A hollywood studio acquires the rights to a book to make a movie version of it, but one of the producers tries to explain that it wouldn’t make sense to make a violent summer blockbuster out of it. Without even finding out why it wouldn’t make sense, they tell him to do it anyways because those types of movies make a lot of money. They hire Michael Bay because he is known for making mindless big budget summer blockbuster movies such as Transformers and Armageddon. Bay then proceeds to create an extremely violent movie about a female spy who indulges in killing and torture with the requisite explosions and bloodshed.
The reader then discovers that the book the producers acquired the rights to was Harriet The Spy, a delightful children’s book about an 11 year old girl from New York who would like to be a spy when she grows up. The book’s content has nothing to do with what the movie portrays. This is a commentary on the seemingly singular focus the big Hollywood studios have on making money rather than meaningful art. Instead of making an accurate portrayal of Louise Fitzhugh’s story that could have entertained children and their families, the producers instead chose to go after maximum profits by exploiting America’s voracious appetite for mindless violent entertainment.
