What is with action movie writers these days? I went to see Daredevil tonight with M! and M3, and I thought all three of us were going to get kicked out of the theatre for laughing at some very inappropriate places. For example, when Ben Affleck's voiceover says, seriously and tragically, "I waited for my father outside the theatre that night. In some ways I'm still waiting," all three of us cringed and then laughed. I mean, that's not really funny—it's serious and tragic! He is angsty! His father died! It was a tragedy! Feel his pain! Uh...no. The only pain I'm feeling is the pain of ham-handed dialogue that ruins action movies. Honestly, who talks like that? Nobody, that's who. Nobody is that dramatic. My seventeen-year-old drama-queen sister isn't that dramatic.
Unfortunately, Daredevil isn't an isolated case. Last summer's Spiderman was probably even more painful. This exchange is a good example:
Green Goblin: Are you in or are you out, Spidey?
Spiderman: You are the one who's out, Gobby—out of your mind!
What is that? It's something no self-respecting eight-year-old would say, much less a suave superhero.
The worst offender, though, is the lastest installment of the Star Wars series. It was...well, the only word that comes to mind is "excruciating." Thank God I didn't pay to see it, because I would have been so mind-numbingly furious that my own dialogue would have been reduced to the level of the film's: "I'm not afraid to die. I've been dying a little bit every day since you came back into my life." Ugh! There are Harlequin Romances out there with higher standards for dialogue than that. Lifetime (Television for Women) wouldn't let Meredith Baxter Burney say that if the future of the entire network depended on it!
So I'll be going back to my dramas and romantic comedies and musicals and anything that doesn't have a superhero(ine) that takes himself so seriously that I can't. Cute as they are, Ben Affleck and Tobey Maguire just aren't making it worthwhile for me.
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