If It Weren’t for Movies, We’d Just Be Sitting in the Dark Facing the Same Direction

I love the movies. Love, love, love the movies. I grew up an only child, and one of the things I liked to do, as soon as I was old enough, was to go to the movies by myself (one nice thing about being an only child is that — usually — you’re comfortable with your own company). Sitting in the darkened theater with popcorn and a coke, and someone was about to tell me a story — it was a kind of everyday magic.

<old fart moment> The defining movies of my childhood were the “Star Wars” films, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Superman” (which was amazing on the screen, but doesn’t really hold up as well as some of the others, which isn’t to say I don’t still get the goose bumps during that opening credit sequence), “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” etc. I feel like it was a golden era for a small boy in an oversized seat, something that kids don’t have today. I feel bad that the summers of their childhood will be filled with disposable films like “G.I. Joe,” “Transformers,” and other pieces of cinematic crap “events” that no one will really remember a decade from now. By 2017, no one will really be going to rescreenings of “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” </old fart moment>

I love movies so much that, with the help of a very understanding wife, we remodeled the basement of the house we bought last year into a big-screen theater with surround-sound and décor that looks it was designed by a 12-year-old boy with a budget. Have I mentioned that I love my wife?

<old fart moment.2>The theater of my youth was Showcase Cinemas on Bardstown Road in Louisville. It was a multi-screen cinema, and sure, you could tell when screens were added later because of the space allotted — more screens means more butts in seats means more money, so theaters got smaller — but it still had some really, really big theaters. Screen one was massive, and screens four and five will always be the theaters that I had the perfect “Star Wars” screening experience. That Cinema is gone now (actually, it’s still there, just rotting away). Modern theaters have fallen prey to the “strip mall” mentality. No personality — just a box to watch a film in, and then get the hell out. </old fart moment.2>

Maybe as screens at home get bigger, the “event” feeling of being at a movie shrinks. This leads to a whole mass of people not knowing — or worse, not caring — how to behave at a theater. And it’s not just kids. Adults are losing the ability to watch a movie in public, and it’s not pretty. It’s not your living room, and no one wants to hear your personal commentary, and being irritated at people in front of me opening their phones (which in a darkened theater, looks like a little flashlight) who just can’t NOT TEXT for TWO FRACKIN’ HOURS ruins the experience a little.

But I digress.

One of the best things about films, as I discovered a bit later as my circle of friends and family grew to the point where being an only child didn’t matter, is discussing films afterwards. Sometimes, after a great film, you can talk about plot, subtext, nuance, history and on and on, with each person bringing something different. For a completely different way of looking at your favorite films, take a quick visit to postmodernbarney.com’s Uncomfortable Plot Summaries. All these are accurate,  from a certain point of view (to quote a certain lying-ass old Jedi Knight):

ALIEN: Ship fails to deliver cargo, crew don’t get bonus.

BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: Deranged pedophile big-business industrialist tortures and mutilates young children.

FRANKENSTEIN: Scientific advancement proves unpopular with general public.

IRON MAN: Alcoholic rich white man with technology fetish goes vigilante.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: American yahoo murders soldiers and desecrates religious artifacts for money.

TWILIGHT: Girl gives up college for stalker.

And on and on….

Even films that are inaruably classics can afford to have some holes drilled through them. On AMCTV.com’s SciFi Scanner, novelist and columnist John Scalzi offers his Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design. “I’ll come right out and say it,” he writes. “Star Wars has a badly-designed universe.” And he makes good points. For instance:

“Stormtrooper Uniforms
They stand out like a sore thumb in every environment but snow, the helmets restrict view (“I can’t see a thing in this helmet!” — Luke Skywalker), and the armor is penetrable by single shots from blasters. Add it all up and you have to wonder why stormtroopers don’t just walk around naked, save for blinders and flip-flops.”

Movies will be a central feature in the coming months for Internet Siteseeing, because they’ve been such a big part of my life, and well, it’s my blog. What are some of your early movie memories? Share, won’t you?