You Oughta Be in Pictures

by Robison Wells, a shimmering star in the cinema firmament

Amazingly, I managed to see all the big summer movie blockbusters this year. This is kind of a big deal for me, considering that I very rarely ever watch anything at the movie theater. Ever since I had a kid, my movie watching has gone down the drain. I live across the street from a theater, for crying out loud, and I never go over there. Dang kids.

But, this year, through a string of magic coincidences and negligent parenting, I managed to see: The Da Vinci Code, X-Men 3: Cyclops Gets Fried, Superman Returns, and Pirates of the Carribean: Miss Swan's Chest. I missed Mission Impossible 3, but saw The Devil Wears Prada, which I'm assuming was a pretty good tradeoff.

And you know what? I was pretty dang disappointed. All of those movies were okay, but none of them was amazing. None were terrible, either. They were all just kind of blah. Here, below, are my thoughts on all of them. Spoilers ahoy!

The Da Vinci Code: I've blogged about this movie a little bit before, and you'll no doubt remember that I was somewhat annoyed with the moral message of the show. Because I'm a zealot. But there's no denying the fact that, as I'm looking back on the summer, The Da Vinci Code is the movie that I'd most like to re-watch.

Here's the problem with The Da Vinci Code: it's a movie about ideas. Granted, it's not a movie about The Federalist Papers -- it's not revolutionary or life-changing -- but it's about ideas nonetheless. For crying out loud, ninety percent of the book is transcribed lecture. And yet the audience was annoyed that there weren't enough laser beams and sword fights (or whatever the attention-span challenged audience wanted). If you watch the movie, realizing that it's a really talky, idea movie, then it's perfectly enjoyable. Not groundbreaking, but good.

X-Men 3: Cyclops Dies and Nobody Cares: This movie was just about the exact opposite of The Da Vinci Code: the first two movies were really awesome, what with the explosions and the kung-fu fighting and the mutant powers. But this episode was a whole lot of talking, and very little stabbing bad guys. Sure, occassionally Jean would explode and people would disintegrate, but on the whole it wasn't quite up to par with the previous two. (Probably because it had a different director -- a director who seemed to think that it would be a good idea to remove all the action and characterization.)

Superman Returns: Here's a question for Superman: Honestly, Superman, if you can fly up into space and hear everything all over the world and then swoop down and solve all the problems, then what the stinking heck are you doing capturing muggers and stopping car accidents. Honestly, aren't there wars going on somewhere? Sure, it's nice that you rescued that girl who had no brakes, but what about GENOCIDE, you moron!? And if you can do all this good and hear all the world's problems, then why do you waste so much time dorking around the Daily Planet?

Pirates of the Carribean: Some people seem to have very strong opinions on this movie, and they make very angry statements, such as: "character assassination, no sweeping love story, everybody gets a plot (including various body parts) - total mess". People who say this (Sariah Wilson, I'm looking in your silly direction), seem to care just a tad too much. But, here's my thought: if you can accept that this movie is different from the first, then it's completely enjoyable. If you can stomach the idea that Jack Sparrow isn't in quite as much control, and that Keira Knightly left her makeup kit home and spent too much time in the tanning bed, and that Legolas is, well, bland as always, then it's a totally watchable movie. Sure, it's a little long, but so was the freaking Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice, and you all seemed to love that, didn't you?

The Devil Wear Prada: This movie was actually really good.

So, there you go. Those are the movies I've seen, and that's what I think about them. Looking back, I'm surprisingly negative, considering how I said they were all decent movies. Ah well. It wasn't my point anyway.

My point, which I'm just now coming to, is this: I wonder how long cinema, as we know it, is going to be around. Case in point: Mission Impossible III vs. television's 24. If you think about it, there's not an enormous difference between the two of these. They're both outrageous action thrillers, where insanely improbable things happen, and people are way too serious, and a lot of things blow up. So, what sets them apart? Mission Impossible has better effects. 24, on the other hand, has a new episode every week, all season long. It was six years since the last Mission Impossible, and it's really not all that much better than what we get every week with 24. So, why do we care?

Look at the current state of TV: production values are up, stories are excellent, writing is better than ever. Look at 24 and House and Lost and Veronica Mars and Smallville and all the other great new shows cropping up. CSI is one of my most hated shows, but you can't deny that the production values are good. But more importantly, all of these shows can build characters and story in a way that movies could only dream about. Let's say a Mission Impossible TV show started in 2000, the same time that MI2 came out. Since then, we could have had hundreds of episodes, where plots are developed and characters are explored. Instead, we have one big blockbuster movie, six years later, where nothing much has changed, but there are cool explosions and make-up.

Modern technology is making special effects cheaper and easier all the time. How long will it be before nothing differentiates between the big blockbuster movies and TV shows?