Take Two #87: What We Learn from Movies
Mon, 08/05/2013
By Kyra-lin Hom
I've been awfully serious here lately. What with my hammering on the toes of Big Food industries, terrifyingly zealous Jesus camps and big-mouthed hate mongers you'd think I never find my eggs sunny-side up. I don't know about you, but every once in a while a person needs a break to just let the silly shine. I know I could use one right now.
This week, my boyfriend and I found out we need to have our things packed and shipped out two weeks sooner than we'd planned. Wonderful. That's just... wonderful. I was, in fact, so flushed with joy at discovering this that I backed into a parked car in the U-Haul parking lot. Perfect. Just what I wanted. Anyone out there who thinks moving across the country is fun should be duct-taped to a pole and beaten by a hoard six year-olds with sock'em boppers – best and worst toy EVER. On the upside, I get to continue providing you all with scintillating entertainment even after my Chicago-ward jaunt at the end of this month. Thank you Ken!
My boyfriend is unwinding tonight by doing a 'Let's Play' with a few of our friends. If you don't know what that means, that's okay. I didn't either. 'Let's Play' is the noun for a group of video gamers marathoning a single game from beginning to end, while recording video of their game play and their audio commentary. These usually 20+ hour long videos are then uploaded to Youtube so other gamers can watch them. It is one of the nerdiest things I have ever encountered. First you could play video games. Then you could watch your friends play them live online. Now, you can watch recorded videos of strangers playing them. Oh boy!
Have I lowered myself to this new ditch of nerd-dom? Yes. Yes, I have. Put together a good game with pretty graphics and an entertaining narrator (or a few) with a decent talent for editing and you get a really fun, completely mindless evening. On the flip side, you could also get 26 hours of drunken yelling while Sonic the Hedgehog ricochets off a train...
Instead of joining boys' night, I decided to indulge in one of my favorite hobbies: film. Recently watching the ridiculous epic Pacific Rim sparked my muse. In this film, it is simply accepted that the most powerful weapons all of Earth's united nations can build are giant, slow-moving, humanoid robots that, despite being designed to battle monsters that emerge from the ocean, have no underwater maneuverability. No, walking along the ocean floor doesn't count. We're in the so bad it's good territory, especially for anyone familiar with the phrase, “It's a Gundam!”
Asking around, I compiled a list of the absurd things movies teach us or what I like to call 'If Movies were the World.' Here is some of what we came up with.
THRILLER: In a dangerous situation, always split up. Run as far away from each other as you can. At least one person should end up at the top floor and another in the basement. Whatever your background, no matter how experienced you are, never plan an escape route. After all, help only arrives when all else is lost.
ACTION: Guns hold an infinite amount of ammo limited only by the plot. The same can be said for what is and is not bulletproof. If you're the hero, though, don't worry about gunfire. Bad guys can't hit the broadside of a bus at point blank range. On the off chance they did, it would either rollover, flip into the air or blow up in a fantastic fireball. And when in doubt, C4 is the most powerful explosive known to man.
ROMANCE: The best way to get a girl is to be over-persistent (because stalking is cute), lie and then do something impressively charismatic when she discovers you've been lying. Or you know, just save the world with her. That's a guaranteed happily ever after right there.
DISASTER: The one expert no one agrees with will always be right, listen to her. If you didn't, pay attention to your pet. Animals are smarter than people and will always run away when a disaster is near – even when that disaster is global. No, I have no idea where they're running to.
DRAMA: If you ever lose a symbolic trinket, it is guaranteed to find you again when needed most. It will even find you deep underground because mood lighting exists everywhere even in caves, basements and the moonless wilderness.
Alas, I could go on about how heroines scoff at hair ties, flat shoes and sports bras, or how bookworm spaceship doctors somehow find themselves with chiseled 3-hour a day physiques, or how A.I. is always evil unless in the form of a pretty girl – but the end is nigh. So with this hopefully satisfactorily silly ramble, I wish you all a wonderful week.