The Rise and Fall of the Hit
Wired has a great article out this month about the drastic changes the entertainment market has taken in the past few years and the causes and effects of this change. I thought it was pretty insightful. The basic point is that the "era of the blockbuster" is over, and that in today's "niche driven" society, you can't expect to sell one thing to everyone.
Generally, in my mind, this translates to an increase in the quality of our entertainment, which is something I'm always getting upset about. "Blockbuster" products usually translates to "stupid but flashy" in my perspective, and I've always been rather.....offended...by movies with no plot but lots of special effects, music that was more marketing than music, and what I perceive as the implication by the entertainment industry that I'm stupid enough to enjoy anything as long as it's packaged right.
A great recent example that highlights the differences between the niche and blockbuster models that very few of you will care about was X-Men 3. It should've been a niche film, like the first two, that didn't concern itself with showing a lot of hyped action sequences but rather exploring the Marvel comic universe us geeks have enjoyed for decades. Instead, it attempted a large summer blockbuster, and as a result failed with both audiences.
Anyway, read the article, and then let us know what you think.
posted by RJ @ 2:17 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
RSS feeds have killed hit counts on blog type web-pages. I thought that is what you meant when I first read the title.
The interesting thing is that the entire society today is driven by marketing. Whether you want to be a part of the viscious marketing circle or not, everyone succums to it at one point or another. Even though movie people realize that it is a nitche market, they still try to squeeze every dollar that they can out of a movie...plus when you have a cast that charges as much as the X-men cast does, you need to at least be able to cover the overhead.
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