Sequel: The Sequel

With the success of Paranormal Activity Hollywood has decided to make sequels from it. Due to the movie being made with a budget of $15,000 and making at total of $107,918,810 during its time in the movie theater it has become a box office hit. Unfortunately the Hollywood execs are more concerned with making money than actual stories. For example the Saw franchise was originally intended to end with the third movie due to the main antagonist death. However the Hollywood execs and all their brilliance decided to make more sequels and drag out a story that had already finished. As much as I like the first 3 Saw movies they should have stopped at three and not have gone to seven. While I have never seen Saw 7 (and never intend to) I heard that the movie was left open ended. If this is in fact true then somebody deserves to get slapped for leaving it open ended. There are only so many times stories, movies, books, TV shows, etc. can be told and should be told. Financially it makes sense to milk a franchise for what it is worth but personally I think the Hollywood execs should stop looking to milk movies and start creating new and original movies. Unfortunately milking franchises has been the goal for the past few years.  Movies like Rocky, Rambo, Terminator, Shrek, The Mummy, and Indiana Jones all have one thing in common, they have sequels that should have never been made. I want to say that the Hollywood execs have learned their lesson that movies shouldn’t have a sequel unless it was always intended to have one, however this is not true. It seems like everyday I hear about another sequel that will be coming out soon. While I don’t like sequels I do plan on seeing Paranormal Activity 4 this coming October because I am excited to see where they take the story to.

http://boxofficemojo.com/search/?q=paranormal%20activity

http://www.imdb.com/list/wNzb7qtbmpA/

Movie based on video games? Video games based on movies? What the deuce?

There are a ton of movies that try to have a video game come out the same time the movie is released. One genre in particular comes to mind. Superhero films. While superhero movies such as Spider-Man, Superman, Fantastic Four, Green Lantern can make big bucks in the box office opening weekend the same cannot be said about their video game counterparts. The reason for this is because most exceptionally good video games tend to take over a year to develop to have it be playable on consoles. There is another reason why movies based on video games tend to be a disappointment to the fans. The reason is because most superhero movies tend to 2 hours long and have only one villain in it while video games are much longer than a 2 hour movie. It is harder for the video game developers to create the characters from the movie when the movie itself has barley begun pre-production. There are exceptions to the bad video games. Games such as Spider-Man, Goldeneye 007, Ghostbusters: The video game are great and well loved because not only are they faithful adaptions of the movies they are based on, they have gameplay that is easy to understand and easy to adapt to.

While some video games based on movies can turn out bad, there are movie based on video games that can be equally as bad. Movies such as Ecks vs. Sever, Max Payne, Street Fighter are not faithful adaptions of the games they are based on. One of the reasons for this is translation. Video games are difficult to translate because there is so much content within a game that cannot be put into a two hour movie. There are however exceptions to this. Movies like Chronicles of Riddick, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine were not that great. Their video game counterparts however where very well liked due to the factor that they take you beyond where the movie stops.

All in all I believe that movies and video games should respect each other and work closely so that they may form a great piece of entertainment.

http://www.metacritic.com/feature/best-and-worst-movies-based-on-videogames

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/717406/the-best-video-games-based-on-movies/

http://www.watchvideogames.com/top-10-best-movie-based-video-games/

American Remakes

Earlier today I read an article online stating that the "Akira" has been put on hold. The reason why this movie has been put on hold is because Warner Bros. wants to spend less money that what was originally intended for the movie because their are no big actors attached to the movie. I can understand where they are coming from. They are afraid that they will lose money since no one will know who the stars of the movie are. I think they should be less worried about not having big named stars and concentrate on leaving the budget the way it was intended to be. "Akira" should not be a movie that has very little special effects, it should have Michael Bay size effects. One reason I bring up "Akira" is because the major film studios here in the United States like to remake a lot of foreign films. Personally I do not like it due to the fact that we are taking someones original film and messing with it.

Speaking of "Akira" (which is a Japanese animated movie) there are a few American remakes of foreign films that come to mind such as "Ju-on: The Grudge" and "Let The Right One In". While the latter remake was not a box office hit the former remake was. I believe the reason for this is because "The Grudge" changes many elements that made original movie great. With "Let Me In" the remake was almost an exact duplicate of the original with the exception of different actors. Even with the success of "Let Me In" I do not think Hollywood should resort to remake any foreign film because it is lazy to just take someone else's work of art and try to copy it and pass it off as if it was their own work. It can be successful or a complete failure but I know personally I would not like anyone to remake anything I have done.


http://www.slashfilm.com/akira-pause-warner-bros-budget/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/grudge/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/let_me_in/

Viral Marketing

I have just watched a very interesting and intriguing TED "speech". The reason I have the word speech quoted is because it is less of a speech and more of a viral marketing ploy. You can also consider it to be people enjoying their job or even them wanting to do some brand new. Here is the link below.

http://www.ted.com/talks/gel_gotta_share.html

I chose this because the people behind the Gotta Share musical improv have an interesting approach as how to promote themselves. They not only have prepared a short and brief introduction into what they are doing but have also created some viral marketing for themselves. The speaker or rather speakers have helped me understand a little bit more about viral marketing. Viral marketing does not only have to be online, it can also be done in a real life situation that can cause people to tweet, text, or even talk about it. The speakers have also made me learn to be somewhat spontaneous because their little song and dance was a little spontaneous. All in all the speakers showed me that you can still have fun doing your job and have your audience or clients and customers have fun with you.

Lets remake everything.

Hollywood is starting to get themselves into a trend where the are remaking movies. This is a good idea and a bad idea. The reason it is good is because there are some movies that are outdated in todays day and age. But there are some movies which are classic that should not be remade at all. I think Hollywood needs to have movies come out every two weeks rather than every week. Imagine a 2 new movies come out every week for a year. That is 104 movies every year. You know how many remakes those movies probably are? If Hollywood came out with movies every two weeks it can help everyone by people getting outside and enjoying the world around them rather than going to the movies seeing the same thing a dozen different times. On the subject of remakes why does money have to influence people into making them? For example Spider-Man, the first movie came out in 2002 and made tons of money. The second one came out in 2004 and made even more money. The third one came out in 2007 and made a lot of money but was a horrible movie. Less than 4 years later it was announced that they were going to reboot the Spider-Man franchise and take him back to his high school years. Why? There are other movies that Marvel can reboot such as Daredevil ,Fantastic Four. So why reboot a franchise that was already great to begin with? Answer money.

http://www.nextmovie.com/blog/upcoming-movie-remakes/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0948470/

Viral Marketing

I just saw Paranormal Activity 3 this past weekend and it made me think of movies and viral marketing. When the first Paranormal Activity movie came out it came out through word of mouth and through viral marketing. In order to see the movie first everyone had to log onto a website and vote for which city would see it first. Me being in Orlando I voted for it because I wanted to see what all the hype was about. I am glad I did it because the movie scared the hell out of me. Now another movie that has used viral marketing is a little indie film called the Dark Knight. When viral marketing started for the Dark Knight it started off with one website that that led to another and another. This got the hype up to see the movie grow more and more everyday because there was something new to discover. While there are a lot of movies that do not need to use viral marketing there are some that can definitely benefit from it.




http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1179904/

http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/guerrilla-marketing/video-viral-job-challenge/

Is it that easy to sue to a company?

Ok so I found an article at IGN http://movies.ign.com/articles/119/1199189p1.html saying that a woman from Michigan has filed a suit over a movie trailer for the movie Drive http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780504/. The suit claims that she felt that she has been misled into believing that she would be watching a movie that is similar in nature to the Fast and Furious franchise. I find it hard to believe that the woman did not know that movie trailers typically lie to everyone. Most trailers tend to be deceiving in order to make money. They can show a kids movie to be funny but once you are in the theater they kids (and adults) do not find the movie to be funny at all. That is one way Hollywood deceives people into going to the movies. The woman should know that not every movie is going to be what the trailer has shown, many times there are scenes shown in a trailer but yet they do not make it into the theaters. All in all I hope the court doesn't even look at this woman's case.