Jack Attack Tuesday – Stop Supporting Crap

Another Summer box office weekend, another “record-shattering” movie release.  This past weekend, Suicide Squad came along to set the movie world on fire, immediately dividing the masses into two main camps.  You either like the movie or you hate it.  Well, that is, unless you’re trying to protest against Rotten Tomatoes, take down critics for disliking the film and picketing against Marvel.  In the age of Social Justice Warriors, entitlement and parity for all, the movie-going world is changing for the worse.  Marvel, for all the good they have done since 2008, clearly have had a negative effect on the studios around them.  This is no more evident than their main comic book rival DC and their handling of the creation of an inter-connected movie universe of their own.

Man of Steel was supposed to kick these films off, a film which included a Superman that doesn’t smile.  That was followed up with Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, a patently idiotic attempt at launching a wave of DC cinematic goodness that fell flat for being poorly written and horribly conceived.  Now, Suicide Squad, a film whose trailers looked genuinely interesting, featuring a new take on arguably DC’s greatest villain ever, was a disjoined, badly made and stupid movie.  There is an argument to be made that all comic book movies are kinda stupid, and I get that, but Suicide Squad is the kind of movie that forgets about its own logic halfway through the film.  DC is going south quickly, and despite the amount of money they earn on opening weekend they are failing many of their fans, myself included, consistently.

I know this seems like a simple thing to say but there is a simple way to combat the slew of shitty films that get thrown out way.  Simply put, do not go and see these films.  We are at a point where audiences are more interested in seeing a certain character on screen than caring about the actual story in the film, and that is a shame.  Suicide Squad, for all its faults, does have an interesting story to be told…it’s just 100% different than what they went with.  But studios aren’t going to stop shoveling this shit in our faces until we decide to do something about it.

This past year we had a Snow White sequel, a Tarzan reboot, more young adult novel adaptations like Allegiant and a few other genuine pieces of trash.  While those were properly ignored by the masses movies like BvS and SS are manipulative in the way they are made.  SS featured Batman in the trailer, and of course anyone would want to see him in the film.  His screen time amounts to 2 minutes that mean nothing to the story, but at the point most people understood this the ticket was already sold.  Take, in comparison, Marvel’s Civil War, featuring the first appearance of ***SPOILER ALERT*** Giant Man on screen.  They didn’t play this up in the trailers, they didn’t advertise it elsewhere.  Marvel knew the strength of its story was enough to intrigue people and didn’t resort to masking a shitty movie with a lot of pomp and circumstance.

It is tough to know what will be a good film and what will be a bad one these days.  Trailers are made to sell you on a film, and oftentimes those are better than the finished film.  I think we need to be more conscious of movies and pay attention to the ones that deserve more exposure.  Sing Street, The Nice Guys and Hail Caesar are the types of films I want to see more of in theaters.  Movies that are well made, sure to entertain and are different than a bunch of people in costumes punching each other with their laser-penises.  Let’s try to be better fans and give love to the stuff that needs it or else it may not be around much longer.