So, movie and TV and funnybook nerds… what the hell? Between Iron Fist and BvS and fanbois not letting go of their hate of everything, yet couching the three things they do love in relation to how all of genre entertainment is failing them, and Lady Ghostbusters and Black Adam and Quantumania and whatever outrage du jour is going on, I have a simple question: WHY DO YOU POST ON SOCIAL MEDIA ABOUT SOMETHING THAT IS OBVIOUSLY NOT FOR YOU?
I’m not talking about reasoned critiques about how you thought an entertainment failed to live up to its promise, from your point of view; that stuff is instructive and, dare I say it, welcome. You can learn a lot from views different than your own, of course. I’m talking about the sort of post where someone gets rabies from his own defense of something when somebody replies, “Meh.” I love coconut ice cream, for example. I have more in the freezer than I should because i don’t really have a sweet tooth, but if there’s a zombie outbreak, I’m going to want my coconut ice cream for the two or three days it’s going to take them to get in to my house. My wife hates it. Thinks it tastes like rat poison. But I don’t greet her home from work every day yelling YOUR ICE CREAM SUCKS; MINE IS BETTER! I just don’t understand the impulse. What mutual understanding does that get you? Sometimes stuff just isn’t for you.
You think Man of Steel’s presentation of Jonathan Kent sucks? Cool. Tell me why. Because I can tell you why it’s internally consistent and makes a powerful bookend to Russell Crowe’s Jor-El; two fathers sacrificing themselves for their son’s destiny. Want to tell me how Sucker Punch was awful? Sure, but spell it out; I can tell you how they tell you in the first shot of the film how Snyder put the audience on notice that the main characters under the proscenium and the viewers in the audience were going to get sucker-punched. You think Iron Fist sucks? You obviously haven’t paid attention to the whole thing. Didn’t like Andor? Brother, I got nothing.
I dunno. I guess I’m just saying I expect more out of you, social media. Stop choking down your meals so quickly without chewing on them because you want to be first with the pithy comment, or the early bird for the click-through, or whatever. You’re missing the point of commenting on commercial art, which is to tell your audience how well you feel the entertainment reached its goal.
Writing THAT SUCKED; I HATED IT tells no one anything except that you aren’t very thoughtful.