The summer blockbuster season is upon us, and no franchise is safe. Everything must be sequelized, rebooted and thrown through the ol’ grit grinder. Now, you may find this hard to believe, but as a pasty, bearded, bespectacled fella in his 30’s, I have some things to say about the state of movies. This is the prison that I have built for myself.
Movies have to appeal to wider audiences now because they cost $700 billion to make. This character or series or toy that you still hold dear? It now has to appeal to every man, woman and child living in China if they want to make any money off of it. This is what we in the movie industry call “money making plan.” So that’s why Iron Man has to fly to Tibet and breakdance with a monk for 30 seconds, give a thumbs up to no one and then fly off to do whatever it is Iron Man usually does. Screw your continuity, pal, in this rebooted universe Peter Parker assembles iPhones and he’s never been happier. Look at him go.
Speaking of reboots, my brain processes their existence in a very specific way: First is general interest based solely on name recognition. Ah yes, Name of Movie, I remember that movie. I liked the part where it was a movie. The second stage is anger. The original Name of Movie was perfect. The special effects looked like dog shit, none of the actors remembered the other character’s names so they snapped their fingers and pointed and called everyone “um uhhh what’s their face, the guy with the amulet,” and the entire third act was considered a hate crime in 38 states but GODDAMMIT, NAME OF MOVIE WAS SO GOOD AND THIS REBOOT WILL SULLY THE GOOD NAME OF NAME OF MOVIE. The third and final stage is forgetting the reboot exists and watching it on Netflix three years later and saying eh it was ok.
Though I’ve only seen the trailer, I’m going to assume the Poltergeist reboot is not for me. Me, the person whose favorite scene in Poltergeist is when the mother is setting up ghost traps in the kitchen, maybe a little stoned from the night before. She’s drawing circles on the floor, she’s putting chairs in the circles, chairs are flying all over the kitchen. She’s just so damn excited to have ghosts in her house before all hell breaks loose, and who could blame her? It’s a scene that breaks up the tension without grabbing your head, throwing it onto a curb and stomping a lighthearted, tender moment down your throat while screaming, “DID YOU FEEL THAT? ARE YOU FEELING THIS?” You know? Do you know what I mean?
The house lights come up. The ghost of Roger Ebert turns around and gives my blog post a middling half thumb up. “I felt like he had a point in there somewhere,” he says, ghostily, “But it seemed lost in a toilet of all-caps yelling and word vomit.” He rattles some chains and makes a candelabra float around the room before disappearing forever. Thank you, ghost of Roger Ebert, for inspiring me to reboot this series of words, maybe bring along a plucky CGI sidekick, and try again in two weeks.
You can watch me scream and yell all of my recent posts on AwesomeTalk! It airs every other Tuesday on our YouTube channel, where you can also find past episodes and other psychotic vlog vids.