Sunday, August 31, 2008

Outlandish!

My intelligence has been insulted by many movies, but last night we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie and I realized that Hollywood has reached another level of outlandishness. The gundpowder flying down aisles in the warehouse seeking out the magnet, the sword fight while standing on two jeeps driving through the jungle, surviving an atomic blast in a lead-lined refridgerator, an aging professor throwing Russian soldiers around like rag dolls, Indiana and Marion calling each other "dear" and "honey" despite her having been married and not seeing each other for so many years, falling hundreds of feet in waterfall after waterfall...I could go on and on. Granted, it was not supposed to be a serious, scientifically sound movie. But it got to the point where they could have dropped an anvil on Indiana Jones, flattened him like a pancake, and had him stand up and walk away like an accordian and it wouldn't have taken away from the movie.

So I got to reflecting on other ridiculous movies.

King Kong (2005) -- Peter Jackson was trying to out do himself. And he was trying too hard. The giant gorilla is swinging around on vines with like twelve tyrannosaurus rexes trying to eat the girl (apparently they were more concerned with a snack than they were with falling to their deaths) while she repeatedly fell thirty or forty feet without any harm.

Die Another Day (2002) -- James Bond goes off a collapsing glacier cliff and uses the wreckage of his vehicle to windsurf to safety. Yes, windsurf.

Superman (1978) -- Lois dies so Superman turns back time by...making the world spin backwards? That makes no sense at all!

Any Movie Starring Vin Diesel (1999 to present) -- I hope no one who reads this blog has actually gone to see The Fast and the Furious, XXX, Chronicles of Riddick, or anything else that guy has starred in, thinking, "Ooh, that looks good."

24 season 6 (2007) -- The plot was simple: terrorists are trying to set off a nuclear bomb in the United States and only Jack Bauer can save us. The problem is that every season you have to add to the plot. "Now let's have TWO nuclear bombs! Now let's have THREE nuclear bombs! Now let's..." We get it.

Hopefully that's enough to get you started. I didn't even touch romance movies.

2 comments:

jonhintze said...

i am so glad somebody else realizes that spinning the world backwards would not turn back time.

what was grabbing onto to spin it back anyway? trees? buildings? please...

Jen R. said...

I like that word outlandish...I'm going to try and use it in my next post. Also, I totally liked Fast and the Furious, but I went knowing it would be lame...sometimes you just like lame...I'm kind of lame, but people like me. And the thing that bothered me in King Kong, is when she'd fall a thousand feet and he'd catch her in his hand...you know that impact would break all of her bones or at least something...when I was a flyer in cheerleading and the boys would throw me up to do flips, when they'd catch me, their arms would leave bruises on my skin, and we're talking only like 15 or so feet here.