The Trouble with Nollywood.

Beautiful or handsome face? Check. Awesome body? Check. Luxurious lifestyle? Double check! These are all features of a Nollywood actors and actresses. These talented individuals have inarguably earned themselves this position of admiration. They have had to climb to the very top of their careers through a dint of hardwork and possibly a very big dose of luck. However, the current trajectory of Hollywood does these talented individuals a great disservice, it shames Nollywood and has a trickling-down effect on the identity of the Run, Karz, Jaal, Om whole country. 

It goes without saying that the media, both the entertainment media and the news media play a very crucial role in shaping how the country are perceived in the outside world.
  The media are used to highlight a nation’s strength and also address their weaknesses. In Bollywood, a part of the movie is often dedicated to portray just how the Indian society struggles to address gender inequality. Thus, the protagonist who is usually a male is seen in one part of the movie defending a woman’s honour. This is so pervasive that four out of every 10 indian movie must project this theme somewhere in the movie. Movies like Run, Karz, Jaal, Om, Commando: One Man Army are littered with these themes. Indeed, it is basically an attempt by Bollywood to address the societal posers in a society where women rights are still topical issues and the rape statistics are at the roof tops. 

The Times of India posited in an article on the 1^st of July 2014 that on a daily basis, 93 women are raped in India, leading to it being referred to as the rape capital of the world. Bollywood has often found a way to address topical societal issues through the movies. Through their movies, we have come to accept that not only do they boast the most beautiful women across the globe but we also have realized that the pace of their development have been nothing short of supersonic. In their movies, we see the supersonic train, well-tarred roads, efficient hospital management systems and advanced technological strides like in Ra-one. I have often been taken to task on my appreciation of what people called film tricks or science fiction, I have tried to answer that science fiction of today are science facts of tomorrow. Indian movie industry, Bollywood has positioned themselves to pro-actively preempt history and development, to act as a societal conscience and to participate in societal debates. In Hollywood, they are considered as vanguard of history, partner in development, societal critic and forecaster. Their roles have been recognized and they have often been supported by the government as they continue to make movies which are often larger than themselves. One of such movies is The Eagle Eye which expertly predicted the Edward Snowman CIA leak which hit the news media years after it had hit the entertainment media.

This begs the question, why has Nollywood been unable to replicate these positive impacts in Nigeria? Why is it trapped in banalities and recycled clichés?  Why is the Nollywood enmeshed in the stench of her own mess? What obtains are awfully long, teeth-grindingly ponderous, half-baked, poorly-planned and even more poorly-executed movies often lacking in drive, distinction and entertainment value. Nollywood’s attempt to portray the societal issues is often reduced to caricatures. You would think that an industry that could be accused of producing a monstrosity like Aki and Paw Paw Sisters would suffer reduced sales and ill-fortune as a wake-up call towards diligence but the reverse is the case as the stock of Nollywood continues to rise.  It has been recognized as the second largest movie industry in the world ahead of the United States, Hollywood and only behind India’s Bollywood. As recently as in 2013, Nollywood was rated as the third most valuable film industry in the world with gross revenue of $10 billion (#1.72 trillion), placed only behind India’s Bollywood and the US’s Hollywood.  A cursory look at the aforementioned facts may present a virile, functional movie industry with strong value but the truth is far from the presentation.  The figures are boosted not just by the quality of the movies but mostly by an extremely supportive and over-indulgent population who patronize the movies irrespective of the quality or its lack thereof. Their case is also helped by the cheapness of the films which sometimes can be bought for a song (a nollywood movie costs less than fifty-five cents). Thus, buying all the parts of a Nollywood movie does not cost more than $5. The figure may sound respectable until we are reminded that a full Nollywood movie is often divided into eight different parts of monumental disappointment. Thus, the numbers only tell half of the story.

The features of Nollywood movies are almost uniform across all the movies. They start with a lot of advertisements of producer’s movies which last between fifteen to twenty minutes, then takes a further five minutes to write the names of the actors, actresses as well as all those who have a part to play in the production of the movie. Then the flick starts with the general theme of the movie which could be predicted from the name of the flick itself. Furthermore, the viewers are treated to either least twenty minutes of a traditional wedding, shopping at a boutique, prayers, singing by a known or an unknown artiste or a dance club. Yet somehow, the producers manage to elongate a storyline that would not have taken more than eighty minutes to six or eight hours and the processes are repeated ad nauseam ad infinitum. These frustrations are interspersed with some basic negligence like poor grammar, oversight and implausibility. I was once watching a movie with a friend, a traditional epic movie set presumably at the time before the coming of the Europeans, yet we were treated to the sight of a bottle of coca cola at the background. My sister and I saw one where “truth” was grossly misspelt in a movie starring John Dumelo and Mercy Johnson. It could then be said without the fear of equivocation that quality has been sacrificed at the altar of commercialism.  A typical Hollywood movie takes between nine to eighteen months to edit and perform. Depending on the scale of the project, a movie can demand more time and as they spend more time, so too do they spend more money. A movie like Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings trilogy took seven years to develop; gulped an estimated $281 million and grossed approximately $3 billion has become an example of the fact that quality pays. The time it took to produce that trilogy would serve to produce over 180 Nollywood movies and that single movie grossed a one-third of the whole Nollywood’s worth ( A Nollywood flick reportedly takes less than two weeks).

There is also the pervasive lack of patience in the Nollywood movie industry. Movies are sometimes produced without a thorough adherence to the scripts with the effect that some movies lose its direction and purpose. This is amplified by the moral confusion in Nollywood. It is said that every movie has its moral lesson. Movies are meant to be didactic and to reinforce societal values. In this particular regards, Nollywood could be said to be self-defeating. In many movies, gangsterism, ritualism and materialism is not only advertised but also inadvertently encouraged. Poverty is denigrated. Movies like Vanity upon Vanity and Billionaire’s Club are examples of movies where the lessons are either lost in the plot or are emasculated in the pomp of wealth. Some movies do not have lessons at all and gets one wondering how they even got censored.

It is not all doom and gloom. There have been some rays of light in the otherwise grim Nollywood. The much-maligned film industry has managed to weave some interesting movies, the foremost of which is Igodo: The Land of The Living Dead a tale of an epic, heroic journey into the evil forest. The movie gained global acclaim and would inspire several copycats like Ikoro, Egg of Life and Ijele. Another of the impressive attempt is The Figurine which garnered rave reviews. The problem is that these good attempts are merely intersperses between the consistent dreadfulness. There is the need to invest in better movies and go for quality rather than quantity. There is need for plot variation; the clichés are now getting tired. The movie industry is built on imagination and creativity and Nollywood could do with an injection of such.