Okay, I know I said I would write more about my work of late, but I thought I’d throw this article in to talk about the recent wave of decent films that followed a previous wave of awful films. Gotta love summer movie season:

I’ve been incredibly surprised thus far this summer with the rampant success of films like Transformers and Live Free or Die Hard. Honestly, I like everyone else, assumed that the super huge sequels of May would be the highlight of the summer movie season. Three trilogy ending mega-blockbusters to critically acclaimed franchises (Spiderman, Shrek and Pirates of the Carribbean) couldn’t possible fail, right?

Well, they didn’t fail at the box office, but they surely failed in the reviews. They were bad films, plainly stated. By Memorial Day weekend, I was bent on keeping my cash firmly planted in my pocket to ensure I didn’t spend any more of my hard earned money on another clunker. The $30 that I squandered in May was enough for me. It’s a sad experience to look at a site like Rotten Tomatoes and find the top 5 movies all have rotten ratings and yet people are willing to shell out hundreds of millions to see them.

Which is why, going into June, I didn’t expect to the blindsiding of films like Ratatouille, Ocean’s Thirteen and the final Die Hard. To be honest, I wasn’t disappointed once with a film I saw in the last month and a half. After the dredge and muck of May, June and July have been good to us and I’m intrigued as to why this is the case. With the exception of Ratatouille and Knocked Up, the rest of the summer is adaptation and sequel heavy. However, these ones have managed to do something the earlier failures did not, succeed.

Genre Film Success

It doesn’t take that much to succeed in genre film. I’m sure many of you are sneering, wondering how I would know anything about the film making process and what works and what doesn’t work. Honestly, I don’t. However, what I do know is what makes a good film, and in genre films it doesn’t take much. Live Free or Die Hard is probably my best example of how this works. Instead of imbuing the film with subplots, romances, unnecessary tertiary characters and maniacal super villains with twisted back stories, the quintessential action film franchise did what it always did best 15 years ago – it blew things up.

For the most part, the reason so many films are considered failures is because they fail the expectations of their viewers. For a genre film, expectations are markedly low. An action film is not meant to tug on heart strings or offer a pointed political debate. It can do both and a few films have managed to tie everything together into a beautiful menagerie of brilliantly written film. However, for the summer film series, people want something entertaining and fun to sit and watch under the cool fans of air conditioning while it’s 100 degrees outside.

And the basic formula for a film like Live Free or Die Hard is so brilliantly simple that it’s hard to believe that other films don’t get it right more often. A loose yet believable plot, a couple of smart-ass main characters, one of them very angry and a whole lot of kicks to the face and exploding cars. The film makers know the stunts are outrageous. In fact, even the characters in the film know how ridiculous their actions are. It’s a big joke and we’re all in on it. By recognizing and making light of the over-the-top nature of the action genre, the director can quickly move beyond it and get to the matter of simply enjoying it.

Where films like Spiderman 3 and Pirates failed was getting too carried away with their own premises. The first Pirates film was the perfect balance of camp and clever winks to the audience. It was funny, entertaining and easily made light of its own premise. The second and third film started to take it all too seriously and exploit the smarminess of Captain Jack and the embattled relationship of Elizabeth and Will. Thus they began to fail. Genre films are built on shaky premises. It’s the films that are willing to recognize that shaky premise and embrace it as fully as possible that ultimately succeed.

Originality Also Works

And then there are those films with original plots, written as films from the start. They are incredibly rare in the summer movie season. An original comedy or action film is as hard to come by as a brilliant video game adaptation but when they squeeze through the cracks and find a home in the June and July movie season, they have the potential to clean up at the box office. Both Knocked Up and Ratatouille are prime examples of the strength of an original script and brilliant writing/directing, in this case by Judd Apatow and Brad Bird.

What makes these films work though is not just that they are original. There are plenty of “original” comedies released in February and March every year that just plain stink. Ironically, it is in comedy more than any other genre that embracing the genre and diving headfirst can actually fail. It’s not that the formula doesn’t work. It’s that a bad writer and poor jokes written into this formula create a horrendous film.

Apatow and Bird have both proven in their previous films an immense ability to both understand write about the humanity present in all comedic situations and vice versa. They do not craft outrageous settings and relationships full of gags. They create meaningful characters with purposeful relationships and definite growth. Their casual observations about things like growing up, accepting who you are and becoming responsible are themes that transcend genre. In their hands though, these themes also become open fodder for brilliantly observant comedy, something very few other writers or directors can manage.

When everything is said and done, the summer movie season tends to be a hit and miss affair, full of iffy films, major disappointments and a few rare gems. However, this year, it appears that the disappointments were top heavy and the rest of the summer has produced mostly gems. With The Simpsons Movie still on the way and a small handful of more sequels and comedies en route, there is a chance that this could become one of the better summer movies seasons in recent years.

I feel like I have to dust off the cobwebs here before I get started on a new post - something I haven’t done in a month and a half. Let’s just say the month of June was a good month for me in terms of work. July as well. I’ve been incredibly busy and with numerous personal projects on the plate beside my work projects, I suppose I more or less abandoned this site. However, after a little gentle prodding (mostly by the invoice I received this morning) I figured I would get back to my roots and start updating the old blog again. Honestly, it’s not that I even purposefully neglected the site. I just got too busy and after 10,000 words a day at times, I had absolutely no desire to write anything on here. Luckily, I have a few topics that have been sitting around for a good six weeks now that I can discuss as well as my new found success and a certain website that I hope will take off in the coming weeks. All told, things have been good.

First off, I’d like to make mention of SeattleFreelance.com, my newest business venture. Essentially, I’ve found that my current sources of income are a little sporadic and charge me just a little too much money for their services. For that reason, I figured why not start my own site and gather my own clients and resources. Unfortunately, a few large projects for the month of July have meant that the site is still full of bugs and hasn’t been advertised yet. If you need any “quality copy for an affordable price” though, drop me a line.

Secondly, I’d like to make special mention of my Spammers. These men and women have gone above and beyond the call of duty and overloaded my website with upwards of 600 separate messages in the last month. I’m especially appreciative of their creativity. I’ve been privy to reading through more than just the usual fare of porn keywords and false IP addresses. The ability of some spammers to string together otherwise unrelated keywords into a seemingly sensible sentence is impressive - do any of you need work?

I’ll be posting a bit more, though probably not as often as I did before. My goal this run through though is to offer a bit more of my experience in the wonderful world of Freelance writing. It’s been a solid 7 months now and I am therefore a seasoned veteran (hey, I get paid right?). Check back for more.