Posted on January 8th, 2018 by Adam-Troy Castro
Look, the worst thing that can happen to you at the movies is the commentary track from the fellow patron who understands nothing, who doesn’t get the point, who sometimes advises his fellows what’s happening with absolute certainty even though his explanation suggests that he’s watching a completely different movie on his phone. We all know this.
Sometimes the commentary doesn’t need to be endless. Honestly, the guy who sat behind me yesterday was largely quiet during ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, even if he did open up his mouth at a key dramatic moment and tell everybody, “This must be the scene where the kidnappers cut off the kid’s ear.” That was an unnecessary observation to speak out loud. Even though almost everybody in the theatre was either old enough to remember the Getty kidnapping, or had picked up this dramatic point from prior coverage of the film, the last thing you need while a story is playing out is the proudly clued-in person announcing the story beats just before they happen.
I know Hamlet kills Polonius and that he must kill Polonius. I am sure that most of my fellow members of the audience have also been exposed to some version of HAMLET in the past and are also operating from this knowledge. But if I am in a movie theatre watching any version of HAMLET I do not stand up at the moment when Polonius hides behind the curtain, wave semaphore flags and tell everybody, “Hey, this must be the scene where he kills Polonius!”
But still, that is stuff that happens during the film.
It takes a truly talented person to say something so clueless that it rings in your head throughout the film, before the actual beginning of the film.
It takes a profound nudnik to say something during the trailer that makes me want to turn around and say, “Really? How does that sponge between your ears generate enough electrical energy to keep your heart beating?”
To wit:
One of the trailers before ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD is a film whose title fled me. (ADDENDUM: It is ALPHA.)
It is one of those trailers that tells almost the entire story. Honestly, if you threw out the full motion picture and played only these three minutes, in toto, you would have all the major story beats, and a perfectly acceptable short subject.
A title card advises us that the story takes place fifty thousand years ago.
A group of fur-clad hunter-gatherers wander across a stark landscape, hunting bison.
Our protagonist is a young man.
We see something goes wrong during the hunt. A bison, trapped against the edge of a cliff, knocks the kid off the edge.
We see his weeping family give the boy up for dead.
We see the boy wake. He is injured, but he has fallen in soft mud and survived with only a broken leg.
We see him set that leg, screaming.
We see him wandering, calling his loved ones, not getting a response.
We see him running from a wolf.
We see him take pity on the injured animal and bring it to a cave.
Honestly, the trailer gives you all of this. The whole goddamned story.
We see him toss the wolf a hunk of meat.
We see the boy and wolf together by the fire.
We see the boy and wolf hunting together.
Then we get the title of the movie, and the tag-line, “Witness the Origin of the Relationship that Changed the World Forever.”
Honestly. The whole story. I know six-year-olds who could explain what happened in that three minutes, in detail.
It doesn’t look like a great film, honestly. In part because the kid talks like he was raised in 2017. I kept expecting him to start scrolling through his twitter feed. But still, one of the most important events in the history of human civilization (and one that likely took place in multiple locations, with multiple people). Fodder for a great film, at least.
The scenes excerpted didn’t move me at all, but that tag-line raised a lump in my throat. It might have done the same for you. That tag line hits many of us, who have ever had any relationship with dogs, where we live.
The guy behind me said, “I don’t get it. What relationship is that?”
The woman sitting next to him said, “The dog.”
“He makes friends with the dog?”
“Yes.”
“Why does that change the world forever?”
…this echoed in my ears for two hours.
Tags: Assholes, Hamlet, Movies | Category Humor, Movies
