So I did see the new Poseidon this afternoon. It was not as bad as I once thought. But, it did cement for me this: I swear that the art of story telling in Hollywood is dead. Honestly, how hard can it be to remake this movie? It was pretty frickin’ good as it was. You just have to update it a bit, work some perhaps on the dialog to punch up and clarify some things that I consider confusing, and use all of the new technology available developed in the 34 years since the original. The cgi in the new one was very good. It helped tell the story and wasn’t over the top, a quality often remiss in modern action / adventure / drama / thriller movies. Most, if not all, of the qualities that I liked about the original were lost in the remake. The preacher was now a firefighter. This killed an entire understory. There was virtually no character development or exposition at the beginning of the movie. I got lost a couple of times in regard to where they were going/doing. There was very little expository dialog. This would have helped immensely to keep the audience abridged of what was going on. If the American cinema go-er no longer has the ability to cope with a movie ending that isn’t happy, then why can’t they treat the audience like the little kids they are and stopped to have some expository dialog? The pacing can wait. The story can wait two seconds for someone to say “ok, everyone’s going to go one-by-one across this big piece of steel; the kid goes first”. There was no real team building at the beginning. There were no hot pants. I didn’t really care that Alena died. The little kid didn’t steal the show and know more than the adults. The captain wasn’t Leslie Neilsen. I didn’t really realize that the captain was the captain (until much later). Where were the romantic overtones of the original? Why was it 20 minutes shorter than the original? Honestly I felt that the original went very quickly. And what was up with the sound? Maybe I was in a bad spot in theater (in the very middle, high up — exactly where I wanted to sit), but it sounded awful to me. Maybe the theater’s audio wasn’t setup properly… I should have been right there with them as stuff was exploding and creaking, but I wasn’t. So, I got over the “rogue wave” and my expectations were pretty low, so it pretty much met those low expectations. So there you go.

What does this mean for me?

I am looking at probably plopping down $500–600 on my car next week at the dealer. I’m confident that I can keep myself from being screwed by them, but we will see. If after I see how much the real cost of the Yukon will be, and when I get back, I will look into getting myself a new $275 coffee table. KB wants me to get it, so I will put more serious thought into it.

I will be in California Monday through Friday, fyi.