Monday, April 23, 2012

Whoops

So, I realize it's been a bit since I bothered to regale anyone with my thoughts and whims. I recently finished editing my version of Hammers in the Wind and put it up for sake on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. Please check it out. In the meantime I read that the head of Disney's movie studio stepped down over the John Carter of Mars debacle. While Disney was forced to eat 200 million dollars I can't help but wonder what happened?
The movie, in my opinion, was great. It followed the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels almost faithfully and was visually rewarding to watch. I felt engaged and entertained with almost no bored moments. Disney admittedly did a horrible job of marketing this film. No sequel for you! Boom. This suggests one critical thing: arrogance. The recent success of the Pirates of the Carribbean series and High School Muscial has lulled the Disney corporation into a false sense of security. They took us for granted and decided to let the Disney name do all the marketing for iit. Such a shame.

This isn't the first time Disney has sucked the egg, so to speak. The Chronicles of Narnia started out as a blockbuster series that quickly wilted. Disney wound up selling the franchise to Hallmark by the end of the second movie because they didn't like the downturn in profits. Understandable but it raises the question of what's the point?

I think part of the problem is that the newer generations don't know who CS Lewis or EGB were. I grew up reading these stories but that was in the 70 and early 80s. We've become a world of drones, slaves to the internet and the gods of technology. There is little room left in the world for wonder or magic.

1 comment:

  1. Disney left the director, Andrew Stanton, with complete control of the marketing: they couldn't sell the film to a broad audience, which is kind of sad, because it's a pretty big franchise that had legs. There's minute details, like the trailers and promotional material that was shot down, but they also didn't do a good job educating their base as to who ERB was. Dedicated fans know, and we've consumed the stuff that's been hugely influenced by him, but after watching the trailers, I couldn't figure out if it was a YA sort of film, a bad Star Wars knock-off, or something else entirely.

    The film was okay - a bit too long, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

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