Comical Repetitiveness! and other musings [movies]

We haven’t talked about it much lately, but I’m pretty sure that most of the staff grew up as big comic book guys. I know I did. I was a pretty big Marvel apologist (still am) back then, and I think the first series I ever got into was the Avengers which in all honesty, kinda sucked (at least during that era). After that I moved on to every X-series* and never really looked back. I even suffered through the horrendous Rob Liefeld phase of X-Force’s beginnings (and its nonsensical storylines of THE IMMORTALS!) as well as the huge Image/Marvel split (Wetworks! Savage Dragon! classics!). And as far as I know, we all still do read comic books (they’re actually called “Graphic novels” now *snort*), and it only goes to raise our level of geek acumen around these parts.

What does any of this have to do with movies, you may ask me? Well I’m getting to that gentle reader. I’ve spent most of the past week going back and rewatching old classics and favorites (including reviews of newer movies like Darjeeling and Into the Wild). I am a notorious rewatcher of movies, having seen some of my favorite movies well into the 20th and 30th viewings in my lifetime. I don’t really expect people to see their favorite movies 30 times (and I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that I’ve wasted that much of my life watching Say Anything or Do the Right Thing), but I thought it was pretty normal to have seen some of your favorite movies more than once at the very least. Bringing up such topics in conversation, I’ve begun to discover that most people in the world** really don’t watch ANY movies more than once. I was trying to figure out why that is with my brain trust team of scientists and big thinkers, and I think when it comes to geeks like us, a lot of it has to do with comic books. Wait….I’ll explain.

When I was younger, I went to the comic store once a week (Thursday, I believe) to get a couple new issues of X-men/force/factor/calibur/etc. only to run home, read them through, and be done with them in about 20-30 minutes. Loser nerds like us never really had much incentive to go outside and play sports constantly, TV was a joke back then, and what else was I going to do…read books? HA. For me, it was mostly comic books***, and I found myself getting attached to moments, lines of dialogue, kick ass actions sequences. And like any kid without much else to do, I would reread those moments ad nauseum. I would sketch those moments out in my sketchbook (little known fact, I used to be heavily into sketching and inking), and replay them over and over and over again in my head. And y’know what? They never got old, at least to me. I could probably still go back and read the 11 X-men Jim Lee issues and still be amused when Psylocke tries to seduce Cyclops, or Gambit throws the charged up dirt at Bishop, or Maverick and Logan fighting against Omega Red. Maybe I like beating dead horses into the ground, but they never got old.

I think this mentality carried over to action movies, to the point now where I can rewatch old action movies to the point of no return. It’s pretty apparent that everyone at this site is a pretty huge Die Hard fan. I’m not going to go into depth about the caliber of cinema that Die Hard actually achieves (LD can do that for you anytime you want him to), but basically it’s a kick ass movie that we as guys, geeky guys, NEVER get tired of seeing. You can replace Die Hard with any number of action movies (The Last Boy Scout, Predator, Point Break, Terminator, etc.), and it would be the same analysis (with some being better movies than others, but all being equally amusing in a catatonic, vegetable state way).

This is all good and fine, but there’s also the obvious “explosions good” theory that draws guys to kick ass action movies time and time again. What about the meatier movies, the heavier dramas? I’ve seen movies like Road to Perdition or Annie Hall or Raging Bull as many times as I’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or Passenger 57. For people who weren’t huge comic book geeks, comic books were half about action, but half about cheesy ass soap opera-ish drama. It’s the same logic as why we watched pro wrestling (which I ALSO was a huge fan of ****). Guys love soap opera drama, it just has to be presented in the right form (i.e. half robotic guys with glowing eyes and big guns in love triangles with telekinetic busty woman who were also ninjas). The cheeseball human drama presented in comics (and wrestling) were what made you stay, week after week, hoping for resolution of all the emotional entanglements that you tried to deny meant so much to you. I think my heart is still warmed when I think of how Macho King (yes, he was King at the time) took back Miss Elizabeth after his retirement match with the Ultimate Warrior in Wrestlemania VII.*****

Uhh…the point is that at least for me, my constant rewatching of movies is a comfort thing, a call back to days when I had nothing better to do than sit in my room and read shitty X-men comics over and over again. I came for the kick ass action, I stayed for the soap opera human drama, and the movies remind me that at my core, I’m a simple guy to please with pretty pictures and a familiar story to back it up.

Notes:
* yes, even The New Mutants and X-Calibur, which both sucked as well. I was also a HUGE New Warriors fan, which I still hold is one of the best written AWFUL series ever.

** most BORING normal people…i.e. not us

*** and baseball and basketball cards. My massive collection of Shaquille O’Neal rookie cards will one day pay dividends. Doesn’t that make you feel old? That Shaq is a veteran who came out more than 15 years ago? I still picture him in his LSU uniform breaking rims.

**** I once high fived the Bushwackers. True story.

***** other good matches from that Wrestlemania: Hart Foundation vs. the Nasty Boys; Million Dollar Man vs. Virgil; Jake the Snake vs. Rick Martel in a blindfold match; and of course, Hulk Hogan vs. Iraqi Sgt Slaughter. You also had the debut of the Undertaker against Jimmy Snuka, as well as Mr. Perfect vs. Big Boss Man. Best Wrestlemania? It’s one of them.