I had seen virtually everything Hollywood had put out over the preceding two years--cinephile girlfriend--but our relationship had blown up like a Michael Bay explovaganza by that point. Hobson's choice: I saw JURASSIC PARK alone.
I have always hated going to the movies alone. It hasn't stopped me from doing it, if I really want to see the movie badly enough, but I feel like the world's biggest loser, sitting by myself...almost as if I'm wearing a trench coat with nothing underneath it. But for JURASSIC PARK, I didn't care. Dinosaurs trump low self-esteem. Dinosaurs trump a lot of things, really.
And that movie performed. It was damn near perfect: stunning spectacle--the effects hold up 22 years later--but so much more besides. It functions as a scathing critique of blind faith in science, of capitalism, of humanity's misperception of its place in the world. All this and velociraptors.
There was a heated debate, at the time, over that film's rating. It was rated PG-13, meaning any child could get in and see rampaging dinos chasing kids just like them. My Media Studies prof allowed me to write an essay on whether or not children should be allowed to see such things. (Longtime readers may be surprised to find out I argued they should.)
I wrote that essay much the way I would write a long Breadbin entry today, with a framing personal story and references pulled from all over. I got a 95 and a complimentary question I've never forgotten: "have you considered writing for the media?"
I had, as it so happened. And so I went to that prof and had a long sit-down discussion with her. Shortly after, I dropped out of university.
What she told me was a variant on what people have been telling me my entire life. I have talent, she said, but talent alone is meaningless. In order to succeed at a newspaper--the first step, at the time, towards writing the long-form articles I admire as a writer and a reader--my talent must bent indefinitely to the will of an editor, and behind him, a readership, with very firm ideas on what is and is not "news"...ideas I vehemently disagree with. Her words, as well-meaning as they were, had the effect of slamming a door in my face. You'll have no doubt noticed I don't handle rejection very well.
I have digressed.
Movies. Dinosaurs.
In those halcyon days before stadium-style cinema seating had made it to our fair city and drove most of the rest of the business out of business, there were three movie theatres within a couple of square blocks of downtown Kitchener. Before JURASSIC PARK, for whatever reason, I'd only ever been in two of them, the Lyric and the Capital. I saw SILENCE OF THE LAMBS earlier at the Lyric and loved it so much I went back to see it again the following night; I saw TITANIC later at the Capital and did the exact same thing.
The Hyland occupied a cavernous space in the basement of one of the few office towers that existed in downtown Kitchener ca. 1993. It had seats for more than 450 people, and on the night I saw JURASSIC PARK, I got one of the last ones: frontmost row, off to the right. Not ideal seating, but so what? Dinosaurs!
All this trivia is about to mean something, I promise.
I'm convinced that each of us has at least one incredible ability that happens to be incredibly useless. I, for instance, can sit down at a piano and play a song that's never been played before (and most of the time will never be played again).
My darling wife has this astounding, and astoundingly pointless, facility of recalling anywhere she has ever sat. Go into a restaurant, no matter how long ago it's been since she was there last or how many times she's been there, and she can tell you "I sat there, and there, and over there..."
This talent of hers of hers seems to have come at the expense of her ability to recall dates. She wouldn't be able to tell you within three years either way when JURASSIC PARK came out; even important dates rarely imprint on her. We joke that we married in 2000 so she'd always remember which anniversary was upcoming: I'm the one who remembers dates around here.
So Eva says she sat "front-middle-left" when she saw JURASSIC PARK at the Hyland theater, but couldn't tell you whether it was the 7:30 showing on June 12, 1993. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it was: it wouldn't be the first time we had crossed paths, long before I met her at a job interview in 1999.
The Hyland cinema closed shortly after we saw JURASSIC PARK, and laid vacant for some time. It has reincarnated as the second-run/repertory Apollo, and last night we went full circle there and saw JURASSIC WORLD.
The theater itself couldn't be more different. It's considerably more upscale, with actual tables to rest your popcorn and local craft beer (that's another change) on; much more comfortable seating, and no sense whatsoever that you're in a cave. That said, the prices are quite reasonable (even more so if you have a Groupon that effectively gave us two-for-one admission and concessions).
We needed an escape; it had been a very rough day. Luckily, the theater was almost empty--I think there were three other couples there besides us, not that I was paying that much attention.
No commercials or trailers before the film started, and right away I was hit with the HOME ALONE problem: I couldn't shut my brain off.
HOME ALONE is one of two movies that I have walked out on partway through (the other was BEETHOVEN). HOME ALONE is considered a comedy classic, but I couldn't suspend my disbelief long enough to even let the comedy begin. I'm supposed to just accept that a mother and father would accidentally forget to take one of their children on a trip to Paris? After sending him to his room the night before? And the kid would let this happen? Yeah, sure, tell me another one. On second thought, don't, because I can see the "comedy" is going to involve pain, the way it so often does. Excuse me...pardon me...sorry...I'm gone.
So here we have JURASSIC PARK up and operating bigger than ever, in the wake of -- did the first three movies even happen? Apparently not. Okay, it's a full reboo--wait a minute, they're fully acknowledging at least the first movie not ten minutes in. Um? Hello? The first generation of life, uh, found a way, and I'm supposed to think "try again, fail again, fail better"? Even more astonishing, regular boring old velociraptors and T-rexes aren't good enough anymore and we need to (gasp) GENETICALLY MODIFY even bigger, badder beasties? Give me my hip waders, I beg you, the bullshit's getting thick on the ground here.
I was turning all that over in my mind and I realized that yes, actually this sort of thing probably would happen. It's a chronic failing of humans to forget the past: every real-estate and commodity bubble pops and blows goo all over investors who, right up until the splat, were feverishly arguing about how "it's different this time". Austerity as an economic strategy has never worked, and yet it's always the first "solution" trotted out to any economic problem. If you prayed to God and bad things still happened, you didn't pray hard enough. Try again, Fail again. Fail better. It's something Ian Malcolm would have said, with a sardonic grin on his phiz.
Okay, let's see if they even allude to this.
Not quite, but several of the characters seemed as if they were in on the joke, which I appreciated. Those characters were cardboard cutouts, every last one of then--the dinosaurs, especially the raptors, had more depth--but before long the gobble-gobble had commenced and my brain had finally winked out. It was just Eva and I and our limbic systems, out for a stroll in the woods.
The popcorn ate itself as the people got popped and eaten. Predictable, sure, but the journey was fun.
Total escapism...which is just what was needed. I'm glad I saw that on a big screen. Incidentally, once again the 3-D glasses were entirely unnecessary. I'm still waiting for another movie that actually demands those glasses. I'm thinking I'm gong to have to wait for the sequel to the only one that has so far: AVATAR.
Thanks, love, for a great night.
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