They’ll keep making trash as long as we keep buying it– and we do

They’ll keep making trash as long as we keep buying it– and we do

Nov 15

The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week had this interesting tidbit:

“G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” has stormed into the No. 1 position on the national DVD sales charts.

The action film scored a whopping first-week North American sales tally of 3.8 million discs, 500,000 of them on Blu-ray, during the week ended November 8.

Some of those units wound up in as rental items, but the majority were sold directly to consumers, making “G.I. Joe” the third-biggest title so far this year in first-week sales, behind “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Twilight.”

“G.I. Joe” handily trounced the competition on both the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert sales chart and the Nielsen VideoScan Blu-ray Disc sales chart.

Did you read that closely? The to three selling DVDs and Blu-rays (so far) this year are:

• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
• Twilight
• G.I. Joe

Now, I’ll admit right now that I have not seen G.I. Joe. I just cannot justify dropping the dollars on what I know will be a complete waste of time, so, I’m not really allowed to rip into it. But, judging by online response and general consensus, it was a stinking pile and I was right in giving it a miss so far. (I might see it one day…)

I have seen Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Twlight, both of which were mediocre and cumbersome–yet there is no doubting they have an audience. I just had no idea the audience was THIS big.

It’s no wonder ‘Hollywood’ keeps turning out utter cheeseball films – they’re getting permission to do so! Free reign, go for it, cock it up — they’ll buy it anyway! And we do. In droves, it seems. Someone reading this right now has all three of these titles on their shelves.

It goes to show that the majority rules. The majority out there aren’t in it for the art form, or the discussion or the comparison. They aren’t keen to critique. They do not care as much as we do. You’re here now reading a random film blog (thanks, by the way!) because you give a shit more beyond some action sequences and special effects. The majority do care about those things, and so long as they can be wowed in such a brainless manner, they’ll continue to come to the cinemas then follow up with disc purchases.

It’s just frightening that there is no end in sight.