OK, here’s the situation…
…My parents went away on a week’s vacation!
And they left the keys to the brand-new Porsche;
Would they mind?
Ummmm, welllllll, of course not!
I’ll just take it out for a little spin
(And maybe show it off to a couple of friends!)
I’ll just cruise it around the neighborhood
Well maybe I shouldn’t
Yes, of course I should.
Err… right. Where was I?
Anyway, Cracked.com reported recently that we came very close to having the Twilight series of movies actually be about a vampire and his new vampire lover vs. endless waves of SWAT-team vampire hunters and their Korean-American martial-arts commander. Presumably this would have been accompanied by frenzied amounts of explosions, and possibly an airplane being hit with a submarine. Real shame that this didn’t happen, huh? After all, what they came up with was certainly not enough to make me go to see any of those flicks…
After that, the new studio made the questionable business decision to stay faithful to the books — a decision so questionable that the films have pulled in close to $2 billion in worldwide box office so far (to say nothing of merchandise and DVDs) and have become a bona fide cultural phenomenon the likes of which the planet has seldom seen.
…and I suspect that Cracked.com author Cezary Jan Strusiewicz shares my realization that the studios not only don’t particularly care about my opinion; they’re not particularly obligated to, either.
Moe Lane
PS: I think that this establishes once and for all whether Stephenie Meyer is or is not a “real” artist. I don’t know exactly at what point on the x-axis does commercial success indicate artistic merit – but I’m pretty sure that two billion in gross revenue is to the right of that point.
Moe, THANK YOU…I thought I was the only one who, upon hearing the phrase, “Okay, here’s the situation…” immediately goes to that song.
You are not alone, my friend.