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I had tickets to this on Friday and couldn't go because I was working. John Williams had better live long enough to do next year's concert.

It's almost like he was only in it for the money!

To go along with that, has anybody claimed Explorers? Our discussion of when the movie comes to a screeching halt should be good insight material.

But there's no money in that. At least not as much money as the big spectacle tent poles. At least not in the time frame that makes any difference to the studio executives in question.

I dunno, maybe if you tied compensation to an executive for the rest of their life, a la residuals. That way individual agents have an incentive for the movies they green light to have lasting value, i.e. be well told stories. But if you're making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year, how much do you really care about that check for $20 ten years from now?

Which is exactly the demographic they care about almost to exclusion. Rise up! Demand better! Grab the pitchforks! Have fun storming the castle!

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Wait a second, here's a question.

If Saito was trapped in limbo with one time dilation ration, and then all the levels above him (and Leo) collapsed so that instead of Level 5 it's Level 1, does the time dilation ratio change? Obviously the movie says it doesn't, but shouldn't it?

It comes down to the fact that these guys are only concerned about the next financial quarter, a mentality that gives us shit like Alice In Wonderland. Movies with well told stories are a product that lose less value over time. Somebody, somewhere, is still making money off Casablanca. Disney is definitely still making money off of Bambi.

But these guys don't care about the long term. They'll be gone from their current spots inside of five years, shuffled around like a deck of cards to other positions within the financial elite. They just have to make a couple of big splashes that don't have any lasting value and then they move on. So Alice In Wonderland was shit. It made it's opening weekend. Now it will fade away and be forgotten. but not before Mr. Hendrickson has moved onto bigger and better things, thanks to Alice's 'success.'

It's a perfectly valid strategy for running things if you're only concerned with the bottom line of each quarter. But if Walt Disney had been as short sighted, Disney wouldn't be around today.

THAT THING CAME OUT OF YOUR PENIS!?

ouch

Hey, if you've got a solid thematic reason to do it, knock yourself out. But if you realize your script (or rough cut) is just too damn slow at the outset so you lop off the first half of your climax and throw it up front, then that's lazy. If you're gonna do it, have a good reason for it.

I'm sorry, I just watched too many episodes of Battlestar Galactica that tried to cover their poor plotting by throwing their cheap cliffhanger in the teaser to have much patience for this gag anymore.

That's not a framing device, that's in media res or according to TVtropes, How We Got Here. And, in my opinion, it's a cheap hook and lazy writing.

It's basically the writer saying, "I can't be bothered to think up an interesting opening that establishes what I need to establish, so here's the climax right up front."

Wow. Right-a-fuckin-way.

There you have it, folks, hot off the presses.