Warner Brothers Pictures

The Importance of being average

This Friday, I attended a screening of Justice League amongst an opening weekend crowd. The film was complete garbage. While my interests in the film lie more on it’s production history and intriguing switch of directors, I do not think that this is the case for 99% of the movie-going audience.

JL will probably be in theatres for about three or four weeks and will have sellout crows for at least it's opening weekend. But why? Surely, it is not because Justice League has realistic and compelling characters infused with emotional conflict or that it exhibits much artistic merit. Therefore, I must say that my take on the film results in this conclusion:

The general audience is dumb, and doesn’t like to be challenged intellectually or emotionally. We like the familiar and gravitate towards things that feel safe and non-confrontational. Whether it is emotional familiarity, vicarious fantasy, simple adventure and excitement, sci-fi action or cheap thrills and laughs, this is the movies! and this is what people love about them: The ability to vicariously transport themselves into a fantasy world away from their boring day jobs. But it’s not just emotional escapism, the success of movies often comes in their simplicity,  just like how most newspapers are written in the 6th grade reading level. You see, the average human IQ is 100 so if you want your film to make money you’ve got to aim for average.

Just look at the top box office films of all time: And then maybe consider suicide...

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Exceptionalism is the exception.

Directors like Joss Whedon and James Cameron are masters at pulling on simple but all important heartstrings. With some exceptions, they are the makers of the movie versions of  MacDonald's Fast Food, Holiday Inn Hotels and The Ford Motor Company. The brilliant, complex and challenging films fall to the wayside, while the safe and the familiar is the norm. And so, the reason why people will come to hate Justice League will not be because it is a terrible movie but, It will be because it aimed for the middle and missed the mark.

Finally, while watching Justice League you can't help but step back and look at the bigger, more depressing picture: That we are mostly creatures of habit, aimlessly wandering into theatres to be vicariously entertained by pictures of ever diminishing significance. In other words, that we are all, collectively, average.

Here's hoping...

So if the audience is not going to punish the mediocre and garbage releases, who will? Could there be a way to level the plainfield between dumb blockbusters and films of merit? The rise of New Wave movements has always been linked to social, technological an economic changes and so... Here's hoping for interesting times.

London, 2017

The fist two sections are heavily inspired by Mike Stoklassa's essay on averageness.

After going to the cinema twice to confirm, I'm now sure that "Dunkirk" is a dud (for me).

I know that it's major flaws have been pointed out before, but my thoughts are of almost complete disinterest. I went in "tabula rasa" which is always best, but left the IMAX theater wondering why I couldn't be immersed in the story. 

How could this be? This is the same guy that brought us Inception after all...

So this is what I figure: Christopher Nolan films have left me cold since The Dark Knight Rises. As the scope of his films has gotten larger, I have felt that his stories have become less ambitious and his storytelling more clinical. In The Prestige he invited us to look as closely as we could. Now it seems that we are to follow the emotional ark, to bite into it, but if you can't do that, like me, the artifice breaks apart at the seams.

Yes, his films retain the visuals and the awe-aspiring endings, but I now see these aspects of his film as tricks that have been done before.

Take the music for example. Right now opinions seem divided but here is a more universal take: The music functions solely as an emotional cue. In other words, it is utilized for it's basic effect -a clinical approach- and this is why it leaves a lot more to be desired for some and completely engrosses others. 

Even In Atonement's attempt at Dunkirk I see more humanity, more cinema - that is not to say that Atonement is a better film. In Nolan, I see that railing set piece on the mole opening and closing, and I feel as if he was improvising, which can be good at times, but not at the core of a war/survival epic.

Yes, yes, he is trying to do something brave which is to refrain from taking big artistic licenses with the story but maybe the choice of storylines is not that strong. Also he claims to be refraining from digitally manipulating his images, but that seems to be irrelevant at best.(I can explain if anyone is interested)

Can this trend be similar to late De Palma films collapsing under their own weight?

I know that Nolan and the gang can create groundbreaking and engaging pieces of work that introduce a larger audience to smarter films but if the box office keeps rewarding what is in my personal opinion mediocre works utilising the same techniques, then we might be witnesses to the decline of a prominent Hollywood filmmaker into widely-perceived mediocrity. A filmmaker that is also a powerful and vehement defendant of original authored work and practices like shooting on film.

I hope I'm not alone in this... Please let it not be just me looking too closely...