The other day I was, against my will, watching Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III. It's fairly standard Hollywood action movie pablum, except for Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as Owen Davian. Also, it's worth noting that, had he worn a dark shirt to the Vatican, the IMF plan would have been screwed. So much rests on what you wear, which is why I choose to go nude all the time.

More disturbing personal revelations after the jump!

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Anyways, while leaving the theater, I got into a conversation about the prohibitive cost of making a film like the one I had just seen. I realized it must have taken hundreds of construction workers, makeup artists, cameramen, stunt men, caterers, location scouts, digital effects specialists and, I dunno, gaffers or whatever it is those guys are called. (I'm pretty sure some of the job titles in the film industry were thought up while under the influence of the Sauce. I mean, what the hell is a Best Boy, or a Key Grip? Cheap wine has a lot to answer for, if you ask me.) And, surprise, these people don't work for free. Oh, I've forgotten to mention actors and directors wages, not to mention the cost of props - some of which have to be bought in bulk as they are blow up with each take. This is obviously very expensive when you're, say, blowing up a luxury SUV with an air-to-surface missile while the male lead scrambles out from under it. Then there's advertising, which I won't even get into because it would soon become apparent I know jack-shit about it. While there are some ways to mitigate some of the costs (CGI jumps to mind), it is nonetheless mind-bogglingly expensive to make a move with production values like Mission: Impossible III.

And the same thing happens with video games. Think about it – how much did Microsoft spend on marketing for Halo 2? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it was probably more that the entire combined GDPs of a bunch of those little Baltic countries which were apparently named during the Great Vowel Shortage of '45. By way of contrast, consider that classic games like Pong had advertising budgets around $5.23. Canadian.

It's not just the costs of marketing that has increased since the early days of gaming either. As gaming technology becomes more and more powerful, consumers demand more and more from it – they want to be able to make out individual facial hairs on the main character's face, or see their reflection in their enemy's sunglasses. The level of graphical and audio detail that gamers demand from their games these days has exponentially increased the number of hours of professional labor required to produce these games. This, coupled with gaming's rapidly expanding audience, has made video games into big business, prey to the same innovation-stifling factors as the film industry. It is simply too expensive to roll the dice on a brilliantly creative game that might flop worse that Ishtar.

Still, the situation isn't entirely bad for fans of movies and games that are more than recycled schlock. Just as technology has, to an extent, handicapped innovation in these industries in the biggest markets, it has also produced incredible tools that allow anyone with too much free time on their hands to make a game or movie – with digital video cameras and film editors like iMovie, any moron with a couple hundred bucks and a laptop can make a film. It's even cheaper for games: for about $500, you can buy a fully-functional game engine licensed for commercial use. (Check this out if you don't believe me.)

Cause and effect work in strange ways sometimes. In an era when big-budget entertainment is becoming less and less original and creative by the year, small, independent developers and directors are using low-cost technological solutions to make their visions realities. The big entertainment corporations like EA and 20^th Century Fox are now mostly stuck on artistic repeat. New ideas are now, for better or for worse, the realm of the little guy.