Take the Good, Take the Bad

We here at Mormon Geeks send out our sorrow for the families and friends of the victims in the school shooting last Friday. Being a father of a child in that age range, the whole situation terrifies me and makes me want to hug my children more, tell them I love them more often, and keep them as close to my heart as I can.

With that, my title for today's post is completely irrelevant to my above comment as I compare and contrast two very different movies...but before I go there, I wish to congratulate Denise on winning Survivor's 25th season last night. Something unique about Denise is that she walked away from every single Tribal Council without once getting voted out. Gotta say, that's a tough thing to do.

I'm sad that Lisa Whelchel (who portrayed Blair on the 80s show The Facts of Life) made it to the finals to lose. She did awesome and I was glad that I voted for her to win the $100,000 viewer's choice award from Sprint. Her show's theme song (Facts of Life, not Survivor) is the inspiration for this post.

I don't get to see movies very often. And at home, I feel like spending two to two-and-a-half hours of movie watching is a long time to devote. Although, I must say that I'm pretty sure my wife and I have watched more movies this year in relation to TV shows than we have in years past. This past weekend, I got to see one movie in the theater with Stephen and then one movie on Saturday on DVD with my wife. I don't think I've watched that many movies that close together. Not too mention the previous Sunday where my wife and I watched another movie.

Anyway...the movie Stephen took me to for my upcoming birthday was The Hobbit. To be frankly honest, I wasn't that excited to see it. I knew it was a long movie (look at LotR for past precedence) and I just didn't want to spend that much time in a theater. But...I also needed to relax and being forced to sit in a theater would have to let me do that...which it did.

Let me recap the movie for you.... slow....  slow.... interesting... more interesting... good.... better... awesome... worth seeing again. Yeah, me--the guy who doesn't like to sit through a movie--actually wants to see a LOOONG movie again. First, it's definitely worth seeing. I've read the Hobbit (I haven't read Lord of the Rings) and the movie does it justice. What annoys me is that they added a lot from other Tolkien novels to complete the Middle-Earth world. Seeing as how they've expanded what could've made an awesome single movie into three, I feel like the 2nd film could jip the audience.

Regardless, I must admit that I really enjoyed the film and it made me wish to reread the novel (which I will hopefully do in early 2013).

Something that I like about The Hobbit was the kinship I feel toward Bilbo. When I first read The Hobbit, I felt I connected to his height (well duh), but also his desire to enjoy his quaint home and ignore the rest of the world. That's me. I prefer to be home. I enjoy the quaint. I don't seek out adventure. But, when the option comes along, I will surprise myself occasionally and say "sure, why not?" Example: this past Summer Stephen and I participated in the Cahoots Duo Challenge. But ordinarily, I like my stay-at-home order.

On the flipside, there's a movie that my wife and I finally watched: The Dark Knight (aka Batman 2 aka Heath Ledger's final film). One of my biggest reasons for not watching movies (especially during the day) is because my children like to interrupt us. Having played in the snow earlier that day, we figured we could get our kids to watch Netflix so we could watch The Dark Knight (we've owned it on DVD for like 3 years and it hadn't been opened).

I liked the film for what it was. It was definitely dark and its message of "there are good people in this world regardless of who you break" is very good. And, I absolutely believe that Heath Ledger did give the performance of his life portraying the Joker and deserves the praise and accolades that he posthumously received. 

With that, though, the film made me miss what had me fall in love with the Batman series. I don't like dark. So when one compares the 1960s' Adam West series and the 80s/90s film series (okay, I admit the last one wasn't good at all), to this series, it gives a whole different feel. I prefer lighter, but that's the timid, optimistic guy speaking. Regardless, The Dark Knight was a worthy one-time watch.

In the end, having been a Batman fan before, this pulled my love of the superhero away a bit and had me wishing for my calm Hobbit friends.

Alien abductions are involuntary, but probings are scheduled.