Spinning Gold From Garbage...


OK, so this past weekend I had to make a bargain with my kids for some quiet reading time. We could either go to a movie, (How to train your Dragon 2), buy Popcorn for all of us, spend roughly $100.. or we could stay in, pop our own popcorn, and order Starz on our Comcast Cable Package, (which I hate on so many levels.. but that's a different story)..

To my surprise they chose to get Starz for the next few months.. (probably because of the currently available Monster's University and the upcoming Frozen).. so we were sitting this morning, together, flipping around trying to determine what to watch when "After Earth" came up as a movie. My 11 yo boy asked about it and after explaining the plot to him they all asked to watch it.  It's PG13, but didn't seem too bad in the description, at least nothing beyond what they get in the old Tom and Jerry reruns that I grew up on too.. so we popped more popcorn, (like we need an excuse for Popcorn).. and settled down to watch it.

Spoiler Alert.. it wasn't that good.. in fact it was very, very bad.
Horrific might be a more apt description.. if I weren't already an anti-fan of Jaden Smith, this movie would have made me into one. It was bad, really bad. M Night Shyamalan has used up his alotment of good Juju and is now paying the price for selling his soul to the movie Devil.. cause everything he touches these days becomes horrible, and this was no exception.

So.. in the middle of this crap.. there was a single.. solitary.. moment of clarity.  It was when Dad of the Year Will Smith is lecturing his whiney, overacting, 'look at me.. look at me' son about how he can survive the unsurvivable Earthian terrain and he says the following.

 
Now.. of course it's a ripoff of about a dozen other quotes.. but it's still accurate, and here's why.
Fear really is all in our minds. 

Fear of failure
Fear of looking foolish
Fear of not being as good as others
Fear of nobody liking what I write
Heck.. sometimes even the Fear of Success can cripple us.

Yet none of them are real.. they're all based on what if's. What if I try really hard and I fail. What if people around me know I tried and failed? What if I think I'm good when I'm not. What if I tell myself that I can do this when in reality I can't. What if I've spent the past 6 years obsessing over something that will never happen?

All have destroyed my momentum at one time or another. They've started as seeds in my mind and blossomed into full fledged ideas that have stopped me in my tracks.

The trick is recognizing them for what they are and pushing past them. Fear isn't real.. it's all based on thoughts of the future. But here, today.. right now.. there isn't anything to actually fear. There is only me, and my ideas.

Anyway.. that encapsulates the entire worthwhile minute of cinema in the movie.. so in order to save you from wasting 89 minutes of your life.. here is that portion in video form.




Comments

  1. There's usually a nugget of awesome to be found somewhere in a dud, not that I'm eager to pay to find out. I learned my lesson from that Last Airbender disaster. :)

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    Replies
    1. I'd watch a Chinese bootleg of the cartoon Avatar backwards before I'd watch the movie version again.

      Interesting though that both movies were directed by M Night Shyamalan.. shows just how far he's fallen. Sad.

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