Blockbusters, Indies, Art, Films, Trash Films — They’re All Movies

I hate movie snobs. Whenever I catch wind of some blowhard spitting movie snobbery, I just want to crush their skull in, which would make me a murderer, which is arguably much worse than a movie snob. I get the same violent urges towards art snobs in general. I’m talking about the kind of people who like to rank mediums of art.

“Painting is the highest form of art. Music is a close second, but only if it’s orchestral music, not rap. Rap isn’t art at all. And movies and TV are the lowest forms of art, if you can even call them that.”

Their reasons for not respecting certain mediums of art are usually steeped in ignorance.

“Movies are all explosions and superheroes.” Cherry-picking to denigrate the whole medium (and what’s so bad about explosions anyway?)

Or, “rap is all about drugs and violence.” Yes, and I suppose sculpting is all about men with small penises.

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That same poisonous thinking permeates movie lovers as well. The cinephiles who scoff at whatever new blockbuster is playing at the mainstream theaters. Or the blowhards who would laugh in your face if you so much as suggest that they see the newest comedy starring a former wrestler (may this trend never die). These are the people who pat themselves on the back for watching foreign films. The people who won’t dare watch a horror movie if it isn’t directed by Ari Aster.

Netflix? Never. The Criterion Channel? Always.

It’s not personal taste I’m attacking here either. It’s when someone can’t appreciate a genre on its own merit. Instead they judge all movies on the merits of their favorite genre. A goopy, soupy horror movie like Society won’t hold a candle to Lost in Translation in terms of character depth and emotional resonance, but as a goopy, soupy horror movie, it’s really damn good.

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Let me address my own blind spots here. All you need to see is my iTunes library to known my tastes fall heavily towards Junkfood movies. Give me Big Trouble in Little China. Give me any Fast and Furious. Anything with Rutger Hauer (RIP). But that’s not to say I don’t enjoy a good slow burn, a foreign film, or something drastically outside of my tastes. And most of all, I believe they’re all valuable in their own way.

You’ll often hear movies snobs say things like:

A movie should be a deeply serious work.

A movie needs to be about something important.

A movie needs to make you think.

A movie needs to challenge you.

Those are all great qualities to strive for, but in no way a prerequisite to be a valuable film. Usually what these people are really saying is, “a movie needs to do all of those things in the exact way that connects with me, no matter the genre.” But I don’t want the same thing out of a Coppola movie that I get out of a John Carpenter movie.

I’m not saying you have to love every single movie. I certainly don’t. Like I said, this isn’t about taste. This is about the asshole who scoffs at you for loving Hocus Pocus. Or the dickhead who thinks there’s a competition between art films and popcorn movies, and that art films are the clear-cut winner of said competition. Or that there’s even needs to be a winner at all.

Movies that make me think. Movies that make me zone-out. Movies with explosions. Movies with quiet moments of brilliance. Action movies. Horror movies. Character studies. They’re all movies, or film, or cinema, or whatever you want to call them. Those are just umbrella terms for endless possibilities. Movies are like people. You don’t have to like them all, but for god’s sake, respect them.

Except for Jean-Luc Goddard’s The Image Book. That movie fucking sucks

 

“Loved the script, Quentin. Just a few notes. Maybe less n-word.”

I’m fresh off of seeing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which I thought was incredible, but I’ll leave it at that since this isn’t a review. I do, however, need to give the tiniest of spoilers with this one simple, and possibly surprising, fact: the movie doesn’t have a single utterance of the n-word. That, my friends, is progress. The lack of n-bombs seemingly comes at the detriment of not having a single black speaking role in the movie, but some progress comes at the expense of others, I guess.

Tarantino’s scripts have never shied away from the word, and his bold use of it has even created some iconic movie lines, for better or worse.

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But there’s one of his films that particularly sticks out to me in its flagrant use of the word. I’m talking about The Hateful Eight.

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Watching The Hateful Eight can at times be an uncomfortable experience if you’re not someone who delights in hearing white people saying the N-word. A more prudent writer might have prepared for this article by watching The Hateful Eight and counting every utterance of the word, but that sounds like a great way to go insane, so I skipped that. Plus, if you’ve seen it, you already know exactly what I’m talking about.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the movie. I saw it in 70mm and watched the four-part episodic series on Netflix. I’m not saying that wins me the “biggest fan” award, but suffice to say, I am a big fan of the movie. And no, this isn’t me flexing my woke muscles either, mostly because I don’t think it’s a particularly heroic stance to say that white people saying the n-word makes you uncomfortable.  As a screenwriter myself, it just brings up one one simple question: how do you give that script to someone for notes?

You’d have to expect the first note you’d get is, “maybe less of the n-word.”

OK, so maybe the note “less n-word” doesn’t give Tarantino enough credit as a writer who knows what he’s doing. Let’s go with the note, “I know that it’s probably historically accurate, but at what cost?” That’s part of what makes the word work in his films, after all. The word always fits with how the characters would talk, whether due to the setting, time, or characters in the scene, but is that level of accuracy in historical fiction even necessary? Will the audience be taken out of the movie because the characters aren’t using that common vernacular of the time? Or will they be taken out of it because at this point, that vernacular is jarring no matter the context?

I know Tarantino hand writes the first draft of his scripts, then types them out page by page using some old half-computer/half-typewriter thing, so this is more of a rhetorical question than anything, but at what point do you CTRL-F the n-word, see that you’ve used it 37 times, and then decide, “maybe I can delete a couple of these.”

The argument against everything I’m saying here could be made as simple as “Tarantino is a genius.” That it is exactly his use of bold, unwavering language that makes his work resonate. From top to bottom, this is how he crafts his movies. With unwavering, confident choices that few others would dare to make. There’s an old zen quote that says, “the way a person does one thing is the way they do everything.” How he uses the n-word is the same mechanism he makes all his directorial and prosaic choices with. They simply can’t be parsed.

Maybe that’s giving him too much credit and the movie would be better off with a few less n-words though.

Or maybe I’m just being overly sensitive.

Or maybe he should have added more. Who knows?

Make Terminator and the Predator Horror Again

I’m so over Predator and Terminator movies.

Of course, I’m also full of shit. I’m not going to pretend like I’m not there opening weekend for every new Terminator and Predator movie, but I have stopped expecting them to be any good. Fucking hell. Even the combination of Shane Black and Olivia Munn couldn’t make The Predator work (the fact that Black cast a convicted pedophile in it didn’t help either, not that it affected my viewing. I just think it’s really fucking funny to mention for some reason).

The Terminator franchise has had the same problems as Predator. There hasn’t been a good one since Judgement Day. In that way, Predator and Terminator are kindred spirits. For the record, here are the official rankings:

TERMINATOR
1 (tied). Terminator/Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Everything else: garbage

PREDATOR
1. Predator
2. Predator 2
Everything else: garbage

Both of these franchises have the same big problem: their obsession with bigger, badder, more-CGed bad guys. Every Terminator movie has some new model of Terminator with a new power desperately trying to outdo the previous. That worked to terrifying effect with T-1000, but past that, not so much. In the new Terminator movie, Dark Fate, it’s not a T800. It’s not a liquid metal Terminator. It’s not a nano-bot John Connor Terminator either. It’s a Terminator who can separate and become two Terminators. Wow. Scary… And it’s up against a new, good Terminator! Plus Sarah Connor! All of that won’t amount to much more than a bunch of nonsensical CG action, not heightened drama or suspense (no, I haven’t seen it. I’m just being a bitch).

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Predator has seen a similar trend. We can ignore the AVP movies since they practically glow with radioactive badness. Nimrod Antal’s 2010 Predators asks the question, “What if there were more predators?” And the most recent Shane Black movie, The Predator, asks the question, “what if there was a BIGGER predator?” Just like our friend, the Terminator series, this seems to just amount to more CG nonsense, and very little drama or suspense.

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That’s why I plead with the series to go back to their roots.

Make Terminator and Predator Horror Again.

That’s where the heart of the series lies. Even Predator 2 and Terminator 2 have horror DNA in them, and at the very least, are just great movies regardless. We don’t want to see a bigger, badder bad guy. We want to see an unlikely protagonist take on an insurmountable foe, and guess what…

An alien bred for hunting  = insurmountable enough.

A man-hunting robot = insurmountable enough.

Let’s take a look at the first two Terminator and Predator movies.

Terminator
Protagonist: a waitress and a normal guy who traveled back in time. Neither of them can ask for help without sounding crazy.
Bad guy: Killer robot.

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Terminator 2
Protagonist: a kid and his robot.
Bad guy: Killer robot who can imitate anyone.

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Predator
Protagonist: Bad ass soldiers.
Bad guy: an alien who eats bad ass soldiers for breakfast.

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Predator 2
Protagonist: A hardened detective.
Bad guy: an alien who eats hardened detectives for breakfast.

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Now let’s jump ahead to the most current iterations of these franchises!

The Predator
Protagonist: bad ass soldiers
Bad guy: An extra large predator, plus other predators, plus demon dogs, but the other predators and demon dogs sort of work together with the bad ass soldiers.

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Terminator: Dark fate (Haven’t seen it yet, so yes I am talking out of my ass)
Protagonist: a bad ass female Terminator, Sarah Connor, a little girl
Bad guy: a Terminator who turns into two Terminators.

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Don’t you see the problem just by reading that? It’s just shit piled on top of shit. Why don’t these movies connect with fans and audiences? They actively disregard the soul of the series and instead chase the mumbo-jumbo. The soul is horror. The mumbo jumbo is the weapons, the action, and the lore.

Instead, give me this:

Predator: New Blood (working title. Might also be called Child Predator)
Protagonist: an 8-year-old.
Bad guy: A predator.
Sure, you’d have to figure out why the Predator is going after a kid, but after that, you’re off to the races. Make it a kid with no allies. No one to turn to. Make the kid have to figure out how to defeat the predator using his/her smarts. Make it a horror film.

Terminator: Orphan Maker (working title. Might also be called Terminator: Child Predator)
Protagonist: an 8-year-old
Bad guy: a killer robot.
OK, so, yeah this is the same idea as my Predator movie, but no one said I was original. Again, give the kid no allies. Give the adults an active reason not to help or believe the kid. Let the kid figure it out. MAKE IT A HORROR FILM!

It doesn’t have to be an 8-year-old kid, but you get the idea.

The Terminator/Predator hunting a baby.

Terminator/Predator hunting someone in the desert – make the environment just as unforgiving as the bad guy.

Trap the protagonist inside of an insane asylum or prison.

The point is that the Predator and Terminator are enough. They don’t need to get bigger, and we sure as hell don’t need to give the protagonist powerful allies. Our protagonists situation just needs to get worse.