I think this is confusing publicly-traded companies (which are bound by shareholder fiduciary duty laws) with private companies (which are not), but it doesn't matter because this isn't what the dispute is about.
It has less to do with trading shares than with corporate by-laws, which favor owners, and owners caring for returns, which is what happens even when they invest in government securities. Only fans live outside that reality.
Your position is that it's impossible for movies to look more expensive than they are?
My position is that they have to look expensive in order for viewers not to complain paying $20 a ticket to watch a tent-pole. Otherwise, the latter will go for cheaper streaming and bargain bins, and the former will be less inclined to get burned again in funding future projects.
Hooray, we're getting somewhere!
Yes, sometimes people talk about what should be, either instead of or in
addition to what currently is. I'm not sure why you feel that has be accompanied by the reminder that it is not currently like that, and even more confusingly, I'm not sure why that reminder would be phrased as a
contradiction.
No, you're not getting anywhere. That's why you're still stuck with what you think should be because you can't live in what is. That's where the contradiction takes place.
Nobody here is acting like a naïve child, imagining an implausible utopia because they don't know how the world works. Similarly, nobody here requires a tutorial on the financial side of filmmaking, let alone the incredibly simple and well-understood idea that people who invest money want to see a return on that money.
What I gave is the way that world works. You're the one insisting on some "plausible utopia". Not only do you need "a tutorial on the financial side of filmmaking," you even need one on how business works. In your incredibly ridiculous world, the idea that not only do investors want "a return on that money" but the best returns is beyond your view. Grow up.
It's pretty weird to frame this as them "put[ting] in a lot of spectacle" as an initial act so that they end up with sci-fi or fantasy, rather than the causality flowing the other way. Nobody writes "and then the White House blows up" first in their screenplay and then figures out whether aliens or terrorists are the ones responsible, with the possible exception of whoever wrote White House Down I guess
Your reading comprehension is pathetic. I didn't argue that one ends up with the other.
Nope. I'm saying that lots of moviegoers do not require spectacle to "get their money's worth." That's all. Nothing about this suggests that I (or anybody else in this thread) is unaware of basic marketplace dynamics. As it so happens I work for an economist, but I'm pretty sure I could break rocks with a sledgehammer for a living and still know all that.
See, that's what I mean by someone who lives in a fantasy world. Moviegoers don't require that, and yet Hollywood producers make spectacles that way.
Stop fantasizing. Also, stop claiming that you're an economist or otherwise because (a) everything you've said so far goes against that claim, and (b) you can't prove that claim anyway as this forum is based on anonymity.
Add to that your lack of reading comprehension, and you have bigger problems.
First, I would start by questioning the premise "and yet they do." You've reduced all of filmmaking to a binary. "They do" in the sense that it happens, sure, but not in the sense that it's the only way things ever happen.
That's what you should have done in the first place? And yet you didn't because you can't.
Why do they sometimes (maybe often?) make them look expensive? Because they feel it reduces their financial risk. This is probably true in the aggregate, but sometimes it fails miserably, too. It is a messy, glamorous business with a lot of expensive, high-profile failures. It is famously fickle and fairly unpredictable. But none of this contradicts anything people in this thread are saying, that I can see.
Now, you're admitting that I'm right by figuring out why they make tent-poles look expensive! You can't even think about this issue properly!
As you put it: bingo. Now you're asking the right question. But again, why phrase this like a contradiction or be so weirdly confrontational about it?
Because you kept giving la-la land remarks, like claiming that producers don't try to make movies look expensive, and viewers don't need the same.
Shooting yourself in the foot again.
Less right!
The leap in logic is right there, at the end: "they better look good." Many viewers do not care about this or, more importantly, do not take "look good" to mean "look super expensive" (your announced switch from one to the other is part of the issue). I want my movies to look good, but I don't particularly care how they do it, because what looks good in one context looks bad (or totally superfluous) in another. I would be really mad if I saw the trailers for Transformers and didn't see a lot of shiny robots punching each other, but I would be similarly mad if I went to see There Will Be Blood and got the same thing. But There Will Be Blood definitely "looks good." Do you think it looks bad? Do you think it would look better with overt CGI spectacle, thus proving it was expensive (it wasn't)? Would the people who saw it like it more? And so on.
Back again to your fantasy world. Many viewers don't care, and yet tent-poles show movies that way. And we're back to your previous point.
You really need to work on your argumentative skills, too.
Wait:
There Will be Blood is a tent-pole? You must be joking.
Some people do this. I regard them as mostly silly people, though, who apparently value the minutes in their lives so cheaply that they think of "it fills time" as a positive rather than a negative.
Welcome to reality. Now, guess what investors and producers do in light of that.
Yep. But again, that's not how the argument started. It started with a specific quote, which I even reproduced for you: "want to get my money's worth." Do you not see the implication embedded in that statement, and how my distinction about not extracting money from producers is a direct response to it?
If I'm going to pay $25 dollars per ticket plus overpriced snacks plus parking plus lunch or dinner, and for a family, with a total cost equivalent to buying a new hard drive, then I better get something that doesn't look like the first
Mad Max movie
There's no leap of logic here. You're simply that naive.
Then why did you post it in response to that quote? There is an expectation that if you quote something, and put something just below it, that's the thing you're responding to.
Where was this said, exactly? Please produce a quote.
"Cheaper" and "cheap" are not the same thing. CGI certainly can be expensive, but for many things--particularly, the kind of large-scale destruction that loud, tentpole blockbusters require--they remain considerably less expensive than, ya' know, actually blowing up buildings/planets/the multiverse.
Good grief. Look up "practical effects", genius. In this light, look up reasons why costs went up for
Fury. Look up words like "Africa" and "delays".
I've read this like four times and I genuinely have no idea what you're trying to say, but nobody said CGI appeared ex nihilio. As a good rule of thumb, if somebody appears to be saying something insane like "CGI appears magically by itself!" the odds are good there's been a misunderstanding, since that's a bonkers position no one with a working brain would ever say.
"Most" had to do with budget. Check the quote I just produced: the word "most" is followed by the words "of the cost of an entire films production." Pretty straightforward.
If you want to see what a bonkers argument looks like, check out:
they remain considerably less expensive than, ya' know, actually blowing up buildings/planets/the multiverse
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