Goodbye Hollywood!

Someone else must have realized it by now!

We don’t want to accept it because we know accepting it means facing the reality of it and if our dear old habit is no longer there for us then exactly what are we going to do with our Saturday evening dates? But let’s all admit the truth already… Hollywood is dying!

Phew! Isn’t that a load off your chest? And I say so for one simple reason:

They’ve run out of stories.

In Nollywood, we thought we knew how to make sequels? Apparently Hollywood has got that game on lock. How many parts has Shrek had? Pirates of the Caribbean? Fast and Furious? Star Wars? Friday the 13th? Need I continue…

Fact is Hollywood has run out of stories so much that it’s trying to feed off of past glory. This is evident with the endless sequels and with the not-so-enchanting remakes: Karate Kid, Clash of the Titans, King Kong, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Oceans Eleven and many others

And in the event that we’re not remaking movies, and not making sequel upon sequel, we’re turning books into movies. Read and think: Life of Pi (yes, I went there), Twilight, Harry Potter, Cloud Atlas, The Help, The Hunger Games, Water for Elephants? Oh where would we be without our darling authors keeping Hollywood alive

It’s *sob* It’s… it’s *sobs harder* It’s so sad the trend we’re following that we’ve run out of American movies a long time ago. America has exhausted her stories, be it about black people, about slavery, about Native Americans, about wars, about conflicts, about interracial drama, about economic strife, about… about whatever it is. Coming from the fact that America really doesn’t have that much in culture, therefore doesn’t have as wide a pool of stories to select from as other parts of the world with tangible culture (read India, read Africa… yes I’m coming there, wait for it!)

We ran out of American stories a long time ago, then we started heading out: in Asia (The Karate Kid), Africa (Tears of the Sun), Latin America (Original Sin), Argentina (X-Men: First class). The thing is, we’ve explored these countries so much that we’re running out of stories for these countries and now?

We’re going out of this world

No! Literally. Avatar was only the beginning, after avatar it seems like 1 in every 3 films is either set in outer space, a time in the very very far away (like Christ-might-return-before-this-future-even-comes future), or it’s (wait for it) SUPERNATURAL!

Ha! Let’s call a spade a spade, by now even you have must have realized that is Hollywood is dying and it’s time for a change.

I’m not even going to try and plug Nollywood here because I know (in all my positivity and ‘revolutionizing’) that we’re not ready to take over the world.

Thinking about it alone, the $$$ factor would chase so many people to it such that Yul Edochie would find himself playing prince 20 times in 20 different movies per month… And the last thing the world needs is another Yul-Edochie-Prince movie

But if we had any sense (which a select few have), if we had any direction (which some noble filmmakers have) we would take advantage of the market before us. We have so much to offer. So many unexplored stories that it baffles me why we continue to focus on the same ridiculous stories about jealousy, deceit, and betrayal. We need to move on. We need to grow up. Somebody smell the grass on the other side.

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE PEOPLE!

See what the world is willing to offer us. We have the opportunity to take over the world’s film industry if only we’d pay more attention because we have one thing most other’s don’t: we have culture.

So let’s not be so quick to become over-westernized in our movies that we loose the one thing that made us unique, our culture.

Let’s not try to be like Hollywood, a fading industry, when within us lies the future of film.

The only other people who could possibly offer what we can is Bollywood. But Bollywood started big, Bollywood started massively and when Bollywood started (10s upon 10s of years ago) they focused exclusively on movies that highlighted their culture that’s why they’re where they are today.

People watched Bollywood movies to see people in Saris, to see a bride ride away on a palanquin, to see a 16 year old girl excited about getting married to her first love. And even though she’s only 16 and most of us would naturally protest it, we are overwhelmed by the culture, we’re immersed in it such that along with the soon-to-be dulhania(bride), even we are excited for the wedding.

But now Bollywood is preoccupied with making the ‘Race 2’, ‘Don 2’, ‘Agent Vinod’, Singham, Rowdy Rathore, and Dabangg’s of the world. People rarely wear sari’s anymore now they’re all preoccupied with the cooperate world, 100-crore-club and (wait for it) westernization.

This is our chance to work a magic on the film industry, not on the national stage, not on a continental stage, but on a world stage! A magic that can only be brought about by an infusion of culture.

Hollywood is dying, Bollywood is hanging on by a thread, but Nollywood has not even started yet!