Some Movies Make Me Sad for All the Wrong Reasons

Every once in a while I watch some news stories on the television. Practically every time I see a news story someone else is watching t.v. and has the news on, I don't seek out the news, but this past week I saw a brief story on one of the California news channels about a church offering people lessons on how to use handguns. I would link to any information regarding this story, but my lazy Google searches have returned no evidence of this story, so you'll have to take my word for it or just dismiss this as something stupid from my demented mind. The choice is yours. I saw this story and thought about the advertisement I see all over the place for the new Jason Bourne movie that just came out. I'm aware that the newest Bourne movie isn't getting many favorable reviews early on and I haven't seen it, but I think I know what the next Bourne movie should be about. I'll lay it out for you right here. See Jason Bourne as you've never seen him before in religious garb. This summer Jason is all in for the church in Bourne Again.

Comedy!

Alright, I digress from that idea which I will not describe with any adjectives. What I would like to discuss with myself here are movies, an entertainment medium that I very much enjoy, and a sad trend in the goal of movies. The movies I like best consist of an interesting story with a character or characters that the viewer actually gives a damn about. Now there are differences in what makes a good movie that are completely depending on the genre of movie. What makes a good comedy is completely different from what makes a good horror movie and what makes a good drama is completely different from what makes a good sci-fi adventure, etc. Also I'd like to take the time to acknowledge that I am fully aware that I'm a moron before I delve further into this, but I am sad that some movie makers have foregone making movies with good stories in an effort to push an agenda or pander to a certain group of people, or appeal to the largest amount of people. I've become a fan of Bret Easton Ellis' podcast recently and I particularly find his thoughts on movie making today interesting, especially when he touches on how ideology is trumping aesthetics a lot now. I know nobody cares what I think because I'm a nobody, but just because a movie is about a real life issue of importance doesn't mean that the movie is good. I feel like if a movie is about slavery you are expected to like it regardless of how good it is or else you're a racist. If the movie is about an empowered female lead and you don't like the movie, then you're a sexist. How about making a good movie?

Adventure!

Personally I'd like to see all the pandering and agenda pushing go away. I watch movies for entertainment. Sometimes I want to go on an adventure, sometimes I want to laugh until my eyes tear up, sometimes I want to get a scare that makes it hard to sleep at night, and sometimes I want to have whatever kind of an experience dramas engender, a dramatic experience I guess. I want buzz surrounding a movie because of the interesting story it's going to tell, but now a lot of the big headlines about movies have to do with social issues and to me social issues and entertainment do not go together. For example, I recently saw a report about the new Star Trek movie before it came out about how one of the characters is gay. All I could think about was why in the hell does that matter? I don't see characters in movies and instantly think I wonder if that guy wants to make out with the female character or take it in the ass. Especially in a movie like Star Trek where I can't imagine how a character's sexual orientation could matter. Then at the end of last week I read the intro to an article about a new Rocketeer movie. I remember watching that movie as a little kid and enjoying it so I was thinking "oh cool, there's going to be a new Rocketeer movie!" I only made it through one paragraph that said the new Rocketeer is going to be an African-American woman before I stopped reading. Again, why does that matter? Why is that the highlight of a new Rocketeer movie? I feel like whoever is making this movie is expecting praise just because of who is playing the lead role. The safety net has already been cast, if you don't like the movie, then you are a sexist and a racist. But obviously you can't have an opinion on a movie that hasn't come out yet.

Horror!

An important thing to take into account here, too is my age. I'm in the mid-twenties, twenty-six to be exact, so my overall scope is limited. I can't comment on the movies trends from decades ago, I'm merely reacting to what's going on now, but I believe this is a recent trend that has grown stronger over the past decade or so. The new Ghostbusters movie fits into this agenda pushing trend. I haven't seen it and I don't plan to because after seeing the trailers it simply didn't look like a movie I'd want to see. For one I wouldn't call myself a Ghostbusters fan, I've seen the first one which is good, but I never thought it was one of the best movies I'd seen or a personal favorite. Another reason I won't go see it is because of how Sony Pictures treated the people online for disliking the trailer and expressing negative opinions. Of course it's not a good thing to post hurtful comments, but remember this is the internet we're speaking about and as BanditIncorporated said, you can't out troll the internet trolls. Plus those people should be the target audience for a Ghostbusters movie. Lastly, I won't go watch this movie because from the reviews I've listened to the humor is not the humor of the first Ghostbusters movie and there is no horror element like the first Ghostbusters movie. Those two things are really what made the first Ghostbusters movie the popular movie it is. From what I have garnered from reviews is that Ghostbusters 2016 is a forgettable story centered around a whole bunch of dumb people with a whole lot of CGI. Simply, it's not a movie I'm interested in watching. I also get the impression that some of the people who like Ghostbusters 2016 like it because the men in the movie are stupid and the main characters are female and there's a part in the movie where the Ghostbusters shoot a ghost in the balls region. I hope my impression is wrong because it saddens me if people like a movie for those reasons.

Action!

I also believe that the newest Star Wars movie titled The Force Awakens is part of the we have to please certain people trend. This is a movie I have seen and if you've read my previous post, then you know I don't like it. In short, I didn't like The Force Awakens because I thought the story was weak and rushed along with lots of character issues for both old and new characters. I'm just a nobody, dumbass, but I could come up with some more interesting ideas for episode seven than what was in The Force Awakens which was more like a remake of the original Star Wars movies but a little different. Enough with these reboots and remakes of good movies of the past with new spins and bring back new ideas with fresh plot lines and characters.

Satire!

On an unrelated note, I've started a new blog dedicated to dumb short stories that cook inside my demented mind. I give you Absurdly Twisted Shorts! Follow the link if you'd like to read my dumb crap. Just made my first published post the other day and I might add some artwork to it which will most likely be very bad, but artwork nonetheless.

Drama!

Well, that's all I've got for now. Have a wonderful day!

Sci-Fi!

How Good is The Force Awakens?

Let's attack the highly debated Star Wars franchise on the offensive. The Force Awakens is my least favorite installment in the Star Wars movie franchise. Star Wars popular opinion states that the original trilogy is good, but go ahead and talk crap about Return of the Jedi, and the prequels exist as an utter load of garbage. Now I do agree that the original trilogy is the best, headlined by The Empire Strikes back, a gloriously good movie, but I don't hate on Return of the Jedi and I don't think The Force Awakens is good, much less better than the prequels. Having watched and read many reviews and takes on The Force Awakens over the last few months I've noticed the first point of discussion I'd like to tackle: a plethora of people annoyed that people didn't like the prequels because they weren't anything like the original trilogy and now people don't like The Force Awakens because it's too much like the original trilogy. I don't believe that's the issue here and in order to come to that conclusion we need to look at what the prequels represent and what the new trilogy of Star Wars movies represent.

Since the prequels tell George Lucas' Star Wars story from the beginning, I'd like to look at that trilogy first. Essentially the prequels represent the rise of the Dark Side threat in the galaxy through Darth Sidius (Senator Palpatine) and Darth Vader, and the dismantling of the Jedi, the protectors of the galaxy. Now by no means is this well done in the prequels, however, if you take the story's concepts, then it fits into the original trilogy just fine. I don't believe anyone has any qualms over the overarching story of Darth Sidius seducing Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side while rising to power politically. The issue with the prequels is in the execution. All three prequel installments have major issues that deserve all the criticism they receive and no, the prequels are nothing like the original trilogy, but I don't think they were intended to. The prequels show how Palpatine rose to power and turned Anakin Skywalker into his apprentice. Episodes four through six tell the story of the return of the Jedi to protect the galaxy once again by vanquishing the Empire and it's Dark Side gifted leaders. Two trilogies telling two different stories are not going to have the exact same arcs with the same elements and same tone/feel. All the bad that people bring up about the prequels, in my experience, have to do with execution, not so much the overarching story. I do agree that in comparison to the original trilogy, the prequels are not good movies, but I would argue that the problem with the prequels lies in the execution of the story telling.

In comparison to the prequels, the new Star Wars trilogy, now in the hands of corporate giant Disney, is much more abstract because complete freedom exists in the direction of the story. After the original trilogy came out, labeled as episode four through six, it makes sense that episodes one through three would show how the Star Wars universe got to episode four as previously discussed. Then at the end of Return of the Jedi, the conclusion of the original trilogy (episode six), the Jedi assisted the rebels in overthrowing the Empire and it's quest to rule the galaxy by taking down the overseeing leader Darth Sidius and his apprentice Darth Vader. Return of the Jedi ends on a happy note with Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbaka, Lando, etc. surviving the war in space, land, and on spaceship and everyone rejoices with parties galore! From a moviegoers perspective all is well in the Star Wars galaxy, good guys win. If anyone wants to continue the Star Wars saga from that point forward there's a lot of freedom. Now we can finally get into The Force Awakens.

The Force Awakens is titled Star Wars Episode VII and takes place about 30 years after the events of Return of the Jedi with all our heroes from the previous trilogy still breathing. Calling this movie episode seven means that it is a continuation of the first six movies, but I take issue here because The Force Awakens doesn't tell a new story. The problem is not that The Force Awakens is too much like the original trilogy, the problem is that it is the original trilogy, most specifically Episode IV: A New Hope. I know that a countless number of people have pointed out the plot similarities between the original trilogy and The Force Awakens, but it's an issue that cannot be ignored. In terms of style and feel, I don't think the original trilogy and The Force Awakens have much in common at all, all the commonalities lie in the plot which is the reason people criticize the movie. The Force Awakens is more a remake of A New Hope than a continuation of the saga. I will not go over all the similarities in the plot, there are plenty of videos on YouTube on that subject, I just wanted to point out that The Force Awakens suffers from borrowing too much from the original trilogy and telling the same story we've already experienced. We'll have to wait for the rest of the trilogy to come out before passing final judgement on the overarching story, but I take issue with that direction: no one knows what Luke Skywalker is up to, the lead villain Kylo Ren already suffered defeat at the hand of the protagonist, and is the New Order just another name for the Empire? What was the point of the movie? What is The Force Awakens about? The plot and story of The Force Awakens did not peak my interest in a what's going to happen next way. After the Episode IV: A New Hope we knew that Luke's father was a Jedi and Ben Kenobi had been a mentor to Anakin Skywalker. We knew that Ben Kenobi told Luke that Darth Vader had murdered Anakin and at the end of the movie Vader takes down Kenobi. We knew that the Empire had been set back by the destruction of the Death Star at the hands of the rebels, but the Empire had not been destroyed. Luke tells Ben Kenobi that he wants to follow in his father's footsteps and become a Jedi Knight. We know that going forward we'll see Luke's path of struggle to Jedi Knighthood and  the rebels' uphill battles to stop the Empire for good. There's a general sense of what's going to happen in the next installments. As for the prequels, we knew Episode II would be a continuation of the Anakin Skywalker story as well as Palpatine's rise and his attempts to dismantle the Jedi. The story of The Force Awakens leaves so many unanswered questions that it's hard to draw any conclusions about where the story is going. Since The Force Awakens tells an extremely similar story to A New Hope, I'm guessing the rest of the new Disney Star Wars trilogy will be about the rebels/Jedi going against the power of the New Order who want to conquer the galaxy and the next installment will probably be called something like Star Wars Episode VIII: The New Order Retaliates.

After walking out of the theater at the end of The Force Awakens, I remember thinking quite hard about what I thought of the movie. At first my reaction was that it was just alright, but I felt disingenuous even giving it an alright. The Force Awakens, at it's core, is a very hollow film that really meant nothing at all to me. The story was very familiar and I couldn't find a reason to care about anything that had happened. The movie felt like a nonstop roller coaster ride rushing from scene to scene without any reason to stop and think about what happened or how it made me feel, never mind giving any explanation for what had happened. The Force Awakens relies on references to the original trilogy and characters from the original trilogy to plow through an uninspired story. I think The Force Awakens suffers from lack of an original, well thought out story poorly developed new characters. I found the new characters rushed into the plot and contradictory to established personalities/skills at times, but these are stories for another time (see what I did there).I wanted to establish my view on The Force Awakens on a macro level before getting into the precise details of why I'm not a fan of the film. Also stumbled across a great article about what The Force Awakens is about, if you're interested and have some time to spare click here to read it! In conclusion, I think The Force Awakens is a below average movie and, as previously stated, my least favorite Star Wars movie. I'm also fully aware that I'm a moron so no need to take any of this seriously. If I ever get around to blogging some more about Star Wars, I'm thinking of writing about the moments in The Force Awakens that took me out of the movie in a "what the hell?" kind of way and an exploration of the characters new and old. Thanks for reading!

One Man, Two Masterpieces

Over the past few months, an excessively large amount of free time has provided me the opportunity to explore one of my personal favorite expressions of art: movies. More specifically, I watched two insanely well made and entertaining movies directed by Ridley Scott, Alien and Blade Runner. These two movies are absolutely amazing and on my list of all time favorites (that has never been compiled). I find that movies today and recent history don't have the same kind of magic that Alien and Blade Runner have, making me feel kind of like an old curmudgeon claiming that "they don't make movies like they used to." But in all honesty, I feel that the style of movie portrayed in these two Ridley Scott classics is a lost art. Unfortunately I don't think I'll ever see another movie like Alien ever again. What I am going to do here, is break down what, in my opinion, made Blade Runner and Alien so damn good. If you haven't seen these movies, I would suggest reading no further than here because some of the things I write about will probably ruin certain things that should be experienced when watching the movie for the first time (spoiler-esque stuff).

Let's begin with Alien, a near perfect horror movie, at least in my estimation. First thing I want to say, I love this movie. What I really enjoy about Alien, and Blade Runner, derives from the era these movies were made, 1970s and 1980s respectively. With low tech special effects at their disposal and no CGI, these movies focused on creating a good, solid story that makes you think, and in Alien's case, does a masterful job at creating tension. Let's take a step back, though, and begin with the trailer for Alien.

Fantastic is the word that comes to mind when I watch the Alien trailer. No words are uttered, none of the plot is given away, but the trailer leaves the viewer with a sense of intrigue, a wonder of what the heck is going on. Many trailers today give away far too much of the plot or show too many of the funny parts. Most importantly, the Alien trailer doesn't show any glimpse of the Alien. The sense of wonder and cause for fear only revealed in the actual movie. I wasn't alive when Alien came out in theaters, but I wish I could have had the experience of seeing this movie for the first time on the big screen with no idea what the movie was about. The title Alien itself is fantastic. Working as a noun or adjective, the word "alien" has a double meaning as the title for the movie. The title coupled with an outstanding trailer make practically a perfect marketing tool, and I didn't even mention the insanely good tag line "In space no one can hear you scream." But I digress, let us look at what makes the movie so good.

The plot of Alien is incredibly simplistic: a crew of seven people aboard a commercial towing vessel (the Nostromo) are waken prematurely out of hyper-sleep when the ship detects a distress beacon on a foreign planet. The crew investigates, one is member, Kane, is attacked by a facehugging thing, brought back on the ship. An extraterrestrial being bursts from his chest and terror ensues. The plot is simple and easy to follow. I would also like to note how there are only seven people on the Nostromo which allows the story to build personalities around the characters. It gives us a reason to give a crap about what's going on. I personally love Parker, played by Yaphet Kotto. In the opening scenes up until the incident, each character's personality is built, how they speak, how they react, sense of humor, those types of things.

C'mon man, the food ain't that bad

Good stories, whether movies, books, short stories, whatever, allow you to connect with the characters, make you give a damn about them. Then the next fantastic aspect following the initial character development is the tension building. When the crew finds the downed ship on LV-426, there's this steady decent into darkness, where you're wondering when the heck is something going to happen. Even as Kane peers at the mysterious looking eggs, the subsequent facehugger was something no one had ever seen before and goes straight for Kane's face. Remember, too, that this movie came out in 1979 and no creature shots had been revealed. I think that's incredibly awesome!

From the time the Nostromo crew sets down on LV-426 the tension continues to mount until the movie comes to an end, where only Ripley and Jonesy the cat make it out alive. One by one the alien takes out the crew. There are no overlong action sequences or battles, just overpowering extraterrestrial rape? Why bring up rape? Well, the only thing more terrifying than getting raped, is getting raped by a clown. And the only thing that might be more terrifying than getting raped by a clown might be getting raped by the xenomorph in Alien. Discussions of Alien have covered practically all aspects of the movie including what the alien does to its pray. In Alien, you never see the violence, you have no idea what in the hell it's doing to the victim. Then you also notice that the bodies are never left behind. What is happening to these people? The concept that the alien in a way rapes it's victim adds to the terror created in the movie. Even if you go back to the facehugger, what does it do? It jumps on the victim's face and puts it's proboscis-like tube down their throat while wrapping it's tail around the neck. That is damn horrifying!

There's also this sweet deleted scene that indicates the alien isn't killing its prey:

I'd like to think that this scene was not included in the final cut of the film for pacing reasons. The movie does have wonderful pacing and it probably just didn't fit. However, I choose to believe that what's seen in this scene is what is happening to the alien's victims. Ripley just doesn't discover the cocoons that the alien has been creating. Again, this just adds to the terror in the movie, these people are attacked by the alien, who the hell knows what the alien does to them, and then it cocoons them. Then you add in that this foreign creature cannot be killed, the android even calling it the "perfect organism." That's horror done right.

Now let's switch gears to the other Ridley Scott classic, Blade Runner. This movie is straight up science fiction gold. This movie, like Alien relied on something outside of giant action scenes and crazy special effects that didn't exist when the movie was made. Blade Runner relies on a great story to build a memorable movie. Set in future Los Angeles, blade runners are hunting down a group of replicants, the Nexus-6, who have gone rogue and come back to earth to find their creator. Replicants are androids, and the Nexus-6 are a particularly advanced model. Please stop reading and go watch Blade Runner if you haven't seen it. Without going through the entire plot to this movie, what makes it great is the realizations of both the Nexus-6 replicants and blade runner Deckard, played by Harrison Ford.

Once you've seen the whole movie and taken some time to think about it, you realize that the Nexus-6 replicants want the answers to the same questions we humans have. The Nexus-6 seek out their creator and want to know why they were created, why the are here, and how long will they live. While this movie is made much better, I believe Ridley Scott was attempting to tell this story from the human perspective in Prometheus. You get all these questions raised by a mechanical race created by man and at the same time there is this kind of strange thing going on in the background making you wonder if Deckard, the blade runner tasked with hunting down these replicants, is actually a replicant himself. The movie makes you think beyond the events of the movie. I'd now like to end this post the same way that Blade Runner ends: