Ange at 2014-01-03 17:26:37:

Wonder if the fascination with the horror genre is partly driven by the fact that it actually makes you feel...well, something. Even if it is just the screaming heebie-jeebies and that uncomfortable feeling when the hair on the back of your neck rises. Sadly, too many leave me with only the slightly pissed-off feeling that I could've done something better with my money. It's not hard to see why the likes of Gravity and Captain Phillips did so well at the box office, and sure Baby Boomers and star power might account for some of it, but it was impossible to sit there and watch them and NOT feel anything. So sad that so many movies miss the mark. Movies shouldn't just be about actors and plots 'moving', they should be about audiences feeling 'moved'.

Scott at 2014-01-03 17:38:22:

Ange, you are talking my language. That is the FIRST thing I want out of a movie: to FEEL something. This is my complaint with so many of the big, CGI-driven franchise type movies: sound and fury signifying nothing. I finally saw Hobbit 2 last night. I had resisted for weeks because I was afraid of precisely what happened when I watched it: I felt NOTHING. Deeply disappointed because I thought LOTR was wonderful. But this exercise with Hobbit, making it 3 movies, there's just not enough in the source material to warrant that. Besides there is nothing akin to the Frodo-Sam relationship, or the Gandalf-Frodo relationship, or Merry and Pippin's mini-arcs, and others that are present in LOTR, but lacking in Hobbit. They try, you can SEE them trying to generate actual feelings between characters, but for me (as well as both of my sons), the movie falls flat (even though the river sequence is pretty damn awesome as an action piece). One reason I think Gravity succeeded at the B.O. was the filmmakers grounded this Big Story by setting up a Small Story - Stone's grief - to give viewers an emotional conduit [beyond being scared shitless floating around helplessly in outer space] into the narrative. So yes, we want to FEEL something. And Ange, I'd say this is a key point about spec scripts: Identify the core emotional points of resonance and work them. If it's a scary movie, ground it in human fear. If it's a comedy, ground it in character humor. Ah, that word again: character. It always comes back to characters...

Ange at 2014-01-03 19:51:26:

I, too, LOVED LOVED LOVED LOTR. (And not just because I was born & bred in NZ/Middle Earth, although it didn't hurt.) But PJ lost me completely at 13 dwarves - seriously?! 13 of 'em! What the...? And all guys. Apparently dwarves are all asexual or something. It's like a list of Biblical begettings - mothers and sisters don't count. It's okay to play with Tolkien in some places but not in others? Disney got it right: never go beyond 7 with dwarves or we'll struggle to remember who they all are. Forget this one wears a yellow hood and this one grey. You nailed it, Scott - Disney doubled down on character: Happy, Dopey, Sleepy, Sneezey, Grumpy, Doc and, hmm... Not Sleazey. Not Creepy. Not Wishy-Washy. It'll come to me. (Could be a spoof spec script in that: Snow White as an exotic dancer and the Seven Obsessed Dwarves. You heard it on GITS first...) So, anyway, I'm waiting for Hobbit 1 to show on free-to-air tv, and I really hope I last longer than the first ad break, but I fear... You're spot-on about stretching it out to 3 movies, too; seems much more an economic decision to milk us of our hard-earneds. Such a shame. Frodo-Sam, Gandalf-Frodo & Merry-Pippin were all terrific relationships.