Here we go again, ladies and by now extraordinarily bored gentlemen. Are you ready for an exciting, action-packed, over-the-top explosive summer of movie-going madness?!
Well, Hollywood’s not, so try not to get too disappointed. I know, I know – they claim that this summer is going to be absolutely amazing in terms of special effects and the undying laughter that is expected in the presence of Mike Meyers, even though most of us realize that he hit his peak back in 2002 with the first Austin Powers flick, and for those of you who thought that “those Shrek movies were pretty funny, too,” well, your vote doesn’t count and that specific thought is exactly why!
Arguably since 1998 when Armageddon came out, the so-called summer blockbuster season has been filled with nothing but hype over movies that, while sometimes ok, certainly wouldn’t be of the caliber to fit under the canopy of summer blockbusters, unless maybe the selection process is being overseen by a six year-old who hasn’t been getting a lot of sleep lately because of the monsters underneath his bed. And yet despite this consistent suckage, so many of us continue to go see them anyways, thriving on that primal urge deep down inside us to spend $18 to get in the door followed by roughly $47,000 at the concessions stand for a heart-attack-sized tub of nachos and a diet soda so large that it’ll have you running to the bathroom every fifteen seconds, resulting in your completely missing that angelic romance sequence between that chick from Charmed and that handsome, romantic-type fellow who’s never really been in anything except for other angelic romance sequences.
Well, at least there’s a tiny bit of sympathy left extending from that stale popcorn-strewn side of the concessions stand to our own…
And I’ll be the first to admit that I’m certainly more a part of the problem than of the solution because I keep going to watch this crap, too, longing for the day when a superhero movie rolls its credits without the most painfully obvious of teasers for its own sequel that hasn’t even been written yet. I think we keep ponying up that $18 weekend after arduous weekend, not so much because we just have no other need for $18, but more so because we yearn for the summer blockbuster that actually lives up to the moniker and leaves us walking out of the theater going, “Damn – did you see that coming?! I can’t believe Will Smith’s character died…” Mind you, it certainly won’t happen this summer, and yet we’re all still going to rush out to see Hancock for the 4th of July anyways – gotta keep that hope alive!
…because if we’ve learned anything at all from those two cranky, old Muppets who sit at the top of the theater shouting obscenities (or at least Muppet obscenities, anyways…), it’s that even the absolute unfunniest of bears can be made admirably bearable with a healthy dose of scathing sarcasm – pun intended. So I say if you’re going to haul yourselves down to the theater to watch this drivel anyways, why not at least do old Statler and Waldolf right and heckle Hollywood mersilessly until they give us something actually worth paying $9 / person to watch?!
They don’t even have to be particularly good insults, as depicted in my examples below…
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?! More like Kingdom of the Crystal Fart!“
“The Incredible Hulk?! More like The Incredible Do-Over!“
“The Dark Knight?! More like, ummm, well, actually that one’s supposed to be pretty darned awesome, despite all of the unwarranted hype that every other superhero movies seems to get these days, so you can go ahead and say whatever smart-alecky comment you want, but I’m not gonna mess with The Batman…”
Only you can prevent another summer of Hollywood flopbusters…