My "Tomorrowland" Review

I saw "Tomorrowland" this past Tuesday, at a special press screening at the Disney El Capitan in Hollywood. I get the feeling the press is going to kill this one as box office expectations are fluctuating all over the place this week, which isn't a good sign. Plus, all my Disney boards are freaking out about a review by the LA Times which was released this morning. This all equals hesitation which equals poor box office results. I hate to see this happen to a movie because millions of dollars go into the thing only for it to be killed online. To be fair, "Tomorrowland" wasn't amazing but it was a good film, perhaps 20 minutes too long but a good film in the family sense. In the style of past Disney family fair such as "Swiss Family Robinson" and "Pollyanna" which by the way, weren't critical hits for Disney but in their own right good films. So it's very sad for me to see this movie starting to tank when in essence, it is not a horrible film. I saw the power of the critics and online review sites such as Rotten Tomatoes when my start up company released it's first film. It completely tanked at the box office making only $3M in its opening weekend. I kid you not, critics actually apologized to our publicist afterward saying they were too harsh. Don't these reviewers know they are only harming the film industry? If people don't go to see films, guess what, people don't back them and films don't get made. That's why I completely hate it when I hear someone say, "Why doesn't Hollywood make movies like they used to?" The answer is because you are conditioned in Sequel Land (where tentpoles and blockbusters are the norm) and you do not want to see something new. The studio bean counters have ruined traditional film. If a movie isn't projected to make a bazillion dollars in all areas of distribution then the studio doesn't make it. They don't like to take risks on "original content." They like to take risks on the known. That is why you see so many sequels and movies based on comic books or huge properties. The movies I work on are hard to market because they've been passed by the big studios but they are creative with original content. Basically, they are movies "like they used to make." However because they don't make hundreds of millions in the theaters, in home video or in other areas downstream, traditional Hollywood or the bean counters have given up on these films. The result, is creativity lacks in Hollywood. People complain about "Tomorrowland" but they can't say it isn't original. "Transformers 4" now that wasn't original and I would even argue it lacked any kind of story whats-so-ever but it made millions. So before you listen to critics or naysayers online, I beg you to go see for yourself. You may you end up with a stinker but I argue film is like Vegas, you can't guarantee good results but you keep showing up because every so often you are rewarded with an awesome one. Film is art and not every single person is going to like one thing. I am really afraid for cinema...this digital, online stuff which everyone says is "progress" is slowly killing cinema piece by piece and I am not just talking about the reviews going digital but everything going digital. When was the last time you saw a movie in 35mm? Bet it has been a long time.