Posted on 07/26/2013 7:02:51 PM PDT by dynachrome
At last week's Comic-Con event in San Diego, the film director Zack Snyder bounded on stage to announce a bold new merger. His next Warner Bros blockbuster would pit Batman against Superman, two costumed superheroes in one movie. "Let's face it," said Snyder, "this is beyond mythological." The fanbase was galvanised. Hyperbole hit the roof. But in Hollywood, alarm bells were ringing.
Industry insiders are referring to this season as "the summer of doom" – an overcrowded huddle of big-budget spectaculars, without the audience to sustain them. US box office takings are down 19% on the same period last year, while the studios are smarting from such high-profile casualties as The Lone Ranger, After Earth and the supernatural action-thriller RIPD. While the runaway success of Iron Man 3 and Despicable Me 2 helped soften the blow, major figures claim that the industry needs to adapt quickly or die.
Speaking on a panel at the University of Southern California last month, the film-makers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg suggested that the era of the $300m movie dinosaur may well have run its course. "There's eventually going to be a big meltdown," Spielberg said. "There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even half a dozen of these mega-budgeted movies go crashing into the ground – and that's going to change the paradigm."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
I hope spielberg loses everything that he owns... he sold his soul long ago.
LLS
Watching disney go bankrupt would be a delight beyond nirvana.
Nirvana is a supposed exalted spiritual state posited by Buddhism. It’s based on the theory that all desire leads to disappointment, and therefore that it is blessed to desire nothing. They’re picking up alright on the futility of living in sin, but missing on salvation.
(What would beyond nirvana mean? Desiring less than nothing?)
Batman has tricks up his sleeve, and Superman’s powers (especially in “Man of Steel” as compared to “Superman”) actually do have limits.
We don’t know the plotlines it could be Worlds Finest type team-up with an uneadiness but respect of different styles or ‘the fight’ that has been covered several ways including frank millers dark night returns, a novel and graphic novel called Kingdom Come, and a few more. Personally I’d hope for the team up with a potential lead in to a JLA movie, but DC/Warner Brothers has managed their adaptations and characters terribly outside of the batman dark night movies. So I’m not placing bets for success.
Special effects could sell tickets for only so long before the audiences got bored. Hollywood needs to try something that hasn’t been done for years; rely on plots, character development and story lines. You know, like Ben Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, The Great Escape, etc.
Nirvana in what is to me “contemporary” use, is referencing a generic state of bliss... not necessarily spiritual. At least it was decades ago when it was being used as a hip way of stating that one is residing in a happy place.
You are dead on about salvation.
Personally, I’m very, very, very tired of seeing Leftist screeds mascarading as film plots; self-indulgent and ego-maniacal actors and actresses strutting and preening themselves before the camera; plots written by high school students for high school students; and directors with nothing to do but run down America and/or generate endless remakes of American cinema classics.
These days, I wait to see where a film stands on all these issues, then check it out of the library after it’s out on DVD.
Lately, I actually enjoy four or five films a year, at most. And that’s in a good year.
Hey, I know! They should start making GOOD movies again. That would do the trick.
When was the last “On Golden Pond”, “Blade Runner”, “Glengarry Glen Ross”, “To Die For”, “Soylent Green”, “Pulp Fiction”, “Something about Mary”, etc.?
Right now the only quality story telling is on cable. Shows like “Dexter”, “Ray Donovan”, “Sopranos”, and “Deadwood”.
...... Dear Mr., Mrs., or Ms. Hollywood ..... I request that you please Stand Back .... and gaze upon the aftermath of the utopian world that you and your masters have worshiped for decades. You have brought this to us and now you must also reap it's glorious rewards! You have destroyed the same system that brought you and this nation wealth and now expect us to spend what is left in our bank accounts to enjoy your services?
.... Yup .... I guess we could say that Hollywood's chickens have indeed come home to roost. They have destroyed the goose that has laid their golden eggs for decades ..... now so many that enjoyed those fantasies of tinseltown can no longer afford to support their socialist vice ...... Oops ..... sorry Hollywood! ..... Hows that utopia of yours working out?
Every movie loses money. Just ask the studios.
In other words, the movies are for liberals.
Special effects is so ‘90s.
Atlas Shrugged pt 3 7/4/14
I do get it of course... just being rhetorical for rhetoric’s sake. Wouldn’t it be an oxymoron anyhow to desire nirvana?
You want to know what I desire... I desire my America back. I desire the Saturday morning where kids watched Roy Rogers and Trigger... Sky King and Penny... where young boys were turned into men through scouting... not a world where boys are raped by fagot scout leaders or watch a homosexual sponge work his magic or worship a marxist kenyan and are forced to sing songs about his greatness... as they have done for decades in places like north korea, china, russia and a myriad of other **** holes. I would like to return to a world where doors were mostly open, Churches were filled and the media reported the true facts of what makes up news. Is that too much to ask when contrasted with this evildom we are living in today?
LLS
Well, I would desire that God be again enthroned in the hearts of the people as a King and not just as a Facilitator Of Worldly Schemes With Lots Of Resources. And God does too. God is not having schizo spells here; God is letting evil become obvious without violating anybody’s will.
Frankly, “full churches” might or might not mean anything further than people who were acting good only for show. The latter is a nice thing from a worldly point of view and that’s something we see championed a lot here by FR discussants. (Hey, my spell checker took “discussants.”) But it has the vice of slapping a spiritual band-aid on a spiritually cancerous people. At some point God stops letting common grace, as nice as it is, obscure the need for saving grace, rather than let people’s souls be lost to hell.
Hollywood is dying because they haven’t had an original idea in decades. They just keep re-creating the same tired old superheroes from the 1930’s. And making movies based on videogames. And making movies based on toys. No imagination, no originality, just keep stealing the same old ideas over and over.
I guess I’m getting into more trilogies now than before. US Christianity has been at a sub-gospel-power level for many decades if not centuries. At least at the Great Awakening the people still cared about being saved, and still believed it possible in spite of God accused, in one Calvinist mode, of being a “do you feel lucky, punk” God rather than a biblical “whosoever” God. (Why should this kind of philosophizing matter? Well it does, because it drags unnecessary doubt into the actual salvation walk. Try to apply modernist human philosophy to the bible and at best one will get insoluble conundrums, at worst one will be repulsed from it as “impossible.”) I believe it very likely that God is letting these trials come along with selective movement of His Spirit to get a true gospel power voice back into the USA. One hallmark of gospel power is that you will see some of the most thorough sinners, including so called “gays” (they are grim buggerers) being visibly saved, which is something that right now is virtually off the radar except for private groups that hunker down low.
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