Baby Games

You would think it’d be tiresome by now, wouldn’t you, the hand-wringing and dire pronouncements about how superhero movies are KILLING CINEMA! 

AND CULTURE!

AND THE WORLD!

Like, these are movies, man, is it all that dramatic?

Really?

I have talked about this in other blogs and as I said there, I get the dislike for the films and shows and appreciate the place it’s coming from. 

But it doesn’t make the fear true. 

1. Let’s stop treating audiences like idiotic children who don’t know what they want. They do. We don’t have to agree with it, but they do. If they rush out to see the new TOP GUN 80 times to make it one of the biggest movies of all time then so be it. It ain’t for me but hey, that’s life. Let’s stop acting though as if audiences don’t know better than to go see superhero films. Just because they aren’t into your work doesn’t mean that they don’t know what they like…and don’t. 
2. Don’t blame the movies and shows and, well, ART for Hollywood’s myopia. If Hollywood decides that they won’t support anything other than what is making money AT THAT MOMENT then that’s on the business, not the art. I can totally appreciate how frustrating it must be to be a creative who has projects that you want to do but can’t because they don’t fit into a small box. I can appreciate it because that’s the life of a writer. Unless you get a foot in the door or catch lightning in a bottle they want something similar enough to something popular so it sells. That’s just how it works. Business and art are not friends. They are sometimes allies but that’s about it. They’re friends with benefits. That’s the life of art though that others pay to produce – you are at their mercy and whims. If they aren’t into it…it may not get made. 
3. Stop shaming geeks and nerds. Stop. The idea behind the  – IT IS RUINING CINEMA –  is as if to say  this stuff is crap and no one should like it. Stop. Who said what you are doing is better? What makes you a cultural knight set on a quest to slay the dragons of pop cinema? Horror films and fantasy films get the same treatment. Oh, it can’t be good, or have depth, or good production, or acting, or direction. It’s strictly lowbrow. That mentality is the death of culture. That narrow scope of worthiness. Let folks like what they like. If someone watches PREDATOR and finds that it’s deep and great art, then so be it. If they watch SPARTACUS and feel the same way, then so be that. I adore CITIZEN KANE but is it boring? Yup. Is it for everyone? Nope. Do I still think it’s one of the greatest films ever made? Yup, probably THE greatest, to be honest. It’s not something I’d pop in for a fun time though. It’s nice to see more of geek culture being embraced. So much of it has had to exist in the margins and in the basements that it’s nice to see that it’s being embraced a little.

It all gets tiresome. 

Like the bullying of special effects creatives that get to hear how bad their work looks when only a handful of years ago the things being done today were just glimmers in a programmers eye. There’s an attitude that SERIOUS film is the only sort of important film. SERIOUS art that is about introspection, and sorrow, and blah, blah, blah. As if those sorts of serious topics can’t be explored in a film not set in the past and with lavish costumes, or in a film that casts an able bodied actor as someone with a disability. I have seen, oh, well, my fair share of films over the years and I have seen genre films that had far more to say than their art house brethren. A good storyteller can make you feel no matter what sort of medium they use. To act as if pop culture cinema and art have nothing to say is very short sighted and biased. 

Sure, there’s a lot of projects that have to do with comic books these days. It’s a trend. Like zombies. And like both, and every other trend, people bore of it. Thems is the breaks, kid. You don’t have to support stuff you don’t like though. It’s easy as that. Just like the geek reading comics in his bed doesn’t have to go watch self-important movies made to get some folks awards and make them feel as if they are making Art and not just movies. 

Whatever, man. 

Whatever. 

There’s room enough for everyone. 

We don’t gotta love one another’s quirks but we gotta get along. 

That’s just how it is. 

Otherwise someone’s liable to come and tell us how what we love and what we do is trash and is ruining this or that as well. 

Be careful when you light bags of crap on fire on someone’s doorstep because you might inspire someone to do the same to you. 

…c…

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