Kingdom of Ridley Scott

Yo. I know it's been a long time since I rapped at 'cha, but this class thing is really cramping my style. This week's going to be a bad one. I can just tell. My horoscope for the next seven days reads:

"You thought it was only people in movies that were tied to railroad tracks by mustachioed villains, but your upcoming experience on Walt Disney World's monorail will prove otherwise."

Ominous.

Despite the fact that last night was a definite low point of the quarter, I know things are only going to get worse. The reincarnation of the epic film makes this as much of a lock as the Freshmen potheads getting the Lodge kicked off campus next year. Epics used to be film's Midas... you really can't be a movie fan without loving classics such as Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, etc. Unfortunately, epics ceased to be produced in the 60s and 70s. Once again, this is the fault of fucking Hippie potheads. Apocalypse Now may be a great movie to come out of that generation, but if I were a betting man (which I am), I would say that movie has induced about as many suicides as the Japanese honor system. So epics, as a legitimate genre, had died for about thirty years.

Only to be resurrected by Ridley Scott. Gladiator was a good movie. It wasn't great, but certainly enjoyable and worthy of seeing more than once. What really excited me about that film was the idea that its enormous box office success would mean the production of more epics. I was right, which is fairly typical. A couple of years later, a movie would come out that looked so incredible that I actually made an effort to see it on its first day of release (the only other movie I did this for was Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace). This movie was to be so great that it would forever change American society, 'cause we would all start respecting Classics again; this in turn would usher in a new age of American renaissance.

The movie, which was Troy, scarred me for life. I'm serious. I've never looked at an epic the same way again. The film was so amazingly bad that I puked that night (that may have been the beer, but I'd prefer to blame it on Troy). Troy was followed by Alexander, a movie which also should have been an instant classic on the level of the Yankees/Sox 2004 ALCS. It sucked. Actually, I never saw it, but everyone I respect said it was awful, and I was unwilling to put myself through something like Troy again. And for those of you out there saying "don't knock it 'till" you try it... we have critics for a reason. And friends with taste.

The latest offering is another Ridley Scott affair, Kingdom Of Heaven. It sucks too. Once again, I haven't seen it yet. George said it was bad though, and that's good enough for me. Apparently it only has one battle scene. ONE BATTLE!!!! They've got to be kidding me. You'd think they're making movies with Hugh Grant, Renee Zellweger and the asthmatic kid from Jerry Maguire. But no. They're ruining the best genre that film has to offer. I hope Zeus kills everyone involved with these last three films. Failing that, Jesus could do it.