Dear Motion Picture Industry.
Thank you. Thank you for putting me on the path to the rightous, legal citizen. Thank you for showing me the light. Let me explain…
The other night I went to see your excellent movie XMen 3 – The Last Stand. After getting to the theatre 30 minutes early, playing $13.00 for a bag of popcorn and coke it cost no more than $0.25 to produce (including packaging), and sitting through 20 minutes of pre-ads (loud enough of course I couldn’t enjoy a conversation with my good friend Lawrence), then another 10 minutes of ads and movie trailers, I saw a great preview of your (hollywood’s that is) new movie Fast and the Furious – Tokyo Drift (or “keeping the franchise alive 3” as I like to call it). It put me in a bit of a mood.
See, it got me in the mood for a mindless movie with lots of great car racing scenes and fast and (pardon the pun) furious (ha ha ha) action. Now a few years ago I saw the original Fast and the Furious and remembered it fondly as a neat racing movie with a non-offensive enough plot to move from one fast and (pardon the pun again) furious (ha ha ha) race to another.
So I thought to myself, “self, there is another fast and furious movie in the franchise, for this is an ad for 3, I have seen 1, so self, there is a second one to see!”. Yes, that’s right, I got inspired to see 2 Fast 2 Furious, the second in the series, or as I think of it “the first didn’t drag the studio under so lets make another one”.
Now when I got home I could have waited till the weekend and then wandered down to the local video emporium and spent my hard earned $5.99 to rent the movie for an evening or two and help your executives buy their fourth house on the beach…. but no!
I was weak. I search on the internet and after hard, hard trials and tribulations found one of those evil pirated movie sites, found the copy of “2 fast 2 furious” and furiously (ha ha ha) started downloading it. Luckily (for you) the fact I was downloading pirated movies instead of one of the many legal, buy and download movie sites that the MPAA has put up to help people get legal and pursue the new market…. oh…. wait, that’s right, there aren’t any. As I was saying, I was furiously (ha ha ha) downloading, but there was no “fast” involved here 🙁 The download counter said it would take days. I wanted it though, and as a child of the 00’s (or the naughties as I know them), so I let it download.
This evening after dinner I turned on the tube and lo and behond what was playing? That’s right dear MPAA friends, 2 Fast 2 Furious. It was even edited (digitally removing an upraised middle finger I believe) as not to offend me (somehow the illegal street racing and endangerment of ordinary citizens lives was kept in though… odd).
The movie was…. aweful. Horrible acting, dialog, and special effects. Terrible all around. I persevered though, and kept watching right to the bitter end, doing my best to believe that this was the movie I was wanting to see. Even as the final credits rolled I know I was wrong. I came down to my computer and immediately stopped my as-yet-10%-into-it download and deleted any files.
Thank you MPAA for keeping me a legal citizen by producing crappy sequals to crappy movies once again!
Love,
Al[1]
[1] Absolutely true story. Except for the part about illegal downloading though, I wouldn’t do that ever.