In its own backyard, Hollywood Elsewhere has identified why a fair amount of movies are vapid, insipid and formulaic to a fault. The reason is because of the cinematic preferences of two HE commenters — one called “Roscoe Coltrane” and another who goes by the name “Kit Reyes.” These guys aren’t literally the cause of shitty movies, of course, but they’ll do for metaphors.

Yesterday people were talking about the failure of Widows, and Roscoe posted the following: “I’ll be honest. I want to see this. I want to support Viola Davis. But I fucking refuse to be depressed at the movies. I fucking refuse. Too much shit going on in the world. I can’t get up for two hours of melodrama. Even well acted and shot melodrama.”

About ten hours later Reyes chimed in as follows: “I agree with you completely. That’s why, as dumb as Aquaman looks, people will watch it. Because people who don’t follow this site really just want to have a good time, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.”

To which I replied, “Yes, there is something wrong with that. As in a whole lot wrong ‘Just show me a good time, don’t bring me down and let me pop a Percocet’ attitudes encourage the very worst kind of jizz-whizz, jack-off filmmaking. The people who buy movie tickets based on this attitude are the reason so many films are trite and shallow and soul-draining. So thank you, Kit, for doing your part. And you too, Roscoe! Thanks for Aquaman and Otto Bathurst‘s Robin Hood! Films like this make me ten times more depressed than you ever felt because of this or that dreaded melodrama.”