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!