Making your own Hollywood Blockbuster

How-to articles and guides are always popular because everyone loves being told how to live their lives and then relishing in the feeling of completely ignoring said advice. So in the spirit of how-to articles I have come up with the most important one you'll ever read in your lives. 

Reading this guide very carefully will make you Michael Bay. It will literally turn you into a 50 year old white man with a knack for taking everyone else's money with minimum effort. Last time I checked, that's called living the American Dream.

To start things off like any respectable movie, you need a script. But since this is a Hollywood blockbuster, you actually don't. So on to more important things…

The Actors: People will only see your movie because their favourite actor is in it. Choosing the best flavour of the month actor is hard when people's opinion of a person changes as fast as they can type out 140 characters. But if there's one skill you absolutely need when making blockbusters it's the ability to leech off a bandwagon before all the competition. Right now, Chris Pratt and Channing Tatum are the big shots, so get them. If you can't get them, get someone who looks like them and hope they just confuse your film with the fifty others they're doing this summer. Remember: not getting sued is the first step to success.

Normally I would complain here about how actresses in blockbusters are marginalized and cast only based on their looks and not acting talent, but so are the guys. Nobody has acting talent in this part of town. 
That said, you can get away with hiring an unknown actress as a lead who says three lines in the entire movie and nobody would even bat an eye as long as she has a pretty face. So there's that.

The Poster: The next thing to work on is the poster. Make sure your lead actor is right at the centre and that his face covers the exact percentage of the poster as agreed upon in the contract. (This is a true fact by the way. I'm absolutely 100% not making up the contract thing. Look it up.) Put miscellaneous explosions all around and decide on a catchy name that looks cool with numbers next to it, like "Tryhard." If you're feeling particularly lazy and don't want to come up with an original name, just make a superhero movie.

The Trailer: Traditionally, this should spoil the entire plot but this is a summer blockbuster so there is no plot and I have written a paradox.

The Plot: Remember when I said that you don't need a script for a Hollywood blockbuster? I lied. It's actually the scriptwriters who are expendable. Professional writers? Pfft. Writers who get paid for writing scripts of summer blockbusters are bigger scammers than you'll ever be. The best way to look for the plot to your Hollywood blockbuster is to go to a kindergarten and look at the drawings the kids made during Draw Time. 
Alien Squid fighting a Giant Robot?  Found one.
Two Alien Squids fighting a Giant Robot?  Found the sequel.
 An army of frogs fighting an Alien Squid?  Squid: Origins.

Remakes: Do you have a movie that you watched with your friends and family a long time ago and have great nostalgic memories of? Do you want to completely butcher it and ruin the experience for everyone involved? If your answer is yes, what a time to be alive! Looking at the rate remakes are popping up, pretty soon you'll be making remakes of your remakes every two years. Easy money, easy life.

The Direction: An Oscar-winning movie comes together with the combined effort of a director, producers, cinematographer, casting director, production designer and many other people. Know what's an even better Oscar story? One man doing all that and succeeding. Get close-ups of your actors whenever you can so people can see them trying to keep a straight face while saying your great dialogue. Once you get past the first boring 15 minutes of your movie and start the action, remember, never let up. Follow this basic flow pattern for the next hour and a half.

Explosions>Shaky Cam>Explosions>Shaky Cam>Explosions>Shaky Cam>Explosions>Someone Dies>Coldplay music>Shaky Cam>Explosions.

If you slow down even for one second, you have lost the attention of the audience and your movie is a failure. If you manage to do all the things in this guide absolutely perfectly, congratulations on becoming a millionaire. Thank me later.