It is always the businesspeople at fault for it. Creatives don't naturally want to create bland and uninteresting work any more than software developers want to naturally build CRUD apps for ad-tech companies. The employees go where the businesspeople and their money lead because working class folks need to make a living and most Hollywood creatives are working class.
> Creatives don't naturally want to create bland and uninteresting work
Hmm. I've seen a few "passion projects" that reach new heights of uninterestingness. Detach the creative from needing to bring in an audience and we get projects that "explore the liminal space of boredom" and such. Once directors get the "make whatever you want" power it's not always a happy outcome. Same thing with authors - they get famous with a tightly edited 300 pages and use that to release a 1200 page barely edited brick.
Sometimes the balance of the two really works - the money man is the only representation of the audience and can cut out that nonsensical 45 minute dream sequence. I guess what I want is not a money man as such, just an editor with a bit of power as an objective source of improvement.
There are of course good businessperson led movies and bad businessperson led movies. The same is true for creative led movies. Maybe the "explore the liminal space of boredom" movie is bad, but that description certainly sounds more interesting than a bad version of Transformers 7 or whatever.
Creative led projects are at least personal and that gives them a unique quality even if the project is an overall failure.
>I guess what I want is not a money man as such, just an editor with a bit of power as an objective source of improvement.
Editors would generally be considered creatives and not businesspeople. There is also no such thing as "an objective source of improvement" when it comes to art.
> Detach the creative from needing to bring in an audience and we get projects that "explore the liminal space of boredom" and such.
If there is a project that literally and perfectly matches your description, it is "Paint Drying", a 2016 protest film against censorship and classification mandates in the UK [1].
I generally am not a big fan of the CGI-dominated action film catering to international audiences. But I'm mostly not a huge fan of art house fare either.
> Hmm. I've seen a few "passion projects" that reach new heights of uninterestingness.
This is what happens when the money men also think of themselves or their buddies as creatives. Extremely high production values on extremely stupid movies.
It’s normal to have creative flops too, but generally the landscape looks much better and healthier than now. And some of those dreamscape flops are likely low to mid budget or self funded projects.
How many of them have you talked to or worked with? The ones I know don't "snub their noses at the 'working class' and share none of their value of beliefs". But I have a feeling that you're not looking at the whole working class, only a subset.
Anyone who complains about “toxic fandom”, particularly for a franchise they inherited (which includes all of marvel and Lucas film) is thumbing their nose, you can call it what you like but the behaviour is evident. It used to be, when an adaptation was bad, writers and execs would blame each other and audiences would sorta side with writers. Then game of thrones proved it was possible to make an adaptation that was both faithful and good cinema, so now writers and execs blame audiences when they fall short.
> Anyone who complains about “toxic fandom”, particularly for a franchise they inherited (which includes all of marvel and Lucas film) is thumbing their nose, you can call it what you like but the behaviour is evident.
A bunch of people who didn't inherit a franchise also complain about "toxic fandom". What's the problem with saying that? Do creatives have to butter up their fans?
I know the cases you're referencing, and I don't disagree with you that "toxic fandom" was a fake complaint in those specific cases. But it's not the writers who use this to deflect from criticism, it's the investors behind the scenes. The writers (the ones that are part of the normal work force) want to write good stuff and create good entertainment.
But, say, the actress of Rose from Star Wars? She has every right to complain about a toxic fandom. Christ, they sent her death threats because she performed as asked for by the studio!
It wasn't the ending per se that everyone got mad about. It was how the ending was written. Silicon Valley has showed us that execution matters as much or more than ideas.
If you'd been paying attention to what the writers and actors on strike right now are saying—including some of the A-list ones who are genuinely quite rich and famous—you'd see that, at least as a class, they do not, in fact, snub their noses at the working class.
The idea that Hollywood actors and writers are arrogant elitists who look down on "regular" working folks is, to a large extent, propaganda, specifically intended to destroy solidarity in moments like these.
