When I was reviewing 2021’s Mortal Kombat reboot last night, it hit me as I was finishing up the review that what I’ve been doing here up until this point has been not as satisfying. Don’t mistake my intent, I’m going to continue to talk about and review movies, as I really enjoy doing it. There’s something incredibly rewarding about talking about a movie that I really enjoyed. There’s an energy that surrounds you when you talk about something. When you have something positive to say, that energy lifts you up and makes you want to do more. On the other hand, when you have something negative to say, that same energy can really drag you down. That energy is one of the things that I’m going to deal with as I make changes going forward. There are definitely going to be some changes around here. First thing that’s going to go is my grading system. For years, I’ve used a 1-10 system with 1 being the worst and 10 being a masterpiece. I’ve had some time to think about it, and who does that actually serve? Personally, I justified the use of the number system to try and keep things straight in my head. After some time of thinking about it, I’m going to stop using it because it doesn’t accurately describe how I feel about a movie. That’s what the actual body of the review is for. Putting a number on it does absolutely nothing, except getting people to skip reading the review and just go to the number. I want people to understand how I feel about a movie, so the number system from here on out is gone. Mortal Kombat is the last movie I reviewed that uses it.
Going back to the energy that you get when you talk about something you really like, I’m going to focus my reviews on stuff that I enjoy. The movie can be bad, but if I enjoyed it, I want people to know why. If I enjoy a movie that is grim-dark, people need to know what makes it worth watching. The energy that it takes to tear a movie down because I hated it can be damaging. Not necessarily to the film being reviewed or the film-makers behind, but to me as a reviewer and a blogger. Whenever I hate something, I have a tendency to hold on to that feeling for longer than I really should, and while some consider it to be therapeutic to put all that negative energy into words, I find it counterproductive to what I’m trying to do here. I love talking about movies, and there’s going to some bad stuff going on periodically. I’ll deal with that when it comes, but I would rather not focus my energy on movies that I hate. At the very least, I may give them a mention, but for the most part, I won’t give those kinds of movies the time of day. I want to focus positive energy on movies that I enjoyed, so that I can share that with the world. I want people to be aware of the movies that I enjoyed. They don’t have to be good movies, but they can be enjoyable on certain levels. That’s why I could never actually hate Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. I love watching that movie. It’s a glorious train-wreck. To hate a movie is to find NOTHING enjoyable about it. Thankfully, I can count on maybe TWO hands how many movies that I legitimately hate.
So, when I encounter a bad movie, what I intend to do going forward is to poke fun at it. It’s my way of turning a negative into a positive. Sarcasm may be what some consider to be the lowest form of wit, but it’s incredibly hilarious when people don’t realize you’re being sarcastic. It’s hard to convey sarcasm on the Internet, especially in written form, so there has to some kind of wordplay that I need to use to convey how goofy these bad movies can be. Another thing that I’m going to do over the next week or so is clean up the tabs on the top of the page. Some of them I either don’t use anymore or haven’t bothered with for a long time. Do they really need to be there? No. Change is healthy, so you’ll be seeing some of that pretty soon. I’ll still be doing some of my favorite things like The Best/Worst and basic news commentary as well as reviews. But outside of that, I’m going to simplify Major Tom’s Movies quite a bit. It needs it, I need it, and so does my audience. There’s nothing worse than complicating something that needs to be simple in the first place.