the m0vie blog

The internet seems to be in mourning. There’s none of the angry fist-waving fury that we saw over the announcement of the planned sequels and prequels to Blade Runner, just a solemn sense of reflection. After it seemed that good news was on the way, word came down the wire that Guillermo Del Toro’s planned adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness would not be happening. Apparently Universal Studios have decided that instead of spending $150m on a genuinely respected classic horror story, they’d rather blow $175m on another shot at Doom. The two decisions probably aren’t directly related (in that I doubt it was an “either or” situation), but it’s fairly damning. However, I honestly don’t think we should blame the studio for any of this. And, that, my friends, is the sad madness-inspiring truth of it all: we have only ourselves to blame.

Del Toro's dream project met an icy reception...

There’s a powerful moment at the end of The Planet of the Apes. Not the Burton remake, mind you. In it, Charleton Heston has a moment of terrible realisation about the hunk of rock he has found himself stranded on. He finds something which triggers a terrible thought inside his head, something which he can’t stop – however much he may want to. Heston collapses to the ground in shock, as the origin of his plight slowly dawns upon him. He rambles to himself, the revelation having perhaps pushed him past the brink of madness. As he realises that he has nobody to blame for his predicament other than his fellow man, he screams in agony, “Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

As I read the on-line reaction to the decision not to fund Del Toro’s adaptation of the Lovecraft classic, I felt a similar sensation. The bandwagon would tell you to yell at Universal. To argue that they shouldn’t be afraid to take risks or to make brave pictures rather than continually playing it safe. They seem like the big bad villains in all this, an otherworldly abomination of which us fleeting mortals can barely perceive in the finest Lovecraftian traditions. However, that bandwagon is completely and utterly wrong. Universal certainly don’t deserve your aggression, passive or otherwise. We have nobody to blame but ourselves.

Contrary to popular belief, most studio executives do not look like this...

“Take risks!” is the mantra of on-line bloggers such as myself. “Stay away from assembly-line production models! Give us something fresh!” These aren’t idle calls into the wilderness, they are a chant repeated consciously and solemnly. We beg the studios to treat us like adults, to offer us genuinely exciting and new movies to sink our teeth into – we’re grown-ups, we don’t need a movie about a toy or fifth sequel to an original that nobody wanted to see. And, you know what? It was Universal more than any other movie studio that gave us those sorts of risks.

Look at Universal’s slate for the past few years. They’ve encourage Edgar Wright, giving him the financial backing to produce Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. When Paramount offered the conventional Iron Man 2, Universal gave us Kick-Ass. They took a huge chance on Forgetting Sarah Marshall, an original comedy with no big stars and no big director attached. Hell, their past association with Del Toro included Hell Boy and Hell Boy II – two unconventional summer films which never connected with audiences, but they threw their support behind them anyway.

No love for Lovecraft?

You might argue that none of these were major risks on their own – and you’d be right, none of the individual films broke the bank. Still, that money adds up over time and they were all still “big” films, produced on budgets that national film industries outside the United States can only really dream about. If these films had been successful, you would have undoubtedly seen Universal throwing more money at slightly quirkier and engaging properties. They provided the audience with the chance to see stuff that they wouldn’t normally see – something outside the realm of sequels, prequels and remakes.

Even this year they offer a strong slate which has its fair share of risk:

Hell, if any studio deserves to be congratulated for taking risks, it’s them.  Just this spring, we’ve got Paul and Your Highness and The Adjustment Bureau in release, and all of those are sizable films that take some real chances.  You want to send a message?  You start by supporting the risks they’ve already taken.  You buy Scott Pilgrim.  You see Paul.  You see Your Highness.  You reward them for taking a chance. Paul is an R-rated movie about two guys who meet an alien during a post Comic-Con road trip.  Your Highness is described as a really filthy comedy set in a world like Krull.  These films were made because Universal took a chance on Simon Pegg and Nick Frost or because they took a chance on David Gordon Green and Danny McBride.  Last year, Universal got the crap kicked out of it for making Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, and I wouldn’t trade that film for anything.  They believed in the film.

And did the audience decide to respond to these invitations? They did not. The industry laughed at the commercial disappointments many of these films became, because that’s what Hollywood does – it grudging acknowledges success and gleefully mocks failure. However, we can’t blame the studios – we were the ones who made the films successes or failures. And, in these cases, we stayed away. We had the chance to be heard, to vote with our feet and to show Hollywood we didn’t need recycled blockbuster fare. Did we? We didn’t.

It's an uphill struggle...

You know what? Every time any blogger, journalist or pundit states that big studios should take risks, the studio executives can point to this trend. People like me begged for the chance to demonstrate that audiences would respond to a challenging and engaging film that didn’t speak to them like they were a bunch of morons. And what did we do? We bought tickets to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Sure, occasionally we make the right call. Every once in a while, a risky film makes a huge bonanza. Inception is the most recent example, and I can think of few others – it’s the exception rather than the rule. The Dark Knight is arguably a smarter brand of blockbuster, and one we should be demanding. However, that these garnered huge audience followings represents an extreme minority. Fast Five will appear in theatres as the fifth instalment of The Fast & The Furious, and it will undoubtedly have a larger opening than any film so far this year.

It would have been a beast of a film...

So, I can’t be angry at Universal. Hell, from their position, it’s the smartest call. They’re a studio sitting at a poker table, losing badly. They need to change their strategy, or else they will continue to lose badly. They adopted a high-risk strategy based on what people like us had assured them, and they put their money where their mouth is. We, on the other hand, didn’t. Such is life, c’est la vie. Perhaps my taste is the minority – perhaps the average cinema-goer is happy with your bland vanilla-flavour big-budget offering. Maybe I just don’t get it, and I’m missing the point by daring to ask for more. People know what they like, and who the hell am I to question it?

So, the buck has to stop somewhere and – in this case – it stops here, not with the studio. I’m getting up on my high horse. I waited for many of the above films on video, only catching some of the more recent ones in theatres. In my arrogance, I dared to assume it was a greater risk for me to buy a ticket and potentially waste two hours than it was for them to make the movie. I contributed to the box office failure of these films in some form or another, and I will ultimately pay the price. So I can’t really complain.

And that, I think, is the root of the response to the decision not to press ahead with Del Toro’s adaptation. Most of the blogs that I’ve read aren’t angry – they aren’t calling for blood or contrition. They are sad, because they realise that – in some way, shape or form – this is our own fault. “Ah, damn us! God damn us all to hell!”

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: At the Mountains of Madness, blade runner, danny mcbride, edgar wright, films, forgetting sarah marshall, guillermo del toro, H. P. Lovecraft, Mountain of Madness, Movies, United States, universal studios |