A long time ago, in Ogden, my father who was just a dumb little ten year old kid being dragged to some movie called StarWars that he had no desire to see. He had wanted to go out and play or do anything other than see this dumb movie that he had never heard anything about. He sat down in the old theater in that grumpy way that anyone who has ever met a ten year old knows, and then it started. Suddenly his senses were assaulted by a sweeping musical score, booming sounds of turrets and the roar of massive engines as two massive star ships swept across the screen. Truly this was a spectacle to behold, and it was like nothing his ten year old mind had ever dreamed it would see. To this day he still says that he will never forget the first time he saw that and, then the 11 times after that, because it was like nothing he had ever seen before. This was the case for just about everyone who walked into the theater in 1977, and it launched a worldwide phenomenon which to this day is still running strong (Don't let us down JJ!)
However, experiences like this have become almost non existent, and to this day the effects of the original StarWars are much more fun to look at and watch than that of most movies today (But that's a rant for another day). What I want to talk about today is how Corporations and all of their guidelines, statistics, and whatnot are killing creativity in just about every medium. If you go to a summer film, chances are it is a re-make of an older movie, an adaptation of a book, comic-book, or even video game, a dramatization of real-life events (although done right those are awesome.), or just a paint by numbers rehash of the same basic plot we have all seen a thousand times that offers nothing new really except for some fun distraction for a couple hours. The same goes for video games, which are all becoming clones of each other aside from a few games made by indie developers (more on those later), not even books are safe from this, and even music can tend to fall into the snare of Corporate Commander (I have to mention music because that's the prompt for the week).
I believe that this death of creativity is caused but corporations and statistics that say "people don't want a story about knights and dragons." or "that could offend someone." or "I liked it, but I'm not sure it will play in the mid-west." In fact I remember reading somewhere that many game publishers said that they would not even consider working on a game unless there was a franchise or series that would come out of it. Why did they say this? Because it is too expensive to do otherwise. Most movies and games cost millions of dollars to produce it seems like (it's more money than I'll ever see anyways) that's just ridiculous I think. Movie studios know this too because at the end of film credits there is always a note saying that the making of this film provided so many people with jobs for however long and whatnot as if to say "Yeah, we know we spent and inordinate amount of money making this, but hey it's justified because, jobs!" And yeah people need jobs, and good for them for employing all those people. But I would like to point out that the original Star Wars was a very low budget film (Compared to most films today anyways, only about 20% of the total budget went to the effects and the budget was only $10 million. The more you know!) so now that you know that you know why the effects of star wars are so impressive considering that they still stand up today and look better than a lot of modern movies because, you know, you can see whats happening and it looks somewhat real (because the ships were real. I really don't like CGI) But more importantly, to get that budget it took George Lucas several attempts with several studios before someone gave him the green-light. Now all of those studios all are kicking themselves for not seeing how great the idea was but at the time they were saying "that will never take off." "there's no money in this." And it is exactly that mentality that has more or less killed creativity today. no one is willing to take risks anymore because they might lose money, make a fool of themselves, or it might just not sell. (or it might offend someone which is bogus. stop being offended so easily please. Censorship is ugly. so are people. Sorry, my brain left my head for a moment.)
Anyways, that's my rant for this week. Don't let Corporate commander kill your creativity with his cash grabbing schemes and just create because you want too and because you see value in it because that's more important than making more money than James Cameron's Titanic or being top of the box office or a best seller for three weeks straight.
That is all.
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