Alan Moore Explains Why Big Budget Movies Suck and It's Hard to Disagree
Hard to argue with words as accurate as this...
Alan Moore, co-author of the famed graphic novel "Watchmen", has spoken out to Total Film and his words hit right on target as he rips to shreds the idea of big budget films.
"The main reason why comics can’t work as films is largely because everybody who is ultimately in control of the film industry is an accountant.
"There is more integrity in comics. It sounds simplistic, but I believe there is a formula that you can apply to almost any work of modern culture…
"The more money that's involved in a project the less imagination there will be in the project, and vice versa. If you've got zero budget, you're John Waters, you're Jean Cocteau, you're going to make a brilliant film.
"100 million dollars — that's what they spent on the Watchmen film which nearly didn't come out because of the lawsuit, that's what they spent on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which shouldn't have come out but did anyway.
"Do we need any more shitty films in this world? We have quite enough already. Whereas the 100 million dollars could sort out the civil unrest in Haiti. And the books are always superior, anyway."
Hard to argue with those words. They leave very little room for any commentary or rebuttal.
I do think Total Film's headline saying "Why Alan Moore Hates Comic-Book Movies" is off base since Moore is obviously referring to all big budget films in which accountants and executives have more of a say in than those actually making the films. You can read the complete piece here.
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im with alan on this one
I've pretty much held this opinion for a very long time. The low budget movies tend to be better than the big budget ones because there is less concern about earning the money back from the public, and when you don't have as much money to deal with it makes you think more creatively with what they have. Take El Mariachi for example, that movie was made for only $7000 and its a great action movie. 1 out of every 25 adaptations are truly great pieces of work. I know that Watchmen has a ton of work put into it, but it's probably not going to be very good. I'm just going to see the movie so I can get whatever I can out of it. A Shining example of shitty adaptations are the Harry Potter films, the only decent ones are the first 3 or 4 and even they weren't that good. If the studio execs hadn't taken it away from Terry Gilliam and given to the guy who directed home alone those movies would have stood a chance of being fantastic. Leave it up to hollywood to care about its earnings more than making a truly great flim
Little room? Isn't it a bit too broad a sentiment to give it that much credit?
It's a cynical view that, while accurate, is certainly being challenged by films like The Dark Knight, and perhaps even Watchmen. Movies that successfully combine budget, source, and creativity contrary to the harsh reality of the majority.
There are a glut of shitty comics out there, but I'd like to think they reflect on Watchmen as much as any of those shitty films do other films by other people.
@Mike Haseloff: Yeah, little room. For the most part $100+ million films pale in comparison to smaller budget films in my opinion. There's no doubt there are some good films that cost a lot to make, but most of the films I would say are worthy of being called "great" were made for less than $100 million. I offer up the entire Godfather trilogy as an example. It was made for a reported $73 million with $54m of that going to Part III (pretty much accepted as the worst of the trilogy).
@Brad Brevet:
I agree with Mike Haseloff. While a greater budget often does mean less creativity, truly great minds can combine to balance that out. For example, $185 million under the direction of Christopher Nolan will always be better than $20 million under the direction of Friedburg and Seltzer. And, for that matter, I found the $185 million under Christopher Nolan to be better than the $19 million spent on Godfathers I & II. Yes, the first two Godfathers are wonderful films, and yes, I love them. But 1) I find the stories to be slightly less engaging than TDK 2) I find the characters to be slightly less engaging as well 3) In terms of technical achievement, TDK is far ahead.
The point I'm trying to make is that it really depends on who's in charge. Some directors can command any budget and make a creative project. Some directors can have a miniscule budget and still make something bad.
Also, it depends on how much room the studio gives the director. Warner Bros. gives their directors a lot of room, thus creating movies like TDK and Harry Potter 3 (name one other studio that would have "risked" a franchise on a foreign director most famous for his Unrated "Y Tu Mama Tambien") and, hopefully, Watchmen. In comparison, Fox restricts their directors as much as possible, creating crap like "Babylon, A.D." and "The Happening" on half the budget.
I think The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a good film.
There is some truth here… but not in its entirety.
Granted I'd be pissed too if a production studio took my graphic novel (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and turned it into a piece of shit film. But big budget movies don't always suck. Some one before used The Dark Knight as an example. Well how about The Lord of the Rings? These movies are the exception… but they have been made… and properly.
Also, Watchmen is different than most adaptations. Movies like spiderman, iron man, xmen, and the batman movies all take the concept of the super heroes and things get lost in the screen translation. But watchmen seems to be a direct translation. So I don't see why he's bitchin about studio execs.
Besides look at Moore's supid, pompous photo up top.
As if he's not as hollywood-ized as the rest of us.
Brilliant artist… bit of a hypocrite
The Lord of the Rings Movie was retarded. It did no justice to the books. Orlando Bloom was a fairy little bitch, the Balrog was some retarded looking Fire Dinosaur, Elijah Wood just plain sucks and what the fuck was with the flaming lighthouse eye? And don't even get me started on the weirdly depopulated middle ages setting.
Seriously, you've either only seen the movie or paid no attention to the book. Elves are ubermensch, Balrogs are black angels and Sauron had a physical body and wasn't a flaming eye. That stuff is so stupid and typical Hollywood, exactly what Alan is talking about.
@Brad Brevet:
The Dark Knight is really just a very prominent, recent example that could be plucked from many. It is a specific, pitted against a very broad generalization, that, though founded in many examples of it's own, ignores the vast array of variables presented by the bloated chain of command criticized by Moore. It also seems to undermine the influence of those-who-command-money who would include, under the right circumstances, Moore himself.
Yes, it's a fair, if vague, point, but I think there's more than enough room to argue it for days on end. It's a flippant generalization that, at times, Moore himself seems willing to politely disagree with, briefly breaking character to acknowledge something positive about productions (like Watchmen). A cynical aspersion directed at artists themselves, in a way.
Again, the source realm of comics attacks the point from the opposite end, offering up low budget examples of volume that rivals any percentage of mediocrity Hollywood can throw up. Just like film, low budget productions offer up some examples of some of the very worst on offer from the comics medium.
Little room strikes me as a little naive.
@Mike Haseloff: This is pretty much an impossible argument to have in a comment section, and no matter what I say I am sure inflation is going to come into play within a few comments, but I would love to hear a list of great films that were made for over $100 million. What Gladiator? I am sure Terminator 2 will be brought up. WALL-E was made for a TON ($180 million)… but how big will that list truly get when compared to the legions of great films under the $100 million number?
Well of course there's going to be more good films made for little money when compared to good films made for lots of money, just as there's more bad films made that didn't cost a lot to make than bad ones that did.
Why is budget even considered in the judgment of quality in any artistic endeavour?
Can't we just looks at things based on their artistic merits and not worry about the behind the scenes politics and whatnot?
Yes, it's true that bigger budget productions (movie, music, television, comics, whatever) have more people with a vested interest in the final product. And it is also true that with more people involved the chance that the artistry of the final product will become diluted is much greater. But none of that should matter. All that should matter is whether or not YOU (that is yourself, not anyone else) enjoys what you just watched, read, listened to, etc.
Whether something is made for $100, $100,000 or $100,000,000 should not alter your ability to enjoy a piece of art. And prior knowledge of a budget should not colour your opinion of something before you have even see it. That is just ridiculous.
@Kevin: Because that is the conversation we are having and money does have a direct effect on the artistic merits of a film because the more that is spent the more hands are in the cookie jar.
As an accountant, I can agree that having an excess of them does cause problems with artistic expression. I will say, what I believe is that having less money causes the filmmakers to be clever with how they develop the story and focus on what they do not show, which I believe typically results in better dialogue writing. Also, with money comes these pesky accountants whose obligations are to ensure that the money is well spent and can get returns, so the filmmaking starts to cater to what will drive audiences. Most audiences aren't looking to watch Schindler's List repeatly, just to watch it once, give acclaims and throw it on the shelf to watch Ghostbusters twenty times. Regarding his point about the books being better, it is true, but you have to consider how many people even read these days, comics probably are read more, but the numbers have dropped over the years. It becomes an issue of finding an outlet to get the material exposed to people. The money can be used for better purposes, but people aren't lining up in these economic times to give to charitable things like that, they want to see something in return. So if they don't put money into a movie to get something in return, they are going to only be able to contribute once or twice and be done and how many people that run a company are going to take all their money and give it away and disappear in two years?
I think we sometimes lose sight of the fact that there are many, many, many, many, many crappy low-budget movies. I think the answer is the director not having too much carte blanche that he or she loses some of the creative juices. Having said that, it is very hard to do what TDK did: be a big budget, studio movie that has to please way too many suits and retain both entertainment value and artistic integrity. The spirit of Moore's comments are sound at least. Although he is one uptight dude.
@dre: To that point I think there is a difference between spending $30 million on crap and spending $100 million. I would also love to see this argument without using films such as Dark Knight or the Lord of the Rings as the prime examples.
I was trying to agree with you there home skillet. TDK and LOTR are exceptions is da point dawg. I'm not sure what % I would rank big budget films (of which less are made) as "bad" movies as opposed to the % of low budget movies that are "bad" movies. It would be an interesting exercise if the idea of actually sitting down and doing that didn't bore me to tears.
@dre: Ha, that's what I am here for and have already started compiling lists based on the idea of great films made for over $100 million. It is shocking even when you take inflation into consideration how small the list is. With inflation Braveheart barely makes it at only $102 million… hardly a strong argument, and I had never really thought of it in these terms before.
Alex Proyas said the same thing about trying to get Dark City made. The more money that is involved, the more fingers in the pie and very few of those fingers are attached to anyone with any creativity, vision or committment to the film itself. And as for "crappy low budget films," do you know how many films are made each year? Hundreds and hundreds. But we don't get to know about most of them. That's why I read sites like this one and many, many more, hoping for a DVD release. There are some overlooked gems that won't make the 80 million+ mark and are therefore pitched out. And that's not counting the vastly overlooked foreign language markets. Some of them are my favorite films.
Hey, I know how many movies are released each year. And most of them, big and low budgeted … are crap. Not just crap, no: Stinking, steaming, smoke-rising, spoof-movie-soft-mounds of plopping pooh. Now, there are MORE really low budgeted films than there are really good big budgeted films each year. But there are also a lot more low budgeted films released each year.
But amongst those really good movies is a whole lot of caca. If you don't believe me, take a nice long look at Blockbuster's straight-to-video section. Woof. And we shouldn't forget, most of the foreign films that eventually find distribution here are usually only the really good (or at least notorious) foreign flicks (though there are still many great foreign films that never find real distribution in the U.S. Battle Royale, Ping Pong, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance to name a few). There's a large, large number of foul-smelling foreign films each year that thankfully never make it to our shores.
Having said all of that, once again, I basically agree with what Alan Moore says. It's just logical.
I'll agree with your, "…there are MORE really low budgeted films than there are really good big budgeted films each year." That's irrefutable. And I'll agree that odds are that most of them are crap. But what I'm saying is that budget does not gauge quality. I think that's the point here.
sometimes people can be really ridicoulous.
While I personally prefer medium movies (as in mid-budget, around 30-80 million as opposed to the low budget or 200 million dollar movies) like Resident Evil: Extinction, Underworld Evolution, Ultraviolet, etc, really big budget movies can be excellent.
Besides, it's not the budget; it's some of the stupid people sometimes involved, like whomever wrote the entire house scene with the transformers (in the transformers film).
The point was that big budget movies are less likely to be good because there's more hands involved. In that sense the argument is saying budget DOES gauge quality. And I'm not sure Alan Moore is wrong in that. But there needs to be some perspective.
great writer. but hes kind of a dick it seems
@Brad Brevet:
Another reason why "The Godfather" is a bad example of a bigger budget meaning less creativity is because "The Godfather: Part III" was not bad because of its budget. It was bad because of its script, and probably also because Coppola lost his flair after the 70's.
In fact, the imagination MUST start with the script. As Hitchcock said, the three most important things in filmmaking are the script, the script, and the script. Then along comes a great director and translates the imagination in the script to an even greater vision onscreen. But if there's no imagination in the script to begin with, even the best director can't make the film much fun to watch.
What money can do is sap the imagination from the script through rewrites that aim at a more general audience. But if a studio is smart (like, once again, Warner Bros.), it'll tamper with the script no more than it needs to. The script for "Watchmen" was like 150 pages or something… most studios would have demanded it be cut, but not Warner Bros. Heck, even movies on $10 million budgets are expected to keep their scripts below 120 pages.
Alan Moore is making broad generalizations. And broad generalizations ALWAYS leave a lot of room for argument. Always. If they didn't, they wouldn't be broad.
I disagree with Alan Moore's argument. He thinks that the size of a budget is indicative of a film's quality. I think a more accurate statement is that the best films have the right amount of money they need to tell the story in the best way. Some stories need more money than others to be told well; others need less. If you follow Moore's reasoning, you run into the problem of arguing that since films that try to be mainly entertaining as opposed to mainly thought-provoking tend to need bigger budgets, they're automatically worse. It's an unfair comparison.
@JM: Actually, I believe Fred Zinnemann said that, not Alfred Hitchcock.
@JM: So far I have only seen The Dark Knight and now the unseen Watchmen used as examples. However, like I said this is a difficult argument to stir up in a comment section. I am trying to do a little research and put together a better article for us to discuss and bring up all the issues mentioned here so we can hash them out with a few more bits of information so each can argue their side with additional information.
This is a far more intriguing topic then I originally thought it would be and I love the enthusiasm. Hopefully I can get the next article put together soon, but midway through I realized I couldn't rush it.
Ok, First let me say that Allen Moore is a great writer and I love everything he has put his hands on.
However, he is wrong. I know that tons of fanboys and bandwagon jumpers alike love to side with him but anyone with a brain knows that this is completely BS. You cannot link the budget of a movie to how much it will suck. ALot of people are given money and they dont have good ideas, but that has nothing to do with the money, it has to do with crappy ideas.
Just like comic books, where I would say 10 stories a year have something worth remembering, the same goes for movies. I do appreciate someone who can do something with nothing, but he's the same type of nazi that would stop listening to a band after they made money and call them "sell outs". It's not about the money, its about creativity, and neither affect anything more than set pieces.
The individual telling the story makes the difference and if he can get a big budget to do what he always wanted, thats all that matters. If he doesn't get a big budget but has a real story, he can do it without the budget. Allen Moore is a naysayer and a closet case. I would give him some sort of credibility but this is the same guy that stated that he's never watched a movie made from his work, and never will, but will continue to spit "Venom" on every single one of them. If he's so willing to let his work die without helping people tell his stories to a new generation, then shut up and put the pencil down. For every movie that he could bitch about, they asked him to help and he said NO! If you aren't part of the solution then you are the problem. He has not right to say anything about film as a whole with his track record and personal statements. He's being a dick.
The books aren't always better, and even if i looked at both sides of the coin, you have to compare them as two separate mediums with good qualities for each. I for one am disgusted that he could look at someone like zach snyder who is trying his hardest to be as faithful as possible (WHICH IS WHY THERE IS A 100 MILLION DOLLAR BUDGET), and spit in his face for trying to express the greatness of watchmen and how much he appreciates the great story. I'm not even a fan of Zach Snyder but anyone who's followed this knows how far he is going to be faithful to watchmen AND to Moore.
Moore, you are an idiot.
Get your hands on the DVD of Dark City: Director's Cut. First, if you haven't seen it, watch it. It's a great film and this is a much improved rendition. Second, listen to the Documentary part of the extras. The director/writer, Alex Proyas, says many of the same things as Alan Moore. We can all have our opinions but his is coming from a player.
This commentary is reminding me of some business meetings I've attended where everyone knows the problem but they talk and talk around the edges to justify their pet projects. Watchmen could be a great movie. Or many it will only please its fan base. But Moore's statement that throwing an obscene amount of money at a project is often conterproductive is something that should be said. I disagree that lack of funding will mean more creativity because that's just nuts. But too much money will certainly leach away creative control from creative people.
A factor that has to be added to this debate: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was made on a budget of 160 million dollars. You know why? It has flat-out revolutionary special effects to capture aging and bodily changes. It's sets are necessary to the story, in order to appropriately capture the feeling of changing eras and times, and, of course, to add an element of interest to the fact that you can watch a virtually reconstructed image of times long since gone.
And you know what? Without that budget, the film would not have been able to rise to the same level of artistic integrity and impact. It would not have been a worthy best picture nominee.
Another example? Martin Scorsese's the Aviator had a budget of 110 million dollars. Why? It needed that type of money to accomplish its artistic intent.
The majority of 'great' films were made on a mid-to-low budget, that's correct. But that's because they didn't need a lot of money in order to become a great movie; they focus purely on human drama, emotions, and thought-provoking themes. This doesn't require money in order to capture.
Big-budget movies simply have to make money in order to be profitable, which is in the studio's interest. Audience have been repeatedly proven to usually go to escapist, thoughtless movies; the kind of movies that are nice for two hours of entertainment, not much more. Fun movies, not great movies.
But there are multiple exceptions to this case. Occasionally, there is a great director like Christopher Nolan or Peter Jackson who employs money as means to an end; a method of making a movie better. Such a movie deserves to make a lot of money. The fact that money was used to make it is not a bad thing; without this 'money', the movie would, quite simply, not have been as good. There are 'anti-conformists' and 'anti-materialistic' people (who do so for the sake of doing so) like Alan Moore who instantly make anything that makes money, because they perceive money as evil. I don't like money myself, actually, but if a film is successful or needed a lot of money to be made… then so WHAT? Look at the quality of it. That's what counts.
Big budget and big success is very different from 'suck'. The problem isn't with it- it's with the filmmakers. If a filmmaker needs money in order to accomplish his ultimate goal, and has enough backbone to stand up to the studios (who don't always intervene, actually.) in order to still make an artistic statement, then let him do so. The film will probably be good.
No one is saying there aren't great big budget movies that were made even better because of the extra dollars they were able to put into the movie. But the point is movies like Benjamin Button are always going to have more of an uphill battle because there is so much money at stake and all the suits want their say.
That's correct, but, occasionally, a studio is sufficiently lenient and a director sufficiently good and a good big budget movie can be made. Not all big budget movies suck.
Look, Alan Moore was burnt out on "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." That should have been a deep, psychologically thrilling comic-adaptation; however, it turned out to be the worst film of 2003 and the film that made Sean Connery take an early retirement. I can see why Moore doesn't trust big-budget hollywood entertainment. But Alan, you are WRONG.
Saving Private Ryan, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight: all of these films had huge budgets – THESE FILMS ROCKED!
Sorry, Alan is way off base.
Stick to writing great comics/graphic novels and leave big-budget filmmaking to "qualified" directors. Martin Scorscese, Steven Speilberg, Christopher Nolan, Peter Jackson: these guys can handle big budgets, without letting the film/story get taken over by the effects.
I like how everyone forgets that each person mentioned is only trying to fulfill his or her own selfish needs. It is the rule of species.