epitomes

I was thinking about epitomes today because I've encountered quite a few recently, and most of them were in 2012. It wasn't the epitome of suck, but it came close. It contained two epitomes of terrible plot clichés, which is a remarkable accomplishment for one movie.


The first is that recent trend in disaster movies that focus on regular jackoffs instead of scientists, politicians, and military people. This is supposed to make the movie more realistic and closer to home. But I don't want see regular jackoffs. Putting them in extraordinary situations doesn't make them interesting, it makes them worse. It raises the stakes, so their dumbass regular jackoff decisions cost lives, so they become infinitely more irritating. And the jackoffs in 2012 were the boringest I've ever seen.

The second epitome was a contrived moral dilemma. Charismatic Guy argues with Fat Guy about whether they should let some thousands of people onto the rescue ship. What made it an epitome was that the arugment was 100% free of facts. There was no information to help the viewer decide who was right, or even what their motivations were. Actually, it did show a little of Charismatic Guy's motivation. He was surprised at the last minute that there was plenty of physical space available on the ship for more people. That was weird because he was in the know on the whole rescue project, so he should have known the basic logicsitcal situation. But he was apparently unaware of any real metrics of people capacity, like how much food they had. The only fact he had to base his whole argument on was that the thousands of people in question would have legroom.

And, and, all the other national leaders contributed nothing to the discussion. They were sitting around waiting to see whether the good American or the evil American would sway them. So they took on their extra passengers, and then, before they had to resort to cannibalism, they were all saved by blind luck. Short-sighted emotional arguments win again. In your face, logic and fat people.

And here's the epitome of hyperbole. Just when I thought the whole rotten hyperbole industry was too rotten, here it comes and totally redeems itself. It's not that much of an epitome, but I feel like I have to manifest the image that popped into my head.


I'm pure evil for thinking that's funny. But who isn't these days?