Dear Adventure Blockbuster,
Do you remember how much fun we had? This is out of the blue and I know we haven’t seen eye to eye for a long time now, but I wanted to reach out and talk about it. I want to talk about where you are going and why I can’t follow you. I also want to thank you because I owe a lot of who I am to you.
You used to be one of my best friends growing up, sick days in middle school were like playdates. I could be suffering from all sorts of stomach maladies, fevers, or especially bad bouts of seasonal allergies but you were always there for me. Because of this I loved the vast majority of my sick days, real or contrived. I would wear my pajamas all day and wrap myself tightly with one of my great grandmother’s crocheted afgans. Like a cocoon, immobile and comfortable, I rested atop a couch in the TV room. The lights were low, on the coffee table lay an opaque, half-full sleeve of saltines, a glass of water on a coaster, and stacks and stacks of DVD’s.
These days were for us and no one else. On days like this, no matter how weak, achy, or congested I became, there was always adventures to be had.
I must have watched Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl half a dozen times in middle school, rolled like a burrito on a dinner plate. For a couple hours I was completely engrossed in a world saving adventure. There was no time to feel sick when Indy was running through an ancient, booby-trapped temple, Harry was fighting off Dementors, or Jack was insisting everyone attach a captain prefix to his introductions. I was thrown into another world, fully realized and bursting at the seems with excitement. The protagonists were hero’s all brave, charming, flawed humans who I came to understand and admire. You gave me away to project my imperfect self into any hero’s shoes, think how they thought, and live another person’s life, even momentarily.
For a long time, I wasn’t sure if it was you who changed or me. Maybe that was just part of growing up I used to think. This was some hidden cost attached to the strides I made in experience, knowledge, etc. Everyone loses friendships, we just tend to grow apart over time. Sometimes it’s all at once in a great fight and a stubborn, silent unwillingness for reconciliation. Sometimes you can never point to the end or even the beginning of the end. Life just continues forward, you see less of each other, relate less, move on.
The reason I can’t follow you is we don’t connect like we used to.
One thing I remembered about you growing up was how perfectly you wore your imperfection. It felt authentic, like someone who accepts that you are an individual and not a flawless construction. Moments like Indy shooting the sword fighter because Harrison Ford was sick on set or Star Wars’ unabashed love and homage to sci-fi “B Movies”. There was no sense of pretending you were something that you weren’t. You were happy to be yourself and the people who liked you liked you.
Sometimes it just feels like you are trying too hard to be something else now. Your success is an incredible achievement but I can see it weighs heavy on your conscious. Some times it feels like you are trying to be perfect for everyone. As you get big and important, your investments grow large and foreboding, if feels like you carry a fear. Fear that maybe you won’t be perfect or that your fans may turn their backs on you or that maybe, just maybe, you couldn’t recapture the spark that made you so beloved to begin with. Fears that your millions and millions of investment will backfire and drag you like an anchor to the bottom of the sea. And the sleek, CGI look that has become your new normal, I don’t recognize that on you. Gone is the grittiness and improvisation, gone is the humanity pressed into the film. You are flawless, made perfect by computer graphics, inoffensive writing, and a strong sense of your customer demographics and preferences. So that instead of letting your actions speak for themselves you make a big show of advertising yourself and how great and important you are.
You have always been important but you didn’t used to try so damn hard.
When I watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time I felt the same way I felt about it the last time I watched it. This has to be some kind of magic. It was, and still is, the most amazing story telling I have ever experienced. They brought to life a world that was as real to me as the world outside my door. I can’t really appreciate watching the behind the scenes because I almost can’t believe it was ever made. It seemed to me, then and now, that it just existed, a window into a fully realized world, a time capsule artifact that we were so lucky to excavate. It is pure cinema and, more compelling still, it is an adventure.
I think about the potential you have always had. The potential you have now with more money and power and relevance than ever before. I think about the legions and legions of kids who you reach, kids that are getting their first exposure to cinematic language through you. Kids like me who watch you just as they are learning what their creativity is capable of. I think you can be so much more if you want to be.
There will always be a piece of you in me. I want to thank you because I wouldn’t be the person I was today without that. But that same piece is the reason I have to write this to you. I still think you can have this power to effect people but to truly get there you have to be authentic.
You don’t have to be something for everyone if you can be everything for someone.
Take care of yourself Adventure Blockbuster,
Sincerely yours,
Ryan