AML and I went to see Captain America: Brave New World last weekend. I honestly can’t say I enjoyed or didn’t enjoy it. I think I’ve seen almost all the Marvel and DC comic hero movies that have come out since Superman in 1978 and X-Men in 2000. I was a comic book kid, mostly into DC characters with an occasional foray into Marvel. So going to see Captain America:BNW was a given. But this time it was different, because if memory serves me right, this is the first movie I have seen in a movie theatre since the pandemic ended. The experience is not the same.

For one, it’s too loud. I like to believe I am self-aware enough to know part of this is me - as I age, being this overstimulated is annoying and uncomfortable. I prefer watching these movies now at home where I can turn on the closed captions and reduce the intensity of the volume. It does seem, however, that the point of these films is more to overwhelm the senses than anything else. It feels like I am the block that has to be busted.

Two, the entire genre seems to be getting stale. Every plot is about the world being on the brink of disaster. The heroes are loved, then unloved, then loved. Cap has identity issues. Young buck is eager to show his stuff. Nobody has time to eat, sleep, or take a shit. I’ve seen it all before. It’s all starting to feel overdone.

Three, being in a movie house is an alienating experience. It feels more like a mass-producing factory of some kind. Multiple screens, seats that recline and rock, outrageously priced and oversized snacks (I saw one family so loaded down with snacks they must have spent three times as much on the food as they did on the tickets). According to the pre-show infomercials, you are even able to have popcorn, soda and snacks delivered to your seat - you don’t even have to move your fat ass off the reclining seat to break a sweat walking to one of the 5 concession stands. I was surprised not to find an IV drip at my seat ready to inject me with the requisite amounts of salt, sugar, and fat. And of all the ironic touches of all, the walls were adorned with publicity still of movie stars that the kids and probably most of the adults in the place couldn’t name: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Jimmy Stewart, etc.

Four, every preview that was shown for upcoming movies (about 5, I believe) featured some mix of blood, guns, violent death, crashes, and sex. I believe it must now be against the law to make a movie which does not contain some mixture of three out of these five elements. So for me, there’s not much to look forward to.

If you happen to be under, say, 60, and you are reading this, I want you to understand one thing. This is not a rant against pop culture. This is a rant about getting older. The brutal truth about getting older is that you begin to age out of almost everything, and there is no longer very much to age in to. I am aging out of modern culture, and the reality is that there is only a past culture to which I can continue to relate; a world where movies were 50 cents, there was only one movie playing in the movie house (which might have a balcony), where plot, character, and story were more important than spectacle, and the seats were shitty and had gum on their undersides. It’s much better now for me to sit in my own recliner, pop my own popcorn, and tune in to Turner Classic Movies. I am not sure what will happen when TCM begins showing Superman I as a TCM classic.