So there’s this film out there about the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. Eleven people died, with several more wounded. The resulting environmental and economic damage was catastrophic. The Gulf economy has largely recovered in many places, but a lot of livelihoods perished and never came back, too.
I don’t want to watch a movie about that.
I don’t care how well the action sequences are done, or how capably the director builds tension, or who’s in it, or anything else. It could be the highest-quality film ever made. But I know that at the end of the events depicted in this film, things are terrible. That’s enough for me to stay away from it.
It’s not just that it significantly affected one of my favorite parts of the world. I didn’t want to see The Perfect Storm either. Oh, the boat sinks? All hands lost? Do I care how skillfully that’s depicted? I do not. Pass.
I don’t have to have happy endings. But I think I’d like a little more distance than movies like these provide. The Titanic sank over 100 years ago. Han Solo isn’t real. Realistic depictions of ripped-from-the-headlines heroism that, in the end, weren’t good enough don’t entertain me.
What about you? Are there movies, books, or anything else you avoid for similar reasons?
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I generally try to avoid movies and books where realistically bad things happen to little children. That’s just too close to my real fears. I still haven’t gotten over The Road; I wish that I never read it.
The Road didn’t affect me like that, but yes, it was very dark. I had no interest in seeing the film; I’ll put it that way.
I have more trouble with reading about things that actually happen to little children at the hands of evil people, and then never being able to forget them.
I generally avoid movies where having “realistically bad” things happen to humans is a key point of the plot, e.g. slasher flicks, etc. Not a huge fan of highly realistic war movies, either, come to think of it.
Bo, you might have a look at http://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2016/09/deepwater-horizon-parable-of-risk-earl-boebert-james-blossom.html. I thought it was an interesting discussion on the differences between the (scholarly) analysis by Blossom and Boebert and the film.
I’ll have to chew on that notion of “realistically bad.” I think I might share some of that wiring.
I enjoy war movies that do an artistically interesting job at examining psychology, morality, and so forth. Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now are two of my favorite films, but I have to be careful about when and how often I watch them. The latter especially puts me in a pretty deep funk for a day or two.
Good link on the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and it basically reinforced my desire not to see the movie.