another grumpy old person unpopular opinion. I seem to have a lot of them these days.

One of the reasons I was so underwhelmed by Top Gun Maverick when I saw it last summer is that I'm so tired of mavericks. The basic mythology of ONE MAN, ALONE, breaking rules and flouting authority and saving the day is practically wired into our brains. It's part of our national character. There's Pete Mitchell/Tom Cruise in Top Gun. There's John McClane/Bruce Willis in the Die Hard series. Han Solo, Iron Man, Ocean's Eleven. There's a million westerns and heist movies and military guys gone rogue that all feed our need to see that the status quo is inherently bad and only a disruptor, a troublemaker, can make things right.

I've been as big a fan of the idea as anyone in the past, but I'm just so tired of it. I only saw the new Top Gun movie once and it was several months ago, so I don't remember the details. It was fun-- there's no denying it was fun to watch. But the whole thing was so obvious it makes me roll my eyes. Of course after he gets fired or pulled off the team or whatever it is, he's going to steal a plane and defy his superiors and get back in there and use some good old-fashioned American ingenuity to do the job the average people think can't be done. OF COURSE. Because he's Tom Cruise, and he's a maverick, and we have infinite belief in the power of a troublemaker to overcome the forces of mediocrity and save the day.

It's all fun and games when Tom Cruise flashes his cocky grin and faces down the boring authority figures, but is it so much fun when a handful of congresspeople can hold up the entire process of government for a nation of 330 million because they believe they are lone warriors standing up to big government? How fun is it when a wealthy sloganeer spends four years in the White House because he's convinced his base he's a disruptor who can clear the swamp? There's a big cesspool of fat cats in Washington and only an outsider, a maverick, can save the day! 

At some point we need to start valuing functional systems again. We could show some respect for the people who show up for work and get their jobs done, even if it is in the service of the status quo, because it is in the service of the status quo. Maybe we could acknowledge that even if there is some deadweight in government and civil service, there is also a whole lot of stuff that works just fine, because regular, boring people follow the rules and do their jobs. And thank God for that.

Some mavericks are just a pain in the ass.

And that's (another of) my unpopular opinion(s). Next thing you know I'll be stopping gen Xers in the street and telling them to get a haircut and get a real job.

P.S. I wrote the first version of this post on Friday morning. The post title was "I am So Tired of Disruptors" and since I was trying not to target the new Top Gun movie specifically, I had only used the word "maverick" once. Then Saturday night we watched Glass Onion (not to get sidetracked, but we thought it was fun, and at least it was different--no sci-fi, no dragons, no superheroes, no romance). If you haven't seen it, the word "disruptors" plays a large part in the movie, and even though the writer used it in a way that was sort of similar to what I mean here, it just felt wrong to leave the post the way it was. So I re-wrote it a bit, and now it is much more directly about the Top Gun movie. I know a maverick and a disruptor are not exactly the same thing, but at least in the way I mean here, they are in the same group of provocateurs who think their job is to shake things up instead of being "boring" and playing by the rules. Apparently, I'm a fan of boring people at the moment.

A Grumpy Old Person and her Unpopular Opinion about the Movies

I think you can tell that time has truly passed you by--that you have, in fact, become irrelevant-- when the big blockbuster moments that are moving the culture at large leave you shrugging your shoulders. 

I've seen three big, successful films this year, and I had the same reaction to all of them: pretty or even spectacular visuals, seamlessly made, but shrug. They were OK. A bunch of hackneyed clichés, plot points that feel like they came from a checklist, all put together with beautiful actors, polished cinematography, and outstanding costume design. (For the record, the ones I'm talking about are Top Gun: Maverick, Where the Crawdads Sing, and Avatar: Way of Water.)

People talk about those films as if they are all-time classics, pure magic on the big screen. But I came out of them feeling a little disappointed and, maybe weirdly, a little manipulated. It feels like the filmmakers have sucked you in with addictively gorgeous visuals and Meaningful Archetypal Plot Points, but left you with nothing to think about, nothing to chew on, so to speak. It's all stock characters and ham-fisted morality. Even when I agree with what's being preached, I hate being preached at. 

Yesterday I listened to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast (Dec 16 2022 episode) where they discussed Avatar: Way of Water, with a panel of commentators who are all probably 30+ years younger than me. They are smart and literate and their opinions make sense, but listening to them is what made me realize, oh, the problem is that I am old. I have different expectations going into a movie. 

They were in complete agreement with me that it was a humorless, heavy-handed, ponderous plot, but they didn't care. They were so transported by the immersive visuals that they barely noticed the generic story. The innovation of what they were seeing on the screen meant more to them than an innovative plot.

They walked out awed by the groundbreaking technology that made the CGI so spectacular; I walked out thinking it was just a remake of the first Avatar movie set underwater (and on the Titanic)(you practically expected Kate Winslet* to run around the corner shouting Jack! Jack!).

I'm not sorry I saw it. It was a decent use of three hours of my time. I was invested enough that I was teary-eyed when someone dies toward the end. But I guess I'm just not a visual person, because for me all the visual wow was not enough to make up for the stock characters and derivative plot. 

That's my unpopular opinion, and I know it is, and I understand that it just identifies me as a grumpy old person. But seriously. Maverick is such a stock plot that they never even named the enemy country, because it doesn't matter. Whoever it was, Tom Cruise and all those exceptional Americans would have defeated them. The Crawdad movie was practically an entire movie about a white woman's tears and the stock characters surrounding her. It's beautiful. The acting is moving. You feel like an old grinch for even complaining, but I found myself thinking (like Timon), and... everybody's OK with this? 

The exception is the only other movie that I saw in a theater in 2022, the new Black Panther. It checked all the boxes of blockbuster budget, gorgeous costumes, pretty to look at, etc, but the way it dealt with grief over the death of T'Challa was genuinely moving to me. It had its own problems--it wasn't nearly as seamless-feeling as the other three, for one thing, and I suppose MCU movies will always be bound by the expectations of people who have read the comics-- but I came out of it thinking, that was a great movie, which I did not think of any of the others.

Those other three were fun, enjoyable blockbuster movies if you could turn off your brain and just watch. They weren't a waste of time. Maverick took the standard "arrogant hot shot young guy saves the world" plot and changed it to an old guy. Way of Water made its heroes parents with a blended family and children who misbehave. Crawdads is at heart a movie about a woman who is fed up with sexual harassment. Those aren't meaningless ideas. But they all felt so slick.

If it weren't for the way people are talking about them, my irritation would be at a level that wouldn't even be worth mentioning. But I heard someone say that Maverick is one of the ten best films ever made, and the swooning praise I've heard about the Way of Water makes me wonder if we actually saw the same film.

So, that's all I have to say. I deleted two paragraphs of further moralizing and trying to justify my opinion because there's no need. Who cares? I'm writing this out here because every time I've tried to say this irl, I've been booed down, so if I type it here, maybe I'll get my grumpiness out of my system and I can keep my mouth shut. Because entertainment is often a good thing, and those three movies were certainly entertaining.  

* Kate Winslet voices one of the characters in The Way of Water. When you see it, see if you can figure out which one it is without looking at the credits (I couldn't).

7ToF: phew. what a week.

 1. Things I've tried so you don't have to: Native brand deodorant. This gets advertised quite a bit on various podcasts, and the hosts will give you a discount code for ordering it online. But just so you know, you can also buy it at Target and Walmart. It has no aluminum, no parabens, etc etc. So if those things bother you, it's a great choice. It smells great, and it actually works, unlike the last natural deodorant I tried. But it costs twelve dollars for 2.7oz. It would have to be way more amazing than it is for me to switch from my usual deodorant, Old Spice Wolfthorn, which works just fine and costs $4.99 for 3 oz (and is frequently on sale for less than that). It's in the men's section, but it doesn't make you smell like a guy.

2. Trivia that I don't know why I know: anti-perspirant usually has aluminum in it, deodorants usually don't. Aluminum makes me itch, so I've never been able to use anti-perspirants. Deodorants don't bother me, even when they contain parabens or propylene glycol. Just make sure you look at the label-- it will say right on the front whether it is an anti-perspirant or a deodorant. Wolfthorn, the one I use, comes in both an anti-perspirant version and a deodorant version so you have to read the label to make sure you're getting what you want.

3. I'm so tired of everything. Just thought I would tell you that. Politics, paperwork, the driver's license bureau, not going to restaurants, more confusing conversations with friends, and above and beyond everything else, the freaking pandemic. (cue stirring music) Frodo: I wish it need not have happened in my time. Gandalf: so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide.

OK, so maybe that's a tad melodramatic. Whatcha gonna do? It's not even that bad around here, so I'm sure some of you have had much more trouble with it than we have. I'm just whining. Rough week.

4. I may have given the impression in my reading report that we never watch TV, which is not true. Our TV is often on in the evenings (almost never during the day). We watch a lot of sports, and some movies. We are especially bad about re-watching our favorite movies. And recently we have also tried The Mandalorian, Schitt's Creek, and Queen's Gambit. They are all pretty good, but I max out at two episodes per night so other than Queen's Gambit, we're still working our way through.

5. My unpopular opinion for this week: I have never, ever seen an episode of the Bachelor or the Bachelorette. I know that makes me a party pooper and I am missing out on a lot of fun but honestly, the whole concept just horrifies me. I told you, unpopular opinion.

6. Speaking of movies we re-watch, one we did this week was Pirates of the Caribbean. Sometimes when we watch an old favorite, it hasn't survived the passage of time, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. I know Johnny Depp is problematic these days, but I'm going with the headline that said his "issues" are recent, and since Pirates came out almost 20 years ago, I'm giving it a pass. 

7. I'm declaring Monday, February 8th Aunt BeaN's Unsubscribe Day. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I've signed up for three trial periods of services that I no longer use but I'm still paying. Oh, lord, the more I think about it, the more I think maybe it's four, or five. Add to that the one billion political emails I receive for the party that I do not support and have not voted for since 1980. On February 8th, I'm unsubscribing from all of them. I have to work up to it. Join me? More on this topic next week.

Have a great weekend.