Elephants never forget. I am here to say, elephants never forget anything. But Hollywood forgets. It forgets how to tell stories that really mean something.
My name is Jocelyn Dawson. I am 10 years old. I come from the United Kingdom. And I am here to speak on behalf of future generations.
You may say I am just a child - what do I know about filmmaking? But I am only repeating the opinions of respectable film critics.
Tim Burton's live-action Dumbo remake has so far grossed $329.3 million at the box office against a budget of $170 million. It will have to make at least $500 million to break-even. I am sure it will. Parents will take their children to see it because it is a Disney film about a flying elephant.
But will these children thank their parents?
This does not matter to Hollywood. They will see how much money it has made and produce more remakes. There may even be sequels.
In places like Hollywood, people like to tell success stories. They talk about grosses and residuals, but they forget why audiences watch films.
Yes, sometimes it is simply about entertainment. But moviegoers like to connect with the characters on the screen. They like to share the adventure and laugh and cry. And then they talk about it with their friends and share the adventure all over again.
Elephants never forget.
But this version of Dumbo forgot. It forgot what made the original so magical in the first place. It is nothing more than a series of CGI-heavy set-pieces backed by extravagant production design. There are too many human characters and their backstories are ridiculously convoluted. We do not care about them, and we do not care about Dumbo himself because the film never asks us to. Instead, we are asked to marvel at the spectacle.
It is as though we are meant to be thankful that the film exists. And why? So a small number of people could make almost unimaginable sums of money. These are the same people who push the message that movies are magical and the cinema experience cannot be equalled in any other medium.
They lied to us. They sold children's imaginations down the river forever with their cynicism and laughed all the way to the bank. And the saddest thing is parents will keep taking their children to these Hollywood extravaganzas because they are popular and they think it will keep us quiet during the holidays and at weekends. Plus we are not old enough to buy our own tickets.
The Walt Disney Company is worth $128.8 billion. It is not inconceivable that some of this money could be put to developing original concepts on modest budgets and allowing filmmakers creative autonomy instead of investing large sums into tried and tested content overseen by executives who work to a strictly commercial agenda.
"But will that work?" you ask - because I am only a child and have no filmmaking experience.
And I say: "I don't know, but it requires multiplex thinking. We must lay the foundation before we know exactly what films will be showing."
Then you say: "Ah, what do you know, anyway? You're just a kid who's being used by adults to push their message in the most emotionally manipulative way possible."
And then you elaborate on the ethics of this, but I stop listening because I am right and you don't know what you are talking about.
Disney's recent acquisition of 21st Century Fox has been seen by many as a harbinger for the decline of cinema. That the company will swallow up more and more media outlets until the Western world is dominated by bland, inoffensive content designed to be consumed rather than experienced on any meaningful or intellectually fulfilling level.
This may well be the case. We are at a point in history where anyone with an insight into the crisis that threatens cinema - or culture in general - must let their voice be heard, no matter how irritating it may be for fans of popular franchises, or unprofitable it proves for studios.
We must change our viewing habits immediately. The bigger the film's budget, the more important it is you stay away from the box office.
Parents will say: "Oh, we thought you liked Disney..." But I don't. I don't want you to assume what I like or don't like. I want you to pay for me to watch something else. I want you to feel my resentment. And I want you to get angry.
I want you to get as angry as I am. Because elephants never forget. And this elephant certainly won't.
