Today's Movies Suck - That's Why Box Office Receipts Are So Low

It's a no-brainer. Hollywood can dance around the reason fewer people go to the movies these days all it likes. They can blame rising gas prices. They can blame competition from TV, Tivo, and DVDs. They can blame competition from computer games. Rising ticket prices. No one wanting to sit through ten minutes of ads before the movie starts. People with cell phones who talk before the movie comes on.

Face the truth. The reason fewer people go to the movies these days is that movies suck big time.

There has been no movie advertised lately that I'd want to waste money on. Frankly, what's available at Blockbuster hasn't been all that great either. I usually have a knack for picking out good DVDs just by reading the jacket and seeing who stars in the movie, who produced it, and who directed it. I've been striking out lately. It's not my fault. The reason is that there just isn't anything good out there to watch.

There are a couple that caught my attention, but I'll wait until they're out on DVD. "The Cave" sounds like fun. "Ring 2" sounds like fun. I already have the Japanese original version of "Ring 2", so I'm interested in comparing it to the American version. Ditto for "Dark Water". I'm waiting for that one to come out on DVD because we missed it at the movies. It was gone almost the moment it hit the screen.

The American Prospect has an article out about why people aren't going to the movies, and it came to the same conclusions I came to months ago.

Multiples theories for the decline abound: a failure of studio marketing, the rising price of gas, the lure of alternate entertainment, even the prevalence of commercials and pesky cellphones inside once-sacrosanct theaters. But many movie executives and industry experts are beginning to conclude that something more fundamental is at work: Too many Hollywood movies these days, they say, just are not good enough....

In previous years, he said, "you could still count on enough people to come whether you failed at entertaining them or not, out of habit, or boredom, or a desire to get out of the house. You had a little bit of backstop."

With competition from video games, hundreds of television channels and DVD's, that's no longer the case, he said. The problem, these studio leaders and other industry experts seemed to say, was not only that a steady diet of formulaic plots, too-familiar special-effects vehicles and remakes of television shows has, over time, left the average moviegoer hungry for better entertainment.

It's pretty sad when the Sci-Fi Original Movie of the week is better than the dreck you see at the movie theatre.

The article mentioned that all the media attention on celebrity antics, marriages, and divorces probably turn off the movie-going public. It mentioned one celebrity in particular, but I won't mention his name because this is a The-T-Word Free Zone. Read the article, and you'll know exactly who I'm talking about.

I understand that Blockbuster is in financial trouble. I'm not surprised, since there has been a dearth of good movies available to rent. The Count did manage to find one directed by horror meister Fred Olen Ray, which we enjoyed very much. I met Fred Olen Ray at a horror convention in Maryland several years back. He was a fixture at this convention, and I saw him there every year. I always enjoyed seeing his B-movies at the cons with other horror fans. That was my favorite convention, and I looked forward to going to it every year. A real fun one was "The Attack Of The 60 Foot Centerfold". You had to see that one to believe it.