question of the day: Are movies about to become even more youth-oriented?

As long as Hollywood continues to court the opening weekend numbers more and more, yes the pressure will be to push toward younger audiences. Opening weekends reflect the people who can't wait a single day to see the newest, shiniest thing. By and large, that does not describe mature (age wise or otherwise) people.

As I've said often, the youth and children's audience is still underserved, which is why parents and children flock to any crap that targets young audiences, since there's so little to choose from.

I don't look forward to it, but sooner or later business sense will prevail and Hollywood will shift more emphasis to young audiences.

But there is another reason that the big budget films do well. Many of us have limited time to go to the theater, and see many more movies on DVD. One factor in going to the movies for me is thus whether seeing the film on the really big screen vs. on TV make a big difference. It will make a huge difference, I'm sure, for such films as Star Trek and Wolverine, and thus I'll be off to the theater to see them. For smaller films, the difference won't be as pronounced. I still might go to see the smaller films in the theater if I have time, but if not, I'll see them on DVD.

Jim

Nah I don't Believe this one bit, I feel movies come out in seasons and right now its a major time for Kids movies. When Fall swings around horror will pick up again. Action and Horror movies need to smarten up thats all, stop staring Action movies with professional wresters and retiring some horror series with never ending sequels. In the long run I'd say children are taking over the big screen, constant pixar and disney movies every month wouldn't be to my liking, not event the slightest. I wouldn't event want to go to the theaters anymore, the floors would covered in damn skittles

I'm not entirely sure this would be a bad thing. A lot of my favorite newer movies I would describe as teen or kid movies that have jokes for the grown ups too. That would include the movies based upon comic books and the cartoon movies like "The Incredibles." Very few movies for grown ups need to be movies: they could just as easily be stage plays or books. They are often based upon books. Having written that, I would actually describe the new Batman movies as adult movies with action for the teens.

Let me preempt an objection here: I do not think movies for teens or kids means "dumb." Teens and kids have as wide a range of intelligence as adults. One goes to Iron Man and all he sees is the violence, another sees a similiar, if a little neutered, message as from Lords of War. I think the divide between smart and dumb people is far wider than that beween those of different age groups.

My favorite movies in general have a lot of humor, and unfortunately books take themselves too seriously in general. If I want to laugh, I almost always pop in a DVD, not a open a book (even if I have reread The Princess Bride and Small Gods several times)

Sorry, I just thought of another thing. It's my new theory of messed up marketing. It is this: Hollywood wants to figure out what sort of movies to make. The age and gender of movie goers is easy to determine, so they measure by that. Unfortunately, they cannot determine the IQs of the people going to movies, so that is not a "relevent factor."

So they make a good movie and a lot of teenage boys go see it. So they make a lot more teenage boy movies, but don't always remember to make them good.

Alternatively, a really good movie comes out about humanized insects (Antz, for example). It makes money, so they figure, hey, lets make a movie about insects that talk, and again, don't worry so much about it being good,

I think book publishers do the same thing, because the ultimate decisions are made by guys from the sales departments intead of the editorial department. Sales guys crunch numbers.

OF course, this doesn't explain why there hasn't been a plague of Titantic wannabes. That might have to do more with the culture of the number crunchers; it's a boy's club.

No.

Because most movies are making more money on DVD than in theaters, so going for the theater thing is pretty much bragging rights.

Movies have become dumber in recent years - at least major big-budget movies. However, that's because people have become dumber.

Back when I was a kid (oh, maybe 15 years ago), all my peers were able to read subtitles by age 8 or 9. We watched foreign-language cartoons subtitled in Portuguese, and only the really dumb ones got lost. I remember my sister (one generation down from me) could read all but the longest subtitles by age 9, too.

Now? 12-year-olds are watching dubbed movies, and parents shy away from the original, and far superior, versions.

Paradoxically, storylines for children's movies have become significantly smarter, with recent examples (Bolt, Monster vs Aliens, Shrek, Kung-Fu Panda) recapturing the tradition of "classic" Disney movies of old. After all, children are not dumb, they just have a more basic view of life.

I work with kids age 6 to 11, and not particularly smart ones either; yet they are able to comprehend all but the most nuanced of situations. They can't grasp why I can't get girlfriends (from their standpoint, it's easy) but they do understand how one can have no news of his father for several years.

But I digress. My point was that children are smarter and braver than they're given credit for. I watched Jurassic Park when I was nine, and I wasn't scared (well, a little, but don't tell anyone). And by fourteen, I could get my head around movies like Sleepers without getting lost in the maze.

Today's teenagers, however, are DUMB. George Dubya-dumb. They have no ideas, and they consume their processed movies along with their processed popcorn, without even stopping to consider plotholes and implausibilities.

I just got off Youtube, watching Tiny Toons. We watched that show at age eight. Nowadays, eight-year-olds are watching Pokémon. Where has the ability to comprehend wit gone? To the same place the capacity to discern gold from crap did: the Cemetery for Burnt Braincells. That's why only shows and movies for 20- and 30-somethings are clever nowadays: everyone below them is just too dumb to "get" them.