Hacker Cinema
Underworld
2003 · Film · 122 min
Directed by Len Wiseman
Vampires and werewolves have waged a nocturnal war against each other for centuries. But all bets are off when a female vampire warrior named Selene, who's famous for her strength and werewolf-hunting prowess, becomes smitten with a peace-loving male werewolf, Michael, who wants to end the war.
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5 comments on Hacker News
I would add Simon Fraser University in Vancouver BC. Its grey concrete architecture combined with Vancouver's grey skies has appeared in a host of scifi, mostly dystopian stuff such as the Underworld vampire movies. And of course X-files, which was pretty dystopian imho.
https://604now.com/simon-fraser-university-movies-filmed-at-sfu-hollywood/
Page Eight introduced me to Bill Nighy, whom I then realized I had seen in Underworld and two of its sequels. There are two sequels to Page Eight, both from 2014, Turks and Caicos featuring Christopher Walken, and Salting the Battlefield. "Brilliant" isn't how I would describe Page Eight and the subsequent films. They're not boring, but "relaxing" is a better word.
"provide an equal number of counterexamples, then."
Equal number to what? What is the number we are looking at - did anybody even count anything here? I already mentioned several female action heroes in other comments, like Underworld, Resident Evil, Buffy, Dark Angel, Aliens, Aeon Flux, Nikita. If you only count movies that are actually worthwhile, the comparison to male hero movies is not bad (I can only compare to mostly worthwhile movies).
Also some things don't make sense, as somebody pointed out, WW2 didn't have that many female soldiers, so why would you expect 50% of WW2 movies to be about female soldiers? You could go on and complain that there are too many WW2 movies, but that is hardly convincing as a feminist issue.
"Your last paragraph is blatant sexism, fyi."
It's not actually. Would "women have boobs" also be a controversial statement? It is very obvious that it is easier for women to reproduce than for men, and it is statistically proven. Just because you can't see it (like boobs hanging off a person) doesn't mean some difference does not exist.
Men get to do the life threatening jobs because men are more expendable. Women are the limiting factor in reproduction (only about one baby can be produced every nine months per woman).
It doesn't mean that women can't do life threatening jobs, just that there is a reason they usually don't have to.
If it is sexist to assume that there are differences between men and women, then maybe it was sexist. Then I'd have to say I'd rather be sexist and stick to science than give up logic for ideology.
Edit: I wonder what is the feminist explanation for less women doing risky jobs? The patriarchy doesn't want women to be cannon fodder because they could start believing they can be aggressive and revolt against men? Or really just the media - if more female warrior movies were being made, women would be flocking to the military by the millions?
There are many, many movies with women as the main actrice. Even female heroes.
What do you mean by hero, somebody who carries heavy guns and mows down lots of enemies? Even those exist, for example Resident Evil (totally unrealistic of course).
Have you even actually counted the movies with male and female heroes, or do you just have a gut feeling that there are only few female heroes?
While you are counting, you could also count how many men die as collateral damage ("guards") vs how many women.
Edit: some more I remembered in the meantime: Underworld series, Alien series, Aeon Flux, Buffy, Dark Angel, Nikita
I have two general ideas. Steal them. I don't have time to implement.
1) Find innovative ways to reduce production costs. Production is expensive. Unimaginably so. This can be things like: a) Redesign physical set equipment. Ex: Set lights are expensive; a single light can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Design a new light that takes advantage of modern LEDs or something, or that can be deconstructed to serve multiple lighting functions (beyond what exists today). b) Design automation to replace physical support crew on the set. Payroll is an enormous cost. Ex: Invent a tracking system that would make the boom mic not require a person to physically move it around to follow the actors. Yes, mechanization would eliminate jobs - such is the nature of creative destruction. c) Innovation in use of set design and photography to make things look much more expensive than they are. A shining example of this was how Orson Welles shot Citizen Kane. Another example is what Spielberg did with the nonfunctional shark in Jaws. For those two, you're probably going to have to check out a book to learn how they did it. And more recently the impressive-looking but cheap sets and photography in Underworld (2003). These directors did unbelievably good things with constraints. Find a way to systemize this. To study what could be made cheaper, look at films that cost way too much, and see how each shot could've been cut down to bare bones - the absolute minimum dollar amount required to make the exact same look and effect.
The most choking example of waste I've ever personally witnessed was on the set of Van Helsing (2004) in Prague. The entirety of Old Town Square was cleared, about a hundred security held people out around the perimeter, and giant cranes and lights lit a scene of Hugh Jackman leaping in the air. What was the end product that appeared in the movie, you ask? A two-second shot of Jackman leaping in the air above some cobblestone. The whole thing could've been accomplished on a 10' by 10' mockup of cobblestone in a studio, or a cobblestone street somewhere cheaper to rent the entirety of than the Old Town Square of Prague.
2) As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, marketing costs are gargantuan. You have to get eyeballs on your enjoyable entertainment. I watch independent film. The difficulty of going into a little-known film, even one that's received some good notice, is that I generally don't know a thing about it. People enjoy trailers. Create trailers. Once production is complete, making a trailer for it is essentially free - it requires the software you used to edit the film and your own time and effort. Run strings of trailers for unknown films on IFC. Run a 30-minute block of 30 to 45 second teasers with links to the film's site, where you have the 2 1/2 minute trailer and more information. Get eyeballs on productions. Right now getting eyeballs on productions is forbiddingly expensive. Revolutionize it. Cheapen it.
I don't think innovating other entertainment will kill Hollywood any faster. You have to innovate the film industry itself. Every human culture throughout history has enjoyed watching performers enact a story, of some kind or another. Moving pictures of performers enact a story isn't going anywhere in popularity. There's a reason it's such a profitable industry. Technology has advanced to the state it's in today where moving pictures of performers enacting stories are easily viewed the world over, but I don't think you should think about changing the type of entertainment so much as the mechanics of the medium.