Review

The 70s is such a goddamn good time for movies that it makes me sad that it ended. This is the kind of golden shit you get when you just let the directors be directors. People will poo-poo on auteur theory and I don't necessarily disagree with them, but when I think of movies that came out in this period, it really solidifies my opinion that for a movie to be good you MUST have one, or max two, people who are clearly behind the steering wheel and are getting final say in things. (I.E. someone who is directing other people) I don't think a committee is capable of making a good movie. There has to be someone who has a vision who is putting that vision down onto film for others to view. Otherwise, you just start getting movies and not films. And I'm tired of movies, you know? I'm not a gluttonous slave to entertainment. I don't require flashing lights in my eyes every hour of every day and so I will lower my standards as much as possible to ensure there is a never-ending line of trash I can shovel into my psyche. If there's no good movies on I will simply not watch a movie.

An interaction I find weird that seems relatively common is when someone will criticize some modern media (Marvel, whatever random TV show is on, some video game). And people will come out of the woodwork incensed, rebutting with "Just let people enjoy what they want!" I find this completely misses the point that is frequently being made by the critic. The problem is that no, you can't just let people enjoy what they want. There isn't an infinite amount of money in the universe. Not every project that gets presented gets greenlit. And in the modern day, increasingly shitty things are greenlit, to the detriment of everything else. Those modern superhero flicks that haven't had anything new to say in the last 10 years take up all the air, and money, in the room. And it means actual cinema, true films, have to compete amongst themselves over the scraps to get made. That makes me sad, the idea that there are dozens of potential classics that couldn't get made because we needed to shovel a couple hundred million dollars into the latest DC sewage. So when you have these white knights circling the wagons for the monolithic corporations telling me "Actually, I thought Fast and Furious 17: Go Vroom Vroom wasn't entirely trash. This youtube video essay I watched showed me how if you just changed every aspect of the movie there's actually a completely serviceable movie hidden in there. It was definitely way better than the previous 8 in the series that I dutifully saw". I'm at the point where I can only roll my eyes.

What I want is for more people to be selective in what they view. I'm not saying that no one is allowed to have guilty pleasures. That would be silly. We don't need to all be harsh critics with sticks up their arses 24/7 demanding only the finest caviar available. But Hollywood is ruled by money right now. And I can tell you that the psychopath execs that only care about their bank account increasing at an exponential rate will stop greenlighting trash when it stops being economically viable for them to do so. You do not need to run out to theaters because someone on Twitter said Justice League: Oops, All Ezra Millers made them huff air out of their nose twice when the previous one only made them do so once. Fear Of Missing Out is the death of genuine enjoyment of media. Kill it in yourself and never allow its rank seeds to germinate. It is a relic of a bygone evolutionary age. The need to keep up with the Joneses to signal to others that you are part of the in-group and not the out-group. You will become significantly happier for dismissing it, I assure you.

Oh yeah, I liked the shark. 5/5