Hello cadets! It has been an interesting week and after a couple of even more interesting conversations I felt we were due for a slight comparison rant. Let me preface this with the fact that I absolutely love movies, they are great for escaping reality and inciting emotion, it’s escapism at its finest. That being said, I cannot stand film critics, overly critical people, and the dreaded elitist.
I understand that I am a bit of a critic myself but there is a vast difference between myself and most of the critics in the news and magazines. I am aware that I do not like dramatic love stories and depression inducing movies, that being said I do not review movies such as the Notebook or Pursuit of Happiness purely because I have a strong bias. That being said I hate hate hate critics who review action movies and complain at the lack of realism, or watch an animated movie and nitpick at it for being animated. I feel if you go in with bias against a movie that you should have a disclaimer at the beginning of your review. I would like to see two reviews, one for diehard movie fans and another for the casual movie-goer; to me it just makes sense.
That brings me to my next bit of disdain, overly critical people. I understand you want to get the most for your money when you see a film but if you want extreme realism please do not see any comedies, action movies, animated movies, in fact, just go watch a nice documentary. Movies are typically fiction and therefore have many fictional elements; bending physics to fit a story is one of many tactics a film may use. I understand it can be irksome at times but instead of getting angry try to laugh at the obvious flaws, it’s just a movie, no need to get worked up over minor details or slight plot holes. To me a movie is a method of escaping reality, no need to drag reality with you into a fantasy world.
Last but definitely not least is the elitist. These are the people who declare a movie that is a remake, reimagining, port from paper to film, etc… as awful based on a brief synopsis and trailer or other people’s opinions (a.k.a. mob mentality). Again, I can understand the why but sometimes the hyper-critical hysteria in bashing a movie is just too much, especially if it’s not even out yet. These people tend to get angry at things such as the Thor movie because it wasn’t the version of the story they liked, saw it in the theater anyway and then bashed it and declared how awful it was despite the fact that they technically supported the movie by seeing it in theaters. Another aspect that made me a bit batty was the fact that many people refused to see the Watchmen and spoke poorly about it because Alan Moore refused to give it a chance and declared war on the film. To me that sounds like a bunch of followers who were incapable of forming their own opinion lest they displease the creator. I will give Moore a lot of leeway as that was his brainchild and his legacy but that being said he should have known that this movie was a long time coming due to the comic’s legendary status. Either way, people need to chill out and learn to enjoy it, it’s not like the movie Priest (now there was a travesty).
All in all I feel people have started to look for more than entertainment in movies. You can learn important lessons or finally see your favorite hero as he or she would be in our world but the reality is that movies are, in fact, not reality. Just because you didn’t learn a life lesson does not make the movie bad, and if you go into an animated film expecting realism you must have missed the part where they said animated. That being said I will continue watching comedies, action flicks, and B movies because it’s an hour and a half to three hours that I was able to let myself be absorbed into a different world and for a little while shifted my focus to something fun. That being said, this is War Kitten signing off and informing you that if I see any sparkling vampires while I’m in Seattle I cannot control my impulse for vampire population control.
