Bakustra wrote:
Most people feel that films, and, indeed, most entertainment are motivated by artistic purposes, or at least should be.
I'm sure that 'most people' are free to view the purpose and nature of films however they choose. So what? What relevance does that feeling have to a studio's right to do as they please with the works that they financed, created, and own?
Bakustra wrote:So rereleasing a film with minor additions in a brief period of time after its initial becomes seen as a betrayal of trust and naked money-grabbing.
Well, in order for it to be a betrayal of trust we need to define exactly what 'most people' were trusting the studio to do. I'm going to guess that maybe you mean that the audience is trusting that any re-release of a given film will be different in a particular degree from the initial release version. Well, in this case Fox is advertising not only how much the change represents in terms of run time (about nine minutes) but also the outline of the additional content (more battle footage, more on Na'vi...uh, naughtyness, more back story regarding Grace etc) and putting up a new trailer
displaying some of the new material.
So where is the 'betrayal of trust?' You're being told pretty much exactly what to expect, so you have pretty much all of the information that you need in order to make an informed decision as to whether or not you wish to see the re-release.
Or maybe the 'trust' is that the initial release cut would be the only cut of the film, for ever and ever, amen. Since revised edits of films are released constantly to video, and since revised edits have been re-released in the past, there's no reason for anyone to
expect that the 2009 cut was the final version and therefore no violation of trust since no one ever said that it would be, anyway.
As for 'money-grabbing' - if you feel like buying a ticket, buy one. If you don't, don't. No one is 'grabbing' your money; they are offering you a chance to spend it on a product which they hope will attract your interest. If you choose not to, there's no penalty, no pressure, no reproach, no imaginable consequences of any kind at all in your life.
Or maybe you feel that a business holding a property with the potential to earn them further $$$ in addition to its first run should just sit on it and pass up the opportunity out of some sense of...I don't know. Asceticism? A distaste for filthy lucre? A feeling that it's nobler to ignore an
entirely legitimate business opportunity, in order to...what? Feel good about themselves because people who pass up opportunities to earn money by entirely legal and righteous means are somehow 'better' than people who don't? What about the company's obligations to its shareholders (yes, I know that around here we don't care about shareholders but alas people actually responsible for managing companies don't generally get to think that way)? I don't know about your personal views on business but do you really think corporate decision-makers blow off opportunities for profit
when there is no harm of any kind being done to anyone at all, by pursuing the opportunity? Why
should they? To satisfy the self-righteousness of people outside their industry who don't even have any kind of stake in the matter, one way or the other?
Bakustra wrote:If the nine minutes is valuable to the film, it should have been on the original DVD/Bluray.
Since we managed to arrive at an acceptable release cut without it, the new material is clearly not critical to the narrative. It does add some extra dimension, though, but the salient point is that the video release - which was contractually scheduled - came too early for full rendering of all of the new material being included. Pushing back the release date was not an option because of the contractual obligations on the participants' parts.
And in any case, no one was defrauded, ripped off, deceived or in any way at all badly done to: anyone purchasing a DVD or bluRay got precisely what they were told to expect: a digital media copy of the film in the same editorial configuration they saw it in the theater. Since it was publicized before the DVD release that there
would be a theatrical re-release of a new cut, anyone who bought the initial-cut DVD had every right and opportunity to wait and see what the new cut would turn out to be.
And to anyone in that position: you liked the initial cut well enough to purchase a copy. Do you suddenly not like it anymore, simply because there is a different cut coming out? You haven't even
seen the new cut. What makes you sure that you won't prefer the cut you own, that you liked well enough to purchase in the first place?
Bakustra wrote:If it isn't, then it's pure paff that shouldn't be trumpeted as anything more than generic deleted scenes.
'Generic' scenes? They're not 'generic;' they're part of a specific work and fit in specific ways into that work. There's a middle ground between scenes that contribute absolutely nothing to a work, and scenes whose removal would cripple it, and that's where this material falls. There was a lot of pressure regarding the film's running time, which exhibitors thought was over-long even as it was released; this is to a degree the re-insertion of material that had to be sacrificed as part of the release process. Now that the film has done as well as it has, its director has the clout to put that material back in. Because as writer and director it's an opportunity to put it back up on the big screen in a form closer to what he had originally hoped for. There's no reason that a director should be guaranteed that opportunity, but there is zero reason he should reject it, should it present.
Bakustra wrote:Imagine, say, if the Beatles had released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band without the hidden track after A Day in the Life... and seven months later released the historical album, at the same price. Alternatively, imagine that they cut out Good Morning Good Morning instead, for a "valuable to the film" analogy. In both cases, the albums would both have sold well, but now imagine that every band started doing this. Suddenly, the advantage disappears as people start waiting for inevitable rereleases or refuse to buy the slightly-changed rereleases, excepting obsessive music nerds.
I'm agnostic as to whether or not Fox will do well with the re-release (although I expect they'll probably do okay). But what I'm objecting to is not the validity of re-releasing a film as a business model; I'm objecting the what smells like this sense of outraged pissed-off done-wrong
entitlement and
moral outrage over a studio's decision to see if they can extract some additional revenue from a property that they
own, and which they are re-releasing at
their own expense without harming
anyone at all. In part so that its writer and director can present the audience (which was in the main quite enthusiastic about the film to begin with) with an expanded version which hopefully they may enjoy a bit more.
If they voluntarily and under no pressure at all choose to view it. It's as though there's a perception that there is an actual social or economic
benefit to avoiding the re-release of a film whose ticket sales will if nothing else kick some useful $$$ back into the tax base.
Bakustra wrote:The same thing happened to Disney with their horde of DTV sequels to older movies. They started selling less and less as time went on and people noticed that they sucked. As a result, they have been barred from rerelease for a long time, and Disney's animation departments are in serious trouble.
I'm not entirely following you here. A full theatrical release of an expanded version of the same feature <> cheap 'n' cheerful straight-to-video low production value sequel to an entirely separate work. How does a raft of cheapass videos undermining the Disney animation brand relate to a singular theatrical release of an expanded feature film? If your point is that Disney trying to make some extra $$$ off a property=Fox trying to make some extra $$$ off a property, you have to go a bit further and actually compare the format, qualities, and numbers of the follow-up products.
Avatar with a few extra minutes' content <>
Jafaar Spends an Afternoon at the Whorehouse or whatever lame video follow-ups to theatrical pictures you have in mind.
Bakustra wrote:While companies do have the right to overexpose brands and run them into the ground, customers also have the right to bitch about the film industry adopting one of the more noxious practices of the comic-book industry.
Customers have a great deal more power than that. They have the power to stay home and not buy tickets. And the 'right' to bitch is predicated upon actually understanding what's going on. People who bitch about nefarious plans to screw them by pre-planning a re-release and 'tricking' them into buying copies of the original cut when there's a 'better' cut coming do not understand that no one talks re-release until seeing how the first release pans out; in November/December 2009 there was actually some degree of pessimism regarding
Avatar and people were mostly hoping that it would just earn out, forget about huge sales and records broken and fanpersons in blue body paint and all the rest. People who bitch that the initial DVD release should have included the 'restored' material do not understand that much of it was not rendered in time for the DVD release, and that legal obligations between Lightstorm, Fox, and their distribution arms were damned inflexible, meaning that holding the release was not an option. And in any case the director would certainly prefer that new material be seen as part of a theatrical viewing, just as the film was primarily intended for theatrical viewing to begin with, which is his prerogative. People who bitch that 'the studio just wants to make money -' well, fucking
duh. Any business making their money via legal means and legitimate products without harming anyone at all is a good business. Particularly when that business is offering a product without which anyone who disapproves can live in perfect safety and comfort and can easily avoid if they so choose.
Bakustra wrote:Companies should also maybe listen to customers if they value them... but I suppose that you're assured that the people who complain are the only ones who disagree with this practice.
Fox listened to the long-lasting buzz surrounding
Avatar and that buzz suggested to them that the audience would be receptive to the re-release. Considering the degree of test-marketing, test-viewings, re-edits, fine-tunings etc that studios pursue in the hope of nailing a given audience's tastes, I find it kind of peculiar that you think studios are disinterested in what their customers have to say. Will studios take their
marching orders from consumers? Fuck, no. But they are certainly interested in trying to figure out what said customers want to pay their $$$, to see. Which makes it strange how widely studios seem to persist in missing the mark, but thankfully audience research is not my department.
The people who dislike the practice, whether they complain or not have every right to not-see whatever it is that they prefer not to see. Hopefully there will be something out there that they
would like to see. If not, there's always books, chess, and maybe going outside and getting some nice fresh air and exercise.
Bakustra wrote:If you feel that films are made for profit
I don't
feel that commercial films are made for-profit; it's a stone fact. Even people making small independent 'art' films may hope that their film will get at least limited distribution in order to just earn back the considerable expense of making them, profit welcome should it actually happen. As for folks making films without an interest in commercial distribution, or even earning back their investment, good for them. That's as legitimate field of film making as any and serves as an invaluable incubator for talent and exploration of novel concepts and techniques.
Bakustra wrote:and not for storytelling or other artistic purposes,
Why should there be a binary solution set? If you wish to make a film in certain genres to a certain degree of finish and make some money while you're at it, that doesn't mean that you have ditched any interest in telling a story or pursuing an artistic goal. That's the tension on virtually every project I've done: the director wants Shakespeare, the Cinematographer wants Ansel Adams, the Production Designer wants Rembrandt, and the producers organizing and financing the project want Mister Monopoly Moneybags. Since they all need one another to get anything done, the final product will be whatever emerges from that tug-of war. Remember that saying about seeing how sausages are made? Yeah,just like that. The dichotomy between
we want to make money and
we want to make something of artistic merit is entirely false. Do you really think any given producer doesn't want both the big box-office money
and the little golden statue?
Bakustra wrote:I must question why you ask questions about the layout of ships for the films you're involved in. If the purpose is to make money, why pay that much attention to detail? After all, the audience that doesn't notice is larger than the one which does.
In the specific case of the ship's layout it's in part because I'm personally a freak for technical accuracy wherever possible and in part because members of the ship's crew begged me to 'make the ship look real for a change' and having promised that I would do whatever I could, I'm not going to back off. People in my department frequently get into fights over that sort of thing. Which raises another issue: the professional team that creates a film or tv show is extremely diverse in terms of skills, personality, and philosophy. I've seen creative differences lead to actual fistfights (of course the subtext was about power but that argument itself is over creative differences).
But anyway the question again reflects the false dichotomy suggesting that it has to be about money, or about storytelling, one to the exclusion of the other.
Bakustra wrote:Ha ha! It's funny because you don't care about what your customers think!
Depends upon what you mean. Do I broadly, considering the total of available moviegoers or tv-watchers, care what they think? Sure I do. Do I care what any specific given person on this board thinks? It depends upon whether or not what they think is underwritten by anything worthwhile in terms of an informed argument (so far...no, not really). I'm not here as some kind of studio rep laying down the company's line; this is what I happen to think myself based upon my experience in the industry. So really you're talking about the various studios' customers, not mine in any personal sense.
Bakustra wrote:The reason that I object is not "fuck you, imma communist sir", but rather more along the lines of an intervention on a friend doing something stupid. Shortsighted attempts to increase revenue along these lines tend to peter out or even backfire, and since I love film as a medium, I do not like that prospect.
How do you anticipate the
Avatar re-release backfiring? This is not the first time a film has had a second theatrical release, and it's not the first time a film has been theatrically released in a new cut. Since examples of re-releases and re-edits damaging studios
by virtue of being re-releases or re-edits would provide really good support to your argument, I'd like to see them.
I guess the re-release could backfire in terms of widespread disinterest and no one coming to theaters. But that's no worse that any other film failing to perform up to expectations, and
that's something the studios have clearly incorporated into their business model with relatively little discomfort.
Bakustra wrote:Yes, let's not complain about company practices. We should be grateful to corporations for deigning to give us this rerelease, and never be convinced that it's a bad idea and somewhat abusive of its customers in any way.
No one suggested that you ought to be
grateful. I'm suggesting that the
outrage is misplaced and foolish. No one 'deigned' to give you anything; the studio is putting the product out there in the hopes that
you will deign to give them some of your hard-earned $$$, to watch it. And you haven't actually shown how it is in any way a bad idea for the studio to do it (save that it annoys some people who by their own account are going to exercise their freedom to avoid the product; since it's tough to imagine anything easier than not-going-to-a-movie it's unclear how these people find themselves to have been harmed, or even what rational cause they have to take offense). Likewise you have not explained how it is in any way
abusive for a studio to offer audiences a revised theatrical re-release, considering that (a) the re-release was publicized long ago and no one was deceived regarding plans for its release, (b) the contents of the re-release have been described sufficiently well that any person may make in informed choice as to whether or not the re-cut interests them and (c) we all, every last one of us, have full freedom to decline purchasing a ticket.
Bakustra wrote:Do you have any experience with customer service or interaction at all?
I've worked a few retail jobs, in which the only enjoyable, non-soul-deadening part was interacting with customers. I have not worked specifically in customer service a la 1-800-type call-center help-type stuff.
