The Saw/Applebee's Mystique

Whenever I think of the Saw movies, I think of Applebees. It's just the whole "Capitalism at it's best" idea. And just let me put it out there, I have nothing against the whole torture porn movement in cinema. Hell, I'm a horror junkie myself, and I embraced the movement back during the days of Videodrome. But I hate the Saw movies so much for the same reason I hate Applebees.

I'm sure Applebees started out as a nice little neighborhood bar and grill in some small quaint Midwestern town, as all soon-to-be-fucked-up-psychologically things do. And I'm almost positive that there food was pretty good. So good in fact that after a couple years, Grandpa and Grandma Applebee opened another Applebees in the town over. And then there were five Applebees. And then ten. Then a hundred. Then a thousand. Now there are over eighteen-hundred Applebees choking our collective arteries. And if everything goes to plan, there should be three thousand Applebees by the year 2020. Awesome! Wait no, Applebees sucks, nevermind. The reason Applebees sucks, and the reason why all franchise/chain restaurants suck, is because they cut corners on the things that matter.

When a company expanse like that, they have to save money by using sub-par ingredients and storage devices and so on. So how does this relate to Saw? It's the same process.

The first Saw movie was okay, not unlike the first Applebees. It had an interesting premise but the novelty of it wore thin, on me at least, especially from the horrendous acting. But it made a lot of money, so they made more. A lot more. And just like Applebees, the quality diminishes as the franchise grows and reason is because they cut corners on things to save money. It would be more expensive to actually hire a guy write a "plot"and "characters" for the Saw movies. So they just said to hell with that and just thought up really elaborate ways to torture, maim, and kill human beings. Congratu-fucking-lations.

But this is only "Capitalism at it's BEST". Imagine "Capitalism RUN RAMPANT". You'd have Saw resturants and theme parks. You'd have a Saw-Ville, with spurious torture devices placed in every home. Oh the money to be had! The best though, would be a Saw holiday where people would be guilt-tripped into buying torture devices for friends and families, like during Christmas. Everyone would gather around the "Face-Ripper-Off-er" that's lit with little lights and they'd sing made-up songs of flogging and pain and everything would be right with the world. Everything except for the whole sanctioning of torture and death part.

How the EMOs Stole Christmas

Well it's Halloween and the studios have decided to re-release The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D. They've done this before, last year I think, but this year I saw something online that I did not before. This movie is the only one that I can think of that people hate solely based on the nature of the fanbase. On IMDb, the site I love so much, has a thread on the movie entitled, "Emo kids ruin everything...". Apparently this guy hates this movie solely because of the emo kids who obsess over it. And he's got followers too, he's not alone.
But that just made me think. I thought of all the stupid fanboys in the world and I realized that I can't really say that they make me hate whatever medium they devote thier lives too. Trekkies and Star Wars fanatics were the first ones to come to mind. And while they are equally annoying, I can't really pull myself to hate Star Trek or Star Wars because of them. Moreover, even including my hatred for George Lucas, I still like the Star Wars franchise.
And this once again proves my theory that most people on IMDb are morons.

IMDb: The Scum of the Internet finds a Graceland

I love movies so much. People sometimes get irriated with me because of my love for film. I remember watching Straw Dogs with someone and asking them questions about it. I was just trying to spark a conversation using the old Socratic method. They didn't really care about it but I wanted them to. I'd seen that movie so many times and it means a lot to me but they just said it was "wierd". Whatever, it's okay, I'm just not like other people.
So being a cinephile, I browse IMDb until the wee hours of the night. And one thing that I'm drawn to by some mysterious force is the message boards. Sometimes, there can be rich discussion to be had among the users of IMDb. But most of the time, you run into hate-filled anti-movie people. Cinephobes. They hate movies. Everything that spews out of thier rotten mouths is only in reference to why they hated something or why something was a horrible movie.
That's fine. I don't expect everyone to love every movie they see, I know I don't. But when I watch a movie and don't like it, I think of the reasons why I don't like it. Then I think of examples of those reasons. This may seem like the most logical thought process to use when discussing anything really. You have an opinion, you support it. Well that little fantasy doesn't exist on IMDb. You need only state that a movie sucks and you are immediately more knowledgable or sophisticated in filmmaking. And it works in vice-versa. People to go on and on about how great a movie is can't explain why. And it pisses me off.
And so the vast majority of IMDb consists of those individuals yelling about how a movie sucked or about how a movie was the best ever. They are so absolute. They're like those fanatic religious fundamentalists who strap ten pounds of plastique to themselves.
So discussions about movies are reduced to shouting matches and name calling and stupid pointless banter that makes me want to stick my head in front of a subway train.