Listen to my words

"Malcom Reynolds could SO kick Han Solo's ass!"

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

I think the very first "fantasy in space"-movie I saw was Star Wars. I don't remember exactly how old I was but I remember thinking they were absolutly fantastic, and for a few years they were the best movies I'd ever seen - little did I know there are different kinds of "best."
A few years after Star Wars I got more interested in movies which led to more movie-watching (and now it's reached the "Hello, my name is Richard, and I'm an addict"-stage.) The more movies I saw, the more I realized you can't really put all movies into the same ranking system. You could rank movies within their genre but that would leave too much information out. Because then you would get Star Wars, Star Trek and Alien in the same category and they are very different kinds of movies and, I think, have partially different audiences.
Star Wars is aiming for adventure, classic heroes and classic bad guys (Darth Vader being one of the coolest ever) and I think it hits its target.
Alien is horror, also hitting its target. Aliens is panic and Alien 3 is about shaved heads, dirty prisoners and dogs in space.
Star Trek is pseudo-science, technobabble-orgies and sometimes a sociological analysis.

So, if people realized that all movies don't fit into the same ladder, I think they could have more civilized conversation about movies without it turning into "Kirk would snatch Leia from Han Solo in a heart beat!"
Maybe people have already realized this and they just go about flaming anyway - a "the curse of the internet" kind of deal? Or maybe this isn't the problem, maybe it's something else. Feel free to comment.

This blog entry began as a discussion about Star Wars and ended up in an attempt by me, to describe why people argue about movies. Now, the link I had prepared really doesn't fit with the what I wrote, but here it is anyway http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20050510

posted by Richard @ 22:14