Has Hollywood Reached Peak Woke？ - Critical Drinker
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Summary
In this episode of the podcast, we re back with a guest who was on the show a year ago, talking about whether woke politics are ruining the movie business. This time, we have our guest on to talk about why superhero movies are no longer making as much money as they once did.
Transcript
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I was watching it going, I think Barbie's a bit of a bitch, to be honest.
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She treats Ken like a piece of shit, from what I recall.
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He just wants a little bit of respect, and apparently that makes him the antagonist of the movie.
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Like, you couldn't find anything better than that.
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If we look at the Oscars now, what is the point of the Oscars, really?
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Because the last time anybody really talked about the Oscars in any great detail
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They're dying a death, and they're bringing about their own demise.
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Well, it's awesome to have you back on the show.
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We had you on about a year and a half ago, and we spent, it's not an uncommon thing for us,
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quite a bit of time talking about whether wokeness is destroying Hollywood and the movie business,
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So we wanted to talk about a bunch of stuff that's happened since a few of the movies,
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you know, Barbie Oppenheimer, the controversy with the Oscars and all of that.
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But first of all, actually, it'd be interesting to get your take on coming back to the conversation
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I think last year really saw a lot of changes in that industry.
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I mean, I think for one thing, it was the demise of the superhero movie last year.
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And, you know, that really became the benchmark for, I guess, woke politics being pushed into
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movies when you look at the Marvel stuff that had been coming out.
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I think they got away with it up until a point, and then last year was really the point where
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it all reached critical mass and everyone just really rejected it.
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Partly it was the politics, partly it was just really terrible writing and low-quality movies
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But, yeah, I think probably last year was a bit of a turning point for all of this stuff
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It's not going to go away overnight, but it's definitely the point where it's no longer
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And the superhero stuff, is that literally just, as you say, fatigue, or is there another
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dimension to why those movies are not getting made as much anymore?
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It's probably a whole bunch of things that have come together, like I say, to reach critical
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Like, we have had nothing but superhero movies for the past 10 years.
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It's declining quality because they've spread themselves so thin, trying to make so many
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I think also perhaps hiring people based on things other than merit to do the writing,
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And, yeah, the political dimension of it, I think, has just become tiresome.
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So all of those things combine together to just really crash the entire genre.
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So I'm not going to be sad to see the back of them for a while.
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I think we're all getting a bit bored of that sort of thing.
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Isn't that a real problem, though, for the Hollywood studios?
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Because in an era where young people are going less to the cinema, they seem less engaged with
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The superhero movies were a guaranteed way for those studios to print money, in a way.
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And they were partly responsible for this gradual creep in cost as well for movies.
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You know, it used to be that any movie that went over the $200 million mark was rare.
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That was the minimum, really, to make a superhero movie.
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You were getting into the realms of $300 million, $350 million, and when you're doing that,
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when you're spending that amount of money, you have to play it safe.
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You know, you need a guaranteed return on that investment.
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And the way to do it up until recently had been superhero movies because they were making
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But when you start to get tired of that, when the audience interest starts to decline,
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and you're not even able to get to $500, $600 million, you're losing.
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And one thing I found really interesting is that accompanied by the rise of the superhero
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If you go back to the early noughties, you saw these incredible indie movies being made
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for relatively low budgets with big name actors.
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Certainly at the cinema, the summer movie season became entirely dominated by the big
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For the obvious reasons, like I just said, they made a lot of money.
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But then you saw last year, the biggest movies were the Mario Brothers movie, Barbie, Oppenheimer,
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you know, movies that had nothing to do with superheroes or comic books or anything like that.
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But what I found, let's talk about Barbie and Oppenheimer, because I don't think many
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You go, look, you know, every girl played with Barbie when she was younger.
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OK, I get the nostalgia elements of it, why people would go and watch that movie.
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But suddenly, Barbenheimer was just the thing that dominated the summer.
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And, you know, we've said before on my live streams and so on, I think Oppenheimer profited
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And the idea that you've got this very long, very slow-paced, historical epic, you know,
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dealing with a subject matter that not everyone's going to be super invested in.
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But the fact that it did as well as it did was just a testament to the fact that Barbie
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And people were seeing them as a double feature.
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Not something that you see very often in modern Hollywood, but it somehow happened.
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Or did it sort of spring up organically that it was packaged up like that?
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I mean, certainly the success of Barbie was very well engineered through a brilliant marketing
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I mean, they made this the movie that everyone had to go and see for the summer.
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Tell us more about that, because I know that the marketing budget for Barbie was bigger
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than the budget for the movie, but money doesn't necessarily equate to outcome.
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So what is it that they did that made it such a big movie in the end?
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I think they just obviously tapped into that nostalgia aspect for the toys.
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You know, like most girls in the Western Hemisphere will have played with a Barbie doll
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And so there's a big, probably emotional attachment to it there.
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You had a star like Margot Robbie there, who was finally coming into her own as a A-list
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star, because she'd struggled a little bit, weirdly.
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The thing that people forget about her is that she'd had a lot of movies that hadn't
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The Birds of Prey movie, trying to launch her as an A-lister.
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But this was the point where she finally reached that A-list status.
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You had Ryan Gosling, who was super popular as well at the time.
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And the whole aesthetic of the movie was just very different, very interesting.
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Certainly not like what we were used to seeing.
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It didn't look like a superhero movie where there was big explosions and big, grand, spectacular
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Kind of looked like, as you'd imagine, a playset, you know, for little kids.
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And it really, the marketing somehow made it seem like it was going to be an event.
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I don't know exactly how they accomplished it, but I think they brought together all
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of these elements of having two big popular stars, certainly a popular director in Greta
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Gerwig, who, if you're a feminist, for example, you're definitely going to be aware of her and
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And so I think it became that kind of, what did they call Black Panther?
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I think maybe this was like Black Panther, but for feminists.
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So it was a piece of genius how they marketed it.
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And it's interesting because my wife and I, we've got a young child at home.
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So we don't go and see a lot of movies, even though we love them.
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But it was one of the ones, one of the very few that we did go and see.
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Um, and you know, we had our own opinion on it.
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I, I, I'd be lying if I said I had a great time watching it.
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Watching this film was one of the most miserable, demoralizing, unpleasant experiences I've ever
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had as a movie critic and genuinely made me question where our society is heading.
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I, I feel like the, the actual telling of the story and the, the internal consistency of
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it, the characters, the things I generally look for in a movie.
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Uh, was entirely subsumed by the message of the film.
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Um, the only problem is the film wasn't particularly clear on the message it was trying to get
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Like the obvious one being, you know, uh, women have it terribly hard in the modern world
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and we need to appreciate how, how difficult it is for them and cut them some slack.
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Um, you know, it's been the theme of every movie ever for the past 10 years.
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Uh, I think they could have done interesting things with it by perhaps exploring that,
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you know, in the world we live in today, men don't always have it easy either.
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And there's perhaps expectations put on them or there's unfair imbalances in how they're
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But clearly the film wasn't willing to go there.
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Uh, and I think, you know, it's, uh, it became a bit toothless because I, I understand what
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people say, but it was also a critique of modern day feminism in that it puts on realistic
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They have to be super successful and, and make it look easy and all that stuff.
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But it felt like it was never willing to really critique it.
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It clearly wasn't a movie made for someone like me.
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I suppose all I could do was give my impressions of it.
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Um, certainly as a person who tries to be, um, to judge movies based on the key elements,
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like I say, storytelling, consistent characterization, all that sort of thing.
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Uh, it definitely fell flat because it was all subsumed by the message it was trying to
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And what was interesting about it is because we're talking about wokeness, but it was a
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Like some of the central tenants of wokeness, you could see running right the way through
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I mean, it's, uh, it's not to the degree of other films where, for example, Barbie becomes
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this, um, action hero who can, who can fight men and beat the crap out of them and
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Um, it was a more, um, I don't know if thoughtful is the right word, but it tried to at least
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go into the, the methodology and the, um, philosophy behind feminism and I guess how women are treated
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Um, and I guess, yeah, if you want to, um, apply that term to it, it would be considered
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woke because it's really, um, it doesn't treat men and women equally, I guess.
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And the, the way the film resolves itself is essentially in the fictional world of Barbie
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where you're supposed to be identifying with men are put firmly back in their place.
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Uh, and I just thought that's doesn't seem like a very nice way to end it.
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I feel like maybe if you were to go for an equal balance, you know, where they recognize,
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hey, men and women are both really important for society.
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And if we keep them, um, if we keep one side down and elevate the other, it's not really
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But the movie didn't seem to want to go down that road.
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And it was interesting because I was watching it and I actually went in and I wanted to like
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I was watching it going, I think Barbie's a bit of a bitch, to be honest.
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Um, because you know, people talk about this, like he's like the actual hero of the movie
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where all he wants really is a little bit of recognition and to be seen by her.
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He doesn't even want to be like worshipped or like, um, be the ruler of everything.
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And apparently that makes him the antagonist of the movie.
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And then, so I didn't actually think it was a particularly good movie.
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I didn't think the, the narrative was coherent.
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I thought the, to me, it was a badly structured movie.
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It's got, well, it's nominated for best picture at this year's Oscars.
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And then Greta Gerwig didn't get nominated for best director, which then precipitated the
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inevitable meltdown on social media and whatever else.
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Man, these guys should be grateful that that movie got nominated for anything.
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Like I can see it getting nominated for like best production design or something.
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Like you couldn't find anything better than that?
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I mean, it's, it's a movie that says all the right things, presents all the right messages,
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and obviously has this massive cultural movement behind it.
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And so, sure, of course, they're going to try and give it every award ever, you know?
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And it was quite funny that people were raging, you know, that Greta Gerwig didn't get best
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director, Margot Robbie didn't get best actor or nominated for it, whereas Ryan Gosling did.
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I mean, Gosling was actually the best thing about the movie.
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I mean, he's, he's obviously a charismatic actor, and even though they present Ken as
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this bumbling doofus, you know, who you're not meant to empathize with, you absolutely
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And partly it's on the strength of his performance.
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And I think Margot Robbie, to be fair, she's a good actress, not taking anything away from
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her, and at times gave a pretty good performance as Barbie.
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You know, she can certainly emote, but, you know, is she like the best of the best for the
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I actually thought that, I don't remember what other movies came out in the year, but I,
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like, Tonya is a movie that she is absolutely amazing as an actress, like, so, so, shows
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her range very well and very, very persuasive, not just a pretty girl.
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Yeah, she's very much willing to do smaller projects and take risks and take on more challenging
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And, you know, I've heard it said before that perhaps, like, the fact that she is so beautiful
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in a conventional sense, which works so well for her in Barbie, maybe worked to her detriment
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in some other films, because you almost have to look past that and realize, no, this person's
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actually giving a really good performance as an actor.
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Yeah, I remember realizing Brad Pitt was a good actor, like, quite a long way into his
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career, because it's hard to look past the looks and all of that.
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But speaking of visually arresting movies, I thought Oppenheimer was so cinematically
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And that one, it was a movie that I really loved.
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Certainly up to the point of the end of the Manhattan Project.
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The third act is obviously the, I was going to say the fallout from that, that's the wrong
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The later life of Oppenheimer, you know, the trials, the very much, it devolves into a
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I probably would have trimmed that down personally, because the movie does start to get a bit long
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But as a visually interesting and brilliantly acted, brilliantly structured movie, yeah,
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It's nice to see a movie get so much attention, which is actually thoughtful, intelligent,
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well put together, made by an actual artistic director who actually has something he wants
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And he has a really strong creative vision, as opposed to someone that's just been cast
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So it's, if nothing else, like the good thing that came out of Oppenheimer is that a lot
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They got to see Oppenheimer, who perhaps wouldn't have done otherwise.
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I don't know if you felt this way, and you probably don't, but my issue with Christopher Nolan
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is I always feel like with some of his movies, he's very prone to disappearing up his own
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And he didn't on this one, which is what made it palatable to a mass audience.
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It was a movie that was actually consumable by a normal person like me.
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And that seemed to me a really important thing in telling what is actually a huge element
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of the story of world history, Western history.
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Yeah, I think the key difference is that this is not a work of science fiction.
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And that's where sometimes Christopher Nolan can go off the rails, because he has got
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this gigantic mathematical space brain where he can conceive of the most fantastical ideas
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The problem is, like, the average person can't always digest it.
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And Interstellar starts to go down that road towards the ends, where you get into hard,
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And then Tenet was probably the worst example of that, where I watched it twice now, straight
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It's so intellectualized that it's difficult to even connect what the narrative is there,
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particularly because it is straight up going backwards and forwards.
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He's, I hate to say it, but he's almost too intelligent for his own good sometimes.
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And he needs someone to rein him in sometimes and say, you know, the average person's not
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And I think he even made this excuse when he was taking criticism for Tenet.
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He said recently, oh, you're not necessarily meant to understand it.
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You cannot say that about your movie, that it's intentionally impenetrable to a normal
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Yeah, the fact that he said that is both shocking and at the same time, completely unsurprising.
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So with Oppenheimer, it's great because he's dealing with real events, real people.
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And, you know, I'm surprised actually he didn't go into more of the science behind the actual
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Like, I don't know, maybe he was prevented from it.
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You don't want to tell people too much about how these things work.
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But, yeah, it's very much him just dealing with real events and not allowed to indulge
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Do you think part of the reason that Oppenheimer was so successful, and it's actually, if I'm
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being brutally honest, one of the reasons that I loved it, there was no political lectures.
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There was no talking about, you know, politics.
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It was just a story that was well told, well acted, well written, well shot.
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I mean, your only political dimension to it is, like, the universal idea of science going
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too far or creating something that is going to have unforeseen consequences, you know,
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Well, you know, and what happens when people start using them?
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And so that is a pretty universal theme that doesn't try to take a stance necessarily one
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It's just an interesting philosophical idea to explore.
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And yeah, it was nice to not be lectured by a film and just allow the audience to draw
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some of their own conclusions from what they see.
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Can I just disagree with both of you on this, by the way?
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There's a massive political dimension to the movie that gets smuggled in that it's so
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well that both of you didn't notice it, which is the McCarthyism thing.
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The whole film is about him and people around him being persecuted for being communist or
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It's not about that necessarily, but it's a dimension of it.
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The core element is what have we created in this thing.
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But that serves as a backdrop to his life and a reflection of the persecution that he
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But the reason I say this is we recently interviewed Michael Malice, who's a good friend of ours,
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talking about the concept of McCarthyism that Hollywood likes to portray may not have happened
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quite like that, not least because Hollywood was absolutely infiltrated with communists.
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So what I would say is the political dimension was very well hidden in this film.
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So I saw that more as a kind of historical element to it.
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If we look at the Oscars now, what is the point of the Oscars, really?
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Because the last time anybody really talked about the Oscars in any great detail was when
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And that was nothing to do with the movies or anything.
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It was just, you know, one man punches another kind of thing.
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Well, at this point, it's becoming increasingly irrelevant.
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It's reflected in the viewing figures, really.
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It's pretty much just Hollywood kissing its own arse for an entire evening.
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The degree of self-congratulation, the arrogance of it, and the fact that you've got all these
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people who flew in on their private jets to be there for this ceremony.
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They're wearing suits or dresses that cost more than we make in a year.
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And they're going to lecture us about climate change and saving the environment and cutting
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You're singularly unqualified to have opinions about any of this stuff.
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So all of that is just, people just aren't interested anymore.
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And that, to me, even though it was the Golden Globes, but it's pretty much the same thing,
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It's one of the most cathartic things you can see, because he's exactly right on every
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And the reactions from people in the audience are just glorious.
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But does it mean anything anymore, really, that an actor wins an Oscar or a movie gets
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Because I remember, as a huge cinema buff when I was a kid, if I saw a movie got nominated
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for an Oscar, I would actually say to my friends, should we go and watch it?
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But to somebody who was obsessed by movies, that was a big thing.
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And it's just the whole devaluing of the brand and the trust in that Hollywood institution.
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Because like you say, it used to be movies that had real artistic merit, but there was
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a balance between them and films that people have actually heard of before, that told interesting
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stories, that had really interesting performances, all of those things.
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Now, when you see it, I think they've got quotas for the level of diversity, for example, that
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you have to have in your actors, your film crew, your production people, just to be considered
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So when you realize that, when you realize that films mandate that certain people have
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to be put into certain roles just to be considered, you're automatically not getting the best quality
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end products because you're making all these concessions that you shouldn't have to.
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Because, and it seems now that we just get trapped in these endless arguments about, you
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People were saying, well, Cillian Murphy shouldn't have played Oppenheimer because he's not an
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It's, yeah, I mean, where does it end, I suppose, when it comes to this sort of thing?
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If you're going to do a zombie movie, do you have to cast actual corpses in it?
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But, I mean, yeah, that's the, when it comes to this sort of thing, though, people are making
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up their own minds because you, like I say, you see it in the viewing figures or things
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You know, they're dying a death and they're bringing about their own demise.
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If people don't care about it anymore, they're just staging a really expensive show for nothing.
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Do you know, it never made a lot of sense to me why people would, you know, destroy their
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We saw it actually in comedy in this country as well.
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I have not been to LA and I'm very proud of that.
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We went for work, you know, interviewing people and stuff.
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But when you are in LA and you meet people in LA and you see the world that they live
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in, suddenly all of this makes so much more sense.
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Because the bubble that those people operate in, then the contrast between the stuff you
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might see on social media about, you know, this actress says, oh yeah, we don't need
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And the world that we all normal people live in is massive and it is because they just live
00:25:42.760
And all of these diversity quotas and all of this other stuff, it makes perfect sense
1.00
00:25:49.300
Which actually, I have to say, has made me incredibly skeptical about everything Hollywood
00:25:54.360
producers because you're going, you know, the perceptions we might have of, you know,
00:25:59.800
people in the American South or people in the American, in the city or whatever, they're
00:26:04.460
all shaped by that cultural creation that is made by people who don't actually live in
1.00
00:26:15.200
And you can understand that when you, like you say, you see the echo chamber that they live
00:26:19.480
in, when you're surrounded by people who all say the same thing, you don't want to
00:26:23.260
be that person who disagrees with them because suddenly you're going to stand out.
00:26:27.720
And I think really it can end your career if you ask the wrong questions or you say the
00:26:32.780
wrong things within Hollywood, you'll just get blacklisted.
00:26:39.660
You'll just stop getting recommended for roles or you'll stop getting opportunities.
00:26:43.780
And before you know it, you're just closed out of it.
00:26:45.720
And yeah, I've read just really sad stories for people who are used to work in the writer's
00:26:52.500
rooms, for example, for big TV shows or movies.
00:26:56.080
And they essentially just don't get opportunities anymore.
00:26:59.740
And they were told by their agents in some cases, there's no point applying for this show
00:27:04.460
or this movie because they're not looking for people who look like you or your gender
00:27:12.800
And I just thought, what a crappy thing to do to people, to take opportunities away from
00:27:17.140
them just because you've said, well, this group or that group deserves it more.
00:27:20.640
Which is funny because that is exactly what people used to do to ethnic minorities and
1.00
00:27:27.820
to women in the past in Hollywood and elsewhere, right?
0.93
00:27:33.060
And then there was the attempt to resolve that.
00:27:39.900
Because, you know, doing the opposite is just replicating the problem.
00:27:45.060
And, you know, it's not like I can sit here and say, yes, well, there's clearly an easy
00:27:52.540
There needs to be a bit more of that balance, though, and an opportunity for people to come
00:27:59.020
Because what you get is people, say directors, who've got almost no experience, being suddenly
00:28:08.720
And the movies inevitably flop because they're not ready for a massive project like that.
00:28:13.620
And so they then get the blame for it and they're not used again.
00:28:16.640
So you're almost giving them one brief opportunity and then taking it away from them again.
00:28:21.540
Whereas you need a chance to gradually bring people up, I suppose, and allow them to build
00:28:26.920
up their experience, build up their skills at doing this stuff, and then give them the
00:28:32.100
But it's like they try to jump from A to Z while missing out all the other letters along
00:28:37.820
It's so interesting that it's exactly what happened in the comedy industry in this country.
00:28:41.740
But actually, what you're talking about is also true of, I don't know if you saw the
00:28:44.840
affirmative action thing being struck down in America.
00:28:47.800
And one of the arguments about affirmative action against affirmative action has always
00:28:52.120
been that it means that students from certain backgrounds are being pushed into positions
00:28:57.780
And instead of going to a college where they would do well and they would be at the top of
00:29:01.380
their class, they end up going to a place where they're not at the top of their
00:29:05.960
They drop out and it's bad for them more than anybody else.
00:29:10.060
And it's also bad for the people who are ethnic minorities who have got there on merit as
0.78
00:29:15.640
well, because then people go, oh, you're just a diversity hire.
00:29:22.280
So then they're exposed to another type of bigotry, prejudice, whatever you want to call
00:29:28.800
And like I say, I don't know what the easy or quick solution to this is, probably because
00:29:33.500
But trying to just force that solution on people, I don't think it benefits really anyone
00:29:41.620
And one of the things we wanted to talk to you about is obviously, as Hollywood moves
00:29:45.360
in that direction, there are attempts being taken to actually counter that, how successful
00:29:54.420
I mean, you've got places like The Daily Wire who are now starting to make their own movies,
00:29:59.000
And, you know, it's a drop in the ocean, really, compared to what Hollywood can do in terms
00:30:06.580
of resources, in terms of the volume of programming.
00:30:09.360
But I think the demand is there for non-political, non-pushy content, I suppose, that's just there
00:30:19.760
I don't know if necessarily The Daily Wire is the one to do it, but they've kind of opened
00:30:26.320
Other people might start to do their own things, and other people might follow in their footsteps.
00:30:32.320
I actually thought, no, I haven't seen the Western.
00:30:34.760
Apparently, the Western that they created, I can't remember the name off the top of my
00:30:38.040
head, was a fairly down-the-line standard Western movie.
00:30:49.920
Yeah, with Terror on the Prairie, yeah, it was just a stock Western, really.
00:30:53.400
Nothing particularly new or innovative about it, necessarily.
00:30:58.580
It was just a standard Western kind of story about survival out in the frontier.
00:31:05.500
You know, I think I would give them a little bit of slack, because it's one of their first
00:31:09.840
But if it had been just a mainstream Hollywood production, I would have said, yeah, it's
00:31:16.120
But it's an interesting little landmark, I guess, for them.
00:31:19.800
And I was really heartened by that, especially when I was reading about it.
00:31:24.820
Now, I didn't watch it, because I'm not particularly a big fan of Westerns.
00:31:29.140
But what I found very heartening about it was there was an absence of politics within
00:31:34.120
And I thought, ah, they've hit on something here.
00:31:37.400
Because what they're doing is they're presenting, they're doing a movie like you would have seen
00:31:42.240
30, 40 years ago, where it's just a straight movie, simple narrative.
00:31:52.240
Because to me, and let's have a conversation about it, I thought that they just did the
00:32:03.280
It's because they tackled a very contentious subject.
00:32:07.000
And it's obviously not things that mainstream Hollywood studios would be willing to take
00:32:13.500
But I think the key to getting that demographic of people who are tired of political pandering
00:32:18.540
and just want entertainment, you've got to capture the middle ground then.
00:32:22.000
And so you've got to resist the urge to put your own politics into it.
00:32:25.420
And that's, I think, the trap that they fell into there.
00:32:27.540
You were essentially just replacing Hollywood's message with your own message.
00:32:37.380
So yeah, that was probably the issue I had with it as well.
00:32:46.100
And it started to get quite pushy with all that stuff towards the end, which it didn't
00:32:51.420
I wonder whether that's almost actually a financial stroke business decision, because
00:32:58.240
in the modern world, as we all know, things with a political message or political dimension
00:33:07.480
And so if you just make a good movie, but you don't have access to the ability to push
00:33:12.320
it out like Barbie, even though that was a political movie, you don't have the ability
00:33:16.540
to push it out to cinema and movie theaters all over the world, then you almost feel like
00:33:22.260
you have to insert a political message, because then at least your base will watch it.
00:33:29.320
I mean, I think when you look at companies like The Daily Wire, they're obviously a very
00:33:37.440
And presumably, if you're a subscriber to their services, that's what you believe in as
00:33:42.360
That's their audience that they're going to play to.
00:33:46.540
And I think it would be enough almost to just tackle a contentious subject like that, because
00:33:52.540
it is a very politicized topic, what the Lady Ballers covers.
0.85
00:33:56.340
But you can do it from that neutral standpoint of like, this is a bit silly.
0.94
00:34:01.420
Like, maybe there's a middle ground that we can find here, kind of like what South Park
00:34:06.060
But they're not going to expand beyond their core audience.
00:34:09.480
They're not going to expand beyond their base if they just keep pushing their own sort
0.97
00:34:15.920
Because, yeah, the middle ground of people, the vast majority of audiences just wants to
00:34:22.380
They don't want one side or the other necessarily.
00:34:25.040
There's two problems with that approach as well.
00:34:27.300
Number one, when you have the comedy element, if your comedy is strongly ideological, then
00:34:32.820
you're going to be able to predict every single punchline because you know where they're coming
00:34:37.800
from, what the point of attack is going to be, and therefore what the reveal is going
00:34:42.240
And number two, you're never going to get people defecting, probably the wrong word
00:34:47.680
to use, from Hollywood because they'll be thinking to themselves, if I go and work with
00:34:52.720
this strongly ideological studio, I may not be able to go back.
00:34:58.220
Whereas if you work with someone who would just, look, we're not going to do the whole
00:35:02.560
woke stuff, we're just going to make movies, that's all we do, then you're offering people
00:35:07.780
an opportunity to be able to flip back and forth.
00:35:10.540
I think so, yeah, because there probably are a lot of creatives in Hollywood who are just
00:35:14.460
burned out with all of that sort of thing, and they just want an opportunity to have artistic
00:35:19.540
And that's what a studio who's willing to just say that, they would thrive at this point.
00:35:24.340
They'd attract some great talent, and they would attract audiences as well.
00:35:28.940
It's just hard to then, it's hard to break into that, I suppose, because you're going
00:35:32.520
to need someone with huge amounts of money and resources to be able to set up a studio
00:35:42.660
Yeah, you're going to need a bunch of billionaires to get together, basically.
00:35:46.160
Elon Musk, you should just make a movie studio.
00:35:48.860
It's kind of tied down with Exit at the moment.
00:35:51.340
Yeah, but no, it's an interesting conversation, because I suspect part of the reason that they've
00:35:58.680
made the movie that is that ideological is just, at least you know that a certain number
00:36:06.100
And also, let's be honest, from a creative perspective, it's much easier to create something
00:36:10.740
that's politically driven, because it doesn't have to then be as great a movie, because people
00:36:20.000
And we're talking about these people who can create and who can change the movie industry.
00:36:25.860
To me, there's very, very few people who could do that.
00:36:28.220
At one point, it was Harvey Weinstein, who completely...
00:37:02.500
Tom Cruise is one of those people who started out as a pretty boy 80s actor, as part of the
00:37:09.640
Brat Pack, and has now gone on to be arguably the most powerful man in Hollywood at this
00:37:17.700
You could say that he even single-handedly saved the movie industry through COVID with
00:37:28.220
I guess at a certain point, he is going to get too old to be doing these action movies,
00:37:34.600
He'll stop running around and throwing himself off buildings.
00:37:37.060
But yeah, maybe he'll start to get more into the producer side of things.
00:37:41.260
But yeah, he is an extremely powerful force within Hollywood now.
00:37:44.400
And part of that is tied to him being one of the last remaining actual movie stars that
00:37:52.480
I mean, I talked about this recently in a video where actors aren't box office draws anymore,
00:37:58.660
You know, nobody's going to go to see the latest Chris Pratt movie.
00:38:02.620
They might go and see it anyway, but not because he's in it.
00:38:06.420
It's just, you know, we've moved beyond that point.
00:38:09.540
Tom Cruise has still got an element of that, I think.
00:38:12.560
But yeah, he's savvy enough to pick movies that he knows are going to be successful.
00:38:21.060
And with things like Top Gun Maverick, yeah, he certainly pulled Hollywood out of the doldrums.
00:38:27.400
And it was just, for so many people, it was such a relief to get a movie that was big budget,
00:38:33.740
that was bombastic, that was patriotic, didn't make them actively feel horrible about themselves,
00:38:39.740
and wasn't some, you know, superhero movie with people just like flying around shooting
00:38:46.260
It's so interesting the way you described it, though, because you described it almost
00:38:53.880
You threw in patriotic and a couple of other things, but, and that's kind of how I felt
0.73
00:38:58.020
about it, because I was like, this is good by virtue of not being crap.
0.69
00:39:07.580
Because I watched it, I was like, okay, cool, nice.
00:39:10.320
But it was like a six and a half out of ten compared to the movies of that genre that
00:39:17.500
Yeah, I think we're all old enough to remember the 90s and the 2000s, where big action movies
00:39:24.620
And, you know, they, by and large, were not particularly political, and they weren't out
00:39:33.500
And I think that's what we've been missing over the years.
00:39:36.360
And so to get a movie like that, it was like this crazy throwback to a different time in
00:39:40.440
So I think that was a real novelty for people as well.
00:39:45.100
I was just, I guess what I'm saying is, I was just, the film is almost a reflection of
00:39:52.960
It's basically a remake with an old guy who's playing a role that's a little bit too, like,
00:39:59.760
you're almost like squeezing an older guy into a younger role.
00:40:08.040
To some extent, they talked at the time, actually, about, like, we're looking for the next Tom
00:40:13.420
Cruise, like the next movie star, the next guy who can sell box office tickets.
00:40:20.160
So then actual Tom Cruise had to just come back and do it again.
00:40:24.320
Do you think part of that problem, just touching that with the death of the movie star, is when
00:40:30.380
we looked at movie stars, there were these bigger, larger than life characters.
00:40:41.360
They, you know, they enjoyed the company of women, shall we say.
00:40:45.360
And that kind of stuff, I mean, it's pretty much frowned upon really now, isn't it?
00:40:50.980
When you think arguably the last movie star, I would say, would be someone like Robert Downey
00:40:59.640
I think the bad boy of Hollywood seems to be a dying breed.
00:41:04.180
You know, like, when you look back to a lot of the lives these guys led, like you say,
00:41:09.900
They were doing all kinds of crazy stunts and dangerous things with their lives.
00:41:16.580
Now they seem a bit safe and a bit stage managed by comparison.
00:41:20.100
And the other problem is we've actually got to know them now.
00:41:25.480
You know, with social media, the mystique that used to surround the movie stars vanished.
0.99
00:41:30.700
And now you get to see every dumb thought that pops into their heads.
0.77
00:41:34.180
And it doesn't make for compelling viewing.
0.97
00:41:36.500
And so they don't seem like a breed apart anymore.
0.99
00:41:39.560
You realize, like, well, at the time, they're just as dumb as I am.
0.99
00:41:50.040
Even Tom Cruise, you wouldn't go, oh, I'd like to hang out with him.
00:41:53.140
I remember hearing this story about Peter O'Toole when he was filming King Ralph
00:41:58.820
And this young actor came in and said to him, oh, do you have an ashtray?
1.00
00:42:02.720
And he went, make the world your ashtray, dear boy, and flick the ass on the floor.
0.98
00:42:08.040
And you just go, there's that sense of fun that when you watch Peter O'Toole,
0.99
00:42:12.300
of course, he was a magnificent actor, but there was this danger about him.
00:42:19.760
You wanted, there was a part of you that wanted to be him.
00:42:22.680
But you look at the actors now, and I mean, some of them are very good,
00:42:26.600
very technically competent, but there's nobody who's got that charisma.
00:42:32.720
Like I say, they're just a different generation and a different breed.
1.00
00:42:36.380
Yeah, some of the stories about Richard Burton were amazing
00:42:38.420
because he vanished for an entire week while they were filming Where He Goes There.
00:42:42.540
And he'd just gone on this crazy bender around Europe and no one knew where he was,
00:42:52.200
Well, if you've got more questions, I was going to say,
00:42:54.520
why don't we ask some questions from our supporters on Locals?
00:42:57.940
There was just one thing that I wanted to talk about very quickly,
00:43:00.520
which is we've talked about movies and we've kind of ignored TV
00:43:09.140
If you think of things like Succession, Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos,
00:43:13.900
they've made far more of a cultural impact than any movie, really.
00:43:18.020
They have, but then a lot of them are from a good five or ten years ago now.
00:43:24.660
but they were talking recently about how we're no longer in that golden age of TV
00:43:28.280
because it's been dumbed down and partly streaming is the problem.
00:43:31.700
Like you need to capture your audience and keep them hooked in.
00:43:35.900
And so you can't have these big elaborate like 28 episode seasons.
00:43:40.000
They can't be as slow paced and methodical as they used to be.
00:43:44.200
It's got to be very immediate because people want to binge it now.
00:43:47.340
And so it's contributed, I guess, to that sort of decline in the quality of TV production.
00:43:52.820
There's still definitely good stuff out there, but it's not as mainstream as it was.
00:43:56.240
Like in the days when we had The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad,
00:43:59.720
like those are all very much like previous generations TV shows.
00:44:06.120
The more recent ones would be Game of Thrones, for example, right?
00:44:13.260
And Game of Thrones, well, we saw how that ended.
00:44:18.640
What was interesting about that was it was almost like the entire series,
00:44:22.580
they'd been resisting the urge to make it conventional into a conventional story.
00:44:28.220
And at the end, they were just like, you know what?
1.00
00:44:30.620
I think it was partly the writers were eager to move on to Star Wars
1.00
00:44:33.800
because they had a Star Wars movie that they were promised to do.
00:44:36.400
And so HBO were up for doing two or three more seasons with them.
0.99
00:44:42.340
Let's get this out of the way as quickly as possible.
0.99
00:44:44.060
Wrap everything up in like five or six episodes.
00:44:50.360
And that's why, yeah, everything started to rush.
00:44:52.780
Characters who would have taken an entire season
00:44:54.640
to get from one end of the country to the other
00:44:58.880
And there was all the big set piece battles and everything.
00:45:02.040
It was all a bit spectacle rather than storytelling.
00:45:03.840
And in the end, what they went away from is the thing
00:45:10.360
And it wasn't good versus evil and good always wins in the end.
00:45:15.480
I mean, it was slightly unpredictable towards the end,
00:45:21.420
Well, listen, man, it's been great having you back on the show
00:45:25.440
Before we go to a few questions from our supporters,
00:45:29.960
what's the one thing that we're not talking about that we should be?
00:45:33.840
Why are visual effects so horrible in movies now?
00:45:36.460
Like, they're worse than they were 10 or 15 years ago.
00:45:42.740
Like, I look back to things like Pirates of the Caribbean,
00:45:52.120
where we ask a few of your questions to the Curriculum Drinker.
00:46:08.920
and Moody's can help organizations move even faster,
00:46:11.520
leveraging AI to help you gain quicker insights
00:46:18.160
Visit moody's.com slash kyc slash ai dash study