The producers in Hollywood are always trying to find ways to
get people to go see the movies that they churn out. One of the most popular ways to get an
audience is to build an ensemble cast.
The mentality of an ensemble cast is that there will be so many
different actors in the movie that almost anybody would want to see the movie
for one of the actors. There will be
someone in the movie for everyone, thus making a bigger audience and generating
a bigger box office.
There are different ways to go about creating a large
ensemble cast for a movie. The three
main ones are to heave a large team-based movie, intertwining stories, or an
anthology. Each method of executing the
story utilizes the ensemble cast in a different way. One constant remains no matter what method is
used to capitalize on the cast: the ensemble cast is there.
The team-based movie is a movie that tends to have one main
storyline, and follows that story in a fairly linear way. The method of doing this usually involves a
team being put together. This allows for
the actors to interact, and many times be on the screen for more time than they
would in other methods of using an ensemble cast. Not only can the producers say that they have
all of these actors together in one movie, but they can brag that certain
actors will be interacting. An example
of this is with the first two Expendables movies. With both of those movies, the producers were
able to market the movie based on scenes which had Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce
Willis, and Sylvester Stallone together on screen. The fact that three big actions stars were
together in a scene was definitely a selling point of the first movie, and the
expanded roles of Willis and Arnold were selling points of the sequel. The first movie really brought out the
ensemble cast in it, with the three aforementioned actors, as well as Jason
Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, and
Steve Austin. I feel like I’m missing
someone, but that list shows how filled with people the movie was.
Another way to fill a movie with actors is to have
storylines that weave in and out of one another. This is a way to try and give each of the
actors their own story, thus making them all the main character of the
film. Whereas in a team movie, there
will be the actors that lead the team, and the wacky side characters, the
interwoven stories give many people their own piece of the lead role. This week’s Sunday “Bad” Movie, New Year’s
Eve, can help to describe what I mean.
There are a few stories that all interweave to build the movie into what
it is, and each story gets one or two main characters. There is a story with Michelle Pfeiffer and
Zack Efron, one with Robert De Niro and Halle Berry, one with Katherine Heigl
and Jon Bon Jovi, one with Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele, one with Sarah
Jessica Parker and Abigail Breslin, one with Seth Meyers and Jessica Biel, one with Josh Duhamel, and one with Hilary
Swank. That makes fourteen main
characters. Each of them gets a good chunk
of time to shine. There is also a wide
array of supporting actors who you might recognize, scattered throughout the
film. The only downfall to this kind of
storytelling is that sometimes the stories don’t feel as satisfying as they are
meant to because not enough time was spent on them to invest the audience in
them. But when done properly, all of the
stories can have influence upon each other in a way that makes the whole
experience of watching the movie more exciting.
The third main kind of large ensemble cast movie is an
anthology movie. I’ve covered one in the
Sunday “Bad” Movie posts before, The Summer of Massacre, but there aren’t any
big stars in it for me to use it as an example.
For that reason, I’m going to use the recent film Movie 43 to describe
what I want to describe. When I’m talking
about these big ensemble casts, I mostly mean the mainstream movies. Movie 43 represents the mainstream anthology
film. The film boasts a star studded
cast. You’ve got Kate Winslet, Hugh
Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts, Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, Josh Duhamel
(that guy again?), Emma Stone, J.B. Smoove, Kieran Culkin, Richard Gere, Kate
Bosworth, Jack MacBrayer, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Justin Long, Leslie
Bibb, Bobby Cannavale, Kristen Bell, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace
Moretz, Patrick Warburton, Matt Walsh, Gerard Butler, Seann William Scott,
Johnny Knoxville, Halle Berry (again), Stephen Merchant, Snooki, Terrence
Howard, and Elizabeth Banks. That’s a
lot of people, not including the two different versions of the segment in which
they watch these short films. The
anthology device is able to give each of these actors their own complete story
to tell without it being sidetracked by other stories. It’s a way to tell short stories with big
names. The directors of Movie 43 were
also fairly famous. The problem with
anthologies is that the quality of the segments will vary, and the pacing of
the movie can easily be thrown off by the varied qualities. When it works, it works, but when it doesn’t,
it is a catastrophe.
As I’ve shown in a very basic sense, there are benefits to
having large ensemble casts, as well as drawbacks. The name value alone can help to give a movie
a boost in audience numbers. But it also
means that certain stars might not get the screen time that they deserve and certain
stories might suffer due to other stories overpowering them. Ensemble casts can help bring in money for
the studio, but they can also lose the quality credibility that may have been
built up through their previous output.
It is difficult to gauge how the ensemble movie will end up.
When all is said and done, the studio will likely still make
money. That’s the bottom line in the
Hollywood system. If something makes
money, the quality doesn’t matter. Only,
it does. Any future installments depend
on how much the viewer appreciates the prior movies. New Year’s Eve being made was based on the
financial success of Valentine’s Day.
Does that mean that the quality of Valentine’s Day was good? No.
Does it mean that the quality of New Year’s Eve was good? Nope.
Hollywood doesn’t fix what isn’t broken.
They don’t improve something if they think they’ll make money through
carbon copies. I don’t know where I’m
going with this.
Ensemble casts can both make and break a movie. I guess that’s what I’ve been getting at
through this entire post. Many bad
movies are bad because too many people were thrown into the mix. Many good movies are good because the
ensemble cast feels like a bunch of friends hanging out. Either way, I’m always interested in seeing
the movies. If they’re bad, they’re
bad. But I like bad movies, so there’s
that.
There are a few notes to make before this post is complete:
- New Year's Eve was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards. The entire cast earned Worst Ensemble, while Sarah Jessica Parker earned Worst Actress. The writing and directing also got nominations as the worst. And to top it off, the movie was nominated for Worst Picture.
- Jessica Biel and Sean O'Bryan are in New Year’s Eve. They were also in Playing for Keeps.
- They aren't the only people in another Sunday “Bad” Movies film. Cary Elwes is in New Year’s Eve, but he’s also in Hansel and Gretel Get Baked and The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure.
- There’s also an appearance by Robert DeNiro in New Year’s Eve. He was in Freelancers.
- Don't forget Til Schweiger, who was in New Year's Eve. He was in Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo way back when.
- An actress named Christine Lakin was in New Year's Eve, as well as Parental Guidance.
- Finally, John Lithgow made a small appearance in New Year’s Eve. He made a bigger appearance in Santa Claus: The Movie.
- If you have any suggestions for future Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can either leave a comment below, or message me on Twitter. There are lots of movies scheduled to come up in the next year or so, and many of them are suggestions, so I do make note of what I am suggested.
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