“Disney Exec Says Tentpole Movies are About Spectacle, Not Story. Is He Right?”
Here we go again: Hollywood’s recurring assault on the importance — or not — of story. From Slashfilm:
Think back to the last movie you paid to watch in theaters. What inspired you to shell out your hard-earned cash for two hours’ entertainment when you could’ve easily saved money by exploring your Netflix queue at home? If you said “the story,” Walt Disney Animation Studios chief technical officer Andy Hendrickson has one word for you: “Bullshit.” In Hendrickson’s view, what draws in paying audiences is “spectacle,” not storytelling. And, well, he might not be totally wrong. Read more after the jump.
During a talk at the Siggraph conference this weekend, Hendrickson talked up the benefits for studios of focusing on event movies that draw in larger-than-average audiences, and explained what makes a good tentpole. Referencing a chart of the top 12 domestic grossing films of all time, he pointed out that each one was a “spectacle film.” He used his own studio’s Alice in Wonderland ($334,191,110 lifetime domestic gross) as an example of how his theory plays out: “The story isn’t very good, but visual spectacle brought people in droves. And Johnny Depp didn’t hurt.”
According to Hendrickson, the number of domestic tickets sold has remained steady since about 2005 even as the number of titled have increased — indicating that theatrical releases are drawing smaller and smaller audiences on average. Meanwhile, Hendrickson said, now that home video technology has moved on from more-profitable DVDs to less-profitable streaming, revenues from home entertainment have fallen to VHS-era levels. “Once you’re out of theaters your maximum profit potential is over,” Hendrickson said. Therefore, in his thinking, “Profit equals the ability to capture more than the average share of viewers [in theaters].”
What’s going on here? Since the inception of the movie business, there has been an effort to minimize the value of writers. Almost everything else about the filmmaking process is technical in nature so studios can hire… you know… technicians to do it. But story? What the hell is it? How do you do it? Story is ephemeral, mysterious, even mystical in nature. As a result, studios are forced to hire writers. It’s where the creative crashes up against commerce. And that brings a general sense of discomfort in movie studio offices.
So a “chief technical officer” feels confident enough in a business where, as William Goldman famously said, “Nobody knows anything,” to opine that franchise movies don’t require a good story, all they need is “spectacle” to succeed. Whether it’s true or not, it speaks to the desperate desire of the suits wanting to believe it’s true.
Reminds me of the 1992 Robert Altman movie The Player in which studio exec Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) muses, “I was just thinking what an interesting concept it is to eliminate the writer from the artistic process.” That he actually kills a screenwriter, albeit for other reasons, only serves to put an ironic spotlight on the sentiment.
If you read the Slashfilm article here, the writer [Angie Han] does a good job analyzing the top 25 B.O. movies and comes to a decidedly different conclusion than Mr. Hendrickson.
Thanks to the many people who sent me the article. Evidently the CTO’s sentiment didn’t sit well with a number of GITS readers.