I’ve loved movies ever since I was a little kid. Just stepping into that dark theater, with the smell of fresh popcorn, was like being transported to a whole other world. It used to be so magical. But now I’m thinking about boycotting movies altogether. Why? Because I can’t seem to watch one anymore without having some stupid theme shoved in my face.
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore. Take this Sonic The Hedgehog 3 movie they got out now: I watched it expecting to be dazzled and entertained, and instead I had to sit there as they introduced a big, central theme and then spent nearly two hours exploring the living hell out of it. Who wants that?
I went to the theater to be amused and distracted by a film about a super-fast hedgehog, not to witness these gratuitous scenes that glamorize the importance of teamwork.
Give me laughs. Give me thrills. Even give me a scary villain now and again, why not? But spare me this obsession with making sure we all know your movie is about friendship, or perseverance, or whatever. You can stop crafting your movie around some aspect of human nature you find interesting, because I don’t care about that. At all.
I don’t want to see what made a character do something, or what led up to some event happening. I don’t like when your movie shows me various points of view that paint a fuller picture of the story. I just want to enjoy a movie for what it is, and that’s a random array of completely unrelated moving images that evoke absolutely nothing inside me.
Stop trying to make me fathom stuff.
Look. I get it. Hollywood is a big business, and directors have to follow the latest trends to be relevant. That doesn’t mean I want to fork over my hard-earned cash to sit through yet another well-paced plot that supports the main theme of love or bravery or how revenge is a fool’s errand that ultimately corrodes the human soul.
It’s getting so I can’t take my kid to the movies without having to cover her eyes so she isn’t exposed to the eternal struggle between good and evil or the universal need for human connection. I just wish they would leave those parts out. So many movies would be great if they didn’t include all that unnecessary garbage.
And that’s another thing: Enough with all the depth and meaning already!
Remember when movies were black-and-white vignettes of mustachioed strongmen lifting weights, or a group of bandits silently chasing a train on horseback? We need more of that these days. Silly, mindless fun like they used to make. I miss going to unpretentious popcorn movies that you could take a date to without having to worry about it “being about something.”
Now, before you bombard me with angry emails, I know I can just skip past all the themes and concepts of any movie and go straight to the credits. But I shouldn’t have to, and neither should you. That’s why I’m asking you to join my nationwide cinema boycott!
Let’s make it perfectly clear to all the studios and filmmakers out there: Until you stop polluting your movies with gratuitous themes, ideas, and allusions of all kinds, we’re gonna spend our precious free time doing something more worthwhile. Like reading and rereading all seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time in its original French.
Because after all, “Le seul véritable voyage…ce ne serait pas d’aller vers de nouveaux paysages, mais d’avoir d’autres yeux.”
Jesus Christ is King
