When DreamWorks’ CEO, Jeffrey Katzenberg, stated last month that 2011 had so far been one of the worst years for cinema in recent memory, it was easy to see where he was coming from.

Sure, the CEO of DreamWorks complaining about the quality of filmmaking does reek of hypocrisy (this is the man responsible for the unforgivable Shrek sequels) and yes, this year is probably not worse than 2010 but still, it’s hard to imagine 2011 being remembered as a golden year for cinema (or une année d’or if you want to be all Cannes about it).

How will it be remembered?

Perhaps as the year Harry Potter part 7 part 2 was able to stake a legitimate claim to the title of ‘Best Film of the Summer’, or the year Hollywood was running so low on ideas that they made a freaking Smurfs movie even though no one asked for one and scientific studies (probably) showed that most people would rather have a knitting needle shoved into their eye than have to pass posters emblazoned with the vacuous faces of the smug blue bastards on the tube everyday. Or perhaps 2011 will quite simply be remembered as the year cinema got even stupider.

The central problem with cinema today is that the film industry is no longer making movies for adults. I believe that the blame for this can be attributed to one little word: ‘demographics’.  For a long time now, the balance between ‘show’ and ‘biz’ has been out of whack. Studios are so focused on revenue that films are increasingly being made solely to appeal to the broadest possible consumer demographic, forsaking little things like quality and integrity.

It seems that some marketing genius somewhere has also decided that people over the age of about 15 don’t go to the cinema anymore.  In addition to this, it’s common knowledge that the young, perhaps due to their not-as-yet-entirely-formed brains, are much more inclined to buy the ‘merchandise’ that movie studios are busy fashioning out of cheap plastic and the tears of orphans in some factory in the Far East. This has led to film studios pouring huge amounts of time and money into films aimed at teenagers and, God help us, tweenagers. (It should be noted at this juncture that this demographic of course deserves to be rewarded for its valuable

contribution to our flagging economy and for the fact that it isn’t comprised of ungrateful squatters insistent on milking dry our society’s bizarre idolisation of the young).

This not only leads to more films being made specifically for a younger age group, but also to the tweaking of films that traditionally might not have been aimed predominantly at a youth market (this is why every big Hollywood film now has to have a seemingly unnecessary and irritating teenage character who makes wisecracks and adds little or nothing to the plot).

In addition to this, there are countless examples of screenwriters having their work butchered because Hollywood execs are worried that this youth market won’t understand words of more than two syllables or be able to focus on the screen for 15 seconds without an anaemic chase sequence or a cutesy CGI rabbit prancing around.  In short, they are attempting to make movies so stupid that even the stupidest person in the room can enjoy them.

Of course, this is based on the mistaken assumption that teenagers and children are idiots. I don’t believe this and I’m sure you don’t either. In fact, in my experience kids are more equipped than most to follow the plot of even the most byzantine blockbuster because not having student loans to pay off or a job to worry about means that they are able to focus much more energy on understanding the intricate details of a fictional world.

Naturally, some children are idiots in the same way that some adults are idiots (children and adults share many similarities like this, something the use of ‘demographics’ fails to elucidate) but on the whole, children are pretty smart. If you don’t believe me, just ask any little boy about his love of Star Wars or James Bond or dinosaurs and I guarantee that he will amaze you with an answer so extensive and detailed that even Temple Grandin would probably think it was a

little over the top.

No, I don’t think that the youth market is stupid and neither do you, but as we all know, conventional wisdom has no place in Hollywood and clearly they think the little darlings are as thick as box of rocks.  Don’t believe this? Don’t believe that movies are getting stupider? I have a statistic: the average shot length (ASL) of US films in 2008 was 2.5 seconds (the most recent statistic I could find). This means that roughly half the time in 2010, movies could not go 2.5 seconds without cutting to a different shot. The average movie studio believes that we can’t go more than about three seconds without the under-15s getting distracted and leaping around the cinema trying to catch imaginary butterflies.

If this is not an absurd underestimation of our collective intelligence then I don’t know what is.

Compare this to the fact that in 2000 it was 4.7, in 1994 it was 6.8 and in 1972 it was a whopping 8.6 seconds and you have categorical proof that films are getting dumber and it’s children’s fault.

 

Of course, the fact that so many films are being so heavily targeted to the youth demographic means that anyone over the age of 15 is skipping the cinema and staying home to watch Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic instead. This means that when the marketing guy checks the figures again, he naturally comes to the conclusion that no one over the age of 15 goes to the cinema and so he reports that the studio should be even more heavily targeting their output to the youth demographic who are of course all suffering from ADHD, anterograde amnesia

and crippling stupidity. This in turn, leads to more stupid movies and even fewer intelligent adults going to the cinema. The marketing guy then checks the figures again and so on and so forth. It’s a vicious circle, but I’m sure you’ve got that now (unless of course you’re a teenager, in which case we’ll be here for hours).

Compounding this problem is the fact that films getting steadily stupider means that cinemagoers (on the rare occasions that you do go to the cinema) are becoming less demanding, indoctrinated by this widespread idiocy. This means that the bar for what people will pay to see at the cinema just keeps getting lower. So when you forked over your hard-earned cash to see Transformers: Dark of the Moon (even the title has a typo) because ‘y’know it passes the time of day and there are like some real cool ‘splosions and such’ you were actually creating a demand for more horribly inane movies to be made. Basically, it’s your fault.

By now this relentless negativity, this somewhat condescending end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it attitude that I’ve adopted has started to wear you down and you’re probably left asking firstly, whether things are really as bad as I’m making out and secondly whether we can do anything to prevent cinema’s seemingly inevitable descent into idiocy.

Well, the answer to the first question is a tentative ‘not really, I’m being dramatic’. While on the whole, studios do seem to be churning out more and more movies that are little more than products designed to generate revenue, all is not lost. This year alone has seen

many surprising, heartfelt, challenging brilliant films such as Win Win, True Grit, Tree of Life, Beginners, Bridesmaids and Submarine so we definitely shouldn’t give up hope yet.

And the answer to the second question is ‘yes’, you can prevent it by going to see the films I listed above because demand creates supply.

If more people go to see intelligent and well-made films, then more intelligent and well-made films will be made, it’s basic economics. Now, I’m not saying that we all need to be watching Eastern European art house films with inexplicable costumes and ugly people crying, just choosing the better option.

If you’re going to the cinema this evening, don’t go and see Transformers, go and see Super 8 or Tree of Life instead. And later this year don’t go and see Final Destination 5 (5inal Destination, seriously?), go and see Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

Have some self-respect and demand something from cinema. Demand to be challenged, to be moved, or to laugh. Demand to be exhilarated or befuddled. Demand to be angered even.  Just don’t allow yourself to be yet another pile of laundry who just sits in that dark room feeling nothing for 90 minutes and then immediately forgets about it afterwards because you are better than that and you deserve better than that. After all, we are lucky enough to be alive at a time when the likes of Terrence Malick, Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese are still making movies. Let’s take a moment to be grateful for that.

If you want to try to counteract the ill-effects of the cinematic junk food you are being force-fed, then please check out our new semi-regular feature, ‘Have you seen… ‘. The first of these is about the 1998 film Happiness and can be found here:    Have You Seen… Happiness?