Thursdays at the Theatre: Vol. 4

By: Joshua Volkers

Hello there, Titans! It is now officially spring and the fact that the temperature is slowly but surely maintaining an average of above zero, as well as that spring smell that comes once the soil is not capped by snow, we are looking at warmer times coming fairly soon. But, before all of that, we still will have to stay inside before doing anything out in the warm outdoors, seeing as it’s not warm at the moment, so that does force you to do more indoors. And hey, you found this article, didn’t you, so why don’t you read through the whole thing and see what I have to say this week about movies?

So with winter ending, we are starting to enter what we call the ‘summer blockbuster’ months, where most of the big films typically come out - but this time it’s different. You see, blockbuster films have become more spread out over the past couple of years, so much so that the bigger-budget films aren’t just found at Christmas and the summer, they’re now found all year round despite whatever season they are released in, seeing as film production and budgets have gone up tremendously. Of course, we get this cute animated film called Home releasing this weekend, featuring the voices of Rihanna, Steve Martin, Jennifer Lopez, and Jim Parsons, which looks like it could be fun for the kids out there, but I’m not particularly sure about the adults. However, as always, place your expectations at the door, right?

After that, though, we do get the big one on April 3rd, and that is Furious 7! Now, this film faced a troubled production, of course, after the tragic passing of Paul Walker, but they were able to pull things together spectacularly well and crank this film out for audiences to see. Now, while I doubt this is the last Fast and Furious film, this will be the last time the Brian O’Connor character will appear onscreen, with the screenwriters finding a way to say goodbye to the character without something cheap like an off-screen death, or even killing the character at all. On top of that, the marketing team for the film should be applauded for treating this situation with respect by not using Paul Walker’s death as a marketing tactic; of course, people will still see the film because of Paul Walker’s passing, but the marketers focused on the action and silliness that have made the last few Fast and Furious films work instead of some sappy music and a montage of just Paul Walker. They’re even refusing to use the caption ‘In his last performance’ like other studios do when their film has an actor who passed during or shortly after production. Aside from that though, this movie looks like a ton of fun, with The Rock and Statham doing UFC style fighting, parachuting cars, and a Lamborghini smashing through the window of one building into the next with explosions chasing after it. It looks completely nuts, crazy, ridiculous, however you want to call it, but it sticks with that tone of the last few Fast and Furious films, and that’s why this one’s going to be a big hit.

Well, those are the movies releasing in the next 2 weeks, so we move on, or should I say back, to a classic for this edition of ‘Thursdays at the Theater’, and that is:

You know, I was thinking about how I would like to travel back in time and relive March Break all over again to get that feeling of complete bliss back, but then I realized I could have something similar if I re-watched Back to the Future, which is all about time travel! So, if you’re one of those people who’s never seen Back to the Future, it’s about a high school kid named Marty McFly who leads a crappy life with parents and siblings who are all losers in life, and has this weird scientist friend of his who creates a time machine in the form of a Delorean car. Of course, something crazy happens in the form of Libyan terrorist shooting Doc Brown for stealing plutonium, which leads Marty to escape in the Delorean, going back in time to 1955 by accident and meeting his parents when they were his age. There, he meets Biff Tannen, who essentially becomes his arch-nemesis; has his own mother accidentally develop a crush on him as her younger self; and has to be careful not to erase his existence, along with his siblings’, because he’s present in the time of his parents’ initial meeting. So it’s up to Marty to dodge Biff (and his mother too, unfortunately), encourage his father to stand up for himself, attend prom, invent the first skateboard, find a sufficient source of electricity that can be equivalent to ‘1.21 GIGAWATTS!?!?’, while trying to prevent himself from vanishing from time and space forever. It’s a fun film, as you can see. While there are some minor problems with plot, as there are in every time travel film, Back to the Future is remembered as a classic, beloved by all, and deserves to be watched over and over again, because it really is an amazing movie.

That concludes this edition of Thursdays at the Theater, so please, if you have any thoughts that you would like to share, do not hesitate to type them out down below. I mean, everybody loves talking about movies! This was a surprisingly fun one for me to write, so I hope I was able to translate my enthusiasm into words for you all to read. With that said, I will see you in two weeks, Titans to talk more about what will be going on at the theaters at that time. Stay strong Titans, and goodbye!