Here at Ask Erik, we've spent a lot of time reading books and comics, watching movies, and browsing through the Internet in the hopes of finding the answers to life's biggest mysteries. Is the Xbox One the future we always imagined it would be, or the start of a Big Brother oversight group? Could America grow as an agricultural nation to supply food to other developing nation, or are our roots as cultivators too far gone? Exactly how was Universal Soldier "universal?" I'm pretty sure he couldn't breathe in space.
Having instead amassed a vault of useless knowledge stored in his head, Erik instead tackles your questions and tries to find the answers you care about (or a reasonable facsimile). Or, if you don't care, he'll at least try to make you laugh and forget you just wasted time you could spend doing anything else.
To Erik: How do you watch movies?
Okay, this is a bit of a self-serving question, but it's one I was asked not too long ago when Iron Man 3 was coming out, and I, in an off-handed way, said I wasn't a big fan of watching movies with a big crowd because it got in the way of how I watched movies.
Having now just seen Iron Man 3, and having been thinking about this question during my viewing, turning it over in the back of my mind between bites of Buncha Crunch, I think I've figured out how to answer it. But to lead off, there's one thing I think people know about me.
I can never "turn off" my brain. There are so many movies that were huge hits or that people I know like because they say you can just "turn off your brain and enjoy it." The Transformers movies fell into this category, and I just wasn't really able to enjoy the first one enough to bother with the sequels. Whenever I watch a movie, I'm rolling dialogue from before over, pulling it apart and putting it back together. I'm picking apart themes and ideas that are introduced to see how well they're developed, I'm recalling previous readings of tropes from tvtropes.org to see how they're either built up or subverted, I'm pulling past experiences with actors from older movies into my mind to compare how closely linked characters are to tell how they're fitting in their current role (spoiler alert, Jack Black plays Jack Black in most films I've seen him in). I'm looking for hints of a green screen, and figuring out what's a model, what's a costume, and what's CG.
In other words, I analyze movies constantly, and with few exceptions. Have there been times I've simply been able to block out all thought and simply take in what's presented to me? Certainly. I managed to get a ticket for Winged Migration during a limited release in New York, and from almost the first minute my brain went silent as I watched the film, enraptured with the spectacle before me. I was so caught up in it that when I emerged, blinking, from the theater, the first thing I did was sit on a bench and watch pigeons mingle with pedestrians, how they'd do a half-hop and flap their wings once for just enough lift to keep from being truly underfoot.
Back to how I watch films, though. Does this mean I don't get as much enjoyment out of movies as other people do? It's possible. As I said before, I came out of Transformers feeling disappointed, and I know other people are amazed when I say it, but there are a lot of really popular comedies I just couldn't really enjoy. Dumb and Dumber, The 40 Year Old Virgin, The Nutty Professor (the remake one, with Eddie Murphy)...I just didn't really enjoy watching them. I kept predicting where the build-up was going, and while they were reveling in their own humor, I was getting impatient waiting for a joke I couldn't see coming from a mile off.
Don't get me wrong, I love Jane Lynch, but when she's on screen you're expecting her to say something outrageous and offensive, which is why I think I enjoyed her so much in Wreck-It Ralph since I was surprised every time she didn't do that while playing a character who I'd expect to swear all the time.
I keep wandering with this article, which I know I tend to do often, but I am going to try to bring it all back together. When I was watching Iron Man 3 tonight, there were plot points I saw coming a mile away. It had a few surprises for me (including one big one that I'm amazed I didn't predict happening), but throughout it I was able to get an enjoyable experience, pull apart the references and put them back together, enjoy the humor of it, and really consider a lot of the ideas it was putting in front of me. To me, it's a successful movie, but then, I also enjoyed the second one a lot because it had me thinking about international politics, technological advancement, and where country lines blur and industrial and corporate lines begin through it.
I also spent a lot of my drive home thinking about ideas that it presented, and looking at how those ideas might influence things in the world we live in. I'm not going to say too much more about it, as I plan on doing a full review, but I think it makes for a good example.
So, having now wasted this much space answering the question without any kind of solid response, I guess that if I had to think about how I watch movies, I'd say that I don't simply look at a series of quickly presented images, push aside everything, and take it for what it is. I do my best to incorporate the film into part of who I am. I invite its ideas to shape my humor, how I communicate with people, and what I'm willing to accept and not accept as being acceptable in the world. I pull it apart and look at the threads that made it up, keeping the ones that I think work with my line of thinking, and rejecting the others back to where they came from. When I enjoy a movie, it's because it fits well with me, or is eye-opening enough to make me reconsider something I had a solid idea on.
Or, to sum it up, I over-think things. But I think we all know that by now.
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