Twitter vs Hollywood

I read something a while ago which left me in a very good mood. It concerned Twitter, the popular social network which allows you to tell everyone when you're scratching your ass at the bus stop in real time, and movies.

In a society where people will still pay nearly 8 € for a movie and a large drink, you want to know exactly what to watch. Especially this being a society where there is also a huge pile of bullshit called Hollywood somewhere on the Northern hemisphere which approves any script with a number in front of the title. It's nothing short of shameful that American Pie had so many sequels we could set our watches by the time it took Jason Bigg's dick to get stuck somewhere. Reviews take time to be uploaded, and many of them are severely biased. Some, almost as much as the ones you get in newspapers. Unless someone marched down to the theatre before you and could tell if a movie was worth those 8 € or not, you'd pretty much sit down with your large drink and hope for the best. This is not fair. Hence why I don't blame anyone who will rip a movie off the Internet and watch it. Why should we pay so much without knowing there is some quality to the experience?

When I was a kid, the only way to be in the clear was the aforementioned: I would only watch movies on their last weeks at the box office, after everyone else did, so I could be forewarned. If the rumors about the flick were bad, I'd simply wait for it to come to DVD and rent it. I failed to watch good movies on the silver screen, and I also watched plenty of movies in theatre which weren't worth my time getting there or the money I paid to sit and watch them. The Internet helped, but the problem remained. Hollywood would get money anyhow, at least for the first two or three weeks, and if they kept getting money, it didn't matter how many Internet users went online saying the movie sucked balls after the first two weeks. They'd keep on doing it.

Twitter seems to be helping moviegoers make a difference in this process. Since it can be accessed and updated via cellphone or palmtop, you can find out if a movie is good or not by following other user's tweets. If someone watched a horrible movie in the morning, you'll know before you buy the ticket in the afternoon. This in turns forced Hollywood to improve the quality control of their scrips: there is no force in this world as strong and relentless as public opinion, and if they hope to change the way all those Twitter users talk about the movies, they must try their best, once again, to make truly entertaining and truly good movies.

Having in mind there are about 6 million users on Twitter every day, this leaves me in a very good mood. .