Today’s films are bankrupt of creativity yet with overflowing budgets

Movies are big business in the world these days. They always have been, but recent decades… Movies are big business in the world these days. They always have been, but recent decades have forged them into an indispensable industry in the United States and other countries. Movie stars are some of the richest people on earth, and just about every film now made in Hollywood costs more than several small countries’ gross domestic products.

However, as this summer and many of the ones before it are showing, the movie business is far from bankrupt, but a lot of the creativity going into it seems to be.

Almost every heavily marketed film in the theaters is a remake, sequel or prequel. They are all houses built on someone else’s foundation. With all the writers working today, one might think they would have more to offer.

On top of that, most of the remakes, sequels and prequels in the works are a mere shadow of the original work. All the films in the second Star Wars trilogy replaced the mythology and idealism embodied in the originals with comic relief and special effects. Most of the people I know who have seen “Revenge of the Sith” say that it’s awesome to look at, as long as you don’t listen to any of the dialogue.

Don’t listen to the dialogue? Oh, come on. How far can you go with new visuals? You can blow up a planet, you can turn an actor into a superhero and you can make James Bond’s car invisible. With all the money that gets poured into it, can’t someone write?

George Lucas, the writer and director of the new Star Wars films, said outright that he never concerned himself with dialogue.

“It’s not my job to make people like my movies,” he said in an interview.

I could buy hearing that from an art-school film director whose film will never be seen outside his class, or maybe Tribeca, but George Lucas? Judging by the flimsy Star Wars prequels, he wasn’t responding to a higher authority when making his movies. He wanted to sell tickets.

What scares me most about this situation is that future generations may see Star Wars beginning with “The Phantom Menace.” Please.

In his work outlining the purpose and nature of the media, Marshall McLewan referred to television and film as “cold media,” as opposed to the hot media of books and papers. A hot medium makes a person think, and lets their brain fill in the visual and auditory blanks that result from interpreting something you read. A cold medium spells everything out for you and leaves nothing to be discovered by the mind.

Now that someone considered one of the greatest film directors in history doesn’t care about the dialogue, the cold media are beginning to freeze over, leaving nothing to even be contemplated by the mind.

We all love to see a movie that’s fun and entertaining and lets us relax without having much to think over. One of my favorite films is named “The Great Escape” for that very reason. But there’s only so much mind candy someone can take before becoming diabetic.

I’ve completely given up on television. Since every show is either a far-fetched crime drama or a “reality show,” the only conclusion is that the writers just gave up or got fired.

But while we still have writers in film, they might as well attempt to make a good product. They are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for each screenplay they write, and that’s more money than most Americans will ever see at once.

Maybe once everyone gets past the stuff that is just being digested and regurgitated from previous works and the cliches of a man walking stoically away from an explosion or racial stereotypes being incomprehensible to anyone else are left behind, we may see films outside the art houses that show the super-cold medium beginning to thaw out.

But if we see “reality movies” in the future, I’m out of here.

E-mail Michael at realityfactory@yahoo.com if you have a good screenplay in the top drawer of your desk.