I think we've all been in that place where a phenomenon overtook our senses and amped anticipation to see just this one movie that we felt in our hearts was going to change everything. Maybe it was all we saw on our tumblr dashboards, twitter trends, even got word of mouth day after day by friends. Then we finally gave them a shot - poof. The hype was over and not really worth it. There's one big question to ask: What movies failed to live up to your expectations?
I'm unsure if The Time Traveler's book or movie was the actual kicking off point of my brief obsession with him, but it definitely played a major role. I read the book in 3 days, watched every interview, and was in love with the entire sad sob story of Henry and Claire who are separated by his ability to time travel.
Every book suffers in its adaptation to the big screen. 400 page novels can't very well have every page filmed, or else every book would be a 9 week mini series on PBS. While most of The Time Traveler's Wife had the physical atmosphere of the book, the script and direction was definitely lackluster. Key scenes of their romance was reduced to tiny one liners, awkward staging of fights, constantly rotating camera angles, and a complete disregard of important supporting characters. Bana wasn't too bad though, but the movie was a definite downer.
I was so revved up to see this I had an Aliens marathon before going to the movie theaters, and once there....I was bored out of my mind. No real thrills, no real scares. Just a conglomerate of scenes and aliens from other Alien movies that it wasn't supposedly meant to replicate or pay homage to.
I'll become the bad guy and say: I really blame tumblr for the hype over this one. Every day on my dashboard I would see a gif set of characters or a particular shipping, and there would be an entire analysis of every nuanced look, thought, and meaning behind the characters. It was addictive! I kept waiting for the next gif set to arrive. I had become to believe this was the second coming of the superhero genre.
Then, holy disappointment and squashed dreams Batman, The Avengers is so linear. All of these superstar actors and it had no personality. The film is two hours of each actor throwing a one liner out there to seem witty, and then a big fight scene at the end. Hardly my idea of an interesting or spectacular showdown of comic book's greatest icons.
