Trends in Entertainment, or Why Do We Eat this Crap Up?

[Dervish]

There's something we're all doing that we claim to hate worse than Kim Jong Un's hair stylist and despite a rather vocal outcry to stop it, it continues going on full steam ahead like an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile of Bullshit that we're clearly still throwing ourselves at like One Direction Groupies.

I am of course referring to the current trends in entertainment media and why we as a society are tea bagging the concept of original content.

This whole thread kind of came up as something I wanted to discuss after reading about how that Divergent movie, yet another hastily shoveled together young adult novel adapted movie about a Mary Sue teenager who apparently is super important to stop some great evil and blah blah blah. In this case, Divergent is about some dystopia that segregates and sorts teenagers based on emotional profiles and the protagonist doesn't fit into their system so is in threat of extermination or something and falls into the clutches of a resistance that wants to overthrow the government and of course she falls in love with the hunky leader who decides she's also worth getting smitten for for whatever reason.

In short, a story we've all heard a variation of approximately 100 times in the past five years. Examples include City of Bones, Harry Potter, The Golden Compass, Twilight, Ender's Game, Percy Jackson, Warm Bodies, Beautiful Creatures, and so on

Lately, there's been a really big push from movie companies to produce and shovel out Young Adult novel adaptations like they're going out of style, as they really want to cash in on the trend that Harry Potter started and completely knocked out of the park. Twilight was the next big thing to ride Harry's Broomstick, and it did really well because of pop culture's love affair with supernatural things (especially vampires), which you'll notice is becoming a massive thing for not only movies, but several TV series (Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, Once Upon a Time, True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so on) have popped up over the past couple decades that have done insanely well for themselves. With a few exceptions, a lot of those shows involving vampires and the like are usually steamy romance dramas that completely ignore the fact that vampires are supposed to be horrific murder machines, not sexy young adults with ample assets and a labido that would exhaust Ron Jeremy. People really love the idea of hot corpses screwing each other while acting angsty, as it turns out.

The reason I single out Divergent is because Lionsgate just announced that they're going to split the last book in that series into two parts, just like Harry Potter and Twilight did, as well as The Hunger Games is planning on doing. I can't speak for Twilight, having not read it for hopefully obvious reasons, so I can't speculate of whether or not the last book had enough content to really justify turning into two novels, but in the case of Harry Potter I thought it was a fairly sound decision. In Divergent's case, I haven't read it either but I have a strong suspicion that they're simply just trying to milk as much money out of the franchise as possible, tapping into this overdone YA novel movie genre to bleed people's pockets instead of feeling like the story was one that was truly worth adapting into a film. In the case of novel adaptations like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, those movies are clearly made out of love for the subject matter and their massive budgets, very elaborate props and costumes, casting choices, and just about every facet of the movies are made to be as faithful to the books at they can. They feel like they existed because the people who made them genuinely wanted to bring those words to life. Even the Hunger Games, I found, was a labour of love that while I have no doubt was riding the success of the previously mentioned novel adaptations, the producers looked at making it as faithful as they could while putting no small amount of time, effort, and resources into getting right. Movies like that, I find, are pretty alright in my book.

However, for every successful franchise that understands that a successful movie adaptation depends on more than just the rights to a novel, there's a graveyard of attempts that make you wonder if they were made for any reason other than to try and cash in on the trends. Outside of Divergent, which I'll stop curb stomping for a while, other recent attempts included Ender's Game (which depresses me; my all time favorite book did not deserve a hastily rushed film adaptation that cut out almost everything that made it such a great story), The Golden Compass (another book series that I was REALLY surprised at how much I enjoyed and made me think), City of Bones, Percy Jackson, Spiderwick Chronicles (pretty sure the last three were trying to cash off of Harry Potter's fantasy elements), Beautiful Creatures (Twilight 2.0, from the previews), and so on. Most of those bombed at the box office, with a few exceptions, and I have no doubt if they were successful the producers would have tried to green light the remaining books in their respective series. It's like they tried to pump out a movie with the same clothes at the book but none of the soul that made them respective hits among readers. This is... unfortunate.

Probably the worst offender in the movie category is the whole superhero genre that seemed to explode after Spider-Man and X-Men hit the scene and stole our hearts. Before they came out, Superhero Movies were pretty much box office kryptonite and no producer in the right mind would want to touch them. They weren't popular, they were nerdy, and they weren't stories worth telling, and most importantly, they wouldn't sell past a niche market. Now, several attempts were made in the past, some more successful than others, but on the whole, most of the ones made were cheap efforts made by people who earnestly wanted to make super hero movies on what little budget they could afford. I honestly feel bad for the guys. But fast forward to 2014, and just counting American-made superhero movies that came out since 2000, and excluding some movies that didn't get box offices releases, are obscure characters/ comics, or just weren't successful in the slightest, we have had a soul-crushing 54 movies in 14 years, and another 14 in production or soon to hit theaters. This, needless to say, is completely fucking insane and Marvel's going full bore to make a movie about even the most obscure, unpopular, and useless characters they have in their roster while featuring popular heroes multiple times (So far, Iron Man has showed up in released movies 4 times with another Avengers movie on tap, while Wolverine has shown up SIX times as Hugh Jackman with another three on tap!). I genuinely enjoyed the big-budget movies leading up to the Avengers, which was a concept completely unheard of at the time, which is having so many big super heroes who were in wildly successful movies in the same film. It was a fantastic movie, and it proved the concept worked. Now, they keep making more and more movies using those same characters because of the success of those movies in hopes they'll keep raking in more money per movie than most third world countries' GDPs. Iron Man 3 was a shitty movie if I ever saw one, Thor 2 was pretty much the same thing as the first one, and I don't even care to go see Captain America go through the same formula as every super hero movie ever (seriously, the characters, plot, set pieces, climax, and so on are almost all interchangeable. You know exactly what is going to happen going into it). They're bleeding the whole concept dry, and nobody seems to care. People are literally spending money on movies they've already seen before, expecting a different outcome. That's insanity. About the only draw is the insane CGI budgets and pretty eye candy.

I'm not even going to touch anything related to zombies; that's low hanging fruit if there ever was one.

When movies like Pacific Rim and The Lego Movie are perhaps some of the most original and fun movies to come out in the past several years, you know you're in the dark ages of cinema. For the record, I loved those movies.

Looking at shit like video games, I don't even have to explain what's screwed up about annual releases of Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed and the like; you're more or less buying the same game as last years, only with a different coat of paint... sometimes. On Metacritic, Call of Duty keeps getting pretty high score from the media, but the users are ripping it apart, accusing it of being recycled garbage and what's killing gaming (like Nickleback is to music, heyo!). People keep claiming they want original IPs, but original games are really having a hard time selling compared to the mountains of sequels. For the sake of brevity, and the fact that The Game Theorists cover this topic more comprehensively than I can, have a video.



For those of you who can't be bothered to watch that, this sums up the point nicely: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, one of the most beloved and acclaimed games in history, moved 7.8 million units in its lifetime, while a single Mario Party sequel moved 8 million.

I could go on and on with examples across everything from music to books and so on so forth, but I want to get to the whys.

Honestly, I think a big part of why sequels and me-too releases and trends are what's always been the big sellers is partially because A) the producers have a giant budget and can market and distribute this stuff super effectively, B) It's like comfort food. If you're in the chip isle, people are more likely to pick a bag of stuff they know they like than try a flavour they haven't before because what if they don't like it, C) it's trendy to like popular things, and people don't like to be excluded,
(e.g. "Hey, have you seen Cars 7 yet?"
"Oh man! I went with all my friends! Owen Wilson is HILARIOUS! And Larry the Cable Guy, can you believe him?!"
"Hey, remember that scene where Lighting is like.."
"DUDE! SPOILERS! I'm going this weekend!"
"Hey, Joe, have you seen it yet?"
"Uh.. no?"
"..."
"..."
"...Get the fuck out of here, apostate.")

And so on. For as much as people like to claim they love original stuff, the numbers just don't add up. They just don't want to take a chance with their money on something they don't know if they're like, which is really, really too bad. Or they process to want something, or that they'd buy it, and when it's finally made after enough demand, they don't follow through. People keep buying Call of Duty because everyone else has it, including all their friends. Do you know how hard it is to get people to play Co-op for Transformers: War for Cybertron or get a good posse going in Red Dead Redemption when everyone and their dog is bugging me to play Call of Duty? The worst part about that is I can barely tell the difference between Modern Warfare 2 and Ghosts, they are almost identical games. It's one thing to have a series where it takes several years between installments (Half-Life, for instance), and it's quite another when they keep popping out the same game to try and keep sales high. The only reason I still like Assassin's Creed is because they somehow manage to rebuild these old cities and have entertaining, engaging characters and stories each year. I've played through every installment but only own the first game, Brotherhood, and Black Flag. I simply can't justify buying multiple copies of a game that has almost the same mechanics year after year (Black Flag being a big exception thanks to the excellent naval content). Point is, as much as I am rallying against the same old shit, I'm just as guilty of it as the rest of you.

Anyways, what are your thoughts on this? Anyone else getting as tired of the same old shit month after month with no end in sight? We all fall victim to it, and it's a comfort food that is no longer fulfilling. It's a sad state of the world when all the money that companies earn, they still think it's not worth the risk to come up with new IPs and original ideas because we, as consumers, NEVER buy them. If you're one of the people who craves something original and new, let me ask you this; when's the last time you went to see a movie you've never heard of in the theater, or bought an Indie video game, or bought music from an artist you hadn't heard of before? When's the last time you took the risk on something new? What do you think of the current trends, and what are you guilty of indulging in?

TL;DR: Stop buying the same shit over and over again, try something new. I don't need to see 14 different Spider-Men in my lifetime.

[ASTA]

Because everything that has been done before has literally been done before.

[Nevis]

Heeere you go, written by an ex-game maker. On the note of movies-Hollywood has been doing that for decades at least. A lot of serious writers actually dread having their books turned into movies out of fear of what Hollywood will do to it (dear god).

On this note-I actually play and own very few video games now. I had actually quit video games altogether a year or two ago for several months (after completing Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma). A while later, I rented Skyrim and later Kingdoms of Alamur: Reckoning. After renting those two games (which I DESPISE on a plethora of levels), I actually soon came back into games (Dark Souls, mainly) after it drove home just how amazing some of them were-sometimes just for not engaging in such crap.

On the note of 'originality', though-being the first doesn't really matter. Plenty of the best stories (and games) there have been weren't because anything new; plenty of them used entirely already-done elements. The focus wasn't on 'being original', which always results in just producing a poser product; it was on making the piece good, whether it was the first or not besides. Even t he very word 'original' doesn't mean 'the first'; it means 'from/of the origin', from inspiration, true, authentic.

As for Twilight-interestingly, Robert Patterson, the guy who acted as Edward, detests the series. He actually intentionally portrayed Edward as both arrogant and pathetic; really, go read his comments on it.

[mdk]

You can't have it both ways. You don't get daring fiction *and* a big budget (well you do, with folks like the Coen brothers and Nolan and I guess sometimes the Waichovsky's... Aronofsky... it's just very rare, that's the point I'm making). Alternatives exist. Low-budget film is very real, shit, with internet distribution as cheap as it is, you can find **tons** of original stuff. And you can support them, with your attention and dollars and recommendations, if you want..... but you probably don't. Why? Because we're all complicit in the erosion of American cinema. This is economics 101, invisible hand stuff. What the market wants, the market gets -- period. So what are we getting from Hollywood, if not exactly what we want?

Movies are the most consistent big-business in America, not the bankers, not the stock traders. Studios exist to make money, and they're good at it. Maybe even the best at it.

[Kadaeux]

mdk said Movies are the most consistent big-business in America, not the bankers, not the stock traders. Studios exist to make money, and they're good at it. Maybe even the best at it.

Ah no.

By definition, the respective mints of various nations are the best at making money.

:p

[Shy]

To be fair, the Ender's game movie was in the works since the 90's if I'm correct so it wasn't really hopping on the bandwagon so much as the director's and producer's kept leaving and getting switched. That being said I still think it could have been waaaaaay better so they failed me there. And same with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she was kicking vampire's butts before Meyer ever even had an idea for Twilight, she didn't jump on the vampire trend, she started that thing (Okay, maybe Dracula did but shh!).

Other than that I completely agree with you.

[mdk]

Kadaeux said
Ah no.By definition, the respective mints of various nations are the best at making money. :p

Obviously a joke, but let's keep it running.... if you add up all the dollars from all the heist-movie safes and briefcases and shit.... I bet Hollywood prints more fake-cash than the US Mint prints *real* cash, some years at least.

[mbl]

There's a difference between a producer appealing to the mainstream(producing for the bigger audience) and selling out(forgetting artistic integrity for the sake of monehz), and consumers tend to accuse artistic producers of selling out whenever they make something said consumer doesn't like (Which I would say is what is going in several of your examples and most of game theory's vid, just so you know game theory is generally a pretty yellow source of info on the gaming industry). Also note that the mainstream is different for each industry and the mainstream of each industry tends to change drastically every few years.

As far as the movie, music, and television industries go, they've always been heavily connected to the mainstream as they were born alongside widespread media (which created the mainstream), but we've definitely had more producers full on selling out in the past decades. The main problem now is that the mainstream's taste has been degrading since the late 90's and it just terrible, to the point that we're left looking for maybe one good movie each year instead of a competition as to which will be the best. You or any of the countless masses who have made similar "Don't buy garbage" speeches online do not have any chance of doing anything to change this, the only way this will change is if the widespread media starts changing the mainstream for the better, which it doesn't look like it will do for at least another several years.

As far as the gaming industry goes, I'd say things are a bit different. The gaming industries has always have very loose ties with widespread media with only occasional games getting picked up by it (WoW, Minecraft, and CoD are good examples of what a ridiculous money maker the gaming industry could be if widespread media gave it more attention). What I think is the cause of the problem you are talking about more has to do with one of the recent major mainstream changes, in that when it changed a large portion of the consumers didn't go with it, which has created another large (but still small compared to the mainstream) faction that detests a good portion of what the recent mainstream likes. Game companies had to make a decision as to which group they would work to appeal to more, most chose the mainstream while this little company by the name of Valve has made a killing by playing Steam as the savior of this other faction of gamers. IMO most game producers haven't full on sold out, apart for EA who sold out a long fucking time ago

As far as trending and franchising goes, yes, they're cheap tactics used to milk the mainstream, but major production companies gotta get their money somewhere. Though several of the things you accused of just following treads have been a thing long before they were popular. You say superhero movies weren't a thing and got no respect, when really big groups have been producing superhero movies and show long before recent series made it epic-tier popular. Oh, and as someone who didn't like Hunger Games, I'll tell you it is just as guilty on all of that teen-book trend shit as all the others, if not more so than most as it is the major series that took the mantle once Twilight and HP were out of the way.

[mbl]

Shy said
And same with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she was kicking vampire's butts before Meyer ever even had an idea for Twilight, she didn't jump on the vampire trend, she started that thing (Okay, maybe Dracula did but shh!).

Think he was saying that Twilight jumped on the same trend as Buffy, not that it started it.

[Kadaeux]

mdk said
Obviously a joke, but let's keep it running.... if you add up all the dollars from all the heist-movie safes and briefcases and shit.... I bet Hollywood prints more fake-cash than the US Mint prints *real* cash, some years at least.

Too true :p

[ApocalypticaGM]

This is definitely an area I find pretty interesting. Originality seems like this thing many people abandoned a long time ago when some primary school professor told them 'nothing new is ever created'. There's this notion that no idea is new, but I think that idea is misconstrued. There are actually tons of new ideas out there that we've simply never come upon or have yet to find the means to realize. A story set in a world so interlaced with technology that one dissident could make great change with a small device is a largely fresh idea when looked at the sum of its parts. The narrative structure may rely on tried-and-true tropes along the way, absolutely, but that perspective used to build the experience is still very much new. Games like Last of Us, Watch Dogs, Half Life 2, Mirror's Edge, and Fallout, are not games built on entirely new ideas. What makes them original content are how the elements relate to tell their stories. Originality is how we use our predecssors' tools and our creativity to make something worth experiencing. Even Mirror's Edge is actually very similar to Watch Dogs and Half Life 2 in that they star revolutionaries fighting an oppressive system, but focusing on a specific perspective that most do not have can make an experience truthfully original. TLDR: Originality is not necessarily creating absolutely new everything. It is absolutely possible to create something 'new'.

Moving forward, I hear you Dervish. I deeply enjoyed Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy for their direct plan as to how they wanted to explore each character. The stories seemed self-contained, unaware to the public in that the series did not exist in response to trendy consumerism. We have to realize that America places more value in commodifying a thing than it does on sharing it. The point is to make it a product and to bring in a profit. When creators seek to provide stories that defy simply sating the common tide, such as Tarantino's films often do, we start to see creations built because someone thought the idea was worth sharing. Sure, money is a factor, but we all can tell a movie that's been made solely for-profit vs. one crafted as a labour of love. I personally think Marvel is an interesting situation. I enjoyed the first rotation of Marvel films, though I found Captain America somewhat campy. Continuing the stories makes sense, but it's getting hard to discern if these films are being made to explore new perspectives of each character for a grander tale, or if they're just trying to create an endless series. I find this especially disturbing when we've also just had Nolan do a take meant only for three films, which tried to make direct ties to social concerns and clearly had cultural relevance. Superhero movies have the same potential as their comic forms. They can absolutely tell stories that grip us deeply, making us consider new perspectives on our world. I think it must be harder to keep that as your mission in film though, where a successful hero flicks require hundreds of millions of dollars as opposed to a graphic novel.

We are in a really interesting time for creativity. Most of us have cameras and phones more than capable of producing imagery of a quality most can endure (if not enjoy). Everyone can produce a story, whether it be a brief slice-of-life caught at home, or some play-acting with friends. Netflix and Hulu originals are a serious thing that might still have a significant budget, but are actually pretty affordable in comparison to mainstream television. My point is that we have a stake in the content of these stories. We have the means to create media critiquing what's being produced as well as creating what we desire. Fan-films already make great impact on showing the support for ideas. I look forward to seeing us change our idea of media as this big-budget-required-to-be-good entity. I think that would actually change this whole idea of originality in a way we've never really seen before.

[mdk]

'nothing new is ever created'.

I think it's probably true, for a lot of people, which makes it marvelous when I can find people who actually create. It is a rare and powerful gift.

[Nevis]

Shon, I can hug you for that.

As I said before, originality literally doesn't even mean 'the first'; it means 'from the origin'-that is, from inspiration or such. The point of it is to express the idea and/or truth, not to be the 'the first'. Whether something is the first doesn't have any effect on whether the story is good or not; it's the honesty and depth that does, which simply copying popular ideas by nature lacks-as does eschewing honesty and depth n an effort to be 'the first'.

[Brovo]

Or you know, people like popular things because they like them. There's a reason they're popular. In fact, that's the definition of popular: A lot of people like it.

Though in all seriousness I'm pretty much here only address the idea that either the films or gaming industry are stagnant.

No. At least, not for games.

There were more games made in 2013 than there were in the entirety of the 80's. The indie scene is exploding, some of them even manage to have graphics engines and look good. The free to play market is also exploding, with games like League of Legends seeing humongous success spawning and advancing genres. The mobile industry came from nowhere and, profit-wise, is kicking the shit out of everyone in terms of expenditure versus profits. The modding communities for various triple AAA titles are bigger than ever, with games like Skyrim seeing entirely new areas to play in, new monsters to fight, new gameplay mechanics, new everything basically... For free. Then you have things like Kickstarter which gets new projects off of the ground with large budgets without any publishers at all, admittedly with mixed results because people haven't figured out how conmen work yet apparently.

The consumer has really never had it better from the industry in terms of choice and variety, and the industry is recording record high profits again and again and again. It barely even slowed during the world wide recession. As for costs, on release games cost more, but look at steam sales during the summer and winter: Anywhere between 33-95% off pretty much everything. Other online retailers like eBay have similar sales, or online distributors like GoodOldGames, have similar sales to compete.

Are there a lot of sequels? Yes. Why? Because people recognize the brand label. Why does that matter? Because people grow attached to things. Why did I buy Mass Effect 2? I wanted to see what happened to the characters and universe I grew to know and care about in Mass Effect 1. Sure, there were other sci-fi RPG's that came out that year, but Mass Effect was the one I was looking out for. Why? Because I grew attached to it.

As well, I can enjoy something that, for all technical purposes, is really just schlock or crap. I love Independence Day, but good lord it's a dumb movie. I also love Dynasty Warriors, but I'll be the first to admit that it's the definition of a mindless grind fest where you mash the attack button until your thumb is sore. The fact that these things are dumb or awful does not invalidate my enjoyment out of them in the same way that someone else's enjoyment out of the next Call of Duty game isn't invalidated just because Call of Duty is a shitty game from a technical standpoint. If people really love it, they can keep playing it in their corner, and I'll play my RPG's and strategies in my corner, and we never have to meet each other.

As well, things like the movie or game industry wouldn't even die anyway. They may collapse on their own weight, but after a few years of recovery, they'll be back to juggernaut status again. That would be a perfectly normal boom-bust cycle that you see in a capitalist economy. Even if the film or game industry is heading for a crash (and that's highly unlikely), there's no possible way it will kill the industry, because there will always be a demand for films and games. The entertainment industry is quite possible the biggest industry in the entire world. I'm pretty sure only the military complex is bigger, and even then, I'm not sure.

Plus, if you really want to look at films and how they change, look at the 50's. Compare it to now. Hell, look at the 60's, the 70's, the 80's, and even the 90's, and compare it to now. The face of television and film has changed multiple times over the decades, usually with each new generation. It will change again. That's just how it is.

So basically what I'm saying is if you hate what's mainstream, go look at the indie scene. There's always an indie scene. In films and in games... And, in all honesty, don't be afraid to enjoy something dumb once in a while. It's not a crime to sit down and watch a film with a series of broken aesops and terrible written schlock storytelling if you're there just to watch things go boom and eat popcorn.

That's about it really.

tl;dr: People who think that either the film or gaming industry is stagnant and/or going to crash are totally ignoring the economic and historical backgrounds of both in favour of personal nostalgia and doomsaying nonsense. You can hate a game for not innovating. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with someone else still enjoying that formula, even if it's the sixth Dynasty Warriors doing the same schtick for the sixth time in a row.

[gamer5]

Trends? I don't even follow trends - I watch and play what I find entertaining, fun, a good way kill time and so on. Hell I have to much interests of my own to pay any attention to that thing that masses dig - I am unconventional and weird so I don't care for trends.

[Lucian]

Gotta' say, Derv, The Winter Soldier was actually surprisingly good. I'd recommend seeing it and then getting back to me about it. I want to know how you feel when you see it.

The rest I pretty much agree with. Especially the bastardization of Ender's Game and other young adult novels.

EDIT: Gotta' say though, this is a difficult thing to change and/or fix. There's almost no point in bringing it up, other than a good vent.

[Dervish]

Oh, this lives again! Maybe I'll get back to some of the other walls of text soon!

And have actually heard Winter Soldier was surprisingly good, which is a bit of a surprise. It's out of the local theater rotation in my town now, so I'm going to have to wait until it's out on DVD/ NetFlix. I heard from a friend that it played out more like an elaborate spy movie more than your typical super hero fare. So, sadly, I won't be able to let you know my thoughts on it for a long while, Lucian. Remind me when it comes out to buy. I won't blame you if you forget lol.

[Lucian]

Dervish said
Oh, this lives again! Maybe I'll get back to some of the other walls of text soon!And have actually heard Winter Soldier was surprisingly good, which is a bit of a surprise. It's out of the local theater rotation in my town now, so I'm going to have to wait until it's out on DVD/ NetFlix. I heard from a friend that it played out more like an elaborate spy movie more than your typical super hero fare. So, sadly, I won't be able to let you know my thoughts on it for a long while, Lucian. Remind me when it comes out to buy. I won't blame you if you forget lol.

I don't forget. Also, your friend was right. It was a refreshing combination of things that ended up as something unexpected and really quite enjoyable.

Also, Piracy. Just wanted to say that word for completely NOT-ILLEGAL reasons.