Would movies be better if studios weren't so focused on getting star actors

and actresses?

Literally just have open tryouts with character descriptions and you'll probably find dozens of great candidates for each role. But you wouldn't have to cater to their celebrity needs or celebrity salaries

Not to hate on Nicolas Cage, but would someone like him even be in the movie industry if he wasn't a nepo baby and didn't have connections? Yet he still makes millions of dollars for every movie he's in

The actors aren't really the underlying problem with modern Hollywood.



Damn_Underscore posted...

Not to hate on Nicolas Cage, but would someone like him even be in the movie industry if he wasn't a nepo baby and didn't have connections?

Yes. Because he's actually a very good actor. In fact, the reason you know him as Nicolas Cage and not Nicolas Coppola is because he didn't want to exploit his family connections to get work. He wanted to succeed on his own merits. And he did.

The fact that he does a lot of terrible movies, and that he overacts and just has fun in a lot of movies, doesn't mean that he's not a great actor in movies where he chooses to put the effort in. He's successful enough that he can afford to be eccentric, and take weird roles just to amuse himself. He's not trying to be the greatest thespian of his era.

I'd include people like Adam Sandler and Will Smith in this - both of them are way better than most people think they are, because they basically get paid a ton of money to NOT put the effort in. Will Smith has a very strong acting range, but studios pay him millions to just be "The Fresh Prince", so a lot of roles are just going to be him being more or less the same character over and over and over again. Adam Sandler gets paid the most money to just be himself and goof around with his friends in terrible movies. But you can actually tell which movies the two of them are really acting well in, because they tend to be the movies they get paid the least for.

The main reason major stars get paid millions of dollars for their work is because studios believe they're worth it, and will bring in more profit by name recognition alone. But that name recognition is usually created in the first place by being good actors in previous movies - so it kind of invalidates your point.

Be better? Hard to say. Probably not better in the sense of producing new "best movies ever," but you'd probably see more movies being made with actors that are quite good, but aren't necessarily the best, which could be an overall positive.

Sell better? Absolutely not. Studios shell out millions for big names for a reason: recognizable actors draw a larger audience and that investment usually pays off.

The thing is, making movies is expensive, investors want a sizable return, and the salaries for big-name actors are usually actually a fairly small portion of that cost. It's not a trivial portion, and getting somebody cheaper will make the overall production notably cheaper, but all of the other costs are going to remain the same and you need to do what you can to ensure you recover those. If potential audiences can say "well I know X is a good actor, so this movie at least has that going for it," that gets them watching things they otherwise wouldn't give a second thought.

Movies would be better if consumers actually went to see good original movies. Money is what influences studios more than anything.

Of the top 30 highest grossing movies since 2010, virtually all of them were either sequels, remakes, or superhero movies. There's comfort and security in paying to see these as you know it'll be at least familiar and mediocre, but we've incentivized movie producers to stop taking creative risks. We've also created a safe environment for big studios to put absolutely no thought or effort into creating an intellectually stimulating experience (the Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy will forever be the textbook example of this), driving movie quality down even further.

I think this has nothing to do with actors and everything to do with studios prioritizing profit over artistic accomplishment.

adjl posted...

If potential audiences can say "well I know X is a good actor, so this movie at least has that going for it," that gets them watching things they otherwise wouldn't give a second thought.

It's actually worth noting that the power of marquee actors to sell a given movie has been getting much weaker over the last decade or so. While there are still a few "must see" actors in Hollywood, there are far less than their used to be, and name recognition is becoming a lot less reliable to sell movies than it used to be. Which may actually be part of the reason why studios have pivoted more towards selling existing brands and nostalgia, because recognizable IPs have strong drawing power.

Though even that's becoming a weaker draw, because studios have spent years (or decades) poorly exploiting existing IPs to the point where people no longer trust the brands.



faramir77 posted...

we've incentivized movie producers to stop taking creative risks.

Arguably they've incentivized themselves to do that.

In the old days there used to be multiple tiers between "blockbuster" (itself mostly a newer concept that only really solidified in the 80s) and "low-budget indie film". Studios could take more risks on lower-budget films, and see modest success (and the risk of failure was much lower).

But major studios have prioritized massive films because they can lead to massive profit - given the choice between spending $15 million to make $200 million profit versus spending $300 million to make more than a billion, studios are opting for the larger picture every time. But that dramatically increases risk, because losing $300 million hurts far more than losing $15 million, so studios have become far more risk adverse because they're unwilling to risk massive budgets on original or niche concepts, but they're also unwilling to invest smaller budgets into original IPs that could be successful, but which would never produce the same degree of profit as a larger picture.

It's a very short-sighted mindset, though - because many of the IPs they're currently exploiting themselves began as smaller projects that were never guaranteed to succeed. The sort of movies that could literally never be made today because no one would ever be willing to invest in them. So while Hollywood can still theoretically profit off of past glory, they're not really building any brands that future audiences will ever care about. That, combined with the younger demographics being aloof about TV and movies in general versus social media and clips, means there's not really going to be any deep well of nostalgia to tap into for future studios (how do you make a movie about TikTok influencers or Fortnite memes?).

That's part of why most of the original and interesting films at this point are coming from indie filmmakers and studios almost exclusively at this point, but those suffer from low awareness and distribution because they're not part of the larger machine. But not being part of the larger machine is pretty much the only way they can be original or interesting in the first place.

I'm not saying this would fix all Hollywood movies, but it would be a positive change from the norm

IMO the average big Hollywood budget (apparently around $100 million) is extremely overinflated.

I dislike it when they get famous movie/TV actors to do voices for cartoons. Most of the best voice actors are names most people have probably never heard of, like Jim Cummings, Peter Cullen, or Tress MacNeille.

Damn_Underscore posted...

IMO the average big Hollywood budget (apparently around $100 million) is extremely overinflated.

The thing is, the average Hollywood budget film isn't hiring $40 million+ actors (or if they are, the actors are usually taking a pay cut to do a more prestigious film). Not every film is going to pay someone at the level Disney paid RDJ to do The Avengers, for instance. Usually, when you're looking at those films where the actors are getting paid out the ass, the total budget is closer to $300-400 mil.

When you look at the accounting, the cast contracts are generally only a small fraction of the total budget. And most of the time, when an actor IS getting paid at that level, there's theoretically a return on investment in higher revenue. There are a LOT of other behind the scenes payoffs and costs that are ballooning film budgets, not just the actors.

And sure, you can cast a movie with total unknowns - but audiences are far less likely to see that movie. So you might wind up losing more money than you save.



captpackrat posted...

Most of the best voice actors are names most people have probably never heard of, like Peter Cullen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIeQr_q0Xw8

Alan Oppenheimer is another name that few have heard of, but everyone recognizes more than a few of his voices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2YNjIczKl0