The Wild Bunch

[maggie2]

I've started a project of watching all of the films on the AFI top 100 list, because I'm the weird sort of person who loves ticking off items on a list.  Sometimes it's labor.  Sometimes it's a lot of fun.  My last effort -- The Wild Bunch, a violent western by Sam Peckinpah -- was mostly labor.  Until the last half hour when it was smashingly brilliant and made the whole thing worthwhile.   I once dated a very brilliant guy whose policy is to decide within the first ten minutes if it's worth staying for a movie, and leaving if the answer is no.   There are many times when that's the right policy. Maybe even most of the time.   But you do miss some spectacular stuff doing things that way, and I guess for me it's worth paying the price of sitting through some unredeemable schlock to not miss those pieces.that only come together in a mad audacious rush at the end.  

Comments

[next_to_normal]

Yeah, I think at some point, it becomes not just about "Is there awesomeness at the end?" but "HOW awesome does it have to be to make it worth sitting through the whole thing?"

It's a lot easier with a movie, I think, because it's only two hours of your life. That's not a huge investment, so it doesn't require a lot of awesome to make it worth it. Season 8 has been three years, and we've only got a handful of issues left. Certainly, that calculation is going to be different for everyone, but at this point, for me, I don't think any amount of awesome can make up for the disappointment that has been the previous 35 issues.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I don't blame people for giving up. Not at all. I'm feeling a bit isolated because I'm one of the few who doesn't think we can pronounce it a failure now. But I can certainly see saying that even if it's great at the end, the price in the mean time has been just too high.