I used to go to movies all the time. There was something magical about them. The bright lights would dim, the curtains would pull back, the theater would get quiet and after 30 minutes of commercials and movie trailers, the movie would start. Well, after the dozens of production companies did their professional TikTok-like Vanity cards to make sure you knew they contributed to the movie somehow. After twenty minutes of credits, then the movie would finally.

The reason why I loved movies when I was a kid, was they transported me to another world. It was almost always somewhere different than my world, so I got to go different places. And yet somehow, because of the magic of the Hero’s Journey, and special effects, I could relate with the hero of the story. The sad reality of movie magic is that the longer I’ve been around on this rock we call earth, the more the movie magic has started to fade.

Why? The older I get, the more I got a peek behind the curtain. In college, I took a class called Intro to Film, and it introduced me to the elements behind how movies were made. Cinematography, writing, special effects. It taught me about how stories worked, and how almost every film, and stories in general followed a pattern. They call it the Hero’s Journey, or other variations, but every movie follows a pattern. At the point in my life, I started watching movies with a different “lens” (get it? Like a camera lens?). Instead of disappearing into the magic of a movie, I started analyzing movies. I was trying to figure out the “ordinary world”, when the Call to Adventure happened, who was the “mentor” and when the hero “crossed the threshold”. All of a sudden, going to movies felt like a chore, and some of the magic disappeared. It was now just pattern recognition.

After a while, though, I would forget about the Hero’s Journey and went back to enjoying movies again. At other points in my life, I would learn so much about actor’s and their personal lives, that I started seeing terrible people that would pretend to be awesome movies, and I started to sour on movies again. I went back to ignoring actor’s lives and just disappeared into the magic once again, and movies were better again. In 2019, I was having a blast with all the awesomeness of movies again. The absolute peak of the Golden Age was here, and I was all into it.

Then, we all knew what happened next. There was a dang pandemic that kicked us out of theaters for months. While sitting at home, I longed for the day when I could go back to theaters again. The first few were an absolute joy. It was like my first glimpse of what freedom felt like again. It was like the first signal that society could return back to normal. Magic, though briefly, was restored.

Unfortunately, just as the pandemic finally faded into obscurity, the actors decided to strike, and then just as that one ended, the writer’s struck and 6 years later, dozens of reasons are keeping me from the theater. $20 entrance, $20 popcorn, and $20 soda doesn’t help. Comic book movies have absolutely sucked since Avengers Endgame. The emerging threat of AI, TikTok attention spans, bigger, cheaper TV’s, getting old and just wanting to rest on my couch all weekend, have all contributed.

Perhaps the biggest thing overall though? The message. Hollywood has absolutely lost their minds. They stopped making movies with the Hero’s Journey. They started making movies with the Message. It hasn’t been entertainment for years. It’s now about self-insertion, slapping something that writer’s, directors and actors believe, sometimes subtly and other times, not so subtly into their movies. If I wanted to be preached at, I would go to church. Which I do.

When I’m at church, I can at least stay awake. And at least I’m not rolling my eyes back so hard, I can see my bald head.

If this was a movie being written about my life and it intertwining with movies, we would be in the Ordeal part of the Hero’s Journey, or what modern screenwriters call the “Dark Knight of the Soul”, or the “All Hope is Lost” moment. Right now, I’m the Hero, looking distraught, where droll music is being played, and I’m imagining no possible way a movie could entice me to come back to the theaters on more than an annual basis.

At this point in my life, I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, where she just found out the Wizard of Oz is just an ordinary “man behind a curtain”. To me, the man behind the curtain is Hollywood. I used to think of that place as magic, but the older I’ve got, the more I know that Hollywood is just a city near Los Angeles. Almost no movies are made in Hollywood, Los Angeles or even California anymore.

AI is about to finish the job, and then curtain is gone for good.

Hollywood was the man behind the curtain all along – and when I looked behind him, Hollywood was just a city near Los Angeles.

The disillusionment of Hollywood, in BFG form:

When the lights went down…

Or at least that’s when the 30 minutes of…

Then the movie started…

Eventually, though, just like the fade into the movie starting…

My first peek behind the curtain was the Intro to Film class in college…

My next peek behind the curtain…

After forgetting about how horrible people actor’s were…

Especially in the peak Golden Era of movies…

Then the pandemic came…

Then the actor’s struck…

And the writer’s struck…

And all of a sudden…

And The Message…

Now AI is so close to taking over movies…

And after all these years I’ve figured out Hollywood…

It was just the Wizard of Oz…

Hollywood is…

ARRRGGGGHHHHH

Bitter Movie Magic? Ben