A Sane Man of an Insane World

Thanks to BloodyDisgusting, it has been revealed that the Castlevania movie, which was killed in the Spring, has been revived, thanks to the co-creator of the Saw franchise, James Wan! ...Yeah, I never heard of him either. But it has an awesome poster!

“This was the time when the Oscars actually meant something”. So commented Skac01 7 months ago to a YouTube video of Jerry Goldsmith winning his one – and unfortunately, only – Oscar for his score to The Omen – and what a score that was!

But I’m not going to write about that fantastic score. I’d much rather talk about that comment, what it meant, and why it rings so true… or at least to me.

The Oscars first came about in 1929. That was when movies were still young. They were fresh and exciting! Sure, we didn’t have CGI, or Computer Generated movies, or even color. Now that I think about it, we didn’t even have sound. But we did have stories. We did have images that moved. That was something new. After millions of years of just being content with having pictures that stayed perfectly still, they could now be animated.

It was something new, something exciting.

And the Oscars were supposed to award those that were truly great.

With that in mind, a question should be raised. Is the reason the Oscars no longer mean anything is because movies no longer mean anything.

I’d wager a yes.

More and more, I am seeing a trend in our general media. The mass audience go for the cool things. Big shiny robots, cool explosions, a simple good against evil plot. Things that are nice to stare at and say “Oooooo” for 90 or so minutes, but beyond that, not much more.

We have our cool special effects, the awesome fight scenes, the copy cat romantic comedies, and one has to wonder, why even bother anymore? If all of the movies are cookie cutter duplicates, with minimal difference in characters and plot, why should we even care?

And the answer is we shouldn’t.

So, Academy, if you want to make the Awards worth something, allow me to give you a big hint. Nudge those Studios to make movies that are worth something. Then you will see people flocking to their televisions to watch the Academy Awards again.

Just a hint.

By saying that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is way too long at 2 and 1/2 hours, has way too many juvenile jokes, and had what I'd like to call the "Car Car Binks" twins. But it had awesome action scenes and Meghan Fox, so all is well. With all due apologies to those (2) faithful readers. I will return to posting more melodramatic insights on philosophy, politics, and RPGs soon, I assure you.

Here's to hoping that it is going to be good. :)