History Quotes / TheBlockbusterAgeOfHollywood

-> ''When I was young, box office reports were confined to industry journals like The Hollywood Reporter. Now, I'm afraid that they've become...everything. Box office is the undercurrent in almost all discussions of cinema, and frequently it’s more than just an undercurrent. The brutal judgmentalism that has made opening-weekend grosses into a bloodthirsty spectator sport seems to have encouraged an even more brutal approach to film reviewing. I’m talking about market research firms like Cinemascore, which started in the late '70s, and online “aggregators” like Rotten Tomatoes, which have absolutely nothing to do with real film criticism. They rate a picture the way you'd rate a horse at the racetrack, a restaurant in a Zagat's guide, or a household appliance in Consumer Reports. They have everything to do with the movie business and absolutely nothing to do with either the creation or the intelligent viewing of film. The filmmaker is reduced to a content manufacturer and the viewer to an unadventurous consumer.''

->"''[[MoneyDearBoy The reality of our current situation is that the five families don’t want to make anything that can’t make them a billion dollars]]. None of them want to be in the medium-priced challenging content business. And that cleaves off exactly the kind of movies I make ... What [[Creator/Netflix the streamers]] are doing is providing a platform for the kind of cinema that actually reflects our culture and wrestles with big ideas: where things are, what people are anxious and unsure about. Those are the kinds of movies that would have been dead on arrival five years ago.''"

->"''[[MoneyDearBoy The reality of our current situation is that the five families don’t want to make anything that can’t make them a billion dollars]]. None of them want to be in the medium-priced challenging content business. And that cleaves off exactly the kind of movies I make ...
\\
What [[Creator/Netflix the streamers]] are doing is providing a platform for the kind of cinema that actually reflects our culture and wrestles with big ideas: where things are, what people are anxious and unsure about. Those are the kinds of movies that would have been dead on arrival five years ago.''"

->''"Creator/WillSmith is living out the common conundrum of almost every once-and-future movie star. Audiences don’t show up for star vehicles (anymore), but they still show up for [[DerivativeWorks franchises]], often the very kind of franchises that lead to accusations of [[CashCowFranchise selling out or cashing in]]... ...And this October, Film/GeminiMan, which gives you two Will Smiths for the price of one, will likely fall well short of [[Film/Joker2019 a gritty Joaquin Phoenix crime drama]] purely because [[Creator/JoaquinPhoenix Phoenix]] is playing ComicBook/TheJoker."''\\

''"(Gemini Man) looks great, has a killer hook and [[Creator/AngLee a critically-acclaimed (and twice Oscar-winning) director]]. However, it is a giant question mark because it’s not an IP adaptation. In short, Will Smith, Creator/BradPitt and the like didn’t stop becoming movie stars. Audiences just care more about popular characters and popular IP than popular actors and popular filmmakers. Unless you’re Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio and/or [[Creator/ChristopherNolan Chris Nolan]] (or Creator/JordanPeele), but you get the idea."''

-->-- '''Creator/MartinScorsese''', in an October 10, 2017 [[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/martin-scorsese-rotten-tomatoes-box-office-obsession-why-mother-was-misjudged-guest-column-1047286 article]], for ''The Hollywood Reporter''.