I find it funny that we're in 2010 and we're basically reliving the 1980's. Movies these days are all about reliving childhood. They made 2 Transformers movies with another in the makes. There was that GI Joe movie a while back. The Smurfs movie as a live action flick is going to be released sooner or later. The Karate Kid got a really weird modern day makeover. There are a whole bunch more. It's kind of nice having such obvious homages to my childhood pop up like this but at the same time I can't bear to see these movies hack up what was so dear to me. It's a double-edged sword. I love that they're bringing new life into the old stuff and introducing new audiences to what is already there but they have a tendency to chew the old material into bits and pieces so that it's barely recognizable anymore. It hurts the soul. I can't bear to watch most of the newer movies.
Especially the movies that were made from books. I hated movie the Dark is Rising, the Seeker movie. I absolutely loved the books by Susan Cooper while growing up and when I heard a movie was being made I was so excited til the more I heard about it the less I liked about what I heard and then when I saw the movie, I wanted to cry (I was pregnant at the time, leave me alone) and throw tomatos at the screen. It was absolutely horrible. It was almost nothing like the books. The same for the Queen of the Damned movie from Anne Rice's book. It was absolutely nothing like the book. They were like we got the title and a few names so that's all we need to make the movie. There is a reason those books are so loved by people so when you change the material so much, it's not a surprise that people will hate the movie. The point is--Stick with the original material people!
It’s because we like to remember our childhood and the heroes we had then, maybe that’s why you have a hero problem today! I went back to some of the places that I lived after about twenty years, the place really changes, and it isn’t what it was when you lived there, people make a place, not the buildings or shops that are there. Writers today seem to lack the inspiration, want to write reality shows instead of fantasy and lack real imagination, they are ‘commercialized’ and write what sells, I guess we can’t blame them, but in my opinion, the quality is way down. So their solution is to rip off and destroy the rock solid success stories of the past, with a more modern version. Bahh Humbug!
ReplyDeleteI have a few score of grandchildren ranging in ages from 26 to 3yrs old. You know what they want to talk about? They want to talk about Video Games! I invented a bedtime story routine with the six year olds of my fifth daughter. Instead of reading to them we would play, “And then what happened….” it became a real hit, you only are allowed about 3 minutes to tell your portion of the story, continuing on from the previous story teller’s episode, then you point to someone else to continue the story, taking turns, it makes them listen and ask question, use their imagination and was a lot of fun for all of us. Their job was to continue the story, most of the time it would include foes from video games, or events of a certain level of Mario Brothers, it was sad but towards the end of last summer I got them to exclude the video game characters and to include themselves and their brothers in the adventure. Maybe it will save the world and inspire some true imagination in their little video game corrupted minds. And nothing would be wrong with that.