#918 - Critical Drinker - Why Do Modern Movies Suck So Much? - Modern Wisdom: Summary & Transcript

In short

Podcast Notes: Modern Wisdom Episode #918 - Critical Drinker - Why Do Modern Movies Suck So Much?

Episode Overview In this episode, Chris Williamson interviews the Critical Drinker, a movie critic and analyst of modern entertainment media. The discussion revolves around the decline of Hollywood, the impact of corporate interests on storytelling, and the overall issues plaguing modern cinema.

Key Topics Discussed

The State of Hollywood

James Bond Franchise:
The James Bond franchise is undergoing significant changes with Amazon now holding creative control after acquiring MGM.
The potential for a "Bond Cinematic Universe" is concerning, moving towards exploitation of the IP rather than maintaining the franchise's integrity.
The longevity of Bond as a character is attributed to the mystery and sparing use of his backstory.

Woke Culture and Hollywood:
The discussion touches on the "woke" message in Hollywood and whether it is diminishing.
The Critical Drinker expresses skepticism about Hollywood's ability to return to neutral storytelling, suggesting that while executives recognize the issue, they are still bound by projects that were greenlit years ago.

The Shift in Movie Genres

Demise of the Superhero Genre:
Predictions indicate a decline in the superhero genre, with recent releases underperforming at the box office.
The future may see a shift towards video game adaptations, which have a built-in audience and proven commercial success.

Romantic Comedies and Comedies:
Straight comedies are in decline, with increasing political correctness stifling humor.
The nostalgia for romcoms remains, but they are largely absent in modern cinema.

The Impact of Streaming Services

Theatrical vs. Streaming Releases:
The rapid shift of movies to streaming platforms is changing the cinematic landscape.
Audiences are increasingly opting for the convenience of home viewing over the cinema experience.

Competition Among Streaming Services:
The conversation notes the saturation of streaming platforms and the challenges these pose for both studios and consumers.

Analysis of Recent Movies and Shows

Critique of Recent Productions:
The Critical Drinker provides insight into the failures of recent shows like "She-Hulk" and the mismanagement of established franchises such as "Star Wars."
Acknowledges that while some productions have potential, many remain disappointing due to poor writing and direction.

Future Predictions:
Speculations include the possibility of more politically neutral films that focus on entertainment value without heavy-handed messaging.

Notable Mentions

Cultural Commentary:
The podcast discusses broader cultural issues, including the impact of "performative empathy" and the backlash against excessive political correctness.

George R.R. Martin:
The ongoing delays in the completion of "The Winds of Winter" are highlighted, with speculation about whether future adaptations will adequately capture the essence of the original content.

Key Takeaways

The challenges faced by modern cinema include corporate exploitation of IP, the stranglehold of political correctness, and a general decline in originality and quality of storytelling.
There is an observable shift toward streaming services, which impacts how films are produced and consumed.
The potential for change exists, with industry insiders acknowledging the need for a return to quality storytelling that resonates with audiences.

Additional Resources

Find the Critical Drinker:
YouTube Channel: [Critical Drinker](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfVZz5E4N5vF0onK8ZP6EtA)

Follow Chris Williamson:
Instagram: [Chris Williamson](https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx)
Twitter: [Chris Williamson](https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx)

Conclusion The episode presents a critical examination of the current state of the film industry, emphasizing the need for a paradigm shift back toward engaging and meaningful storytelling in cinema.

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Transcript

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0:00What is happening with James Bond? Give me the updates. It's a bit of a mess at the moment. So, in a nutshell, it has now been corporatized. The broccoli family who have been running James Bond on screen ever since the 1960s, and I can't believe I'm saying the word broccoli in relation to James Bond, but there it is. It was originally Albert Broccoli and then his daughter Barbara took over. And they have in a way safeguarded it to some degree. It's debatable how good of a job they did in the Daniel Craig era, but you know, they kept it from becoming too exploited. I think they got a little bit frustrated with dealing with Amazon who had bought over MGM, which ultimately owns the rights to bond.

0:43And so the most recent development is that they have tapped out essentially. And now Amazon have got full creative control over the bond franchise, and they are already talking about turning it into the next marble cinematic universe. Essentially, you're going to have the Bond cinematic universe. So what they want to do is spin -offs of money penny. And, you know, can she shuffle files quickly enough to meet her deadlines? And, you know, Bond the early years when he was a kid. And, you know, we're probably going to have TV shows with all the other double -o agents, you know, with all them getting like their own little spin -offs and then having big team -up events.

1:20That's what they want to do. It's about exploitation of the IP. So that's where we're at now, and it's not a good place to be. There's a reason that Bond has endured as a franchise and as a character for the past what 60 years now, and it's not because he was milked to dry by a big money hungry corporation. Well, they did step in and managed to turn around the Lord of the Rings in a manner that I think was actually impressive. I mean, it takes a certain level of skill to destroy something as thoroughly as they did and to blow up billion dollar, you know, show. But they found a way, you know, and then run it back on season two.

2:01Yeah, they'll keep going with it because they said they were going to do five seasons and they will just out of pure spite. It kind of in the same way that Disney have managed to absolutely tank Star Wars as a brand. and one of the most recognizable IPs in entertainment history in the space of less than a decade, they've completely not only destroyed it. So it takes a certain level of skill, but luckily that skill seems to be prevalent and hollywood these days. Great. Well, we saw this recent thing with Bezos stepping in with the Washington Post. You see that he's saying we're gonna have more balance, et cetera, et cetera.

2:33I don't know, maybe we'll start to see some more of that crossover a little bit into the world of Amazon Amazon Prime? You might see it. The problem is that Jeff Bezos does not run Amazon Studios. That is run by a woman called Jennifer Salky and she is the one who's largely responsible for failures like the Rings of Power because she is very much into the message, as I talk about in my right videos quite a lot, and she essentially directed the way that Rings of power has gone as a show. Even to the point where they had a Tolkien scholar in who was tearing his hair out saying, no, all of this stuff that you're writing is complete nonsense, this would never happen in Tolkien's world, and for his efforts he was fired.

3:21So that tells you everything you need to know. So yeah, Jeff Bezos may well indeed be wanting to restore a bit of balance, which is great, but as long as people like her are actually in charge of their create if I put Amazon Studios, that's not going to change. So people like her have to go sadly. I was thinking about how Bond seems to have been protected, but as you've suggested, it's one very tightly defined set of boundaries around who it is that's got creative control. And as soon as you start to build that out into teams of 150, where the couple of people at top that paid a few million dollars a year, I imagine that your ability to stay true to the So the material starts to go out of the window.

4:01It absolutely does, yeah. And as I said earlier, there's a reason that the Bond franchise has been this cultural mainstay for all the decades that has been around well over half a century. It's, there's something timeless and consistently appealing about James Bond as a character. And they never lost sight of the fact that he was center stage in everything. It is about Bond. We don't want a money penny spin off. we don't want a queue department spin -off or anything like that. You can't franchise Bond because he is the core of everything and he's a character that needs to be used sparingly. You know, one movie every couple of years don't delve too much into his private life, into his backstory, maintain the mystique, maintain the things that have made characters like him so appealing for so long.

4:51That's been the secret to his longevity and they're going to lose that, I think. It is interesting how the sort of allurement of Bond is in his aloofness. It's the fact that there are all of these open loops. And as soon as you begin to say, well, this is the real woman that he loved and this is why he's womanized all the way down from, this is what happened in his past and often and it, blah, blah, blah. And you think, ah, okay, this as soon as you give an answer all of the speculation that was exciting gets collapsed down to see. It's like, shroding as bond. You know, there's so many different versions that it could be and then they tell you and it gets collapsed into the version that it is based on what they said.

5:33But yeah, I mean, fucking she -hulk. You know, there we go. Why did you have to say that name? I'm aware it's a trigger word for you. Yeah. I mean, well, it was a disastrous show. I think everyone recognized that. nobody even at Marvel can pretend that that show was a success and it's been pretty much scrapped now so They can chalk that one up to bad ideas, I think What did you think of Loki what did you make of that? Loki as a show the concepts were interesting, but I hated how it absolutely cut him as a character Loki and his best is actually a really intimidating character They got him right when they did him in Avengers.

6:18The first Avengers movie, where he was actually kind of terrifying. He's actually really physically powerful, incredibly intelligent. He's a skimmer, he's a manipulator. That is the core element of Loki. When they tried to do this TV show with him, he's getting knocked out by people. He's crying all the time. He's emotionally vulnerable. You know, he comes up against a female version of himself who, of course, is better than him in every way because she has to be. And all of those things diminish him as a character and they make him less interesting. In the same way that, you know, having bond no longer be able to seduce women and have him be emotionally vulnerable, diminishes the mystique of his character.

6:59He was always more interesting as an idea rather than a flesh and blood human. They did the same thing to Loki. You know, the more vulnerability is you introduce to a character like that, the less interesting he becomes and the less menacing he becomes. We saw it with Thor as well, right? You go from this beautiful arc where competent, powerful, maybe a little bit naive, immature, childish in a way, but that was part of charm. Then over time, it just gets ramped up and up and up and up and up. Then he's doing the splits over a set of dragons or whatever. and yeah, I mean how many movies can we have where Thorneed to find his true purpose in life?

7:44Like he's done that about five times now it seems. It's a permanent midlife. Well I suppose if you live for a few thousand years you get a couple of midlife prices. So perhaps that's... Sure, I mean I love these problems I would put down to Tica YTE as a creative and he was straight up saying, wouldn't it be funny if Thorne goes through a midlife crisis? And that was as far as he got essentially and then he just based a movie around that. So it wouldn't be funny if he was like kind of useless and he didn't know where he wanted to be in life and he was just lost and You know, you think okay after everything he's been through after saving literally the entire universe You probably have found your purpose by that point.

8:19You can keep reset in that clock But that's what you try to do and just turn them into a complete joke Can you remind me of the Stages that I think inside the movie franchises are subgenres go through that finishes with parody. I swear that you taught me about this Oh, yeah, yeah. So I'm going to paraphrase here because I'm just dredging this up from my memory, but you've essentially got the early stages of the genre, right? So the trailblazers, the experimental movies that define it, then you've got the classic era where they've nailed the formula, they've made it work, they know exactly what works with it.

9:00Then you've got the revisionist era where the classic era no longer resonates with all the audiences, we've got to find a new angle. Well, let's look back now and try and reframe things. A good example would be the Western genre where in their late 80s, early 90s, Westerns had fallen out of favor. You've got movies like Unforgiven, which start to redefine it and reexamine it in a more mature way. And then when you get beyond that, the final stage is parody. That's where it's just like, we've got nothing else to do dramatically, classically, you know, in terms of mining new ideas, we're just going to make fun of it now.

9:38And that's when a genre dies. Seeing that and knowing that parody is kind of the, there's a couple more nails to go into the coffin and then it's about to be brown bread. Once I've seen that, I can't unsee it. And I'm always on the lookout for whatever it is, whether it's a genre, whether it's a series, whether it's a movie, whether it's franchise, even directors. Their style almost becoming a caricature of itself. You being able to predict what it's going to be, even if it's a totally new movie. M. Knight, Shanolan, I think, is sort of perilously close to becoming a caricature of himself. Yeah, I think so.

10:15I mean, when your career is predicated on having mind -blowing twists that no one's going to see coming, you're always in a competition to one -up yourself. off and to try and do better next time. And you can only take that so far before everyone knows. Well, it's an M night shamel and movie. So of course, there's going to be some crazy twist at the end. And that's it. You've pigeonholed yourself to the point where you can't do anything new at that point. So yeah, he definitely fell victim to that. And yeah, you just ended up, you know, putting out absolute sludge. If you want to cast your daughter in a movie, like, you know, one of the last horror.

10:51Yeah, yeah, he put himself in most of his movies in smaller roles and sometimes larger roles like I think Lady in the Water was the the most egregious one where he cast himself as a misunderstood genius who was ultimately going to reshape humanity after his death and I just thought well everyone thought this yeah you're you're reaching quite a bit there sir. Yeah the Lady Doth protest too much so you mentioned the you mentioned the message there I every single time that I talk to somebody about sort of culture stuff and we talk about, have we passed peak woke and how much inertia and momentum is this thing, God?

11:26Surely the movie and TV industry can only keep pushing awful productions that don't make returns for so long before they run out of money and need to change. So how much longer has the message got? It's already changed behind the scenes. That's the key takeaway here, right? What you see when you get movies that come out today, They were commissioned like two, three, even four years ago. So they were based around the cultural zeitgeist of the time four years ago, half a decade almost. And so, you know, there's always a delayed effect before these things actually come out. And from what I've been told by various people within the industry, most of the executives at the big studios are very aware of the problem.

12:13They know that this stuff doesn't sell anymore. they know that the culture has shifted radically, especially over the past six months. And they want to fix it, they want to change things, but they obviously have movies that are in the pipeline that were commissioned years ago and they're just coming out now. And so you're kind of seeing the last remnants of it coming out now. That Mickey 17 movie that I just reviewed a day or two ago is a good example of that where you've got Mark Ruffalo doing his worst possible Trump impression. It just, it honestly felt like a movie that would have been cutting edge like 10 years ago.

12:48Now it's just absolutely stale and cringe and play dough. But that's the delayed effect that you get with Hollywood movies. They take a long time to get made unfortunately. But yeah. What do you predict for the next five to ten years if you could throw a couple of kinds on your roulette wheel for what we're going to see? I think we're going to see the demise of the Super Hero genre. We've kind of seen it already. There's a bunch of Marvel movies that are coming out this year. The first one has already flocked to Captain America. Thunderbolts is also probably no one's going to be interested in that.

13:24The big test will be in July when we've got Superman and we've got what's it called? The Fantastic Four coming out right? Two movies, same month. If they don't succeed, that's it. The genre's cooped because it's super expensive to make. So You probably will see after that a massive reduction in the budgets on a number of superhero movies, there's probably going to be a switch more towards video game adaptations, because that's probably the next big thing that's going to happen. There's a lot of money in that. The amount of money that is made by the video game industry, the worst Hollywood. It is insane how much money changes hands there.

14:02And so if they can capitalize on that momentum and that fan base, it will be a new gold rush. it'll be like 10, 15 years ago with the superhero genre when that's really exploded. So I think there's that and I think you're going to see a return to a bit of a swing more towards the center in terms of like the cultural impression that these movies want to make and the politics they want to push. I think they're going to be a lot more neutral. You're never going to get Hollywood pushing conservative ideas. It's just it's not in their DNA at this point, but they will probably be forced to concede defeat and they know this stuff doesn't sell anymore.

14:40So I think you're gonna see us swing more towards politically neutral movies that are just about entertainment. Yeah, I mean, hopefully. Yeah, well, that's not to speak too soon. People vote with their feet and their butts on seats and their dollars. And as much as you can say, well, we want to make something that stands up for what we believe in. You go, yeah, but eventually there's gonna be some very, very high up guy with a very, very sort of long job title, whose entire job is to look at spreadsheets all day, and the far right hand column is going to be a big bright red number with a minus in front of it, and lots and lots and lots of zeros after it, he's going to say, I don't fucking care.

15:17I don't care about how cool you think this new movement is. We're a business, ultimately we're a business. This isn't a charity. We're not here to try and promote some message at the expense of shareholders, stakeholders, IP, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, it's going to be interesting. I mean, you touched there on the video game industry. I think I'm right in saying the video game industry makes more money than movies, TV, and music combined together. Yeah. It's so weird because to some extent, like the general culture is insulated from video games a little bit. it doesn't have that sort of mainstream impact that you might think, but the amount of money that's actually changing hands in that industry isn't sane.

16:04The top level video games have budgets that would almost embarrass Hollywood films at this point. What are they getting up to? Some of them are up to three, four hundred million, usually, for triple -eight titles. That's a lot of money. I remember when Kevin Spacey was cast in Call of Duty, this is probably about 10 years ago, I think. And then Konohmigreger was put in it, not the Konohmigreger is exactly a sort of a AAA star, but I do remember thinking like, oh fuck, Kevin Spacey, as a fully facial map, all, you know, soundboard, all that stuff. Yeah, that it always felt like video games were cool and exciting and interactive, but the prestige was held with movies, right?

16:55You know, that's what you go to go see at the cinema. Sure. And now it feels like if what you're suggesting is correct, that the world of Hollywood and movies are going to have to suckle at the teeth of the IP from video games. So how the... to some extent and you know from their point of view it's actually a godsend because you've got characters and storylines and entire worlds that have already been created for you. All you need to do is adapt it. And Hollywood you know throughout the say the 90s and the 2000s they were notoriously bad at this sort of thing. They couldn't find the formula to crack video games.

17:30That's why you had god awful films like the Mario Brothers movies and so from the 90s. But in the 2000s maybe they started to get it with like things like the Tomb Raider films that actually were fairly commercially successful, all those Resident Evil movies which were dog shit interpretations of the games, but they made money again. And now we're into this modern era where we've got things like the last of us TV show, which not only is making a lot of money for HBO, it's getting lots of critical praise as well, because the games were very cinematic in their own right. So you're seeing this conversions where games are getting closer to movies in terms of their maturity, the themes and ideas they present, the characters and the acting that they are able to present to you.

18:16And the commercial appeal of crossing that over into actual movies and TV shows because you've got a built -in audience, a built -in fan base, and a pre -made story with pre -made characters. So the potential there is enormous. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Look, you're not going into business to learn and how to code or build a website or do backend inventory management. Shopify takes all of that off your hands and allows you to focus on the job that you came here to do, which is designing and selling an awesome product. Shopify powers 10 % of all e -commerce companies in the US.

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19:24Why is it not as effective to do that with books? There's way more books that come out every single year than there are video games, especially AAA, although probably about the same number of very small portion of video games and books make it to the top of the tree. Why not start to build out red rising or the name of the wind or something else? Generally speaking, because books no longer have that cultural impact. When was the last time we had, see, a Harry Potter series, something that crosses over into mainstream culture or awareness? 50 Shades, probably. We had the, we tried to do that, you know.

20:02And that's great if you're like a frustrated middle -aged spinster who drinks a bottle of wine every night, but like that's not appealing to general audiences, you know what I mean? And that's the reality, man. Like, at this point, the publishing industry is super female -oriented. It is designed for middle -aged liberal women, unfortunately. Like that's how you get. And so there's no more massive fantasy series, no more massive sci -fi series. You're not going to get a dewn or a lord of the rings anymore, or even a Harry Potter anymore, because the conditions that can allow that to flourish and appeal to a broad market don't really exist anymore.

20:43It's geared towards a subset of the population. What's happening with the Harry Potter TV series? Because I heard that, oh no. I didn't get this. Snape man, we've got a lot. So Severus Snape from the movies and from the, yeah, obviously the books famously played by Alan Rickman who was a great approximation of the character. They've cast a black actor, a black actor now to play him. They've decided to race whoop him. And yeah, good luck with that, I suppose. Yeah, the problem is he's explicitly described in the books as having like long dark hair, pale skin, like dark eyes. So we know what he looks like everyone agreed that Alan recommended a great performance as Snape, but they've raced what to them and it's just it's endemic to the the way of thinking that you have in Hollywood productions now.

21:33Well, we've got to get more diversity in there, no matter what it means to the the lore or you know being accurate or respectful to the source material, it doesn't matter. Jake is still heavily involved, doesn't she? She is, yeah. I can imagine her signing off on this. Like I think she's said in the past, like well you know there's nothing in the books that explicitly says that Harry has to be white. Sure, I mean it's her series like if she wants to trash it I'm not gonna defend her for it. So what you want JK? Yeah I suppose it's interesting that you've got this sort of a concern against progressive overreach thing which in some ways slash many ways JK people might assume from the outside seeing Jacob tweet about trans issues that she would be aligned with, but actually she's just very, very specific about protecting women's spaces.

22:30And I don't think that it seems to bleed out that much into the rest of her politics. I don't know much about her politics, but I imagine that she's probably quite a progressive, sort of liberal lady who just happens to have one very staunch set of beliefs around women. Yeah, 100%. It's so funny when people start saying like, oh, based JK Rowling, it's like just because she has a problem with trans people, like people assume like a whole slew of ideas about her politics. In every other respect, she is a raging hardcore lefty. You know, it's just that one issue that she has a problem with. So yeah, like I can totally see her being behind changes like this to the TV show and not have an issue with it.

23:11So kind of that's what she wants to do. I don't know, man. I mean, look, every time that you go home for Christmas, it's kind of like some sort of weird tribute that you need to do, where it's mandatory to watch at least 30 minutes of one Harry Potter movie at some point, sort of between the 20th of December and the sort of second of January, it just it's on TV in the background at some point. I, I'll be totally honest with you, man. I never really gave much of a shit about Harry Potter movies. I mean, for me, I was always much more of a, like, Lord of the Rings guy or whatever. And when it comes to Christmas, you know, I've got Die Hard, I've got Home Alone, I've got all the Christmas classics there.

23:54Harry Potter never figured into it that much for me. I totally respect the fan base around it. And if they love it, then great is just to never particularly grabbed me as a viewer. Yeah. It seems to, whether you like it or not, it just seems to appear kind of, it just sort of emerges like fucking Michael Boobley around a bunch of time and just disappears. Right, Akari and Harry Potter, Romney Buses. But my point was, you know, those are really dated. The first one will be coming up on 20 years now, or maybe it'll already be over 20 years old. And it does surprise me that it's taken this long to sort of get back to continuing to rinse this franchise because this Harry Potter world at Universal Studios and all of the clothing and you go to Edinburgh and there's Harry Potter stores, book shops all over the place, memorabilia.

24:47Tell me about it. Yeah. And a lot of them have cues like right out the door and onto the street. Like that's still the level of enthusiasm for it. So it's still a massive brand. I don't know if they're still doing those, you know, fantastic beasts movies. Maybe they are. Well, I know this certainly doing, I think it's called the Fibidon Forest, which is this sort of outdoor experience. I did that in the north of the UK, a couple of Christmases ago, tapping here in Austin, Texas right now. Like, dude, it's, I mean, at no point in the Harry Potter law, did it talk about scorching hot 30 degree sunshine for five days in a row?

25:25So, yeah, I don't know how true to the source material that is. You mentioned Dune there. I think one of the interesting challenges that seems to be faced is can you have blockbuster that also does well when it comes to awards? Can you have blockbuster that also ends up actually making its money back? Because it's a real challenge. What was the... I haven't done any research on this. What's the synopsis of how Dune got on? I mean, I loved it. I thought it was great. It seemed to have a lot of critical acclaim. but from a awards, monetary, standpoints, everything else, how did it do? I think with Dune 2, it certainly did better than the first one.

26:01There was a lot more hype around it when it came out. So there was definitely more enthusiasm there. And I think it probably is a good example of a movie that achieves quite a lot of cultural and commercial success. and also was actually a pretty intelligent sci -fi movie and a good stab at like, you know, replicating the source material. Oh, let's see, actually, what it got. It was, yeah, so it made 714 million worldwide, which is set against the budget of 190 million. That's actually all right. That's that's pretty good owner. I would say, yeah, that's not bad. Yeah, I mean, the thing is you see Talley's like that and you think, oh my God, that's insane amounts of money, but like you've got to factor in the cost of like advertising you've got to cost to factor in the fact that distributors take like between 40 and 60 % of that revenue.

26:55And so when you see it makes like 700 million at the box office or a billion dollars, really only like maybe five million, sorry 500 million actually goes back to the studio that made it. So the margins are often tighter than you think. I was thinking about this. I'd really love to kind of get an insight about the state of the movie industry and what's happened to it now up against streaming airlines seem to have movies within, I don't know, six weeks to sort of 12 weeks of them being in theaters and then you can watch it on some transatlantic flight on British Airways or something. You know, a lot of the time I know musicians have got problems with what spotifying streaming has done to record sales and the fact that there's basically a much smaller pie and everyone's having to do different things.

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27:44Now we've got to do more live. We need merch. We've got to have a membership site. You've got to get exclusive access. There's got to be a Patreon or whatever. When it comes to the movie industry and sort of what the theater to Netflix, Amazon Prime pipeline or airlines and stuff like that's done, is this kind of just a slow plane crash, a slow car crash into not being viable and stuff's just going to go straight to streaming? What do you think? I mean, to a degree, you're seeing streaming exclusive movies that are getting bigger and bigger now. Like, the Gorge was one. I think that came straight out onto streaming with pretty respectable budgets and pretty big stars attached to them.

28:24So it's no longer this idea of like direct to TV or direct to streaming movies that are just like low budget trash. So it's definitely changing. I think the fact that piracy is more of an issue now, the fact that streaming services are able to throw so much more money at it, does incentivize studios to get things out on streaming as quickly as possible. So you do see a really short theatrical window now and a really short gap between theatrical release and streaming or whatever. So it's just the economics of really the new technology that we're grappling with. And also, yeah, maybe for a lot a lot of people now, the hassle of going to the cinema and the expense of it is becoming more of a thought for them and it's becoming more of a big investment for you because say you want to take your wife and kids to go see the latest Disney kids movie or whatever you want to go and see Snow White if you've completely lost your mind then you factor in the cost of tickets, you factor in the cost of all the popcorn and all the crap that like everyone needs, that's well over $100.

29:39It's probably what, six months of your Netflix subscription? Yeah. And that's to sit in a charity movie theater with a bunch of people who are talking and looking at their phones and just disrupting the whole experience. Or you could wait a few weeks and watch it at home in your nice comfortable living room and do whatever you want and you could pause it whenever you want. What would your rather choose? That's the reality of the cinema going down as an experience. It's changing. So what does that mean for the future of it? It probably means that it will become gradually more like the way we see going to the theater.

30:13To go to see a stage player or something, it will become a more of a niche thing gradually, where a smaller selection of people who are real connoisseurs or real passionate about that particular method of performance still goes to see it, but general audiences will just watch it home. Yeah, well, I mean, we saw it was in live -ning to see, I think, the passion around interstellars tenure and aversary. And, you know, they put that back into 70 -mil iMac's theatres. Maybe there'd been a little bit of tinkering to sort of dial up some sound and, you know, refine some resolutions and stuff like that.

30:51And you'd think that caught, I spoke to McConaughey about this very thing. And that's a question. He was lament perhaps unsurprisingly, lamenting the loss of the romcom. And he said that you could sort of spin this thing up for between 10 and $20 million, and it would be an easy return at the box office. And you get replays on holidays, replays at Valentine's Day, date nights. That seems to be a genre which is almost exclusively just been eviscerated. And is it ever going to come back? Well, I mean, we didn't we have the Bridget Jones, whatever, like Bridget Jones, 17, like the old folks home or something.

31:33Just came out. Yeah, well, I didn't see it either, but I know it did exist. And so there's still the concept of romcoms. I think comedies in general, just straight up comedies, are dead at the cinema. And the reason being everyone's fucking offended by everything. And so when you've got to tiptoe around every potential issue and you don't want to offend and anyone, you can't be funny anymore, it's impossible. And so comedies have died. I've talked about this many times on livestreams and so on. We tried to name like, what was the last truly good comedy that hit cinemas and the best we could come up with was like, Tropic Thunder.

32:09And that's well over a decade ago. Yeah. And would cause an awful lot of uproar if you did it. Sure. It would never be allowed today. But all that stuff, like political correctness is the death of fun and it's the death of comedy and it's the death of entertainment. That's the reality of it. We're seeing, I think Andrew Schultz's live, special life is number two, number three, in America at the moment on Netflix. And maybe we're seeing comedians who can kind of bear the brunt and have less oversight from executives and franchise owners and different stakeholders and people that say, we can't say that, we must not talk about this problem.

32:49So there, maybe the absence of comedy movies has created a vacuum which is going to allow more stand -up specials to appear on streaming services and stuff like that. I think the hunger is always going to be there for comedy because everyone wants to have a good laugh every once in a while and you need it. I think what you're eventually going to see is this is all part of this growing backlash that we've seen to wokeness for lack of a bit of word. It's so puritanical, it's told you all these things, you're not allowed to say that you're not allow to laugh at it, that you're not allowed to make fun of.

33:21And I think as a collective society, we have reached the point of saying, I don't give a fuck anymore. I just don't care. I don't care about your stupid censorship. I don't care about your fake offence. I don't care if you think that's racist or sexist or anything. All of those words have stopped meaning anything. Now, you've used them to the point of insanity, no one cares anymore. And I think now the ground is now prepared for comedy to actually make a comeback. If some studio actually has the balls to do it and make a comedy that's not afraid to be a little bit edgy and offensive, if they were to do something like Tropic Thunder now, I actually think it would play really well, because the societally, I think we're ready for it now.

34:03We passed the scrap and we're ready to... Yeah, I think you're right. And you might not be realizing that these two things are related, but I promise you they are. Lizzos BMI and the preparedness of the world to accept new comedy movies. Reason I say that is I think we had a period where toxic compassion or performative empathy or I stand up for the good guy. Look at me. This is saying good whilst doing bad or the very least saying good whilst not doing good. Kind of nobody scrutinized for a while and it was all around and posting a black square and making sure that you sort of support the message.

34:46But Lizzo has dropped a fucking ton of weight because Azampic is a hell of a drug and she appears to genuinely be taking care of her health and you go, okay, well, if, and the same thing at the Golden Globes, you know, the Golden Globes just proved that body positivity was a total fucking far so long because as soon as people were given an easy route to be able to get themselves out of being plus sized, they did. And I think that that is one more little jenga piece that gets pulled out of this tower, which was already pretty unstable of the performative empathy of the saying good was not doing good thing.

35:23And yeah, I think it's so fragile that it's getting to the stage where it's in its own parody phase. If that makes sense. So yeah, I think that's progressive overreach stuff. I mean, I'm fuck, for those of us that have been swimming in the waters of it for the last, whatever, five years, it felt like we were already in parity come back end of 2020. And then we've just been waiting for this behemoth Leviathan to finally kick the bucket. Yeah, and it's great to see it actually collapse in there, but it makes me sad to think about all the people that have suffered as a result of this, whether it's all the people that said the wrong thing or they dug up an edgy tweet that they made 10 years ago and that got them canceled or they were forced to issue grumbling apologies or the people who literally ate themselves to death because they were told like, oh yeah, you're five foot two and you weigh 300 pounds, ah fine, you can be healthy at any size, no you fucking can.

36:20If you sweat walking across the room, guess what, you're in trouble man. And yeah, I'm glad that common sense is gradually reassert in itself, but man, how many people have suffered and died because of this? You know, I should have to think about that. How many fat influencers that were so proud of themselves literally died before they were even 40, you know? That didn't have to happen. In other news, creatine is one of the most researched and effective supplements for improving strength, muscle recovery, and it even improves cognitive performance and mood, but not all creatines are created equal.

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37:24Right now, you can get a 20 % discount on everything from Momentus Plus that 30 -day money -back guarantee by going to the link in the description below, or heading to livemomentus .com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom. A checkout that's L -I -V -E -M -O -M -E -N -T -L -U -S .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. And how many brain cycles, how much attention of people's precious short, sweet time alive on this little spinning rock. Is it taken up? Is that really what we want to look back at? Well, so dad, tell me what it was like between the 2020 and 2025. Well, son, it was kind of retarded.

38:02Yeah, we all lost our fucking minds as a society. And we were, you know, we were prevented from a certain common sense. And we just had to agree with everything, no matter how stupid it was. You know, it's crazy time that we had to live through. If you'd said to me 12 months ago that Ryan Reynolds would be considered one of the less likable or would be sort of a declining stock, that would have been something that I mean, I fucking adore that man. Like I think he's so charming, so funny, so likable, seems really down to earth, doesn't take himself too seriously. Had this sort of great fourth wall breaky thing with his wife going on, where I think she posted a photo of Hugh Jackman on his birthday saying happy birthday, honey, love you or something, and then he did it.

38:45Yeah, he did it back and he just think this, this is so cool. This is exactly what you want, sort of Hollywood. They're not, they swear a lot and this Blake Lively thing has really sort of turned the eye of scrutiny in his direction in a way that I just straight up couldn't have expected from, you know, 50 ,000 feet straight down to cruising altitude. 100 % yeah. And look, I want to be judicious about what I say because like the fact are still coming out and so on. Like it's still very much a... Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. Exactly. Yeah. And allegedly, he is an absolute dick behind the scenes.

39:23Throws his weight around. He is not the happy -go -lucky, self -deprecating, you know, lovable guy next door that we know him as, allegedly. He is a real asshole. And you know, this is what he does. He leverages his power within Hollywood to prop up his wife, Which, you know, you can understand. You're obviously going to want to defend her, but to the point where you're bullying directors and to doing what you want them to do. And so, yeah, it's kind of a sad downfall really because like you said, he really seemed like one of the good guys, a guy who didn't take himself too seriously and was seemed to be very accessible, was always up for a laugh and we're seeing a very different site to it all now.

40:07But hey, man, you don't become like one of the biggest names in Hollywood by being nice. I think that's probably the thing to remember. I don't know, I just wish. I'm aware that every movie that Hollywood has produced has tried to tell us that sometimes the good guys actually do finish first. But I kind of hoped that that was the way that it were. Anyway, maybe it's not. But I wondered what do you think will be seeing more production, fourth wall breaking, fuckery in the future after this sort of, it ends with us debacle. whether it's going to be the production equivalent of me too, that behind the scenes we're going to be hearing a lot more about not only whether a movie is good or bad, but what the process of creating that was like.

40:51Because you can say what you want, this has garnered an awful lot of attention. It's driven an awful lot of attention. If people think they might not learn the lesson, which is to allege things incorrectly and to overblow and to selectively edit the storyline that you put out. That's bad, but what the lesson they may take away from it is if I want to put myself on the front page for six months, I just need to cause a bit of a who -harm about the way that this movie was made. I think if they've got any sense, they'll be very careful about doing stuff like that because then you're getting into lawsuit territory.

41:25That's the reality of Hollywood. Most of the time when you sign onto movies like this, you sign an So if you break that, you're getting into the territory where everyone has to sue everyone else. And that can bankrupt you and ruin your life. This was an exceptional circumstance. I don't know if we're going to see more like this because everyone thought like after the Oscars, where it will smith slapped Chris Rock. It's like, oh, damn, there's going to be like a punch up at every Oscars ceremony now because someone's going to want to go out into the attention if this not happened. So yeah, I think they have to be very careful when they do stuff like that.

42:03This is something that was just quite unique. And yeah, there's always things that you learn about movies after the fact. There's plenty of movies that have had tortuous production processes, whether it was just difficult shooting or the actors and directors being absolutely dicks towards each other. It's hilarious when it happens, but it usually comes out years down the line. Yeah, I remember watching a behind the scenes of maybe the third or the fourth episode of the final series of Game of Thrones. It's the one where they had the battle at Winterfell. And the actors and actresses were talking about how, you know, it's pretty cold and they just sat on their little stools with their name on the back, with their little foot thing.

42:47They just sat on that shivering for ages and ages and ages for the shot to be gotten right. And I don't know, I've been on a couple of movie sets, but I've not exactly sort of lived and breathed it in that way, but I do get the sense that it probably from the outside seems like it would be all glamorous and fun and sexy and you turn up and say the lines and oh my god, here's an award, I could go and spend you $100 million, but in reality, lots of waiting. There's lots of waiting. Yeah, there's a lot of waiting around. I mean, I could say from time you're a little bit of experience, I used to be an extra on things back when I was at uni, just as for beer and money basically.

43:22And yeah, you spend, you can spend the whole day just sitting in the green room or just waiting on site, just waiting to get used and nothing happens. and it's usually boring and it's quite cold, especially in Scotland. And so yeah, it's not always a glamorous process for sure, but that's just the nature of the work that they do. I'm sure the stars are looked after for the most part. Well, they'll have a big RV and the makeup, and the masses and so on and so forth. Yeah, for sure. You mentioned the disparagement thing, Rachel Ziegler. What happened or do we know because snowites coming out imminently?

44:02Ten days I think yeah from now. Yeah, the 21st and Have you got any idea how much they've had to retrospectively? Edit ads Remove stuff from that or is it all speculation? It's speculation at this point. No one's really come out with a You know good reliable leak on this one And we do know that they put the movie back by an entire year. And I think you can summarize that they did a lot of reshoots during that time. I'm pretty sure they changed the entire dwarf thing where they were going to be played by live action humans. And now suddenly you've got these CGI monstrosities that are just pure nightmare fuel.

44:41It's just, it's the most predictable failure ever. Like when you have to do all of this, when you do massive reshoots like this, you add tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to your budget. And the word of mouth around the film is terrible. Everyone hates the idea of it. Rachel's Eglary is super unpopular on a personal level. This movie has got everything that you could possibly ask to go against a movie. It's all pinned to this film. So it's a perfect storm of shittiness and it's could be hilarious. I would say this is like a catnip for you. This is just pure YouTube channel fuel. Sure.

45:19And you know, There's always that temptation to report on every new development and it's like, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not going to go to that instead. This is a Snow White Breaking News channel. Sure, exactly. Because you can put Rachel Zegler's face onto a thumbnail and you'll get a million views over it. It's insane. But I'm going to wait until the movie comes out and then do a review of it because I've talked about a few different aspects of it. And that's enough at this point. And man, you can only beat that horse so much. but it is content gold for YouTubers. That's the reality of it.

45:51Just like the Acolyte was for Star Wars. You know, when something truly terrible comes out, like people, it's just human nature. They like to see it get torn down. Speaking about beaten down horses, Megan Markle, new series. Is that that from, or sorry, with love or something? Yeah. Megan Markle, yeah. It'll probably shock you to know that. I haven't watched that. I thought that was my thing. I think at the front of the queue of Netflix, there's a, I was, I was, Paul, that was bitchin', man. I couldn't get enough of that stuff. There was a screenshot floating around on Twitter that's her hands, you're reaching down toward a cake or something, and the sentence says, when I think of honey, I think of bees.

46:34As in like this, it's really profound insight. And apparently there's one episode where she spends a good bit of time explaining how to build a balloon arch. It's like, you know, bitch, you're built a balloon arch. What are you talking about? You don't know how fucking balloon arch is made. You know, your butler's butler knows how to make the balloon arch. Yeah. It's like, what can she teach normal people? Like, what has she got that people can aspire to? There's nothing really. Like, you're just gonna do another generic, like, home lifestyle. Exactly. And a thinly veiled PR rehabilitation process.

47:10process. This is allegedly on the podcast run that she had that she did briefly in between each answer from the guest and her response. There was a producer sat next to her telling her what to say. So that's how heavily curated it was that she was being ventriloquized by some person sat slightly off camera. It's so funny when you've got people like that who have actually no discernible skills or personality or like personal history that makes them interested But there's somehow famous anyway, and so you've got to try and do something with them like what do you do? I think the Kardashians kind of encountered that problem with Kim where it's like her one and only ability is to stand still looking hot and Any time she has to speak or do anything like intelligent she's completely lost But you know, somehow you can parlay that into a billion dollar empire.

48:05It's run schemes runs, runs, skims up to, yeah. I mean, look, I really enjoyed suits. I think I bailed out in season five or six. I kind of got a bit confusing and I, but the first few seasons of suits, I thought was great. I thought she was like a good character in it. She sort of definitely visually fit what you would have wanted to expect. This sort of overly glitzy. Everybody is unnecessarily hot in this law firm for no apparent reason. and I thought that was good. I enjoyed her in that. But yeah, I mean, holy shit, what a way to not only torpedo your own trajectory, but that of a literal royal at the same time.

48:42He's still gonna regret this in years to come. He really is. Do you think you'd be able to, I mean, can you as a royal divorce someone like that? Like that just seems like it would be such a huge U -turn. The amount of anger you'd need to wear on your face would fucking suffocate you. Yeah, I mean, I think if you really wanted to do it, you'd have to divorce her and come back to the UK and beg forgiveness from the king. And serving the armed forces for another couple of years. Yeah, I mean, he's getting a bit old from that. But maybe there's something that could be done there. But yeah, there would have to be a humiliation, too, or I think, to get him back on track.

49:16And I just don't think he would be willing to do it. I think he's just too... He honestly feels like a hostage almost. like he looks like he's been completely emotionally captured by her. Has anyone seen if he's blinking Morse code secret? I know. Yeah, help me. Yeah, it's like when they do the interviews with people like Oprah and like he's almost like waiting for a permission to speak from her. And you can tell 100 % like she just like wears the trousers and just dictates everything that he does. You know the energy, the energy it gives me, it gives me Jada Pinkett Smith energy. Yeah. Yep. But real Jada Pinkett Smith energy.

49:53Speaking of which, give me your thoughts on the Oscars. Should we have thanked the sex work community before we started the episode today? That was a weird one. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure if honoring them is quite what you should be doing. Like a land, like a land acknowledgement before you start. Yeah, but because what was that actress saying? Like, I want to pay tribute to the sex workers of the world. Maybe you should like focus more on helping them so they don't have to like be doing this for their careers. I don't know. I don't think there was anything particularly noble about that, but yeah, I mean, the Oscars in general were just a snooze fest this year.

50:28There was nothing particularly controversial, but was nothing particularly interesting. And Nora pretty much was the big winner of the night, a fairly solid, stodgy drama. Like there wasn't a huge, huge amount, I could say about it. Yeah, the Oscars were just boring, really. There was nothing really to pick up from it. Would Dune 2 not have been in the bucket for this one? It would, I think it was nominated for best visual effects or something. So it was there, but I don't know. I just figured, you know, it's this epic movie, did really well at the box office, fan favorite. It artistically seemed to be sufficiently legitimate and edgy that it would justify people that know what movies are about to put it in.

51:16I think they wanted to do a bit of a 180 from the previous year, where there was a lot of big name box office successes up for contention. You had things like Oppenheimer, Barbie, that sort of thing. And this year I think they wanted to go the opposite direction and it was very much like smaller films, you know independent movies, all that sort of thing, like very much your traditional ostracic kind of movies. I don't know if they thought that was going to give them a bit more legitimacy and raise the interest in it or what, but seemed to have the opposite effect. No one was really talking about it.

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52:20And if you still own the fence, they offer 30 -day free returns, so you can buy it and try it for 29 days, and if you don't like it, you can just send it back. Plus, they shape internationally. Right now, you can get 10 % off everything from gym shark site -wide by going to the link in the description below, or heading to gym .sh slash modern wisdom, and using the code would modern wisdom 10, a checkout. That's gym .sh slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom 10. A checkout. Yeah, I do think it was purposely sedate. Was it? I think so. I think that maybe there was a memo that got passed around saying like, right, don't get political.

52:54Okay, that shit ain't working for us anymore. Like I don't care how much you hate the orange man. There's no point in writing about it because no one cares anymore. We've done this for 10 years and it's old now. I think so because they were pretty, pretty toned down about it for the most part. Yeah, I mean, or alternatively, Hollywood realizes that nobody really cares all that much now, and that celebrity law is genuinely losing steam and they're adapting. I'm aware that both me and you might be skeptical of Hollywood's ability for like, self -awareness, but perhaps that's actually happening. It might be to a degree and yeah the way I described it was like Hollywood's at this this entire like award season they gave the impression of a man who has been bent over a table and like violently humbled by society at large.

53:50They have been told in no uncertain terms we don't give a shit about your political views we don't care what protest or what cause you want to support we're not interested in that and we're increasingly uninterested in your actual movies even. So yeah, it was very toned down, it was very sedate and almost intentionally non -controversial. And if anything, that is a good thing. Like, it's good that they're recognizing that. And now that's probably where I would recommend that they go as an awards ceremony. And maybe they need to let go of the idea that it's going to be this huge event that like hundreds of millions of people are going to tune into.

54:28It's not really, It's an industry event. It's a chance for them to like recognize talent within their industry in the same way that companies have award nights for like best employees a year or whatever. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's like you're not going to pretend that like you know the average person on the street is going to give a shit about like Microsoft's top coder this year or anything. But for the people in the industry it's super important. That's a great you're good take. Yeah, yeah, totally makes sense. I don't know. You've got this weird like anchoring by a staying from the past, people used to be normal, people used to be interested in award ceremonies, therefore they should be moving forward.

55:04But there's no reason to assume that that was what was accurate and now is an aberration or some sort of floor in the typical system. As opposed to, they fluked it, people were interested for a bit, but this is actually reverting back to what it is. You know what it is? I think it was the novelty of seeing your favorite movie stars unscripted. They were just there. They were all hanging out together, like back in the day, be like, oh my god, you know, like Steve McQueen is hanging out with Paul Newman and just like chatting away and they're having a few beers or whatever. Like that, that was quite the novelty.

55:36And like to hear them get up on stage and give their unfiltered speech cheesers or whatever, that was cool. But now you see them everywhere. They're on social media. They're given every retarded thought that pops into their head is like going out onto their Twitter feed. And so the novelty of seeing them in this unscripted environment doesn't exist anymore. And so the appeal of that starts to diminish. I think that's the reason. It's so true. I've thought about this for ages that the lure of celebrity for the most part is really hard to hold onto. How are you supposed to do that? People know the name of your dog.

56:09You know, they know that you recently bought new pet food for them and they didn't agree with it or whatever. This, the fourth wall has been sort of thoroughly smashed open and left open and people can just stare in 24 hours a day on your Instagram or on your Twitter feed or whatever. I think it's just not obligatory for you to do that as a celebrity, as a movie star. You don't have to have an Instagram feed, you don't have to be on Twitter or whatever. You can forgo all of that and maintain that distance between you and the fans. It's just, they're chasing that cheap dopamine hit and I think probably during things like the pandemic it was really acute because they could be in movies anymore.

56:48But everything was shut down for a time and so they wanted to hit somehow, they wanted attention and so they would go on social media and do it that way and get that validation. But the downside is, yeah, we get to see you as a human, as a flesh and blood person, just like me and you, and not the star anymore. Yeah, you're supposed to be untouchable. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You're supposed to. And obviously, it's a fantasy, but it was something that made them interesting, like the mystique around them. Kind of like what we talked about earlier, with James Bond, the more you tell me about his private life, the less I'm interested in him as a character.

57:23It's the same with movie stars, the mystique is what drives our interest in them. So true. Who do you think has got the right balance? Who do you think from sort of modern movie stars has got a good blend? Gosh, now you're asking. I'm trying to think, maybe someone like Anja Taylor Joy, I think she's not super active on social media in which case, that's great. Like she's... Congratulations. An interesting performer. I'm always kind of curious about what movie she's in. They're not always great, but you know, I think she's still quite an interested star. He only reaps seems to have got a good blend of it as well.

58:00Yes. I mean, he's obviously from a different generation, but he's still very much active now. Yeah. And yeah, that's cool. I don't know. Would you... There's a bit of me that kind of wishes that Nick Cage and his heyday was like uploading stories all the time behind the scenes because that would have just been fucking brilliant. It would have been Valkyrie's, yeah, like Nick Cage is something truly special. I hope that man never stops working. Well, I think based on his financial position, I don't think that that's an option for him. Possibly not. Yeah. Star Wars, is it redeemable?

58:38That's a complex question, right? Can it get back to being profitable? Financially, it can. Yes, It needs to rest for between five and ten years before they start doing more stuff. The ideal scenario would be stop making new things in Star Wars, say that we're kind of shelving this brand for a time, fire everyone at Lucasfilm who's responsible for anything that's happened in the past ten years, and then come at it fresh with a new trilogy of movies to great fanfare and great fan anticipation. Let people miss it again, because that's what we need. So yeah, that can come back to being profitable.

59:13Will it be this cultural juggernaut that like, you know, you walk down the street and like everyone you meet will have heard of someone like Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader. Will it get back to being that? Probably not. No, I think that's that time has come and gone sadly. And it's just it's brand destruction and there's certain there's certain bits of damage that you can't undo. And I think this is one. You had a tweet, I think this is four or five years old now, but how to be a Hollywood creative today. Number one, Pixar Mold franchise with the loyal fan base. Number two, remake it, but remove everything that once made it popular.

59:51Number three, insult the fan base when they protest your creative decisions. Number four, blame negative reviews on toxic trolls. Number five, move on. Yeah, still, still holds true. It's still holds true today. Yeah, that's pretty much it. And wow, they just do not learn from their mistakes on that one. It's crazy, man. You can lay the playbook out and it's always going to happen. So yeah, we have this odd world in which where it's Star Wars saturation, meanwhile, George RR Martin seems to be having a competition with Patrick Rothfuss for who's going to write their next book last. Like I saw he opened a coffee shop or something the other day.

1:00:31Cocktailbot. Yeah, and you think someone had tweeted it's like it's been 2 ,100 days since when's it came out? More like 4 ,000 days. Yeah, it's a nerd -rotic and absolutely excellent channel that you should definitely have on here to talk to but yeah, he's every time something new about George or Martin comes out like something. He'll just post the number of days since the last book. Yeah. That dude will do like George R. Martin will do anything to avoid writing that book. And I think we all know why he doesn't know how to end it. He doesn't know how to continue this series. Is this the final one or is it the pinnacle?

1:01:11No. So there's one more called dream, sorry, a dream of spring that's supposed to end the the song of ice and fire. Realistically, that's never going to happen in his lifetime. He's already really old and fat and really unhealthy. And if he even gets winds of winter done, that'll be a miracle. Wow. That sucks. I mean, so just someone, no, is there a, is there a potential for somebody to continue on his legacy? Is he, is he going to pass this on to the people that did the world of ice and fire? Are they going to complete it? I mean, I don't know if he's named anyone, potentially named a successor, a health successor.

1:01:49I think so, because like, really, like, the publishing house must have some kind of plan in place to say like you know look George's he's probably not gonna finish this and we need to have someone who could pick it up and carry on the elf probably talk to him about it and I think maybe some people have suggested that like this is intentional on his part he doesn't know how to finish it and he doesn't want to live with the the backlash of it being a crack. So I'm gonna open a cocktail bar instead. Yeah well who do anything like you'll you know he'll produce like five more TV shows and he can use that as an excuse to not be writing or he can say that you know it was a cloudy day and he felt sad or you know trumps in the white house and that made him distracted so he could do anything this year and like anything basically to avoid it like writing the book because if he passes away and I'm not wishing that on him in the slightest I hope he lives for another hundred years but when he eventually happens he can go down and it's like well this genius you never quite got to finish his creative with vision and if the subsequent books might, they're not great.

1:02:50Well, that's someone else's fault. I really hope that that's not the case. Meanwhile, fucking Brandon Sanderson is just a one man word factory who seems to be able to put out. I mean, what was it that he announced? Was it last year or the year before? So do you alongside all of the other stuff that I've been doing, by the way, he's a five -box series that I just wrote on the side, just dumped another couple of million words on you? I mean, when you've got that creative drive going and it's in full swing, like why interrupt? I mean, it's great to see. Plus, hard, moment energy. That's what George should do.

1:03:25George, if you are listening and you convert to momentism, there is a spirit that speaks through your pen. Yeah. There was a great Twitter thread, like I don't know if you ever saw it, but it was some other author who offered their opinion on George and his work. And they said that his fundamental problem is that he is a lazy, nihilistic, sorry, liberal boomer. You know, he comes from that baby boom generation and his entire worldview is colored by like this nihilistic view that there's no good or evil, that like everything is just shades of gray and that like heroes can never like really get the job done and like no one is the people that you think of or evil or are not.

1:04:10And it's like he he conceived his entire storytelling philosophy as a direct response to people like JRR talking. He didn't want that clear delineation between good and evil and good ultimately triumphant. It was much more bleak and nihilistic than that. The problem is, you ultimately end up hating your own creation because it is so depressing and it is so difficult to wrestle with as a creative to the point where now he just doesn't know what to do with it. It's interesting. I think it's an interesting philosophy. Well, it's sexy and complex in some ways because you have twists and turns and you realize that the person you thought you hated, you don't actually end up hating.

1:04:50I mean, Jamie Lannister, a really great example of this, pushes a fucking eight -year -old kid out of a window, episode one. And by the end of it, you think, I really respect this man. I really, you know, he's standing up for his principles. Yeah, sure. He's fucking in his sister, but, you know, aside from that twin sister. Yeah, well, you know, it's perfect. Yeah, yeah. We've all got ways that we like to spend our evenings. But I, and you end up really, I ended up really liking him. I thought he was one of my favorite characters in the entire series by the end of it. And that's cool and unexpected and subversive in a way.

1:05:28And that's, that's pretty exciting. But it's also the delineation when you haven't actually worked out what the trajectory is. This is one of the reasons I think that Top Gun Maverick was such a success. It was easy. Bastards in black helmets versus good guys that were leather, right? Like that's it. They are very easy to work out. Good versus bad. But I mean, even now we've seen suicide squad. The only way that you can have a goodie is for the baddies to be the goodies. And even they are conflicted somehow internally. And there's no clear delineation anymore between heroes and villains? I think ultimately it's going to come down to the execution because there is ways to make it work, but I think what you want to circle around to eventually is a redemption arc or an idea of their being clear lines between good and evil and they just have to go through a bit of a torturous path to get to that.

1:06:26And I think that's what George might have once had in mind for a song of Ice and Fire that like you've got all these characters squabbling over their petty political rival rays and all that crap, but meanwhile you've got this big existential threat that's creeping up on you in the form of the white walkers that are literally going to end the world. And you know eventually those characters have to put aside all their bullshit and all their politics and like band together to actually defeat this much bigger threat and actual heroes have to rise to take them on again. He's just never quite gotten to that point and I don't if he has the ability now.

1:07:00Are you a Severance fan? This is something I haven't watched, but increasingly I'm seeing break the internet. Yes. So I only started it relatively recently. So I'm like four episodes in season one. Yes, season one. Yeah. So I'm late to the party on this one, but a very interesting show, really cool premise deals with some very interesting ideas from that premise. You know, if you're lit, your personalities literally split into two people with two different memory sets. Yes. What do they do? How do they come into conflict with each other and can they interact in some way? So very, very interesting.

1:07:33Hopefully it doesn't go down the bad road of mystery box storytelling where the answers are like super disappointing and you just think Christ I waited like five seasons for that. Lost. Yes, exactly. Hopefully they've learned some lessons for that. But yeah, man, like Apple TV, they don't make a lot of stuff, but they do generally make pretty good stuff. I will see that for them. What was that one with Jason Mamoah where he was blind? Was everybody blind? Maybe everybody was blind. Sight or something? The fuck was it called? Jason Jason Mamoah. I told TV. C it was called C seven point six on IMDB 63 % Rotten Tomatoes came out in 2019 only did one series.

1:08:21It was really cool. Yeah, all of their descendants have lost their sense of sight. And that was pretty fun. I remember thinking that was the first thing I ever saw on Apple TV. It's Apple TV. They're just going to be buying up other series. But no, they're a legitimate production house and they're making this stuff and they're commissioning things and the ideas seem to be interesting. And yeah, the only issue is that for every new exciting network or technology that has a production house attached to it that actually makes good stuff, it's another membership that I need to buy. I'm like, okay, I need Max and I need Disney Plus and I need Apple TV and I definitely need Netflix and obviously I need Amazon Prime.

1:09:02And before long, you like how the fuck do I aggregate all of this stuff? I mean, unless you're willing to sell the high seas, of course, that's a solution to that. Even just the, you know what I mean, useful is just like a search engine that encompasses all the things. An aggregator. Oh, that's so good. Well, just put your logins here and we'll give you all of the options that we think that you'd like. And then if you could, I've thought this for ages. A lot of the time you don't know what to watch. People will send you Spotify songs. They'll send you albums and tracks from artists freely. I don't even know how I send a friend something from Netflix.

1:09:39I don't even know, I'd take a photo of it and say, hey, you should find this on that foot, but I'm not gonna do that. It's just not in, it's not the sort of head space that I'm in when I'm doing it. But if there was a way for your friends to refer to you, what they think you would like. Yeah. Oh, Steven suggested that you should watch Severance with a little note or a star rating or something like that. That would be fucking awesome. But yeah, I mean, we are in this weird scenario where there's all these different streaming networks. They don't really communicate with each other. And like, if you wanna watch one thing, it's on one network, you want to watch something else on another.

1:10:11And it means lots of logins, lots of subscriptions, and it does really start to mount up. And the ones that are ultimately going to stand the test of time and the ones that are going to be successful are the ones that have got some other business attached to them, right? So Amazon, right, it almost doesn't matter whether Amazon Prime Video is successful or not, because they make a shit zillion dollars every day from their actual online website, I, of course. So this is just a vanity project. We can have fun with that. Same with Apple. It's a trillion dollar company who cares if people watch their stuff.

1:10:44But it allows them to finance and do interesting things. So great. The ones that are in danger are things like Paramount Plus stuff, like the smaller networks, even Disney Plus, they do have the theme park business attached to that, but it's still a smaller network that doesn't have a huge financial infrastructure to support it. And those are the ones that I think are eventually going to get swallowed up by other people. What's happening with the production of Rust after the Alec Baldwin incident? Is that just fucking continuing as if nothing ever happened? So I have no idea what's happening in that movie.

1:11:18I don't know if they can even release it at this point. Like the public perception around it has got to be absolutely toxic. Okay, I've just asked Chad G .P .T. What is happening with the production of Rust? Production of Film Rust being noticed. just notably turbulent due to a tragic incident in, okay. I mean, this is just a little bit ago that the accident happened. So it has. 2021 following this event, production was halted, but late regime didn't April 23. Film was completed in May 23, premiered in Poland, November 20th, 2024. As of now, there is no announced release date for Rust in the United States, but Alec Baldwin is doing the Baldwin's.

1:11:59I watched one episode of that, I have pure morbid curiosity and it's the, I like Baldwin equivalent of that Meghan Markle show. Uh, thinly veiled PR. Yeah, that's all it is. It's like, hey, let's all pretend like we're a happy family. This didn't happen. Let's all pretend that this didn't happen. Yeah, and it's like, well, they do actually, um, they do reference rust and the court case and all that. But it's like, what they want to do is garner sympathy by showing that he's got like 12 kids or something ridiculous, his wife is about 30 years younger than him. You know, and it's like, oh, you can't send this guy to jail because you know, look how many people rely on him and look at them, have fun together.

1:12:36And it's like, watching them do things that they've clearly never done in their entire life, like trying to bake a cake. Honestly, it would be like watching my pet dog, trying to like, code a video game. You know, they've clearly got no experience of this whatsoever. and it's just fake, it's all fake. Dude, what are you focused on over the next couple of weeks and months? What have you got? Apart from obviously the star -studded release of Snow White, what else are you focused on? We've got some more movie projects in the works because I did a short film that we released last year. We are doing more of that that we're working on right now and we're hoping that we're going to launch a Kickstarter in the near future to hopefully finance that.

1:13:20And we want to branch out rather than just doing one movie, we want to do a slew of smaller films and give people who back it an opportunity to get some of their projects made as well. So it's like a little mini production studio that we're going to start to do where we can crowdfund movies and let people vote on the things that they want to get made, which we think is hopefully going to be quite an interesting idea. Yeah. On around. Why should people go if they want to keep up to date with all of that stuff and everything you do? So yeah, you can find my channel on YouTube, the Critical Drinker.

1:13:53I also have a gaming channel called the Critical Gamer, very imaginative. And you can obviously find me on the usual places like X and so on. Okay. I appreciate you. Until next time, man. Thank you very much. Pleasure.

From the publisher

Critical Drinker is a movie critic, an analyst of modern entertainment media and a YouTuber.
What happened to Hollywood? Despite bigger budgets than ever, shows and films are struggling to thrive. Thankfully, Critical Drinker points to some pretty obvious and some not-so-obvious key reasons for why there is such a disconnect.
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#918 - Critical Drinker - Why Do Modern Movies Suck So Much?

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