Bad Movies Make Money

Every now and then, I read a "best of" and "worst of" list. We've all seen these atrocities of serious film scholarship. They appear around the turn of the year and seem to be designed to serve the ostensible purpose of film criticism, namely helping people decide what DVD's to rent. The problem with theses lists is that the format allows so little room to breathe in the writing that the critic has no time to undertake a serious analysis of the film's strengths and weaknesses. Too often bad movie reviews boil down to "not bad, three stars". The lists encourage that kind of writing.

With that disclaimer, they can be illuminating when you stand back and look at the lists in terms of cultural contexts. Inevitably, one comes to the conclusion that you've heard of (and probably seen) most of the films on the "worst" list, and you're hearing about at least half of the "best" list for the first time. Nothing new there. We've all noticed by now how movie exhibitors show the films that will fill the house for the opening weekend, as often as not simply the film that has spent the most money on marketing. Quality is rarely a factor in determining success - it has always been this way.

So why is that nearly all the movies on a "worst of" list have made money (sometimes stupendous amounts) and most of those on a "best of" list never even played in theatres? The system seems designed to perpetuate the bad and actively discourage the good. DVD and home video have made a slight difference (and channels such as IFC help, too), but for the most part we have to accept that we'll always have bad movies, because bad movies make money. Roger Corman figured this out 40 years ago, and Hollywood followed suit shortly after that.

The reason given by the industry for this vicious and destructive cycle is circular logic itself: If the people going to see films are largely males aged 14-18, we're going to make films that appeal to males aged 14-18. Aside from the indie boom of the mid-90s (and look how fast the industry grabbed hold of that and made "indie" into a brand-name), bad movies have consistently done better than their more important counterparts.

The system is broken, and it doesn't look like it will ever be fixed. As appreciators of good cinema, we have to simply accept the fact that the best films won't be at the cinema, the best films will always struggle to be born and the worst films will always make money. The public has been trained to have no taste and then rewarded for it. They're consumers, habituated to plopping down their money to the movie having the biggest poster. In the immortal words of a good (therefore, unsuccessful) film, "Buy... buy more.... buy more and be happy"