Category: Movie Reviews

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The Asphalt Jungle (1950) – A Movie Review

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The Asphalt Jungle is a heist film noir co-written and directed by John Huston.  It stars Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, Louis Calhern and Sam Jaffe with a supporting role for Marilyn Monroe.  Sam Jaffe plays “Doc,” a criminal mastermind who was recently released from prison and is now recruiting a team to steal a million dollars-worth of gem stones from the safe of an upscale jewelry business in the unnamed mid-western city in which the story takes place.  Local racket boss Cobby points Doc to Alonzo Emmerich (played by Louis Calhern) as the fixer who can finance the caper and line up the fences to sell the jewels.  He also finds him a getaway driver (James Whitmore as Gus Minissi), a safe cracker (Anthony Caruso as Louis Ciavelli) and a “hooligan” (Sterling Hayden as Dix Handley).

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

As the team assembles Doc privately discusses with Dix his distrust of Emmerich and tells him that he will depend on Dix to protect the loot in case Emmerich attempts to double-cross them.  There is a subplot around a dirty cop; Lt. Ditrich who receives protection money from Cobby but is being pressured by the police commissioner to find Doc.  And we learn more about Emmerich’s personal life and his problems.  Emmerich has an aging bed-ridden wife and a young beautiful girlfriend; Angela Finlay (Marilyn Monrie) that he keeps in a love nest downtown.  And maybe not coincidentally he’s broke and can’t fund the heist.  But his associate     Bob Brannom; a hard-boiled private detective who doesn’t see crime as an obstacle to making money, talks Cobby into fronting the heist expenses and throws in with Emmerich in a plan to steal the jewels and leave the heist team out in the cold.

At this point we watch the team in action.  And it’s like clockwork.  Right up until the point when the nitroglycerin blows the door off the safe.  Somehow the blast triggers an alarm at a bank down the block from the jewelry store.  And when the security guard shows up at the back door Dix flattens him with one punch to the jaw.  But his gun flies out of his hand hits the ground, discharges and shoots Louis Ciavelli in the gut.  Gus takes Louis home and tries to get a doctor who will keep his mouth shut about the gunshot wound while helping his friend.  Meanwhile Doc and Dix show up at Emmerich’s to transfer the loot and get their cut.  But when Brannom sticks them up Dix shoots it out with him.  Dix is wounded in the side and Brannom ends up dead.  Doc convinces Emmerich to fix his mistake by using his legitimate connections to work a deal with the insurance company to get $250,000 in return for the return of the jewels.

Meanwhile the police have offered a reward for the capture of Doc whom they assume is responsible for the theft.  A witness comes forward saying that Doc had been seen entering Cobby’s gambling house and Lt. Ditrich is given an ultimatum to find Doc.  Ditrich slaps Cobby around until he confesses and gives up everyone involved in the heist.

The police go to arrest Emmerich and he shoots himself to death rather than go to jail.  They arrest Gus and go looking for Louis but he has already died of his wounds.  Dix has a girlfriend Doll who hides him and Doc while the police search the city for them.  Doc decides to head out on his own and catches a cab that will take him to Cincinnati.  But stopping off at a café he indulges in watching a young woman dance provocatively to a jazz tune a little too long and a couple of state troopers recognize him and arrest him.  Dix and Doll drive out of town, heading for Dix’s boyhood home in Kentucky.  But Dix has been slowly succumbing to his gunshot wound and just as he reaches the farm his family used to own, he collapses and dies.

This sounds like a pretty wild story and it is.  But it’s very well done.  Jaffe, Hayden, Whitmore and Calhern do a splendid job portraying their characters and selling the plot.  And even the secondary characters like Monroe and Caruso are very strong and provide an entertaining atmosphere for this noir.  I may be biased but I’ve always thought this was one of the best crime dramas ever made.  And this was done in the days when the Hays Code limited the amount of violence that could be displayed in a motion picture and when special effects were basically non-existent.  I would say this movie gets my highest rating for fans of crime and noir films.

The Dresser (1983) – A Movie Review

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“The Dresser” is a very odd film.  It’s based on a stage play and since it involves the staging of a performance of King Lear, you could say theater suffuses the movie.  It takes place in England during WWII.  Albert Finney plays Sir; an aged Shakespearean actor of the old school, full of exaggerated gestures and overblown histrionic elocution.  He leads a company of actors travelling around Britain performing Shakespeare to the wartime population.  But it’s not going well.  Because of the draft, Sir declares that he must find his actors from amongst, “old men, cripples and nancy-boys.”  And he says this to his dresser Norman even though Norman is obviously one of those nancy-boys.

Tom Courtenay plays Norman as a somewhat flamboyant homosexual who assists Sir in preparing for his performances.  He bathes him, helps him apply his make-up and if necessary, reminds him of his lines from the wings.  But this assistance has of late become much more difficult because Sir seems to be having a mental and physical breakdown.  He becomes incoherent and agitated and is liable to run screaming through the streets shouting that he can’t go on.

On the day of his first performance in a new city he is hospitalized because of one of these fits coming upon him in public.  And the company and especially Madge the business manager are convinced that Sir has reached the end of his career and must retire to a rest home.  But when he shows up back at the theater Norman uses all of his knowledge of Sir’s psychology to calm him and orient him into the mental state needed to perform the part of King Lear.  Using visual and vocal cues he walks him through the ritual by which the make-up and costume of Lear bring Sir back into the mindset needed to perform.

And that is the film; Norman coaching, praising, wheedling and sometimes chastising the old man into producing a performance of Lear that the audience receives enthusiastically.  And during the performance and the breaks in the play when the Lear character is not on stage we learn about Sir’s relationship to his troupe; Madge’s basically unrequited love for Sir and his relationship with his wife; “Her Ladyship” who is playing Cordelia and how he stands with the other members of the acting troupe, who mostly fear him for his cantankerous temper.

And by the end of the play when Sir dies peacefully in his dressing room with only Norman there to witness his end we find out that Norman loved him too although it was completely unexpressed in life.  And he weeps over the body of Sir.

Now this is a very strange film.  And if it’s a pro-homosexual movie then it’s a very odd one.  Norman takes abuse by anyone outside the theater who sizes up his obviously gay speech pattern and mannerisms.  He’s told to “sod off,” “get stuffed” and “bugger off” by three different characters.  One of the actors who knows of his friendship with a homosexual actor who has been arrested, notes to Norman that, “The pansy fraternity is always upset when one of their own is caught.”  And even Sir, when discussing this actor’s arrest with Norman states that he himself “holds no brief for buggers.”  So obviously this is not one of the modern paeans to gayness.

But I found it quite entertaining.  Albert Finney’s portrayal of Sir is by turns; interesting, humorous, sad and extremely human.  The character of Norman is also well-drawn.  He’s a fussy, neurotic but loyal friend to Sir and a hard-working part of the acting company.  You can see that this acting troupe is his whole life and Sir’s death represents the end of his own small world.  He will be all by himself.

Recommending this film is difficult.  The gay identity of Norman may put off some viewers.  So, let’s put that in as a caveat.  If that doesn’t preclude someone from watching the film then I can recommend it from the point of view of entertainment.  The play within a movie keeps your attention and the characters are well-drawn and interesting.

Moneyball (2011) – A Movie Review

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Moneyball is a somewhat fictionalized story about how Oakland Athletics’ General Manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) brings advanced statistical analysis (sabermetrics) to the management of a major league baseball team.

When the A’s are beaten in the fifth game of the 2001 ALDS series by the New York Yankees and subsequently the Yankees and Red Sox steal away the two best players on the team (Jason Giami and Johnny Damon) through free-agency and the A’s owner tells Beane that there is no money to replace these stars, Beane searches for a way to overcome the unfair disparity of his team’s poverty.  Beane discovers a young statistician in the Cleveland Indians management team; Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill) who understands sabermetrics and brings him to Oakland to help him compete for the American League championship against teams like the New York Yankees who have three times the salary budget.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The movie chronicles Beane and Brand battling with the team’s scouting personnel and the A’s manager Art Howe (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) while being crucified in the press and social media by fans and pundits because of the unorthodox trades and policies that they institute.  Everything is based on what statistically will reduce the number of outs and produce more runs and more wins.  They forbid players from bunting or stealing bases.  The assign a badly injured catcher (Scott Hatteberg portrayed by Chris Pratt) as the team’s first baseman because he has a slightly higher on base percentage than the All-Star first baseman they already have.  They hire a pitcher who can only throw in the 80-mph range because his price tag is a bargain.  And the first half of the season is a catastrophe.  But Billy sticks with Brand’s system and before the end of the season the A’s gel as a team and even break the record for longest winning streak in AL history (twenty games).

But of course, statistical success is a long-term concept and in a short series like the playoffs big money still buys baseball heroes who hit lots of home runs in October.  And the A’s lose in the playoffs again.  But their success with the meager resources provided catches the attention of more well-funded teams and the owner of the Boston Red Sox; John Henry offers Beane an unheard-of salary of $12.5 million to be general manager of his team.  Ultimately Beane remains in Oakland for personal reasons (being close to his daughter) but sabermetrics wins over major league baseball and is now the standard method for building a team in baseball.

I’ve read that many of the entertaining details of the story are fictionalized.  And I can believe that.  But this is a movie not a history lesson so the real question is whether the movie entertains.  And the answer to that (in my opinion) is absolutely.  Pitt portrays Beane as a former player who has a grudge against the scouting system that lures kids, who won’t be successful baseball players, into the game.  He gave up a full scholarship to Stanford to play for the Mets and then wash out.  He sees a scientific evaluation of players as the way to avoid all the chaos that, in his view, the scouts seem to cause.  Pitt has a good script and he makes the most of it.  And Pitt and Hill have a very amusing Mutt and Jeff relationship with the confident Beane mentoring the awkward and inexperienced Brand in how to work with the athletes.  Philip Seymour Hoffman as Art Howe gives a disgruntled old-timer portrayal that fits the story well.  And there are more than a few very strong performances among the actors portraying the scouts and ball players.  All in all, it’s a very interesting baseball story and I think well worth the time to watch it.  Highly recommended to baseball fans and movie fans in general.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 24AUG2025 – Hollywood

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Sadly it seems that Mr. Whedon wants to get a little more, shall we say physical, with the talent if the Rumors out of the Buffy Series are true. This has always been an issue in Hollywood, sometimes they chase the ingenues and sometimes they chase the beefcake.
That aside what Whedon did is loved the material. He loved Captain America, he loved the Avengers and he wouldn’t change the material (more than a smidge or two). This strategy doesn’t always work. Brad Bird Loved/Loves the Barsoom mythos (and clearly knew it well based on how he plotted it). He gave Dejah Thoris more of a part (and far more of a costume) than in the original books, but he didn’t eviscerate/geld John Carter as a hero to do it. Here the issue was the Disney Princess based marketers couldn’t bring themselves to market A Princess of Mars . They couldn’t even bring themselves to call it John Carter of Mars they had no clue how to sell it and so its existence and nature was known only to the more rabid part of the Barsoom fans (e.g. myself). I took my wife and daughters (college/high school age for the girls) and they loved it. They wondered why the heck there was practically no one in the giant IMAX theater on a Saturday PM showing.

Loving the material is a start but is NOT enough. Peter Jackson LOVED Lord of the Rings but was constrained to make 3 movies (albeit nearly 9 hrs in standard form). He loved the Hobbit too but was given FAR to free a rein. In the interests of adding female characters and filling out 3 long films, he padded the heck out of The Hobbit and made a sloppy mess. George Lucas made the original 3 Star Wars films and loved his material and did fairly well until the damnable Ewoks. This is likely because he had his wife (later divorced) riding herd on him as editor. When he made the Prequel Trilogy no one could tell him no and loved himself a little TOO much and he made crap. Many years later Disney said “Hold my beer” and made the sequel trilogy that makes the prequels look like Casablanca or Citizen Kane.

So it looks like the recipe is get a director and/or screen writer that loves the material. Then make sure there is a check to their choices so they don’t go straight up fan boi/fan grrl.

And for heavens sake Disney, please try something NEW. There’s like 20+ marvel movies/tv shows, at least 11 Star wars movies plus hours of TV, Princess movies by the dozens and 4 Toy Stories with a 5th on the way. Try something new and exotic (for you) it can’t hurt more than the last dozen or so flops. And for the love of all that is Holy Send Kathleen Kennedy on an all expense paid 1 year trip to an isolated portion of Borneo with no phone or internet connections. And let Star Wars lie fallow for a couple years that horse (or wookie) is well and truly dead.

 

The Library is Full of Them

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As I mentioned in an earlier post Disney (and by extension Hollywood) realizes that they’ve alienated the male half of the human race.  And as I gleefully mentioned this is all their own fault and it’s hilarious that it’s a surprise for them.  And after torching two of the most valuable male-oriented intellectual properties (Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe), instead of trying to fix the problems and repair the damage to these brands they’ve decided to bury their losses and start from scratch with brand new franchises.

Well, you’ve got to admire their optimism.  Maybe they haven’t heard the old saying about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  But it’s their money (or their stockholders anyway).

But in a sense, they’ve got it half right.  Half of their problem is that sequel after sequel has drained all the life out of their franchises.  So new stories and characters is a good direction to go in.  People like to be entertained and meeting new characters is part of that entertainment.  And even though there are only a few overarching plots to an adventure story it helps to change the names of the heroes, villains, magic rings, super-weapons and princesses from story to story.

So far, so good.  But now comes the tricky part.  Listen up Disney:

DON’T MAKE THE HERO A GIRL-BOSS.  THE GIRL IN THE STORY IS THE LOVE INTEREST OF THE HERO.  SHE IS THE REWARD FOR THE HERO SAVING THE DAY.  SHE MAY TAKE UP A BOW OR A DAGGER IN A PINCH BUT SHE’S NOT THERE TO SAVE THE HERO AND SHE’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE IN CHARGE.

I hope I was clear there.  Use the traditional hero saga as the backbone of the story and find a writer and a director who can work with such a story in a creative and entertaining fashion and you will make billions of dollars.  Just as a for instance Joss Whedon directed the first Avengers movie.  It made $1.52 billion worldwide at the box office.  That’s a lot of money.  And part of the reason for that enormous sum is because Whedon knows how to make likable characters in a movie.  He blends humor, action and drama in the correct proportions and at the right moments.  In other words, he’s not a hack like all of the DEI directors that have bungled the last several years of your franchise flops.

Now, granted he is demanding and sometimes slightly abusive toward the “talent.”  But they’re getting paid millions of dollars to dress up in spandex and fool around in front of a green screen.  The least they could do is take a little hectoring from a prima donna director to earn those millions.  So anyway, my advice for Hollywood is to find the few creative talents out there; directors like Whedon and Christopher Nolan.  And purchase the film rights to books that millions of people love.  And don’t mess with the stories and characters.  Put them faithfully on the big screen and then instead of trying to recreate success with endless sequels move onto another story!  Did you know there is more than one book in the library?  There are several.

I know it’s a radical departure. But it’s just so crazy it just might work!

A Light Bulb Turns On at Disney

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According to Variety magazine:

Disney’s Boy Trouble: Studio Seeks Original IP to Win Back Gen-Z Men Amid Marvel, Lucasfilm Struggles

Disney has realized that young men are tired of their girl-boss inhabited movies.  And now it’s a problem because Disney needs their money.

And I quote:

“Numerous studies show that Gen Z men in particular are a lonely, gaming-obsessed group who were hampered in their formative years by COVID-19 lockdowns — not the easiest segment to grasp.”

So even when their desperate to attract an audience they can’t help but mock and belittle men and boys.

Rather than rant on my own I’ll borrow the Critical Drinker’s rant.  He is much more amusing than I am.

 

 

A Window into Death

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This morning when I woke up the house was noticeably cooler than it’s been in a month.  It was sixty degrees or thereabouts.  So, Fall is making its entrance felt.  Lots of leaves under the maple tree and the grass is drying out.  The raspberry canes are still producing tons of berries but the lower leaves are all turning yellow.  Well, the kids go back to school on Monday and so this is the end of summer by decree and by degree.  So be it.

Well, it was a terrific summer weatherwise and we did most of the things we wanted to.  And we had a big party at the end.  So now it’s time to anticipate the good stuff that comes with Fall.  Well?  I guess the only thing about Fall that’s good is the long evenings allow us to watch old movies and plan for the holidays.  Certainly, there’s more to do than that.  Fall is when you’re supposed to do the repairs and weatherproofing that prevents winter from doing a lot of damage.  And I do plan to do that stuff.  But let’s be honest here.  I hate that stuff.  I’ve been talking about getting some tarps to cover over the woodwork on the balconies and the outside staircase for about ten years and I haven’t gotten any closer to doing it yet.  I’m just an immensely lazy man whose strong suit is dithering, waffling, vacillating and procrastination.  Of course I blame Camera Girl.  If she were half as good at nagging as she is at cooking, I’d be a model husband.  But it’s the cross I bear.

So, a couple of nights ago TCM had “Psycho” on and Camera Girl was watching it.  Well, I was busy but I noted her choice in passing.  And while I was working in the dining room, I could hear snatches of music and dialog.  And I could tell it was getting toward Marion Crane’s (Janet Leigh’s) fateful arrival at the Bates Motel.  So, I dropped what I was doing and sat through Marion’s supper with Norman and all the way through her murder and subsequent deposition in the “swamp.”  By the way, how much of Southern California actually has any swampland?

Now I’ve seen Psycho dozens of times.  And the murder scene has always struck me as well done.  It’s well staged and well shot.  And having seen it so many times allowed me to watch it this time analytically.  And I thought that the critical snatch of film is when Marion is luxuriating in the shower and the camera shifts to the room through the shower curtain and you see the door open and a silhouette appear in the doorway.

That is the moment when death has entered the frame.  The actual killing with the blood and piercing, screaming “music” is almost an anticlimax.

And then I watched Marion Crane die from loss of blood.  And it was remarkably well acted and achingly sad.  Here was a young woman whose impatience to be with the man she loved had driven her to steal an enormous amount of money.  But just as she’s figured out what she needs to do to escape from the trap she’s gotten herself into, fate steps in and feeds her into a buzz saw of insanity.

The rest of the movie is a murder mystery and a psychological horror show.  But the end of the murder scene is a tiny window into an intensely poignant moment; the death of a human being and specifically the death of a beautiful young woman.  Janet Leigh’s face conveys the reality that Marion Crane’s brain is shutting down from lack of blood and her world has shrunk down to just trying to grasp the shower curtain with her hand.  And then she dies and her body lies crumpled on the floor and her unfocussed eye stares into space.  That’s the best acting in the movie.

So, despite the spectacle from then on, the interesting part of the movie is the first forty minutes that record Marion Crane’s date with destiny.  And I’ll include her conversation with Norman.  He does communicate his pathetic version of what he thinks the world is about.  And in some sense, he provides a sounding board to allow her to think about what to do about her own private trap.

Well, anyway, it’s Fall and old movies are the thing to do.

And Through Me Tell the Story

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Christopher Nolan is filming the Odyssey.  And, of all people, Matt Damn will be Odysseus.  And his son Telemachus will be played by Spiderman (Tom Holland) and Charlize Theron will be Circe.  Anne Hathaway is listed high in the credits so I fear she will be Penelope.  And most frightening of all, John Leguizamo is in the cast.  I guess I should be grateful that Pee Wee Herman is dead or maybe he would be cast as Achilles or Zeus.

Christopher Nolan is a talented director.  Could the movie turn out to be an entertaining and well-made film?  Sure.  But based on the cast I’m pretty sure it will have only the most tangential connection to Homer’s poem.  I’m guessing Damon will channel his character in the Bourne Identity and kill the suitors in a blur of shaky cam footage.  Maybe he can use his character development from “The Martian” to recreate Odysseus’s sense of abandonment on Ogygia with Calypso.  And come to think of it, Calypso can be played by RuPaul in drag.

No kidding, we’ve finally reached a point where special effects are good enough to show the scene in Polyphemus’s cave believably and what will render the story unfilmable will be the ethnicity of the characters.  In order to be eligible for Academy Awards, there will need to be a certain number of non-white and non-straight actors distributed among the most important roles.  I’m guessing that blonde Helen and specifically red-haired Menelaus will have to be portrayed by Australian aborigines and the Sirens will be transgender creatures.  Who knows, just to win Best Picture he’ll have to make several of Sylla’s heads look like prominent Republicans.

I’m probably painting this thing impossibly more negative than it needs to be.  But I think that Christopher Nolan is the closest thing to a good director left in Hollywood and the fact that he’s casting the movie with woke actors and following the DEI guidelines reinforces my worst premonitions for what this will end up being.  Well, why not?  Instead of Odysseus, the Sacker of Cities, we’ll get Matt Damon, Keeper of Safe Spaces.  I’m sure that instead of putting the hundred plus Suitors of Penelope to the sword, he’ll sue them in the court of public opinion and then realize that fighting for his wife’s honor is a toxic patriarchal practice that assumes that Penelope needs him to return when instead she could have shacked-up with Clytemnestra and ruled Ithaca as the first lesbian power couple of the Bronze Age.

And obviously, his son Telemachus would have discovered that he was born in the wrong body and want to be called Telemacha from then on.  And all of Odysseus’s slaves will have read Ibram X. Kendi and will rise up and decolonize Ithaca.

Well, I guess everything in the world is backwards at the moment and we’ll have to wait for a different motion picture environment before something like an authentic Odyssey is possible.  I guess the good news is that the book is still there to read.

The Odyssey

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

of that man skilled in all ways of contending,

the wanderer, harried for years on end,

after he plundered the stronghold

on the proud height of Troy.

He saw the townlands

and learned the minds of many distant men,

and weathered many bitter nights and days

in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only

to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.

But not by will nor valor could he save them,

for their own recklessness destroyed them all —

children and fools, they killed and feasted on

the cattle of Lord Hêlios, the Sun,

and he who moves all day through the heaven

took from their eyes the dawn of their return

(Translated by Robert Fitzgerald (1961))

 

ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ

πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν:

πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω,

πολλὰ δ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,

ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.

ἀλλ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ὣς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο, ἱέμενός περ:

αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο,

νήπιοι, οἳ κατὰ βοῦς Ὑπερίονος Ἠελίοιο

ἤσθιον: αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖσιν ἀφείλετο νόστιμον ἦμαρ.

τῶν ἁμόθεν γε, θεά, θύγατερ Διός, εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν.

(Homer circa 1,000 BC)

Long, Long Ago in a Studio Far, Far Away

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As the tent-pole summer movies of July fade into August obscurity and dinosaurs, Superman and lesser Marvel superheroes get rated and dissected by the movie critics I think it has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the failure of Hollywood to replicate the billion-dollar paydays from earlier versions of Star Wars and the Avengers franchises can now be definitively explained.  They forgot that a superhero movie (or even just a plain hero movie) requires a hero.  And the requirements of a hero (whether in book or on a screen) include that we like the hero.

And that seems to be where Hollywood has gone off the rails.  They’ve managed to make a bunch of movies where the heroes are unlikeable.  For the most part these unlikeable heroes have tended to be of the type currently known as the “girl-boss.”  The prime example of this category is Rey, played by Daisy Ridley in the Star Wars movies.  The type includes the following traits:

  • Although small and thin she is completely capable of defeating men many times her size.
  • She hectors male characters about their obvious shortcomings compared to her.
  • Completely humorless.
  • Has no flaws.
  • Has no setbacks.

Now, this sort of character fits perfectly into the social messaging of all modern Hollywood films.  It allows older franchises with male protagonists to be replaced with the girl-boss.  Examples include Rey in Star Wars replacing Luke Skywalker, Helena Shaw replacing Indiana Jones and Captain Marvel basically replacing all the Avengers.

The problem with these replacements is that the producers think that just saying that their new characters are just as good as the originals (if not better) is enough.  For some reason they didn’t think it would be necessary to hire good writers and directors to make the movies exciting and entertaining.  But as it turns out they are extremely important if you don’t want your movies to be unwatchable crap.  And that is the thing that all these movies share.  They’re awful.  And unfortunately for Disney they’ve been making these “better” movies and television series in the Star Wars and Marvel series for about ten years and they’ve completely dissipated the enthusiasm and good will of their legacy audiences that paid billions of dollars to see the older movies that actually were well written, exciting and entertaining.

Over the last six months it has finally dawned on Disney (and the other studios) that they’ve killed the goose that lays the golden eggs.  They’ve alienated about 70% of their audience and destroyed a machine that printed cash.  From what I’ve read, the most recent Marvel movie “Fantastic Four” went to lengths to not go down the girl-boss lane and even had a decent script that could be enjoyed as an adventure movie.  The problem is that most of their old audience didn’t bother to give it a try and so the movie while not a complete bomb is struggling to become profitable.

Regardless of whether “Fantastic Four” makes money I think we may be at a turning point in the fantasy-adventure genre.  It has finally dawned on the studios that social messaging for the woke agenda is box office poison that has a tiny audience.  As the recent purchase of Paramount by Skydance Media demonstrates, entertainment that doesn’t make money ends up on the auction block and then the chopping block where the unentertaining and unprofitable components get sliced off and thrown in the garbage.  And similar things are happening all over the media and entertainment world.  CNN, MSNBC and CBS are all finding out that woke ideology doesn’t equal profitability and if they can’t adapt to a world that isn’t amused by it, they’ll be out of work.  I guess I’m an eternal optimist but maybe, just maybe, in a year or two decent fantasy adventure may be produced in Hollywood again.  At least it could happen!