Films and the film industry

Comedies and horror films do best at the Vietnamese box office, especially around Lunar New Year, when whole families go to the cinema together and want something light. Family dramas about arguments over money or inheritance have also been huge recently, I think because audiences recognise their own relatives on screen. Hollywood superhero films still draw crowds, though less reliably than five years ago. Why do expensive films disappoint? In my view, money can buy spectacle but not a script. A studio spends a fortune on visual effects and a well-known cast, then plays it safe with a story everyone has seen before, so you leave impressed for ten minutes and bored for the remaining two hours. Heavy marketing makes it worse, because a trailer that promises a masterpiece sets expectations no film could meet. Having said that, I don't think big budgets are the villain. Some stories, like a war epic or a science-fiction world, simply can't be told cheaply, and when the writing is strong the scale adds something a small film can't. As for cinemas, I believe they'll survive but become more of an occasion than a habit. Streaming is cheaper and you can pause it to make noodles, so ordinary dramas will mostly be watched at home. What a living room can't offer is a giant screen and three hundred strangers gasping at the same moment. I'd expect fewer cinemas, with better seats and higher prices, saved for films worth the trip.