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A Shitty Wild West Movie made me sad

5 years ago

So I made an effort to check out and see all 20 of the movies my Library had to offer. And I checked out a movie called "the Last Days of Billy the Kid". And let me tell you, it was not a good movie.  I find joy and quality in what are probably horrible films from a critical standpoint, but this movie was trash. I could go on for paragraphs and paragraphs, but I managed to condense it to just one big one because I have other complaints to go on and on about. 

The plot was dumb and written in a way that made it impossible to get into, the acting was so so dry as if they were trying to be dramatic that it was hard to find any humor due to how bad it is, and the attempts at humor they made were very poorly timed so you almost miss them when they're there. Unfortunately you can't miss them because the movie lingers on every single thing a little too long, so you just have to be content knowing that this was an attempt at humor and there's still an hour and 30 minutes left of this fucking shit. I don't know how they did it, but they found a way to make a 10-man Wild West gun battle unappealing to watch. It's such an abysmal movie that you start noticing things that would've been little nitpicks in any other movie, like "Oh lol that building in the background has fucking air conditioners". This is the first time I've ever legitimately wanted to complain about sound mixing.

But then I noticed something, it was full of people's OCs. Like, all these people that never appeared in the history books. Billy the Kid's Dad who was a Texas Ranger, a tough biker lady with an eyepatch, the gunslingin' doctor who's also a pacifist because of all the death, the characters were all these kinda people you'd see playing their characters in a Wild West recreation town. The whole story was just fanfiction, Billy the Kid and his girlfriend are in the movie for a collective 20 minutes at most before they're both shot. 

But the thing is, my mom also works for the library. And even though we sort of had fun making fun of how bad the movies are... She talked about it to her friend at work, who actually turned out to agree with her and actually made administrative actions to get it removed from the library system. Y'know, as if it wasn't a real movie, or anything worth saving in the public consciousness in any form at all. Which, y'know, it might be. It might be. But I feel guilty about that? Like I shouldn't have been the one to make that decision?

They were not writers, they were not actors, they were not filmmakers. This was a bunch of adults playing cowboys. And y'know what? They were probably having fun. They weren't some distant hollywood d-listers making a bad B-Movie. These were all just people somewhere in the midwest. Somebody's neighbor, somebody's uncle, somebody's grandpa. It was a movie that was probably important to somebody, or they wouldn't have made it. They were *trying*, they didn't have money, but they didn't seem to want or need any. They just wanted to try. And y'know what? They finished it. 

I know I used to tear apart all these horrible storygames that I feel like shouldn't have been published, and I'm probably hypocritical for a bunch of other reasons too, but the fact is, those games and those stories shouldn't have been published. Or, at least, they shouldn't have stayed public, because they required very little investment from the people I was critiquing. They were probably written in maybe an hour. That was as long as it took before they got bored and started publishing their tripe. But movies are different. This took maybe 60-70 obvious hobbyists who love to do this shit the better part of a year. This was a bunch of people who loved cowboy movies so damn much that they were willing to write their own fanfiction together, and they finished it, and y'know what? They probably think it's beautiful, and if I could have bought into that pathos earlier, I might have liked it a little bit too! (Might have. At least, I could imagine somebody liking it.) But now it's gone. Like, their voice has been deleted from the annals of public record. And for what? 

They were just excommunicated for being bad. Yet there are soulless fucking swindles and irredeemable trashpiles like [Insert new Adam Sandler movie] made for no other reason than to launder advertiser money through an insular circle of contract actors sitting on the shelves next to it, but a film that has heart and nothing else? Gone. And you can't remove the Industrially Made Comedies, why would you? They're made by famous people, so they're culturally relevant! Even if nobody watched them, and nobody who did watch it once remembers it!

By showing this horrible movie to my mom, I'm responsible for the death of something somebody cared about making. Or, at least it's dead to everyone within 100 miles of me. And that feels... Sad, because I don't think there are a lot of places where people could find this movie... And I don't think they'd like it either. But if Sherlock and Watson has a right to be found, so does this fucking movie.

Anyway, what's the worst movie you've ever seen? And do you think it should exist?

A Shitty Wild West Movie made me sad

5 years ago

The live action Last Airbender. After watching it I realized there was no reason to go on.