Seen any good movies lately?
An incisive monologue by the YouTuber known as The Critical Drinker perceptively outlines why Hollywood films are so costly, and more importantly, offers ways to fix an ongoing problem that results in the release of so many flopbusters that can ultimately bankrupt the studios.
For the latter, he explains, in part:
Well, the first thing they need to do is start trimming the fat. Cut down on the number of pointless job roles on set, the intimacy coordinators and the sensitivity readers, the unnecessary producers and overseers, who do nothing but clog up production. Stop relying so much on overblown CGI to carry a weak script, and bring back practical effects and location shooting. Recognize that actors no longer sell movie tickets simply by existing and pay them accordingly, because if everyone does it then they’ve got no choice but to accept it. Sorry Dwayne [“The Rock” Johnson], you’re gonna have to put that third private jet on hold for now. Also, bring back solid, quality mid-budget movies that can be made for less than $100 million, because you can make three of them for every bloated, wannabe mega-blockbuster that’s churned out. That means three times as many chances to have a smash hit, which, in turn, means less risk with individual projects, which results in less studio interference and more opportunities for creativity and innovation. It also allows you to avoid the dreaded pitfall of the safe, generic omni-film that has to try to appeal to everyone because it’s the only hope of making back its ridiculous budget, but in reality ends up satisfying no one.
With cheaper films, you can afford to target a specific audience and actually appeal to them. And for f**k sakes, start hiring competent and experienced writers again who can actually deliver good scripts instead of relying on a bunch of meaningless checkboxes that have been promoted into positions they’re totally not qualified for who are going to deliver substandard work that will require a ton of expensive reshoots to fix. Do these things and you might just find that making movies can be easier, more cost effective and more profitable than you imagined. Or on the other hand, feel free to ignore me and carry on sh**ting out $300 million turds that nobody watches until the money eventually runs out and your whole industry falls apart around you. The choice, as they say, is yours.
Along with the equally cogent editorials delivered on the Nerdrotic YouTube channel, The Critical Drinker’s soliloquys make for thought-provoking and entertaining content, even if have no plans to see or haven’t seen any of the movies or streaming show that they discuss.
In this particular monologue about the movie industry in the broad sense that obviously goes beyond the Hollywood short-hand term, the Drinker also implied that the box-checkers more intent on social engineering “don’t know how to put together smart, complex, logically consistent stories populated by compelling characters, interesting dialogue, and meaningful arcs. This low-quality writing has the knock-on effect of poor test screenings, which, in turn, gives rise to… [expensive] reshoots.”
If you scroll through, say, the Netflix catalog, you’ll likely agree that a lack of logically consistent stories exists.
For what it’s worth, and whether or not there is an actual marketplace demand for this type of content, there seems to be no shortage of scripted movies or series on Netflix and elsewhere featuring an all-knowing Girl Boss in the lead role who prevails no matter what over evil or stupid (or both) males, however. [See below]
Related story: Is ‘Hollywoke’ the Stale Sequel to Hollywood?
Along these lines, Breitbart’s John Nolte previously wrote, “Normal people… care about stories, not political agendas. We care about universal themes, not scolding and virtue signaling. Above all, we want to be transported away for a couple of hours to forget our troubles with characters we can relate to…”
The Drinker alludes to the diversity gatekeepers and their acolytes that appear to controlling both hiring and creative decision-making.
In a slight digression, in any industry, hiring, firing, and promotion practices in some instances are already (and have been) unfair or random and can be based on favoritism, nepotism, or for various other arbitrary or irrational reasons.
So meritocracy wasn’t or isn’t always operative. [In the decadent entertainment sector, the tawdry casting couch has traditionally been part of the decor, too.] Whether those instances rise to the level of provable workplace illegality against hardworking employees or applicants is another matter.
And to be sure, some people get hired for positions for which they lack qualifications on paper, but rise to the occasion.
With identity politics in the form of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion apparently running rampant in corporate America, however, discriminatory hiring decisions can violate Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act as well as other laws and regulations when exclusion masquerades as inclusion.
In this context, America First Legal has filed a legal complaint against Disney which apparently has prioritized DEI in content production.
Added: Reflecting on Madame Web, the latest dismal failure from what has irreverently become known as the M-She-U, The Critical Drinker reaffirmed that action movies in general (i.e., sci-fi, thrillers, and maybe even in other genres) with an identity-politics-driven narrative — the message — usually don’t appeal to either gender on a macro level.
Again, instead of a smug female as the lead character surrounded irredeemable and inept males, this is what the studios need to do to win back the audience, he asserted.
Instead of writing likeable and distinctly feminine characters that complemented the existing male ones, the writers and creatives treated it more like a competition that only one side was ever allowed to win. A story about a female protagonist learning to free herself from the oppressive demands of others and discover her true potential is a perfectly viable story to tell. The problems creep in when that becomes the only story that you ever tell, and their standard practice of lazily taking stereotypical male traits and pouring them straight into female characters failed to win anyone over. Men were generally put off by the new crop of overbearing, aggressive, infallible girl bosses who seemed to exist purely to show off and humiliate their male counterparts at every opportunity, while women failed to connect with them either because they represented masculine ideals that didn’t come naturally to them in a genre that most of them didn’t particularly care for anyway. In short, Hollywood’s wasted billions of dollars chasing an audience that doesn’t exist, and in the process, they’ve gradually pushed away the one that did…
Franchises like Marvel, Star Wars, DC, and Star Trek can still have plenty of kick-ass female heroes going on exciting adventures. They just need to be written more like actual human beings with believable flaws and weaknesses and challenges to overcome, instead of overbearing, obnoxious power fantasies that nobody can identify with. And they need to be balanced out by equally strong and capable male heroes that appeal to male audiences. Because believe it or not, those are the driving force behind your box office revenue. They need characters who can actually challenge and push them to be better, who don’t automatically give way to them at the slightest sign of conflict, instead of the neutered lumps of wet lettuce that we’ve been getting, who are always portrayed as less smart, less skilled, less confident and, well, just less, in general…
You’re not going to get equal numbers of women to watch science fiction or action or superhero movies, just like you’re not going to get equal numbers of men to watch romance flicks or musicals. The girl-boss concept is dead. You might not like it, but your audience is your audience all the same, and if you don’t start catering to them, you might just find that they no longer exist, and perhaps neither will you…
Given one expensive box-office flop after another, will the cinematic “Girl Boss” actually get fired?
This whole article is moot. Hollywood is beyond repair and nobody even cares! Shovel the dirt on top and move on to less Woke, derivative, boring, pandering, lecturing sources of entertainment.