According to David Kipen, the current quality (lack of quality, that is) of Hollywood films is due largely to its increased emphasis on playing to overseas markets. Seems that Hollywood movies now routinely make more money overseas than in America.
I have no doubt that the trend he examines is real, and that it has some effect on what movies get made (or, probably more to the point, what movies do not get made). But is it anything but a conceit to claim that the bad dialogue in the Batman or Matrix films is the result of pandering to an audience that will have to read subtitles?
Here, alas, is the virus laying waste to modern Hollywood movies. What do, say, the Batman and Matrix pictures have in common, besides banality? Just for openers, insipid, infrequent dialogue. Why take the trouble to bang out good lines?supposing one can?if they'll only be mistranslated for their real target markets, abroad? Both these movies could have been silents if they weren't so loud. They're overbearing, carelessly told, and gang-written into incomprehensibility.
Well, first of all, though I am the first to admit that The Matrix series has dialogue that is serviceable at best, and occassionaly a bit embarrassing ("Welcome to the desert of the real." (!)), I nevertheless cannot take any movie critic seriously who cannot perceive (or admit) the difference in quality between this trilogy and the (mostly) insulting Batman movies. The final line quoted above is itself careless and is as gang-written as the Matrix was.
That aside, was the Matrix designed for an international market? Infrequent dialogue is not that unusual in an action movie. How much more dialogue was there in The French Connection, not to mention the nearly silent Bullitt, to use examples from Kipen's favorite decade?
Kipen makes it clear that, for him, good movies are dialogue driven, and that the "auteur" in film is really the screenwriter. That's a fair position to take, but his prejudices have warped his analysis somewhat.
Posted by Alan Hogue at May 17, 2004 11:19 AM