I need to get this off my chest, about movies in the theatre...

[Deja Q]

I recall when movies were an event. Something big. Big meaning eventful.

"The Spy Who Loved Me", "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind", "Annie Hall". Even "Star Wars" is an event and its plot is worse than B-material featuring A-level Alec Guiness. These are all events. Richly done events.

These days? It's just a flick. Make it over the top in any way possible and don't try to notice that it's no different on the telly, which might be why fewer amounts of people go to them...

[tjdee]

1. And these days, someone's got to die or get killed/beat up to be BIG.

I'm thinking of the recent Best Pic noms.... it's becoming really annoying, every "big film" that comes down the pike is like that. Maybe that's always been the case. But IMO, in fiction, death is almost always a copout.

[Deja Q]

3. In telivision, it's definitely a copout.

But in either case, it's hard to do money-making sequels if all the main dudes from the first one are put to death... :D

Man, if only real people were as lucky as poorly scribbled cardboard caricatures...

[djeseru]

2. Agreed.

It's just a Tom Cruise fest, twenty-four/seven. I've reached the point where I want the movies to hurry up and come out so I won't have to see the ads repeatedly. I can't really think of the last movie I let myself get worked up over.

The magic's gone I suppose. Or is the pessimism showing?

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. And I remember when people were polite in theaters. Be quiet, assholes!

You - asshole - chew with your mouth closed!

You two - take your conversation outside!

You - the other asshole - you chew with your mouth closed, too!!

You - asshole - go home and shower the goddamned perfume off before you come into a theater!

You - asshole - stop kicking the chair!

You - asshole - stop crinkling your paper! You should have prepared before the movie, or at least done it during a loud part! And no, dragging the opening out for five minutes IS NOT less distracting! Just open the fucking thing already and be done with it!!

You - asshole - sucking on the candy, close yer fucking mouth! I don't want to hear it, and I don't want to hear your constant sucking of spit!


For fuck's sake, i've been to a bunch of movies in Japan the last few weeks, and even in the packed theaters, packed with people eating popcorn and other foods, NOT ONE SOUND. NOT ONE! No paper crinkling, no mouth-open chewing, no talking, we had one cell phone problem, yes, but that wqas quickly turned off, no chair kicking, no throwing shit at the screen, nothing that detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. Going to movies in Japan is pure fucking heaven compared to pig-faced rude America.

In America, I cringe when I see people come into the theater with popcorn, because I know it's gonna be a fucking disgusting loud-ass chomp-fest. And if the unclever assholes sit behind me, then I move if I can.

Americans are just goddamned impolite pigs.

[CBHagman]

7. Amen, Brother Rabrrrrrr

I think people are starting to regard every single experience -- shopping, attending church, going to a lecture, watching a play, seeing a movie -- as strictly a personal experience for themselves alone, requiring absolutely no adjustment in behavior.

Your post has made me consider moving to Japan.

[NewJeffCT]

5. There are still event movies

The 3 "Lord of the Rings" movies, though I think the first was the biggest as an "event", come to mind as "event" movies. I just remember at work there were guys in the mid to late 40s saying, "I loved those books in college and I can't wait for the movie!"

The problem the past few years is that, in general, the movies have sucked, or don't have a broad appeal (Sin City & the Kill Bill movies were good, but not the most accessible) . Yes, "Star Wars" has B-Movie material and dialogue, but every character in there is memorable - C3PO, R2D2, Han Solo, Chewie, Obi-Wan, and one of the all time great movie villains in Darth Vader.

The movies of summer 2005 were "Kingdom of Heaven" which was okay... but, with so many memorable real-life characters in the Crusades, why make a movie about a fictional person & use the real characters as bit players? "Revenge of the Sith" - not a bad movie with some great action sequences, but lacked the sheer number of memorable characters of the original movie, and Hayden Christensen just didn't do it for me. Still not quite up to "event" level. "War of the Worlds" was re-done for what, the 99th time? Kind of hard to get excited by that.

And, to be honest, I don't really see many movie advertisements on TV these days. Kind of hard to get worked up about a movie if you don't know about it - I didn't even know there was a "V for Vendetta" movie coming until until a week or so before it opened - and that was because I saw a post on DU about it.

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. Matrix was another big one -

the problem is that we have damn few movies doing something *new*. Close Encounters and Star Wars were not only good stories (if indifferent to the artistry of the prose), they set new bars and standards for movie making - their appearance on the scene was not just great as a story, but as the very process of film making itself.

The Matrix is another one that had a lot of gee-whiz stuff, wrapped around a very cool story, and so it became an "event".

2001 is another one that changed the way movies were perceived.

Citizen Kane.

The Wild Bunch.

Bladerunner.

But in the end, i thnk it will be Star Wars that will stand out for a long, long time as the "Holy shit you can do that in movies?!?!?!?!" moment in film history. That's gonna be hard to top.

And writers and Hollywood seem so much more interested now in remaking old movies, that were already good, instead of giving us new stuff.

Plus it seems there are also a hell of a lot more movies out nowadays than there ever was in the past, and so for one movie to really stand out and become an event becomes more and more difficult.

When most towns only had one theater in the old days, whatever movie was showing was kinda big news, and had a good potential to become national big news. But now that even small towns have twelve-plexes... well, it's exceedingly difficult for one movie to stand above all the rest.

And we also have shitloads more competing entertainment - back in the old days, there was little TV. And there were not yet video tapes, to say nothing of DVDs, video games, and computers.

So we were also more excited to have a big movie, because the entire wealth of entertainment opportunities was quite small.