Eshi and I talk about movies a lot on this blog, we love them. One of the many cinematic styles that I love is the B movie. We have talked about Bruce Campbell on here before, but I'm not going to talk about him today, after all we devoted an entire week to him. Instead I want to talk about the merits of the B movie and why they can be far superior to the big name movies.
When a mainstream blockbuster gets made it needs to conform to what major production companies/studios want. Product placement, actor/actress selection, story changes to make the movie more in line with the type of movie that the studio wants to make, and the occasional monomaniacal asshole insisting on giant robot spiders. Studio interference is why there are three Hobbit movies, Spider-man fought too many villains in two Spider-man films, and why Die Hard started getting shitty after the first movie.
The advantage that B movies have over mainstream movies (independent films also fall under this to some extent) is that they don't need to worry about being funded by a studio. This means that they can do a movie the way that they want to. This allows them to take more risks when it comes to stories and ways of shooting. It doesn't always work, but there is more heart in a B movie that is made by someone who wants to make a movie. Its not all sunshine though, after all they still need to get funding and the lack of capital tends to force them to use bad actors (though not always, see: Bruce Campbell). This does force them to jerry-rig a lot of gear and come up with interesting ways of shooting scenes that would usually require advanced gear or special effects.
Yes sometimes B movies are bad, but sometimes they are wonderful works of art. Don't let preconceptions of what a B movie is dissuade you from watching one, they are not always bad.
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