Stealing back Looks, Style and Ambition?

I just read the post Time to steal back by John August. Interesting, 3 sentences which got me thinking.

What follows implies that stealing back into movie scripts is the meaning of said 3 sentences.

Looks: Looks, like in surroundings, won't provide much leeway. There is a fixed number of locations on this planet, other planets are out of question due to the costs. Granted, some productions travel wide and far to save some money, but an extraterrestrial location will blow the budget. Being confined to this planet means a lot of "been there, done that" locations, that's all. Even alien planets aren't prone to that. Which brings us to style.

Style: Style, as in looks, is still a field which has room for improvement. Provided the test-audience isn't to irritated, that is. Just compare the "Directors Cut" of Blade Runner and the version which has been shown in movie theaters and you get my drift. IMHO: The intended style of the movie was to make the spectators think, the released version released the spectators from thinking (pun intended), and don't get me started about the ending of the theatrical version, seriously.

Ambition: Ambition is an interesting thought, though. The ambition of a TV-Series like "Lost", "Rome", or "E-Ring" is—among other things—change. Gradual change which happens over a "period" of several episodes, something that's hard to achieve in 90 to 120 minutes. Especially since the latter is frowned at by the owners of movie theaters because it kind of ruins the schedule.

I might sound a lot more grumpy than I really am, but think about the fact, that "doing" a movie involves a lot of people these days, and some of them aren't willing to experiment, are they? Most writers know about the differences of the final cut and what happened to be in the script. Don't get me wrong here, though. The ones with the final say have to protect themselves from failures, but the result of this behavior is visible at a theater near you. ;-)

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