My Musings

Fireworks

I like fireworks - the thunderous explosions, the bright colors, and all the patterns and types of fireworks. That being said, what I'm really wanting to address here isn't the fireworks you see in the sky but what modern movies have turned into.

When movies were first made, most people were awestruck by the sight of a moving picture. Plot lines were unimportant as the spectacle itself was the draw. I think modern films have fallen back into this with the introduction (and sometimes excessive use) of CG. Explosions and animated characters are the theme, and it doesn't seem to matter if there are solid and well developed characters, an interesting plot, or anything else at all. It's a fireworks display – loud, flashy, and quickly forgotten when it's over. The substance is missing. It's one of the many (and I mean MANY) flaws with the new Star Trek films. They have more explosions and phaser battles, but there is less substance, less quality.

Another example of this is in the Mission Impossible movies with Tom Cruise. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen the first film. They took the character that had been the leader of the team through the original series and the new series, Jim Phelps, turned him into the bad guy and then killed him. Talk about spitting in the faces of your fans. As if this wasn't bad enough, the movies also diverted from the format that made Mission Impossible what it was. It had always centered on a group of people pretending to be somebody else, hiding in plain sight, while trying to get the bad guy to do what they wanted and think it was his idea. The films changed it to an action format with gun fights, car chases, and hand-to-hand battles. Is it exciting? Yes. Is it entertaining? Yes. Is it Mission Impossible? No. It's closer to James Bond, and what made it unique has been lost. The action and excitement, the firework flash, has become more important.

This trend is even present in TV shows. When they killed off a character in the show Arrow (one of my favorite series up to that point), the writers explained they chose that particular person to die by asking a question: "Which character will the fans not be expecting to die?" One of the writers even admitted to the elimination being done because it would create the most "pop". They didn't seem to care about all the fans they'd stab in the back; the writers were only looking for the gasp of surprise at the next sudden explosion. Fireworks, nothing more.

Don't even get me started on what they're doing to The Walking Dead and Star Wars.

Let us hope that in the future movies will once more outgrow the crowd drawing spectacle and get back to making things with a good story, likable characters the audience will want to see again, and respecting the fanbase that made a thing popular in the first place.