I like to watch movies. For me they come in an endless variety depending on situation and mood. A movie can be very good and very bad at different times and with different people. Sometimes, though, they are only one thing all of the time (You know what I mean, Showgirls). But there are movies that are good when watching with your girlfriend, but bad when watching with dudes, and vice-versa. Also, try watching a good movie with your parents only to be confronted with a sex scene, that while maybe tastefully done, makes everyone in the room very uncomfortable. So, like party music, sometimes a movie's value isn't dependent upon it's "quality" (in whatever way you can define that), but by it's appropriateness to the audience and situation.
Well, one variety of movies that I like to think about in a certain situation is for complicated, expensive, action-oriented, special-effects-laden movies with great sound and cinematography to be shown in a theater in the silent movie era. How fun would it be to take Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings, or The Maxtrix (to name a few), and then travel back in time to 1916 and blow some audience's mind? You'd have to take your THX-style auditorium with you in the Delorean, so maybe you would have to hitch a trailer or something.
What would the audience do? They probably wouldn't be prepared for the kind of kinetic feast like 300 and would exit the theaters vomiting and trampling old ladies en route to some kind of confession booth, because they've just seen the end of the world. Or would they? There is a long-held myth that during the first screenings of various motion pictures audiences freaked out because they thought someone was going to shoot them (The Great Train Robbery) or that a train would run them over (L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat). They are said to have ran screaming out of the theaters in panic. Just like in my imagination. However, most film historians doubt this happened as no verifiable evidences proves that they did.
So, why do we give past generations the short end of the stick? Like they were retarded children who would crap their pants if we showed them a hologram? I'm sure some people would be a bit frightened. But most would just be suspicous or dismissive because they couldn't understand it. They would be hostile and critical, while a small few would see the wonder and possibility of such advancement. And whatever it is, the loudest critics would decry it as being vulgar or unsophisticated.
But still, wouldn't it be fun to open a wormhole and let in a group of sixty-year old nuns to a showing of Black Hawk Down? What would happen? Would they all have heart attacks? Would some of them walk out? Or would they sit there politely and be unimpressed, like my mom when I try to tell here a bawdy joke she already heard way back in the 60's? Well, that's what I think about when I see a movie that is quite the spectacle. Did you see the look on D.W. Griffith's face when Neo was dodging all of those bullets?! It was priceless!
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4 comments:
When I was about 15, my dad made us all sit down and watch Annie Hall, b/c its such a classic, and had always been one of his favorite movies. Since you know our family so well, I think you can understand the akwardness of that situation.
I'm surprised that's one of his favorite movies! I'd pay money to watch you guys watch that together.
We also watched Forrest Gump with our grandma when I was in third grade.
You are very creative. People should pay you to write this kind of stuff. You should write a book. I would buy it. But you'd have to mention me in the preface. Or maybe dedicate it to me. Or make me the macho main character, if it's a novel. I mean, unless you were using your own awe-inspiring self in that capacity, in which case I would gladly submit to being your sidekick.
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