Dumbing it down

[Ainaserkewen]

I’ve always had a certain mentality about Blockbuster movies. When I say Blockbuster I mean massively advertised, many theater-ed, multi-cultural, hugely popular movies...like Lord of the Rings. The way I view such movies is that they are entertainment. They are made for the “silver screen” as to be enjoyed by all that chose to see them. They entertain you with emotions, ideas, characters, plots, visual effects et cetera, and there is no reason to believe that if you pay to see a movie, that you will get anything more out of it. To me, that is a good blockbuster. In comparison, there are other movies and forms of story-telling art that are meant to contain more. Those types of stories are not made to make money or to be popular, simply to exist as what they are and what they were intended to be.

"more strong female presence is required to make a marketable film"

Marketable is exactly it. Blockbusters are meant to make money and if they happen to have elements in them that would turn some audience members, then what’s the harm in correcting those elements?

Once you choose to adapt an author's work you have a moral obligation to be as faithful as possible.

No, they really don’t. I could bring up hundreds of screen adaptations recent and old that are not only a reflection of the original author of the books their based on, but more so a reflection of the people who made the movie. Some people go see movies that are made by their favourite directors or screen writers, or Bob Anderson (I look for the movies he helped with now). Specifically, it’s the director’s style that will become more important to the audience, after all, it’s their work to make the movie, not the author’s.

I really think we are getting dumber as a culture.

I tried to think of an argument to this statement but depressingly, I can’t think of a good one. As a species we have become more advanced, more civilised, and more complicated than ever recently, but at the same time the value of intelligence and philosophy and downright thinking has decreased. This may just be my teenaged mind talking, I welcome arguments to this particular opinion of mine.

Perhaps I am strange in being able to separate the films from the books and enjoy them both without letting the one impair my enjoyment of the other.

No, that is how such things are meant to be viewed. Blockbuster movies are meant to be entertainment, if you thought the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was entertaining, then it was a good movie. The books however, are on a different and deeper playing field where much more is expected of them. People are far more choosy about the books they read and eventually enjoy than the movies they like and see. The only books that defy this explanation at Harry Potter, but that’s a completely different argument.

I abase myself humbly to those who accuse me of nitpicking about Theoden's line at the tomb. They are absolutely right - it is nitpicking.

I would think that the “nitpicking” is a compliment. If it truly was a terrible drought of movies then we wouldn’t like to complain so much would we?