I'm Not Hostile...Really...

I really want to set some things straight. I really don't want to come across as snobbish or unfairly critical of for any of the few readers I might still have to think that all I ever do on this blog is tear things down when I actually take the time to actually write something here. I want to reassure you that I do truly love film. There are so many movies out there that I find flawless, that I could go on ten page tirades about. Unfortunately I have found it more relevant , both in the blog and in my personal life, to talk about the inadequacies of certain films and the folks that make them. As a person who watches a lot of movies, both good and bad, there are certain things in the realm of both that excite and upset me. And trust me folks I love bad movies. Anyone who knows me well enough has heard my ecstatic glee over David Giancola's masterwork Icebreaker I really do love the truly terrible. However, I am very critical, not unfairly as I stated before, but I am going to call a spade a spade. Now as I have said I do enjoy bad movies, as well as good, but what upsets me and why I have to tear down certain Hollywood darlings, is because I hate any filmmaker who has the ability to create, the means to create something wonderful and out of shear laziness or some sense that they just sneeze greatness, they do not put in the effort and roll out a drastically inferior product. I understand and also have a lot of sympathy for any filmmaker who is working on a shoestring budget and isn't able to fully secure the vision they may have wanted and rolls out a piece of crap. But anyone handed millions of dollars to really make something, that person seriously has to answer for every flaw that the film has. I know that I always bash George Lucas, but he really is the perfect example of this. He really could have, if he wanted to, if he cared enough to, made the Star Wars prequels something special.
(Now I am not saying that he personally has the talent to have made them something special, but we all know that he was as much involved in writing and directing those movies as I was.)
He had the money, the time and the resources available, but there is one simple factor that stopped him from doing anything extraordinary, he didn't have to.
George Lucas knows that he can shit in a box and mark it STAR WARS and someone will buy it. Ok maybe that's a little inaccurate. He'd shit in a box, send it to I.L.M, they'd scan it into the computer, make a 3-D rendering of it, give it a Jamaican accent, then mark it STAR WARS and it would become the highest grossing movie of the year!
So you may still be asking why I am so hostile, especially since this post was supposed to explain that I am really not hostile. I just get aggravated at film makers like Georgie-Boy because I know that there are so many filmmakers out there who really do care, who would never dream of being able to work on that kinda budget. Filmmakers who love what they do and really put the effort into their movies that they know the audience deserves. There are so many wonderful films out there that will never get the recognition that Lucas's films don't even need to try to get. And maybe I just have high standards, not even for the films but for the filmmakers. It disappoints me when audiences eat up these half-assed films when there are plenty of much better ones out there.
I think a lot of the audience are really just settling these days. I know when Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out I was adamantly against seeing it. A friend of mine saw it and tried to convince me to see it by saying “it's not as bad as you'd think it would be”
Is that how we gauge our movies these days? Would we hold anything else to such a low standard?
“you should really try that new restaurant, I actually got through a whole meal without throwing up”
I think we all need to start holding movies to a much higher standard folks. Let's not settle for a substandard product anymore!