I was interested to see WitchBird’s recent review of Caught Stealing, a film that had completely passed me by. It seems like the kind of movie that Hollywood used to release on a regular basis: quirky, niche, original. To a large extent, mid-to-low budget films like this were what kept the lights on, allowing for big budget gambles that didn’t always pay off.
Information on Caught Stealing‘s profitability is conflicting, and its unclear whether it was profitable because even without a pricey vintage star, it apparently cost $40 million to make. That’s unreasonably expensive for such a small film.
In addition to bloated budgets, Hollywood faces a bigger, more daunting problem: the total collapse of public trust. For a century, going to see a movie was a habit among Americans, with a significant portion of the population simply showing up at the theater and picking what looked best. To be sure, the grotesque overreaction to Covid crippled this, but Hollywood’s woke, unwatchable content (combined with exorbitant ticket prices) has all but wiped it out.
All of which is to say that 10-15 years earlier, a film like Caught Stealing might have been a hit as people who were already at the theater decided to check it out. If Hollywood wants to recreate that culture, it can’t limit itself to just one or two non-woke films a year.
Enter The MAGA Men
This brings us to Todd Fisher’s article on Hollywood’s growing fear that MAGA will take over the industry. The threat, such as it is, is that David Ellison might use Paramount to do the unthinkable: make money. This used to be the entire point of the film industry, and it was not that long ago that the degenerates in charge were able to set aside their demonic fetishes and pocket some good, clean, Christian cash.
This really isn’t that difficult. It was the rule for decades. Just look at well-regarded shows that still resonate in the popular culture and make more things like them. Yes, to older folks they may seem unoriginal, but the younger generation has almost no knowledge of what masculine men and feminine women are actually like, and it will strike the market like a thunderbolt.
Destroy Whedonism!
A top priority must also be to eradicate Joss Whedon’s toxic legacy of quips and ironic banter crammed into every possible situation. Yes, Whedon himself is currently banished from polite society for being a creepy male feminist who preyed upon his actresses (and harassed those who refused his overtures), but his creative legacy lives on.
Whedon’s strength as a writer was the ability to introduce some humor into serious situations without completely wrecking the dramatic tension, but that only works in certain contexts, such as modern American society. He was able to port it into Firefly, but that was a near-now future. It does not work in costume drama, period pieces and just about every one of his imitators get it badly wrong.
To put it another way, being clever only gets you so far. If characters are continually indulging in light-hearted banter in the face of existential horror, neither the cast nor the audience will take it seriously. This, plus the endless sequels and limitless reboots of the “multiverse” is largely why no one gives a damn about superhero movies and once beloved legacy brands are completely worthless.
Abandon All The Franchises
At a store the other day, I saw a bunch of Star Wars figures in retro-Kenner packaging being marketed in support of the latest Disney Plus atrocity. They were marked down because no one wants them. Modern kids are not willing to put in the 22+ hours of movie watching as well as slogging through the endless morass of Disney streaming (some of which is completely age-inappropriate) just to catch up. As for the Gen X crowd – formerly the target audience – those who haven’t sold their stuff off in disgust have already got everything they need. There is literally no market for this crap.
Any attempt at reviving Hollywood would therefore require new creative teams, writers who have lived in the world, experienced life and can write authoritatively about more than spats at the middle school lunch table. When even Predator is reduced to daddy issues, the failure of imagination is impossible to ignore.
There are several paths forward. One is to go the route of Caught Stealing and embrace low-budget “small” films that have huge upside potential. You can make ten of these for less than a mid-priced MCU film and only a couple have to hit it big to ensure hefty profits. Hollywood used to know this.
The other is to embrace the popular culture as it is – when you do a book adaptation, adapt the actual book. Don’t use it as an opportunity to piss off your core audience. I’m sure it was satisfying for the creatives at Amazon to take a dump on Tolkien as well as the Wheel of Time fanbase, but one need only look at Twilight to see how to make vast amounts of money with essentially mediocre films.
Finally, embrace the religious audience. Christian moviegoers are famously cheap dates, but there is plenty of quality material to work with. Among her many crimes against fiduciary duty, Kathleen Kennedy canceled the hugely lucrative Narnia franchise because she objectively hates money and is clearly working to bankrupt her employer. Alternatively, she is completely allergic to heroic stories with Christian morality. Probably a little of both.
While Top Gun: Maverick was shockingly good, it should be left alone. Adding films to the catalog just creates a genre ghetto, and we have far too many of those.
Unless the money men are able to counter these obstacles, Hollywood as we know it is doomed. This is a disruption at least equal to the collapse of the studio system in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. It will be interesting to see who capitalizes on this opportunity.
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English (US) · 