No, this is not going to be a thing, but the alliteration worked, so… I want to talk about this film, Don’t Look Up. It carries a pretty obvious message presented through comparative characterizations. However, it doesn’t beat you as hard as the Matrix does. Maybe that is because it is funny and I actually cared about the characters throughout. So, yeah, that’s the thing. MAKE ME CARE. I tell my students that constantly and it holds up. If I care about the character, I’ll follow you through all your strife. I didn’t care about the characters in the Matrix. In truth, I hardly knew them. The characters in the matrix came off as sad reproductions of the original crew that rescued Neo and direction did a piss poor job of making them any more than that.
So, yeah. Don’t Look Up focuses on character and good acting to wrap the clearly stated message in. Matrix reminds you that, yes, this is a message and this action and color is all background–the paper the message is written on.
Some Thoughts:
- YouTube is ruining my kids. While a few of them have a sense of value in shows it is almost entirely limited to a particular style or type of thing they like. They don’t give anything else a chance, but at the same time are entirely willing to spend hours watching nonsense on youtube and not judging that crap at all. How can you judge a movie as being not worth wasting 2 hours on and still spend 3 hrs watching a slew of videos you find at most meh? YouTube has a strange power over them.