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Film Wars: Too Much Cash Will Kill You

Pro Arthouse: Benjamin Kirby

Too much money can kill your film. For every dollar the studio gives a filmmaker, there’s one less risk they allow him to take – their mind is on box office returns, not artistic merit. Take Avatar, for instance. It’s true that criticising Avatar is like violently kicking a poor, confused, defenceless blue kitten (in 3D), but as the most expensive film ever made, it’s the best example of how money throttles originality. Within ten minutes, a two year old could have drawn out the rest of the plot in crayon on the back of a napkin. Still, it’s the highest grossing film of all time, so clearly James Cameron and his moneymen were proved financially wise to avoid any original thought.

Arthouse films don’t have this problem. Without access to the funds that sunk the Pirates of the Caribbean films, the Star Wars prequels, the Transformers trilogy (brace yourselves – part 3 is coming) and countless others, arthouse filmmakers must instead concentrate on things that don’t cost money: plot, characters, ideas. While modern audiences are increasingly desensitised to the best CGI money can buy, arthouse films still have the capacity to surprise. The most exciting filmmakers working today – Paul Thomas Anderson, Charlie Kaufman and Werner Herzog, to name a few – operate without big budgets.

But it’s not just about money. It is the arthouse sensibility that is key – a desire to produce something interesting, challenging and new. In short, a respect for the audience. Encouragingly, some directors have beaten the blockbuster system and brought this sensibility into mainstream films. Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott did this with 2001 and Blade Runner respectively, while Christopher Nolan has gone from making the brilliant, low-budget Memento to the biggest budget arthouse film ever made: The Dark Knight. James Cameron could learn a thing or two.

Pro Blockbuster: Louisa Claire-Dunnigan

Blockbusters take their name from an aerial bomb, capable of destroying whole blocks of buildings. The resonances still remain in the complaints of blockbusters squashing smaller films out of the market, crashing into our cinemas. The media portrayal of the 2010 Oscars as a David and Goliath battle between Avatar and The Hurt Locker played into the old aggressive image of the blockbuster movie.

Yet no one is holding a gun to your head as you go to see the latest Twilight film, or 3D animation. One of a blockbuster’s defining features is that people do go to see it, lots of people. It’s not elitist or obscure. Out of the millions who watched Alice in Wonderland or Avatar then, there must have been some who enjoyed them.

A film’s value should be judged by two simple tests; is it interesting and is it fun? One of the benefits of a market that is geared towards pleasing its target audience, to getting bums on seats, is that these films are often extremely enjoyable. There is a buzz and an energy in a cinema of people waiting to watch the eagerly anticipated blockbuster that is just not there in the reserved and contemplative arthouse audience.

You may not get lingering shots of shadows on a glass, but you will get sweeping shots over rolling sand dunes, chases and gunfights in vibrant markets, jungles, skyscrapers and CGI dream sequences. The money that backs blockbusters allows directors to shoot on location, spend days waiting for the right shot, to use effects and the latest technology to make film watching an experience.

With films like Avatar, which had no big names yet became the highest grossing film of all time, the landscape of blockbuster films is changing. Critics are predicting blockbusters that don’t need stars to sell. As blockbusters get smarter, it’s no longer cool to be snobbish about ‘crowd pleasers’ – critics are now part of the crowds.

 

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