If you're spending more on a movie, you stand to lose more; that's simple Hollywood economics. And as budgets increased, this created more risk, something Hollywood was keen to minimise. At first the answer was toys, but as kids aren't just conduits from parents' wallets to the CEO's bank balance (as much as companies wish them to be), this became regulated. In its wake came something much more insidious and mundane; movies that try and appeal to everyone to maximise profit. It's ingenious from a business point of view, but leads to some of the most boring exercises cinema has to offer. While the ever critical internet voices have forced producers to up their game somewhat, meaning even a Fast And Furious movie now has to be pretty good, the system has still been irreversibly changed by this school of thought; there's an empty gulf between blockbusters and everything else. Have you noticed how films now fall into a few distinct camps: mega-budgeted blockbusters; studio-produced Oscar bait; cheap, curated and cynical genre flicks with no creative integrity; and ridiculously low-budget indies plucked up from the festival circuit. You get the odd movie with a mid-range budget that doesn't have the box-ticking of the first three types, yet the money to make creative choices lacking from the fourth, but they tend to come from already established directors who waltz around the set like a living legend. Where've the movies that were made because people wanted to simply make a good movie gone, the ones that make you call-back to the days of New Hollywood? Short answer: they're in your living room. The golden age of TV was brought about primarily because the artists who would have once flourished in Hollywood can't work without heavy compromise. And while that means you get the likes of True Detective, Fargo, Game Of Thrones and House Of Cards, it also means the cinema winds up being a place where you can go see one of two-dozen showings of the latest fun-but-unchallenging effects showcase, or the one, all but empty screening of the interesting, if financially restricted drama. And thanks to the booming budgets the special effects necessitate, and the lack of quality control an immediate release structure affords, it's all thanks to Star Wars. But it doesn't end there. There's one final thing Star Wars has done to cinema, something the effects of which we're only beginning to feel...
