Cameraman: “I forgot to take the lens cap off”
Director: “Don’t worry we’ll fix it in post”

The Great Gatsby is a CGI fuckfest that is nothing more than an empty container filled with pop songs. They tried so hard to make it appealing to a younger audience with making ever scene loud and bright. Every 20 min a new song from Kanye or Jay-z (one of the movie’s producers) is thrown at you. The story itself played during the jazz-era. Is the extra revenue really more important than telling a believable story?

And even without a computer generated Mise-en-scene and pop songs, they never got the gist of the novel’s story. They took all the subtext out of the story and created a generic love triangle movie. The novel was a cautionary tale about the downside of the American dream, for the rebellious youth living in the roaring twenties. The slow decadence of Gatsby and the depersonalization of Daisy, becoming a substitution for Gatsby’s longings for the American dream. And class inequalities. Gatsby is sadly just a two-dimensional character in this movie, there is nothing more to it.

I think when you have a good story, you don’t have to do too much to make it appealing for a younger audience. They are not stupid and their attention span is longer than 10 minutes. You could instead focus on telling the story in a interesting way and writing good characters. 

P.S: I noticed reference to wilder’s sunset blvd with the body floating in the swimming pool, but its more of an insult than a tribute. I can’t wait till they remake Citizens Kane with pop songs and 99% CGI.