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I'm done. That's it. I didn't like Blade 2. I wasn't upset that Lord of the Rings didn't win best picture. I liked The Phantom Menace. I'm sorry, but I think David Fincher is a highly overrated director. The Blair Witch Project sucked. I'm not fit to be one of you anymore. It's time I give it up. It used to be fun to be a geek. It used to be about enjoying things like science fiction and D&D. We used to be quiet, we used to be nice. Now, it mostly seems to be about arguing. It's about hating things and complaining that things aren't being done to suit our tastes. It's about filing online petitions demanding that David Fincher or Tim Burton direct the next Star Wars film. It's about being the loudest and the toughest, lashing out at people who don't agree with us. It's about our "superior" status as geeks. We understand, while the "sheep" see bad movies. I missed out on the change. Didn't get that memo. We apparently elected a leader; a bloated, loud mouthed, ignorant leader who we thought embodied everything we were. He got attention. That's how we thought it should work. Our opinion mattered. The green lighters started to listen to us. We started to get what we wanted: sci-fi, fantasy, more than we could keep track of. Of course, what some of us wanted was good sci-fi and fantasy. We wanted fantastic stories, likeable characters, morality plays disguised as laser battles. What did we get? We got heroes who kill everyone they meet. We got breathtakingly fast, soulless karate fights. We got space ships that explode better than ever before. We got what we asked for, but we didn't. Now, I'm told that if I don't like it, I should hang it up. I should stop calling myself a geek and move on. Because this is what a geek is about. It's about Blade 2, the number one film in the country. If you don't like it, hand in your geek card. Gladly. I'll hand it over because I don't want
to be that anymore. Geeks were harmless. We argued in a way
that usually ended with someone saying "you're crazy, roll
your dice." Now, you're called an idiot if you didn't like
a movie. You're told that your opinion isn't valid as a geek,
and you don't matter. The geek collective, the hive mind, has
deemed this film as something a geek must like. As I said, I'm
out. I'm jumping off this bandwagon. It's too crowded, and
the wrong people are in the driver's seat. I'm heading over
to the other side and joining the sheep. I'm no longer going
to see a movie simply because it's sci-fi. I'm going to look
for quality, not laser blasts and wire fighting. I'm going to
enjoy things, and not try to convince people that I'm smarter
than them because I liked a movie more than they did. My enjoyment
of a film will not be affected by how much money it makes. I'll
simply bide my time and wait; things change. Pretty soon, geeks
won't be the ones the studios care about pleasing anymore. Sci-fi
movies will become rare again, and maybe they'll be good again.
Another sci-fi movie will come along that won't be a Matrix
rip-off, and I'll enjoy that. In time, this whole time in film
history will fade out. Maybe the geeks in charge will figure
out a better way to amass money and power and find greener pastures,
and the rank-and-file nerds can get back to not being assholes
and talking about good movies. Tomorrow, it's back to normal, when I'll
do a side-by-side comparison of two of the greatest basketball
movies ever made, Blue Chips and Hoosiers. Talk about this in the Forums. Go on, I dare you. |
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