Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Why B-Movies deserve more respect.

            The Room, the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Godzilla (1998), anything in the Troma library, Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Big Trouble in Little China, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Manborg, Sharknado, Howard the Duck, the original Evil Dead Trilogy, Bubba Ho-Tep, Birdemic, etc.

            Why the laundry list of movies? Well for one thing these are all B-Movies. One more point, most of these movies are not as widely loved as Nolan’s Batman, Orson Wells’ Citizen Kane, or anything by Stanley Kubrick. All film is subjective, we all have freedom to enjoy what we enjoy, and there is nothing wrong with favoring one film over another. It’s why there are so many movies produced each year.

            Given my Lucy review, I’m about to sound like the world’s biggest hypocrite. (However) It isn’t right to dismiss a film as garbage simply because it doesn’t meet a standard you set based on what you or the world wide public consider to be, “Real Filmmaking.” The Toxic Avenger, has every bit of effort put behind it as does the latest sequel to Marvel’s: The Avengers. Big Trouble in Little China has enough twists and turns to rival the number of those in a film like Gone Girl. Silent Hill has enough of thought and meaning put into each of its frames as any Hitchcock film.

            I’m currently studying filmmaking, and it really gets to me how professors will go on for days about how spectacular The Grand Budapest hotel is, but completely overlook something like The Naked Gun. I’ve come to learn that among the more seasoned of film aficionados, Kevin Smith is not well liked, while all worship at the altar of the likes of Kubrick and Spielberg. These people feel like the Tim Burtons of the world to me…

            Let me explain. Tim Burton is a director who clearly considers all he has ever done, or will do, as fine high art. Meanwhile he will look down on a common man filmmaker like Kevin Smith and refuse to watch his films, listen to his interviews, or read his books because he sees it as beneath him. I’m not going to knock Burton himself, before he started working with Johnny Depp on, EVERYTHING, he made some great work, fantastic work. However it’s this attitude that completely disgusts me. My friends, he came into Hollywood making B-Movies, do you think anyone looked at Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and thought to themselves, “That director is going to be a household name some day!” No.

            My overall point is this. B-Movies are movies, they have a story, a beginning, a middle, an end, large crews, people working for months on one shot, and actors who commit day after day to a script and a schedule. And some of these efforts are treated as jokes because the end result fails to impress with pretty visuals these small studios just can’t accomplish, or acting by veteran Oscar winners. An artistic property should never be made less of for any reason, because with any product, there is time and effort behind it. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be a critic, if anything criticism is half of what keeps these workers going.


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