烂片证明利润可以成为电影中的一股向善力量

Alien is, at its core, a story of corporate greed run amok. The faceless Weyland-Yutani corporation’s desire to study the unknown creatures means it lies to its own crew and as a result, all but one (or, depending on how you count, two) die horribly.
从本质上讲，《异形》是一个企业贪婪横行的故事。不露面的 Weyland-Yutani 公司想要研究这些未知生物，这意味着它对自己的船员撒谎，结果，除了一个人（或者，取决于你怎么数，两个）之外，其他人都死得很惨。

There’s an easy joke — indeed, one I’ve made myself — that the struggles of many Hollywood studios are contained within the film. Hardworking directors, writers and actors are led astray by corporate greed. The results, while not quite as grisly as what happens to the crew of the Nostromo, are still pretty bad.
有个简单的笑话——事实上，我自己开了一个玩笑——许多好莱坞制片厂的挣扎都包含在这部电影中。勤奋的导演、编剧和演员被企业的贪婪引入歧途。结果虽然不像 Nostromo 船员的遭遇那么可怕，但仍然相当糟糕。

But the latest film in the franchise, Alien: Romulus, is the story of what happens when you don’t have enough corporate greed. An ugly and expensive bit of CGI trickery resurrects a dead actor at great expense, while the film’s final act, also lousy with expensive special effects, lacks meaningful scares.
但该系列的最新电影《异形：罗穆卢斯》讲述了当你没有足够的企业贪婪时会发生什么的故事。一个丑陋而昂贵的 CGI 诡计以巨大的代价使一个死去的演员复活，而电影的最后一幕，也因昂贵的特效而糟糕，缺乏有意义的恐惧。

The profitmaking urge may have been in the room when the studio agreed to make another Alien film, but it doesn’t seem to have stuck around long enough to prompt any searching questions, like “you want to spend how much to do what?”. Nor is the film alone in this. While watching The Marvels last summer, a film which imagined that I would have a photographic recall for the plot of a disposable blockbuster some four years ago, I found myself wondering what Disney’s notoriously hands-on management had actually been doing.
当工作室同意制作另一部《异形》电影时，盈利的冲动可能已经存在了，但它似乎并没有持续足够长的时间来引发任何搜索问题，例如“你想花多少钱做什么？这不仅仅是这部电影。去年夏天看《惊奇》（The Marvels）时，这部电影想象着我会为大约四年前的一部一次性大片的情节拍照，我发现自己在想，迪士尼臭名昭著的亲力亲为的管理层实际上在做什么。

The excessive spending and poor scripts on their various projects are downstream of well-aired difficulties at the top. From parks to pictures, no part of Disney is as well-run as it once was. It’s not surprising that a business that has been unable to manage its leadership succession also overspends on everything from CGI necromancy to made-for-streaming shows. Disney is not, at the moment, a company that does much well. But the problem is not confined to the House of Mouse.
他们各种项目的过度支出和糟糕的剧本是高层广为人知的困难的下游。从公园到图片，迪斯尼没有一个部分像以前那样经营得井井有条。毫不奇怪，一家无法管理其领导层继任的企业也在从 CGI 死灵术到流媒体节目的所有方面都超支。目前，迪士尼不是一家做得很好的公司。但问题并不局限于老鼠屋。

Moneymaking has always been central to the TV business. The only reason there was a Star Trek: The Next Generation is because, in the decades since its cancellation, the original series made a pretty packet on syndication. The very shape of these shows owes itself to the profit motive. They have neat three act structures so that TV channels can break for commercials.
赚钱一直是电视业务的核心。有《星际迷航：下一代》的唯一原因是，在它被取消后的几十年里，最初的系列在联合发行上取得了不错的成绩。这些节目的形状本身就归功于利润动机。他们有整洁的三幕结构，因此电视频道可以休息播放广告。

Compare that with Disney+’s latest Star Wars show, The Acolyte. Like The Next Generation, it was commissioned on the back of previous success stories. Unlike the Next Generation, episodes ranged in length from 28 minutes to around three quarters of an hour, generally lacked anything resembling a structure and were often dull. Its budget came in at $180mn and it was cancelled after one season. Disney’s streaming business has only just begun to report positive operating profit.
将其与 Disney+ 最新的星球大战节目 The Acolyte 进行比较。与 The Next Generation 一样，它是在以前的成功故事的基础上委托制作的。与《下一代》不同的是，剧集的长度从 28 分钟到大约四分之三小时不等，通常缺乏任何类似于结构的东西，而且往往很沉闷。它的预算为 180 百万美元，一个赛季后就被取消了。迪士尼的流媒体业务才刚刚开始报告正营业利润。

TV programmes and films made these days badly miss the voice of someone trying to keep costs low and episodes to time. This may well be why Friends continues to be so successful on streaming services two decades after going off the air.
如今制作的电视节目和电影严重错过了试图保持低成本和按时集数的人的声音。这很可能就是为什么《老友记》在停播二十年后继续在流媒体服务上如此成功的原因。

We should all therefore welcome the arrival of advertising tiers to the streamers, provided they make shows with proper act breaks, rather than going for the ITVX approach of treating an advert break like a terror attack that strikes without warning or regard for the plot.
因此，我们都应该欢迎流媒体广告层的到来，前提是他们在制作节目时有适当的行为中断，而不是采用 ITVX 的方法，将广告中断视为在没有警告或考虑情节的情况下发生的恐怖袭击。

The age of costly film and TV also has lessons for the rest of the corporate world. It’s a parable about the lack of cost control prompted by the era of ultra-low interest rates. More importantly, it is a reminder to remember your values.
昂贵的电影和电视时代也为其他企业界提供了借鉴。这是一个关于超低利率时代导致成本控制缺失的寓言。更重要的是，它提醒我们记住你的价值观。

I don’t mean in the sense of looking after your staff, though this is important too. I mean in the sense of remembering what it is that your business actually does and how it makes money. Yes, for studios part of this is commissioning high-profile films and TV shows. But a key aspect of making money is focusing on costs and quality.
我不是说照顾你的员工，尽管这也很重要。我的意思是记住您的企业实际做什么以及它是如何赚钱的。是的，对于工作室来说，其中一部分是委托制作备受瞩目的电影和电视节目。但赚钱的一个关键方面是关注成本和质量。

You can enjoy occasional success by doing the former and not the latter: just look at Alien: Romulus’s box office performance. But you can’t succeed consistently by neglecting it: that’s the broader story of Disney’s recent struggles, particularly in streaming.
您可以通过做前者而不是后者来享受偶尔的成功：看看 Alien： Romulus 的票房表现就知道了。但是，你不能通过忽视它来始终如一地成功：这就是迪士尼最近挣扎的更广泛故事，尤其是在流媒体方面。

Someone at Weyland-Yutani should have asked, how, exactly, the plan to make money from a nigh-invincible and hostile lifeform would have helped the crew of the Nostromo. In the same way, the person who sweats the costs and the profits of a film can result in a tighter, better product than the executive who signs off a project attached to a big name and then forgets about it. That is a more enduring, and useful, lesson for the business world than anything in the original Alien movie. It is also perhaps the only metric on which Alien: Romulus is the better film.
Weyland-Yutani 的某个人应该问，从几乎无敌且充满敌意的生命形式中赚钱的计划究竟会如何帮助 Nostromo 的船员。同样，为电影的成本和利润付出汗水的人可以比签署一个大牌项目然后忘记它的高管产生更紧凑、更好的产品。对于商业世界来说，这是一个比原版《异形》电影中的任何内容都更持久、更有用的教训。这也许也是《异形：罗穆卢斯》是更好的电影的唯一指标。

stephen.bush@ft.com