The Movie We Deserve, But Not The One We Need Right Now...

 Here's an interesting - if slightly worrying - fact: Nobody knows how much money a country is actually making.
 I don't want to over-complicate the already labyrinthine financial picture, but the total output of a country, the GDP, is measured by a system devised decades ago.
 The formulas used are fine for measuring, say, tonnes of steel, but weren't designed for the modern world, in which a lot of what we buy and sell is basically intangible.
 I'm sitting here right now, paying for minutes on my phone.
 That's not something that can be measured easily as a product. How much does a minute cost? How much does it cost the next person? And so on.
 This is why any picture of the GDP of a nation is always going to be, ultimately, a conjecture of best-guesses.
 This upswing in the immaterial seems to have found its apex in the gold-standard of modern ethereal currency: Hype.
 We're churning out tonnes of hype, every day. Immigrants toil for a pittance in hype mines, day and night, to find the raw materials that advertising execs can then inject into your eyeballs, just trying to get you to be slightly more excited about the new iPad.
 We're hyping everything. New Samsung Galaxy phone?! It's like getting to third base with Jesus.
 Next-generation consoles?! They'll be so good your brain will rupture and leak out of your ears just from opening the box, and there'll be nobody to clean it up because you'll have already sold your family to acquire the thing in the first place.
 This week's Heat magazine?! So interesting that everyone at CERN has downed tools and started re-training as a paparazzo.
 Everything is over hyped these days, but weirdly, the effects of hype are inversely proportionate. The closer you get to it, the less of an effect it has.
 It's a bit like a magic eye painting; mind blowing if you stand back a bit, but then when you get up close you realise it's just a splodgy, incomprehensible mess.
 Samsung's new phone might be awesome, and there might actually be an interesting story in this week's "Heat" [spoiler: there isn't] but by the time these products actually arrive, we're all so burned out from the jumping up and down and salivating that they always feel a little anticlimactic.
 Take, for example, The Dark Knight Rises.
 It's out on Friday, but everyone I know is still more excited that the sun came out yesterday for thirty nine seconds.
 The story couldn't have been more different six months ago. Everyone was atwitter - and, invariably, on twitter - about the new trailers, the first clips, the leaked information.
 Now it's finally upon us, and I feel like the whole hype machine blew a gasket a few miles back, leaving the Batmobile to limp into the multiplex, being pushed by a dishevelled and exhausted butler.
 I also think this is for the best, because, much as people hate to face the truth, this is the third film in a trilogy, and the third part of a trilogy is always, always crap.

The only person who doesn't look like he's reconsidering his career choices here is Richard Pryor, and that's only because he'd finally found a way to get higher than he already was...

 Okay, so that's hyperbolic.* There are a couple of threequels that were alright. "Die Hard: With a Vengeance" might actually be my favourite entry in the series, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" was brilliantly enjoyable, and "Return of the Jedi", for all the fan-bashing, was still a pretty good movie.
 By and large, however, third movies in a series are terrible. If an original idea is good and the second film expands on that, the third film is usually the point where everything implodes and the franchise disappears up it's own arse. Either that, or it's the point where a series has hit the event horizon of bankability and everyone just stops caring, because whatever they shit out onto the screen, people are going to pay for it.

                                                  I can literally do this all fucking day...

 For the record, I don't think Christopher Nolan is out of ideas with the Batman franchise. As one of the more interesting and creative directors currently working, I'm sure he has big plans for the story.
 I do, however, think there's a very real danger of the story getting weighed down by it's own themes and ideas.
 I'll still see it, don't get me wrong, and it's not like I'm known for my uncanny foresight (I thought Dereck Chisora would beat David Haye, and my house is currently being protected by G4S.) I'm just fully prepared to be disappointed by this movie, and I think everyone else should be, too.
 It goes without saying in the modern world, but don't believe the hype; The Dark Knight Rises might actually be a bit crap.
 I hope I'm wrong.


*See?! Even I'm doing it these days...