…Treasure Summer Blockbuster Films

I’m not really much of a sports enthusiast. I enjoy sports, but I don’t keep up with any. I don’t know who plays for what team or who is in the playoffs. I regularly enjoy making fun of my sports loving friends on Facebook, who post nothing but game updates, celebrations and complaints toward the end of EVERY sporting season.  

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Every few years, however, I am gripped with a fever. There is something about both the Summer and Winter games which whips my heart and hormones (insert manly grunt here) into a frenzy. I love the Olympics. I love the way it brings the world together. Cease fires are declared during the Olympics. Nations at war, briefly engage in healthy, friendly competition. It’s beautiful. Usually, it’s sports at its best, showcasing the profound abilities the human body is capable of, highlighting good sportsmanship (Tonya Harding aside) and entertaining millions with something that inspires us to better ourselves, rather than numbing our minds. I missed both the last Winter and Summer games. I left for South Korea August 8, 2008, the day the Summer Olympics started. I saw one Michael Phelps heat, while sitting in a chicken restaurant, broadcast in Korean. The only reason it was on at all, was because he was racing a Korean athlete. My wife and I don’t own a television. So, we didn’t get to see any of the Winter games this last year, either. 

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In the same way (and for completely different reasons), I get irrationally excited every year, around mid-May. That’s about the time the Hollywood Summer Blockbusters start coming out: super-hero movies, swashbuckling movies, magic, train-wrecks, gigantic Jerry Bruckheimer explosions! It’s all very exciting. Perhaps it’s not so irrational after all. I have reasons for the excitement. However, I can’t exactly explain what it does to me.  

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For example, last Friday, we had dinner plans with some friends downtown. That afternoon, I found out that Pirates of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides had opened the same day. I frantically told my wife that it was out and that I wanted to see it. That night. She graciously reminded me that we already had plans, and I mumbled something about being willing to cancel them to see the movie. She told me we could see it after church on Sunday, and I whined like I was 7 and my mom just told me I couldn’t have the new Skeletor figure… I asked her if she would be willing to see it that night after dinner. She asked me what the latest showing was (midnight - haha!), and told me that if our friends wanted to see it too, we could go that night.  

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They did.

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We did.

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It sucked.  

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REALLY! I’m not kidding! It sucked!  

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It was too dark (both physically and spiritually, with all the weird occult stuff). The plot was too contrived. It wasn’t funny, and what jokes there were, were mostly sexual innuendos, which in my opinion, are the lamest and easiest jokes to write. When writers start lacing the script of an action film with sex jokes, I know they’ve run out of good material…ahem…[Transformers2]…ah-ah-ahem.  

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If it had have been good, I wouldn’t have felt silly at all about so passionately and instantly wanting to see it…but it wasn’t.  

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Bruckheimer let me down. Again. It was embarrassing. I was ashamed for how insistent I was. It really made me think about the fact that it’s just a movie. They’re all just movies. Some are going to be good; some bad. However, in the end…it’s not important at all.  It probably won’t matter, in the scheme of eternity, whether or not I saw Thor (which was awesome, by the way). I don’t know if this means that I’ll skip out on movie season this year, but I really want to think through why I get so excited over something so trivial…

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Perhaps after I’ve seen X-Men: First Class next weekend…