As so often happens surrounding a senseless tragedy, in response to the Aurora theater shooting, there have been a lot of symbolic gestures of dubious symbolism. Premieres were canceled. Studios postponed reporting box office totals for a day. (Doesn’t postponing the reports for one day just bring attention to how pointless the gesture is? I mean one day? Come on.). Snooki sent a condolence tweet. Then of course, there’s all the chicken little morons writing about how we need to ban midnight screenings, or violent movies, or video games, or public gatherings, or hands. Thing is, spree killers want attention. They like it when people make a big deal about them, so it seems to me the most effective thing we can do is just refuse to make them a big deal and just go on about our business. That’s why I think shooting survivor Justin Davis makes a much more powerful statement than any of the corporate PR think tanks or the screaming pundits.
Less than one day after he escaped the chaos and carnage of the Aurora, Colo., theater shooting, lifelong Batman fan Justin Davis was back at the movies with a sense of purpose.
Davis, 16, was accompanied by his brother and a friend to a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” at a different Colorado movie theater.
“I just want to finish it, and for all those men, women and children that didn’t get to finish it, I want to finish it for them,” he said. [Yahoo/ABC]
Good.
Not for nothing, but I’m glad The Dark Knight Rises had a strong ending. It’d be a bummer if this kid had to go back to the scene of the crime for the ending of The Sopranos finale or something. “Wait, you mean he’s just walking through a diner in slow motion, then a song plays, and then it cuts to black? What? What the f*ck was that? Jeez, maybe life is meaningless after all…”
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I can’t say I didn’t have a small tingling when I walked into the theater to see it today, and I did look at the emergency exits once or twice. So good on this kid for not letting that bastard get in his way – you win, kid.
Everyone wants to ban guns, until they get butchered like a pig by Jack the Ripper. Then they’re like, “for the love of god, just shoot me already”. Firearms are at least a relatively modern technology compared to weaponized cutlery, which is totally fucking medieval.
Granted, a guy with a gun can kill more people than a guy with a knife, but if you’re the guy getting stabbed to death, that provides little comfort. “Hey, you may be slowly digging my guts out with a sharpened piece of steel, but since it’s taking you so long to kill me, you can’t move on to someone else. Awesome”.
Someone best keep an eye on me when Rodriguez premieres the Machete sequel.
I’ve always espoused self-defense regardless of what type of weapon the attacker has. People are stronger than they give themselves credit for. And large groups of people can stop a shooter equipped with anything short of a minigun or flamethrower.
That being said. It’s a helluva lot harder to defend yourself against a gun than a knife. And it’s a helluva lot harder to kill someone with a knife as well. Not to mention, as you said, it’s harder still for someone to just walk into a crowd and start stabbing everyone to death.
I don’t think we’ll be ready to heal as a nation until a group of 12 third grade Spelling classes from across the nation join together to make the world’s largest condolence card that says “We will nevah forgit u!”
Shit’s a fucked up situation, yo.
So I will avoid seriousness by saying that Drew Magary looks great.
Great article, Vince; but are you sure it wasn’t Pollyannas that want to ban shit?
For Justin Davis:
*clapclapclapclapclapclap clapclapclap clap clap*
Thanks, kid, for having the common fucking sense all the media alarmists are missing.
Yup, fuck psychopaths in the ear. Just lock em up and shut em up.
On the other hand, isn’t a whole article about this still kind of making a big deal?
Worth it.
I love when Sopranos Apologists defend the ending as some great piece of art instead of the lazy easy-way-out that it was.
Not great art. Cool ass ending. You watched Tony deal with panic attacks for years (biggest plot line of entire series) then in the finally scene they flipped the script. All the viewers/fans got to feel first hand what a panic attack feels like.
…and then they all drowned
Considering that Chase had that ending planned from the beginning, I don’t think it qualifies as lazy. Unsatisfying, yes.
This reminds me way too much of that Onion article about victims of a plane crash not being able to finish Dragonheart.
Yeah, have we all forgotten its the one year anniversary of the Amy Winehouse tragedy!
No no. Her death. I guess. I dunno, that’s what CNN’s calling it.
VINCE! Where is your Dark Knight Rises review? Bathe with us.
Seriously, I’ve logged on every 10 minutes for the past 3 hours! My iPad is running out of battery with no way to charge it til this evening! *serious case of first world problems*
Give. It. To. Us.
We must not make a big deal out of not making a big deal out of this.
I’m reposting this because I really hated the ending —
Vince you liked the ending? I thought the ending was hands down the worst part of the movie. It struck me as so out of place with the tone of the entire series. I don’t want to spoil anything, but haven’t Nolan and Bale basically been shitting on what they did at the end for the entire duration of the series? Especially leading up to this movie? It really bugged me, mostly because it felt like a cheap copout to a studio executive, and I thought Nolan was at a point in his career when he didn’t have to do that.
Trollin is a art.
I dunno, maybe I just liked that I finally knew what the fuck was going on.