Keanen's Film Blog

The title is terrible, and the source material is about as niche as it gets. I won’t deny that I am a fan of the source material, nor will I deny that I volunteered on the film’s massive VFX team. I found that environment overly formal and pretentious, like we were supposed to be making a real movie. I won’t assign blame to the VFX supervisor, who was only doing what he felt was best for his own career and the visual professionalism of the film.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? AVGN was never Hollywood. It was a postmodernist gross-out series that made juvenile jabs at old video games, and that’s what everybody loved. Try to dress that up in a fresh coat of paint and you get something false.

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The film opens with an insane crowd flocking around a Jerry Lewis-like character (played by Jerry Lewis). It’s intentionally nauseating. The movie knows more than the audience at this point, presenting an alien world of televised comedy and the surrounding fandom. This is Scorsese’s world, a world of extreme characters in the American excess of the last century.

Scorsese presents a century unburdened by soulless tech giants, fraud, deception, and insincerity. A century in which you can either talk to Jerry Lewis’s secretary over the telephone or go in person. A wonderful century. The century presented is one in which the protagonist, an aspiring comedian played by Robert De Niro, is free to approach the business however he wants, and he carves his path right through the man who he thinks is his friend.

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I have a background in film, and was assisting with a streaming pilot before quarantine regulations put it on hold. We joked about Coronavirus on set, but nobody thought it would be treated as a pandemic. As a result, I have more time to put much-needed work into my indie game.

What I’m trying to say is that pandemics aren’t all that bad. I know it’s a different story for someone pissing blood in the hospital (no offense to those who get off on the insertion of foreign objects; just making a point), but I’m a naturally healthy and socially isolated individual, so pandemics don’t affect me as much. But in the movies, it’s always the end of the world for everyone.

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ThanksKilling 3 is the sequel to ThanksKilling (2008) and the ill-fated ThanksKilling 2. T3 is about one man’s quest to build the year-round seasonal theme park Thanksgivingland, in spite of the inter-dimensional monsters and Muppet-like characters that try to stop him. Like Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), the film pays tongue-in-cheek homage to its roots while consistently delivering scares, laughs, tears, and family-unfriendly fun.

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When I was in high school, I watched Batman and Robin instead of spending time with my mother when she needed it the most, and I will never live it down. When the ice skates came out, I wanted to kill myself.

This is the only movie I have ever felt guilty about watching, and it is not a guilty pleasure. Every childish scene is a slap in the face. It wastes your time. The Adam West Batman show had all-ages appeal. This is not that. This is shit. This is a reminder that comic book movies are shit and only reinforce the worst parts of American culture.

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