I wasn’t invited to the Guardians of the Galaxy all-media, and I forgot to politely beg Disney to allow me to see it beforehand (they usually oblige if I get down on my knees) so I really shouldn’t say anything until I catch it this weekend. (77% on Metacritic, 92% on Rotten Tomatoes as we speak.) But the news about last night’s $11.2 million haul — the biggest pre-opening total of the year — has hit me two ways. The upside is that it’s obviously great when a movie really hits the bull’s-eye and becomes a cultural and conversational necessity to see. The downside is that American lowbrows have once again told Hollywood loud and clear to keep cranking out CG-driven, jokey-ass comic-book movies about unlikely superheroes doing spectacular things and…you know, whizzing around in CG-land. Thank you very fucking much. The downward aspirations of American mainstream cinema have just been handsomely rewarded, the non-Catholic zombies who are in the movie business for what they can siphon out of it are now cackling and flexing their muscles all the more, and the struggle to produce quality-aspiring, human-scale theatrical fare has just gotten that much harder. Congratulations, American megaplex ass-clowns, for doing your part in the great ongoing effort to nudge American movie culture in a downmarket direction and…you know, another notch or two down the reverse-evolutionary (or devolutionary) scale.
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