I've not managed to get out to the cinema much the last two months and I'm wondering why. Each week another crop of movies pass me by and are added to the 'Catch on DVD' list.
It's not like I'm not actually paying to see films. On the fifteenth of every month, Cineworld take eleven quid out of my account, which is a small price to pay for the right to watch anything they have on in their multiplex.
But it takes a superhuman effort to go.
So yesterday I had a free afternoon and forced myself to see Spider-Man 3, which has just had The Most Lucrative Box Office Opening of All Time.
According to The Independent, it 'grossed at least $375m (£188m) worldwide in its opening weekend, dwarfing previous records set by Star Wars: Episode III
It's funny they should mention Star Wars III and The Da Vinci Code: two movies that opened big due to audience faith (from previous films that were good and a best selling book respectively) but then were quickly found out as utter shite.
With regard to Spiderman 3, The Independent also tell us that 'much of the film's budget was invested in its dazzling special effects.'
If only they'd invested a bit more money in the story... or in paying producers to stay the fuck away from the story that was there in the first place. Because only twenty minutes into this film it was obvious that someone had screwed it up and the public out there knows that they've been sold a gold-plated turd, if the two people I shared the cinema with yesterday afternoon were anything to go by.
I won't go into what's wrong with the story of Spiderman 3 because John August has pretty much covered it in his superb blog (The perils of coincidence), suffice to say that the array of unbelievable coincidences on which the story is anchored, which seem to be nothing more than links to the next big SFX sequence, made it difficult to care about any of the characters. Well before the end I wanted them all to die horribly. Oh look, Kirsten Dunst has been kidnapped by the villains for the big finale. Is that bitch still in this movie?
When I got home I was able to watch my download of the Heroes
And it's not because it's 'only' a comic book adaptation. The Spiderman comics are full of weighty adult concerns and sharp writing, even though they're considered suitable for children. I'm reading through the Civil War issues of Spiderman at the moment and they leave Sam Raimi's film looking like a Police Academy scholar delivering a paper to an Ingmar Bergman convention.
The notion of what constitutes 'adult' concerns in drama is of great importance to me at the moment as I'm having a debate with my producer about who exactly my teenage time travel TV series is aimed at. The concern is over whether the 'adult' issues in the script are suitable for a teenage drama.
My argument is that both children and teenagers hate being talked down to as children and teenagers, and they're more than capable of dealing with adult themes without them being gratuitously tacked on (a la Hex
My concern is that cinema is aimed increasingly at that mythical beast of demographics: the 16-year old boy who apparently only responds to things that go bang and has no time for story or character or theme.
My concern is that more and more I can't be bothered to go and sit in an auditorium and pay ridulously high prices to feel cheated and patronised after two hours, when I can sit in the comfort of my own home and experience drama that doesn't talk to me like I'm mentally retarded.