> The most important ingredient to the success of a movie is the plot.

Provably false by all the bad sequels which nonetheless made more money than the original¹. If plot were that crucial, movies would consist of a person sitting down reading a book, à la The Invention of Lying². Money matters to commercial success of a film above anything else.

¹ https://www.vox.com/2016/7/1/12070048/resurgence-independenc...

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Lying

The Invention of Lying makes me sad. I just showed it to someone last week[1]. Great premise, the first half is genuinely funny and then it throws out the whole vibe and turns in to a very cliché critique of religion.

[1] I actually only showed them the first part so we could walk away enjoying it

All substance and no style can work, as your examples prove. But it's also possible to find examples of successful movies which were all style, no substance. For instance the first Avatar (I haven't seen the recent sequel.)

Yeah, well, I saw the first Avatar, too. It was completely boring. Didn't bother with the sequel.

Tbh I agree, but it was certainly a commercial success.

The issue is making money. There are lots of low budget movies with good plots that don’t make money (or not a lot of it). While at the same time, they can make the 5th sequel to some shitty comic book video and almost guarantee a few hundred million in profits. Of course movies can tank, but generally they are not stupid and the accounts have it figured out.

If you're going to spent $100 million on a movie, why settle for a boring plot and pedestrian dialog?

I watched the La Brea show for a while. Lots of expensive special effects. But the dialog was just pablum. The characters each talked like they were the same person - using the same words and phrases. They behaved the same, too.

Because it makes money anyway and getting actually good people would cost more nd take longer.

I quit watching it, mainly because of the execrable dialog. When you want all the main characters to be eaten by a gru, something is wrong with the writing.

I expect the cost of a good writer is a pittance compared with the cost of the production.

Because bad/simple dialog is way easier for the over 50% of the modern box office that isn’t the US. CGI explosions don’t need to be dubbed/subtitles in 20 or 30 different languages

nah, you can't tell me that the transformers movies have plot and they raked in the money!

In what universe was Casablanca low budget? Inflation adjusted it was over $30 million dollars.