DISQUS

kheas · 1 year ago

One movie, or series of movies, that i was very disapointed in were the Mission Impossible series. As a fan of the original, I was VERY disipointed in the direction they used so that Tom Cruise could be the shining hero instead of just another part of the team. MI was originally a group of people working for a single goal, not a James Bond wanna be. Mr. Phelps a bad guy? come on! The studios had to be the one's that said, lets make this a Tom Cruise movie so we can make two more crappy versions of a great TV show.

Chris · 1 year ago

Hear hear, Robert! As a person who's gone through this myself with my scripts, I gotta say, it's really annoying. I mean, every writer whose script is sold is told the same thing... "We love it! It's perfect!" Then, only after you sign the contract, do you start to hear "well, reading through it again, it's not that perfect. You know the father character? The one who has the epiphany that he loves his gay daughter right before he gets killed in a burning building in order to save his dying nephew? Can we change him to a talking yellow motorcycle that speaks jive?" It doesn't make sense! But... an idea is easy to have I suppose once somebody does the hard part of coming up with an entire story. Doesn't mean those ideas are any good however.

As for the question... studio/producer meddling killed the Halloween series. It started with Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers (or Halloween: 666 as it was first known). It had the potential to be a decent enough movie (it's not Shakespeare, it's a horror flick). Some of the rejected screenplays were quite good. But then Dimension/Weinstein/Disney/ gets involved, and the movie takes a tremendous crap. Same goes for the next several entries.

Then again, pretty much every Dimension/Weinstein film has had studio/producer tampering and has really come out as garbage.

Cole Abaius · 1 year ago

If you hate studio meddling this much, you should check out the movie The TV Set. It's about a television show in development, but it echoes a lot of what happens in movies.

"Does the brother have to commit suicide? It's so depressing."

Plus, Sigourney Weaver is awesome as the elitist, ratings-obsessed, television executive prick who demands changes around every corner.

I think the real problem just comes from having too many voices in the mix at the blueprint phase. Audiences are pretty savvy about tone, and it's very difficult for any writer to match another's tone and pacing. That, and it seems like studios have audiences waiting in the wings for testing but don't have a Logic Nazi on hand to tell them when their shit doesn't make any sense at all.

Rob Hunter · 1 year ago

Hollywood is a business. Look at the list of top-grossing films and you have to go pretty far down the list to find R-rated releases with any regularity. (Yes I know Passion of the Christ ranks at #11 but that had Jeebus-freaks to support it.) PG-13 opens the film to a much larger audience and the (theoretical) possibility of higher grosses. Many of the studio "chefs" don't see beyond that so they all try to make their changes with the intention of making more $... while ignoring the film's true quality.

Sucks, but that's the bottom line.

@ Cole, good call on The TV Set. It was simultaneously funny and depressing.

Sebastian Z · 1 year ago

The thing is, a movie doesn't *have* to be R-rated to be gritty. I'm sure the "studio executives" or whoever could have stayed with the original screenplay and make the movie PG-13. After all, the MPAA always seems to be more concerned about nudity and sex than intense violence.

I think exectuvies changing stuff goes beyond the rating. Yes, they want to make sure that the movie is as adolescent-friendly as possible, but to do that thet have to, apart from changing the rating, insert humour and lots of CGI and flashy stuff like that. If these are the rules they follow, then executives must think The Dark Knight is gonna be a total failure...

Oh well, I'll still watch Hancock. It might not be as good as many of us would want it to be, but I can't be *that* bad either, can it?

Cole Abaius · 1 year ago

Rob, you're right about it being about money and about having a larger audience with a PG13 rating, but I'd argue there are also a ton of flops that crash and burn after word of mouth spreads that it's a clusterfuck.

Oh, and if you want further proof that poll testing to create a product doesn't always work, check out the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Eric Dale Eubanks · 1 year ago

William Peter Blatty's LEGION [released as EXORCIST III] starred George C. Scott, Jason Miller, and Brad Dourif --script was good, direction was subte, performances marvelous.

The last 8 minutes or so seem to be a case of "producers knowing better" -- lotsa grue effects and sturm und drang that Blatty didn't really intend -- and which belong in a different movie altogether [lovely demonic voiceovers by Mrs. Scott, Colleen Dewhurst notwithstanding].

The body of the film was subtle, creepy, and not an attempt to out-gross-out the original, but rather to get under the skin.

Apparently the studios thought it would be better with some levitations, mutilations, and so on. The stuff added [at least it sure seems added] might be okay as the climax to an effectsy picture -- but Blatty was trying to make a supernatural drama, not a "stick-em-in-the-eye" picture.

It's too bad that this happens, whenever it happens. Studios seem unable to trust their source material, can't seem to trust the directors, writers, etc. that they've engaged --- it's infuriating.