The Golden Age of Good Movies

Hey all, I watched Justice League last night for the first time. With movies like this (X-Men Apocalypse, Suicide Squad, etc), I refuse to pay money to watch, so I wait until I forget about it and then watch it when it pops back into my life. I don't look at reviews for these movies because I don't care what other people think. Sometimes when you really like something, but everyone else hates it, you might change your own opinion on it. I hate when that happens, so I avoid reviews. I already had my thoughts on what the movie would show me, so it didn't seem necessary to read reviews either. Turns out, I was right about how that movie would turn out, and I'd love nothing more than to tear it apart (if I can find any remaining pieces DC hasn't already destroyed), but I'm not going to. I don't have the time to talk about every problem with this movie, and I also don't feel like making myself angry trying to do it. If you're looking for a review that pretty much sums up my own feelings, check out this link. So, let's just move past that heap of a movie and talk about something more entertaining, shall we?

How about stuff that we all like: ice cream, lollipops, good movies! Yeah, we all love good movies don't we? Where the worst thing about them is when they end? Everyone loves a good movie. What're some of yours? If I had to list my favorites (in no particular order): Catch Me If You Can, Goodfellas, Halloween (1978), Star War: Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones: Raiders Of The Lost Ark, The Good; The Bad; & The Ugly, Shawshank Redemption... There's a lot of them. I have a tendency to say a lot of movies are my favorite, but the truth is I don't believe that anyone can have a true favorite movie. I don't know, maybe you can. There are some movies that I will never tire of. The first three on my list are timeless classics to me. Some of the best storytelling I've ever seen, but that can go for a lot of movies because they're all made differently. One technique is a little warped form another.

I think the real reason I love the movies I do is one simple reason: The movie itself is simple. The plot is easy to follow. No matter how complicated the movie gets, you always know what's going on. That's a big problem I have with movies these days. They're all so complicated and filled with confusing twists. I'm not bashing on any movie in particular, but these kind of movies can be tiring to watch. You may get so confused with what's happening that you lose interest entirely. That's the opposite of what a movie should do.

For some reason, people feel like that for a story to be memorable or unique it has to have a convoluted plot filled with twists and turns to keep the audience guessing. The thing is, you don't need to throw in random elements to keep the audience's attention. Directors and screenwriters in the eighties knew this, and that's why I think movies back then are some of the best movies ever made. They're easy to follow, but you're given bits of info here and there to piece things together.

It's like a jigsaw puzzle where you're being handed the pieces. Movies back then didn't have many pieces, and the picture was easy to assemble. It's not hard to find figure out where each piece goes when it's given to you, but sometimes you have to do a little thinking, but in the end you're satisfied with the puzzle you've completed. Now, movies nowadays are more complicated to assemble. There's hundreds of pieces that form together into a large and complex Where's Waldo picture. You're handed the pieces at the beginning, you're starting to figure out how to put everything together, but then you get a piece that doesn't work. It doesn't seem to fit into the puzzle you're working on. You tell the person and they say, "Oh yeah, that's for this puzzle over here. Y'see, these two puzzles join together to make one big puzzle." So, now you're working on two puzzles, and you weren't even where that there was a second puzzle. 

I think I know why this what happens these days. People feel smarted now, and for the most part I think we understand things better now, but we're giving ourselves too much credit. We know how movies work, we've seen hundreds of movies. We know what makes a good movie, and what makes a bad one. We need more excitement in our lives, and we think that the simple stuff is "too" simple; cliche. We've seen that stuff a hundred times. So, storytellers feel the need to mash a lot of different concepts together to try and appease an audience that thinks that's what they want. Here's the thing, it's not.

People think they want complex, but what they really want is different. That's not hard to do. All you need to do is take a story concept that people like, and instead of rebooting it but with more complex characters and story (because that usually ends up being a big pile of shit), put a small spin on it. Enough to have a different story completely, but making sure that it still hits all the right points. People will see it and say, "Oh wow, that had a lot of the same elements that that one movie I like from a long time ago had. I like how they took that idea and shaped it into something entirely different." That's one way to make a good movie that has nostalgic feeling. Not by rebooting, but by re-molding.

Of course, that's just one way to try and fix the big reboot craze that's happening right now. What do you guys think about this stuff? What are some of your favorite movies? Let me know, and here's some homework for you. Watch some movies from the eighties and earlier, then watch movies that came out in the last five or six years. Compare them and see what you think. Was I right in my hypothesis? Write a comment and tell me your thoughts. I'll see you all tomorrow.

Buh-bye