The Shameless Hijacking of an Artform

By Zach Copeland 

On the morning of July 6, 2009, I sat down with a cup of coffee and started reading The Hollywood Reporter. On the front page was an article about Universal’s latest acquisition.

“Universal,” it read, “has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up film rights to the classic Atari video game, ‘Asteroids.’”

For the rock-dwellers, Asteroids was the arcade game introduced by Atari Inc. in the late 70’s, which amassed such popularity that it quickly became their best selling game of all time, spawning multiple sequels and spin-offs.  Its overly-simple gameplay – probably the main reason for its popularity – involves a small triangle that you move around shooting dots at moving circles.

“As opposed to today’s games,” the article continued, “there is no story line or fancy world-building mythology, so the studio would be creating a plot from scratch.”

Humor me by reading that last paragraph again. I’ll wait.

Okay, let’s recap: Asteroids. Four-studio bidding war. Creating plot from scratch. Does something seem off to you, too?

What Universal has “won” is one of potentially hundreds of hot new commodities that studios are gobbling up like fat kids at a buffet: retro games and toys. No doubt motivated by profit rather than selfless efforts to arouse nostalgia, this current grasping-at-straws trend epitomizes how the Hollywood studio system perceives its movie-going populace: we are cattle lining up to feed from their bountiful trough. But what the vast majority of us cattle are blinded to (and concurrently what the studios must be conscious of) is that this trough is poisoned with mediocrity and apathy by the higher-ups and their fawning armies of hacks and yes-men, leaving us little choice but to be content throwing money away in fruitless attempts to rekindle once-sacred memories, reborn on the silver screen not through purity or imagination, but through the shameless adulteration of an art form.

To give you some idea of where this trend is headed, here is a list of some properties already in development:

• Stretch Armstrong
• Hot Wheels
• Lego
• Battleship
• Candyland
• Monopoly
• Ouija
• Bazooka Joe
• Pac-Man
• Barbie
• View-Master

That’s right. Don’t adjust your monitors. The powers-that-be are actually making a movie, a full-length, big-budget, wide-release-intended movie, about this:

Up in Forest Lawn Cemetery, David O. Selznick is spinning in his grave.

Now hold on. Before you kill yourself, let’s consider the possibility, albeit a vague one, that some of these projects might actually turn out good. After all, Ridley Scott is the man in charge of Monopoly. Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes (who, granted, haven’t produced a decent film since 2003’s Chainsaw remake, but look to be hitting all the right notes with the new Nightmare, knock on wood) is producing Ouija. Columbia’s Hot Wheels, helmed by McG, could be a G-rated Fast and the Furious for the kids, and Battleship is already being touted by Universal as an “epic naval action adventure” with Peter Berg in talks to direct. So what’s the big problem?

Is Ron Howard eyeing the screen adaptation of Stretch Armstrong?

Well, there isn’t one, per se. That is, if you’re the kind of person who shows up at the theater oblivious to the selection, and would have no second thoughts about choosing an IQ-murdering clusterfuck like Transformers 2 over a true cultural gem like The Hurt Locker. If you are one of these people, then stop reading this right now and go masturbate to a Uwe Boll movie or something. For the rest of you, the brave minority of moviegoers who continue to defy that oh-so-depressing norm by preferring substance over shallow spectacle, the issue is one of simple aggravation. Not a single one of the properties listed above (okay, maybe Candyland) has an inherent plot.

Herein lies the problem. Plot – the backbone of every story ever told – has become a secondary priority.

And what can we do? We are forced to sit there and take it as humankind’s time-honored tradition of storytelling – evolving from ancient orators and cave drawings into a vast array of outlets that have forged classics that continue to transcend generations – is bowled over and raped like Ned Beatty in Deliverance. “Squeal like a pig for me, cinema! Weeeeeeee!”

But that’s not being completely fair. For every mindless film that’s released, another germinates on the opposite side of the spectrum. Unfortunately, an enigma exists in this industry that prevents many substance-based films from seeing the light of day outside major cities. And even when they are accessible, sub-par marketing campaigns often further diminish their chances of being noticed, with distributors instead turning the volume up on their tentpoles, virtually guaranteeing their success despite whatever criticism they may suffer. This, in turn, affects box office grosses, which, let’s be honest, is the true indicator of how popular a film is. Despite a discouraging 19% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, Transformers 2 is, as of this writing, the number one movie of 2009. The Hurt Locker, by contrast, is number 87, despite its 98% rating, falling short of such cultural paragons as Dance Flick, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and Tyler Perry’s Look, I Made Another Movie About Black People.

What films like Lego, Barbie, and fucking View-Master will do is further this enigma, even if they do turn out half-decent. And as time passes, with the studios perfecting this profit-formula of theirs, an atmosphere will be created in which the cinematic simpletons can claim the status of the elite, and the ones who truly understand the craft are marginalized even further.

Every so often, I encounter people who claim that there is no such thing as a bad film, that all experiences had in the theater are relative to ones taste, and anyone who disagrees with this notion is a pompous “arthouse fag.” I’m willing to bet that these are the same people who can stare at a monochromatic canvas in a modern art museum and compare its genius to that of a Rembrandt. On the contrary, there are bad films out there. A lot of them. And by shoving aside plot in favor of name-association, we are dooming ourselves to become a society where this kind of conscious degradation becomes the norm.

Movie studios have a responsibility I’m not quite sure they’re aware of. They are the ones with the power to lead us out of this cultural depression of endless sequels, remakes, and plotless toy adaptations, and instead forge a return to creative, original storytelling. What they think we want is not what we need. Bad movies are like fast food: they may currently be voluminous and fiscally assuring, but they’re slowly killing us inside. There are some who understand this, and are doing something about it. J.J. Abrams, Judd Apatow, and Darren Aronofsky, to name a few. Brave soldiers in the fight to uphold the kind of dignity that filmmaking deserves. But there are two sides to every coin. For every Abrams, there is a Ratner. For every Apatow, there is a Wayans. And for every Arnofsky, there is a Bay. If this capitalistic hijacking of cinema continues, then all we can do is hope that the younger generations, who will be brought up on these travesties, will be able to see through the fog of corrosion and inspire a filmic Renaissance of sorts.

And it’s not like there are a shortage of fresh ideas out there. Every year, dozens of original screenplays etch their way onto the exalted Black List – a compilation of yet-to-be-produced “favorites” that have garnered the attention of at least four studio execs. But more often than not, the studios, in their infinite wisdom, decide against rolling the dice on a script that everyone who’s read seems to like, and instead hire one of their hacks to write up 90 pages of uninspired drivel based on whichever property from yesteryear they can get their hands on: a plotless arcade game from the 80’s, an elastic doll from the 70’s, a bubble gum wrapper from the 50’s…

Asteroids are only the beginning. The depths to which these executives will sink seem to have no limits. Roger Ebert joked about this in a July article on his website entitled “The Toys That Ate Hollywood,” suggesting that films based on yo-yos, marbles, and sandboxes may be right around the corner. The sad part is that Ebert’s jests aren’t outside the realm of possibility. When View-Master has the green light, bet the house.

Zach Copeland is a Senior Writer for The Film Crusade.