I love the cinema. Ever since I was a kid, one of my favorite things in the world was heading to the theaters to buy a big tub of popcorn, too much Sprite, and sitting down in front of that big silver screen to watch whatever remotely caught my interest. One of my first jobs was even working at a theater. If I had my way, the movie theater would never die and the films that were made for them would always be creative spectacles that captured the hearts, minds, and imaginations of anyone who sat down to watch them.
But that’s not our reality. Even with my optimistic nature, I can see the writing is on the wall. Theaters will eventually become a relic where people go to get a novel experience of the past that the world has moved on from. Should God bless me with some, I’ll take my grandchildren to a movie theater and tell them about how we used to consume our entertainment and how people would line up out the door in order to see big releases.
I can still remember the endless lines of impatient people at the concession stand when Spider-Man was released at the theater I worked in 2002.
But that was then, and this is now. Now, studios long lost any desire to create new, authentic, creative, or substantial experiences for theatergoers, at least for the most part. You get a few good films here and there but Hollywood has crawled so far up its own ass that it abandoned the muse for political back-pats and easy money.
Like an old sick dog past any point of saving, the only thing Hollywood has to offer is a remembrance of better times. It’s best to put it down. It seems, however, that it might euthanize itself.
According to Bounding Into Comics, the SAG-AFTRA strike is currently plaguing Hollywood, reportedly costing $600,000 a week, mostly to major studios like Disney and Comcast. The actors and writers have gone on strike together for the first time since the 1960s, meaning nothing is getting written and nothing is being filmed. So Hollywood has come to a screeching, and very expensive, halt. Former Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox CEO Barry Diller predicts that Hollywood is doomed if this strike continues till Christmas.
But would that be such a bad thing?
There are a lot of contributing factors to the decline of Hollywood, including the advancement of home technologies and streaming services, but Hollywood’s biggest issue is its culture. This is a realm of finger-wagging hypocrites who have no problem telling you how you should live your life while they revel in their own immorality. Rape, pedophilia, and ideological radicalism are rampant problems in Hollywood, yet they find it fit to constantly tell us in middle America that we’re on the wrong side of history on any given subject.
They tell us that their latest feminist film isn’t for men, then they get mad when half the country doesn’t show up. They attempt to shove LGBT concepts down the throats of our children and then wonder why parents don’t see the latest Disney release. They claim criticism of their latest self-insert reboot/rehash/remake of a once-beloved property is the result of some bigotry and learn nothing as to why their show or film was rejected.
What’s more, that culture has infected creative outlets outside of Hollywood too. DC and Marvel comics seem to have the same issues of political injection that Hollywood does, and it’s even gotten into some video game companies.
Outside of the occasional banger, what is Hollywood offering? What is it good for? What is it producing that is really moving us?
I notice I get more excited about the work of independent creators on YouTube than I do Hollywood lately. Smaller studios with a quarter of the budget create far more incredible works than the old money in Hollywood. The big studios might have run out of ideas but the rest of the world hasn’t. I continuously watch fresh ideas come out of mere teenagers who have a grip on programs like Blender. None of these look as flashy or big as Hollywood productions, but at least there’s substance.
Hollywood has been dying for some time and it deserves to die. It’s not just bereft of passion and love for the art, but it’s a cesspool of some of the grossest behavior in America. It contributes nothing and poisons everything. It makes products for audiences that don’t exist, and continues to do so because it won’t (or can’t) see the reality beyond its ideological bubble.
It needs to die and let the next thing take its place.
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