I'm not really on social media all too much. I do check Reddit more often than I should. But, I deactivated my Twitter account months ago, I'm still on Facebook but I rarely visit the site, and then there's Instagram, which I do check daily. You know, when I started this blog, kenoncinema, in 2010, it's because I had a deep love for movies. I also loved reading about upcoming movies and following movie news in general. So, naturally, I've followed quite a few different film/entertainment sites on my various social media accounts over the years. Even now, on Instagram for example, I'll get some update about a trailer that just came out, or an announcement of an upcoming movie. It feeds into my excitement. "Oooh, a new trailer for Napoleon? I can't wait to see this!" That's generally how it works for me.
But, there's another aspect that comes with that. I just need to scroll Instagram for about five minutes until I come across controversy over an upcoming movie. It truly seems to me that every major movie that comes out these days has some sort of controversy attached to it. It's rare for a movie to get released without it. "Barbie" had angry men and conservatives attacking it. "Oppenheimer" has a sex scene or two. Oh, the horror!
I just saw "Killers of the Flower Moon" and I really wish I hadn't checked any social media for months before seeing it, because unfortunately, I did. I'd see reports like "Martin Scorsese defends Brandon Fraser's performance" or I'd read an angry reaction about the content of the film, or that some theaters put in an intermission in the middle of the movie which upset some people. Or the lack of intermission upset people. Holy shit. Why does everything piss us off these days?
Coming away from the movie, the 3 1/2 hour movie that I was able to sit through without getting up once (I'm not trying to brag, it's really just... if you're gonna see a movie like that, plan ahead. Don't drink coffee beforehand if coffee gives you the shits. Things like that. Use your head.)----All the complaints I had heard all seemed to be for naught. Brandon Fraser... a bit too histrionic? Well, he's barely in the movie and his over-the-top performance seemed to fit with what the filmmakers were going for with that character. I couldn't help but think... "That's it? Martin Scorsese needed to defend this??"
I don't really want to get into too much else with regards to the movie, because I understand we're all different and we have our own opinions, but I'll just say my peace, which is this - I feel firmly this is a story that needed to be told. If Scorsese wasn't involved, it doesn't get made. It certainly doesn't get made with a $200 million budget. And Scorsese did about as much as he could to get approval from the Osage community. Bottom line is, we need to hear these stories. We all need to do a better job of fully understanding the ugliness that is American history. Some already know how ugly it is, but we still need to tell these stories. I had no idea about the history of the Osage people and what was done to them. It's absolutely horrifying and the movie does a masterful job of capturing it. It's really ugly, disgusting stuff and really makes me ashamed of how awful and cruel we can be, both in the past and in the present.
Anyway, I just wanted to get that across. I'm tired of overreactions to movies. There is obviously real shit going on in the world, too many things happening in the real world... let's let movies be movies, for crying out loud. Either see them or don't. That doesn't mean you can't complain about shitty movies. My point is, if every movie has controversy attached to it, then the word "controversy" really starts to lose its luster.
