I think what modern filmmakers keep forgetting (especially disney affiliated productions) is that actors used to have a much more hands on and involved part. they werenât just reading lines handed to them in a dark alley ten minutes before filming. they suggested script revisions and could improvise lines on the spot bc they knew their characters.
if mark hamill says âthatâs not my luke skywalkerâ thatâs a problem. if temuera morrison had insight into boba fettâs character the producers shouldnât have just told him to deal with the script he was given. if seb stan was concerned about the lack of closure in the steve bucky relationship thatâs an issue! the insane levels of secrecy and treating actors like the only thing they are good for is regurgitating lines is so detrimental to modern film/television
Something to bear in mind is that this isnât our first turn on this particular merry-go-round.
Back in the early days of Hollywood, when vertically integrated monopolies were the norm and studios, distributors and theatre chains were all owned by the same parent companies, actors were basically treated like cattle, locked into exploitative multi-film contracts, routinely kept in the dark and lied to, and â apart from a handful of the very largest stars â had very little creative input. This would remain the case until a series of massive antitrust lawsuits in the 1930s and 1940s forced the studio monopolies to break up.
Now weâre seeing a shift back toward all film production being controlled by a tiny handful of companies, employing abusive booking practices to push the theatre chains around and exercise de facto control over theatre booking decisions in spite of technically being unaffiliated â and weâre also seeing a shift back toward how actors were treated under the old studio monopolies.
Like, this isnât just a problem with the cultural zeitgeist. Itâs not just a matter of people forgetting how to make good films. There are concrete economic incentives that lead to this sort of behaviour â and just like the first time around, itâs probably not going to get solved any way other than at legislative gunpoint.
