With over 7 billion people in the world and an infinite Internet at many of their disposals, nothing should come as a surprise to us anymore. It was insanely awesome that someone animated Patton Oswalt’s Star Wars/Marvel filibuster from Parks and Recreation, but that was inevitable and hardly surprising. No, it takes a very specific kind of invested indulgence to widen our eyes, and Twitter user "555 µHz" has done just that. The person is dedicating that account to posting the entirety of Tony Scott’s 1986 cornball action romp Top Gun, one single frame at a time. I feel the need…the need for the least speedy procedure for getting something done, ever.
This is the kind of project that you or I might never consider, but then you and I aren’t baffling psychos. The page is refreshed with a brand new image every 20-30 minutes or so, and even if all of the tweets are being set up ahead of time to post later, that’s still quite a bit of busy work just to…well I’m not sure what the point is, or why he or she took on such a time-consuming project. Perhaps it’s more than one person – maybe the 555 in the name signifies how many people are a part of this – but it still doesn’t quite justify anything. I mean, the posts started on January 23, and it is only just now getting to the bar scene, though the singing has yet to take place.
Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it, however. I’m a huge fan of people pulling off things I never could in the name of "because they can." I’d personally rather see this done with something heavy on the visual details like The LEGO Movie or Brazil, but there’s something strangely delightful about catching Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise with the most goofy faces going.
With VHS tapes as a picture, perhaps 555 µHz is just looking to preserve a slice of cinema in a way that doesn’t rely on physical media. If your Internet connection is fast enough, you can almost watch a silent version of the movie just by scrolling up the page really fast. As Twitter projects go, it’s a tad more questionable than Todd Berger’s tongue-in-cheek release of his dark comedy It’s a Disaster via Vine videos last year, but it’ll be here for a long while, so I’ll just have to get used to it.
I think I’ll just have to stay offline altogether once it gets to the volleyball scene.
