I Don't Want To Live On This Planet Anymore

Via Gawker (EDIT: and The Escapist, which just ran this as I was also typing it up and where someone just made the same Futurama joke)

I have moments of weakness wherein I start to feel "bad" about my own intellectual-elitism... or, at the very least, feel like maybe I shouldn't be that quick to condemn the anti-intellectualism of present-day humanity. After all, "the people" cannot possibly be as dumb as I think they are, right?

Thankfully, something always comes along to remind me that it's just not possible to set the bar too low: A woman in Michigan is suing the distributors of "Drive" for misleading advertisting - specifically, she feels that she was promised "The Fast & The Furious" (no, really - she name-checks F&F in the lawsuit!) by the trailers; and that the actual film failed to deliver. She also claims that the film is anti-semitic, presumably based on scenes where a Jewish character uses "the K word" to complain about anti-semites calling him "the K word."

Ugh. I just... just... UGH...

Good for a laugh, obviously - especially when you start to wonder where this person found a lawyer when she apparently does not own a computer, phone, television, newspaper or any of the other hundreds of ways to look up what a movie is about before you see it; but frankly the idea that ANY lawyer considers this case actionable creeps the hell out of me.

The "misleading trailer" is one of the few weapons good movies have in a market where the audience is ready-and-willing to punish good movies for not living down to their expectations. Fair or not, boxoffice matters and "tricking" Michael Bay's America into occasionally shelling out for something worthwhile is one of the main ways "worthwhile" can still turn a profit.

Movies are bland enough already because studios are afraid that even appearing  to offend or challenge the sensibilities of Joe & Jane McNormal will lead to a lowered boxoffice take - how much worse will it be if they're afraid of being sued because what they've made didn't bear enough resemblance to a fucking Vin Diesel vehicle?

I used to be a movie theater usher, and occasionally had to help "negotiate" infuriated customers in such situations until the manager came over to hand them their "shut up and go away" freebie-tickets. I recall one weekend in particular where much of my evenings were spent glibly asking people if they in fact realized that the movie they'd bought a ticket for was called "SIN City."