Dear reader, I may be running out of strength. I’m tired of Hollywood patronising me with garbage. I’m tired of movies that make completely untrue assumptions about me. I’m tired of false advertising that tricks me into giving up my time and money. I’m tired of film critics setting the tone of the conversation by writing as though they can speak for anyone other than themselves. Is it obvious yet that the new film about the big scary mountain ruined my 22nd birthday? No? Well, it did.

Let me be clear about this: Everest (2015) IMAX 3D–or whatever–is garbage. It tells no particular story, nor does it hold any suspense. None of the people involved in its creation appear to care in the slightest about how films communicate ideas and emotions to their audience. A film is not worthwhile unless its framing, editing, use of sound, and manipulation of colour can be read as deliberate and interpreted accordingly. I have to assume every choice exercised by the filmmakers is intentional because otherwise meaningfully talking about film becomes impossible. Allow me to illustrate with the example of Gravity, an imperfect film which nevertheless avoids so many of the mistakes Everest makes, and takes a much more cinematic approach. So, in Gravity, the long disorienting take at the beginning and sparse use of music aids the viewer in empathising with Sandra Bullock and strongly hints at what feeling trapped in space with her must be like. In Everest, every jarring cut away from the mountain and back to Keira Knightley snivelling in extreme close-up on a 60ft screen just made me roll my eyes and sigh. Relating to characters is about how interesting they are to the audience. This can be achieved through dialogue but in a visual medium like film that’s perhaps not the sharpest tool for the job. Having said that, filmmakers must also exercise care in how they use the unique grammar of film to avoid unintentional humour. For instance, just shoving the camera in the face of a crying actress with a runny nose, snot slowly dripping towards her parted lips does not exactly read as gravitas. Mandatory empathy of this kind is like an unsolicited hug from someone you really don’t like because they wrongly thought you needed it but never stopped to ask.

This is exacerbated by the fact that although Everest IMAX 3D is based on an expedition that really happened, it focuses on a bunch of people whose stories really didn’t need to be retold. We already have plenty of films about straight white men overcoming (although exactly what is never clear). What about Yasuko Namba? She was a Japanese businesswoman, aged 47, who had climbed six of the Seven Summits and was attempting to become the oldest woman to summit Everest before she died in the disaster. She gets all of five minutes on screen before making way for all the interchangeable bearded guys to yell incomprehensibly at each other and not-so-triumphantly overcome. Making her a focal point of the experience would have made the film more engaging because the audience might have been able to relate to her unique purpose that day. Instead, we have generic men in indistinguishable costumes. Worse still, the camera lingers over the rest of the women snivelling and fussing (in IMAX! in 3D!). That kind of message is impossible to ignore when it’s being yelled at you. Men: strong; women: weak. Give me a goddamn break. All I wanted was to spend the day feeling twenty-twooo. Hollywood, take a look what you’ve done ‘cause now we’ve got bad blood.