Don’t be fooled by the title of this post. By no means am I implying that Gatsby is a bad movie; it was actually really good. DiCaprio was perfect for Gatsby and Baz Luhrmann did, as expected, wonderful at bringing the story of a melancholy millionaire to a new generation.

So what is the catastrophe, you might wonder? The movie is boring. At least that’s what someone told me while explaining why he wouldn’t be seeing it.

His girlfriend saw it, apparently, and said it didn’t have much of a plot. Can you believe that? Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby has a weak plot?

I almost had a stroke. Are we so distant from the idea of what makes a great story? Are mysterious and subtle characters too foreign to us? I hate books that make me think, I’ve heard that before.

Maybe it’s that America is incapable of paying attention to anything for more than five minutes without an explosion or nudity. I hope I’m wrong, but it’s getting harder to tell. When did we lose track of what even makes a story a story?

Perhaps it should have been redrafted? Maybe Gatsby should have been a vampire?