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| Image courtesy of www.theverge.com |
Let me put this into perspective, I pay for Unlimited at Cineworld so I pay about £17.40 per month which is the equivalent of paying for two movie tickets, and for that I can see as many films as I damn well please. But even with that incentive, I'd probably still sneak in to see this film and still demand for my money back for how bad it is, or at least, how angry it makes me.
But I'm not a rant person, because whilst it infuriates me, I'm just very disappointed. Allow me to explain.
As we all should know, movies are a business, if movies don't make money then they won't be made. How do producers and studios ensure a movie makes money? They get a factor that a market will gravitate towards, whether that be a genre like superheroes, a beloved novel like Curious Incident (Here's hoping), or even an actor who audiences will recognise. Why do you think Kingsman has brought back Colin Firth for the sequel that comes out in a month?
So all studios are looking for their next big cash grab, and there's no shame in that as long as it isn't so blatant both in how desperate it comes across and you have the right balance of actual good storytelling and whatever the fuck will make them some monehs. When this film was announced as a definitely happening, the internet did a massive facepalm.
A movie, about emojis? Such an inane and mundane concept as little faces that you use to add some kind of emotion into your text messages, that even we as 'millennials' acknowledge is a bit stupid. I mean, the furthest I ever get to really speak about emojis myself is whenever I instead use a colon and a close bracket instead of a smiley emoji, it's so basic.
When the marketing for the film began, it was absolutely bombed with disapproval, everyone stating what I am reiterating, a movie about emojis. The reception on YouTube was overwhelmingly negative, with the majority of YouTube's original uploads of the trailer amassing dislikes in the majority, and immediately everyone going to meme it.
Ever since the film was released, it for a long time sat on a 0% approval rating but has since moved up to a very generous 8% on Rotten Tomatoes, and on IMDb it is on 1.9/10 which right now would be enough to have it sat firmly in the Top 20 lowest rated movies on the website.
Actually just going back to that thing I just said about memes, we really are the generation where we meme anything, and in many ways, I love being a part of this generation because memes as a whole, cannot be touched by big corporate people, even if they try. The big companies no longer decide what we like or pay money for, we do and that's a big disconnect for them and they fail massively.
I liken memes and the corporates trying to "Getting down with the kids", to old people trying to play video games, no matter how hard they try, whether they are good or bad, they never get it. There's a fast food chain in America who ran a campaign saying "Anyone can eat burgers here, like the memer" and cutting to someone saying "Eating a burger, LIKE A BOSS!", it's so cringey!
Whether you like memes or not, it's our generation's way of individuality, you can't deny that. Plus since our generation is also the most likely audience that will go to see a film nowadays, they want to find something that we will identify with, but again, corporate big-wigs trying to make a movie out of one of our exclusives, we see through that shit.
There's such a disconnect between the movie producers and studios, and the actual movie going audience, and that's another aspect I want to touch upon, proving yet further a flaw in our movie industry. But first in order to provide context, how about I attempt to talk about the 'plot'?
We follow the emojis in their own little multiverse inside a kid's phone, and this kid wants to talk to a girl and to do that, he has to send that OOH such emoji of importance to impress her.. did that sound as dumb to you as I felt it did? It did, didn't it? Moving on! In the phone, all the emojis live in Textopolis and each are all assigned the one facial expression and it is their utmost duty to live with that one expression.
However, we meet Gene (Voiced by T.J. Miller) who is meant to be the "meh" emoji, but he is exuberant and has no filter and therefore multiple expressions, and one instance of the phone's user sending his potential love interest a text message ends in disaster, when he makes the wrong face! OH NOO!
This threatens their very existence and as a result, with the help of his good old chum Hi-5 (Voiced by none other than everyone's favourite lovable British comedic actor turned talk show host in America, James Corden) and strong independent woman emoji who don't need no man and codebraking emoji Jailbreak (Voiced by Anna Faris). Gene and his two friends embark on an 'app-venture' through all your RELATABLE apps like Candy Crush, Instagram, Snapchat, Just Dance (That's an app?), Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, DropBox and Spotify with each of their own crazy little world, to find the code that they need to fix Gene.
But when a greater danger threatens the phone, the fate of all the emojis depends on the three unlikely friends who must save their world before it is deleted forever! That ladies and gentleman, what a fucking masterpiece. Not like we haven't seen a movie like this many times before.
Of course I am being sarcastic, but you can't help but think the same of The Lego Movie as well and that turned out to be one of the best movies of 2014. I was in the movie theatre rolling my eyes at the utter cheese it was until that moment that everyone knows what I am referring to when they have seen it. However from the overwhelming response on The Emoji Movie, there's no real moment where this feels like anything other than a corporate cashgrab with little in the way of soul.
At least with Lego, there is lore in the way of their own original characters as well as the franchises that they all have their hand in on, an emoji is.. just a face. It has no substance to it, and that's exactly what annoys me, Sony (Who made the movie) are so blind that they see something which has nothing other than what it is to make a movie out of, I'm going bold right here, Sony thinks we are idiots.
Before you put any words in my mouth, I own a PS4 so I have a Sony product but as far as movies have gone, Sony seem to not have the correct intentions. You've seen how they've handled the Spider-Man franchise, ever since their last decent Spidey film before this year's new iteration with Marvel Studios, before that we had the first two Raimi movies, then the third one was overpacked crap and their failed attempt to reboot with the two Webb directed Amazing Spider-Man movies.
Andrew Garfield (Who portrayed Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the Amazing Spider-Man movies) was promoting two movies - Silence and Hacksaw Ridge - when he was grouped with Amy Adams to do an 'actor on actor' interview, Adams like Garfield also portrays a comic book character as she is Lois Lane in the DC and Superman movies. Garfield had been ousted from his role as Spider-Man after Sony teamed up with Marvel Studios to have the character appear in Marvel's cinematic universe with a new actor, Tom Holland.
Appearing alongside Adams, Garfield went in depth about how he had signed on to serve this character that he had been dressing up as since he was a child, and how he wanted to tell a great story. However, that was not the same priority list as the studio's, which Garfield details here:
Obviously not all movies have the same level of corporate interference and I'm not saying that these movie making companies should leave the product that they're funding alone, but there has to be a level. The Emoji Movie is a blatant example of money over any inkling of movie making passion, and whilst I could sit here and naïvely state, "If you made good movies, people would go watch them" because that's not true isn't it?
Let me put it this way, what made more money at the box office? The incredible story about a 16-year old girl raised in the Finnish wilderness, trained to be an assassin her whole life, who is sent on a mission to stealthily make her away across Europe while evading agents sent after her by a ruthless operative who wants her dead, and as she draws closer to her target, she faces startling revelations about her existence and begins to question her humanity, that got a 71% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes? Or.. a film about the Easter Bunny? Answer, the last one.
No matter how good I can make something sound, you'll always identify with a factor in a movie more than the quality of a movie itself. Even I had that when going to see Kingsman, I had only known about it because the director of X-Men: First Class was the director. High quality movies need that hook that audiences need to contemplate spending the money on going to see it, but you can only go so far before a movie audience can see through your shit.
There are probably those who actually enjoyed The Emoji Movie without the slightest hint of irony, and that's an audience that I cannot speak for, without sounding like a disrespectful cunt. But the backlash that this movie has stirred up, I really can see it actually having an effect on the movies in the future.
The Emoji Movie was created to be cheap because they were expecting it to be a massive hit. In comparison to other animated movies, such as Zootopia/Zootropolis which had a production budget of $150 million, or Inside Out's production budget of $175M, or even Sing (Which I personally liked) which was very cheap for an animation movie, at just $75M. All of them respectively garnered $1.024 billion, $857 million and $632.4 million at the worldwide box office.
In comparison to these actually good (in their own ways and varying levels) movies, The Emoji Movie was made for $50 million and has so far in its theatrical run-time garnered only $125 million. This to me is great, because despite how much they will have saved themselves by getting a limited budget, Sony expected to get a shit tonne of money back. It's highly likely that when you factor in the money it cost them to advertise the movie, it may have even lost money!
That is what they respond to, your wallets! You can cause a shit storm with words however you like, they don't give a shit, because if you pay money to see this movie, Sony are happy and they fucking love you for it.
Sony may finally be seeing the error in their ways, because everyone sees this movie for what it is, a blatant attempt to make a shit tonne of money without any other thought being put into it. This is an issue that has plagued movies and other forms of media for some time, and it needs to stop. Thankfully, this could begin laying breadcrumbs for such a thing to happen.
To anyone who looks to make something for any consumer to see, don't treat us like idiots. If you insult your audience or believe they're not as intelligent as you give them credit for, you lose respect and nobody will tolerate that shit. They put money in your pockets, so drop the shit, studios.
If there's a note I want to end on, it is movies that are in theatres that I am predicting or know are great. Dunkirk, Atomic Blonde, The Big Sick, Baby Driver (I think that may have left theatres, not sure), upcoming films like the new Kingsman, Logan Lucky, Detroit, all great movies.
Those are the films to spend money on. Because they're more than just means to make people spend money, they're a great product in and of themselves with all the correct intentions behind it. Don't be tricked into watching something like The Emoji Movie, with its forced morals and its feministic intentions being shoved down your throat, all for corporate greed. Yes I did say feminist, because they know we are a society that wants women to be empowered now and this movie undermines it and it frustrates me, I've stated why in an article before about shit like that, not willing to go into it again.
I'm just glad that Sony it seems have learned their lesson. They cancelled a Popeye movie for this, let that sink in! I hope I never have to give any bit of purpose of brain activity into having to think about this Patrick Stewart voiced poop ever again.
So as always, I appreciate all of you stopping by here and as ever, if you enjoyed what I have to offer and want to see more, either follow me on Twitter @TheLucaFormat or put your email in the 'Follow By Email' option above. So with all that being said, I hope you return to see what I have to say very soon.
As always, until we meet again.
Luca.
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