As I fork over the ridiculous $20 for a movie ticket to the person at the ticket box, I find myself reflecting on my movie watching ways.
What was I about to see? Why did I even want to see it? Was it really going to be worth the $20 and two hours of my life I could never get back?
With those thoughts in mind, before I even sat down in the theater, I realized I already knew the plot of the movie I was about to see. I could already predict the ending, whether it be the characters falling in love at the end, or the world and all its inhabitants being saved a second before their demise.
There are no surprises in the film industry anymore, especially if you’re a reader.
Today, most films are adaptations of novels or comic books. The popular saying, “the book was better,” is not lost on me and seems to ring true the majority of the time.
Movies like “Watchmen” and “Spiderman” have been disappointing for fans that read the graphic novels and comics. Not to mention the story lines are exactly the same, leaving little to anticipate.
What’s worse is trying to cram an entire novel into a two-hour time frame leaving much lost in translation, leaving those watching feeling empty and unsatisfied.
The 3-D visual format craze is a whole other ball of wax that’s fooling the general public into believing they’re going to experience something that’s never been done before.
Wake up, people, 3-D was invented back in the early 1900’s by the Lumiere brothers as shown in the remakes of their first set of films, “Entrance of a Train In a Station.”
“Avatar” with it’s screeching dragons and life force trees may be a bit more exciting than a train chugging through a station, but it’s not the first time audiences have had objects seemingly flying towards them through a screen.
Then there’s the vampires. Dracula has been around since 1897 and if I remember correctly, his skin certainly did not “sparkle.”
Modern interpretations of vampires, zombies and werewolves just don’t give them the respect they deserve. Creatures once feared, roaming the night, stalking their human pray now prance in daisy fields and walk in the sun.
But who’s truly to blame for the film industries’ lack of imagination?
Human beings have always taken an interest in the same subjects time and time again, whether the hot topic of the day is sex, money, politics or religion.
The same topics have been discussed and debated over and over again, and never cease to entertain the minds of the masses.
And what do we really want to watch anyway? It’s been the Hollywood tradition to churn out passive, easy to watch films that the general public can digest without much thought, and they’ve made plenty of money doing it.
If we really wanted to watch new and exciting films, ones with themes we’ve never thought of before that would expand our minds and truly make us think, I’m sure Hollywood would make them. They’d do anything for a dollar.