The Landscape of the Absurd

The Cult of "It was alright."

I just saw District 9 last night.  This movie is a breath of fresh air in every way from the schlock that has been forced down the mainstream movie going audiences’ throats.  It was made for ten million dollars less than Julie and Julia and for five million dollars less than The Hangover yet has action sequences and set pieces that will make you nerd out faster than Comic Book Guy at a Star Trek convention.  Children of Men is the only other pure sci-fi experience that comes to mind this side of the year 2000 that does sci-fi right and uses the genre for what it should be used for; revealing the human condition.

Despite all of this, the first thing Paolo and I hear exiting the movie was “It was alright,” in a tone sprinkled with smugness.  When did we come to the point that being a hater is the cool thing to do?  Why has it come to this?  Go on any message board about film, or not, and everybody and their mother will post trying their damned hardest to bring down anything that is considered objectively good.  For example someone in one of my film classes immediately blurted out “over rated,” when the film Casablanca was brought up.  These people are the people who will never be satisfied.  When a movie is kept subtle and requires the audience to put two and two together they claim that the part where they are supposed to think is a plot hole.  When it all is laid out to them on a silver platter they call foul on the movie treating them like a retard.

Let’s please just quit being negative and give props to things that deserve it.  District 9, an original movie, opposed to licensed films like Transformers and GI Joe, a movie which actually has a theme instead of pornographic action and explosions is a movie that deserves that praise.  Please un-smug yourself haters, it does not make you look cool.