I'm Matt Champagne. Watch me type things at you.
“GO AHEAD. LIKE ALIEN 4 MORE THAN ALIEN.”
“I wouldn’t be so mad about how much movies suck if it weren’t for all the people who seem genuinely happy about it.”
That’s something my friend Paul Jay just wrote on his Tumblr page, and I gotta say I wholeheartedly concur. I feel like I’m surrounded by people who totally get off on movies that suck. They seem to derive a giddy joy in liking films that are popularly disliked, almost because they’re disliked. It seems as though they wait to see how a movie’s going to do, and then glom onto the ones that get pissed on the most. I know people who actually say this: “It’s not a good movie, but I still like it.” Wait a minute. By “people,” I mean me. What a piece of shit I am. Because that’s how I feel about Taken. That movie is not a good movie. But, man, is it satisfying! Taken is one of the most satisfyingly bad movies I’ve seen in a while. I own Taken. Because I get this need to watch it every now and then. Taken isn’t as reviled as the Transformer movies, though I can’t comment too much on them because the one I tried to watch I walked out on.
This is a tricky thing for me to talk about because here’s what I do if I’m watching a movie and I really don’t like it: I get up and I walk out. I just leave. Which makes things weird when it’s a rental.
I’ve gotten much better at not getting into arguments though. You like Avatar more than Inglourious Basterds? Go ahead. You like The Hangover more than Bridesmaids? Go ahead. You like Transformers 2 more than Inception. I think you’re lying and being a jerk on purpose, but go ahead. You like Alien 4 more than Super 8. Have fun at your table for one. I’m gonna be amused by your assessment rather than enraged by it. You can’t get me angry about this stuff. You’re doing it on purpose.
You know why I try not to get into arguments with people about movies anymore? Because I know how hard it is to make a movie. Why should I exert an infinitesimal amount of energy to hate something that required a ton of energy to make?
By the way: This in no way means I’m gonna stop making fun of movies I think are bad. I’ll just try to do it as briefly as I can: dismissive little one-liners that’ll take up maybe five seconds of your life rather than the ninety it took to watch whatever it is I’m making fun of.
I remain
Champagne
