Monday, April 11, 2011

Batman Forever (1995)

I watched the last hour of Batman Forever on tv tonight and it kind of made me think. I think I have under-appreciated the 90's, maybe because I grew up in them and it's easier to appreciate things in hindsight. It also seemed like to me that the 90's never had a solid identity, all the previous decades were so distinctive compared to the 90's (but again, maybe that's just because the 90's aren't far enough in the past?). What made me think of this was something seemingly trivial: Val Kilmer. While watching Batman Forever I thought "Whoa, Val Kilmer is smokin' in this movie, he was so old and ugly in MacGruber, I can't believe it's the same guy". And then I saw Jim Carrey and thought "Whoa, I almost forgot about the time when Jim Carrey's quirkiness was funny". And to top it all off, the song that played while the credits rolled was Seal's "Kiss from a Rose", awesome song.

It seems to me that the 90's may be, in large part, the end of original entertainment. In general, all the music these days is garbage and sounds pretty similar, and all the movies are based on books, remakes, or part 2's or 3's or 5's. (I realize the irony that Batman Forever is by no means an original movie, but just go with it.) The 90's also marked a real girth of technology, and it has been rapidly advancing ever since. The supposed merit of computer technology can be argued from all sorts of angles, but regardless, the times they are a'changin' and maybe I miss the 90's a bit.

(This may have been a very different post if I was watching "Batman and Robin" - that movie was crap.)

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