Budget Bytes

By Gordon Hopkins The latest news about the release, “Tron: Ares,” Hollywood’s latest attempt to turn something, anything, into a franchise, isn’t great. If one is to believe the movie trade rags, the film is on the way to losing $132 million, or some insane amount.Hearing this got me thinking. Let me be clear. This is not a critique of the movie. I’m not going to get into the quality. Is it “Citizen Kane” with blood-red neon or an abomination upon humanity? I certainly won’t be hypothesizing that the movie failed because Jared Leto seems to be the most hated man on the planet, for reasons I’m not entirely certian. For the sake of this argument, I don’t care about any of that.For the moment, my concern is strictly fiduciary. Put in its simplest terms, “Tron: Ares” is losing money because it cost so dang much to make.When the original “Tron” came out in 1982, it was a big deal because it was the first movie to use a combination of live action and CGI (computer-generated images). I remember articles in Starlog and Omni, touting this as a huge advancement in technology that would remake how movies were made. For once, the hype was right. Today, CGI shows up in practically every movie, whether it needs to be there or not. Filmmakers no longer need to build elaborate sets or detonate massive amounts of pyrotechnics or use paintings on glass to create a world that doesn’t exist. Now all you need are a few actors standing in front of a green curtain. And that, my friends, brings me to the thesis of this rant.Why are these movies so dang expensive?I researched the budgets of just a few movies that extensively incorporated CGI. Here is what I found. I make no claims as to the accuracy of these numbers. Tron (1982) - $17 millionThe Last Starfighter (1984) $15 millionTerminator 2 (1991) - $100 million USDAvatar (2009) - $237 millionTron: Legacy - $170 millionAvengers: Infinity War (2018) - $316 millionAvatar: The Way of Water (2022) - $460 millionTron: Ares - $220 million As you can see, the cost to make these movies just keep going up and up and up. Computers become more and more advanced, faster and faster, easier and easier to use. Theoretically, using computers to replace set builders and special effects artists and all the rest should be bringing the cost of making movies down.In every other industry, replacing people with machines is supposed to bring costs down. That’s why cars are assembled by robots.Yet, in Hollywood, the exact opposite is happening.Meanwhile, I see kids posting videos online that they made with their laptops and store-bought software and they are every bit as good as, and in some cases better than, the stuff I see being churned out by Hollywood. Am I the only one who thinks the only reason Hollywood continues to make $100 million plus movies is so that they can continue to pay stars $10 million and directors $20 million and producers $50 million?

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