Zombies Ruin Everything

No, this does not mean that I hate myself. I’m not really even referring to myself as it’s not like I get paid for this stuff, I’m just putting up what I feel like putting up.

I only recently watched The Lone Ranger movie in its entirety and I have to say that it wasn’t nearly as awful as just about every critic out there claimed it was. Was it great? No. Do I stand by my initial assertion that there wasn’t really a need or market for a Lone Ranger movie? Yes.

But a further look at complaints of a product and what’s actually wrong with it are often two entirely different things.

Now while this whole site started off as a way to push my zombie story out there (It still is), reviewing movies seemed like a simple enough way to keep people coming back. The Myers Briggs stuff and other articles are just other things I started for variety’s sake. But it’s the reviews that usually end up the center of conversation when people bring Zombies Ruin Everything up to me.

“Why’d you give “this” a ‘B?’ It was WAY better than that!” Or the one I love the most- “You just need to learn to ENJOY the movie. You’re too much of a critic.”

Look, I was FINE with the movie. And to be clear, it doesn’t really get “way” better than a ‘B.’ Calm yourselves.

It’s only natural that people would disagree and see things their own way. It would be weird if everybody immediately thought the same thing as me or always saw it from my point of view. I have to say, I do something similar with paid reviewers.

Be they writers for other sites, well known magazines, a newspaper (Ha), what have you- I always tend to find their reviews a bit tedious and pedantic. They go behind the scenes in what it took to make the movie rather than the movie itself.

When the budget is inflated or the director has been quoted as bragging about how big of a production the movie is, critics take note and seem to use it against the film at hand.

It was not even a month ago that I reviewed the ill-received 47 Ronin which suffered from delays, budget increases and it was just ultimately the kind of movie your average film snob is going to sneer at. I mean, where were all the subtextual elements implying an incestual relationship between  Oishi’s wife and son? Like, for real, where was it?

Can’t you just be happy with like, the colors and stuff?

Concerning The Lone Ranger, Johnny Depp went so far as to claim, “I think reviews were written seven to eight months before we released the film.” He and other involved in the film blame critics for the poor box office performance.

And while it is easy to say “Screw you, Depp! You, and your offensive bird-on-your-head, Native American blackface! Your movie just sucked!” It’s also said by many people who just didn’t want to watch it rather than people who watched it and had an honest opinion about it.

I’m not entirely certain why Depp’s accusations are what they are but they could be due to the fact that as far as anybody keeping up with the movie went, it was pretty well known that production was shut down from August 2011 to February 2012. Who kept up with that? Not me and probably not you, so who? Insiders and critics of course. And when the press gets ahold of news like this, they don’t just let it go. They go at it like wild dogs on raw meat.

Plus, it’s like…I mean…It’s JOHNNY. What’s your problem? Ugh.

After watching Jamie Kennedy’s documentary on critics themselves, Heckler, I had to examine my own site. In the movie, Kennedy himself is the perfect guy to have made a documentary like this. He’s an especially hated figure among critics, mostly it seems for his Jim Carrey-less Mask sequel, The Son of the Mask, but also for a few others.

It was months ago that I watched Heckler, but it still left a lasting impression on me. While some critics of Kennedy had sincere reasoning on why they didn’t like him, others were pretty much the stereotype of online trolls. Their reviews included personal insults and incessantly bashed Kennedy’s movies (among others) without giving any reason as to why the movie of discussion was so awful.

When most critics were confronted in it, they would even go so far as to admit that they hadn’t even watched the movie they ripped apart.

I mean I get it and all but…LINES, man. We’ve got to draw’ em.

Now I’m a skeptical guy, but I’m not a cynic. Movies like Project X and That’s My Boy were movies I’d reviewed after watching them from beginning to end and while I came close at times, I don’t feel as though I’ve ever personally attacked any of those involved in the making of the film unless I myself felt like I was being treated like I was stupid. Examining so many movies will have you realize that every movie is getting a message across whether you know it or not.

But ultimately, I was watching the movie and judging them for what they were; some have been great, some have been trash. I could never judge a movie based on what the budget was or because it was meant to be the “BIGGEST EVENT OF THE SUMMER!” or whatever the advertisers would try to sell it as. They are, after all, having to sell it.

And maybe that’s why there’s so much railing against a movie with a budget in the hundreds of millions; it’s there to make money. Many people relate big-budget movies with explosions, Michael Bay and no story- i.e., stupidity. People treat big budget movies like it’s some kind of a trap- “Hey, I’m no dummy! This is stupid! Me no likey! I win!”

“…But that Jaden Smith ‘Karate Kid’ gets two thumbs up for originality!”

You can’t just like the friggin’ thing for what it is? I certainly understand the need to dig deeper and find the little known indie film that focuses on story and character over action figures and fart jokes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find enjoyment in the latter.

At times I didn’t even want to admit that I liked the smaller film simply because critics were drooling over it. This has happened on occasion; I want to reject it just because these people that, for whatever reason, have a hold on much of the public consciousness choose to slap the light action movie in the face as opposed to give an honest portrayal of what they watched.

And isn’t that the point of the critic? To objectively relay what you watched? Not to many. Liking the fast paced, loud, Action/Comedy is like dumbing down your IQ as far as they see it.

Sure, I’d choose substance over style but preferring a classic car doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a newer model.

It’s called the “Tarantula” and I don’t know if we’re looking at the front or the back.

Lastly, I’d asked a friend who watched The Lone Ranger what he thought and he didn’t even finish it. “It was too boring.”

So I’m not saying that to watch The Lone Ranger is to love it, I’m just saying you’ve got to actually watch it and then base it on the quality not what you know about it beforehand.

That is all.

Side Note: On the other side of all of this, Quentin Tarantino actually put The Lone Ranger on his Top 10 of 2013 list.

This entry was posted on 01/16/2014 at 2:05 am and is filed under Whatever with tags critics, critics suck, the lone ranger 2013, the lone ranger sucked, whatever. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.