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Pat Pilcher nails it

Pat Pilcher is a nice guy and sometimes he really nails the feelings of the public when writing his NZ Herald technology column.

And that's exactly what he's done with this one.

One only has to look at the reader comments to see that the opinions he's voiced there are widely echoed by the public of NZ. Let's hope that the movie industry is listening -- although I strongly doubt they are.

Here was me thinking that perhaps I was just getting too critical in my old age when I found Expendables 2 and Die Hard 5 to be tedious and formulaic beyond belief.

I thought that perhaps I had become disconnected with the movie genres I used to enjoy so much (action and scifi) -- but no, it is simply that Hollywood is churning out a lot of crap, despite the highly paid actors and hype that each "epic" involves.

Perhaps what Hollywood calls "piracy" is simply people voting with their wallets when it comes to ascribing a value to this dross.

If you check the cupboard under our TV set you will find a store-bought DVD or BluRay of some great movies -- such as Terminator I and II, Star Trek the movie, The Blues Brothers, 2001, Harold and Maude, Independence Day, Die Hard 1-4, 5th Element and many other great titles. I've paid good money for these disks because they represent a value proposition that I'm prepared to buy into.

However, after renting Die Hard 5, Expendables 2 and far too many of the stuff that passes for a "blockbuster" these days, I refuse to spend money buying those movies. In fact, I would not even bother to download them for free -- they are *that* bad.

With this in mind, even the rental fee was a poor value proposition that I wish I'd not bought into.

So, I'm thinking that people are not deliberately pirating movies simply because they can. Chances are that a growing number of savvy people realise that so much of Hollywood's output these days is just crap and therefore it makes sense to download new movies so that you can see for yourself whether it's worth actually spending money on the store-bought disk.

And yes -- this *does* work. Regular readers will recall that I watched Iron Sky on YouTube (an act of piracy) then, having found it to be a great movie that pushed all my buttons, went out and spent money on a store-bought BluRay copy. I doubt I'd have taken the risk on this movie if I wasn't already satisfied that it was a title I'd like to watch again from time to time in HD.

Perhaps the movie industry is afraid of "illegal" internet downloads, not because they directly represent a loss of revenue, but because it gives people a chance to "try before they buy" and cast a critical eye over the product before they fork over hard-earned cash. Maybe they know that so much of there wares are crap that it's better to try and sell customers a pig in a poke than let the movies sell themselves.

Whatever the case, it is very clear that the writing is on the wall for the movie industry and if they choose not to read it then adapt to what it says -- they're going to feel a great deal of pain.

They need to give aging actors who have "lost the plot" (like Bruce Willis) the boot instead of paying them millions of dollars for flat, boring performances. They need to focus on *quality* rather than quantity. They need to create offerings that are so good, people *want* to hand over their cash in return for a nice sharp HD version.

And perhaps they ought to consider offering SD versions of their movies for free/cheap download without DRM and use "piracy" as a powerful marketing tool. Trying to dupe people by promising quality movies and delivering dross is not a business model that will succeed.

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