“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.“ – Michael Moore.
On the Sunday before the election, my friend Kurt Schlichter tweeted the following:
“It just occured to me that I have zero idea what movies are playing in theaters. None. At all. I checked online. Not a single movie I am interested in. Not remotely. This would have been utterly inconceivable 20 years ago, even 10.”And then he tagged me, and pressed “send”… like a psychopath.
I haven’t been to a movie theatre since The Lord of the Rings trilogy – I think that was early 2000’s? Simply not interested.
much to the chagrin of my own spawn , I fell asleep in all the Lord of Rings
Kimmel’s gift to Gutfeld.
https://babylonbee.com/news/jimmy-kimmel-ratings-soar-after-debuting-new-segment-where-he-stands-there-all-sad-and-cries-like-a-wuss
FTA:
“Category 1 makes me sad, because those customers are lost to us forever. I don’t know how you come back from “you’re all a bunch of pedophiles.” But I will say to those of you in that group, that there are many thousands of good people working in Hollywood, including your humble author.”
Hollywood guy has the sads! Looks good on him.
There were many good people in NAZI Germany. We still bombed them into rubble.
Everyone in Hollywood is complicit with what happened to Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes, the two Coreys, Rose McGowan, etc., etc. Even if they weren’t involved, they knew what was going on.
Many years ago I had the opportunity to hang out with the two Coreys when they were in Canada filming a cameo on a low budget genre show. Haim was tight-lipped about it, but Feldman’s stories were chilling for the banality of it all. This was only a couple of years before Haim committed suicide by overdose.
This essay has more than a faint whiff of the Video Professor “Please buy my product” about it. He accurately notes that perfectly good movies went under-appreciated, but I think he misses why (for instance) Top Gun: Maverick did so well and The Fall Guy flopped: Tom Cruise telegraphed, early and often, that this was going to be a movie for, and more importantly by fans of the first one.
That’s what he’s missing. People are so fed the #$%& up with the constant woke BS that they’re not taking a chance on anything any more unless they’re promised, in advance, that the movie isn’t going to have any of that crap in it.
Gladiator 2 will be like gay porn with a $300 million cgi budget.
Pass.
“Gladiator 2 will be like gay porn with a $300 million cgi budget.
Pass.”
I passed on it as soon as I found out that Denzel Washington was in it, and portraying an actual Roman Emperor from that time period.
Sorry, no…the real Marcus Opellius Macrinus was NOT BLACK. He was born in what is now Algeria. Plenty of statues, busts and other representations of him exist…and again, he was clearly NOT BLACK in any of them.
(and I like Denzel Washington….I’m just disappointed that he would even take the role…)
I wonder if the government of Italy will wake this as seriously as Egypt did when someone tried to turn Cleopatra black, and file a formal protest with the US government?
The last movies I went to see were Top Gun – Maverick, Godzilla Minus One, and (for the 10th time) Saving Private Ryan on June 6, ie the 80th anniverary of D-Day. I went for the cool airplanes, roaring jet engines, cool battle scenes, and lots of explosions and gun fire. When Hollywood realizes that this is what audiences want, and not sappy love stories, or to be lectured to about inclusiveness, LBGTQ awareness, social injustices etc, then maybe the rebound will start.
“When Hollywood realizes that this is what audiences want, and not sappy love stories”
Not all Hollywood love stories are sappy.
Art Follows Life dept.
True Romance (1993):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F5QZpJxrto
An interesting note that predates all the woke BS: action movies have consistently higher ROIs than rom-coms and always have. They’re guaranteed moneymakers for studios, and yet studios churn out almost three times as many rom-coms as action movies.
That’s why I don’t buy his BS that “Hollywood wants to make money”. Hollywood has never had any idea what people want to go see; for every movie that makes it to the theatre two more are binned for tax purposes and never see the light of day (until Netflix started buying them).
I have always meant to see Gozilla minus 1.
Maybe some day I will.
I have no idea when the last time I went to a movie theater or watched one at home even.
Haven’t even seen a movie trailer lately so far as I know. I don’t watch TV either.
Go see it!!! It’s by far the best movie in recent years, along with BULLET TRAIN.
The few other movies I’ve bothered to see lately, DUNE 2 and that GHOSTBUSTERS 2 revamp, were disappointments. Nothing else was of interest.
Thanks!
I liked Bullet Train a lot more than Top Gun: Maverick, actually, although I appreciated both and didn’t find either a waste of money.
Every Ghostbusters movie since the first one has managed to fundamentally miss what made the first one such a success – it’s an episode of Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs as a supernatural comedy. Three lazy academics lose their cushy jobs and their only option to feed themselves is starting a niche pest control business. It’s exhausting, dirty, disgusting work of the kind they never would have considered – but in the process of making a go of it they stop being lazy grifters and start giving a damn about it and the film makes them heroes for it. It’s the quintessential blue-collar entrepreneur movie. The villain of the piece is an officious elfin saffy bureaucrat.
The films since have all tried to cater to the moms who took their kids to the theatre because of the cartoon, and those kids forty years later. They can squeeze a few nostalgia dollars out of that, but no one’s going to stick with a franchise that checks every AWFUL box, from the heroic single mother to the trendily autistic teenage girl.
The demographics have always been that women watch TV and men go to movies. When Hollywood starts making movies for men instead of insulting them, they’ll have a shot at recovering.
the “Good People Working in Hollywood” stood by or even participated in the evil “message movies” trash that drove us away from the theatres.
It doesn’t help that a night out at the movies can set you back well over $100 for two people.
After a close friend died, I took his widow and her two children (at her request) to see TANGLED, which I rather enjoyed, by the way!
As I was paying for the tickets and junk food, she sidled up to me and theatrically whispered, “I’ll give you the deeds for our house later”!
That’s an interesting article that misses the point ENTIRELY!!!! The public (as a majority) doesn’t particularly gravitate to messages or agendas. THEY GRAVITATE TO ENTERTAINMENT!!!! That’s why they don’t know how to interpret the biggest money makers being sequels and reboots. Take a look at that list of successful films provided. Of that listing, they don’t preach current day politics and agendas to the viewer. They are interesting stories. If any one of those films decided to throw in even a single obvious progressive message (even as a throw away) the film is going to fail for that very reason. If one of the actors decides to get on their high horse outside the film itself….it is similarly going to fail. Being a performer/entertainer is a popularity contest. It always has been. Making a film like Reagan or Religion based purely from a position to latch onto a demographic is likewise divisive IMO and the producers shouldn’t be surprised if the appeal doesn’t move beyond that demographic.
Just like organized sports, films are there to allow you to escape the nonsense of the real world. If you ask me, the sequels and reboots are mostly successful, NOT on their own merits in a lot of cases. They are successful because they offer entertainment (period)…and not preachy condescension. In a way, they are the lesser of two evils… What Hollywood should be reaching for is original, innovative, entertaining, story telling free of the encumbrances of preachy current bubbled messages. Such films would outperform the sequels and reboots on that list with few exceptions (IE, story continuation series like Dune).
Is it possible to make a movie where the whole family can sit around and watch without being carpet bombed with the F word every 5 minutes? Tough call…I doubt it.
Personally I don’t care. My shadow will never darken the doorway of a theatre ever again.
Have not seen a movie since Top Gun – Maverick. Generally, we go about once a year.
I haven’t been to a movie theatre in years … I believe the last film I saw was SeaBiscuit
So, I looked up my local theatre to see what was the headliner show. After scrolling past the umpteenth Marvel comics movie remake … I found the film “Here” with my local (Skyline HS) Tom Hanks in the leading role. How many times had he endorsed Kamala? i.e. endorsing the Deep State ?
Well … HERE is the review of “here”. A cheesy retooling of the Forest Gump theme. Gawwwwd.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/here-film-review
Yeah … not interested. Tom Hanks is box office poison now.
All those words just to show he doesn’t get it.
Last movie to see in the theatre was in 2015, A Walk in the Woods.
Rather enjoyable to watch from the position of a hiker.
Last movie to see in theatre was 1982 ( best guess ).
Movie was Gandhi.
The Mrs. and I went to the theater to see Deadpool and Wolverine. It is raunchy. It has blood spattering all over the place and a body count to rival a John Wick movie.
We don’t like raunchy. We don’t like spatter. But the Deadpool movies are so over-the-top as to be comical. So we like to see Deadpool movies on the big screen. There is also the occasional Gee Whizz! CGI movie that we would like to see on the big screen. Anything remotely woke is off the table.
The dude is right. We like to be entertained, not browbeaten with PC Woke nonsense.
–
–
What he missed entirely
–
–
a) It costs a bloody fortune to go to the movies!!! One large popcorn and one large drink, which we share, runs around $16 to $18 dollars.
We are fortunate to be able to go on Senior days, where the tickets are $8 – $10 depending on the theater, But concession prices are outrageous.
2) Big screen TVs and streaming are another big reason not to go to the theater. 65″ and larger high-def TVs are relatively cheap and you can subscribe to a movie streaming service for anywhere from $6 to $15 a month. If you subscribe to a few streaming services, for the price of one trip to the movies you can watch anything that was in the theaters recently. And if you pay around $5, you can watch current movies on demand.
–
–
I did not see him discuss cost or competition from streaming services allowing people to watch movies much cheaper and in the comfort of your own home.
“It costs a bloody fortune to go to the movies.”
Yep. And only getting worse.
All the theaters around here ripped out the cheap seats and replaced them with half as many luxury recliner type things. Food delivered to your reserved seating. Very nice, but they turned it into a luxury experience, with a luxury price tag.
When movies were $5 my family went every week, we would sneak in a can of coke and some junior mints to save money. 1pm Saturday matinee. Now that it’s a $100 date night, I never go.
Escaping The Matrix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkAh0CCrV9I
“Must the Audience Share in the Responsibility?”
This, again?
Short answer: NO.
Slightly longer answer: The audience has no responsibility for the quality, or lack thereof, of movies. Responsibility implies that the audience has influence over what gets made, and we don’t. Presented with a variety of crap, we pick the least-crappy. If the least-crappy is “Return of Maguffin 4, the Maguffining,” then it will probably do well-ish at the box office. Top Gun Maverick is a dumb movie with old people in it. It did well because for all its flaws, it was the least crappy thing out that season.
Longest answer: No, the audience is not to blame, and bears no responsibility. The author is claiming box-office performance is driving corner-office decisions in Hollywood, and that is simply not the case. They pay -no- attention to the fans and in fact deride them at every opportunity as racist/bigot/homophobes with no education and no sophistication. They pay no attention to the box office either, because “Get Woke Go Broke” is an observable fact, not merely a meme. They keep bombing at the box office, and they don’t deviate from their course. DEI is driving decisions. They’re determined to drive their political ideology down everyone’s throat, no matter how much it costs.