Why Movies? (BEDA 29)

So the idea for this blog came to me last night as I was looking at the upcoming Zelda game, Skywayd Sword. Based on everything I know about it, I'm certain that, no matter how good it may be, I'm not going to even bother with it this time. The fact that this one is completely based around motion controls is only one solid reason, but it's this next reason which is what I'm here to discuss today.

I own, and have played, all of the previous major Zelda releases. The series has always interested me, however, one thing that they all have in common is that I have never been able to complete a single one. I've probably gotten the farthest in either A Link to the Past or The Wind Waker, which is why I hold those two in higher regard than the others. However, even with those two, I still wasn't able to beat the game.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is one of the big reasons I'm not into gaming these days, because there is rarely a game that I'm actually able to see through to completion. Whether this is due to the fact that the game just gets way too hard, or because it just becomes so boring and tedious, either way, this has happened with so many games that I finally have lost all interest in playing most games. My backlog of incomplete games has become so long that it's just frustrating to even think about.

And then I gave it a little more thought, and I realized that gaming wasn't the first hobby for this to happen to me. When I was a lot younger, I used to be a big reader. But then it came to the point where I was only reading halfway through books before putting them away, because they were just so overlong and drawn out that they failed to keep my attention. Reading became a chore, and after obtaining a library full of half-read books, none of which I had any intention of ever returning to, I just decided not to even bother anymore.

Every now and then I would still pick up a book that interested me, but it was always the same. I could never make it further than about halfway into it before I just had to slam the book shut and put it on the shelf, never to be opened again. It's a hobby that had lost all its fun, and it required far too many hours in the day to just sit there and force myself to read through something I was no longer having any fun with. In fact, A Game of Thrones is the first book I've actually finished on my own since middle school, and is also by far the longest book I've ever completed. And the only reason I finished it is because I watched the show first and knew that it would be worth the struggle.

But that brings me to my point, which is why I love the film medium so much. Film requires no real effort on my part. Even if the movie I'm watching is bad, it's still only two hours, and then I'm done. That's it. I've never walked out of a theater in my life, and other than James Bond (aka, the most boring series of films that have ever been produced!!), I can't think of a single movie that I willingly started to watch where I wasn't able to sit through it.

And not only that, but you can't beat the replay value of a good movie. I can name the number of games I've replayed on one hand, and I've never been able to bring myself to re-read a book, no matter how good it was. However, I rewatch the same movies all of the time. Hell, I've even gone back and rewatched movies in theaters several times. That's how easy the movie-going experience is, and it's one of the main things that really appeals to me. It's something that I know I can revisit if I like it enough without having to sacrifice anything more than a couple of hours before I'm done.

I really think that's the reason I love movies as much as I do. It's a hobby that's never been too much for me to handle. The more I've fallen out of other mediums, the more appreciative and devoted I've become to film. And now, anytime I dive into any other medium, whether it be TV, books, comics, or games, the first thing I always think about is how this could be adapted into a good movie. As such, I'm constantly editing things in my head as I read or watch them, editing them down to a two hour movie format. Because there's just something about that format that strikes me moreso than any other. And I'm not saying that other mediums can't be great as well. They most certainly can. But there's just something especially captivating about a good, tight-knit movie.