Art. Film. What's the difference? At first film was a novelty, used in the early 1900's as a new technology by various companies and individuals who could afford it. Soon, as film technology improved, people began to understand how the new technology can be used as an art medium. By the early 1920's actors were being credited in the reel and film makers started to experiment with different techniques to tell a story they envisioned. These films were shown to the general public for a fee and the genesis of the modern film age was born.
It wasn't long after that, primarily in France, U.S.A., Germany, Australia and Italy ,that film makers were not just recording images but started to use camera techniques and special effects to make art- to tell a story.
The public received the new art form, and a new industry began to take shape -the film industry.
Studios competed to attracted the public to 'movie houses' by making art on film better than the 'other guys', increasing their profits and gaining notoriety.
So film became a new art form, added to art medium which preceded it: Painting, sculpture, music and jewellery craft to name the major ones.
But like these other mediums of art , there's high art, masterpieces...and just the regular stuff.
Film makers through the decades have produced high art, even masterpieces within the medium, and hundreds of thousands of stinkers.
The movie industry today is profit driven, and art is slowly being replaced with spectacle. We humans like spectacle, so we're willing to pay for it at the box office. However spectacle is superficial and becomes banal eventually, even jaded and we find ourselves looking for the next 'big thing'.
However art, quality art, doesn't suffer this inevitability.
Think of Rembrandt, Michael Angelo even Salvador Dali and Jackson Pollock who's art has a social value that's , well, invaluable.
Films such as 'Citizen Kane', 'Ben Hur', 'The Godfather' and yes, 'Star Wars: A New Hope' have staying power because they're more than a vehicle to generate profit for production companies, they have a social value that has no price tag.
I fear the producers of CBM's are not seriously incorporating the aesthetic element in production , and eventually will all become 'formulamatic' and thus suffer the fate of public indifference. This could doom the genre if, for example people begin to think : " Oh, it's just another super hero movie; we ALL know what's going to happen!"
Any hero can be inserted into the 'formula' script , with the same outcome- he wins.
People love to see the 'good guy' win ;it's what Westerns are all about, and that just proves my point: How many Westerns are being made today? The genre became 'formulamatic' and the public got bored with it. So now, they can only take it in measure, and they rarely gain popularity when at the box office.
Do we what this to happen to CBM's?
The solution is make CBM's art on film. Make CBM films high art. Raise the standard. Give them staying power like a masterpiece, and people will positively respond, and continue to support the genre without suffering the curse of predictability.
It's a worthy investment. Art lasts for centuries, even millennia and is preserved and passed down to future generations to enjoy and inspire. But if it's 'just another CBM' years from now, it very well may suffer the fate of the Western.
I hope that doesn't happen; there are many more stories and hero's to flesh them out on film I'd like to. But if the studios don't incorporate the preserving qualities of true art into their films , CBM's may suffer the reputation of mediocrity.
And that's not good, for art ,for film or for us.