Went to the movies with my friend Chris Smith and his fianceé Sarah this morning. Tamika and I haven’t been out on a date in ages, so it was nice to get out. We hired a babysitter and caught the matinee.
The movie was very well done. The storyline was incredible, with actors that made the documentary style very believable.
We all walked out.
The reason? It was disgusting.
The aliens were cool looking, but followed the same tired old alien character style that has been the norm for the past 10 years. Every since the Aliens series, extra terrestrials have been typically modeled after insects… Except slimy.
Alien herself?
Black, slimy, exoskeleton with sharp angular protrusions.
Starship Troopers:
Yellow Black, slimy, exoskeleton with sharp angular protrusions.
Star trek’s ice monster:
Red, slimy, exoskeleton with sharp angular protrusions.
And now District 9? C’mon, be inventive!
Not only that, but they all seem to have the same language too, growls & clicks through a telephone voice distorted.
But back to the disgusting part. Once he movie got going, every scene. EVERY scene had some kind of swelling, oozing, snotty, slimy bodily discharge. It was like watching a miscoloured Discovery Health with an actual plot.
Which is a shame, because like I said, the plot is really good.
Now, I understand the market… There is a large audience of young men who thrive on slimy disgusting things on screen. The more gory, the better they like it.
This same audience typically buys first-person shooter games with the same level of gore.
But at some point, perhaps we might just take a step back. With movies like these, we not different from Romans watching bears maul Christians at the colloseum and then lighting them as torches along their highways, or Mayans watching the winners of a ball game decapitate their opponents on field.
Sure, we’re separated by a silver screen. But with movies like this becoming so commonplace… How long will it last?