New Year, Same Movies

Just got back from watching James Cameron's "Avatar". The movie was pretty good, but that's not what I'm going to talk about here.

I'm going to talk about the trailers, or rather, trailer. The lights went down in the theater and I witnessed the same trailer, again and again and again. The trailer was for different films, but it was all the same. Threatening music at the beginning, quick shots of random stuff and then a heavy metal song would kick in and there were quick shots of random action. Stop, someone says a line and then go into montage of random destruction. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I witnessed millions of dollars thrown around on screen, again and again and again. All the trailers built to the same point and flashed their title too quick to see, or else I just didn't care.

One film stood out from the rest, not going with the "gritty" and "dark" look of the other films. This was the trailer for an unconventional movie based on an unconventional comic book, "Kick-Ass". Yeah, that's the title, and it looks like this movie will RULE. However, this was the lone exception, and there were at least 5 trailers (almost certainly more, but I lost count because I just didn't care).

It became clear to me that we now live in an age where special effects extravaganzas are commonplace and boring. Why? They make so much money, it inspires studios to make them again and again and again. And we keep buying tickets.

It's unfortunate, but I have no doubt many people will pay to see the same movie several times this coming year, under different titles of course. And next year, they'll do it all again. But I won't.