So with all the hubbub and box office around Deadpool & Wolverine, I decided to go see it Sunday as I had not much else to do. How was it?
I was satisfied.
I mean what else can you be? This isn’t high art, this is taking the piss out of the MCU and I’m happy with that.
Deadpool has an arc, Wolverine has an arc. The jokes land about fifty percent of the time. The production values vary between great and “wow that looked really CG.”
I mean I can’t say anything really that bad. I was entertained. It had enough good moments to overwhelm the bad moments.
At the end of the day, I’m glad I saw it and I’ll probably watch it once more on home video.
Which is exactly what I did with the first two. Enjoyed them, watched them one more time, and never went back.
I guess that’s the problem with entertainment these days, that’s probably as good as its going to get for mainstream movies. It’ll make a ton of money because enough people are just wanting to be satisfied.
So those people will fork over the money, watch it once more and then ten or twenty years from now, everyone will be struggling to remember which one was which.
“Was that the one with Brad Pitt?”
“No that was the third one.”
“No THAT’S the one with Wolverine.”
“Oh yeah. Wait, how many Deadpool movies were there again?”
There are so many movies from back in the day we go back to watch again and again. Hell, even the first phases of the MCU are pretty rewatchable.
But now?
Is this the best we can do? THIS is a huge success and everyone acts like it was the best thing ever when it wasn’t even the best thing in any random week in the 80s?
I’m just not really happy with being satisfied. Maybe I’m too old now, I’ve seen all the movies. The previews, of which there are 30 friggin minutes of them, were all just meh.
Nothing they showed had me going “Oh yeah, I need to see that.”
Santa Clause gets kidnapped and The Rock and Chris Evans have to rescue him by fighting giant demon snowmen? That’s the only thing I remember in all the previews I saw.
I say “remember”, not “compelled to watch.” That’s the best the previews could do, make me actually recall part of one of them.
Is this the last gasps of cinema? It all wears the past glories like skin suits. It’s not just about the woke quotient, though that ain’t helping matters. It’s about the laziness, the lack of any originality.
The most you get as far as originality goes anymore is weird A24 movies. I’ll give them originality but not exactly crowd pleasers. I mean why does everything original also seem to be so nihilistic or just downright depressing? Is an original crowd-pleaser dead?
I saw Twisters this weekend and despite Critical Drinker’s defense of the movie, it was a flatline for me. Basically a beat for beat rehash of the original.
While Glen Powell has that “it” factor, the Helen Hunt stand in looked like she was about Drew Barrymore’s age in E.T. half the time. Can’t we get women who look like women? Looking your age doesn’t mean less hot.
I dunno, I’m using more and more time to go back to things I missed when they were popular, I suppose that’s a silver lining.
I can watch Dr. Who from the beginning until just before it went to shit and see what all the fuss is about. I can find older shows that maybe I was too young to appreciate. I hear Hill Street Blues was amazing for its time.
I mean I can’t muster any enthusiasm for a Beetlejuice sequel. I never want to see a Star Wars again. Trek is ruined, I’ll just watch the golden years. Bustin’ makes me feel bored. I won’t be back for Terminator 15. In space, no one can hear me yawn.
I know cinema has gone through hard times before. But in the 60s and 70s, when the big moguls had passed on and the studios were bought by corporations, at least then they took a lot of chances to find weirdos to make movies.
Not everything landed, but damn it was never boring.
Now it’s nothing but boring. I can’t even muster enough emotion to get mad at this crap anymore. Why should I waste good energy on people that at best are souless shills and at worse hate me for existing?