Michael Foster-Sanders
editor-in-chief
During last week’s Collegian production meeting, senior editor Jose Romero and I got into our weekly banter about the pros and cons of the movies reviewed.
“Godzilla vs. Kong” was on the menu, and I noticed he was being super critical of a movie that was supposed to be dumb fun.
It made me realize this wasn’t just a snobby-movie-reviewer Jose issue, but it has become an issue with the new generation that consumes entertainment. Everything has to be serious or it’s written off as trash, and audiences like to be spoon-fed stories. Movies have to have an underlying theme for people to feel they are important enough to talk about.
I’m a product of the great 1980’s and 1990’s where ideals for movies, TV shows and games didn’t make sense 90% of the time but came out to be unforgettable relics.
Who would have thought about a police officer’s near-death being cybernetically enhanced to fight crime in Detroit being a blockbuster hit movie? Or a game about a lone space marine taking on the demons from hell being the one of the best-selling video games of all time?
The aforementioned move “Robocop” and the video game “Doom” took a chance with being different. Thinking outside the box gave audiences a new thing to crave and ushered in a new renaissance in creation and innovation.
Now everything is so formulaic that it is sickening. Marvel makes the same damn movie every summer that mindless zombies flock to see, and I’m not talking about children.
Rival company DC Comics tries to copy the same formula and fails horribly. They have the uniqueness with their characters and stories to go outside the box and possibly be successful, such as the government teaming up villains against their will to save the world in James Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad.”
