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• Friday, January 18, 2008 07:56 AM

  Big Scary Monsters aren't actually that scary

  Every Big Scary Monster movie takes our anxieties and packages them into a soothing, amusing spectacle. That is the point of the Big Scary Monster movie.

  This is how soldiers get cured of PTSD. They don virtual reality helmets and slowly re-experience war, all the while knowing it isn't currently happening. Of course the soldiers work their way towards the full experience. Today they may look at a 3D tank, tomorrow there may be an explosion. Some of us are ready to look at the explosions and the footage, to feel the memories and then say, "Hey wait, 9/11/2001 happened seven years ago. We're o.k. now. There is no giant crab bat from the sea attacking New York RIGHT NOW." Some of us are only ready to look at the 3D tank.

  This movie exposes the very direct fears we have about 9/11, then reminds us via a giant CGI crawfish that those fears are rooted in the past. 9/11 happened in *2001*. We can watch the footage now and not feel like it's happening in the present. It surely did happen, and may happen again, but it isn't happening RIGHT NOW.

  So quit arguing about whether or not this movie should have been made, whether or not Abrams is callous, what Kind of People go to see such a movie. If you're not ready to re-experience 9/11 footage on the big screen, don't see it. End of story. Some of us are ready, and that doesn't make us callous or shallow, it just makes us ready.

  And how much more awesome would this movie have been with a cameo by the Blair Witch?

  —Robert Dunkel Read Robert Dunkel's other letters
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