If you'll allow me to pat myself on the back for a minute, I think the stuff I've written on Stellar in Neverland in 2020 has been my best work yet. It's probably because I've been home 24/7 and therefore have a lot of time to dedicate to making my content the best it can be, with the fact that I'm also older and more mature also playing a role. Whatever the reason is, I'm incredibly proud of every single post I've made from this January onward. But even with that, last week's post is easily my personal favorite thing I've ever written. I'm sure somebody could analyze it and find flaws, but it's the one I'm most proud of and the one I had the best time writing. But I realized something about a quarter of the way through the writing of that post: if I was going to talk about everything I found interesting in 2010 cinema, it would have to take two posts. This is Part Two. I'd recommend you read Part One first, just because I'm proud of it, but if you don't feel like it, here's what I covered there, as far as why 2010 was such an interesting year:
1. Tangled, because it's my favorite movie.
2. I had my best friend write a little essay on Inception, because it's her favorite movie.
3. The Last Airbender, because it makes a mockery of what I believe to be the greatest TV show of all time.
4. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, because it's a bizarre coincidence that both my favorite TV series and my favorite book series got terrible live-action adaptations in the same year.
5. Despicable Me, because of how it plagued those damn minions on the masses.
6. Toy Story 3, because it was an epic and emotional conclusion to a series that defined the childhoods of many...even though they made a Toy Story 4.
7. Alice in Wonderland, because it was the first of the really successful live-action Disney remakes.
8. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, because it's a cult classic that I really wanted to see.
Now let's quit the rambling and continue with more reasons as to why I find 2010 so interesting. Last week, I talked mostly about individual movies, and while I will be doing that for the first part of today, I'm also talking about general trends for movies in 2010.
Emma Stone first appeared in small TV roles in shows like Malcolm in the Middle before making her film debut in 2007's Superbad. She also found commercial success in 2009's Zombieland, but it wasn't until she scored the lead in 2010's Easy A that she found her true breakthrough. I considered talking about this movie for this post, because I find Stone to be a charismatic and talented actress (and also because I feel like, as an Emma myself, I have to support other Emmas!), but I wasn't sure how I would watch it since it's not Netflix or Amazon Prime. But then I was scrolling through the TV guide and it just so happened to be on Freeform/ABC Family/whatever it's called now. So I watched it and found myself really enjoying it. I'm eighteen years old, so I'm at the prime age for chick flicks, but even then, I was surprised with how clever I found Easy A to be. Loosely (and I mean loosely) based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, the film tells the story of Olive Penderghast, a high school student who finds herself reputed as the "school slut." I'm just gonna say right now that I would recommend this movie, but fair warning: there's a lot of sex jokes, so if you're not into that, I wouldn't recommend you watch this. Anyways, Stone plays Olive, and her performance is definitely the best thing about this movie. She's snarky and sassy when she needs to be, and she also nails the moments where she has to be more emotional. The screenplay is also pretty funny. I love how she lies to her best friend about how she's going on a date, just to get out of spending the weekend with her friend's weird hippie parents, and then it cuts to her singing "Pocketful of Sunshine" by Natasha Bedingfield all weekend long. The framing of the movie is also pretty smart, as it's set up as a confessional webcam. Finally, I really liked some of the more feminist messages of the movie. At one point, Olive and her friend Brandon pretend to have sex, because Brandon is gay and wants to stop being bullied for it. When they come out of the room, Brandon gets high-fives and gets treated as a "super-stud boss," while Olive only gets dirty looks and shame. This scene is a great example of the double standards for men and women, how a man is rewarded by society for being sexually active while a woman is shamed. I could go on forever about how harmful these double standards are, so I really respected how the film shows the wrongness of these standards.
10. Even your average, everyday rom-com could stand out from the pack, not for being particularly good, but for having the most batshit cast list I've ever seen.
The movie in question is Valentine's Day, a movie that got negative critical reviews but raked in $216.5 million. I think it's supposed to be an anthology of a bunch of random romance stories. It's on Netflix right now, so I could have watched it, but honestly, I had no interest in doing so. I saw my mom watch it recently, and she said it wasn't great. Besides, I like some rom-coms, but this one just seemed like total fluff. So why am I mentioning it? Because another thing that made 2010 so fascinating was the fact that a bunch of serious A-listers could come together for a generic rom-com. The cast includes Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Patrick Dempsey, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, George Lopez, Emma Roberts, Julia Roberts, and Taylor Swift. That is quite possibly the most random, but completely star-studded cast I've ever seen. I went on about how Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had a stacked cast, but it was mostly stacked with people who have been in stuff that I care about. Valentine's Day, on the other hand, is filled to the brim with bonafide A-listers, ranging from Oscar winners (Bates, Foxx, Hathaway, and Julia Roberts), Grammy winners (Foxx, Latifah, Swift, and oddly enough, Bradley Cooper has two Grammys for A Star is Born), two famous Jessicas (Alba and Biel), and two stars of That '70s Show (Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher). And they all came together for this thorougly-mediocre-in-every-other-way rom-com. The success of Valentine's Day would lead to two similar movies from the same director, the late Garry Marshall: New Year's Eve in 2011 and Mother's Day in 2016. Personally, I'd want to watch New Year's Eve the most out of any of them, as it features my one true love, Zac Efron. As well as Halle Berry, Robert De Niro, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sarah Paulson, and Ryan Seacrest. And also former mayor of New York/failed presidential candidate/exceedingly wealthy man Mike Bloomberg. Geez, what is this series?
Now we're going to talk about five general trends of movies in 2010. With these, I used the app PicCollage to have fun and make little collages of the movies I was specifically talking about in each section. They're not great, since I mainly focus on writing and have no graphic design skills whatsoever, but I needed a visual, and PicCollage did in a pinch.
11. The rise of 3D technology
2009's Avatar (which I will be talking about shortly) was a gargantuan success, and part of that was because it was shown in many formats. It was released for traditional 2D viewing, 3D viewing (using numerous 3D formats, such as RealD 3D and IMAX 3D), and even 4D viewing in select South Korean theatres. Due to the massive success of the film, there was a huge increase in 3D movies in 2010. Alice in Wonderland broke Avatar's record for highest opening-weekend for a 3D movie. Certain movies even advertised the fact that they were 3D in the title, such as Jackass 3D, King Kong: 360 3-D, Saw 3D, The Nutcracker in 3D, and Step Up 3D. All animated films saw releases in 3D as well. Some movies (such as the animated films, Tron: Legacy, and Jackass 3D) were shot or rendered natively in 3D, but others had to be converted, for better or for worse. Clash of the Titans, for example, was a huge box-office success, breaking Scary Movie 4's record for the highest Easter weekend debut. However, the film's director, Louis Leterrier, had this to say in 2013 about the movie's 3D conversion:
It says a lot that the Razzie Awards' (a parody award show that recognizes the worst films of a given year) special new category for 2010 was "Most Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3-D." The nominees were Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, Clash of the Titans, The Nutcracker in 3D, and Saw 3D, but of course, the winner was my favorite movie to bash on, The Last Airbender. I’ve already criticized it twice before, first in its own dedicated MOVIE TALK, then in Part One of this post, but I can’t help it. Ragging on The Last Airbender is too much fun because I’m constantly noticing new ways the film fails. One of the film’s countless failures is how messily converted its 3D was. In late April 2010, Paramount saw that Avatar and Alice in Wonderland made some good money due to 3D releases and decided “Hey, we want to make money like that too.” The problem is that the film still had to be released by early July, so the 3D was shoehorned in. They also had to cut parts of the story out, including scenes with the fan-favorite Kyoshi Warriors. And it’s not like the 3D effects were anything spectacular. While the original animated series had stellar, vibrant animation, The Last Airbender’s visuals were dull, cheap, and ugly. Oh, The Last Airbender. It’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but I love talking about its failures and listening to people talk about its failures.
12. It was the first year to have three movies gross over a billion dollars
 |
13. Animation had a really good year.
I just want to say that the image came from We Got This Covered. I didn't make it. Half of the top 10 highest-grossing movies in 2010 were animated: Toy Story 3 was the highest-grossing movie of the entire year, Shrek Forever After was fifth, Tangled was eighth, Despicable Me was ninth, and How to Train Your Dragon was tenth. Outside of the top ten, we also had movies like Megamind, which was one of DreamWorks' lower-grossing animated films this decade, but got decent reviews. In Japan, Studio Ghibli released Arrietty, another critically acclaimed, whimsical anime from a studio that's known for those. (I've still never seen Arrietty or any Ghibli movie, because I suck.) The Zack Snyder-directed Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole also came out, which, despite being criticized for its story and characters, has been named one of the most visually gorgeous animated movies ever by CineFix and SlashFilm, among others. Compare that to 2019, where only three animated movies are in the top ten (The Lion King was second, Frozen II was third, and Toy Story 4 was fourth). All three of those movies were extremely successful (with The Lion King remake being the highest-grossing animated movie in history), but disappointingly, they were all sequels or remakes. I adore animation. It's probably my favorite medium for storytelling, as the possibilities of what can happen in animation are endless. It's just infuriating how this medium can be used to tell any story the mind can think of, but people just want to watch things they've already seen before. Of course, there were fresh, original animated movies in 2019, such as Abominable and Missing Link, but those weren't nearly as successful as the sequels and remakes. 2010 did give us some animated sequels, like Toy Story 3, but most of the biggest animated movies that year told unique stories with characters we had never seen before. (Even though movies like Despicable Me and How to Train Your Dragon would get sequels). I wish that both Hollywood and the general public would give some of the more original animated movies a chance, just like they did in 2010.
14. Sequels and remakes were very popular, but didn’t oversaturate the market like they would a few years later.
This is sort of a continuation of what I was just saying, but it's something I noticed. Thirty-four movies hit #1 at the box office. Of those thirty-four, thirteen (Iron Man 2, Shrek Forever After, Toy Story 3, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Resident Evil: Afterlife, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Jackass 3D, Paranormal Activity 2, Saw 3D, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- Part 1, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Tron: Legacy, and Little Fockers) were sequels, while four (Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Karate Kid) were remakes. Exactly half of the number one films were sequels or remakes and half were originals. Let’s compare this to 2019. There were also thirty-four #1 movies in 2019, but twenty-two of those movies were sequels or part of a franchise. That’s 64%! Add in the four #1 movies that were remakes of previously existing movies (three of the four were Disney remakes, of course) and a whopping 76% of all the #1 movies in 2019 were either sequels or series. Looking at the top ten highest-grossing movies of 2019, only one of them (Joker) wasn’t a sequel or remake (technically, it’s not a part of the DC Extended Universe.) For a few years now, I’ve felt like the box office is just cluttered with sequels, franchises, and remakes, which is disappointing. It’s great to see familiar characters and situations, but I also find myself craving originality. 2010 is the perfect middle ground. We had our fair share of sequels and franchises, but we also had new, fresh stories being told. I wish we could go back to this 50/50 ratio between sequels and remakes vs. original stories, but sadly, I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon.
15. The explosion of social media was reflected in our movies.
For Empire, Helen O'Hara published an excellent piece detailing trends in 2010 film. This piece was really helpful for coming up with trends, and initially, I was going to crib from her article a lot more, but then I came up with more general trends on my own. I did decide to take inspiration from one of her ideas, which is how social media began to impact our movies more heavily. By the end of 2010, Facebook saw 608 million users, while Twitter gained over 100 million new users by the end of the year. Other popular social media sites like Pinterest, Quora, and the ubiquitous Instagram were launched in 2010 as well. Seeing as social media was blowing up, it makes a lot of sense that it started sinking into our movies. O'Hara specifically names Catfish, a documentary about online relationships that broke the term "catfishing" into the public consciousness, and Going the Distance, a rom-com about a long-distance relationship that makes use of Skype. I also noticed how the aforementioned Easy A uses a live-streaming webcam for its framing. But of course, the most noteworthy film from 2010 that dealt with social media is David Fincher's The Social Network. The Social Network tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg and how he founded Facebook. Zuckerberg has actually said that the film was largely fictitious, saying "And basically the framing is that the whole reason for making Facebook is because I wanted to get girls, or wanted to get into clubs. They [the film's creators] just can't wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.” However, the film received rapturous critical acclaim. It won Best Picture from the National Board of Review, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association, making it only the third film in history to sweep the “Big Four” critics awards. The Social Network has a legacy of inspiring people to start their own companies, specifically regarding social media. Critic Bob Lefsetz said “Watching this movie makes you want to run from the theatre, grab your laptop and build your own empire. You’ve got the ability.” The film has also been named the best of the decade by several sources, including Esquire, Polygon, and even Quentin Tarantino. Writing about the film for Polygon, Clayton Ashley spoke about the film’s legacy saying “But after nearly a decade of watching Facebook “move fast and break things,” including news websites, social video, politics, etc., the movie’s tangible sense of tension can easily be reinterpreted as foreboding for what comes after you make a billion friends.”
No comments:
Post a Comment