Isn’t it strange how the college zeitgeist seems to pick a favorite movie around once a semester? A little while back it was Toy Story 3, two semesters ago I think it was possibly Pitch Perfect 2, and in my final days as a Junior it was very clearly Deadpool. However quickly the fashions change it’s very nice of the Program Board to pull out the projectors every so often and play a couple DVDs of the recent hits. I still remember lugging my sleeping bag to the giant empty square of grass by the Ram’s Den and sitting on the outskirts of the assembled to watch the Next Big Thing.
This year, though, they put it in the Storer Ballroom, and it was Suicide Squad, the movie that echoed in the dozens of Harley Quinns that came to my door on Halloween. I made to the Den through the cold after putting off a movie night with my friends, and felt a little disappointed about not bringing any snacks when I learned they didn’t have any popcorn. It was a pretty packed affair, though, and I had to insinuate myself into the middle of a row in order to see anything. The movie itself was... well, actually okay.
I don’t have a great relationship with superhero movies, or with superhero anything. I’d say they’re just not my speed, but that’s not really true - I love stories like All-Star Superman, J.G. McCrae’s Worm and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, the thoughtful kind that uses imagination and far-out ideas to showcase the triumph of the human spirit. Because of that, the average superhero story always feels more to me like a soap opera or a WWE match than a piece of wondrous fantasy, the kind of thing people watch to see Robert Downey Jr. punch nondescript evil minions, instead of something they go to for an intellectual challenge.
So after seeing Thor, and then Age of Ultron to confirm that I wasn’t being unfair, I just gave up on the genre. And when I was drawn in by the promise of a passing grade for my Capstone, I was surprised to find that Suicide Squad wasn’t that bad. The story’s a little confused about its own progression, the reveals are pretty tacky and it has the same problems with credible threats as every other popular superhero teamup in history, but it was really strongly edited, the characters were introduced very well given the time constraints, the effects were lovely and there was even some good humor.
You know, ever since I was in high school, I wanted to run a movie theater. Or just work in one. Maybe a small one, like the opera-house a block down from my apartment, or an arthouse place by the beach somewhere, or maybe something bigger and more exciting where homeless people would come to sleep at night. They all have a special atmosphere to them that I’ve always found really heady, and from childhood it’s driven my appreciation for film further than many other media. Video games are what you do when you’re bored, books are what you do when teachers keep talking about things you already know, television is what you do when you just get home, but movies are what you actively go out to experience, in their own little popcorn-microcosm.
So even if the movies aren’t always the best, I have to say I’ve appreciated the chance to experience that in a town where the theater’s mostly for concert performances.
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