My head isn't getting any wider. Stop shrinking movies.
Our culture loves being wasteful so much that we've started to waste things for no reason. It's now hip and cool to watch movies with the top and bottom cut off and filled with blackness. Just to prove to everyone how wastefully American we are.
Which isn't to milk the "lazy American" stereotype. It's just true. We are wasting space on our monitors for no obvious reason. I can only imagine it's because we like to waste shit.
This is what movies should look like on a monitor:
But they destroyed the movie by introducing "widescreen" format and look what happened.
Not only did they cut off the girl's chest, but they also cut out the American flag. Both of which are sinister and unpatriotic and punishable by gradual castration.
That's not just some "girl," by the way. That scene is from Casino Royale, and is the extent of Alessandra Ambrosio's acting career where she says one brilliantly delivered line "Hey." And I shouldn't say this, because it's long and destructive to the narrative of this article, but I recently purchased a triple fucking life-size cardboard cut-out of Alessandra. I had to cut a hole in my floor to the basement so she can stand up fully. Her head touches the ceiling in the attic. And I built a fire pole going down it so I can zip down to the basement if I want to peruse her legs. Also I hooked up a fan to make her sway around the pole like she's dancing and I can fire jizz darts at her chest and scream disgusting shit at her.
Unfortunately, mega widescreen came out, which is totally deprecating to my favorite scene ever.
People say, "Widescreen doesn't cut anything away." And, "Widescreen adds parts to the sides that you normally don't see in regular screen."
If that were true, widescreen movies would look all frame fucked. Because movies are framed for the standard aspect ratio. To prove it, here's a widescreenshot of some shitty movie. I don't know what it is. I got this on google. It's probably something shitty..
If this scene were taken from a 3:4 format by solely reveling unseen footage from the sides, this is what the original would have looked like:
I'm sure that's what the director intended to focus on in this sequence is the bowl of papayas or whatever gay tropical fruit those are. The transition from 3:4 to widescreen clearly cuts off some of the top and bottom.
This is obvious, but nobody wants to admit it. So they came up with a solution - widescreen monitors. This way there's no wasted space by black bars that were intentionally put there to waste space.
Trendy widescreen dimensions utilizing all the screen space you paid for. Yay, now everyone's happy.
Except for the black bar salesman. He's like, "What the fuck is happening to my sales? Widescreen monitors? The fuck? Let's invent ultra widescreen. How you like me now?" But nobody said anything. So he said, "Stick around. See how you like me then." And black bars came back like chlamydia.
That apparently wasn't enough. So they came out with ultimate super duper mega widescreen, which basically truncates off all of Alessandra's favorable parts and forces my eye muscles to move far more than I want them to.
It's a big trendy stupid format. It's like the thinner you watch your movies, the classier you are. I was on a date with a girl. I didn't know much about her, so I figured we'd watch a movie. I was putting it in and she actually had the nerve to ask, "Does it have widescreen?" She actually cared. "No. Sorry," I said, "Do you want a screen that matches your body?" Stupid stupid stupid. Because pornos don't even come in widescreen because porn enthusiasts aren't eager to impress everyone with all their wastefulness. That's why we jizz into our hand instead of Kleenex. Anyone with Kleenex by their bed is a fucking amateur.
But it's a horrible deal. Because god forbid they start making pornos in ultra widescreen and all you can see is a foot flopping around and something furry and bleeding twitching in and out of the frame. It's like a thin band of flesh blinking in and out of existence. And yes I'm happy I got to say the word "god" in that sentence.
And it probably won't stop any time soon. Movies will just get thinner.
And thinner.
And it's stupid because it's totally wasted space. At least they could do something with it instead of show blackness. Like in space movies, why don't they add the starfield screensavor to the black bars. It's relevant to the movie, and it's more entertaining than blackness.
Or here's another good one that I think would be awesome.
Most movies are so shitty nowadays, why not make pong games out of them. And you have to hit all the bricks before the scene ends.
Here's another great idea. Let's use the extra black space to show images relevant to the movie. Possibly parts correlating to the specific scene of the movie. Maybe even featuring the same characters or objects that the characters interact with, including the background and other elements. And they could line these elements up with the rest of the image so they blend seamlessly. Something like this -
You fucking assholes. It's freakin ridiculous how ridiculously ridiculous this ridiculousness is. Because my eyes aren't getting any flatter. I pretty much see the way I always have. If it gets any worse, I'll have to mash my eyes apart with a mallet to watch films. I don't even watch films. I hate films.
I'm not even saying this to be trite and coy. It actually bothers me on an emotional level. It frustrates me to see people live their lives like this. Please, boycott widescreen. Before it gets too late.
Last updated December 17th, 2008