Seriously, WTF Died Inside You That You Could Hate INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY?
Or: Why going to the movies isn't as fun as it used to be
My only explanation for the phenomenon is social media and how it has polarized not only how we talk about politics, but how we talk about anything. Call it a strict bifurcation of all opinions, in which there is no country that lives between good and evil anymore – or, in the case of art, love and hate. Gone are the days when, say, a film could be good or maybe even pretty good. Gone are the days when people could just see a film and say, “Yeah, it was okay. Not really something I’d see again, but I had fun enough and it was certainly better than sitting at home on the couch questioning all the bad decisions I’ve made with my life.” No, now it must be either the greatest thing ever (custom) made (just for us) or we must condemn — no, destroy — it along with anyone who makes the foolish mistake of enjoying the thing. This is all my long-winded way of asking: what the fuck died inside you that could hate INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY?
If you loved it, great. Read on. You’ll probably agree with a lot of what I have to say here. If you thought it was just okay, middle of the road, [shoulder shrug], whatever, I respect your opinion as long as it didn’t lead you to attack others for disagreeing with you; maybe check out of the read at this point. But if you hated it — and a lot of people I know and on social media have made sure the world knows how much they did — you really need to read on. Because I’m seriously concerned about how you ended up like this.
I’ve seen a lot of bad films. I've seen a lot of really bad franchise films, a dishearteningly disproportionate number of them in the past decade. DIAL OF DESTINY is neither. It has a tight structure, solid character arcs, great performances, and expertly crafted action sequences - and is filled with plenty of plot reversals and stakes surprises to keep the audience engaged. Weigh it against the Hollywood films released over the past five years, and it’s a goddamn masterpiece. Weigh it against the history of cinema, it’s okay at worst. But bad? It doesn't even approach the border of the Republic of Bad. You would need a satellite to put them both in the same image, which is why screaming you hate it at anyone you can reveals either your ignorance of how cinematic storytelling works or personal bias/damage that you need to work on with a paid professional or at the local bar.
For context, I never criticize films I didn’t like on social media, at least not for many, many years now having long ago recognized what these platforms did to my mind. Instead, I only analyze and sing a film’s praises, I only discuss and celebrate, which makes vitriol as a response to such commentary so much more sickening on a sociological level.
This gleeful maligning of films that don't perfectly satisfy us for wholly subjective reasons is why social media is so terrible and why so many of us now find so little enjoyment from going to movies – or even sharing them with others like we used to. If I do share a positive opinion on Twitter or Facebook or wherever about something I just bought a ticket to or watched on television, I can expect to be attacked by contrary opinions built on whatever the opposite of critical thought is. Just petty, typically teenage-level emotional one-upmanship, as if dismantling another person’s joy provides meaning and satisfaction in any way.
The most pathetic part is how this behavior has become normalized by sad basement-dwelling ghouls who blame Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy for everything that’s ever gone wrong in their sexless, Monster-swilling lives. (Did you know an angel gets its wings every time some porn-addled misogynist says Kennedy ruined STAR WARS?) These weird half-people who snort Twitter bots and spend all their time defending things like the Snyderverse with al-Qaeda-like religious fervor have helped warp how we interact about the things we used to love so much. Instead of reacting to the merits of a work, we’re forced to react to their reactions to people of color being cast or women playing heroes or whatever other 18th-century logic they vomit into the universe to distort contemporary reality with something like gravitational force. I mean, what the hell kind of intellectually infantile nonsense is this?
Or this misogynistic bullshit that tries to reduce Phoebe Waller-Bridge to a weird brain-addled alien rather than one of the most celebrated storytellers of our time?
Here’s a fun exchange that overlooks, A, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK’s Marion Ravenwood is one of the strongest female co-leads in Hollywood blockbuster history and, B, the “feminist” in question produced two other Indiana Jones films and at least half a dozen other films that easily qualify as some of the greatest ever made (and most financially successful).
This isn’t just something limited to social media either, mind you. Here’s Yahoo — Yahoo! — sharing clickbait for misogynistic trolls. Kennedy hasn’t been fired, which is literally how the article, only intended for those aforementioned sexless, Monster-swill
Art is not sports, in case this needs to be said - which, apparently, it needs to be.
You don’t declare undying support for artists like they’re your favorite team, or wish blood vengeance against producers who make your heroes grow up, and you certainly don’t swear fealty to brands like adolescents arguing about which is cooler: Transformers or He-Man. (Obviously, the answer is Transformers).
If art only makes you feel good, if it never challenges you, if it never provokes or disappoints you or enrages you or blows up your expectations for the better or worse, you’re not engaging in actual art. In the case of film, you’ve been tricked into buying a $15 movie ticket to Nothingville. You’ve been suckered, bamboozled, made into a chump by studio/streamer hucksters who, I assure you, like to refer to you as the “lowest common denominator” in development meetings.
Obviously, this article is not specifically about INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY. DIAL OF DESTINY is but one example of how so many of us — both the trolls and those who have been polarized by their ignorance — have collectively ruined what was one of the most important communal experiences in American culture and in most cultures around the world: going to the movies.
This is not hyperbole. Going to the movies is the one place — the only place — where religion, cultural/ethnic differences, and politics never used to matter.
But where once we found common ground in these cathedrals of light and magic, these temples of modern myths, social media has fractured the experience into discord and babel.
How are we supposed to share all these moments across cultures and languages and borders, with strangers utterly alien to us, to forge a kind of common language — a lingua franca — if cinematic discourse and ensuing cultural conversations continue to be so polluted, corrupted, ruined by racist, misogynistic man-children incapable of remaining silent about anything that doesn’t speak directly to their prepubescent fantasies of how the world works?
Because at the end of the day, all I want to do is worship the images splashed across the big screen alongside all of you. I want them to speak in a voice that transcends our potential differences, with a voice as close to the numinous outside of nature as I’ve ever experienced. They are pieces of wonder, after all — something ineffably luminous — which some of you would notice if you stopped being such Neanderthals.
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I agree, I agree, I agree !!! You have such a command of the subject and the language (I love it when beautiful words come together to express a thought with cohesion) that I look forward to your posts with anticipation. I'll have another cup of coffee while I send one to you. Thanks
Going to the cinema is fun. It’s venturing online afterwards that is hell.