It's total garbage, or I have achieved PAFDC (Peak Alienation from Dominant Culture). Can't quite tell from here.
Everyone loves it. Smart people love it. Dumb people love it. Trump haters & lovers love it.
I hate it.
I'm sitting in the cesspool of bad judgement that perhaps gives rise to such societal consensus: a Starbucks in Napa Valley, California on July 4th, which is purportedly Independence Day, but as a gifted curmudgeon (or at least refined contrarian), I can assure you is more of a National Let's Ignore Reality Day.
There are people far more clever than I who would make this critique a ten pager on this, but I won't presume you're that interested. Let's make this quick.
I. Using traditional critical analyses:
- Dialogue varies from stellar (how people really talk to each other, even if they're teenage super heroes) to wooden (as when Mysterio explains to his colleagues he's worked with for presumably decades why they're doing what they're doing). B-
- Character Development/Arch is strong except for the villain & Peter's emotional depth. People seem as fully formed as you can in the limited genre/time span except for Peter/Spidey, who gives all of 2 minutes on screen to morn the violent death of his mentor, Tony Stark. Honestly, I still mourn some lovely dead people who died natural deaths for more than a few minutes a day, though they've been gone for years, and am not a moody teenager. B-
- Plot Holes are numerous and ignored by most viewers, it seems. That nobody recognizes the villain despite years of him working for Tony Stark; that the within the movie über-paranoid protector Nick Fury hadn't had him vetted; that Spidey's high school classmates are so daft that they can't figure out he's who he is; that in the first bad-guy section, the unreal/projected image monsters cause actual damager to physical objects - I could go on, but seriously, why are you all giving them a pass on this? D
- Plot is kind or charming: Peter just wants to get the girl, and has to make horrific choices beyond the maturity of even a gifted 16 year old. That the high school teachers keep having their European trip rerouted for inexplicable reasons and don't suspect something is afoot however is an unbecoming combination of a major plot-hole and transparently-daft-plot-device, so again, a D.
II. Now then, why I'm in a foul mood:
Came in this Starbucks, which sits kitty-corner to the first coffee house Napa had, here at first and main streets. Hung out there weekly thirty or so years ago for the two years I lived here in the Valley, and Starbucks never met a location it couldn't pilfer. The coffee is not as good at Starbucks (but the wifi is guaranteed to work), and I didn't know that they'd be blasting really loud popular music targeting 15 year old listeners when I first came in to do web-work, and am now annoyed enough to let the productive time degenerate into this scree.
I asked in the following order for my order, Starbucks: 1. real glass, 2. easy on the ice, 3. iced mocha. How hard is that?
So got what you think - a plastic cup (which will never decompose) full of mostly ice. They looked annoyed when I politely asked for what I'd ordered.
Most humans think the destruction of the environment is due to distant bad guys/others, rather than their deplorable consumption habits. I'd prefer shade-tree grown, fair-trade, organic beens like those of Caffe Ibis, but would have settled for just a freakin' glass, like Starbucks and Peets used to automatically give you 20 years ago, but those two companies would rather count their money and fill the planet with trash.
So got what you think - a plastic cup (which will never decompose) full of mostly ice. They looked annoyed when I politely asked for what I'd ordered.
Most humans think the destruction of the environment is due to distant bad guys/others, rather than their deplorable consumption habits. I'd prefer shade-tree grown, fair-trade, organic beens like those of Caffe Ibis, but would have settled for just a freakin' glass, like Starbucks and Peets used to automatically give you 20 years ago, but those two companies would rather count their money and fill the planet with trash.
So can't fill an order properly, screw the environment, and how about some loud music you loathe, old musician man guy? Then I looked around at all the affluence, and hyper-sexualized dressing of children posing as adults (or not prevented from doing so by their doubtless overwhelmed parents), including the flag and red-white-blue themes for the holiday, and thought to myself,
THIS IS WHY THE MOVIE SUCKS SO BAD.
Look, I'm an English major, jazz aficionado and one time professional piano player, and currently professional magician: I am highly qualified to opine about escapism's value.
But here's the rub. While children are in cages without their migrant parent who didn't come here to party but to survive, and a lunatic President is making taxpayers pay up for an unprecedented display of military might for a non-partisan holiday for which he's charging for tickets and handing them out to ONE of the TWO political parties as some sort of sick reward for cronyism, we are watching shitty movies (see above for why again, it's a shitty movie) instead of fixing these huge issues, or purchasing worthy stories, products, and services like adults, we are all praising shitty movies and ignoring the greatest threat to democratic norms in this country in anybody's lifetime.
That's why watching shitty movies is dangerous. That's why it's more important than a franchise, or just having a little fun. There are GREAT movies out there deserving your support, but I can't think of one nearly as worthy of your support as the world's oldest Republic, that has been governed by principles which we are watching erode like banks of a river during a flood, as we purchase shitty things and listen to shitty music and pay money for shitty movies.
End Rant
Signed,
Old Guy Who Can't Afford a Lawn from Which To Berate Those Deserving Berating
