Bad Movies, Great Effects

I am old enough to remember great movies like the original Star Wars, on opening day, when Han Shot First. Movies today have much better special effects than vasoline smeared on the lens to hide the wheels on the anti-gravity land speeder. Nowadays you can CGI most anything you can think of, however the problem is that the dialogue and ideas are largely gone because the people who used to come up with them, called professional script writers and novellists, don't exist anymore. There used to be a union for writers in Hollywood, but they went on strike and Hollywood broke the union back in the 1990's. They kept the money and spent it on cocaine and hookers and movies have gotten worse ever since. If you want your faith in humanity stripped, watch a bunch of this year's movie trailers on YouTube. This is what Hollywood is producing, and its just.... awful. Beyond words awful. I feel my connection to other people evaporating when I see what they call professional entertainment. The Masses seem to want blood and circuses. No thank you.

To restore my sense of humanity I watched deleted scenes from Top Gear instead. They may be very silly, but at least they have a sense of humor rather than slick production values. When Richard Hammond crossed Botswana in a 32 horsepower 1950's car and named the little Opel Cadet "Oliver" he liked it so much he shipped it back to England and paid to have it restored. Still has it in his garage. When you're a multimillionaire you can afford to do that. Drive the little tan car that has a horn which goes "meep meep" very quietly. We need more cars like this in modern America. We need to slow down and not strives so very hard for so very little. We were better off when we were manufacturing stuff for a modest wage and living in modest houses with reasonable mortgages. Not pretending to be rich in mansions crammed up against each other in rotten suburbs close to the freeway offramp. Who needs that?

Its the desire for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous which is probably behind the coke-dreams that call themselves major motion pictures today. I miss witty dialogue and clever ideas instead of a selection of special effects which have become the movie. You get most of the best scenes of a film in the trailer these days. Just watch the trailer, you don't need the film. Easy.