Case in point: Before last night, when the Affleck news broke, everybody on Twitter was abuzz with excitement for The World’s End. As well they should have been, not only because it is a truly great movie, but because it is relevant. It exists, not hypothetically in the future, but here and now. It is in theatres, easily accessible and ready to be experienced, enjoyed, discussed, and debated. I was overjoyed to see Twitter embracing the movie so fully, even before I had seen it, because for once, the entertainment world was talking about something that mattered, not something that may or may not matter dozens of months down the road.
And then the Affleck news broke and all that went away. No more talk of real movies. No more meaningful discourse about films we should all concentrate on enjoying now, in the moment. Just a whole lot of tweets about Ben Affleck and a film that may or may not arrive in theatres two July’s from now. And that annoys and exhausts me to end because I really, really liked the idea of the Internet actually calming down for a few moments and focusing on the cinematic world as it exists right now. I liked the idea of a great, landmark dramatic comedy like The World’s End driving the cinematic discourse for a couple of days, rather than a product that has yet to even be fully conceived by its creators. But I guess that was all just too good to be true, because living in the moment is hard for people (which is, coincidentally, a theme of The World’s End, albeit with characters looking to the past rather than the future).
To be clear, my disappointment goes for people ardently defending Affleck’s casting as much as it does those endlessly mocking the man. Either way, people discussing this casting in any detail whatsoever are trying to make something out of nothing, and I am tired of that. At its full potential, the Internet should be making something out of something, not blowing a lot of hot air around about largely meaningless news.
