Movies today

I was sitting in the theatre awaiting the beginning of what would prove to be a terrible film and, after being comically entertained by hearing one of my best friend’s voice booming through the theater as backdrop to an advertisement for some cough syrup, I sat through the requisite dozen or so previews of films slated for a spring 2018 release. And I despaired. I came of age during a decade of marvelous film making but I realize how subjective that statement is. It was however demonstrably a time in which films were centered around the human condition. Some might disparagingly call them ‘kitchen sink dramas’. Stories of ordinary people and their struggles as opposed to tales of kings and queens. But that was then. Out of the dozen previews shown today only two could be credibly seen as centering on the human condition as it is. The rest were set in the world of fantasy. Stories that ran from futuristic fantasies to the supernatural to the virtual and on down to the comic book action hero. It left me breathless, and not because I found any of the hyper mega tales compelling but because I wondered why writers of today have abandoned the human being. My most generous guess is that adults don’t go to movies anymore and so the content has shifted toward that geared for the pubescent. The lesser guess on the generosity scale is that the generations now populating the writers guild can’t grapple with the everyday struggle of their own species but must look to the fantastical. Of course they would argue that the fantasy they weave is an allegory or a parable illuminating our shared condition to which I say nice try. They are contrived and tired devices practically empty of any real examination or content. Some people are still penning good movies, no doubt. But so few when yesterday there seemed to be many. I must be getting old.