I Should Charge For Reading This

Today’s Sametime Status is in 5 parts, but the last part will be made up of two parts

So, I guess this is part 1?  When do we get the rest.  Maybe you should have done this as a Theme Week.

I did actually consider that, but decided that I didn't want to take up a whole week of Sametime Statuses for one dumb joke.  

Why not?  You've Done It Before.

True enough.  Anyway, today's Sametime Status deals with movies. 

None of us saw this one coming...

Film studios suck.

Ooo!  And we get a rant too!  Bonus day for Blag Readers!

Over the last few years, a remarkably disturbing trend has popped up in film making.  Pure, unadulterated greed for the sake of greed.  Greed at the expense of whoever happens to be on the business end of the studios' greed.  It's crap, and it really should stop...but I know it won't.  

One of the examples that I've talked about a couple times is the recent Transformers series of movies.  These are films capitalizing on nostalgia of 80s kids who grew up and have money to spend on movies and toys now who remember wanting to have money to spend on movies and toys back when Transformers were initially popular.  This is a cash cow waiting to be milked.  No matter how bad the films were (and boy, did they ever test that limit with the sequels), the studio knew that they were going to pull down a fantastically huge payday at the box office.  So what did they do?  They signed lucrative product-placement deals with companies like GM, Coca-Cola, and Hewlett Packard to make even more money by splattering their products and logos on the screen while there's supposed to be a movie going on.  There was no reason for this.  They knew the movies were going to make more money than they knew what to do with, but they milked huge billion-dollar corporations for more money while they were at it, taking away even more quality from the films themselves.  Why?  Because of unabashed greed.  Pure and simple...there is no other possible explanation.  

Then, only slightly more recently came a more disturbing trend.  Film studios making films about remarkably popular book series'.  This, in and of itself is not a problem...but when they decide to squeeze more money out of people for no other reason than to squeeze more money out of them, it becomes a problem.  How do they do this?  By making more movies than there are books.  This has happened twice in recent memory, with the final volume of both the Harry Potter and Twilight series receiving the double-film treatment.  I've never read any of the Twilight saga, but I can assure you that neither that last book, nor the final Harry Potter book deserved two movies.

Why do I bring this up now, you may ask?  Well, yesterday came the news that "Mockingjay," the final book of the "Hunger Games" series is going to be released........wait for it........as two films.  That's right, kids...they're doing it to us again.  They're making us fork over two times the money to see the ending of a film series for no reason other than the fact that they can make more money off of us by doing it.  The mere millions upon millions that the studio was going to rake in by making movies of three books was simply not enough.  

I hate them.     

It was also revealed not long ago that the "Fifty Shades" series is being made into a set of feature films...I've got five dollars on the table right here that says the final book of that series will be split into two movies.  Anyone taking that action?