Just Ask Spock For A Ride

In 20 minutes of previews, I learned about 14 hours of movies I don’t need to watch.  Efficiency!  

This week, Jeremy was more concerned about seeing Anne Hathaway than checking to find out if the movie she was in was any good or not.  The result was a wasted 3 hours spent watching "Interstellar."  

There is every reasonable chance that after this weekend's incident, I may be able to add director Christopher Nolan to the list of Hollywood people that I'm done with.  He would join the likes of Ben Stiller, Will Farrel, Adam Sandler, and the Coen Brothers as one of the people who I never need to see any more work from again.  It's not because his stuff is bad.  For the most part, it's actually quite good (for my money, the Dark Knight Trilogy is one of the better trilogies I've ever seen, and easily the best Batman adaptation to hit the silver screen), but it's all settled into a bit of a rut, starting with The Dark Knight Rises.  

From this point on, there will be spoilers about the Batman movies, but not about Interstellar.  It's safe to keep on reading, unless you haven't seen the Batmans.  

So, about 2 hours into the really long "Batman Begins," we learn that Ra's Al Ghul is really alive, and is Liam Neeson.  Great.  It was a nice twist for anyone who had never seen any incarnation of Ra's.  About 2 hours into the ferociously long "The Dark Knight," we learn that Harvey Dent has turned into a new supervillian, Two Face, and Batman has to contend with that as well.  Fine...it was a nice twist, even though we kinda knew that Harvey Dent was Two Face all along, so we were maybe expecting this to happen in the next movie, but it happened here.  About 2 hours into the ludicrously long "The Dark Knight Rises," we learn that Miranda is actually Ra's Al Ghul's child, not Bane, and Batman has a new villain to deal with.  We get it...2 hours into Batman movies, there's a giant shocking plot twist.  By the third movie, you're expecting it, so you're just waiting around for 2 hours until the plot twists, so the real plot can actually start.  

Fast Forward to Fall 2014, and the butt-numbingly long "Interstellar" hits theatres, directed by Christopher Nolan.  Holy cow!  About 2 hours into the movie, there's a giant plot twist, a character isn't what you thought he/she was and the actual plot/endgame can actually begin.  Are you kidding me?  Nolan needs some new schtick, or he's going to find his way out of the 10 bucks I've spent on his last few movies.  Yeah...that'll show him!  

Aside from the formulaic Nolantwist, (Or maybe, I'll just start calling plot twists "Nolans"...I have yet to decide) the movie was pretty much all over the place, never deciding if it wanted to be sci-fi, or action adventure, or romance, or family drama, or psychological thriller, or psychological drama, or if it wanted to be funny.  It kept wandering aimlessly around itself, never actually exploring any depth to any of the two-dimensional characters, or having them grow as people.  It wasn't until after the Nolantwist that it finally realized that it wanted to be weird, and then it was okay!  Only problem was that it took almost 3 hours to get there.  

On the plus side, even though the movie was 3 hours long, the theatre didn't see the need to spare us from a full 20 minutes of previews, so there's that.  I stopped counting, but there must have been 6 or 7 movies advertised here...and they were all crap.  So, at least now I know that I won't have to spend the time or money watching those piles of flotsam.  I just should have been paying more attention during previews of Interstellar.  Could have saved myself that time, too.


This has been another edition of Jeremy Is In The Theatre.