For someone who really likes movies, I find a surprising number of them really boring. What’s more, I can tell you when I find them boring: after one hour. In over half the movies I watch, I look at my watch at some point because I’m bored and I’m wondering when whatever “entertainment” I’m watching will be over. In almost all cases it is within five minutes of one hour. I take this to mean that most films should only be about an hour because they only have an hour’s worth of creativity (or less—much less).

Sometimes, I will look at my watch earlier—say, after a half-hour. But nothing could prepare me for the experience I had yesterday when I went to see Thor with my brother. After only three minutes (2% of the film!) I looked at my watch. Three minutes and I was already willing to leave the theater.

The film had the problems you would expect, but what really bugged me was the character of Loki. I know nothing of Thor, but I knew immediately that Loki was the bad guy. Why? Because he was the skinny, thoughtful guy. Heroes aren’t thoughtful! Heroes just rush in, knowing that everything will work out because the skinny, thoughtful screenwriters have deemed it so.

Still, there was something weird about this film: the actors. It had some really good actors and I am most definitely not referring to Natalie Portman. It had Anthony Hopkins (okay, he’s been in a lot of dreck) and Stellan Skarsgård. Even relative newcomer Tom Hiddleston was good. I don’t even have anything particularly bad to say about Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth. (I could, however, go on and on about how much I hated Natalie Portman in this film.) How was it, I thought, that this movie that in just about every other way was terrible had good actors and good acting from pretty much all of the cast?

And then I got my answer, right after Thor went to sulk that he would never again see Jane Foster (Portman)—at least until the sequel.

Oh my God! What in the hell is the greatest Shakespearean actor of all time directing this stupid film? Does he owe back taxes? Is someone blackmailing him? I just don’t get it. But don’t let what I’ve said about the actors cause you to give this movie a chance. It is dreck, dreck, dreck. But it does show that Branagh is not just a great actor: he is a great director of actors. (He is not, as far as I can tell however, a great director generally. Maybe I’ll write more about that later—but probably not.)

Regardless, this film should have been titled, Thor: God of Boredom.

In Sam Harris’ excellent The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values,[1] he puts forth an excellent experiment called The Asian Disease Problem. Here is how Harris presents the problem:

The reason this is interesting is because there is no difference between the options. In each case, Program A saves 200 people and kills 400 people, and Program B has a one-third chance of saving everyone and a two-thirds chance of killing everyone. To me it is easy. I am the most unlucky person alive. So if I have a two-thirds chance of killing everyone, I’m going to kill everyone. Therefore, I feel confident that regardless of how the problem was put to me (which it wasn’t—I was given both, just as you just were), I would go for the sure thing: save 200 lives. But what about other people? Would they really change their answers based upon how the question was asked?

I decided to find out, even though countless graduate students have done this to death. I asked 14 of my friends (it’s hard to believe I have that many, I know). The results I got were not as stark as I had expected, based upon what Harris wrote, but they were pretty much in accordance with what my intuition indicated.

When the first question was asked, four people picked Program A and two picked Program B. That makes sense: you are telling people they can save 200 people and you don’t even mention the 400 who will necessarily die. When the second question was asked, four people picked Program A and four picked Program B: an even split.

I don’t have much to add to this. According to Harris, what this shows is that people overvalue certainty. So, the certainty of saving 200 lives is really compelling. Just the same, the certainty of losing 400 lives is really repugnant. Thus, when we are asked, “Do you want to save 200 people, and by the way, 400 others will die,” we jump on that option. But when we are asked, “Do you want to kill 400 people, and by the way, 200 others will live,” we figure, “Well, maybe I’ll try my luck at saving them all, even though the odds aren’t that good.

The brain in a funny thing.

[1] I will be writing more about this just as soon as I can find my many pages of notes. You see, I just moved and things are even more out of control than usual. Plus, I am working on the pilot of the first Frankly Curious Media TV show called, The Post, Post Modern Comedy Hour. Just in case you were wondering: it’s a half-hour long. Oh! And here’s the theme song:

It’s the post, post modern comedy hour
You mega-dose of curiosity power
Out goes illusion! Out goes myth!
In comes compassion, knowledge, and bliss
It’s the post, post modern comedy hour!

(Video soon to come!)