However, beyond the fact that a ticket doesn’t worth 8,16$, and that the

megaplex follows the principle of mass consumption, the real concern resides in the

movies programs. People used to choose their kind of cinema, their kind of culture,

they knew what “going to the movies” meant.

Let’s see how a movie is chosen today, to reach your eyes.

 

The programming choice is a cycle able to divert a culture.

Let’s begin this programming cycle somewhere : let’s choose a movie to watch.

The movie theater (the distributor) proposes 20 movies, all of them paid their “rent” to

be projected, giving way to big budget movies, in other words

commercial Blockbusters made to attract crowds.

Anyway, let’s choose the most suitable movie, or the one that will not annoy

the young lady we invited tonight, or even the remake

of an old movie, in order not to be disappointed. Not to be disappointed means that

we need to make the 8,16$ ticket profitable, as well as our time. When the movies

are no longer in movie theaters, their popularity are rated thanks to the calculation

of the box-office, which is no more than the takings the movie made.

Even if the movie will pass through critics, awards, and festivals,

the real vote is the public vote which defines the popularity of the movie.

Nevertheless, this vote comes from box-office statistics.

​

Here we are : distribution societies and producers (who invest their money) opt for

smash hits, but they do not know it will be a hit before the movie is finished.

The success is a fate, an encounter between artistic ideas and the discovery of a public.

So for producers, hits are synonyms of movies with no financial risks,

which means no innovation and comfort of recycled movies.

If the action movie works, let’s invest more in action movies !... Essentially big budget

blockbusters trying not to get out of the outlined “artistic” path.

 

The pattern is clear : the producer’s salary matches with the hit with no risks.

This enables to remove the support to independent artists, to innovations,

and to squash them thanks to huge amounts of money.

The megaplex gets a reputation with commercials and doesn’t need to diversify

the programming : the cycle is launched.

Arrives the moment when the culture is deeply touched, because the phenomenon gets fashionable.

 

We watch ourselves in the simulacrum-mirror of this cinema, of this

programming so-called representative of our society. Our culture is being dictated to us,

and even if we do not see ourselves in this mirror, we try to guess ourselves to

be fashionable.

 

This is the illusion of a choice. The producer finances Iron Man. Iron Man is

part of a precise programming distributed by megaplexes to reach a public. The public

choose Iron Man among the programming proposed by the producers.

The producer doesn’t leave a chance to the innovative and independent artist,

who didn’t have a budget big enough to realize his movie.

Iron Man reaches public’s eyes instead of this independent movie. The producer

finally voted for the megaplex programming and influenced the taste

and culture of the public. The public, as for him, didn’t vote for the programming,

and neither for his culture.

Results : Iron Man gets a big box-office thanks to restricted choices and 8,16$ tickets.

However, the concept of cinema disappeared. We do not choose more the megaplexes

programming than the reality shows that daze us in front of TV. We are

unfortunately still stupid.

 

The producer owes the money, and so the most important part of the movie

financing.