Category Archives: Movies

Hollywood’s History of Explaining Advanced Technology

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Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

The other day I was watching Apple TV’s telling of the story of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. For the record, at least up until the fourth episode, they’ve been doing a great job (they’ve only released four episodes as of the writing of this article). But one of the things that started bothering me was the way they handle advanced mathematics.

You see, if you haven’t watched the show (or read the books), the premise is basically about a mathematician who has blended math with psychology and history to create psychohistory, which is essentially a predictive mathematics. It’s a great concept, and someday, I’m sure that’s where our math will take us.

What I haven’t liked about the show is how it tries to show one of the main characters (an assistant to the mathematician) practically thinks in math so that she’s always thinking about prime numbers (a number greater than 1 that’s not the product of two smaller numbers). She keeps repeating large prime numbers as she’s doing other things, which is to give the viewer the impression that she’s so advanced in mathematics that she must keep focusing on prime numbers.

Well, to a person who understands prime numbers, it’s not that impressive. It’s actually reductive. To someone who doesn’t follow math, it’s going to serve its purpose: Making one think that she’s so brilliant that she thinks in primes. But to someone who knows basic mathematics (to the level of primes), it’s like pointing out a very smart person who is somewhat stricken by a compulsive disorder because, to be honest, spouting off prime numbers isn’t really complicated; it’s just repetitive and a somewhat endless process.

Which got me thinking about the many times that Hollywood has tried to represent intelligence to an audience of people who generally aren’t very intelligent. I mean, let’s face it. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, the average television or movie viewer isn’t exactly approaching the higher levels of Mensa. Sure, they might be represented in that demographic, but most media broadcasts are designed to appeal to someone with anywhere from a sixth grade to high school level of intellect. It’s not an insult to viewers, but just a common acceptance of the type of media to which most of us are exposed.

I remember years back when I was reading a book by Robert Heinlein, specifically Number of the Beast, a science fiction novel that uses mathematics to explain the nature of God and spirituality. At the time I read it, I remember thinking to myself that this went way over my head, and there were times where I found myself swimming in numbers that Heinlein was presenting, only half understanding the majority of what I was reading. That book alone represented to me the realization that there are some people who are way smarter than the average person, and quite often those people can find themselves incapable of even communicating a message to those they to whom they wish to connect. Which is kind of funny because most of the rest of Heinlein’s books are accessible and totally understandable. It just happened to be that specific novel that threw me off so much.

Of course I was young back then, but I never did reread it, even after gaining several advanced degrees. Why? You might ask. Well, cause secretly I’ve always suspected that I’d probably still find it difficult to read through that book again.

What this generally told me is that there is a certain talent to sharing information with other people. In communication, we call it accessing, which explains the procedure a doctor must go through when explaining complex procedures to a lay person who is being diagnosed. Delivering such information in complex jargon is never going to help to relay information so that the patient can take the necessary steps to deal with whatever might ail him or her. The doctor generally has to dumb down the language so that everyone is speaking in a language that everyone can easily understand.

So I started to think about other media that has attempted to do this in the past, where they have tried to represent some higher intelligence in a way that the rest of us might understand. And a couple of times they got it very right. And here are a couple of examples.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Steven Spielberg’s ground-breaking film was brilliant in how it did this. One of the questions I always seemed to have whenever it came to films about alien civilizations was how would they actually communicate with us. This movie handles this really well by showing that communication would happen through music, which would be a verbal representation of mathematics. By tying the algorithm through computer AI learning the other language, it made for a process that was easy to understand without having to actually learn a language in order to foster further communication to the audience.

Historically, movies and television have taken short-cuts through this process by just having alien races speak the same language as we do, which has never really made much sense. Star Trek attempted to cross this territory by creating a never-seen technology called a Universal Translator that basically gets implanted into your ear and then translates all languages so that you’re always able to communicate with others. A few times they mess this up by having characters actually speak a foreign phrase or two, but for some bizarre reason those phrases don’t end up being translated as well. I never really did understand how that worked (or didn’t).

One of the problems shows and movies have always had is determining how much dumbing down of technology they would do in order to help an audience understand. Star Trek was also famous for creating babble-speak that sounds techno, but doesn’t actually mean anything. It was a process always used to sound technological to a crowd of people who would have no idea what such vocabulary actually meant (usually because it didn’t actually have any translation).

The important question we’re left with is: How complex can you make the technology without losing your audience? Every time I watch a new show, I often wonder how they will handle that question, and often, when the writers have failed miserably, I find myself staring blankly at the screen because I have no idea what’s going on, which makes me question if the fault was mine (lack of knowledge) or theirs (lack of explanation). And sometimes, the answer to that question determines whether or not I will continue watching the show (or movie) further.

So, after Spock went back in time, is the Next Generation time line gone?

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This has been bothering me for some time now. Yes, I understand that the United States is going through a horrible time with a game show host as president, Russian election-hacking and the dilemma of which side to choose in the upcoming war between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. But this has actually been taking a bit more of my attention than those other inconsequential dilemmas.

Here’s the scenario that sets up the problem. Ambassador Spock in the reboot of Star Trek went back in time to chase a Reman mining vessel that was planning to kill Kirk and mess up the time line. The bad guy managed to kill Kirk’s dad, threw the whole universe into a spin time-wise, and now we have a new set of adventures for the Kirk crew, and the future as we know it may not actually happen as intended. Which produces the question: Is all of the history that came after the original Star Trek now gone? Or is it not gone but the stories are quite possibly going to be told a different way?

If so, that means that the future iterations of the Enterprise might change. Khitomer might not have happened as it was supposed to. Kirk might not have died on a planet fighting alongside Picard, even though he was supposed to be already dead and now living in a time ribbon (as if that makes any sense). Is Picard now flying a cargo ship across the galaxy with his crew of Firefly rejects? I mean, I guess anything can happen.

But I’m torn. All of those adventures that come from TNG and Deep Space 9 might no longer be canon. All those adventures might be gone.

And what about when they decided to do a later series of Star Trek? Will it be post-Picard, or will that universe change completely? And even more important: Does the old universe of the future still exist? Or is Data gone to be replaced by Data 2.0? Inquiring minds gotta know.

The new greed is ruining Hollywood movies

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Stop breaking up our movies or the North Koreans will win!
Stop breaking up our movies or the North Koreans will win!

I don’t know if you’ve been noticing lately, but way too many intellectual properties that have been made into movies are now stretching how many movies are being made for the simple goal of getting more money out of the movie public. It was the sort of thing that caused the last book in the Harry Potter franchise to somehow “need” to be stretched into two movies. Then they did it with Twilight. And today, it was announced that the Divergent franchise was going to be doing it with their third movie/book “Allegiant”. Look, I get the idea that more money is better than less money, but sometimes it’s not necessary to make more movies of stories that can easily be told in fewer movies. An example of this is when they decided to stretch the Hobbit into three movies. Keep in mind the Hobbit was one book. But because the Lord of the Rings made so much money for everyone involved, there was no way in the world they were going to limit the next chapter in the franchise to just one profitable movie.

And the franchise has suffered as a result. I know there are people who say they like the Hobbit, but having just watched the second movie, I don’t think it’s hard to come to the conclusion that a lot of that movie really felt like it was just biding time until it could reach the end of the story. They even left it in a cliffhanger ending, almost as if they were trying to figure out what made The Empire Strikes Back such a success for Return of the Jedi and did exactly that. The story arc felt like it was doing EXACTLY the same thing, except without any real resolution like they at least gave you in Empire. In Empire, we did defeat the bad guys long enough to get a breather. They kind of tried to do that with The Desolation of Smog (I know that’s not the correct name, but I’m sticking with it), but to me it fell completely flat. The only thing they didn’t do from the bad writing playbook was have Bilbo fall into a pit and not be able to get back out of it before the train fell into the pit (figured a few cliches belonged in that “cliffhanger” of theirs).

This is becoming a norm with movies these days. It wouldn’t be so bad if the first and second movies were actually full, complete stories, which is one of the cardinal rules of writing a three part series as a writer (you’re not supposed to write just one part of the story and then try to sell the next book…each story needs to have its own conclusion), but we’re getting the lazy writing version of these movies, which is basically just a ploy to get people to want to keep paying money to see a movie franchise each year because the director is too lazy to bring any of the stories to a conclusion.

Today, I saw Captain America 2, and this is a franchise movie that does this sort of thing right. Obviously, they intend to make many more Captain America movies, and they should, but in order to get people interested, they don’t just bait and switch the audience by stopping the story and then saying “hey, give us 8 more dollars, and we’ll tell you what happens next.” Moviegoers need to get a lot more upset over this crappy business process that movie companies are trying to force on us.

Being a Single Guy is Pretty Damn Tough These Days

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It seems there’s a new Muppet Movie about to open up. For those who know me, it’s not a surprise that I’m actually looking forward to watching it when it does come out. But there’s a problem. That’s kind of what this whole post is about.

You see, I’m one of those grown up kids who probably will never grow up. And I’m okay with that. That means that unlike guys who seem to think watching football, Victoria Secret lingerie specials on TV and endless porn is the definition of being an adult, that’s really not me. I’m a lot more comfortable watching Elmo, Scooby Doo, playing World of Warcraft or watching any and all kinds of science fiction on TV. Those are the kinds of things that men are supposed to kind of put behind them when they hit adulthood, right about the time they start thinking about marriage.

Me, however, not so much. I’ve never really given much thought to getting married. Never gave that much thought to actually dating, to be honest. I’m the kind of person who is comfortable living in my own little world, and up until now, this has been okay, as long as this lifestyle doesn’t seem to intrude on anyone else.

Unfortunately, the real world has kind of changed in a way that makes such a lifestyle almost impossible. There is no end to the amount of literature written about how people like me need to “grow up” or “man up”, or whatever stupid slogan they need to use to somehow diminish the fact that I still think legos are cool. And that brings me to the whole idea of what started off this article: The Muppets.

Years ago, I went to watch one of the Shrek movies. I was alone in the theater, because it was the middle of the day, and I chose a time when most of the kids wouldn’t be there (because they’d be at school, or their parents would be at work). Well, at one point, this woman and her kid show up to the movie, and as I’m practically the only other person in the theater (there were actually about four other people in various spots in the theater at the time), her kid wandered to a seat close to where I was, and that woman took one look at me, and immediately ushered her kid as far away from me as possible. It’s not like I’m some serial killer looking kind of guy or anything, but I immediately started to get self-conscious because I could quickly see what was going through her mind: Why is there some strange guy alone at a kid’s movie? It didn’t matter what my real reason for it was, somehow I kept thinking that she was constantly checking up on me to see if I was scouting out other children.

And that’s the mindset of a lot of people whenever a single guy shows up alone to a movie theater, specifically to see a movie that others deem as a “kiddie” movie. In our society, we have people so paranoid about children that they start to perceive that every other person out there has some secret intention to harm them if they can just get away with it. You see this same mentality whenever a porn star goes to read to children at a library, an adult venue comes anywhere near a school, or anything that involves “sex” ends up being in the earshot of someone who might think there are children around. There is such a fear of practically everyone else that otherwise normal people are no longer normal, but they are now suspected child molesters and abductors, and all sorts of other evil entities that I have not yet heard about.

When I told a female friend I was thinking of seeing the new Muppet movie, she said, “you can take my kid to see it”, which would then give me an adequate reason to go to a movie theater (because I would have a child with me). Other than the fact that the offer wasn’t serious, I kept imagining how bad things are when a single male has to “find” kid to drag to a movie just so he can go see a kiddie movie that he’d rather not see with anyone else.

I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine a few years back about this because we surmized that even if two single guys went to a children’s movie, there would still be people looking at them strangely, wondering why two older adults were at a movie theater where kids were present. The idea that people might be there for something innocent, like watching a movie, seems to get in the way of irrational fear, however.

A couple of years back, I used to have a couple of close female friends with whom I would always go to these types of movies, because a single guy was always “okay” at a children’s movie, as long as you were there with a “date”, even if you weren’t dating the woman you were with. I used to drag my friend Kat to movies all the time (or she dragged me…not sure how it really worked out), and if it wasn’t for her, I never would have seen Wall-E, because I probably never would have gone to a movie theater to see it alone. It’s just not worth the stares.

But today, I don’t have a female friend I hang out with like I used to. Back then, while I was doing grad school, it was a lot easier finding a female friend who liked to hang out, who didn’t think you were trying to date her. Nowadays, in the real world, that just hasn’t happened for me. The last woman I asked to a movie wanted dinner to go along with that movie, meaning she expected it to be a “date”, not just two friends hanging out at a movie. And that’s okay, but that’s not the kind of person I want to see the Muppets with.

So, I’ll probably have to wait until it comes to dvd, which usually diminishes the experience of seeing a movie like that in an audience of people who are laughing as Kermit and gang do the kinds of things that only Kermit and the gang would ever do.

Now that Spock (Zachary Quinto) has come out of the closet, will it affect his Star Trek career?

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First off, I have to say “hats off” to Zachary Quinto for coming out of the closet as a response to a bullying incident that he felt warranted his revelation of his gay lifestyle. Quinto, who is best known for playing Spock in the Star Trek reboot and the sinister Sylar on the television series Heroes, probably could have remained incognito about his sexual lifestyle and no one would have really suspected (or even cared), but now that he has revealed his personal background it should be interesting to see where things go from here.

The reason I mention this is because of a distinct hypocritical situation that is probably going to play itself out over the next few years. You see, Star Trek has always been one of those shows that likes to think of itself as forward thinking and taboo breaking. It was known for the first interracial kiss that occurred between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura. When Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura, was thinking of quitting Star Trek, Star Trek lore reminds us that Martin Luther King, Jr. told her she couldn’t quit, that she was making strides for the Civil Rights Movement that were happening in front of the audience in ways that no one else could do at the time. Whereas she thought she was playing a simple part, and not receiving the recognition deserved, others saw her as the ground-breaking maverick who would forever be remembered for her accomplishments.

It seems somewhat ironic, or surprisingly symbolic, that Lieutenant Uhura is again involved in another stride forward from Star Trek, as it is her reboot relationship with Commander Spock that breaks the traditional lore, showing her involved in a relationship with the Vulcan, whereas none was suggested before during the Leonard Nimoy era of Spock. Now, this Spock is going to be seen in a completely different light, because now everyone going to see the new episodes of the reboot will forever know that the new Spock is being played by a gay man. If seen from the eyes of the Star Trek universe, this should be seen as nothing but a step forward, as some of the newer episodes of the later series, like the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were not afraid to explore very controversial and ground-breaking ground in this area, including an episode where the Enterprise’s doctor, a woman, rekindled a romance with a species hopping former lover who was now in the body of a woman, causing one of the more awkward love-scenes between two women in a way that was quite brilliant in that it was not exploited, comfortable or in any way frightened of what it was attempting to portray.

However, even though the show might be ground-breaking and willing to explore new ground, I wonder if the fan base feels the same way. While I have zero problem with an outed gay man playing the iconic Commander Spock in the new reboot, one has to wonder how the loyal fans will handle the same kind of scenes where Kirk and Spock were conquering the galaxy together. Even during the straight days of the two iconic galactic heroes, there was a spread of fandom fiction that postulated the possibilities of Kirk and Spock being gay lovers, and quite often such portrayals were seen with harsh indignation from other fans. The very idea that Kirk and Spock might have even been suspected of homosexuality filled pages and pages of fan blogs about the two characters, and quite often there was an immediate condemnation of the very nature of the idea.

So, how will fans handle this sort of a character going forward? Will they be able to separate the actor from the character, or will they feel an apprehension with Quinto as the iconic Spock? When they see Spock wooing Lieutenant Uhura, will there be a sense that something’s just not right, as it is very hard to see the character through the eyes of an actor who is perceived to be faking a romantic involvement (even though that’s what most actors are supposed to be doing anyway)? Much like the criticisms of Rock Hudson after it was discovered he died of AIDS and was secretly gay, are audiences capable of that suspension of disbelief, or will they spend their time over analyzing every scene, kind of like music critics over analyzed Melissa Etheridge’s lyrics after discovering she was a lesbian, believing that somehow that changed the very nature of any love ballad she may have composed?

Personally, I find Quinto to be a brilliant actor and look forward to the many roles he will continue to play, but at the same time I wonder how much criticism he will receive as the indominable Spock, now having to live up to the baggage that will now be added to the part.

Netflix drops Quikster but Duane really doesn’t care

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I received an email today from the CEO of Netflix. How nice. Not long ago, I received another email from him, indicating that he was raising the price of Netflix by a LOT. And then he sent me another email explaining that he was going to be splitting up Netflix into Netflix and Quikster, basically forcing me to have to use two different services to get the same service I get in one place previously. And then he went on the news and started talking to Netflix customers like a mother talking to a five year old kid who doesn’t understand why mommy and daddy are splitting up, and then decides to explain it by saying that daddy is leaving mommy because you were bad.

Anyway, so this latest email was explaining to me that he decided NOT to split up Netflix into two companies, but sorry about the price increase. That’s sticking because Netflix needs to make a profit, and I’ve been getting too good of a deal from Netflix. Well, he was right. But when he sent me those rude emails a few months back, I did what came naturally. I cut off Netflix for good and decided while it used to be a good deal, I kind of wanted to do business with companies that don’t make me feel like a five year old kid. Yeah, I threw a temper tantrum, like a five year old kid. And I left Netflix. Not coming back, so their CEO can send me all sorts of emails about how he’s changed and isn’t going to hit me any more, but our relationship is over.

I moved on. It’s not me. It’s you. Sorry. And please stop hitting mommy. The neighbors are getting tired of banging on the walls.

Netflix is starting to realize you can’t be a people business & piss off your customers

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Netflix is in a bit of a bind, but you wouldn’t know that from paying attention to anything the company is saying. Earlier in the year, they came up with the brilliant idea of raising their prices by cutting their services in half and charging customers for both (where they used to get both for the same price). Customers got angry. Netflix acted like the knowing parent, coddling children who are upset that they weren’t chosen for the football team (or to be cheerleaders). Customers got pissed because they really don’t like being treated like children when they’re actually customers.

I kind of got pissed, too. The patronizing remarks from Netflix’s leadership surprised the crap out of me to the point where I decided that if it benefited me in the long run, I’d jump ship at the first opportunity. I, too, hate being treated like a little kid, even when I might act like one.

To see it from the viewpoint of all of the analysts, the same point keeps being made: If there’s no viable alternative to Netflix, then Netflix can pretty much crap on its customers, and it’s still going to be all right. The more you read of this kind of stuff, the more you start to wonder if the reviewers are in the same world as the rest of the people who happen to be customers of Netflix.

What no one has addressed, and I find this probably the most significant factor, is that Netflix offers a service that is a luxury, not a necessity. As most Americans are seriously aware of economic constraints in a recession era, the idea that streaming video and mailed dvds are an added luxury might just be enough to cause a potential customer to think that perhaps the money might be better spent on other pursuits. After all, no one really needs movies and television shows. They’re nice and fun, but they are entertainment, not food staples or part of one’s housing needs. On the whole Maslow heirarchy needs thing, Netflix comes long after most of the other needs and desires have been met.

And that’s what I’ve started to realize recently. As I watch through the fifth season of Star Trek Voyager, a series I’ve seen a long time ago when it actually aired on television, I realize that I don’t really need to watch it. It’s an interesting way to occupy time, but I have computer games, writing, my health club membership, an untapped drug habit I could start at any moment, and all sorts of other activities that have been available a long time before television ever emerged. I could even watch network television (or whatever is on the free cable I receive). The need for Netflix is pretty low on the overall scheme of necessities.

So, I’ve been thinking that once Voyager’s run is finished (there were 7 seasons), I’m dumping Netflix completely. You see, Netflix has this belief that people will “respond” by switching to either mailed disks or streaming only (what they wanted in the first place), but there are 12 million people who may choose my option: Cancel completely and never come back. I was charged my first increased charge this month, and while I can afford it, I’m still angry at Netflix for the way it treated me as a customer. Because of that, I, like I’m sure many others like me, will dump Netflix and wish them well. They’ve already indicated in all of their press releases that they could care less whether or not I stay with them (because they expect to make bank based on the rest of the people who will be unwilling to jump ship). Well, fine. I just suspect that they haven’t read the tea leaves well enough to understand that when you cut out your bread and butter, you sometimes go without food.

But what do I know? I’m just a stupid sheep guy who Netflix doesn’t take seriously anyway.

Saving Private Netflix…and dealing with cheating whores

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In the movie Saving Private Ryan, there’s a scene where Tom Hanks, playing the special ops captain who has just risked life and lost really good men, tells a young Private Ryan that he’d better do something great with his life, like invent a new brand of toothpaste or something, something to have made the sacrifices of his men worthwhile. And the young private, now grown up, asks his wife if she felt he contributed something important to the world, and she tells him he has. And all I was left thinking was, that captain played by Tom Hanks wanted something a bit more, not just that Private Ryan would make some family happy, and to be honest, I never really felt that Private Ryan lived up to the expectations that Tom Hanks’s dying character really demanded.

I’m kind of left with that same feeling when I received an email from Netflix yesterday informing me that it was going to be raising my rates 60 percent to give me exactly what I have always been receiving. In other words, rather than raise my rates AND give me a little more value, they’re giving me exactly what they always give me, and charging me more for it. Not very impressive.

And that action has caused all sorts of backlash from the community that makes up the customer base of Netflix. You see, they tried to do this a long time ago, and it failed miserably. Some years ago, they tried to raise rates BIG TIME, and most of their customers revolted. I did, too. Instead of quitting Netflix, I decided to switch from three DVDs at a time to 1 DVD at a time. The result was that I ended up paying less than what they were receiving from me before the change. A month or so later, Netflix completely reversed course, lowered their rates back to the original amount, and then people started to come back; I personally went back to my 3 DVDs a month.

Recently, they quietly raised prices on us. Not a huge amount, but enough to be noticeable. I thought about leaving but then just decided it wasn’t a big enough increase to cause me to leave. Kind of like the frog in a warm pot who doesn’t jump out even as the water slowly begins to boil. The slow burn and the slow increase of heat remains comfortable until you cook to death and die.

Well, this change is much different. They’ve decided that they want to be a mainly streaming company now, which is not what they were designed to be in the first place. There’s a whole lot of literature in Economics 101 about how a company shouldn’t change what it does best or to try to do more products than it is known for, but Netflix has always felt that it could buck the trend and win the brass ring no matter what it did. Rather than just increase rates, they’ve decided to charge people for both streaming AND DVDs, where they used to be lumped together in the past. I think they believe that people will respond by dropping one or the other, but I don’t think they realize the real implication, and that’s that they’re about to lose customers forever. I’m not talking about people getting pissed and changing their options until Netflix backs down. I mean people leaving in droves and being so pissed at Netflix that no turnaround will cause them to come back.

That’s where I am right now. I’m in the middle of watching Rescue Me through streaming, and when that show finishes its run (in other words, I get through the last season), I’m ending my Netflix subscription forever. I haven’t really watched any DVDs in a long time, having held onto the same ones for a long time, so that’s not a big deal. And I’ve never been all that much of a fan of their streaming service as most of the choices have been crap, and when I have watched something, half of the time the connection is not good enough to where I’m constantly watching a smooth experience. The continuous buffering thing gets old, and I won’t miss that.

What Netflix doesn’t seem to get is that they are not part of a necessity for most people. Television and movies is a luxury, and to be honest, I really won’t miss it all that much. Yeah, I could go find alternatives to seeing the same programming, but most of it has generally been crap. Every now and then a good show comes on that I’ll watch through its run, but quite often almost everything I watch has been a waste of time. Movies are almost always a waste of time because Hollywood has been making nothing but crap for years now, and for the five movies I’ve enjoyed, I’ve probably watched a hundred I didn’t. The odds just don’t make it worth it.

For the longest time, I’ve stayed with Netflix more out of nostalgia than anything else. It was convenient and comfortable. That’s it. It hasn’t been that useful. Years ago, when there were lots of things in my queue, it was wonderful. But years later, I’ve gone through my queue, and where I used to have blockbusters in it before, I have mostly second rate choices that were put in there and constantly pushed to the bottom of my queue so I could watch stuff that seemed more interesting. With that to look forward to, Netflix doesn’t offer a whole lot of wonderful things for the future.

So I’ll be dumping them like a girlfriend who has been cheating on me for years, and I’ve just been too busy at work to sit down and explain to her that we need to see other people. Well, the rhetorical job just told me to take my vacation, and I’m realizing I now have to spend a week with the cheating girlfriend, and the girl next door has been giving me the eye. Okay, it’s a bad analogy, and unfortunately all it does is remind me that I don’t actually have a girlfriend, and even worse, a social life. But at least I won’t have Netflix either. I’m dumping that cheating whore.

Super 8: An interesting movie but nothing to write home about

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I watched Super 8 last night at the movie theater. Rarely do I get a chance to see a movie when it is released on its opening weekend, but I had this strange feeling that I was going to be innundated with information about this movie constantly until I finally saw it, so I decided to just go see it for myself and then see if all of the hype lives up to its, well, hype, or if it turns out to be not worth the effort.

First off, the movie wasn’t bad. It was a typical Stephen Spielberg type of movie, if he had made it twenty years ago. Basically, it felt very much like an attempt to blend Stand by Me with E.T. and then with District 9. The only problem was that it didn’t have the writing of a Stand by Me (sorry, but the Stephen King power of Stand by Me will never be achieved by someone emulating him), the cutesyness of E.T. or the raw power of District 9. Instead, it was one of those movies where you watched it and thought, “yeah, they did what they were supposed to do.”

As for the Stephen King attempt, one thing that the movie was lacking was characterization. The two kids who did well in the movie were Ellile Fanning and Joel Courtney (who play the main two kids). The rest of the cast really just kind of blended together in a mass that didn’t really make much of a difference. As a matter of fact, I found myself thinking, who was this again? whenever one of the other kids was on screen, even though they were distinctive enough that that should never have happened. The adults in the movie were irrelevant, even though they were also really important. Even the alien seemed, well, very alien and cloaked way too much in shadow. I don’t think I ever really got a good glimpse of it, and when I did, all I kept thinking was, um, okay, that’s an alien. Where’s my popcorn again?

But having said all of that, it wasn’t a bad movie. It just wasn’t great. It’s receiving all sorts of accolades for being the “in” movie, and I can see how that would happen as it is a combination of JJ Abrams and Stephen Spielberg. There were just too many times where I felt it was a scarier version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But I’m glad I saw it on the opening weekend. That way, I won’t have anyone telling me I NEED to see this movie without me being able to laugh hysterically in his face as a response. Again, not a bad movie, but not the greatest either.