Mike's Musings: What is the Point Anymore?

 "Only TRUE Wolverine fans will recognize these Easter eggs?"

"Stan Lee confirms a fan theory from beyond the grave that we've all thought since day one!"

"Here's what 'The Avengers' directors REALLY had to say about Fat Thor!"

Those are headlines I see plastered more or less verbatim every time I open my phone.  CinemaBlend, Den of Geek, Screen Rant...they all do this (and contain no actual insight into any of the "questions" they pose.  Such obvious clickbait is as ubiquitous as it is annoying.  As much of an ear worm and an eye sore as they are, it got me thinking: why do we watch movies anymore?

Indulge me for a moment.  Let me take you back to when I saw "Teen Titans GO! To the Movies" in a theater about three years ago.  You may recall, or maybe you don't, that I gave the film a 0/4.  A distinction so bad that only a dozen or so have achieved it.  Watching it was a miserable experience.  It was even more so because, down the aisle from me, a group of comic book nerds (who else would sit through this garbage), would shout out every reference and cameo at the screen.  "Oh!  There's Stan Lee!" they'd scream.  "Oh!  There's Catwoman!"  "Oh!  There's Spider-Man!"

The memory sticks out in my mind because it makes me wonder something about our culture.  Do we really value the art of storytelling anymore?  Or is filmmaking just a sales pitch: find a director who throws enough references our way. so that we aren't disappointed and we won't give a damn about anything else.

It's a cynical question and outright character assassination on fans who don't engage in such obnoxious behavior, but it is valid.  One of the criticisms about the new "Star Wars" movies is that they don't move the story forward.  To an extent, this is true, but can you blame them?  Just look at George Lucas when he came out with the prequels.  Before May 1999, he was a geek god, revered as a man of brilliance and the founder of cinema's most famous trilogy.  Even after the release, he was still well-loved, but his reputation grew more tarnished by the day.  People complained about the prequels, saying everything from "they sucked" to "George Lucas raped my childhood."  I'll be the first to admit that none of those movies are perfect, but then again, neither are the prequels.  No matter how far removed from it you were, there was no escaping the bile that geekdom spewed at George Lucas.  Can you blame Disney for wanting to play it safe?

James Berardinelli argued that it was a sense of ownership that fans believed they had over the films combined with Lucas's allegedly fan-unfriendly attitude that led fandom to turn on him.  The idea that someone other than Lucas could have any creative input in the "Star Wars" films he made is ridiculous (aside from the money holders, but when you're George Lucas making a "Star Wars" movie, it's best to hand him a blank check and thank him for his trouble).  No doubt that there is some truth to this.

Personally, I think it is less a sense of arrogance and entitlement and more a biological response.  Seeing an in-joke that only a devout fan would recognize does two things: one, it sets a person apart from the crowd and makes them feel like the movie is made for them.  It triggers a dopamine rush, and it's addictive.

What is my point?  A better question is why do we watch movies now?  Is it to be told stories, or is it to be told exactly what we want to hear?

Hollywood thinks it's the latter.  Just look at the superheroes.  Every movie has the exact same plot.  Superhero A discovers their powers or has to prove themselves only to discover everything they though is dead wrong and now they have to fix their screw up.  Change the names and that describes every plot of every MCU and DCU movie in the past quarter century.  The only differences between them are the cameos and the in-jokes.  For example.  What was the point of the "surprise" cameo by Doctor Strange in "Thor: Ragnarok?"  What possible purpose did it serve?  Apologists could cite world building or whatever, but such things don't build to anything.  They're just there for the dopamine rush.

Sure.  It was cute for a while.  It was intriguing to see an array of interconnected movies sharing a wide array of characters.  But like the old joke about the chicken crossing the road, repetition leads to boredom and eventually annoyance.  Now it reeks of desperation and cynicism.  Disney is betting that if they throw in enough in jokes, cameos and cross-references that no one will notice or care that these movies are exactly the same story dressed in new clothing.  And judging by the box office receipts, they're right.

That's not to say that the entire genre is rotten.  Nolan's "Batman" trilogy is masterful, with "The Dark Knight" deserving to be ranked alongside any of the all time great movies (so, yes, in that sense, it deserves to ranked alongside "Casablanca" and "The Godfather").  "Black Panther" and "Green Lantern" made my Top 10 lists of their respective years.  The differences is that those movies told stories.  There were stakes, people we cared about, and we wanted to know how things were going to turn out.  But those are the exceptions.  Most superhero movies exist to fulfill contractual obligations, juice stock prices and provide those Pavlovian responses in the fans.  They exist to exist.  They no longer give the fantasy of being a superhero, which is to say the audience can no longer vicariously live through the characters and do things they can only dream about.  They can't life the fantasy of being a hero anymore.  The screenplays are too thin for that, and the only personality the characters have comes from the people who play them?

So my question remains.  Why do we watch movies anymore?  To see stories we care about, or just the addictive dopamine rush?  You tell me.