Not dazzled by Hollywood ‘magic’

I don’t go to movies anymore. I just can’t bring myself to shell out $400 a ticket — or whatever it is now — to see something I know won’t entertain me.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I paid to see a movie and felt I got my money’s worth. Oh, wait. Yes I can. It was “Signs” with Mel Gibson before he made himself into Hollywood’s biggest schmuck with his behavior. I was afraid of cornfields for months. Instead of over-the-top special effects, excessive and ridiculous gore and such, it grabbed you with the anticipation and suspense that something was just around the corner. You knew the bad guy was out there, you knew he was coming, but you were always on the edge of your seat as it came closer and closer. Since then, the rare times I have let my children talk me into going to a movie theater have been let-downs.

Over the past few years I have gone to the movies only to learn that Darth Vader was an over-emotional crybaby before transforming into a menacing asthmatic in a helmet that looks like the grille of a 1950s Buick. I can’t watch the old, original Star Wars movies now without expecting the villain to start whining and throwing a tantrum. And what’s with all the bad guy names in those movies anyway? Darth Vader, Darth Sidious, Gen. Grievous, Darth Maul … OK, we get it. They’re all so evil that even their very names are bad. I’m glad they stopped making the films when they did or George Lucas would have run out of villain names. We might have been treated to Darth Notnice or evil Lord of the Sith Meanbully.

And growing up a James Bond fan has become a real letdown as well. The old James Bond matched wits with evil, tyrannical mad men bent on world domination or Soviets bent on the takeover of Europe. But in the last installment, apparently the UK was so concerned about the water rights of Bolivians that they dispatched their top spy to tackle the problem. Bolivian water rights, seriously?

As a kid, I grew up reading comic books. Some DC (Batman, because Superman was just too goody-goody for me. Besides, it gets tiresome to have a hero who can do everything — fly, super-strength, hearing, X-ray and heat vision, freeze breath, super speed), but mostly I read Marvel. I was a big Hulk and Spiderman fan, so when Marvel decided to do the Spiderman movies, I looked forward to seeing them. The 1970s Spiderman movie had been such a dud I figured a modern version could finally bring the comics to life. But again, I went to the theater and watched a crybaby whine through most of the series. Same thing with the first Hulk. And now I see that Superman, Batman, Spiderman and the Hulk are all going to get re-booted.

Again.

Apparently, that’s the thing now with the comic book movies — re-boot them every couple of years. It gets confusing. Oh well, maybe in the next Batman movies I’ll actually be able to understand what the heck Batman is saying when he talks. The growling thing was pretty comical.

In more recent years, I let my children talk me into watching “Avatar.” This movie just reinforced my belief that Hollywood movie-makers have become lazier. They want to catch the short attention span of the modern American with “amazing special effects.” OK, sure, wow, you guys did some pretty cool computer-generated special effects. But after 10 minutes of “wow, that looks real” it gets old and I wouldn’t mind something else like, oh, I don’t know, a good plot perhaps? Not to say that “Avatar” didn’t have a plot. Apparently, the idea is that humans are all nature-hating thugs bent on nothing more than total annihilation of everything good. To ram that point home, one had only to look at the military types depicted in the film. The mullets, unshaven faces and evil grins tell the tale. All they needed were monocles and maybe a few scenes of them gleefully rubbing their hands together as they cackled about stomping on a chrysanthemum. Gee, but I love it when Hollywood wants to educate me. I practically danced out of the theater to go find a spruce tree to snuggle with — not.

Now, of course, I can’t turn on my computer without catching the latest breaking news on “Twilight: Breaking Wind” or whatever it’s called. Gosh, what kind of a day would it be if I didn’t know what the cast members of these films are wearing? I foolishly let my wife talk me into sitting down with her and watching the first installment in this series. Apparently, the monster-ish vampires I grew up with are a thing of the past. Now, vampires are emo-kids who like to stand and deliver depressing soliloquies in the woods to young girls. They’re into lots of hair gel.

Oh, and they twinkle in the sunlight, too. No, they don’t incinerate, they twinkle. What’s next? Tap-dancing zombies? Werewolves being replaced with werechihuahuas?

When the big Netflix brouhaha lit last summer, I’m glad I held off on canceling my membership like most of my friends.

It gives me the opportunity to avoid spending my life savings to go see a film that will most likely be long on CGI and short on acting. A film that will probably have over-emotional pretty-boys sobbing about this or that every few minutes. No, I can now wait to watch — and make fun of it — from the comfort of my own living room.

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column under the tagline “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist.