In which I determine that I am likely hopelessly doomed
I like to think at most points I'm a pretty self-aware kind of guy. I've got a pretty good idea of what being a Pirate fan to the extent of writing like 1000 pages on a blog about them says about me. And yet despite that self-awareness, I still manage to surprise myself from time to time. Yesterday was one of the days I managed to do that.
I came home Saturday afternoon for Spring Break. I don't have any elaborate plans for this break: I spent several weekends this semester traveling to grad school visits already and I've got some other time booked for traveling to conferences and other things, so a week at home on the couch sounds pretty good to me right now. Yesterday afternoon my dad, one of my brothers, and I decided to go see Ghost Rider. This is pretty much an annual thing at my house. Every year around this time Marvel puts out a crappy comic book movie about some fringe character that my dad, being a comic geek, gets psyched about, which in turn gets me and my brothers, being the sons of comic geeks and thus comic geeks ourselves (you can ridicule me for this in the comments but it's pretty unlikely to phase me at this point), psyched as well. Of course no one else is psyched about Ghost Rider. My mom won't go see it with my dad, my brothers are I aren't likely to convince girlfriends or even regular friends to go see it with us, and so we always end up seeing it together with no complaints because let's face it, those other people wouldn't get it anyways.
Anyways, about an hour into Ghost Rider yesterday, I had a double revelation. Those are pretty rare, I think. Watching the movie, it slowly dawned on me that I was watching the Pittsburgh Pirates of comic book movies. The premise of the whole thing is essentially sound: anyone familiar with Ghost Rider knows the potential is there for a kick-ass modern western just like building a baseball team on a base of solid young pitching. The movie has its highlights just like Jason Bay can hit 10 homers in 10 games or Freddy Sanchez can win the NL batting title. Ultimately, however, the movie and the Pirates fail for the same reason: the law of diminishing returns. You could spend, say, an extra $50 million on Ghost Rider to hire a good director, flesh out the cast with decent actors, and improve the special effects, but how much more money will that bring in the box office? As I've already mentioned, only so many people will go see Ghost Rider and that's not going to change if the movie is critically acclaimed. Batman, Spiderman, the X-Men, Superman, they're all a part of the American mythology. You can get a wife or a girlfriend or most generally uninterested people to go see that movie with you. Ghost Rider? Not so much. The Pirates are the same: they can pay for a good GM, a strong farm system, and the missing pieces, but what's the difference between 25,000 fans a night and 30,000 fans a night in terms of revenue? Not enough. In the long run, both ventures fix their problems with big name veterans likely to mail things in (Jeromy Burnitz, Nicolas Cage), flashy promotions (fireworks, Eva Mendes), and cash in on the people that were going to be there anyways.
So I said it was a double revelation. You are undoubtedly asking yourself what the second one revelation was. Well, as soon as I made the "Pirate-Ghost Rider" connection, I realized that I could be watching Citizen Kane and I'd probably be able to equate it to the Bucs. I am hopelessly doomed to a life of Pirate watching and analysis. I suppose the sooner I realize this, the easier it will be for me to accept.
I came home Saturday afternoon for Spring Break. I don't have any elaborate plans for this break: I spent several weekends this semester traveling to grad school visits already and I've got some other time booked for traveling to conferences and other things, so a week at home on the couch sounds pretty good to me right now. Yesterday afternoon my dad, one of my brothers, and I decided to go see Ghost Rider. This is pretty much an annual thing at my house. Every year around this time Marvel puts out a crappy comic book movie about some fringe character that my dad, being a comic geek, gets psyched about, which in turn gets me and my brothers, being the sons of comic geeks and thus comic geeks ourselves (you can ridicule me for this in the comments but it's pretty unlikely to phase me at this point), psyched as well. Of course no one else is psyched about Ghost Rider. My mom won't go see it with my dad, my brothers are I aren't likely to convince girlfriends or even regular friends to go see it with us, and so we always end up seeing it together with no complaints because let's face it, those other people wouldn't get it anyways.
Anyways, about an hour into Ghost Rider yesterday, I had a double revelation. Those are pretty rare, I think. Watching the movie, it slowly dawned on me that I was watching the Pittsburgh Pirates of comic book movies. The premise of the whole thing is essentially sound: anyone familiar with Ghost Rider knows the potential is there for a kick-ass modern western just like building a baseball team on a base of solid young pitching. The movie has its highlights just like Jason Bay can hit 10 homers in 10 games or Freddy Sanchez can win the NL batting title. Ultimately, however, the movie and the Pirates fail for the same reason: the law of diminishing returns. You could spend, say, an extra $50 million on Ghost Rider to hire a good director, flesh out the cast with decent actors, and improve the special effects, but how much more money will that bring in the box office? As I've already mentioned, only so many people will go see Ghost Rider and that's not going to change if the movie is critically acclaimed. Batman, Spiderman, the X-Men, Superman, they're all a part of the American mythology. You can get a wife or a girlfriend or most generally uninterested people to go see that movie with you. Ghost Rider? Not so much. The Pirates are the same: they can pay for a good GM, a strong farm system, and the missing pieces, but what's the difference between 25,000 fans a night and 30,000 fans a night in terms of revenue? Not enough. In the long run, both ventures fix their problems with big name veterans likely to mail things in (Jeromy Burnitz, Nicolas Cage), flashy promotions (fireworks, Eva Mendes), and cash in on the people that were going to be there anyways.
So I said it was a double revelation. You are undoubtedly asking yourself what the second one revelation was. Well, as soon as I made the "Pirate-Ghost Rider" connection, I realized that I could be watching Citizen Kane and I'd probably be able to equate it to the Bucs. I am hopelessly doomed to a life of Pirate watching and analysis. I suppose the sooner I realize this, the easier it will be for me to accept.