Formula for financial success in the entertainment industry:
- Create product
- Market/release product
- If product's value > product's cost, produce sequel
- If product's value <= product's cost, deny involvement and request government bailout
- Repeat
Well, maybe I stretched a bit on the bailout part (not by much mind you) but the formula itself holds true. We've all seen it before: a video game/movie comes out, turns into a success story, and is butchered into low-cost, high profit sequels and spin offs (see The Matrix et al).
We as consumers are exposed to this on a regular basis. Sometimes, on rare occasion, the sequel is both warranted and of high quality (see Half Life et al). More often than not, however, what we are subjected to is nothing more than a steaming pile of the digestive byproduct resulting from years of fast food consumption (see my toilet bowl).
Why do we do it? Why do we stand in line, wait with baited breath, and plunk down our hard earned dollars on what we know will likely be a let down? Personally, I've of the opinion that we have dumbed ourselves down into acceptance. Or perhaps we're so attached to the original property that we lull ourselves into believing that its brothers and sisters can do no wrong.
Example: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of whatever the hell that movie was named. Most of us grew up with Indy in some shape or form. Either we're old enough to have seen it in theaters, young enough to have rented it on VHS, or still younger to have rented it on DVD (or purchased the Super Ultra Mega Director's Cut: Special Edition). Some 20+ years pass and along comes a sequel, or in this case a fourth sequel. Harrison Ford, being a spry 87 year old man, steps up to the plate to star in an irrelevant, yet still profitable, movie involving America's favorite archaeologist. Some plot is added so as to help ease us into believing that this makes sense, a refrigerator survives a nuclear blast, and presto, more money for Steve and George.
Our money. Yours and mine. And not in the pleasant KY Yours and Mine sense either.
As I touched base upon though, not all sequels are bad. For instance, have you ever played a bad Call of Duty game? No, of course not. How about a bad Godfather movie?
Scratch that, they made a third one. Shit.
As a long time gamer and retired movie goer I've seen the high notes and low points that are beaten out of original properties. Sometimes the pleasant surprises shut me up. More often than not my jeers are both loud and obnoxious.
There is always hope though. Indiana Jones 5 might prove me wrong.
We as consumers are exposed to this on a regular basis. Sometimes, on rare occasion, the sequel is both warranted and of high quality (see Half Life et al). More often than not, however, what we are subjected to is nothing more than a steaming pile of the digestive byproduct resulting from years of fast food consumption (see my toilet bowl).
Why do we do it? Why do we stand in line, wait with baited breath, and plunk down our hard earned dollars on what we know will likely be a let down? Personally, I've of the opinion that we have dumbed ourselves down into acceptance. Or perhaps we're so attached to the original property that we lull ourselves into believing that its brothers and sisters can do no wrong.
Example: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of whatever the hell that movie was named. Most of us grew up with Indy in some shape or form. Either we're old enough to have seen it in theaters, young enough to have rented it on VHS, or still younger to have rented it on DVD (or purchased the Super Ultra Mega Director's Cut: Special Edition). Some 20+ years pass and along comes a sequel, or in this case a fourth sequel. Harrison Ford, being a spry 87 year old man, steps up to the plate to star in an irrelevant, yet still profitable, movie involving America's favorite archaeologist. Some plot is added so as to help ease us into believing that this makes sense, a refrigerator survives a nuclear blast, and presto, more money for Steve and George.
Our money. Yours and mine. And not in the pleasant KY Yours and Mine sense either.
As I touched base upon though, not all sequels are bad. For instance, have you ever played a bad Call of Duty game? No, of course not. How about a bad Godfather movie?
Scratch that, they made a third one. Shit.
As a long time gamer and retired movie goer I've seen the high notes and low points that are beaten out of original properties. Sometimes the pleasant surprises shut me up. More often than not my jeers are both loud and obnoxious.
There is always hope though. Indiana Jones 5 might prove me wrong.
For monopolies, the general modus operendi is that quality must decline, while price must increase.
ReplyDeleteIt's not limited to popular entertainment; look at the industry in which Bill and I (formerly) are employed. I remember hearing years ago that it took, on average, 500 million and 10 years to get a drug candidate through clinical trials and FDA approval. For the few that do succeed, some of them are real headscratchers: a pharmaceutical equivalent to your Indy argument would be AstraZeneca's Nexium. While the company claimed it offered greater efficacy over its predecessor (Prilosec), critics justifiably chalked-up those favorable statistics to the increased dosage. Plus, the only difference between Nexium and Prilosec is that they’re enantiomers (in lay terms, they’re mirror images of one another), and it just so happened that the former was hitting the market just as the latter’s patent was about to expire. Fancy that.
The system is set up to handsomely reward the few successful risk-takers. Once empowered by their wealth, most abandon their survival mode priorities (and the needs of the consumer) in favor of fattening their bottom line. Our only referendum is to band together and stop buying, but too often (as is the case with Lucasfilm) there are a plethora of ball-washers/hero worshipers/apologists to drown out our grievances.
In the end it makes more work for us as shoppers, so its understandable how some (such as yourself) emerge drained and disenchanted from the effort.