http://www.showbiz411.com/2016/08/17/movies-ben-hur-remake-universally-panned-set-to-be-summers-biggest-flop-with-possible-100-mil-loss

Possible $100 million loss.

Don't mess with the Hollywood gay mafia.

That whole industry is pretty much morally bankrupt at this point. And the movies they produce are almost without exception pretty bad these days.

A "gay mafia," even if it existed (most people in the industry are either bi or straight, just like in non-industry life), could not either make or break a bad film, and a bad film is evidently the problem with this remake.

The industry is no more (and perhaps much LESS) "morally bankrupt" today than it was a hundred years ago. If you really want "morally bankrupt" there were many more real life examples back then than there are now.

I gotta agree, though, that within the last three decades or so the production standard has indeed perceptibly diminished in the
larger percentage of "Hollywood" films which make it to release.

Lots of reasons (substituting computer effects for drama, as one example), but the result is: fewer "Hollywood" films now are enduring legends.

Doesn't have anything to do with budget, because most of the historically legendary "Hollywood" films were (using "dollars" equal to today's dollars), made for a tiny fraction of now-normal budgets.

A big reason is that the North American audience is now considered secondary in whether a given film is made, or in HOW it is made (script/action balance/editing).

What the controlling mega-corporations are now going for is the international market, first and foremost. [Mega-action plays very, very well in Asia etc., where good plotting and well-written dialogue are for sure going to be lost in the local language sub-titles.]



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2016 01:17PM by Tevai.

Also, the target audience is the under 25 age group. Hollywood in many ways has sold out to the comic book crowd.

DH and I enjoy going to the movies. There is a rickety little old theater not far from our house that we consider "ours." It shows most of the big-name movies, so when we want to see something, that's where we go.

But we are fussy. We don't like cartoons. We don't like monsters, superheroes, or blood and guts. We don't like scripts that would only be half as long if you took out the "f" word.

But it has been a long time since anything was released that looked interesting to us. My adult son and I plan to see "Pete's Dragon" together, because we both loved the original when he was little.

DH and I MAY see the new "Ben-Hur," just out of curiosity, and partly because we haven't had a "movie date" in a long time, and that is one of our favorite things to do.

I guess blaming the Jews has finally gone out of style.

Sure, use the gays (the non-BDSM ones) as the whipping boy.

This is just the latest in a long string of failures of this genre. Here's hoping it stays dead for a good long time. I see the tipping point of secularism as a good sign that the salt has lost its savor and is due to be trodden underfoot of men. I just regret that I can't step on TSM's face.

We used to wait anxiously for the once-a-year or so when Ben Hur would come on the late movie and we'd get to stay up to watch it. Yeah, back in the day. Way back.

I was well into adulthood before I ever heard about the gay subplot. By that time I could just rent the dang thing, so I did. I just laughed to myself about how obvious it was and what a bubble I lived in during my younger mormon years. As much as I always loved that movie, I think seeing that connection made it so much better and such a deeper plot.

Considering the book was published in 1880, I doubt there was a gay subplot, unless it was oh-so-scandalous that no one mentioned it.

Speaking of gay subplots, just think what you could do with Stripling Warriors and Friberg paintings...

It's in the 1959 version screenplay -- not the 1925 version or the book.

There have always been gays. Back in Roman times it was pretty much accepted. An 1880 book would have had it implied but not stated

The hinted gay "subplot" had nothing to do with the 1880 book. It was cooked up by Gore Vidal when he worked as a script doctor on the screenplay for the 1959 movie.

Read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_Vidal#Screenplays

East Coast Exmo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The hinted gay "subplot" had nothing to do with
> the 1880 book. It was cooked up by Gore Vidal when
> he worked as a script doctor on the screenplay for
> the 1959 movie.
>
> Read about it here:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_Vidal#Screenpla
> ys

This makes even more sense...

Well done, East Coast Exmo!!

:)

I remember reading that Stephen Boyd, who played Messala,
decided that the argument between Messala and Judah Ben Hur was
a bit like a lover's quarrel. He asked the director, William
Wyler, if he could play it that way and assume a back story that
Messala and Judah were lovers in the earlier days. Wyler
replied yes but instructed him not to tell "Chuck" (Charlton
Heston) that he was playing it that way.

baura Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I remember reading that Stephen Boyd, who played
> Messala,
> decided that the argument between Messala and
> Judah Ben Hur was
> a bit like a lover's quarrel. He asked the
> director, William
> Wyler, if he could play it that way and assume a
> back story that
> Messala and Judah were lovers in the earlier days.
> Wyler
> replied yes but instructed him not to tell "Chuck"
> (Charlton
> Heston) that he was playing it that way.

This makes real sense...there are similar other stories threaded---since the early 1900s---throughout film history.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2016 05:00PM by Tevai.

When you are lucky enough to have a very close friendship that lasts from childhood into old age, you come to realize that demonstrating fondness between yourselves is really other peoples' problem, not yours.

My best friend and I were basically attached at the soul for 55 years, until she died. But there wasn't a hint of a gay relationship there. We were both straight as strings.

Like Judah Ben-Hur and Messala, (before the falling-out), we tended to light up like Christmas trees and hug warmly when it had been ages since we last saw each other. We joked sometimes, that people might think we were gay, because we were obviously so happy when we had the chance to be together. But anybody thinking so would have been wrong.

I like to think that we had the kind of relationship that very close sisters do. (We were both only children, so we had that in common, too.) We could confide anything to each other, and know that our secrets would remain safe.

Back to the movie - I remember being a little put off by Stephen Boyd's stupid giggling at one point during their reunion; it seemed like something inappropriate for a Tribune to do, especially in the chronically imperial presence of Heston.

I feel free to take issue with Gore Vidal. Leave it alone. The original story was a magnificent piece of work that has withstood the test of time.

Why should anyone think twice when long-separated childhood friends are overjoyed at seeing each other again?

but in modern Western culture it's acceptable for women but not for men.

Life is strange, no?

I used to be a coorganizer of a movie-watching group locally, where every Sunday we would go and see something arty or daring or fun, depending on who was in charge that day. Generally, we didn't hit any sequels, blockbusters, superhero films, or remakes, because that wasn't our thing.

In 2009, I gave up coorganizing when our choices had become pretty limited to the schlocky genres above. I don't think there was anything special that year, but the number of films that reached us on the big screen that were worth watching had simply tipped to the point where it was hard to see any films worth talking about.

I'd say since 2009, I may have seen 20-30 new releases at most, and I'd have to go back to count, because even that might be too high. My husband and I go to see the occasional European film and sometimes we'll catch a biopic or historical piece, but mostly we avoid modern films. Retreads, violence, sloppy writing, CGI, and infantile stories written for dullards have pretty much killed movies for us.

Could this be the reason why it isnt playing in TBM towns like Burley!??