Well, I, apparently along with everybody else in the country, watched Sharknado. And I feel confident in saying that it was better than Sharktopus. After the disappointment I experienced with Piranhaconda, I feel like I deserved it (which is akin to treating myself to McDonald's after a bad experience at Burger King). There's already plans for a sequel.
I know what you're thinking. A sequel? How does one make a sequel about something that shouldn't have happened in the first place? Well, the short answer is it doesn't really matter. We live in a capitalistic society that is in high demand for low-level trash thanks in part to viewers like me. They're having a friendly competition to subtitle the next movie. They asked to tweet suggestions, but I'm no social media glutton (to be read in a sarcastic tone), so I don't even have a Twitter account. So I wrote it on Facebook instead. I called it Sharknado II: The Sharkening. I'd better freaking win.
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| (I don't see how I could lose) |
Sharknado is an incredible movie. And I mean that in the sense that it lacks credibility. But what I find most incredible is that people are actually arguing about it. It's a movie whose sole purpose is to entertain (and make money, and I support both of those purposes wholeheartedly), so why does it need to be believable? It's not like it's a Hollywood drama like There Will Be Blood or Bio-Dome. It's a freakin' Syfy Original Movie.
I don't want to spoil anything for those of you who haven't seen it yet, so I'll spare the details. All I'll tell you is that it involves sharks and tornadoes and chainsaws.
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| (seriously) |
Some dismiss the plot as being "lazy." Well, so are the majority of science fiction and horror flicks, and it boils down to two words and one recurring plothole; "Because science."
Any time a movie needs to establish "credibility" (insomuch as "credibility" can be established without an equally important film component, "suspension of disbelief"), it uses science, or more often pseudoscience, as a backdrop.
In Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (pretty much any Friday the 13th, but this is just the best example), Jason is brought back from the dead when struck by lightning. Apparently, this was "inspired" by Frankenstein. Or, more likely, a lazy way of reviving a dying franchise.
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| (despite several attempts, the series just won't die) |
Okay, so that was another bad movie. But how about George A. Romero's 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead? It has earned its reputation as a horror classic, but do you remember where the zombies came from? A spaceship crash-landed, and the radiation thereof brought the dead back to life.
The laziest science fiction and horror films don't even use pseudoscience. Take Leprechaun 4: In Space, for example. The movie is about an evil, murderous leprechaun (who you got to know and love in Leprechaun parts 1-3) who goes to space to marry a Martian princess. Never once do they tell you how he got there.
I like enjoy a good movie, but I love bad movies. Why does it matter why? That's part of what makes the movie so bad. But if you really need a reason, I'll give you one.
Because science.
