As I sit here at my PC, stomach gurgling, churning, and no doubt brewing up some more lovely diarrhea. (Yes, I’m sick, and no that is not too much information.) I have a far more serious ailment then that which troubles my gut. The summer movie season is upon us, hovering over our backs and pounding our soon-to-be raw and torn consumer anuses, and honestly, I am at a loss. I find that with the passing of each mega-billion-dollar-budget film of every summer I sink just a bit farther down in my understanding of the importance, future, audience, and criticism of cinema. Am I, still having yet to have reached thirty years of age, a fossil? Does the bitter, brewed sentiment that flows out of my lips after sitting through ninety minutes of tepid CGI have any place in a world where films like Taxi Driver, True Romance, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, The Thing, and Robocop are considered dated, slow, and forgotten by the majority? And in contradiction to those questions…are my views and opinions nothing more then a molecule in the fingernail of the giant that is the new-found, un-credentialed, shallow, “thumbs up, thumbs down,” and ultimately useless blogosphere of film criticism that has engulfed an important but lost journalistic art? I will admit that I am probably the only one, if not one of the few, who has had such rousing and troubling questions pop into his head DURING a screening of Speed Racer.
In the past few weeks I have, much like the rest of the planet, seen both Iron Man and Speed Racer. Sitting through Iron Man a second time, after having read a large assortment of positive online reviews and those contained within magazines and newspapers caused me to boil over with anger. This contradicted logic for I agreed (for the most part) that the movie was “pretty good.” Nothing classic, (we don’t make classics anymore these days,) nor forgettable. I then proceeded to write the following…a meandering angered mess for which I wouldn’t insult any reader by putting in the actual “meat” of the column, but still deem worthy enough for others to read, if only to see if you empathize with my often irrational bout of embitterment. Please note how I refer to my metaphorical “gullet” being “sick,” only to be surprised a few days later with the medical equivalent I mentioned above. Here it is…
Jon Favreau’s Iron Man is finally here. The critical acclaim is soaring (94% on Rotten Tomatoes as I type), the profits are rising (no competition except clichéd slop), and the fan buzz is beaming with squeals of geek-gasmic fortitude. I’ve already viewed it twice and I don’t plan on reviewing it here. Why? It’s too expected, too simple, and just too damn painful. I don’t want to be counted among the mass of those fans and critics (including the reputable ones) alike whom I’ve read these past few days who seem to either be sixteen-years-old or mentally stunted and have forgotten that movies existed before CGI. Have you read these reviews? Yes…they are all positive and deservedly so, but the sickening in my blubbery gullet comes from the horrendous comparisons to other superhero movies.
“Iron Man, with its edge-of-your-seat action and skilled male lead, most certainly gives the Spidey franchise a run for its money.”
“One of the best superhero movies EVER!!! Right up there with X2 and Batman Begins!”
“Not since the first classic Spiderman flick has a comic book movie been so amazing…80,000 STARS!!! INSTANT CLASSIC!!!”
“I would sell my own child to see it again! Better then Ghostrider!”
Those quotes were fabricated by me; still they fully represent what I have been reading. My beef isn’t with the opinions either. I thought the movie was, considering Favreau’s involvement, definitely “money.” The dilemma I face is, I’ll admit, probably more due to my bitter nature. However, excuse me, but did you just say that the greatest superhero movies ever were all somehow contained within the last 10 years? Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly. Think!
It seems as though critics, even the elders, are somehow giving in to the youthful, pre-conceived notion that modern special effects are now ultimately integral to define quality within film, especially in comic book cinema. I am going to assume that we’re just throwing all movies before the dawn of the computer under the bus. Superman: The Movie, a timeless, American classic, gets completely pushed aside for the likes of Spiderman? Excuse me for thinking that comparisons of greatness shouldn’t be made toward a movie featuring a Macy Gray cameo and a torturous Julia Roberts underpants joke…but hey, at least it has whiz bang special effects handed down from the gods of the computer chip. See, that’s what makes it better!
Sarcasm. Anyway, I’m not saying that COMPUTER GENERATED IMAGES are bad, or that new superhero movies are bad. What I am saying is that perhaps we should really start to worry about the serious deficiency of scope in current criticism and the foundations on which we are “criticizing.” When the upper echelon (which believe me, I am NOT AT ALL counting myself a part of) of film critics start to “forget” the cinematic support beams of the past 80 years, something needs to wake us up again. 80 years…not 50…not 20…most certainly not 10…80 years and more of this art that we all collectively love and discuss and believe in. Yet, somehow, all Iron Man’s exquisitely formulaic and massively entertaining structure burrows up for comparison is recent CG laden, product placement shit fests of the last decade. This is what we are comparing greatness too now? This is how far we’ve fallen?
It’s almost as if “older” movies are dismissed, not out of hatred or malice, but out of a mental fog that is clogging us all up and making us forget that true quality is not about how good the FX look, or how much the action-to-dialogue ratio is, but how much love and admiration was poured into a film, and what the ravages of time and re-watch value will do to it. Iron Man is a good movie, and it would still be good if you took away half the budget. The characters were funny and real, Tony Stark was perfectly played, and the writing was sufficient for a well-balanced comic book sensibility. Sure, the suit was amazing, the action was kick-ass, and the lumbering fight with the Iron Monger was ok, but much like Richard Donner’s genre-defining Superman, Tim Burton’s beautifully unreal Batman, or Paul Verhoven’s masterpiece, Robocop, it’s the craftsmanship, social importance, satire, and the intentions behind the fourth wall that make it succeed as a film. Not the mind-blowing CGI.
So, it turned into a review after all. I realize that my message of “special effects don’t make a film” is really old and overdone, but if things keep getting worse…why not keep saying it until it sticks? Plus, I have a feeling that the very “critics/fans” I am trying (however unsuccessfully) to address with this muddled message are the same people who will bitch and moan about how the action in the new Indy movie isn’t as “eye-popping” or on the edge as they figured it would be. They, of course, would be forgetting that Indy was never about Matrix-style craptastic action, and of course will not acknowledge that Spielberg INTENTIONALLY made the new film EXACTLY like the other three. I can hear all the complaining now. Ignorant, youthful cries of how Iron Man’s action put Indy’s to shame. Loud yelping spears of sound impaling my ear drums and repeating the unknowledgeable and ill-conceived notions that their .000001 Pico-second attention spans, when not being entertained by their cell phones, found Indy 4 to be underwhelming and not as “quality” as…say…pig snot like Transformers. I really hope Spielberg bludgeons you in the face with his talented directing dick you fucking unappreciative little….
Whoa! Gotta cool down.
I was pretty bitter, and admittedly, a little off base. After reading it again I realized that I had no point other then “HEY MOVIES AREN’T MOVIES ANY MORE, THEY ARE THINGS, JUST HOLLOW THINGS!” I planned to scrap it completely, in fact I wasn’t even clear about my intentions for writing it, and then, I of course saw Speed Racer.
Sinking to the level of reviewing Speed Racer is not something I mentally or physically feel up to right now. I will say that, with the exception of John Goodman fighting a ninja, I loathed everything about it. I’m not going to go into why, for this column it’s irrelevant. All Speed Racer did for me was become a catalyst for realizing that the beautiful, thought-provoking world of main-stream cinema (not talking about foreign or independent here) is NOW, more so then it ever has been, singing the last, muted notes of its swan song.
Film is, actual film, going to be slain by digital. Sets will be fully replaced by green screens. Socio-political and existential satire completely replaced by seizure inducing piles of computerized excrement that have only form and not function. Cinema being important is about to die. Nothing new I know, but it scares me. Yet all I read on message boards is that “Films are made to be enjoyed, not taken seriously for any reason…” Excuse me, but while I do believe in the entertainments, I also have a foot firmly planted on the belief that there are films that have changed the world, changed lives, and truly mean something to humanity. Reducing film to an “enjoyable” yet “exposable” form of expression is sad, and yet that statement is BEYOND rampant all over the realm of criticism and fan reaction. One would hope we don’t also say the same about music, literature, and journalism…which we probably do, sadly. However, I am not familiar with it.
Reading this far you probably realize that I am an old codger. However I am not against all things soon to come, if you notice I am plenty excited for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There are two reasons for such: The first being that Dr. Jones is my favorite fictional character of all time (sometimes trading places with Doc Brown depending on my mood.) The second reason stemming from everything I’ve read Spielberg say about the movie. He’s using little to no CGI, he’s actually using real sets (in the face of advice from pal George Lucas), he instructed the cinematographer to make the film look as though it were made twenty years ago, and he even guaranteed no hyper-edited action sequences that have now become staples of the theater. Steven Spielberg, in a non-Indy related statement, admits he will still be shooting on real film stock long after all other director’s have abandoned it. Mainly because, and I couldn’t agree more, film has a living texture to it, something digital is sorely lacking in its lifeless universe of hallow pixels. Yes I am sucking his cock…you know why…because as an uber-Indiana Jones fan and an uber-film fan…Spielberg is sucking mine. Sure, he makes mistake, yet he seems to be the only mainstream filmmaker that is this adamantly outspoken about real film and it’s preservation. Hate him or love him, The Beard is romantically involved with the beautiful tradition of movies and that is why I retain his work, early to now, still has more merit then even some of the smaller guys that also romantically get down with movies. If you took away his huge budgets you wouldn’t take away his knack for putting something meaningful or just plain fucking great on the screen.
Straying too far away from my main point is not something I want to do, however this “stream of consciousness” induced by Speed Racer‘s disgusting display of cinema’s death is a lot to chew. The warning needs to be put out. We are about to fall off the cliff. Last summer we stood at its edge, the summer prior we saw it on the horizon, now I’m afraid we are goofily balancing on the tip with our arms flailing and the updraft from the cliff face cooling our belly button. I am certainly not the first to ask, but whose fault is it? The moviemakers or the goers? The critics or the bloggers? Father Time or Satan? It is rhetorical, at least for me, because ultimately I don’t know. I just know it really, truly, more then ever, needs to be asked.
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