Are you tired of Hollywood blockbusters?This is apparently the case of Jodie Foster, who did not hesitate to let it be known!
The race for blockbusters has been growing for many years and it is not without worrying moviegoers and filmmakers alike. Visibly tired of this one-upmanship of big productions, the gifted Jodie Foster spoke on the subject, not without a certain vehemence.
"We go to the cinema as well as to the amusement park. Studios produce bad movies that appeal to the masses and shareholders. It's like hydraulic fracturing: you get an immediate return but it destroys the planet… "
It must be said that the actress/director is well placed to talk about production and how blockbusters crush independent cinema. If we mention even his latest film Money Monster (masterpiece to discover urgently), we notice that it was released in 2016 without much publicity. Yet this little gem has two notable headliners, namely George Clooney and Julia Roberts. It was even presented at the Cannes Film Festival that same year in the out-of-competition category. Without being THE textbook case to cite in case of study on the box office, this film is terribly symptomatic of the lack of publicity suffered by many works, even easily affordable for the general public (Foster is also very good at offering us works that are both independent and accessible).
The actress / director did not stop there and took advantage of her rant to tackle superhero movies. After all, these productions are the most emblematic of this one-upmanship present in Hollywood cinema:
"… This ruins the habits of American spectators and, ultimately, those of spectators in the rest of the world. I don't want to make $200 million movies about superheroes."
Despite this categorical statement, the interpreter of Clarice Starling (The Silence of the Lambs) moderated her remarks by adding that if she were ever to direct a superhero movie, it would be in the case where the main character has "a really complex personality". When we know how much she has developed her characters in Money Monster or in The Little Man, we can only understand her point of view.
Even if this rant will not change anything in the Hollywood industry for the moment, perhaps it will alert this same industry a little bit to initiate some small changes. But it must be admitted, it is mainly the spectators that will have to be reached in order to encourage them to be interested in other things than blockbusters. It's a complex subject that Jodie Foster has been engulfed in. A subject that we have not finished hearing about in the coming years. Business to follow…
