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Hyper mass appeal films with no soul seem to be on the menu for many Hollywood studios these days. Have you noticed that there was very little to cheer about in theaters in 2005 in North America? Everything has become so overly-designed for hyper mass appeal that the result is bland on arrival. Creative choices have become marketing choices - which hot bands should we get, which hot actors/actresses should be in it… the “let’s make a great movie mantra” discarded by the roadside. The appeal for the W company is to take an Asian product and make the most money out of it. They want to make a mass appeal film for the Western market. Does doing so really require that every Asian film be reworked for Western audiences? Do they have the same practice for Western films they distribute to Asia? Or is this reworking just a one way street? I don’t see the point in reworking a film along these lines. While film is different than a painting — can you imagine if a Van Gogh painting was redone to cater for each demographic as it toured museums of the world? When is an artist’s work good enough to be able to stand sacred as it is and tour the world with the only reworking of it being purely for communication’s sake (excellent subtitles for each country)? Across the world, are distributors really reworking films as they enter their market? If Pulp Fiction travels to Sweden, it gets a Swedish remix… if it enters Russia, now the Russian remix? I imagine for most Western films the key difference abroad is they may have more sex and violence than the MPAA allows here. The choice of reworking is then purely to fit that country’s guidelines versus a reworking of it to appeal more to everyone in that market. I see an artist’s work in film as a sacred piece of art. It needs to be preserved and shown in its original format. Add excellent subtitles, but do not rework it. The effect of reworking it to fit a market is more like having graffiti all over someone else’s work of art. To use the painting analogy again imagine walking into a museum to see an original Van Gogh, and it’s been completely repainted to have the pop sensibilities of your market. Would you be upset you couldn’t see the original? Fans of Asian cinema living in North America want to see the original film. If you have a reworked alternative, at the very least also offer the original up with subtitles. As it is now, studios want to control what we can or can’t see with films they have acquired North American rights to. They do this by trying to stop all parallel importing and releasing “their” version on DVD. If the original isn’t offered in North American theaters or on DVD, we can’t see the original. We want to see the original work of art. Sony has gotten increasingly good at releasing an Asian film without reworking it. Magnolia Pictures is also releasing non-reworked films (outside of LB’s cut of Ong Bak) with Pulse and others. At least some studios/distributors understand we want to see the original. When a studio says we can’t see the original, only their version (whatever it is), it immediately puts people on the defensive and up in arms. The heart of the issue for me is that I want to see the original film. I want that sacred version. As long as I can see the original version of a film or buy it on DVD, you have gone a long way to make me happy. You still want to release a reworked version? I’m not happy about it but so be it, you bought it and want to make money. Just don’t let that version be the only damn one there is. Comment by Blake — December 27, 2005 @ 8:22 am

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