It's Natural to Be Afraid...

Well, I hope you all read up and studied each and every manufactured thought that appeared in yesterday's L.A. times concerning the box office success of 300 versus the relative disappointment of Zodiac. Like I said, I hope you didn't break anything in your fit of rage. Then again, it's important to remember these are just half rate idiots writing for a stupid newspaper and they don't really care about telling a good story or even telling the truth. They write whatever will give them the quickest easiest answer to complicated questions, actually most journalists do that too come to think of it.

Anyway getting down to business, this article pissed me off in so many ways, I don't know where to begin.

Let's start with the basic assumption the article makes:

That 300 is a new cultural phenomenon in league with Star Wars, The Matrix, or Lord of the Rings. And like those films it's success is based around the fact that it supposedly celebrates the things that movies do best (visuals, speed, classic story telling) and how it is invincible to any sort of criticism because the very thought of analyzing such a work would rob of the purpose it serves as a movie. It's not a dissertation after all.

The first part of this I would like to debunk is that 300 is some kind of cultural phenomenon. That simply is not true, you need a little bit more time than a week to prove that. You also need a better response than the movie has gotten thus far. If you apply this logic to every movie than in this year alone, Norbit, Wild Hogs, and Ghost Rider would be considered cultural phenomenons. Not to mention scores of other movies most people only remember as something they dug out of their ears. I would even argue that Lord of the Rings is not quite yet a cultural phenomenon, it was at one point but I think the true test is to see how long it stays in the public sphere of conscious after its initial release. Star Wars has passed that test (the original trilogy anyway, but I won't get into that now), and I think the original matrix will any day now. The point being, 300 is a movie that made a shit load of money on its opening weekend and it surprised some people. are we really going to remember this, ten years later, as a watershed day for cinema? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.

The article then goes onto to discuss the drubbing the movie received by the critics. Which is also inaccurate, for according to metacriic the movie received a score 53 which it describes as mixed to average reviews. Compare that to the score of 27 received by both Norbit and Wild Hogs. Point being, while it didn't get great reviews, a couple of big critics like entertainment weekly and rolling stone liked it. And even the people who didn't like it didn't hate, the sampling the L.A times takes are from critics who really hated it, of which there a few. Not to suggest that this means the movie is great, but the article essentially claims that the critics who hated the movie some how took away from it political or social commentary that wasn't there and therefore only existed so critics could rag on it. First of all, most of the negative review of the movie I've read and even the two they quote in the article (and you can see these reviews at www.metacritic.com) hated the movie because it is poorly made, not because they didn't agree with its politics (as dunderheaded as they may be). They hated it because the writing is lousy, the acting is a lot of screaming and little else, and the fact that the entire movie strives to be a feature length gorgeously rendered video game. Any mention of the nationalistic, drumbeating, pro war homophobia that supposedly exists in the movie, goes by as more of an afterthought. More like, yes the movie sucks and p.s. here is some weird shit in it. The article, however, quotes director Zack Snyder as laughing off the reviews, saying they came across as "so neo-con" and "so homophobic" (yes his actual words) and that "they couldn't just go see the movie without trying to over-intellectualize it." This is idiotic in so many ways, first of all he uses the words neo-con and homophobic as if he doesn't know what they mean. And I think it's very interesting that he equates intellectualizing something with being neo-con and homophobic. Does one make you the other? I guess I never thought about it that way. He also doesn't seem to understand that when someone accuses you, based on your film, of subscribing to a certain set of ideas, that doesn't mean they are always right. However it doesn't mean that pointing those ideas makes them fervent followers of them. I actually don't even know what he's trying to say, it doesn't make any sense and he sounds really stupid saying it. The critics pointed out how homoerotic the movie is to deflate the toxic machismo that seems to permeate every frame of the damn thing. They said it to make fun of you mr. snyder, not gay people. The article acts as if no movie in the history of cinema had ever grossed a lot of money while receiving mostly negative reviews. It kinda happens all the time, and it's one of the great mysteries of life, hopefully this writer will sleep better knowing he has contributed much by way of public knowledge about the subject. What it seems to me, with all of this, is that Snyder made an irresponsible movie (and that's okay by the way). He made a politically irresponsible movie and he won't cop to it, I think he put a lot of shit in there without realizing it and refuses to admit it because he will come off as a buffoon. Well, tough shit, own up to it at least, I think that's what the Spartans would have wanted. That's the man's way of dealing with it.

The final part of this article that actually enraged me (the other stuff just kind of got on my nerves, whereas this part sent me off the fucking cliff). The writer attempts to make some half assed connection between why 300 succeeded and why Zodiac failed to attract any of that attention.

Oh no he didn't.

I've been harboring this ever since I became aware of the 70 million opening for 300. Dammit, that was Zodiac's money and it fucking earned it. Why a movie like 300, that is chest thumping, simple, comic book gore gets the audience, whereas a devastating, thoughtful, and supremely executed detective story like Zodiac gets none. Why can't they both get it? I imagine there are more than enough people in this country to make up for Zodiac's deficit, right? Why Zodiac didn't do well is for another blog, I want to dicuss why 300 did so well instead. The article supposes that is because David Fincher made the movie for himself and for no one else. That he wasn't thinking about the audience or the critics, only about himself. Well, moron, filmmaking is an extremely personal artform and in case you forgot, David Fincher's (along with several other thousand) name will be attached to this movie forever as not just the director, but as the guiding vision. If he doesn't make it for himself, than why make it in the first place? I hope this guy knows that his name and only his name will be attached to this shitty article forever, so he is not allowed to blame anybody else for this debacle. Second of all, the claim that Zodiac is somehow inaccesible is complete and utter bullshit. I have not been more enthralled by a movie like that for a long time, how is that not accessible. And obviously not every audience member shares the same tastes as me. But it doesn't really matter whether people like it or not but there is something in this movie for everyone to at least check out. To least buy a goddamn ticket. Also, God forbid, a director tells a story without the usual cinematic pay offs. God forbid he makes a murder mystery not about the violent porn of most serial killer movies (and stupid T.V. shows by the way) but about the cereberal and haunting life of its own that a case can take on when it infects the mind of ordinary human beings. God forbid a director attempt to show the transformation of a city and its media from mild indifference to the kind of paranoid delusions we still suffer from today. God forbid a director try to make a movie not about death, but about how life rebounds or doesn't from that death. Again, these are not radical concepts, merely interesting ideas explored with precision and depth by the makers of Zodiac. It is not like some kind of thought exercise that will only appeal to intellectuals (christ, I liked this movie) but rather a movie that poses a lot of interesting questions and theories but allows its audience to come to its own conclusion. Dammit, that's what filmmaking is all about and it pisses me off that because Fincher doesn't revel in bloodletting, he somehow has receeded into the dark corncers of artistic pretension, and that nobody should see his movie. That is complete and utter bullshit, to the highest degree. I loved Zodiac, I was into every single minute of it, and I watched it feeling as though I was in the hands of one of the most capable story tellers working today. Other than that, it was a weird and deeply confusing artistic experiment that left me feeling cold and indifferent because Fincher didn't include an ending where Jake Gyllenhall cuts off the Zodiac killer's head in slow motion with a battle axe while sreaming something about the glory of the San Francisco Chronicle. Oh yeah, everybody.

Okay, I've chewed everybody eyes and ears for about long enough now. I hope this rambling tale of magic and heroism made a little bit of sense. Again I should have prefaced this by saying I haven't seen 300 yet and maybe all of this is moot. However, I plan to and when I do, you will be the first to hear about it.

Go see Zodiac.

"i said johnny and i, we got lost tonight, but we doubled our chances we've got somewhere to go, we've got devils chasing us to hunt us down, and we know we can't go like this from now, i've got a feeling of you, and we danced for so long, i want your arms around me, said never gonna let you down, never gonna let you down, but i will always let you down "