Monday, July 14, 2014

A Guilty Pleasure

Guess who's back? Nope, not Slim Shady but rather your favorite inconsistent blogger! I said I would finish this blog challenge and even though I'm like really far behind I'm still going to see this one through, mostly so I can tell myself that I actually did finish one of these things.

.So I'm going to tell you a guilty pleasure of mine today even though I'm not sure I really have one, since I don't really feel bad about anything that I enjoy a lot. Actually now that I think of it, there is something that I know I should feel much worse for liking so darn much. I take so much joy out of listening to people tell me that a movie is "bad" because the source material, (99% of the time books) is not being perfectly represented in their film counterparts. When people say things like this, all I can do is laugh and think of a quote from the YouTube channel Cinema Sins, "THE BOOKS DO NOT MATTER." and they don't, because your source material only gives you a basic idea of what the story CAN be and in no way determines the quality of a film. Having spectacular source material does not guarantee a good film and terrible books don't make terrible films necessarily. Yes this does mean that there was a real possibility that the Twilight movies could have been quite good actually,  but there would have had to have been a significant departure from the books in order to accomplish this, and that's something that you just have to do sometimes to make a movie work. Or you can always rely on the massive cult following to just carry you to box office success, whatever works.

The examples I like to bring up is Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies. Both of these series take some liberal departures from their source material, and you know what? So far it's worked pretty darn well. Also I have read both of these so people can't just claim that I'm totally ignorant of how amazing the books are and how that should shape my opinion of a movie. (don't do this by the way, it's really dumb.) If we can be realistic for a moment here and take a look at what the Lord of the Rings would have been like if they had stayed really true to the books. We would've had some sort of weird combination of a documentary about this incredibly detailed universe that J.R.R. Tolkien created and a musical. ( they sing ALL the time.) Guess what? That combo of Les Miserables and Planet Earth? Terrible movie. Guaranteed. Now with the Hobbit I jump on anyone that is still upset about the existance of Tauriel in the second part of the Hobbit trilogy needs to think about how silly it would be to not have ANY consistent female presence in the set of films, it was fine to just have the band of dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf in the book because it was a very not serious children's book that also happened to fit into the canon of the Middle-Earth universe. The films however are major blockbusters that need to connect to as many audiences as possible and not including a minor character that is female at least does not bode well in that department.

I feed on your fanboy tears. 
Enough rambling on the subject though, my guilty pleasure is laughing (at least on the inside) at fan-boys who think that whatever book they like is above interpretation and change by a filmmaker trying  to make a FILM. Stay Salty and peace out buds.