I be a Pirate!
The anti-piracy lobbyists would have you believe that going to the cinema is an experience worth paying for, that it is a somehow superior environment in which to enjoy a film. This, as I’m about to go on at length about, is utter bollocks.
Last night I went to see Terminator Salvation, the most ridiculous film ever made. John Connor, it would seem, has become a complete tit who seems to think that clubbing a terminator with the butt of a rifle will have some sort of effect beyond breaking your rifle. Mind you, he also seems to think you can restart a heart by dropping on someone’s chest with your elbow while screaming ‘COME ON!’ but that’s beside the point.
What is the point is that I paid £7.50 last night instead of downloading a copy of the film and, for my money, received little beyond tedium and irritation. You might think, being in the cinema already, that they’d perhaps ease off with the anti-piracy adverts given you’ve already paid the requisite fee to ‘enjoy the experience’. But no, five minutes of tedious shit implying that downloading movies will kill babies while having poor picture quality and sound that will give you aids had to be endured before…
ADVERTS! Half-a-fucking-hour of advertisements filled with people trying to sell me shit I don’t want, don’t need and can quite happily live without. Consume and be happy? No thanks, how about you take your cans of Pepsi and your Daz SUPER AWESOME and fucking shove it.
Then, of course, there were the trailers for other films in the hope, presumably, that I’ll want to come back and watch some more adverts in the future. This seems unlikely.
Your choices, then, would appear to be simple. You can spend money that you’ve slaved away earning on massively overpriced snacks that taste like ass, forty minutes of continuous marketing, twenty minutes of uninspiring film snippets, messages that have no meaning and, finally, a film that is probably going to disappoint the shit out of you. Or, you could download the film while doing other things you want to do, avoid all the shit-filled preamble of ‘the experience’ and, if you like it, buy the DVD later and still be branded a thief.
Not exactly a difficult choice, is it?
