The impact of movies on geek culture is hard to argue. If we didn’t have Star Wars to obsess about, we’d be bored out of our glasses. Thankfully, movies were invented in the late 19th century as a mishmash of technologies converged into movie magic. Moving pictures existed for centuries before in the form of sequentially ordered pictures like flip books. A two-second film by Louis Le Prince called “Roundhay Garden Scene” is considered the earliest surviving motion picture, though evidence of earlier examples exists. William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, working for Thomas Edison, is credited with developing with coming up with the earliest commercially viable technology for movie making leading to something called the movie industry.

William Stepp from Against Monopoly has an interesting take on the Wall Street Journal article I just wrote about.  Responding to movie companies flooding the market with too many movies, Stepp cites economist Arnold Plant 1934 article on “The Economic Aspects of Copyright in Books.”  He explains that because of the monopolies granted by copyrights, publishers make excessive amounts of money off a few blockbusters, which they use to fund a long string of duds no one wants to read.

Julio Cole tackles this issue in “Controversy: Would the Absence of Copyright Laws Significantly Affect the Quality and Quantity of Literary Output?” In the paper, Cole recognizes the lottery aspect of publisher, but criticizes copyrights for increasing the payout of larger titles, distorting the marketplace.

Movie companies seem to think if they make it, we will come. Unfortunately, they’re making too many movies with too few ways to see them.  The Wall Street Journal writes how movie companies are flooding theaters with more new releases than audiences can handle. Almost every weekend this summer from April through July features a major blockbuster, leaving many with disappointing and embarrassing box office returns.

The Wall Street Journal ignores, however, the potential movie companies are squandering.  There are more avenues to release content and make money than ever before, but movie companies are focused on obsolete business models built around weekend box offices and distance DVD releases.  Not every movie has to be released in movie theaters. There’s online downloads, streaming services, direct-to-DVD, etc. giving any movie maker a huge audience to market to.

Digital distribution allows for more content to reach more people. You’re not taking up limited number of theaters or shelf space in a DVD store, so more content can be offered.  Unfortunately, Hollywood remains focused on a box office mentality, meaning it would rather lose money a $60 million George Clooney film rather than use technology to make more money.

Media and software companies release reports that piracy costs them billions of dollars, destroying their business, funding terrorism, or hurting poor farmers. These companies lobby governments to pass laws, sue fans in court, or ask people to spy on others in order to prop up business models that are becoming obsolete. Companies should stop fighting piracy and treat it like any competitor - by competing and out innovating file-sharing services to provide a better value allowing everyone to make more money.

Matt Mason promotes this in his book, The Pirate’s Dilemma, calling piracy a sign of innovation as pirates experiment to make processes more efficient.

Some of America’s greatest innovators were thought of as pirates. When Thomas Edison invented the phonographic record player, musicians branded him a pirate out to steal their work and destroy the live music business, until a system was established so everyone could be paid royalties. Edison, in turn, went on to invent filmmaking, and demanded a licensing fee from those making movies with his technology. This caused a band of filmmaking pirates, including a man named William, to flee New York for the then still wild West, where they thrived, unlicensed, until Edison’s patents expired. These pirates continue to operate there, albeit legally now, in the town they founded: Hollywood. William’s last name? Fox.

New technology has repeatedly challenged media companies, from Edison’s phonograph to television to cassette tapes. After lawsuits attempted to quash the innovation, media companies embraced the new technology and found new revenue streams, making more money as a result. The home video market Hollywood so desperately defends now would never have existed had Universal and Disney’s lawsuit against Betamax succeeded. Instead of suing file-sharing networks, media companies need to embrace the new technology as a new way to make money.

The current state of media and software is quite good. Media companies are making more money every year. Even the music industry is making more music while more people are listening to music. The recording industry is plummeting at a rate so fast piracy cannot be the sole factor, as studies have shown.

But piracy has become an obsession for media and software companies, hurting themselves and their paying customers with DRM and restrictive policies that limit the value of their products. Microsoft, Google, and Major League Baseball have all discontinued DRM serviced, meaning people who legally paid for goods no longer get to use them while pirates continue to download DRM-free goods for nothing.

Piracy offers a compelling alternative. Piracy offers unlimited free downloads of an almost complete collection of every movie, song, TV show, book, or game ever made using a variety of easy to use programs. Pirated content has no DRM, meaning you can put your music and movies on every computer and portable device you own. On the down side, pirated content is has unreliable quality and inconsistent download speeds, but since its free, these are minor negatives.

Why should someone pay for a service with less services?

Media and software companies need to recognize piracy is not going away - it’s a competitor. No matter how many lawsuits the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA file, piracy grows. These lawsuits increase publicity for many sites and services, working against the lawsuit’s purpose - Pirate Bay, the leading BitTorrent tracker, is now one of the 100 most trafficked websites thanks to publicity from these lawsuits. And for every file-sharing service closed down, dozens more pop up. File-sharing is too useful and thus valuable.

To compete, media and software companies will need radical changes to their business models. Techdirt’s Mike Masnick constantly refers to leveraging infinite goods to sell scarce goods.

In a competitive market, the price of a good is always going to get pushed towards its marginal cost. That actually makes a lot of sense. As competition continues, it puts pressure on profits, but producers aren’t willing (or can’t for very long) keep selling goods at a direct loss. Sunk (or fixed) costs don’t matter, because they’ve already been paid — so everything gets pushed to marginal cost.

Movies, music, and software have high upfront costs but negligible reproduction costs - it’s as simple as copy and pasting a file.

This means leveraging infinite goods to sell scarce goods, like concert tickets, collectable merchandise, or advertising (people’s time and attention is very limited). $20 for DVDs and CDs worked under the old, obsolete business model. The new media economy requires new business models that offer more value to consumers. Plastic discs don’t offer $20 of value anymore, meaning new price models and revenue expectations need to be developed. Just because the recording industry used to be making $10 billion a year doesn’t mean is deserves to always $10 billion. As Masnick points out, should the automobile industry be blamed for putting horse-drawn carriages out of business? The industry has to innovate and adapt to market forces to continue making that money. That’s how capitalism works.

Several progressive artists and developers are experimenting with new business models. Radiohead’s pay-your-own price for their new album was a good start. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails earned $1.6 million in one week selling special editions of his new CD, a CD that you could also download for free. Indie record label Fueled by Ramen used viral marketing to build valuable brands around its bands rather than relying on disc sales. The potential for rewarding business models exists, but will require risk and experimentation and an understanding of the evolving marketplace. Media and software companies need to recognize what their customers want and give it to them. Suing isn’t the answer. Embracing is. And that’s how both piracy and business can win.

2001 was quite a disappointment. No space tourism, moon colonization, or sentient artificial intelligence, but 2001: A Space Odyssey can still be an enjoyable alternate reality. Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi classic featured a visionary look at the future that he said called for open interpretation. The depth of Kubrick’s film helped legitimize science fiction for grown-ups, replacing the campy Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers for maturity and vision. The industry took notice over the following decade with more adult science fiction from Blade Runner to Alien, showing that blood, gore, and sex actually do make for better movies. Emotional depth gets fit in between.

So here’s a question. If a movie makes $300 million, but none of the actors care, will there be a sequel? The answer is an very obvious yes.

Resident Evil 3 ending with a painful cliffhanger. Sony Pictures announced three more Spider-Man movies. And while there’s no X-Men 4 announced, let’s be certain it’s happening. Yet should these sequels be made? When do these franchises run out of stories? Or are the replacement actors an embarrassment to the originals you love and adore (Roger Moore’s James Bond still gives me nightmares)? But I think wanting these franchises to end too early might deprive us of something amazing: the endless debate.

For about a week, my friends and I debated what should happen to Spider-Man after the disappointing Spider-Man 3. The crowded and overly dramatic film might have represented a franchise lost and without a future. Batman and Robin, Superman 3 and 4, and Rocky 2-5 all show franchises that have been left on life support far too long. But you know what, bad story telling does not mean there are no stories.

Look at Casino Royale. After about 15 mediocre to bad James Bond movies, Casino Royale showed what new blood can do. And Daniel Craig won’t replace Sean Connery, but he can stand on his own.

So who’s to say someone can’t replace Toby Maguire as Spider-Man? The guy where’s a full-faced masked for half the movie…or, well, he should.

So, to settle the debate once and for all. My first point is to remember, there is no limit to the stories that can be told. Marvel Comics has been telling Spider-Man and X-Men stories for more than 40 years. There are more than 60 years of Superman and Batman stories. So I don’t think no more movies can be made for these characters.

The problem is more that movies are a poor medium for serialized stories since it takes two to three years to make a movie. As a result, actors and directors have to devote years to these franchises with little time for variety. This is why actors for franchises are more and more likely to sign contracts to appear in several movies, in order to maintain some consistency.

But I think most franchises can survive just fine without the original creative team. The best success is for franchises based on pre-defined characters. James Bond and Batman can change actors with relative ease because we as fans want to see a new James Bond or Batman movie, not because we’re desperate to see Pierce Brosnan or Michael Keaton. And the same will apply to Toby Maguire as Spider-Man. I don’t go to see Spider-Man to see Toby Maguire. I go to see Spider-Man. I go to see web-slinging super-hero goodness. So if all of a sudden Jake Gyllenhaal tool over as Spider-Man, it might be a little jarring, but I’d survive.

Sometimes a franchise is, however, built on the skills of one actor rather than the character. Take Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. I would agree Depp would be near impossible to replace. When I think of Captain Sparrow, I only think of Depp. Spider-Man, James Bond, and Batman all existed in my mind before any actor on the screen. If an actor tries to replace Depp, they will spend more time imitating Depp than being Sparrow. It is not impossible to replace the original actor, but it takes time. Steve Martin has been an acceptable Inspector Clouseau in the recent (and soon-to-be-sequel) Pink Panther movie, taking the reigns of the character almost 40 years after Peter Sellers created the character. Sellers died in 1980 after making six Pink Panther films (include one released after his death made using deleted scenes). I do not mean to say death is the only way to replace to a character, but that this example shows even a character created and perfected by one actor can be evolved to fit a new actor.

I think the main thing to remember is franchises are meant to continue on and on. While it might get annoying to see an 11 after a movie title, fans of that series have kept it going and should get to enjoy more and more stories as long as they’re willing to watch them. No franchise ever runs out of stories to tell. A run of bad films should not ruin a franchise. It just needs to be fixed and renewed. As long as the characters interest people, there are good stories to tell. And I hope these stories get told…whatever they may be.

Anime fans long knew the name of Hayao Miyazaki has pretty much a genius and all around awesome guy. A few of his movies leaked into the United States, but the flood gate (in relative terms for anime) began when Princess Mononoke came state side. The visionary, mature, animated masterpiece was already the highest grossing film in Japan and garnered rave reviews from American critics, including Roger Ebert who named it one of the best movies of the year. Miyazaki’s next film, Spirited Away, went on to win the Academy Award for animated feature further legitimizing anime for mainstream western audiences.

Stan “The Man” Lee made his career helping create the Marvel Universe, but in his twilight years, Stan has gotten a second career in movie cameos. Stan Lee has appeared in almost all Marvel Comics movies and makes surprise appearances in TV shows, cartoons, and the occasional DC property. This list ranks the geekiest, most comic book friendly Stan Lee cameos with no bearing on the actual quality of the movie (it’s almost an inverse relationship).

7. The Hulk as security guard with Lou Ferrigno

Not only was this Stan Lee’s first speaking role in a Marvel movie, but “The Man” got to work security with the original Hulk, Lou Ferrigno in a double whammy of geekery.

6. Fantastic Four 2 as rejected wedding guest

Poor Stan Lee. He co-creates almost the entire Marvel Universe, but he not one even sends him a wedding invitation. Stan Lee arrives assuming it was an over sight only to be not only turned away, but not even recognizes. How shameful.

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One of the best parts of any geek movie is debating the casting. Fan favorites are chosen years before comics or books even get optioned by Hollywood, so we feel strongly about our opinions. While dreams can’t always come true, and rarely do, here are some of the best performances by actors portraying our favorite geek icons.

7. Chris Evans as Human Torch

Amid the bright and perky mediocrity that is the Fantastic Four movie, Chris Evans shines surprisingly bright. Even without being blond, Evans played the arrogant, womanizing, spotlight stealing narcissist as if he lived the role everyday. Every funny like came from this man’s mouth. On top of that, but this guy has a real super-hero’s body, and filmmakers didn’t seem to mind showing off that fake, regulating Evans to nothing but a towel or spandex for the majority of both films.

6. Mickey Rourke as Marv

Innovative film techniques alone didn’t make Sin City one of the greatest comic book movies. Mickey Rourke portrayed Sin City’s most recognizable hero with all the subtly of a fist to the face, just the way he should. Rourke mixed Marv’s self-hatred with a chiseled exterior, eventuated by the awesome visual effects, creating the perfect movie representation of the modern film noir bad ass.

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I don’t mean to condone or glorify the acts of these, disturbed individuals. The truth is serial killers are damn captivating characters, with their arrogance, creativity, and lust for blood. It’s fun to root for the villains, these deplorable cretins obsessed with death and destruction. These are the coolest serial killers who you don’t want to meet in a dark or even well lit alley. (Spoilers included)

7. Michael Myers

The featured killer of the Halloween movies, Michael Myers began his career killing his older sister. Fifteen years later he escaped his sanitarium, returning to his home town to kill teenagers especially Jamie Lee Curtis who managed to fend off the fiend long enough for help to arrive. But after every movie, Myers manages to survive gunshots, car crashes, explosions, and more to return again for more murder and mayhem.

6. Norman Bates

Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Psycho inspired a generation to take baths. Bates suffers from dissociative identity disorder, dressing up and pretending to be his mother. He developed this to deal with murdering his mother who spent years abusing him. His classic shower murder of Marion Crane remains his crowning achievement, but anytime Bates, or his mother, were threatened, the mother took over and took care of business.

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