So I just got back home from watching King Kong. What a waste of three hours of my life. The movie was, in short, BORING! Amazingly boring. Oh, and extremely over-dramatic. Parts of the movie looked like bad renditions of some crappy soap-opera. Now, I had a bad feeling in general about the movie, as I never tend to like remakes of classics, but I did not think it was going to be this bad. I mean, it was really really bad. So bad I wanted to get up and walk out before the past the 30min mark. Grrrr.
There was one aspect of the movie I did like however. Well, two actually. The first was the visuals. The detail on King Kong was good. The second aspect of the movie I liked was the building of the relationship between the beauty (the girl) and the beast (King Kong). It really gave you a sense for the bond and made you feel bad for both the girl and Kong. Sad story really. — PS, my girlfriend wanted me to add that the ending was good and that it made her cry. OK, now that I am done with that…
Moving on, watching King Kong made me realize something; the movie industry is dead. And I have figured out why it is dead. Writers! Hollywood obviously has no good writers anymore. For the longest time I could not pinpoint why The Longest Yard and Spiderman and King Kong and The Italian Job and Ocean’s Eleven and The Honeymooners and etc. and etc. were being redone. At first I thought it was just the movie industry trying to bring new life to old ideas, but that was all wrong. Hollywood is not bringing new life to old movies because the old movies are great ideas. Hollywood is bringing new life to old movies because they simply do not have any good ideas to bring life too.
Now other than The Wedding Crashers (which is not a big budget movie by any stretch of the imagination), I cannot think of any movies which I have really enjoyed lately. In fact, I cannot think of many movies recently which were not remakes. However, I can think of a ton of television series which are mildly enjoyable: 24, CSI, Prison Break, Rome, etc. And this my friends, is the source behind the death of Hollywood. The good writers are moving over to television (at least that is what I think).
And honestly, why shouldn’t they move over to television? They probably get paid more, they get to venture into non-typical ideas (24 is a great example), they get to develop their characters more, and they simply get more screen time. A movie gets, or should get, at max 3hrs of attention. A television series on the other hand gets a full days worth of attention per series. Add to that the unlimited number of series (CSI is a great example) and you get the opportunity to develop characters, plots, love stories, and all of the other necessary elements of entertainment in ways that a movie would never allow. It is a recipe for tremendous success, and one which I think the television industry is finally starting to realize.
Personally I am at a crossroads, because I really love watching movies. All types of movies. However, at the same time, I like that fact that I can turn on my TV and not be bothered with ridiculous Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire and Fear Factor spin-offs on every other channel. I like being drawn into and anticipating the next episode of CSI or Prison Break. However, I just do not see the two co-mingling very well. Either there will be great movies or great television series. The battle is on, and I do not know which one I should be rooting for.
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