The failure of 21st century Hollywood

In a nutshell, film directors have forgotten how to tell a story.

Because of dependence upon CGI and gore that would disturb a coroner and sex that would shock a hooker, not to filming with a leftist slant that makes LBJ look conservative, movie makers provide us little reason to want to shell out big coin and take our families to the multiplex.

Christian Toto, in a piece for Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood (here, with a great video about Robert Shaw), made these very points as he reviewed the Blu-Ray release of Jaws.

If "Jaws" came out today, and it's a miracle some thick-headed studio exec hasn't already greenlit a remake, the shark would look so realistic audiences wouldn't be able to tell the movie shark from the real McCoy. And, most likely, the film's storytelling would suffer as a result.

Why bother writing a great script or indelible characters when all movie goers will be talking about are the special effects long after the lights turn back on in the theater?

Heck, Spielberg himself admits as much during the release's copious "making of" features. The director couldn't rely on "Bruce" the shark for extended closeups or elaborate poses. So he showed less of it, and the result was far more frightening than any CGI shark.

Great CGI + lame story + lame characters + lame dialogue = 2012 Hollywood.

The door's wide open for any who care to craft a good story. Don't tell me. Show me. Toto highlights a great line of dialogue that captures that essence. As Richard Dreyfus' character gets ready to be a diver-in-a-can lunch snack for Bruce the Shark, rather than state the obvious, "I'm scared to death and pre-wet my wetsuit" he states simply, "I got no spit" as he tries to defog his swim mask. Scared. To. Death.

Interesting, too, that 1970's Steven Spielberg removed the graphic adultery of Peter Benchley's novel in crafting the screenplay for the movie. Minus the shadowed girl running naked into the waves at the start of the movie, there is little to object to in Jaws. A terrifying story told with exquisite mastery.

Are you ready to go back into the water?

Coming down the Pixar Pike

Last summer, Pixar exposed its humanity by dropping Cars 2 into the lap of America.

Those movie makers had smashed home run after home run by anchoring their feet on two solid foundations: the mystique of original characters and a depth of story that wrenched the human heart.  Cars 2 failed on both counts.  While their other sequels, Toy Story 2 and 3, returned familiar characters, the new characters captivated us, and the stories continued to plumb the human soul. Cars 2, on the other hand, smacked of commercialism and political correctness.

Back to the drawing board of originality ran the Pixar artists. From that easel springs Brave due out this summer. After viewing the trailer (below), I'm not hopeful. Take a gander yourself. I offer some encouragements and concerns afterwards.



Here we go.

PLUSES

1. PIXAR. Even with the dud that Cars 2 turned out to be, it was still better fare than 97% of the refuse that Hollywood is cranking out. Artists. Master storytellers. Bring it.

2. ART. Yes, they are cartoons. Yes, they are movies. Yes, they are geared to younger audiences. But they are incredible works of art. They drill a bullseye everytime they match a vocal talent with a character. The worlds the characters inhabit breathe.  Attention to detail beyond what you will ever notice. And it's not just noise. It enhances and never detracts. Brave seems to continue in that vein.

3. SCOTTISH ACCENTS. You can make just about anything better with a Scottish accent. While these are only words, "I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain," you can't read them without hearing the lamenting pleas of Montgomery Scott's brogue.

Yeah, I'm sorry. That's it from the trailer. On to the ...

MINUSES


1. LOW-GRADE HUMOR. A nipple-pinch and a hoisted kilt to reveal a Scottish full moon. You expect such from South Park or The Simpsons, but its not the humor we've come to know and love from Pixar.


2. CHARACTER STEALING. Didn't it seem to you like they ripped off the characters and styles of How to Train Your Dragon or perhaps Tangled?


3. MEN ARE STUPID. Bob Parr (aka Mr. Incredible). A great character. A man. Unashamed. His heroics. His struggles. Bob Parr is an uncommon Hollywood character. Most male characters idolize adolescence and follow their hormones. They're idiots. Dolts. Pixar has done a decent job portraying men as heroic and noble. Perhaps King Fergus might be such a man. The clip offered little hope.


4. HELEN REDDY REDUX. Is this going to be yet another "I am woman--hear me roar" flick? Men are stupid and the women are heroes. Alas. Can we not have strong men and women without turning women into warriors and men into transvestites?


Well, I thought a story about bugs would be stupid and about an old man and a Boy Scout as exciting as chess. I was WRONG.


Here's hoping I'm wrong again. Bring it! We're going.

Movie villains 2

As I lamented Hollywood's oil hatred, exemplified in Cars 2, in my last post, I cited other villains cliched by movie makers over the past thirty years, notably OUR government, OUR military, and the church. Regarding the latter, I should have been more specific. It's not the church per se.  Hollywood hates those who take Christianity seriously and live it out at home, at work, at play, and yes, in the church.  That hatred burbles to the surface in villains that look nothing like Christ.

You might think I'm just being thin-skinned, knowing full well that I am a Christian of the born-again variety, a man who tries to love his wife, train his children, labor at work, and cast his vote in accord with the word of God. I understand that there are Christians who do evil and that there are those who profess to be Christians who do evil in the name of God.

But.

Is this the exception or is this the rule? Dinesh D'Souza in his sterling work, "What's So Great About Christianity," details the rise of western civilization (is there really any other?) upon the foundation of Christianity, a history rapidly being amputated from our schools.

How, too, does such Hollywood's Christian villainy jive with the cover-to-cover word of God? The Bible reveals that those who are Christ-followers will be known by their love (John 13:34-35), that they are to love their neighbor as their very self (Matthew 22:39, Romans 13:9), and that their character will reveal love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, self-control, and more (Galatians 5:22-23). The Son of God declared that you will know a tree by it's fruit, therefore if these things are obvious by their absence in someone's life, their relationship with Jesus Christ is questionable at best (1 John 3:6-10).

Will a Christian be perfect and without sin?  That is without a doubt the standard because God himself is the standard (Matthew 5:48, 1 Peter1:15-16), but at the same time, as we struggle in our skin (Romans 7:13-24), we will still sin (1 John 1:8).

If that is what we would expect to see of Joe "The Average" Christian, why do we not find such characters in television or in film? Ever. If you find a practicing Christian in film, it's a C-grade "religious" movie with a production quality of a junior high school play (yes, there are exceptions), and therefore, few see it. The entertainment's vision of a practicing Christian falls into one of these categories:

• Ignorant.  The person has no education and, in the Hollywood mind, believes the Bible literally.  That said, I believe the Bible literally where a plain reading demands a literal reading. But Hollywood has no understanding of context or of the different types of literature in Scripture. To their mind, anyone who believes it is an eyes-aflame ignoramous.
• Evil. Hollywood believes the Bible to be a dangerous book unless you cut parts out of it. Any who choose to live by it are therefore by default evil.
• Intolerant. Because a Christian has the audacity to declare something sin, they get portrayed as out-of-touch isolationists.
• Hypocritical. To the movie-making mind, not one Christian practices what he preaches. All decry the perversity of the culture only to return home and bed the baby sitter.

Yes, many Christ-followers do not know their Scripture and many are not on top of current events, but many more are.

Yes, many Christ-followers misapply the very word of God they profess to follow, but many more honor the name of Christ with their lives. The lives of many who profess to be Christ-followers and carry out evil in the name of Christ look nothing like God's word says a Christ-follower will look.

Yes, many Christians exhibit little tolerance, but many more live great care and compassion for their fellow man without condoning their sin.

Yes, many fall short of the holiness of God's character, but that is why Christ shed his blood in the first place. Man cannot attain to the holiness demanded by a holy God.

Here's my beef. In the past thirty years, how many noble Christian characters have made it into film or television, not pseudo-religion like "Touched by an Angel" but those who hold to and live out a vibrant faith in Jesus Christ? The idea of the Christian villain would not even be an issue if any semblance of balance was shown by those who produce our entertainment.  

Despite the success of films like The Blind Side, Soul Surfer and the works of Sherwood Pictures, an arm of Sherwood Baptist Church (Fireproof, Facing the Giants, Courageous), we get fed film after film like the upcoming film, "The Ledge." 

"Those quiet religious types are always hiding a bit of crazy, aren’t they? Anyway, at least in “The Ledge” they are, as it centers (on) a Bible thumper who gets off-the-crucifix crazy when he finds out his wife is taking advantage of the pleasures of the secular flesh."

That crazy Bible thumper takes Leviticus into his own hands and demands that the adulterous atheist commit suicide before he murders his adulterous wife.  Charming.

Not to be outdone in bashing believers, "Salvation Boulevard" will also pitch in to tar and feather the pious.

"Set in the world of mega-churches in which a former Deadhead-turned-born again-Christian finds himself on the run from fundamentalist members of his mega-church who will do anything to protect their larger-than-life pastor." 

Yeah, it breaks my heart, but yet again, it does not surprise me. A few millenia back, as the incarnate God walked the earth, he said, "You will be hated by all for my name's sake" (Mark 13:13). And It gets better. On the night before he would be nearly beaten to death and then hung upon a Roman cross to die, he told his disciples,

"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name,because they do not know him who sent me...But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled:'They hated me without a cause.' (John 15:18-21, 25)

So Christian villains will continue to fill the cineplex. Perhaps our conduct as Bible-believing Christ-followers will help others to see that such films are truly works of fiction.