Events
David Gritten explains why Dream Works is slow to kill and say goodbye with his world famous monster.
Over the years, cinema goers have associated various Hollywood companies with different genres. Warners was “responsible” for gangster films as well as realistic stories that raise pressing social issues. Disney is the epitome of live fantasy as well as family movies. MGM's trademark is extravagant musicals.
Now everything has changed and the brainchildren of one Hollywood studio are almost indistinguishable from another. In fact, this is a shame, and not because viewers should feel a film's connection to a particular studio.
The problem with all companies is that they are all in pursuit of the same thing: maximum profit for their shareholders. Moreover, in most cases, shareholders are not people whose main love is cinema. Currently, all studios are just cogs in giant conglomerates run by money-makers who care little about the quality of what we see on movie screens.
Another problem is that filmmaking is rarely the most profitable part of the business in these giant conglomerates. There are only rare exceptions to this rule — Avatar is the last — the average film tends to make losses, or generate profits so modest that accountants “yawn out of boredom.”
That's why every studio is constantly desperate for a franchise: movies that will open up other money-making opportunities. The fourth part of Shrek (almost certainly the last episode of the cartoon), which has already been released, clearly testifies to this. All the previous three parts were very successful, but still much more money is earned from toys, figures, blankets, curtains and other paraphernalia related to cartoon characters.
If we approach the issue creatively, after the second part, the filmmakers should have stopped, and Dream Works could start looking for new, fresh ideas. But Shrek is a real cash cow, so it's no wonder he's still alive.
Dream Works, by the way, started 16 years ago with the claim that they would not be like everyone else. Its organizers Steven Spielberg, singer David Geffen and former Disney animation producer Jeffrey Katzenberg promised to satisfy the needs of the most demanding movie lovers to create smart, thoughtful and entertaining films.
But this did not happen; such films are very rarely seen in cinemas, and this applies to all studios. The only thing that makes Dream Works very vaguely different from its “brothers” is that they release their cartoons in 3D format. However, their work is still inferior to Pixar's brilliant animated works.
After all, Dream Works, like many other companies, was mired in the pursuit of money, which became their main job. The name Dream Works, however, turned out to be prophetic: although dreams of originality did not come true, under limited conditions, as a modern film studio, it works quite successfully.