From Hollywood to Tokyo: Resolving a Tension in Contemporary Narrative Cinema‪.‬

By the mid to late 1970s hypertrophic B-movies like Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) became an economic force in Hollywood. Their skew toward a younger audience, the increased financial stakes associated with their inflated production costs, the enormous success of product tie-ins as additional revenue streams, and the growth of market research as a guiding force in corporate America led to an expanded role of marketing considerations in the Hollywood development process. Subsequent changes in distribution technology encouraged younger audiences to treat film as only one aspect of a multifaceted media stream--including cable television, internet, and interactive entertainment--each tributary of which offered opportunities for user control of content, duration, and pace. One effect of these parallel developments was more and more discretely parsed and high-energy films. But changes in production and consumption were not the only paradigmatic shifts. New ranks of young filmmakers, whose sensibilities had been shaped by Spielberg's and Lucas' B-movie behemoths, progressively replaced the old guard. Unlike their predecessors, who typically served long apprenticeships on their slow climbs into positions of creative power, these young men and women found an infrastructure of film schools and screenwriting manuals ready to teach them everything instantly.