Kicking it

This post is not at all about the Middle East--well, just peripherally it is, just a little bit.  But really, this post is about Veronica Mars!  You see, as some of you know, I was a backer of the Kickstarter campaign to crowdsource the funding for a Veronica Mars movie years after the television show ended abruptly.  For the uninitiated (or for those who couldn't care less about this sort of thing) being a backer meant I made a pledge as part of the campaign that ultimately raised over 5 million dollars.  Mine was a modest pledge, enough to feel like I had contributed and earn myself a t-shirt, a PDF copy of the shooting script, and a digital copy of the movie when it came out.  There were others who pledged much, much more and earned themselves everything from a trip to the premiere(s) to being an extra on the set to an actual speaking role.  I neither had that much money nor was I going to give it to a movie, but I did my small part for the cause.

In truth, when I was re-watching the three seasons on Veronica Mars in preparation for the movie, I realized that somewhere in the middle of the third season I had quit watching, so the end of the show was a revelation for me and had I realized just how much the end left the viewer hanging, I probably would have been even more insistent that I be part of the campaign to tie up loose ends in a movie!

In between the Kickstarter campaign's beginnings and the eventual release of the movie on March 14th, a lot happened for me.  Most importantly, I moved out of the country and far out of the realm of the Kickstarter campaign, though there were people who pledged who lived in Europe and Austrailia and the like, but I was pretty much on the edges of where I assumed the movie would reach when it premiered.  And I was right.  There were premieres in Canada and in various European countries, but I think the closest to me was somewhere in Germany.  And I was not about to fly over there just to see the movie on the big screen!

But not to worry, right?  I got a digital copy of the movie that was sent out to me on the same day as the theatrical premiere so I would be able to watch the movie in the comfort of my own home here in the desert.  Only...there was a problem.  I got my digital download code fine...but it didn't work.  I needed to download a new app and then load the movie onto a new video library in the cloud which the app recognized, but the app wouldn't recognize me or my code nor could I get the cloud library to work properly or at all, really.  I was pretty sick during the week of the premiere, so I calmly emailed customer service and went back to bed, sure I could either work it out when I felt better or when customer service got back to me, whichever came first.  The next day, and the next, I tried again, emailing customer service all along with my progress, or lack thereof.  I finally realized that part of the problem was my computer telling the app I wasn't in North America, the UK, or Europe, so I remedied that problem with my handy dandy VPN service (LOVE this, by the way!) and then tried a few different ways of backing myself into these services to see if I could find a way of leapfrogging the problem areas and then, all at once, I was in!  Success!  So I downloaded the movie as quickly as I could to my iPad and started watching it right then on the desktop, just in case the download failed.  The download functioned perfectly, and I was finally able to watch the movie in its entirety, just a few days after the rest of the world.

Apparently, I was one of the lucky ones.  A significant percentage of backers had problems with the digital downloading and some were even given refunds when they ended up having to purchase the movie in order to watch it at all.  I never did hear from customer service, probably because they were inundated with complaints from these angry backers.  The problem with rabid fans is they are always rabid, particularly when things go wrong!  But I was happy to see the movie at all, especially given my geographical issues.

As for the movie itself (SPOILER ALERT!)...


I liked it.  I wouldn't say I loved it, but I liked it a lot.  It really was an extension of the television show, so it felt more like a two-part special episode than a theatrical event, but as a conclusion for the show, it was satisfying.  I may be one of only a handful of people who think Veronica should have ended up with Piz instead of Logan, but I knew that was a long shot, so I wasn't too disappointed by her choice.  I appreciated the inside jokes and the cameos just for the benefit of the backers, though I wish the movie could have been just a tad more edgy in keeping with the tone of the show.  My only real complaint was the treatment of Weevil, always my favorite character.  He was given three scenes, really, one in which he tells us he has turned his life around with a new life, a new wife, and a daughter, another in which he gets shot totally randomly (because it's always the gang members, even reformed, who get shot), and a third in which he is really no more than a plot device to add to the already sufficient evidence that the current sheriff's department is corrupt.  His story seemed not at all wrapped up nicely, the most unsatisfactory part of the whole plot as far as I was concerned.  There was even the intimation that he had returned to his gang ways but no explanation for why or how or anything.  Lame!

I do hope there is another movie, but I think the financial realities of this release will mean that won't happen.  This production was an experiment in a lot of ways, and I think we learned a lot about how crowd funding can and can't work and how writing exclusively for the fans and the fans alone can, perhaps, backfire.  Regardless, I got my money's worth, in the end.  Should YOU see the movie?  Yes, I think you should, but only if you've watched the entire series, because then your viewing will be a richer experience.  Mine certainly was!