I know studios need to make their tentpoles that sustain them, and they take incredibly safe bets making relatively benign or saccarin films that get the ticket sales, but don’t move film or cinema forward to any degree.

The problem is our fandom of nostalgia, and all those things many of us loved in our youth: Star Wars, Alien, Blade Runner, GIJoe, Transformers. There’s even a movie coming out that has no plot other than to advertise the nostalgia of the 1980’s as if it was branding porn.

And in that, we’ve run into the problem of Intellectual Property. It seems, intellectual property is nothing more a pseudo-tentpole, or one to combine as a tentpole, to make safe films, that lack any real merit. It’s true there are some DP and editors out there that are making some beautiful looking films, but most of these reboots are weak attempts to onboard newer, younger audiences into the universe. Star Wars’ Ep 8 seeming a rehash of Ep 4, and Covenant as a poor retread of prior Alien films.

So, specifically, in the run up to Blade Runner, and using Scott as a good example, after Covenant, I’m pretty soured on Intellectual Property as a reason to be excited. And I am now actively tempering my expectations of film seeped in IP tentpole mentality, because they all seem to be, frankly, really bad. Maybe I’m grumpy, but I can’t think of any franchise other than Bond that is taking risks or doing interesting things (*even* if the result isn’t stellar).

I’m thinking this started incredibly innocently, possibly in the 90s, when production houses started rebooting horror franchises, to great success. Then a few video game series popped up. I remember a radio interview where someone mentioned the first IP with absolutely *zero* narrative was Battleship, about 10 years ago. Literally just a name…. this has happened more and more, think Angry Birds, Lego stuff, etc. So I think this was born out of some innocent execs remaking horror on the cheap, but does anyone have any idea how we got here?

Finally, do you think it’s fair to basically write off IP based films, or completely lower expectations, or am I missing something, and are a few studios doing it “well”?? As for people like Lucas and Scott, with all due mad respect…. sometimes you need to take the art away from the people. I don’t even think Ridley cares about continuity or sense in his universes, anymore.

Just a ramble. Any thoughts…. let me know. Here or @unclefishbits.

About Uncle Fishbits

I'm.. just this guy, you know?

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