For years people have said in my presence that despite the leftist leanings of Hollywood, the people running it were there to make money. But despite that I watched as Hollywood produced bomb after bomb that preached the leftist creed above all other ingredients in the film. They sacrificed entertainment, artistry and certainly profitability on the altar of woke propaganda. Probably the most egregious of these studios was Disney that sacrificed the virtually unlimited money-making machines of such franchises as Star Wars, Marvel Comics and even the classic Disney princess movies to bang away at woke agenda elements like LGBTQ identity, anti-white racism and feminist dogma.
Well, maybe, just maybe, the tide has turned. I think this week we received two data points that signal a definite reversal. The first is the news today that Sky Dance has cancelled the third season of “Star Trek – Starfleet Academy.” This was a two-season installment that has been estimated to have cost somewhere between two hundred and four hundred million dollars. Now that is an enormous amount of money but what makes it astonishing is that when this show ran it wasn’t one of the top ten shows on Paramount Plus. It was regularly beaten out by reruns of “Everyone Loves Raymond” and “Sponge Bob Square Pants.” In fact, it was even worse than this. In order to build up buzz for the first episode, it was put on YouTube for free and less than a thousand people watched it the first day. Think about that.
Paramount was bought by Skydance last year so they didn’t order this show. And the production company (Alex Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout) is finishing its contract with Paramount in April and it’s looking like they won’t be doing anymore Star Trek for Skydance. And Skydance is probably going to purchase Warner Brothers this year and that may have a very great impact on how the DC Universe movies look going forward. So, there is an example of changing sensibilities going forward in Hollywood. Enormous costs for productions that no one wants to watch are ending. So that’s the negative case, what won’t be happening anymore.
As for what is happening on the positive side let’s look at what Amazon/MGM have released this week. Andy Weir (the author of the book turned movie “The Martian”) wrote the book “Project Hail Mary” in 2021. It cost two hundred million to make. It made $141 million on its first weekend. This is one of the biggest openings in the last four years. And it is predicted to be a big hit. It’s a movie whose only human character is a white male. The only diversity casting is an alien creature that looks like a pile of small rocks. There’s no woke elements at all. Just an adventure story about a man light years from Earth cooperating with an unearthly creature to save both of their planets. From all of the reviews I’ve read it’s a solid movie that the whole family can and probably will enjoy and it doesn’t say anything about the LGBTQ or how white people stole America from the Indians or enslaved black people. And the fact that the astronaut is not a girl boss but a young white man I take to be aspirational for every white American boy who has been told for the last couple of decades that they shouldn’t get a turn at being the good guy. So that’s the positive side. Hollywood can make good movies and people will come to the theaters to see them. And they can make money doing it.
Maybe the tide has turned.
I’ll have to watch and wait. I haven’t been to an in-theater movie in over ten years. Besides the poor films, the experience is further degraded by high ticket prices. Higher concession prices, still higher sound-track volume, to the point where I pack ear-plugs, a mind-numbing, endless series of ads, and unruly, unsupervised teenagers yelling at each other and into cell phones, and raising all varieties of hell.
No, it’s going to take a LOT of improvement before I subject myself and My Lady to a night of dinner and a movie.
For the most part, going forward, in-home viewing of movies is the reality. But it still requires Hollywood (or whoever it is that makes them) to produce watchable movies. That is the part that may finally be happening again. Time will tell.
Well, other than that, Ed, what is your true opinion of the modern movie theater experience?
Cautiously optimistic.
Yes. Definitely some promising signs. Cracks are appearing in the woke consensus in Hollywood. Hopefully seeing some of their colleagues making money will convince the true believers to wake up.
I suspect Hollywood would STILL like to make money. The issue is they have no clue who their audience is. They write for their own warped sensibilities, they pay no attention to existing fan bases (Thus Disney’s failure with most post Endgame movies in the MCU and with the Star Wars sequel trilogy). The latest Star Trek mess (aka Starfleet Academy) is a similar issue. In addition, they just don’t know how to write a story anymore. Hail Mary will succeed because Andy Weir can write a story and Hollywood has wisely stayed faithful to it, making only the changes… Read more »
Seems to me that an industry that doesn’t know/understand their customer base is a contradiction and, without external support, should go rapidly extinct.
It’s hard to overstate the destructiveness of the woke ideology/theology?. The conspiracy theorists among us may suspect that “woke” isn’t entirely organic.
The fact that an outsider has bought up Paramount and is seemingly about to purchase Warner Brothers makes me think that the status quo of “Hollywood” has already collapsed and whatever is to follow is coming into being. Even Disney is purportedly abandoning the woke project. MGM is owned by Amazon so maybe we are going to see something like sanity return to entertainment. Or maybe I’m just projecting my hope on a chaotic reality.