by Brian.


I look out and see several filmmakers on the verge of something new, failing only in their reliance of old Hollywood standards. I intend to take four films and explain exactly what I mean.

Dinosaur: Anyone that witnessed the extended trailer for this film preceding Toy Story 2 will agree that we had a glimpse of what could have been a groundbreaking film. Imagine a nature film documenting lives and behaviors of extinct creatures; an hour and a half of silent anthropology on screen, opening a window into evolution's past and giving us, the lucky audience, a portrait of a time long gone. For the first reel of this film, we were in awe of what we were about to see. The journey our hero took even before birth! The film really started on something special. Then the legendary creatures of legend spoke. Then the monkey appeared and the whole film reverted to typical Disney fare. A golden opportunity wasted on safety.

The Cell: The idea was great... What if we could literally crawl inside the mind of a killer? What mental landscape would be experienced as we travel through his hills and valleys? His memories, his pleasure and pain sensors, his thought processes and innermost secrets all elude us, only opening their doors with advanced digital effects and wonderful art direction (not to mention writing). This concept will thrill anyone because it's never been seen before, truly groundbreaking and inspired in scope. However, there must be a Hollywood law that forbids an interesting idea to present itself without a halo of boring Hollywood crap. We cannot simply open the curtain inside a killer's mind, we must first show what makes him a killer, how archetypal cookie-cutter cops catch said killer, establish some inane reasoning and setting as to how one gets inside a killers mind, and build us up with some bullshit plot that will undoubtedly save a life or two. All these things bring the film down; they bore us because they neither interest nor surprise us. My Ideal presentation of this film would start inside the killers mind. Jennifer Lopez would not be there, for we wouldn't need her. We would simply see the intricacies of the human brain through the camera, taking our own journey. Just as we find out why we're there, what we've been looking for, we pull out and the credits roll. Of course this film would never be made in this fashion, for Hollywood would never go the distance to treat the idea with the respect it deserves.

Cast Away: A "monumental" film in that it's second act has no music and almost no dialogue. Does anyone remember the fifteen minutes following the Shower scene in Psycho? How about two thirds of 2001? If Hanks and Zemeckis truly wanted to show this film for what it is (a study in isolation), we should not see anything before or after our time on the island. Imagine, the beginning credits end as Hanks washes up on shore. We see Zemeckis' second act as if it was the first, for this part of the film is admittedly very good. Now instead of flashing ahead four years, we stay with Hanks, showing him surviving, showing him growing away from his previous character, and ultimately rolling the credits as the boat finds him. The film that I describe, the film I'd like to see, truly confronts this premise and develops it. As it is now, we rush through the first act and fit all of the Hollywood film quota dialogue in the third, for the second act is a small experimental film inside typical Hollywood slop. Perhaps the reason why I don't like this film is that it shows me something special then stops before it gets any good. Although he might've thought he did, Zemeckis did not follow through.

Contact: Another Zemeckis film, although this time he chose to show too much. Imagine if you will, the entire alien sequence cut from the film. Yes we cry and say that we would not see the cool visual effects of the wormhole and we wouldn't see her Dad/Alien and all that and we wouldn't know what happened as she fell through the mechanism. We must realize that these things deserve to go! The whole film is a conversation of Science, religion, and most importantly Faith. As we watch her travel to Vega, we discover that this mechanism does indeed work, dulling the entire argument on Faith after her return. Therefore, the critical last ten minutes of the film, are boring. When we are told that Foster has indeed recorded nine hours of static, we have already left! Now imagine that we didn't know; we saw her fall through the contraption into the cargo net, she emerges from her sphere bedazzled by some manifested hysteria, and we don't know whether it worked or not. Suddenly we find the last ten minutes interesting, if not riveting. Did she actually go? Even though no form of conclusive proof is available? Wow these themes of faith are coming back to kick me in the ass! This is a good film!

Instead, we get Hollywood slop.

Maybe my ideas are ludicrous and I realize that the films I describe are not Hollywood features, but I feel they would be better films for taking their ideas to a logical and genuine conclusion. If this defies Hollywood, then maybe Hollywood needs help, for in film, one must treat their ideas with respect, not fitting them in the "hook" position of a template or using them only as far as convenience takes them.


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