While some will call baseball America’s past-time, that’s not quite true anymore. In fact, it probably hasn’t been true for quite some time. Any night in any town, big or small, anywhere around the United States of America, you’ll find dozens of people doing the same thing. Since the days of drive-in theatres, going to the cinema has been a great way to spend a night out. However, it’s not perfect. Here are five annoying things Hollywood needs to stop doing.
Five Annoying Things Hollywood Needs to Stop Doing
Disclaimer
A quick disclaimer: These are subjective things. It’s almost impossible that Hollywood will stop doing any of these things—after all, money reigns supreme. However, if you agree, disagree, or think I’ve forgotten a few things, let me know in the comment section below.
Unnecessary Sequels
At the end of Empire Strikes Back, we’re left in a haze. Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father? Boba Fett has Han Solo trapped in carbonite? What will the Rebellion do to right these wrongs? After Empire, we needed another movie to finish the story.
What we didn’t need? Four Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. Know what story really didn’t need eight chapters? The Fast and the Furious. Much like remakes (we’ll get there), meaningless sequels are greedy, soulless, and unnecessary. With the exception of Empire, The Godfather: Part 2, and Terminator 2, the sequel is almost never as good as the original, and the farther you go from the first, the worse it gets.
Copycat Movies
Monkey see, monkey do. When someone finds success, someone else is destined to try and copy them. Last year, The Shallows was decent, so in 2017, we got 47 Meters Down. In 2010, The A-Team, The Losers, and The Expendables all came out, despite having the exact same plot. Even though Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad were both based on pre-existing comics, there’s no question that D.C. tried to cash in on Guardians’ silly team-up success, even scoring a fun and nostalgic soundtrack.
Splitting Finales
As fantastic as the Harry Potter books and movies were, they started a trend that is soulless and cheap. Hollywood has started splitting movies, typically the finale, in two. Since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One hit theatres in 2010, Twilight, the Hunger Games, and Divergent have decided to split a movie into two parts.
If the movie was just too long, and one part couldn’t cut it, that would be one thing. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Movie makers have realized that by watering down the plot a little, they can stretch one movie into two. By doing so, they can charge people twice to watch one movie. It’s just unfair.
Post-Credit Scenes
We all love it when Marvel does their cute little post-credit scenes, but they’ve gotten a little old. When you go to see a Marvel movie, you know that you have to sit through ten minutes of credits, just to catch a glimpse of what the next big thing might be. It’s branched out into an ugly trend, where ushers have to sit, broom and bin in hand, while movie-goers stare blankly at rolling text.
Remakes
This is the ultimate cinema sin, isn’t it? Hollywood makes a movie, it’s successful, and then a few years later, they make the exact same movie. It’s slimy, but it works. They can recycle a plot and make the same money without any of the risk. Hollywood makes so much money off of this practice, and it’s not going to stop any time soon.
But they really should. Some remakes are great. Scarface, The Departed, A Fistful of Dollars come to mind. However, some remakes are just terrible. Who asked for a remake of Point Break? Why is Michael Bay producing a remake of The Birds? The 2010 remake of the Karate Kid was so bad, I don’t even enjoy Will Smith’s good movies anymore.
It’s just so cheap and soulless. People want to mock Star Wars for cashing in on nostalgia, but at least they make new movies. What movies will we remember fondly at this rate? How will the world of Hollywood evolve without original, groundbreaking pieces? At the end of the day, it’s just disrespectful to those that pour their well-earned cash into the movies.