I love movies. I always have. But something that has been a big part of my life has been sharing these cinematic experiences with friends. The social element.
I often defend my love of big film franchises like The Fast and Furious and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in that to me this has been the shared experience and the happy memories that these bring. I’d often pre-book cinema tickets with others and make a day of it, often taking time off work, combining the event with a meal out or a few nights away or whatever.
But in the past few years something that has really created a distaste has been the quality of the big event movies. Granted movies have always suffered from one not being as good as the next, but this is something more. Something more of a specific pattern has been emerging in the ruination, in the past few years.
A pattern of woke insertion of identity politics, Cultural Marxism and Critical Theory.
in 2019 alone we had a number of ruined (formerly beloved) franchises. We had Star Wars – Rise of Skywoker, X-Men Woke Phoenix, Terminator: Woke Fate, (Wo)Men in Black: International. And the looming likelihood of having a great franchise in James Bond ruined with a 25th entry in No Time To Die, with some cringe inducing information coming to light about that and Third Wave Feminist involvement in the writing. Sadly that was delayed, so we still don’t know how accurate the numerous rumours are.
Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies going forward are now being dubbed as the ‘M She U’ or ‘MLGBTQ+CU’, given the social messaging that they are now seemingly planning to force into their storylines, hatchet-job style. And these are the big franchise movies.
Clearly the intersectional identitarians of the far-left have been winning the culture war and are injecting their cringe inducing agendas into these, with the TV and movie industry alike catering almost entirely to/for them. Making for poor story telling, lazy character development and just all round divisive political messages.
This isn’t why we go see movies. At least some of us.
And with everything caused by the lockdowns from 2020 onwards, the closing of cinemas, the forcing of as yet unreleased and completed movies straight on to streaming, this begs the question: ‘what kind of state is film making and film viewing in from now on?’.
One thought I have been entertaining over the past year is that the lower budget ‘indy’ studio movies have a better chance. With lower budgets, less studio meddling, less Hollywood (far-left) influence, it stands to reason that a films production would be less compromised.
So, I was pleased to see Ben Shapiro announce on behalf of The Daily Wire, an independent online news and podcast media platform, that they (i.e. The Daily Wire, not Shapiro himself) are going to be getting into the business of releasing/distributing TV entertainment and movies. See the end of my post here for the announcement video.
Shapiro claims that these movies and shows will counter the social engineering of the identitarian left, which dominates the vast vast majority of the cultural institutions. This begins with their debut release of an action movie, Run Hide Fight starring some pretty well known actors (such as Thomas Jane, Treat Williams and Radha Mitchell), which premiered on their own platform on Friday 14th January 2021.
It actually looks impressive!. Here’s the trailer.
This sounds like a great way forward. I wish them and any studio with a similar mission statement the best of luck with making good movies.
Of course if this becomes too ‘in your face’… the forcing of political messaging and catering to one specific side of the political spectrum, then we have potentially the same outcome. That being the aforementioned poor story telling, lazy character development and just all round divisive political messages. But somehow I don’t think this will be the case with The Daily Wire.
Here’s hoping.
Joseph
You can read an article about this here. See also Ben Shapiro’s announcement below.