the brilliantly leaping gazelle

There are two types of film genre I can’t be doing with, sci-fi and horror.

In my view, one goes to the cinema to be entertained, although seeing as how ‘No Time To Die’ was the last film I saw in a cinema was and that was as entertaining as a public hanging. Given as how they killed James Bond and all, possibly that film is the exception that proves the rule.

The problem I have with most sci-fi films, is that they make up their own rules, which I call my ‘magic button’ theory. Invariably, at some point of a sci-fi film, something will happen, maybe a seemingly inescapable situation is suddenly escaped from at the last second, or possibly the heroes will thwart the villains plans for this or that by miraculously – and also at the last second- exploiting a hitherto unremarked upon flaw in their plans.

Admittedly, a few do not. The excellent ‘Moon’ being a case in point. Logically consistent and being set on just the right side of a future that was already being seriously speculated on – extracting precious minerals from asteroids, remember when that was a thing – and well that’s it. There are bound to be more, there must be, but off the top of my head I can’t recall them. Perhaps as I’m writing this post, some ‘non magic button’ ones will occur to me. Thinking of ‘magic buttons, I think of ‘Doctor Who’, which gets a free pass because it not only has so many magic buttons to be almost a parody of itself, but I’m English and well, duh!

Horror films are kind of the same, but with added wankiness. The genre has so many tropes, visual cliches and other bollocks, that directors are lauded by critics for making a film that subverts the genre. It’s not three scantily clad young women who investigate creepy noises outside their remote woodside cabin late at night, no its three older women, or maybe its early evening. Soon, directors will be subverting the subversion by returning to the old tropes, but insisting they’re paying homage to the genres traditions. Or pastiche, if its a ’15’ rating their after.

I was thinking about this after watching ‘Nope’, the latest attempt in Jordan Peele’s quest to become like M.Night Shyamalan, another emperor who wears no clothes. Although at least he was upfront with it what with the title of the film being a clue right off the bat.

Was I going to enjoy this? ‘Nope’. Was it going to make any sense? ‘Nope’. Were any of the characters going to fully fleshed out, have a compelling back story or something that’d make me want to root for them? ‘Nope’. Was it going to make me glad my house-mate had made me buy it on Prime, or that my investment in time was rewarded? ‘Nope’

But according to Wikipedia, “Nope is a 2022 American neo-Western, science fiction horror film”, it has an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a lot of people who are paid to tell others what to think were so convinced that the film the film touched upon a lot of important themes that I thought they’d watched another film.

This is why I thought of ‘2001’, a film that is as bewildering as it is overrated and in that it shares similarities with ‘Monty Python’. Like ‘2001’ most people only liked ‘Monty Python’ because they didn’t want to embarrass themselves, to admit to not understanding something everyone else agreed was both terribly clever and unlike anything else that had gone before it. They both became something that others explained to others why they should enjoy it, without actually enjoying it themselves.

Mind you, given that ‘Nope’ had world-wide box office of $172 million, against a budget of $68 million. when I think of the attendant marketing, publicity and distribution costs that a film is saddled with nowadays, I joyously admit that the truly horrific thing about ‘Nope’ was its awful box office.