i miss the 80s.
sure i wasn't around for most of them; heck, what i'm about to talk about was done four years before my birth. but i digress...
you know what i like best about the 80s? movies. and do you know why? because movies were good. no over the top special effects that are completely redundant (you know who you are), no leeching off popular trends and other pinnacles of cinematographic achievement (again, you know who you are), no requirement for racial or sexual diversity for the sole purpose of not wanting to offend anyone, and most of all, movies in the 80s understood movies in the 80s.
what i mean is that those movies took themselves seriously and understood how a movie was supposed to make a person feel. the best example is pacing; nobody uses pacing anymore: everything is flashy, obvious or in-your-face.
i want to look at John Carpenter's The Thing.
this movie is about a bunch of dudes (yep, no women!) living in a research base in Antarctica who encounter a hostile alien entity.
Side note: if The Thing was made today, it'd have the creature killing people off one by one in the darkened corridors and kennels playing with shadow in such a way that the horrors of a dog's face splitting open would still achieve a 14A rating. in this movie, the overtly masculine and well built, clean shaven hero would defeat the horrible foe and totally bone the non-existent female character. this would be a terrible movie.
thank god (internet) that The Thing was filmed in 1982. the first time the creature is revealed to the audience, every single person in the research base is witness. they then discover after killing the creature, that it has the ability to imitate life forms. the movie then turns the characters against their fellow man for fear of infection and murder, and peoples true natures are revealved.
mutations make more appearences, but not in such a way that says "hey, look what we can do!"
holy shit i just figured it out!
lately, movies are suffering from David Blane syndrome. they distract you until they can pull the twist and amaze you, only to have the majority of people pull back and realize that it's actually not a very good trick. uver-used computer graphics snap their fingers at you off to the side to distract you from the lack of plot and when they take your watch off after you pulled the queen of hearts out of the rabbit, the climax dissapoints at best.
good lord that was not very well thought out.
i'm going to stop blogging now.
The David Blane analogy is on the right page. It's like movies from the 80s were Houdini. He wasn't saying, "this is magic." He was saying, "this is an illusion. enjoy it."
ReplyDeleteThen David Blane comes in in the 90s and says, "fuck you, I'm magic. believe, motherfuckers." And you're all like "whoa, shit! hey, wait... but you got me pretty good there, Blane."
And here in the 2000s, we finally have Criss Angel. "I'm important and better than you." Angel hangs from a flying helicopter attached by metal hooks through his skin. Okay, impressive, but that's not fucking magic. and why? why did you do that? you didn't prove that no man could hold you or that you are harder to kill than Rasputin himself. you've proved that you can let a helicopter fly while you dangle from it in an idiotic display of... of I don't know what!
You are entirely right. Movies today try and say "hey! hey! hey! hey, look! look! hey!" and just like the shows, you foolishly listen and watch the whole damn program to see if maybe it is worth it. Then a helicopter goes up and there is a body attached. when it lands, Criss is hurt. great. that could be summed up in an animated gif, not an hour long television programme. Perhaps if you want to make a giant nuclear explosion scene to proclaim your awesomeness, make a short YouTube clip. Don't crowbar it into a movie.
I have to disagree, movies are just different today not better or worse just different. I will agree that generally blockbuster movies have faster yet longer pacing then they did awhile back. but what ever. I will say that 80's action stars were better back then, only because they looked that they could take on the world.
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