Elias+O's+Op-Ed+Article

media type="file" key="eliaso-muckrakers-2012.mp3"
===**You come home after a crappy week of school, as usual. Not having a pencil in your hand makes you feel as if you’re missing a limb, you held onto that thing for dear life as if it was your only weapon against a surprise AP guerrilla attack. Losing the will to stand on your feet, you fall onto your couch like a helpless rag-doll because you can’t remember the last time you had a good night’s sleep as energy drinks have replaced your blood. In order to stop the voices of your last physics lecture, you desperately call your friends to have some human interaction.**===

** “I dunno.” **

 * “Want to hang out?” **
 * “Sure.” **
 * “What do you want to do?” **
 * “I dunno.” **
 * “I guess we could go see a movie?” **
 * “Sure.” **


 * Crawling to your laptop, you scroll the list of movies in order to escape from your hell of a reality. Mindlessly, you choose the movie with the most computer graphics and the most sex appeal (“The Lorax” starring Danny DeVito? Oh, baby). But your friends don’t want to watch the film starring your four-foot man-candy. They want to watch Exploding Murder-Babies versus Homicidal Ninja Penguins 2 starring that chick on that magazine your friend hides under his bed from his parents. Begrudgingly, you accept and try not to cry while you hand over ten dollars to the cashier whereas you would have more fun shooting yourself in the foot. **


 * Two hours go by and your brain has long turned into a steaming pile of goo. Why did you let your friends persuade you to see that movie? Why did you waste a good one-hundred-and-twenty minutes of your life watching that crap when you could have just ran in front of a bus? Why did you pay the extra three dollars to see it in 3D!? You go home and sit in the corner thinking about what you had just done. **


 * “*GASP!*” You wake up fifty years later in a cold sweat. You feel an empty blackness in your soul while tears stream down your face, crying in hopeless misery. “Why, God!?” you shout, “Why did I have to see that awful movie!?” **


 * A serious epidemic far worse than bubonic plague or swine flu has swept across the nation. A travesty more sickening than the severed finger in the Wendy’s chili. A sight more horrifying than your childhood wardrobe. The septic tank of imagination has burst and crappy movies have filled our theatres. Simply watching the trailers or hearing the starring actors can give someone nightmares. The names “Adam Sandler” and “Nicholas Cage” even make Satan shudder. How many movies have you seen in the past three years or so have been as good as a bunch of soggy bananas? How many movies has your mother dragged you into seeing? How many freaking Shrek movies are there?! (Four main films, two holiday specials, 5 short-films, a 4D movie, and a Puss In Boots spinoff, that’s how many) **


 * Look back into your wasted summer days and think about how many movies you’ve seen that were either a sequel, remake, based on a book, or based on a TV show? “How is it possible that ‘The Smurfs’ was even allowed to see the light of day?” you may ask? That’s a valid question, one of which I can answer. Studios feel really nervous about putting money into a fresh idea, and having an existing idea such as “Spider-Man” or “Fat Albert” guarantees a fanbase and also guarantees money so the studio will just take an old idea and make a movie out of it. In the rare cases that an original idea is actually successful, the majority of studios will milk that sucker to the bone and keep going, a flaw that Dreamworks fails to recognize. Remember how good “How to Train Your Dragon” was? Just wait until they ram that thing into the ground with eight sequels. However, there is a difference between a good and a bad sequel. Sometimes, in rare instances, sequels actually are creative enough to add to the series such as the other two original Star Wars movies or the Harry Potter series. But most of the time, sequels are caused by simply greed and then we end up with the fourth Indiana Jones movie or serious considerations for Casablanca 2 (look it up, I’m not even joking). But not all remakes or pre-existing-idea-based movies are bad, a number of them are actually pretty good such as “Shutter Island” or the second “Sherlock Holmes” and then there were the movies that still haunt me to this day such as The Green Lantern or the-one-that-shall-not-be-named (Super Mario Brothers Movie *cough cough*)(If you want to experience torture that only hell can offer, simply watch that movie). Hollywood will never let go of cash-cows like superheroes or teen novels, so the only thing we can do now is hope that they will not crush our memories with futile attempts by ailing actors and directors at making a quick buck. (What’s that? They’re making “Zoolander 2”?) Nevermind then... **


 * Undoubtedly the greatest factor at making you face-palm at the theatres is the invention of computer animation (or better-known as CGI). CGI has ruined cinema as we know it because it takes the effort and creativity out of filmmaking. Do you remember the old days of make-up and cheap special effects? Take “The Killer Klowns from Outer Space” for example. Sure, the movie was totally cheesy and made you laugh at how lame it was, but late at night you were shaking like a paranoid chihuahua because, deep inside, the clowns creeped you out. Or watch the remake of “The Fly”. That movie got pretty freaking creepy, especially when he dissolved that one guy’s arm off with his acid spit, and also when his skin broke apart to reveal his true slimy bug-form, and it was all done without computer animation! All of it was made with tangible material. Now all of these new movies can green screen the whole dang movie without having to put in any real effort such as “time” or “energy”. Sure, it can be helpful in some situations such as Harry Potter or Avatar, but then you get totally computer-animated bull-ogna such as “John Carter” or “Journey 2”. Studios expect by cramming a movie with CGI and making it 3D will make it an instant blockbuster, and sadly, they’re correct! People’s standards for movies have drastically fell and movies are no longer a time for escape but to relish in the explosions and the dancing CGI animals. Personally, my vendetta against computer animation stems from the decline of stop-motion animation such as Wallace and Gromit or The Nightmare Before Christmas. People would spend six hours into making two minutes of film and here we have the guys at dumb-ol’ Dreamworks who can pump out cruddy flicks faster than a pair of frisky rabbits can make babies. Computer generated imaging has become a poison to the masses and cinema, but sadly enough, society has come to accept it with open arms and open wallets. **


 * However, I am not saying that all movies need to be Oscar-winning material, I’m also not one who reads “Forbes” for fun or has Sudoku sleepovers. I’m just a concerned movie-goer and avid filmmaker. I’ve seen a number of good films over the past year even though they weren’t all that and a bag of chips. I’m not the kind of person that only wants to see dramatic political movies because, come on, you can never go wrong with Liam Neeson. I rarely listen to any high-end movie reviewers because they hate everything except for politics and George Clooney, which I think is just a waste of time because you shouldn’t limit yourself to watching movies only your church or knitting group recommends. But then again, the majority of average moviegoers are only concerned about a minimal plot helplessly supported by visual effects and explosions, so think twice before you listen to your friend’s advice because 1) he’s probably an idiot and 2) is the movie really worth ten bucks? I didn’t think so. I believe that a good movie is something that entertains both types of extreme movie-goers by having a substantial plot, good acting, and Batman. **


 * I have been dragged by my friends and family too many times to see a bad movie, and too many times have I cried myself to sleep knowing that I could have spent that time doing something productive like eating glue or sticking a fork in the toaster. Something has to be done and it ends here. No more bleeding wallets. No more lives ruined. No more crappy movies. **