this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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Hype, spoilers, trailers upon trailers ... IMO these things are ruining cinema experiences.
As someone who rather enjoyed EEAaO ... it is not a film that benefits from hype ... it's a deceptively moody / vibe-y film that benefits from coming at you by surprise, telling you a story you didn't know you wanted to hear/see, a pretty personal experience. It's that experience, IMO, that people fell in love with. Not that everyone should like it ... I'm curious to hear what you didn't like about it apart from "not living up to the hype" ... but your experience doesn't surprise me at all.
Generally, I'm completely done with hype and trying to decide on whether we should watch something based on whether it's "good". There are good objective reasons for thinking that, and I've thought it for a while, but the insane inanity of where modern mainstream cinema has gotten to recently has really burnt me. A defining moment of this being when I went and saw the latest Thor film, actually thinking I might enjoy it, and honestly felt like the whole industry had literally picked my pocket. Hobbit trilogy had a similar feeling. We can do better at understanding what we get out of films and talking about what we should see and why.
I avoided everything about it except the hype and the cast. No idea what the story involved.
Like I've said, I didn't dislike it. I felt like it was a cute little fluff piece with a simple, tender parent/child story wrapped in a silly multiverse wrapper.
I so agree with you about Thor. I had enjoyed the prior movies, and when they last one started I figured the silly stuff was just going to be the story teller at the start, which would get displaced by the regular MCU universe. As it approached the halfway point, my wife and I were kind of in disbelief. I couldn't believe anyone thought it was a good idea.
I think this is probably the major disconnect with fans of the film. Compared to the silly multiverse stuff from Marvel, EEAAO actually did something with the concept by addressing what it means to have made and regretted life decisions and what it would actually look like if you could somehow rise above those choices and not suffer from them. The daughter-mother dynamic then becomes a vehicle to explore that, depicting depression, nihilism and outward and inward destructive urges, and what meaning if any can be built amongst all of that while also folding in a fairly touching if somewhat basic story of immigrants (Asian and others too IMO) and their children.
The simple ending, for instance, where Yeoh’s character can’t quite ignore the multiverse is a pretty stark statement, to me, that enlightenment is almost unattainable however close you get, as it’s human nature to crave something else or new.
Without wanting to be harsh about this, there’s a real chance you didn’t quite get the film. Maybe its absurdism is to blame in part, being a distraction. But OTOH combining all of the above into a fun absurdist genre pastiche was definitely part of the quality of the film for fans. Kinda like seeing a stand up comic for the first time who turns out to be hilarious while also laying down some hard and deep truths.
To get back to my initial point about hype … part of the culture it has created is to emphasise the entertainment aspect of films over the meaning and artistic aspects. A “good” film is obviously good in the cinema in the middle of watching it. The audience will applaud scenes it’s so obvious.
Sometimes a film can mean something deeper and longer term with its quality lying in the discussion and understanding you have afterward and the random rewatch 5 years later.
There's literally nothing you said that wasn't pretty obvious - don't assume that because you found something deep out enjoyable that a person who didn't have the same reaction just "doesn't get it."
Well I didn’t mean it intellectually. Often times, in my experience, “getting it” is about resonance with one’s experience, feelings or something else.