What’s that old saying?
You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?
No. That’s not it.
The grass is always greener on the other side?
Maybe.
I’m trying to say something about why Black Adam didn’t do well at the box office.
There have been a lot of critiques of superhero movies as of late. They say that they all feel the same. They’re all lowest-common denominator entertainment. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.
While there are definitely issues with Marvel and DC movies, sometimes it takes a superhero flick outside of that space to help you realize just how much better those movies are. While technically part of the DC universe, Black Adam is its own thing. And it’s so generic that nobody went to see it.
This has surprised no one except for the film’s creators.
How did they get it wrong?
We always say that the key to a successful idea is to make one tweak to the formula. Give us “the same but different.” If you spoke to The Rock or anyone working on this film, they would’ve proudly said that’s exactly what Black Adam did. The title character is a superhero who kills people. He’s not all good. That’s what makes him and this movie different!
For this reason, we should all be running out to theaters to watch this film because it’s a unique twist on the superhero formula.
But we aren’t.
Why?
In my newsletter (e-mail carsonreeves1@gmail.com to get on), I talked about the importance of telling the TRUTH as a screenwriter. If you lie to the reader, they’re done with you. Cause if the reader can’t trust that what you’re saying is real, why would they continue to subject themselves to more lies?
The Rock tells us, in the trailer, that he kills people. That he’s not good. But does anybody watching the trailer truly believe that? Do they believe that he’s bad? Not a chance.
First of all, if you were really bad, your movie wouldn’t be rated a safe and cozy PG-13. And, if you were really bad, you wouldn’t have cast The Rock in the lead role. Everybody knows that the Rock has an image to uphold. They all know that he’ll never do anything that bad. So we all know you’re lying to us.
Right there, you’re done. You’re done before we even got to the theater because we know you’re lying. If you were serious about what Black Adam was saying, you would’ve cast Tom Hardy, Christian Bale, Idris Elba, or Michael B. Jordan. You wouldn’t have cast the sweetest most caring guy in Hollywood who actively cultivates a family-friendly brand. You would’ve given the movie an R-rating. You would’ve given us a much darker film, which we would’ve seen in the trailer.
We all know The Rock is going to be The Rock in this film. So the only thing you could claim as different in your movie, you neutralized with the casting. Maybe this is for the better. With James Gunn taking over DC, you get the feeling that he’s going to make a lot more Suicide Squad type movies and a lot less Black Adams.
Yet another high profile piece of fiction was also shown the exit door recently. Westworld got canceled at HBO. I hear a few people complaining about this online. How could you cancel Westworld? Pretty simple. It originally had 12 million viewers an episode. Now it has 4 million.
Maybe you can rationalize that drop with a White Lotus budget. But you can’t rationalize it with a Westworld budget.
Look, I’ve said this a dozen times already. You could see Westworld falling apart mid first season. You could see that they didn’t really understand their mythology. And every episode since then has shown the mythology getting sloppier and sloppier.
It’s the same deal as the Rock telling you he’s a bad guy. We know you’re lying. We know, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, that you don’t really understand this world. And I’m not saying world-building is easy to do. It’s painstaking to flesh out mythology that can support 6-8 seasons of television.
Which is why I tell writers, you gotta do the hard work and figure this stuff out ahead of time instead of putting it off. Cause readers have a sixth sense. They can feel when you’re trying to figure things out on the fly.
One of the reasons the original Star Wars trilogy was so good was because George Lucas’s first Star Wars screenplay was 200+ pages and included all three movies. It wasn’t until people kept pestering him to cut the script down that he finally focused on just the Death Star storyline and took the Emperor stuff out.
Therefore, when it was time to make a Star Wars sequel, he already knew all the mythology surrounding that sequel because he’d written it into the original script.
Naturally, we saw what happened when Lucasfilm took the opposite approach in the most recent trilogy. They tried to figure it out on the fly and that resulted in bizarre moments such as Rey being a Palpatine, Han Solo coming back as a Force ghost, and Snoke being some sort of test tube clone.
You don’t want to f**k with mythology, guys. It’s unforgiving, particularly later in your story when your world and rule-set have to be airtight. And just to reitnerate. You can’t fool the reader. If you’re shaky on some rule or some piece of your mythology, I guarantee you the reader will feel it.
Since it’s been light offerings at the movies, I’ve been looking for films to watch at home and have been frustrated with the options. I know some of you are gung-ho about Terrifier 2 but I suspect that the only terrifying that would happen if I saw that film is how terrified I would be to admit it.
By the way, looking for films to watch is impossible in 2022. Rotten Tomatoes is hit-or-miss. Sometimes I’ll use “Decider.com.” But there’s no place I can just go and they give me three great suggestions. And even after 20 minutes of intensive research, there are always movies that these supplementary sites miss. So since you don’t have any confidence that they’re giving you all the films, you stop going to them.
I mean, did you know there was a film out with Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke – two great actors! I didn’t. But apparently there is! And it just came out this month! There’s a movie, Causeway, starring an Oscar winner, that just came out. No one’s aware it exists. There’s a movie from the former head of Pixar, the guy who invented Toy Story no less, called “Luck.” Nobody knows about it.
There’s a war movie called “All Quiet on the Western Front” that just came out a week ago. Nobody’s seen it! Just four years ago, every war movie that came out would get a giant marketing push. This one debuted with a whimper. Like a lot of content these days, I have no idea it’s out until it shows up on my Netflix home screen.
You have a film from a filmmaker WHO JUST WON AN OSCAR (for his movie “Green Book”) called “The Greatest Beer Run Ever.” You could take a bullhorn to the intersection of Hollywood and Highland and ask if anyone knows about the film. They’d all tell you they have no idea what you’re talking about.
Granted, some of these movies aren’t good or aren’t made for broad appeal. But you’ve got stuff like 13 Lives, which is a great movie on Amazon Prime, that is just sitting there in digital obscurity. You’d have to look for it to find it. But since no one knows it exists, you don’t even know to look for it in the first place!
This is a growing trend and something I’m worried about. I suspect that the years of 2019 to 2026 or 7 are going to be known as the Graveyard Streaming Years in Hollywood. All of this content is being made that immediately disappears. Is that not devastating?
There’s a show right now called Shantaram, which is based on a novel that sold six million copies. It’s got a legit lead actor in Charlie Hunnam. And it’s got insane production value, as it’s shot on location in Mumbai. Five years ago, this show would’ve had an insane marketing campaign. There would be so much awareness of it. Yet nobody seems interested in letting you know the show exists. Including Apple, who made it!
Lou, Blonde, Day Shift, Senior Year, Rosaline, a Fletch movie, Outer Range, Tokyo Vice, The Sandman, Maid, Black Summer. These are only recent shows or movies that have come out and that you’ve never seen because nobody’s told you they exist. They have been banished to digital purgatory. It’s more terrifying than Terrifier 2.
I almost feel like there should be an entertainment version of the SEC that makes sure that films and shows get a minimum amount of exposure so that people know they exist because it doesn’t make sense to spend 100 million on something and let it die on a below-the-fold 4th line of suggestions on your streamer’s home screen.
We shouldn’t be feeling like we’re all missing stuff just because it’s not being marketed properly. I don’t know if anybody else feels this way but I certainly do.
The good news is, we’ve got a big one next week. In fact, we’ve got tons of big movies coming our way. This is one of the best times of the year for film buffs. I’m curious how they’re going to balance emotion with entertainment in Black Panther 2. If they go too heavy on Boseman’s death, the movie might be a sad experience. I still want to have fun here. But this film is coming at just the right time. We need something big that everyone is talking about. Those releases unify the movie-going public. I’ll definitely be reviewing it Monday.
In the meantime, what the heck should I watch???
