Why I Hate Hollywood

(originally posted 8/15/2013… when there were actually movies you could see at the cinema instead of Netflix)

Cars don’t explode. They just don’t. It rare that they even catch fire.

Not even when they hit a curb and go flying a hundred feet in the air.

Which is also something they don’t do.

Cars are funny like that.

But the men and women who write movies in Hollywood are either unfamiliar with both the combustibility and aerodynamic qualities of today’s automobile or they are intellectually lazy. Faced with either sitting inside and trying to come up with an interesting plot twist that will keep the potential viewer glued to their seat or going skiing with a man or woman (both?) half their age knowing they can always have a few cars explode and nobody involved with the marketing of the film will give a crap they will more than likely be seen fleeing into a waiting cab with skis and scented oils in hand.

People who write movies in Hollywood are funny like that.

Hate them as I do it’s very doubtful I could punch them and have them go unconscious. It just doesn’t happen. I would probably punch them and then they would look up at me, rub their chin and then try to knock me out with a single well-placed blow and fail. We would repeat this until someone got tired of being punched. That’s how fights go.

I hope you see where I’m going with this.

Theater goers have become so used to these shitty writing clichés that they will actual show up to a movie that has been showing previews consisting of nothing but exploding cars and knockout punches.

That’s why I hate Hollywood.

They have dumbed down movie audiences to the point where we don’t even care anymore.

I realize that part of the agreement we enter into as the lights dim is to suspend belief for a few hours. I get it. My problem is that this arrangement used to allow us to swallow aliens and magic and dragons and such. Give me a well thought out premise and I’ll forgive a boatload of issues relative to physics and such, but don’t take the easy way out because you think I’m an idiot that will oooh and aaah at bright shiny explosions and loud noises.

It’s demeaning.

And it’s all because you’d rather snort coke off the chest of a hooker than stay in front of your computer screen and actually put some work in.

Hollywood has set the bar so low that I can’t even tell the trailers apart for the next slew of ‘blockbusters’ headed to a theater near me. These days the script is treated with the same respect as the referee at a WWE wrestling match. I can almost hear the executives, “How many explosions does this one have? Not enough. Take out the dialogue during dinner scene and have a plane crash into the restaurant.”

Hollywood turned us all into empty-headed sheep.

The writing in Hollywood sucks ass. It’s ok to say it. Not only is it ok but I think more people should be yelling it from the rooftops.

I think we should demand a little more in the way of imagination.

Stop with the sequels to movies nobody liked the first time and, for the love of all that is holy, stop making movies based loosely around a children’s story so you can use a well-known title. I swear, I’m waiting for “The Three Little Pigs” to be pitched… complete with a stoner wolf voiced by the next ‘slacker sitcom star ready for the big time’.

Enough.

Cars don’t explode.