Some More News - Some More News: How Did People Become So Bad At Watching Movies?

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Hi. On today's episode: Movies! We talk about movies. Specifically, the changes in Hollywood now that "Obsession" and "Backrooms" were big hits while the new Star Wars flopped, why media literacy when it comes to movies has gone down the drain, and why the Right is so bad at just watching movies normally.Note: this episode contains spoilers for "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," "Obsession," and "The Odyssey.”PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/joinHosted by Cody JohnstonExecutive Producer - Katy StollDirected by Will GordhWritten by David Christopher BellProduced by Jonathan HarrisEdited by Gregg MellerPost-Production Supervisor / Motion Graphics & VFX - John ConwayResearcher - Marco Siler-GonzalesGraphics by Clint DeNiscoHead Writer - David Christopher Bell#SpiderMan #Obsession #MattWalshSubscribe today to get a 1-month supply of AG Omega-3 with your first AG1 order! You’ll also get their Welcome Kit with everything you need to get started on your AG1 journey. So make sure to check out DrinkAG1.com/morenews to claim this special offer. That’s http://drinkAG1.com/morenews.Mondays don’t move for anyone. Pre-Alcohol works overnight so you can have a real weekend and still show up sharp. https://ZBiotics.com/MORENEWS, code MORENEWS for 15% off.Pluto TV. Stream Now. Pay Never.Chapters:Chapters:0:00 - Introduction6:28 - MOVIES.10:09 - Millennials Are Old People Now, Sorry!15:03 - Nostalgia Has To Be Earned22:54 - Hire People Who Give A Sh#t To Make Mid-Budget Genre Films30:54 - Did Superheroes and the Internet Ruin Movies? Yes.42:12 - SPOILERS FOR SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY55:49 - Everyone is Weird About Obsession01:02:24 - Why Can’t The Right Watch Movies Normally?01:16:43 - Elon’s Pathetic AI OdysseySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Movies. Hey movies. Hello, movies. Here's some new Vies, movies. Like and subscribe to movies, folks. Have you heard about movies? Hey, Warmbo. Movies! Movies! Hey, Katie! Movies! Movies! Movies are back. For real this time! Specifically, the summer box office has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. Remember movies? Remember... The pandemic? Well, you do now. More? More? More? More specifically, domestic grosses, also known as Uncle Sam money, are expected to hit over $10 billion for the first time since 2019. At the end of July, the top 10 movies worldwide were toys, a fifth story. Mitchell, Italians Meet Fuckable Fox, Long Trip, Sexy Satan 2, Charming Rock in Space, movie

that no one in America has heard of, movie that no one can be normal about, yellow butt plug number seven and office space. Of course, that last one has been knocked down by East Coast Web Guy. And what's pretty interesting is that, as you would notice if I said the names correctly, there aren't nearly as many superhero or big franchise blockbuster sequels as there used to be. Yes, there's a toy story and a Mario and a minions. But those are all little stupid kid franchises for dumb stupid babies. And yes, Spider-Man just made an ass ton of money and I'm sure Doomsday will as well. I'm not saying that superhero or blockbuster films are dead, and in fact, we've loved Spider-Man specifically for over 20 years now. But when it comes to movies aimed at Gen Z and Millennials, there has been a way more diverse spread of films that became surprise hits, at least compared to the past.

The two horror movies, but also Project Hail Mary, a sci-fi book adaptation, and the freaking Odyssey, which I'm told is also an adaptation of some kind. I think a TV show from the 90s, And then there's, of course, one night only. The film that takes place in a world where single people can only have sex one day of the year. Wild thing about that movie. It's real. Finding love is hard enough. Try doing it on the one night a year.

Single people are legally allowed to have sex. I hate this night. That's the movie. And I guess it's a romantic comedy and not about like a dystopian uprising. Apparently, everyone is forced to have special tattoos that tell the come police when you're coming? Rick Perry must be in Guantanamo. Polygon asked the director a lot of questions about the logic, and they didn't seem to have thought about it much.

When asked about how this even became a law, if the Supreme Court intervened, etc., he responded, there's a lot of things in the movie that we kind of explained as much as we want to explain. All the questions you're asking, I want people. to ask them to each other in the theater. Seems like if you made a romantic comedy sex romp, you'd actually want the audience in the theater to focus on the romance and the comedy and the sex, and not like the unexplained lore?

Not watching a romantic comedy, but asking each other questions in the theater while the movie's playing about hypothetical legislation that led to your dumb, confusing movie. It also seems like it's a metaphor for mask mandates, so I don't know what? Why does the trailer barely mention this stuff anyway? Why are the people in the movie going along with it? You could actually make a really good film about how puritanical thinking drive sex work underground and explore things like sex trafficking or contraception or something.

But I guess it's just a fun, romantic romp set in this Hunger Games ass universe? I don't know. I haven't seen it. I probably won't. Maybe it addresses all of this, and this episode isn't about that movie, so I, I guess I have to let it go. For now. Anyway, this has been an ongoing change with the box office, and in fact, we did a video a few years ago pointing this out as well, back when Barbenheimer's roamed to the planet. We've been in a state of flux with blockbusters where audiences gravitate toward more original films made by people who, like,

Give a shit, while studio executives seem to actively fight against that desire. Like how David Zazlab is currently refusing to make another Barbie film because, of course, he is. See, what's more interesting this year aren't the surprise hits, but the movies that bombed. For example, there was a whole Star War out this year and it didn't break the top 10. In fact, it was a genuine flop. Star Wars bombed at the box office, as did Supergirl. That He-Man movie also bombed. And Melania?

Really? I thought that would have been a hit. So you see what I'm getting at. Not only did the box office rebound, but it did so through far less help from the genres and franchises that were expected to be hits by the big studios. Spider-Man, far less help. Gen Z specifically gravitated toward more original stuff. Can't exactly call like The Odyssey original or Backrooms or Projetail Mary.

But they're all adaptations of stories that haven't been told to death. When this video comes out, there will be an original dinosaur film out that isn't Jurassic Park presents Jurassic World Five. That Star War was beaten at the box office by obsession, an actual original story, made by a YouTuber for under a million dollars. YouTubeers making movies. If only we knew someone who could do such a thing, like if there's like a spunky YouTube show that Mr. Big Shot could watch and go,

hey, I like the cut of that guy's beard. Let's put him in the pictures. Anyway, that's what we're gonna talk about. The box office, the movies, the right-wing response to movies, the movies, other things about movies, people in movies, that one night only movie, Movies, AI and movies, and most of all, movies. Movies.

It stands for majestic video fantasies. So here's the thing about movies, or rather, here's the thing about movie studios. They want to make money. That's what they do. Their priority is to find projects that they think will make a lot of money, which it turns out, it's kind of hard,

as evidenced by the film One Night Only, which is, not well reviewed and has not done well in theaters. Maybe because everyone was asking each other questions out loud about the logic of it. A lot of the best movies, classic movies, don't actually make a lot of money, though. Movies like It's a Wonderful Life bombed when it came out. The Thing, the freaking Shawshank Redemption. All bombs. That's why studios tend to care less about quality and instead they want to find patterns that they know will work.

For example, they used to rely on certain actors they knew would draw a crowd. But lately, that's been less of a guarantee. Although I would argue it's coming back. What with the Zendaya and the Tom H and the Robert P? Two memes in one summer, Rob? Impressive stuff. That's like Leo numbers. And of course, Safdi fever.

But since the 2000s franchises have been the new way these studios could rely on the box office. to the point that studios like Marvel and Lucasfilm were created just to make one specific franchise. That is becoming a very dangerous game because as audiences grow less interested in those franchises, those studios have nothing to do but lay off employees. No matter the specifics, the pattern stays the same. Studios look for broad characteristics in the films that do well

and then try to ape that, which most of the time proves to be very stupid. It's how you get Mac and me after E.T. Or the Lone Ranger after Pirates of the Caribbean. Or the Sex Purge movie after The Purge. More recently, Barbie prompted studios to Greenlight a bunch of toy films, as if that's what audiences liked about the movie. One such project that was pushed forward after years of trying to get going

was the Masters of the Universe movie, otherwise known as He-Man. See, because toy... equals money. Except, oops. Turns out that Gen Z wasn't interested in a movie based on action figures created over 10 years before the oldest of them was born. A movie that cost nearly $200 million to make.

A movie that at one point has a scene where an Amazon truck saves the day. But don't worry, maybe the sequel they're still planning will do better. Similarly to Barbie, the new success of backrooms is causing studios to swoop up every internet horror meme, once more misunderstanding what is actually going on. So we thought that perhaps, since we're really cool and have our many fingers on the even more pulses, we would introduce three very clear lessons that Hollywood could learn about the

2026 box office so far, starting with something that I don't think people, including myself are ready to hear, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Millennials are old people now, sorry. I am so sorry, but it's true. Millennials are no longer the exciting demographic that film and TV executives should be thinking about. We had our time, and it was pretty cool. You know, we got three Lord of the Rings, we all

all love to rewatch, way more Harry Potter films we don't really feel comfortable talking about. A lot of tattoo regrets there. We're old people is the point. We just, we just, we just are. I heard La Tigray play in a right aid recently. Little John is in a Honda ad now. We're old.

Closer to the warm, merciful grave. And people closer to the grave, statistically speaking, don't really go to the theaters as much as people further from the grave, also known, as disgusting young people. We millennials don't have a lot of time left, you know? Why spend it watching the same AMC ad over and over? No, we're gonna be here in our homes watching Mayor of East Town,

trying to guess who the secret horse is. Or I guess that Harry Potter HBO show? I mean, I'm not gonna watch it, but by making it an HBO show, I guess they realized that we're old. The point is that movies haven't quite caught up with that fact. The new Supergirl's big fun needle drop was a cover of Jimmy Eat Worlds the Middle, a song that was briefly famous in 2001 and 2002, which I hate to inform you,

25 years ago! The star of Supergirl was barely alive when that song was a hit. The key demographic a movie like Supergirl is trying to court won't even know that it's a cover of a song. A good song too! Why'd they use a cover? Stupid. Also, I'm not saying we olds don't watch movies.

But the millennial demographic simply doesn't have the time or energy to fill theaters unless they're seeing Toy Story 5 with their kids. Because that's where a lot of millennials are eventually now with kids. See, because we don't have money. So millennials are having kids later in life. So the only films that can still pander to us have to be films that we're bringing smaller humans to. That new Shrek might actually do really well for this reason. But Supergirl?

Sorry, too scary. The villain in that is a sex trafficker and masters of the fucking universe? That's too old for most millennials. We didn't really grow up on He-Man, Gen X did. And listen to how Alison Brie, one of the stars of the film, talks about her experience, the role. Every man I have ever met who has my phone number has reached out about this movie. People I did not know still had my phone number. I'm getting text. Oh my God, you're evil Lynn. What behind the scenes? I can't wait to bring my son. I mean, that's a really fun.

Like every person I know who's in their 40s and 50s men especially, you know, they want to go and bring their kids. And it is the perfect movie for that. It really threads that needle. She's charming and very talented. We love her. But I have some bad news. Those men in their 50s telling her that they're going to bring their kids to the movie? Well, they're 50. Their kids are in their 20s. It sounds like she's picturing like little kids discovering the wonder of He-Man,

but some of the kids of Gen X are in their goddamn 30s. This means that the Masters of the Universe film was actually designed for a very niche group of audience goers, with the budget of a Marvel film. Like, that very expensive film has a weirdly drawn out Dolph Lundgren cameo in it, because I guess they expected a packed audience to cheer at the star of the original 1987 movie. You're in my spot. What? You're taking my spot.

I'm sorry. Get it? Because he was the previous star of the only other Masters of the Universe film made almost 40, 40 years ago, a film that also bombed when it came out. They spent nearly $200 million folks and dudes, and I don't think they considered any of this. They probably just kept repeating what our Emmy is saying in that clip, because I think a lot of studios have taken the concept of nostalgia completely for granted, which brings me to the second lesson. Nostalgia has to be You know why the Mandalorian and Grogu bombed?

Because the last season of the show the movie is based on that people liked and remembered was from six years ago. The last Star Wars movie was seven years ago and nobody liked it. It's subjective, but probably the last time someone made a Star War that most fans could agree on that wasn't Andor, which they'll never make again, was like, probably Rogue One, 10 years ago? So if you're a person in their 20s, the demographic they are hoping to nab, what nostalgia do you really have for Star Wars? A few movies that were kind of okay? Those prequels that came out before you were born? If you were born for those, you probably liked those as a kid,

even though they were also bad, and no revisionism will change that. It's a fine idea and potentially good themes to explore, but they're just bad. They're bad movies, folks. So generally speaking, if you're younger, then you probably don't have the same blind passion for Star Wars like a millennial or Gen X or has. You've probably moved on and Star Wars gave you no good reason to stay. It wasn't paying out. And it feels like the franchise was still riding the couple of good movies from the 70s and 80s, right?

Trying to ping everyone's nostalgia for Han and Leia and Luke and Captain Harry and then a bunch of TV shows. But Star Wars is movies. Yes, it's sci-fi fantasy for kids, but it's also cinema. Unfortunately, the last Star Wars movie in theaters that was part of the Star Wars Cinematic Saga was one of the worst movies ever. Then a pandemic and seven years passed, and the big triumphant theatrical return was a movie approximating a streaming show about a guy who looks like one of the side characters for a 46-year-old movie and a little cute guy who looks like the big,

version of a different side character from a 46 and 27 year old movie, but also the streaming show split into a second show that was about the original side character that the guy who looks like that guy is looking like. But in one random episode of this other new show, it resolves the primary narrative of the final episode of the third season of the first original show about the guy who looks like the guy in the second show about the guy from the 46-year-old movie. And so they made a new movie about that guy going on a generic adventure with the little version of the other old guy and also the son of a side character from a 43-year-old movie and the special edition of a 49-year-old movie who constantly says that he's not the guy from the 43-year-old movie. Star Wars is dumb, I guess, is what I'm getting at.

They ran out of things to say. Somehow, all the stuff they already did returned very poorly. My main point here is that nostalgia isn't something you just inherit from your parents. And I feel like studios completely forgot that and took nostalgia for granted. If you want to cynically bleed a franchise dry, as these money ghouls certainly do, you have to re-up the nostalgia every 10 years or so. I'm not saying it's good to do. But for example, look at Spider-Man.

I do have other thoughts about why Spider-Man specifically is always apparently such a popular character, but for our purposes here, they made three films between 2002 and 2007, then a reboot series in 2012 and 2014, and then another reboot series starting in 2017. Without having a bunch of television homework, that covers three generations of moviegoers

who were within a demographic that would be resuscary. to watching a spandex man sling his goo all over New York City. It's no wonder that the one that brought all three Spider-Men together was such a hit. Aplaus, breaks, and all. Did you clap? They left space for you to clap. Even the fourth film, with the same actor, operates as a reboot of sorts,

though there are other examples of this. Scooby-Doo and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are always keeping the ball in the air with new TV shows and movies, right? It's a tricky little balancing act. little balancing act, as evidenced by the fact that Star Wars seems to have fallen out of the groove. And again, it's cynical. It's also really damn hard to maintain these days for a few reasons. Firstly, of course, classic, the internet. See, in the 90s, a studio could just declare, we're making a live action Flintstone's film, and young people would just kind of have to go see it.

What else were they going to do, read? But these days, Gen Z can just watch something. else, which is what they're doing, abandoning stuff like streaming services for other forms of entertainment. This likely became way bigger of an option because of the pandemic everyone remembers, remember? There is a tween generation that likely now has a lot of nostalgia for staying inside and wasting time online. Meanwhile, the final reason is that since these franchises, such as Marvel, have refused to end and lasted so long that younger audiences have been left out.

How is a 15-year-old going to see Doomsday when that requires them to watch nearly 20 years worth of movies and TV shows? The total MC runtime is over 600 fucking hours. Are young people really going to care when white vision shows up to punch... I don't know. The Hulk's son? Remember that? This is my son, Scar.

Where's the Hulk's son? Are we just gonna try to forget the Hulk's son? Why would Bruce do that? Why would he dare to put his jizz in anyone? Anywhere? That thing probably tore out of his mother. Or maybe he was cloned. I have no idea.

I'm not gonna find out. I shouldn't have to watch the finale of a streaming show to find out that a character from a movie has this weird as fuck son. Look, my point is that people want to have their own nostalgia. They don't want to be told what to have nostalgia for. Teenagers want their own pop culture in general. Generally, not the stuff their parents liked.

So, of course, something like Backrooms was a hit. It's what they were watching. Of course, something like Exit 8 did really well. That is a film based on a horror game that young people played on Steam. And if studios like Marvel wanted to cynically cash in on this, they wouldn't drag the MCU on for any longer, but rather reboot it the way they rebooted Spider-Man so many times in the past. Clean break. Do X-Men, but without all the baggage. Give kids something that belongs to them.

Which actually, it seems they're doing. There was a lot of discourse about the Big Avengers movie poster with people pointing out how, sorry, old every one. one was. Which seems to kind of be the point, in my opinion. It's doomsday. They're gonna kill a bunch of the olds and then secret wars their way into a young, hip X-Men. And maybe that shift in the generation of the cast will work.

Because of course, the question always is, how do you find that next big hit? Which brings us to the final lesson. Hire people who give a shit to make mid-budget genre films. Okay, there are two parts there, so let's address the first. It seems obvious that you need people who, you know, care about a film, but you'd be surprised. For example, that news about studios rushing to make movies based on creepy internet memes. The thing about that is, a lot of those memes, like the backrooms, don't technically belong to anyone. So anyone can make it, and you will be forgiven for not remembering that Hollywood tried this before and it failed.

They took a very popular horror meme and made a movie about it all the way back in 2018. It was called Slender Man, and it, as the kids say, fucking sucked. It was everything wrong with those PG-13 overly CGI pop horror films that have no respect for its audience. And perhaps part of the problem is that it was just made by some people hired by the studio who didn't really have any personal involvement with the original meme. Probably because the people involved in the original meme wouldn't make it. Because if you remember the original meme, you probably remember what happened afterward. For those listening, it was attempted homicide.

Compare that with Kane Parsons, who didn't invent the concept of the backrooms, but absolutely defined it with a series of horror shorts he made as a teenager. Of course, the movie was going to be a labor of love. So it's not enough to just shit out a sirenhead movie. You need people who actually like Sirenhead to make it. Who, who... Care about the Sirenhead lore. Whatever that is.

And for the love of God, you should make it for under $100 million, which is the second part. This is not official, but there have been some murmurings that the long dead mid-budget film is making a comeback. Yes, the dumbass and alleged abuser Bradley Pitt has said that AI can be a great tool, to bring back mid-budget films, which are apparently impossible to make without AI and didn't exist before AI. But ignoring that guy, without AI, genre films like comedy and horror are coming back.

For example, A-24 put out not one but two mid-budget relationship comedies this year, and they both did well. The drama, which did incredible internationally, and the invite, which takes place in a single location. Just folks talking in a room and people showed up to watch. According to something called Entertain Lens, as of July, mid-budget films were responsible for 38% of North America's box office revenue and were over 50% of all films released so far. A lot of that success was probably backrooms, another A-24, mid-budget horror that made nearly $200 million internationally alone.

The speculation is that the way superhero films used to drive, overseas audiences with built-in goodwill, genre films like horror are now doing the same. Meanwhile, superhero films have lost their magic overseas, probably for the same reason they're losing their magic here. You know, because they kind of used up all the goodwill with, well... I've seen that man before. So who is he?

Ezekiel Sims. He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died. Oh man, do you even remember the name of that film? I'll give you a hint. The villain is defeated by a Pepsi sign in it. The genre has buckled under its own massive weight, to the point that Marvel somehow couldn't figure out how to make a blade film, probably because they were obsessed with weaving it into the larger MCU.

So, yeah, it kind of makes sense why mid-budget genre films are being favored. And that's kind of how it used to be. It's why people like me get so frustrated with the superhero genre because it became a genre that took up all the money that a diverse group of blockbusters and mid-budget films used to have access to. It used to be that there was something for everyone, including the olds. If you wanted to watch a courtroom film, you could see the verdict with Paul Newman. If you wanted a comedy drama, you could see Nobody's Fool with Paul Newman.

Or if you wanted a crime thriller, you could see Roald to perdition with Paul Newman. These days, it's like there's basically zero Paul Newman films. What is with that? I'm sorry? Oh, that's a shame. Dead for two decades? Well, that's, I should have known that.

See, this combination, giving a shit and not spending hundreds of millions of dollars, means that you can have more movies that take actual risks and do interesting things. It's gambling after all, right? And so why not bet a little bit on a lot of long shots? You know, like a romantic comedy that takes place in a world where single people can only have sex for one night only. Yes, I actually do want more of that. Even if it's stupid, which it is, it's new.

Anyway, all of these lessons might feel obvious to some, but after the break, I want to talk about why they are, for some reason, not obvious. Not only to studios, but to certain audiences as well. I think that perhaps a lot of people have kind of forgotten how to make and watch movies. But that's a conversation for a later time, that time being after these ads. So that is now happening to the break time. Welly, well, well, look who comes crawling back. Is what your boss might say to you

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I've missed you. So much is what you could say to Pam from marketing. Okay, we're back. Just like movies. Movies. Also breaking news. Movies. God.

Movies. Why aren't I movies? I can be movies. Hold on. I'm gonna call Katie and ask. Hey. Hey, why aren't we making movies? Who is this? Where are you? Listen, Kobe, baby, I've got some bad news. Money has been tight lately. Yeah, our entire some more thing, whatever. The entire budget, it's just, it's been eaten up. Affordability. Iran. There's definitely Iran. Biden. The pandemic. 9-11. You get it. You understand. Are you in Hawaii? Ooh. I don't know. Maybe if we created some sort of proof of concept, we could chop that around. But it's going to have to come out of your dumb wallet.

You are actually in Hawaii. That's not a green screen. Exactly. We can't even afford a green screen. anymore, Crobe. Anyway, I gotta go. It's awesome here. Tons of free booze. And you can just pluck crabbed right off the beach and eat them like an apple.

Okay. Later, Skeeter. Wow. Can't even afford a green screen. Didn't realize it was that bad. That explains the backdrop, I guess. Well, the show must go on. We were discussing some basic things

that Mr. and or Mrs. Holley's. can do in order to make a successful film here in the year, 2026. Lessons that I think were forgotten in the last decade or so. And while I don't want to just blame superhero movies, as the reason these lessons were forgotten, I don't have a way to finish that sentence without blaming superhero movies at least a little bit. It was largely a corporate-led genre that drove a massive fan base

to rally around brands as opposed to artists. In the worst moments, these films were entirely made on a green screen, often being rewritten in post-production and relying on a massively underpaid army of visual effects artists to produce cartoonist shots that had no business being CGI, to the point that even their costumes were done in post. Tom was wearing what we call the fractal suit, the tracking suit, but we had a little patch of suit that had a little piece of cloth that could be pulled on a string. It was like a very simple, simple gag when that got pulled. I'm not gonna rant about all the issues, mainly because we did that in the previous video. Instead, I wanna talk about Tom Holland specifically, a 30-year-old, I wanna say dude, who grew up literally

in Marvel films, who then got to work on Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, and according to interviews, was completely blown away by that production. Quote, I think coming from the Marvel space, and I think this will upset Marvel a little bit, His level of preparation is unlike anything I've ever seen. There's not a single question you can ask him that he can't answer immediately. Holland would go on to say that he would demand the Spider-Man 4 production be more like the Odyssey.

Quote, I was really able to lay down the law and say, we are not going to come to set and figure it out. We need to know why we are making this movie beyond the fact that it's Spider-Man 4 and they make loads of money and we're going to just have a big sense. summer. Why are we making this movie? Amazing point. Spectacular point. What's another one? Uncanny? Uncanny. That's X-Men. Good point, Tom. There's always a lot of this kind of talk around Christopher Nolan specifically and how he likes to do as much as he can in camera. Go to actual locations. Use CGI as a last resort. And like, he plans his movies before the production. And I hate to break it to

Tom and others, though he probably does know this, but this is just how movies are supposed to be made. Before Marvel, that's just what movies were. And it's really telling that people are praising Nolan for doing, honestly, baseline filmmaking. The fact that brand new day was shot in real places shouldn't be a headline. It just feels like the bar has been way lowered and it was lowered specifically by the superhero genre and Marvel combined with the hype and marketing of the internet These are franchises that were designed to be watched exactly once in the theater full of cheering people Driven entirely by hype and anticipation and memes to the point that every one of their films is at least partially devoted to advertising the next film Even in the new Spider-Man without spoiling it even though later we're really just gonna

Spoil the hell out of that movie. The movie spends a lot of time setting up the next big thing, which means that an entire generation has been conditioned to think of movies episodically and look for little teasers and clues. It can't be about a character going on a journey. It has to involve how they relate to other characters and other movies going on other journeys, serialized mysteries unfolding, the expectation that every story is going to fill them with excitement and never end. No one dies. Everyone you like wins. Characters are uncomplicated,

but don't worry. There's lore. All the quadrants are filled. And especially, nothing is ambiguous. That last bit is a bigger problem than I think people realize. The internet and the endless franchise, together have seemingly blinded audiences to the value of doubt in art. See, the same way a movie makes you feel sad when Thanos wins, or happy when Thanos loses, sometimes they are designed to make you feel doubt and or conflicted, often with some ambiguous endings.

Did Shane die at the end of... Shane? Did the alien die at the end of the thing? Did Emperor Palpatine die at the end of Return of the Jedi? Okay, well, that last one wasn't ambiguous. He chucked him down a forever hole, but I guess we should have been, been asking that apparently.

Doubt is the point sometimes, is my point. And the internet, as a swarm of people yelling at each other, just doesn't understand how to absorb anything nuanced. For example, the ending of inception. You're not supposed to know if the top fell or not, and that's the point. There isn't an answer, or rather, the doubt is the answer. And Christopher Nolan has pointed out

that the entire focus of the scene, is about Cobb's emotional conclusion and not the fate of the stupid trinket. It's the feeling that's important, not the lore or the rules, not the mystery. But that doesn't stop the internet from debating it to this day, because the internet tends to be very argumentative and polarized, which doesn't make for good movie analysis when art tends to explore things like moral ambiguity. And the idea of an ambiguous ending was made much worse, worse by how the superhero genre began to hijack and misuse the mechanism.

Let me demonstrate. Ratrater. Oh, I never want to be jump-skared by that. Man, those early X-Men movies were made by not the best people. That's the ending of X-Men The Last Stand, which, what a lie, that title is. If you recall, Magneto had lost all of his powers, and the very ending showed him maybe just getting them back, demonstrated by him moving a chess piece slightly. Or was it the wind? We'll never know, except of course we knew.

See, while crafted to look like an ambiguous ending, that wasn't actually an ambiguous ending. It was a teaser because we knew Magneto would be back because we knew that franchise wasn't going to ever end, as evidenced by, you know, Ian McKellon's Magneto's skeletons still being dragged out in a movie this year. And of course, this is not unlike X2, X-Men United, which ends on a dark Phoenix tease also designed to look ambiguous.

But again, it wasn't. They were making a sequel, a terrible sequel. Terrible, terrible, terrible sequel. So what's even the point of cutting away early? I guess it's so people on the internet can write 300-word articles titled, The Ending of Blank, Explained. These articles now get written no matter if a film is actually ambiguous or not. Does Odysseus die at the end of the Odyssey? Hey, maybe just

watch the fucking movie with your eyes. And over time, the superhero genre would move these types of endings into the post-credit scene, often made to feel ambiguous and function as a vague teaser to something, which created a whole new industry of articles asking whether a film had a post-credit scene and then explaining what the post-credit scene credit scene meant. Even scoopers are now tweeting about whether the extra scene is worth watching the credits for. Like don't you people enjoy these movies and support the people making them? Watch the fucking credits. But over time, the internet just started registering the concept of an ambiguous ending as something that needed to be

solved and debated and by extension started to forget the entire behind ambiguity as a whole. And on the flip side, the internet loves trying to find these weird conspiracies or complexities that aren't really there. For example, the finale of Stranger Things resulted in people thinking that there's a hidden, secret, final finale planned. Now, to its credit, that theory was better than what they did in the show. But still, it was this sort of, pardon my French, lostified media culture that reads,

into so much, yet into nothing at all. For another example, as of writing this, Spider-Man fans and casuals are apparently debating what the end of brand new day meant. So, lots of spoilers for just a moment or like 10 minutes, because honestly, this has been absolutely driving me up the spout. And we can always, you know, clip it, milk it for clicks or whatever, so I need to address it.

Skip to the time code on your screen if you don't care about the fucking new Spider-Man movie, and also spoilers for the end of the new Spider-Man movie, whatever. So, if you recall, Peter Parker's best friends, Ned and MJ, via Wizard Magic, no longer remember Peter at the end of the previous movie No Way Home. Brand New Day ends on Peter approaching Ned and instigating their special little handshake. This handshake. So Ned somehow remembers this handshake, some sort of muscle memory kicked in, a dormant emotional habit that he used to share with his best friend.

He looks visibly dazed, shakes it off, looks at Peter and says, Peter in recognition. The obvious purpose is to show that Ned's memory of Peter has returned, something Peter and the audience had been yearning for the entire movie. Because it's actually not ambiguous or confusing, but for some reason, people are interpreting it bafflingly incorrectly, saying that Ned merely remembers that this guy he just met in the movie named Peter is also Spider-Man, who he met earlier in the movie. But Spider-Man doesn't do the handshake with Ned. Peter does. Specifically the Peter he knew before his memory was erased. Why would a specific handshake that Ned doesn't

remember make him think that this stranger is Spider-Man? Well, one of the pieces of I don't want to call it evidence for this, I don't even want to call it a theory, is that earlier in the movie, when Spider-Man left Ned and MJ's apartment, MJ calls him Peter, and Ned's like, Spider-Man's name is Peter? So later, Ned sees this guy, he met randomly at a party, who originally said his name was Maynard, but is now saying his name is Peter, which doesn't make Ned think it's the Peter who is Spider-Man from earlier yet, and then he does a really specific handshake with him that he didn't do with Spider-Man when they met earlier in the movie, so he realizes he's Spider-Man, who he now remembers is named Peter and says, Peter, but he doesn't say,

Spider-Man. If the point of the scene is that this guy's name is Peter and he's also Spider-Man, he would have been like, oh, Spider-Man, right? Why the handshake? Peter could have just walked up and told him, hi, I'm Spider-Man. We played Legos earlier. Do you want to be friends? Or they would have had Ned learned the handshake from Spider-Man when they met earlier in the

and then it would make sense that Ned needed the handshake to connect that this guy named Peter who he doesn't know is Spider-Man, who he does know from earlier. But none of that happens. And it's really, really, really weird that so many people think this is what the scene is about. And I know it's easy to take a few silly opinions or tweets from a few people and inflate them to make it seem like, oh, everyone's saying this. But it's not just a few people. Not to single any one person out, but I just want to point out that this is a little

This isn't just random accounts on Twitter. It's a very common misinterpretation. This channel has almost 4 million subscribers. It is dedicated to talking about Marvel movies. And yet... The movie ends with Spider-Man reintroducing himself to Ned Leeds, revealing his name is Peter, with them doing their handshake and Ned connecting the dots from earlier that this Peter is the same Peter that MJ just said was Spider-Man after all the Legos earlier

in the movie. The idea being that they'll become best friends again and Ned will eventually become his man in the chair again. In fact, we now have people asking the director and actor about what the scene means. And they're kind of playing along and trying to get people engaged and leaning into this theorizing. But they know what the scene means. They made it. And more importantly, they made it well. And I think it's actually kind of insulting to the creative people involved who did a good job at the

obvious thing that they're portraying. The only other piece of, again, I don't want to call it evidence, is that spoilers. At one point, the villain of the movie tells Peter that all of MJ's memories of him are gone and there's no getting them back. And she says that in the scene specifically about the villain manipulating Peter. So like, maybe the villain of the movie that's about isolation and maintaining your humanity, was actually lying to the hero and manipulating him into falling deeper into despair and isolation, squashing any hope he has of the return to a semblance of a normal life,

thus all but guaranteeing the villain's success. It's a movie. Because what I'm positing is that much like ABC's Lost or the deep, intricate, satisfying mysteries of stranger things, Perhaps the creators of this Spider-Man movie put some secret little hints into their film to guide people to understand the final scene in order to elicit an emotional reaction. Again, I know that this seems like a waste of time, and honestly, it probably is, I'm so sorry, but here's our new segment. Please stop being so wrong about the end of Spider-Man Brand New Day. This shouldn't be hard. In Brand New Day, Peter starts out, not as Peter Parker,

but a Spider-Man, who, when he takes his mask off, looks like a guy named Peter Parker, but to him, he's not really Peter anymore. He has nobody. He's isolated. He's closed off. Then he sees his friend Ned in person, possibly for the first time in four years, and stalks him to a party, and doesn't even tell him his real name. There's not even a reason to not use his real name since nobody remembers Peter Parker anyway, yet he lies even to his best friends. Sad.

Then, a whole movie happens about this identityless and lonely Spider-Man. As I described, at one point, the villain lies to Peter a lot and takes control of MJ's mind and makes him think, oh, maybe a kiss with MJ will trigger something in her, and her memories will flood back and the villain mocks him about this, telling him it's hopeless. It's important to note that during the kiss, MJ was not present. Her mind was gone, taken over by the villain. It's actually a significant plot point that MJ's consciousness did not experience that kiss, which did not work.

Anyway, a little later, the villain takes over the mind of Bruce Banner, who at one point literally says that she broke something in his brain. Then Spider-Man fights the Hulk, and the Hulk, who I don't actually think Spider-Man or Peter ever even met, seemingly remembers Peter. Later, the villain who said they couldn't restore all those memories has her special mind superpowers increased by like a thousandfold, and freezes thousands and thousands of people in New York City. At one point, the camera lingers on specifically MJ, frozen by mind powers, as a tear falls down her cheek. Interesting that they wanted to show us that. Then, later, she's seen on a rooftop holding a broken black

dahlia pendant, which the audience had not seen in this movie until this point, much like we're not shown the handshake until it happens at the end. Yet here is MJ, after being mind-control, by an unfathomably powerful person who made her specifically shed a single tear while using mind powers. And now here she is with this object from her unremembered past contemplating. I'm laying all of this out just the highlight that the movie really holds your hand through this entire process. It's doling out little bits of information for the audience to collect over the course of the film so that they grasp that remembering Peter Parker is very much on the whole. the table so the audience can fully understand and emotionally experience the final scene,

which, now that I've explained other parts of the movie to you, I'm going to describe an excruciating detail. Put up a title card or don't, I don't care, we're really in the shit right now. So Peter spent the entire film isolated and struggling, but he learned that he can allow himself to be himself and let others into his life, and then he's not only Spider-Man. So when he sees Ned at the end of the movie, he's thinking, I should start a new friendship with Ned, a brand new day. I should do what I didn't do at the beginning of the film, because in the beginning of the film, I saw Ned and quietly followed him from afar

and then gave him a fake name. So this time, he walks up to Ned and introduces himself as Peter, and then he shakes his hand. Okay, that's a nice little ending. Peter's making his old friend a new friend. But, but then, the scene continues. And as you can see on the actor's face, Peter gets an idea. Then, with a look of hopefulness and determination, he throws a Hail Mary and tries to do this special little personal handshake.

Miraculously, it seems to work. Ned seems to remember the handshake. Then Ned's actor, doing some acting, makes some acting, makes a series of faces. He becomes visibly dazed and confused, blinks four times in one second, shakes it off, then looks up in recognition and says, Peter. Then we see Peter Parker's face, and he's beaming. Look at him. He's so fucking happy. And that's not because Ned now knows that he's Spider-Man, which Peter could have just fucking told him. That wasn't Peter's goal. And nothing about the handshake would communicate that to him anyway. The goal, as we see in Peter's face before he does the secret handshake, is to see if maybe

it jars Ned's memory. The villain, earlier, was lying to Peter, because it turns out that true love's kiss does work. Peter and Ned do true love's handshake, and the spell is broken. If you've seen specifically these Spider-Man movies, you know that they end with a big surprise that fundamentally changes the dynamic of the characters and the narrative. In this case, it's Ned remembering his best friend. This doesn't cheapen the story, it enhances it.

At the beginning of the film, Spider-Man has been isolated and Peter Parker ostensibly doesn't even exist and hasn't for four years. Throughout the film, he's beaten down, he suffers, he struggles, he sacrifices, but then he grows and evolves and learns from those struggles. And then, and this is important, He's rewarded. He gets his best friend back. It's a story.

It's a really sweet ending, and I wish people understood what the fuck was going on here because they would have felt nice watching it. Instead of confused and asking what's going on, it's a nice ending to the movie that's pretty good. And I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm so sorry for talking about the ending of Spider-Man Brand New Day so much.

I've been losing my mind about this, People also seem to think that it was purposefully ambiguous? What? Why would they do that? As we mentioned earlier regarding Inception, most movies aren't trying to confuse you or make you not know how to feel about something because you don't know what's happening on the screen.

They don't want you to watch these two best friends do their special handshake and for you to see the protagonist smile so enormously and for you to go, huh? What just happened? Let's check the forums. No, they just want you to feel happy for Peter. Or I'm wrong about all of that,

and this was an even more embarrassing waste of time than it's already been. Maybe it is ambiguous, or maybe it is that Ned realizes that this guy is Spider-Man. And if so, then my position is, that's stupid. That's a bad ending. a good ending that elicited an emotion.

But also, if you really need little clues and freeze frames and some mystery box homework. In the previous film, it's established that Ned is magic and has gesture-based magic powers. And in the middle of the movie, before the spell is cast to erase everybody's memory, Ned, with Dr. Strange's magic brass knuckles in his hand, does the special handshake with Peter,

and this happens. See you later. Be sure. You too. I could have just shown that actually instead of all this stuff. But I didn't. Maybe I should have, but I didn't. So yeah, Ned probably remembers Peter,

not just because of everything they showed in the movie, but because he's magic and he's magic and he's magic power to make the handshake magic. So when they do the handshake again, he remembers Peter, and that's why Peter's so happy in the final image. Congratulations, Peter. We're so happy for you. Good job at the good ending of your movie. I know that I have spent far too much time on you.

in the final scene of Spider-Man brand new day. Just, I just, stop asking Destin Daniel Cretton what the end of his movie meant. You're supposed to know, and I really don't think it's his or the actor's fault that you don't. Just tell him you understand and it was sweet and that you liked it.

God, so, yeah, I, I, I, you know what? Good, I hope, that was worth it, I hope, I've convinced you. This has been our new segment, I hope I've convinced you about the ending Spider-Man Brand New Day. I don't know why this was so hard. Did I just black out? I can't think of literally any other movie than Spider-Man Brand New Day. Oh my god, I can't even remember how it ends now. What? Somebody, somebody, somebody name any other movie, any movie.

Obsession. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Obsession. Great. Oh, B-Br-Oh, okay. So if a baby superhero movie like Spider-Man is so difficult for people, Surely a good but pretty standard horror film like obsession was going to be insurmountable for some. Indeed, the internet lost its entire mind trying to overanalyze a story made around moral complexities. Some spoilers. The movie's about a guy who has a major crush on his co-worker, but he's too afraid to tell her and potentially face rejection. So he instead makes a wish on some little trinket that she'd fall in love with him more than anyone in the fucking world. Then horror ensues.

The entire point is for you to start out kind of sympathizing with the main character, Bear, who could have never guessed the wish trinket was real. There are signs early on, but after the wish, over time, you watch as he really shows his true colors and the parts of himself that led him to make the wish in the first place. He crosses a point of no return when you realize that he's not really all that interested in undoing his wish, which he realizes did work, and he seemingly forced. forced this other person to be, well, obsessed with him. Which means that the next time they have sex,

he's raping her. The other times he was too, but this time he knows it. And then you go back and look at his previous actions and realize that he was always the victim of his own carelessness and selfishness. And of course, Nicky isn't the villain, but also the victim of bear and this magic wish. But the internet cannot handle nuance,

so we get this fight over whether Bear is the here, hero or the villain in the movie that isn't supposed to be that black and white. We get endless, and I mean an endless supply of social media accounts that seem to be built around having the most rage-bait interpretations of this film. Here's one that's Team Bear as if we're watching Captain America Civil War or something. Here's one claiming it's not a horror movie. Here's one where they were mad at the ending and made an AI version where it was all a dream. Why is she on an airplane?

Is that the fucking inception plane? I'm pretty sure that's the inception plane. But sure, yeah, no one's ever made a story where it turned out to be just a dream before. Oh, they should fix the movie by making it all a dream or something. Absolute idea slop. Which might be the point. You know, since X pays people for engagement,

there's no incentive to have a thoughtful conversation on there. But rather, to put out the worst opinions ever so people can get mad and engage with it. Like I'm doing right now, I guess. And of course, the film itself is either a masterpiece or the worst thing ever. Because everything on the internet is Marvel versus DC now. Rank your whatever's.

Baseline cinematography is being praised as revolutionary because they put actual contrast and lighting in the movie, something Marvel didn't do because of their ever-changing V-FX shots. Meanwhile, other people are trying to dismiss the film for just using basic filmmaking techniques. Here's a guy angry that they used post-production masks to make her face darker. Like that's cheating or something? Also, that might just be the shot in the poster and not the film? Not that it matters either way.

A lot of this just, it feels like baby's first movie, you know? And it's mostly driven by these slop X accounts purposefully spewing the worst takes ever, to get attention. And don't get me wrong, I am glad young people are experiencing and enjoying actual filmmaking. I'm not mocking anyone except those fucking morons who didn't understand the ending of Spider-Man. I'm just pointing out that I think a lot of people raised on the internet and Marvel films might not have realized that movies, even big blockbuster movies, can be more. I'm not the first person to point this out, but it just feels like people

have forgotten how to watch movies. Maybe that's just how it looks on the internet. Maybe to some extent it's because we've simply made too many of them. As Christopher Nolan recently commented, there's a real arms race when it comes to the familiar tropes in movies. And armchair critics will often confuse the presence of tropes with the film being bad. The interesting thing about film, and this is, you know, when I was talking about film criticism, I was talking more about amateur film criticism.

than professional film criticism, because professional film criticism tends to understand the necessity for the mechanisms. So you're looking at a lingua franca of storytelling created by Hollywood for the last hundred years that is very effectively universal. And so it is its own language. And that language is understood by people all over the world, which is what's incredible about it. And it is a very, very accessible modern language of storytelling, and it has certain rules,

has conventions. You can break those conventions. You can bend them, you can move them. But you have to be aware of them the whole time. And as I say, I'm thinking more of amateur criticism when I say that people who, because they feel they've identified the mechanism, they feel that it invalidates it. That can be true of certain elements and film grammar, film language evolves with that. So when a trope becomes too familiar to an audience, you know, then it has to be changed. And I actually don't think that's the biggest problem with amateur film criticism. A bigger problem is that people have forgotten that other people can be professional critics,

and that critiquing a film is something you can take classes on and gain experience and trust doing and is a completely different concept than whether or not you emotionally like a film. I think people sometimes want to use the language of criticism in order to justify their emotional response or simply their difference in taste. And the internet has created a lot of weird polarization around certain movies, even before those movies come out. Most notably, in the right-wing responses to films, because of course, we got to talk about that. We're a news show after all, I guess. But also, the far right is a really fun and easy way to demonstrate all of the problems with the ways the internet watches and critiques movies.

Because they embody all of the wrong ways, starting. with the fact that they have usually decided whether or not they like a movie before the movie comes out. It was reasonable to hope that Nolan would be faithful to Homer's original story and produce a worthwhile film. Then the trailers arrived. Nolan set out to subvert a classic, to bludgeon a monumental story with flat writing and incoherent creative decisions, along with the modern mandates of feminism, transgenderism,

and anti-whitenism. Oh, Walshy! Even the Babylon B is taking shots at you, you fucking stupid, fucking idiot. That clip was from before the Odyssey was in theaters, which Matt Walsh had very loudly decided to hate for being woke before seeing it. Of course, he tried to claim it was for other reasons too, like historical accuracy in the Odyssey, or that he thought the trailer looked too dark, or that people in the past didn't talk like they do in the trailer for the movie they showed, because we all definitely care about historical

accuracy and dialect. At one point, he even tries to claim that the armor looks bad by comparing it to the film Troy. Just look at this side-by-side comparison. You have the armor in the 2004 movie Troy with the armor that they're using in The Odyssey. And you can see it there. It's a pretty obvious downgrade, in my opinion. Yeah. You know all the famously good armor in Troy? Let's watch. Oof. It's all very sweaty stuff. Because ultimately, he just didn't like the black people in it.

I'm not saying that everyone who disliked the Odyssey is racist or a bigot. But in this case, a bunch of bigots got really mad at the Odyssey because it dared to have black people and one trans person in its cast. But instead of just saying, we're mad at the film because we're bigots, They had to create some kind of elaborate lore to their ire that had to do with historical accuracy and immersion of the movie based on a fake story about demigods and cyclops. They had to suddenly pretend like they really cared about how ancient Greek people were depicted in movies, despite the film being a fantasy.

But also, ancient Greek people were actually pretty diverse and had darker skin and had a lot of migrants from other areas, including North Africa. and in fact, the least accurate portrayals in the film are probably the white guys. You know, like the guy from Boston? But of course, those weren't the actors they were so upset about because they're racists. But they needed to articulate their anger in a way that made them seem less bigoted. That's pretty much all this was because a lot of these grifters are fueled by culture war grievance fads. They had to be mad at something, right?

After all, there's no Barbie this year. So they got mad at The Woke. The Odyssey, a movie made by a very serious professional who famously doesn't own a smartphone and probably doesn't even know these guys exist. And now Matt Walsh has to like pretend the movie is bad for the rest of his career. And it is just something to see.

Now that I've actually seen the movie, I can definitively say that every single criticism from conservatives was entirely correct on every point. How convenient that the movie I thought would be bad and doubled and tripled down on it being bad is, according to me, Bad. Not going to go through his entire video, because like, who could possibly? Most of it is just him being angry that the cast was diverse. But when Matt tries to criticize other aspects like the story, he has to do so by just misunderstanding the film completely. Some spoilers for The Odyssey. So in other words, in order to rectify his violation of Zeus's law during the Trojan War that he feels really bad about in the movie, Odysseus violates Zeus's law again by killing

the suitors using trickery to get into the pals. But he thinks it's partially okay, I guess, because the suitors themselves, were taking advantage of Penelope's hospitality by getting drunk in the palace and hitting on Penelope while Odysseus was away. And then after this massacre, Odysseus decides that he's tired of violating Zeus's law and sails away with Penelope.

So, spoiler alert. A little late. So he does not, in this movie, he does not reclaim the throne in glory. He also doesn't die for his sins. Both of those would have been decisive choices that clarified the themes and concluded the story,

that Nolan chooses the third and most indecisive route, having Odysseus leave and hand the throne to his son. What? Not what happened? Odysseus didn't just leave because he was tired of violating Zeus's law. He put himself in exile as punishment for violating Zeus's law. Nor did he kill all the suitors to rectify his violation of Zeus's law. He killed him because he was pissed off and they were all in his home waiting to bang his wife. On the one day where it's legal for single people to have sex, no less.

A big part of the adaptation focuses on the idea that the Trojan horse was a violation of civility and Zeus's law, that Odysseus had gone too far and felt the need to atone. And that reflects his choice at the end to once more violate the social trust in order to oust a group of people who had zero respect for Zeus's law.

People you could argue represented the consequences of Odysseus' actions at Troy. His decision at the end is an attempt by Odysseus to return to the civility that existed before the Trojan horse. And you could argue he's a flawed character for all of that because that's what he is. You don't have to agree with the theme, but it's all very clear in the movie. So basically, Matt Walsh has to pretend that the theme of Nolan's Odyssey is muddled and confusing by purposefully muddying it and confusing what happened in the film. Very obvious things that happened, he has to pretend to be completely befuddled by them. At one point, he criticized Nolan's film for being disjointed, as if the original story wasn't also told out of order.

Pretty funny, considering he's one of the people complaining about the desecration of Homer's epic. Indeed, it is very stupid and funny and kind of sad to watch some of these dips be forced to die on this hill, to be so removed from shared culture out of racist spite. And some of them, like Ben Shapiro, realized that and admitted that the obviously good movie was good. But even Ben couldn't hide his white, hot rage at the casting of a trans man. And having a woman pretending to be a youngish man

telling you these things does not land in the way that it should. Does it kill the movie? No, of course not. But is it a flaw in the movie that is utterly unnecessary? To me, this falls into totally the same category as dad and mom and mommy. Like, it's just, it's a stone in the shoe of the movie that is totally unnecessary and takes you out of it. And that's annoying. It's an unforced error. It's kind of wild because Ben spends a lot of the video forcing himself to like,

justify the logic of the diverse cast in the film, even though you don't really need to do that. But when it comes to a trans actor, he's suddenly up in arms about the realism of that. Which is kind of funny because Elliot Page is extremely. extremely well cast in this. He's playing Sinon, a member of Odysseus' army who is sacrificed as a decoy. He's supposed to be this scrawny young dude that gets thrown away in the film.

Ben could easily have realized that and justified it like he does everything else, but is suddenly confused and taken out of the film for this one thing. And it's incredible to watch him balance these two opinions, because at times he almost becomes self-aware. Almost. Again, it doesn't take me out of the film that there's a multiracial cast.

If you want to make the case everybody needs to be Greek, to be authentic, I think you can make that case. If you want to make the case, everybody has to be white, I think that that is a lesser case because white people in Greek are not quite the same thing. And if you want to make the case that males should play males and females should play females, I'm very much into that. That makes sense to me. Wowie. He says that it's a lesser case to claim that everyone in the movie has to be white. And I think there's another word for that, Ben. I think it's a racist case.

Baby steps, I guess, not too hard for Ben to do. But of course, he chooses his words carefully there lest he alienate his own audience. But he knows. He knows it's stupid and racist and that no one is complaining about the white actors in this movie as being inaccurate, even though they also aren't Greek.

Somewhere in that meaty brain, he knows. He knows why Elon's mad. He knows why his own... employees are mad. But then he goes on to practice this exact kind of bigotry for the casting of a trans man. Men have to play men and women have to play women. And I, I just hate artistic expression. That is just, what a beautiful dummy. Delicious. I want to gobble him up. But of course, there's an even bigger dummy who was mad at the Odyssey this year. But I want to talk about him after the break. Who could it be? Who is this mysterious, perhaps world's richest Nazi idiot whose name I already

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Carrie Gulligan Roosterman Pike Donald Fescence Leonardo DiCaprio Ursula Warrblero Drew Sturkey Robberd Pattinson Julia Roberts

Gail Garcia Berdanall Nicholas Vulture and Titmuthy Chalamee What a cast. I mean, whew. Anyway,

Top Gun, the Dungeons, the Rise of the Beast, et cetera, so on and so forth, movies, whatever. Glipp your glup over at Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay Never. It's after the ads.

Also, movies. In this movie episode, we were talking about the recent changes in the box office, the waning popularity of superhero movies, and how Marvel fandom and the internet broke everyone's ability

to just watch a film. Specifically, a recent Marvel film I can't remember the name of, or how it ends. And how the most extreme examples of these issues come from the right-wing reaction to any time a film has a brown person in it. Most recently, The Odyssey,

a film that caused a bunch of racists to suddenly become very concerned about how ancient Greeks were depicted, which, as I mentioned, is funny because ancient Greeks were pretty diverse and had a darker complexion. You know what they didn't look like? This.

Seven years I have kept you here. Weep no more, I am letting you go. Build your raft. Be free. You mean some other thing. So if you're wondering why that creeped you out, it's because that video was created by AI and then shared by Elon Musk,

while he claimed that Grok was going to create a full length and historically accurate version of the Odyssey. And that is many levels of pathetic. And as I just noted, it's very much not historically accurate just from the skin tones alone. But also, the armor he wears, for example, looks nothing like what armor would have looked like in ancient Greece. Mind you, neither does the armor in Nolan's film.

Because it's all make-believe. We're telling stories, folks. We love movies. And what Elon is calling historically accurate there is just an AI rendering of a 60s or 70s-era fantasy epic, right? That's what it looks like. Somehow the acting is more stiff. Excluding the shot that was just obviously scraped from the Game of Thrones episode Blackwater. I mean, look at it.

The style and the cinematography just looked like something that would have Harry Housen's stop motion in it, something that Elon Musk might have watched as a kid. It's just pathetic. It's an old racist telling on himself by claiming this is the accurate version of The Odyssey. Even when you remove the racism from the equation, it's just so anti-art and anti-film. Elon Musk, while being a lot of things, is also the ultimate version of everything wrong with how people watch movies. This is the guy who thinks the main character in Blade Runner is named Blade Runner. He is the ultimate misunderstander. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he thinks Odysseus's name is Odyssey. And he has nothing but contempt for art and artists if he thinks he can get Grock

to whip up an Odyssey in order to like show up Christopher Nolan, an Oscar winner who's other movies he likes, who just crafted this visual masterpiece made up of actual locations on this beautiful planet of ours that Elon pretends to love, with the help of an assortment of extremely talented and famous artists. At one point, Elon said he was going to give Mel Gibson money to make his own Odyssey? Does he think that Mel Gibson would do that as like, revenge against wokeness? Mel has some issues, but knowing how to make a movie is not one of them. Respecting the craft is not one of them. The idea that Elon could just pay a famous, talented director to remake a different famous talented director's extremely recent movie,

and Gibson would agree to it, is so fucking stupid. It's so stupid. They're colleagues, man. They're artists. It's one of the stupidest things Elon has ever said. Long list. Long list of things. And it is up there.

Anyway, AI. The final thing we have to talk about in terms of the internet's inability to watch movies. And this opposing force to the recent trends in the box office. We talked about it in the last video about blockbusters, But we have to reiterate that of course studios would replace everyone with AI if they thought they could get away with it. Since that video we made, it seems pretty clear that this won't happen. Even a few years ago, nobody wanted to see an AI actor in a movie.

And since then, Gen Z has found AI useful as a tool while still growing increasingly less enthusiastic about it in general. A lot of companies are starting to ditch generative AI due to a new. it cheapening the brand. It probably won't go away entirely, mind you. And since our video, there's been one really disturbing new trend. Specifically, there's been a rise in smaller indie and autore filmmakers deciding to use generative AI in some of their films. Most recently, we learned that Eli Roth used it

for his latest ice cream whatever thing. Who cares? Roger Avery plans to make multiple AI movies, and Neil Blomkamp, the guy who made District 9 in that big circle, movie, put out an entirely AI short film. Okay, this is the control implant. It seats at the brain stem, right where the brain meets the spine. Easy, easy, gentle.

Got it. It kind of looks like complete and utter shit. It's photorealistic for sure, but a common issue with AI video is that it can't really generate a shot for longer than 30 seconds without the image beginning to fall apart. So every AI video we've ever seen kind of feels like a montage, which is pretty anti-cinema, considering how much we love our long Wonders and films, right?

Folks, Wonders? Yes. And you can see it in that video. The buttons on that camera when you try to read them stop making sense. Do cameras normally have a bell cancel back button? It's ultimately just a collection of shots created by someone collaging the best footage they could get from the these prompts. It just seems rudderless. I don't know, Neil. I get that people haven't been very keen on your work since that first movie, and it's very hard to make indie films. But is this really what you want to spend your creative time on? Go make District 10, please. I don't mean to

put this all on Blump Camp or Roth or Avery or anyone. But I think a lot of this AI garbage, all the way to Elon Musk wanting Grok to make a non-wokey Odyssey, shows an overt contempt for the artists and crafts people behind the scenes who are often responsible for the things we love in movies. Below the line jobs such as the costume designer or set dresser, some of the most iconic parts of movies came from them. There's an entire conspiracy theory that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing because the costume designer for the Shining had her friend knit an Apollo 11 sweater, which she

then showed to Kubrick who was like, yeah, that'll work. The entire franchise of Alien was built on the vision of a single Swiss maniac. The opening titles to Seven and Home Alone were made by the same person. This is the lifeblood of films. It's a collection of artists coming together under the management of a director. And if they are a good director, they will let those artists cook. And so the only thing I can conclude from these directors turning to AI is that they're bad at their job.

They are so egotistical that they see below the line work as some kind of nuisance, a faceless tool at best. The same way executives see artists as a nuisance, the same way Elon Musk sees everyone as a nuisance. Which is quite sad. That was another conversation that went around on the internet when it came to the movie Obsession, which was the revelation that many people who worked on that film

didn't get a share of the financial success. And a disturbing number of people online took the goddamn studio side with that. It all just feels like the same pattern here. An assortment of people who don't really see movies as art anymore, but rather a product meant to make them feel good and the artists are a nuisance, if not expendable. And that line of thinking tracks all the way

from a small production replacing someone with AI slop to this. Federal judge now has set a March trial date to determine whether the $111 billion mega merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery violates antitrust law. This after a coalition of a dozen states led by California challenged the merger saying it would create less competition, higher prices, and a loss of jobs. It is pretty gosh darn important that the Paramount Warner Brothers merger doesn't happen. Unfortunately, spoilers for reality, we have to be.

a crime precedent, so all that effort comes down to the states and the individual unions. After all, while it's looking better for the box office, these companies certainly won't learn any lessons and will probably fight any change if they think it'll make them slightly less money. Because, of course, the people who don't understand movies the most these days are the film executives. The CEO of Netflix declared movie theaters dead less than a month before obsession made back nearly 500 times their budget. Imagine a world where that movie was picked up by Netflix and buried on their streaming site. All those actors and artists who are now getting opportunities from that success because thankfully, a movie studio did the baseline work of putting a movie in theaters, something that

they don't want to do anymore. When this episode comes out, that dinosaur film, the end of Oak Street, will be in theaters. That film was written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, the same guy who did the horror film It Follows, which made a ton of money for an indie film and gained a cult status and is considered one of the best horror films and just films of recent years. It should be very easy to advertise based on the dinosaurs and the writer-director. But instead, they've been pushing the fact that it was produced by J.J. Abrams, the guy who fucked up Star Wars so much that the last

last one bombed because it sucked shit. JJ, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you, what are you doing, man? Why do you do that? Why do you do that? Star Wars. Like, yes, they're also mentioning it follows, but every trailer leads with Abrams name. He's on the top of the poster, because the studios think he's the main draw, even though his production company has been downsizing as we speak. Nothing against JJ except that bantha shit Star Wars he made, but I don't think the executives realize that audiences kind of groan at his name in a trailer now. They're still thinking in terms of box office numbers from 10 years ago. And sometimes it feels like they are deliberately sabotaging their films.

Like they teamed up with an AI dog podcast to advertise this movie. Why would they do that? Why would they see a dinosaur movie by a horror director and think the target audience is listening to something called dog pack. Why do a talking dog podcast? If you're listening to it, it's just the sounds. It sounds like a regular podcast. Why do you need AI dogs? How hard is it to just advertise an original dinosaur movie? Do they not watch the movies? Do they not like movies? As we speak, the geniuses. over at Warner Brothers, are toiling away to create something called HBO Max Shorts,

a push for vertical videos made from clips of their old shows, which they will do through AI, which according to them, quote, helps human editors select and verticalize content by using machine learning algorithms that utilize scene-level metadata to comb through thousands of hours, of titles and suggest the most compelling high-impact scenes for discovery. Okay. So first of all, call it HBO Min. It's right there. HBO Min Max. Like, come on, get it together. But also, what? Do they think the kids are going to sit together and flip through vertical clips of the wire? Do they want them to do? that? I'm not sure they thought about this at all. They probably sat in a room with some

marketing dildo who ejected the right combination of buzzwords from his curated face. They saw that kids love the TikToks and we're like, well, let's just let's just do that with the shows we already have. Free money! There's certainly no recent example of someone trying to do this and failing. Big stories. Quimmy. Oh, quibbs, we love you. Take us back, quibs, do a one-night-only show.

So this episode was sort of a mishmash of conversations around current blockbusters. But there is something that binds all of this together. From surprise successes and surprise failures and studios learning the wrong lessons from that, to the right-wing approach to art, to the use of AI by filmmakers and corporations, It's all this top to bottom thinking where people, often people who aren't artists, picture a result before actually doing the work to make the film. Elon Musk is picturing this abstract, all-white, woke, free Odyssey film that everyone is going to totally love the same way an executive is asking a chatbot to give them next obsession-level hits. Everyone is clamoring to be the next meme, the next big thing with Gen Z. And man, I don't know what Gen Z wants, but I do know that Gen Z wants something that belongs to them.

They want their own arts and films. They want their own stories, their own nostalgia. And no one can tell them what that will be. We can only just make things we like and hope they like them too. Because they seem to like and want good things and won't just eat up any slop you give them. And the good news is that this year has been full of a. amazing and unique films. For example, I have to talk about one night only again.

That rom-com about this odd, high-concept world had a bunch of nudity in it that the director apparently cut from the final film because he thought audiences would be uncomfortable with it. As I already said, the whole thing feels like a pretty thoughtless attempt to make an internet meme movie that people will see out of morbid curiosity. But then there's this other film.

It's called Teenage Sex and Death, Camp Measma, and hopefully you've heard of it when this video comes out, because the film will be having a wide release. During its limited release, the film already did incredibly well. And that film is also a high concept film that you could argue is a romantic comedy, with the exception that teenage sex and death at Camp Measma actually has nudity and sex scenes and is just very horny, on top of having a lot of artistic intent behind it. and it's specifically speaking to younger generations. It's a little meta-horror-like new nightmare from Horror Master West Craven, and I want to say a little lynchian, a horny, unique, surreal romantic comedy. It's not trying to be a meme or play it safe for wide audiences.

It's just a good film made by someone with something to say, which is what Gen Z and frankly, we all want. That's it. Ultimately, it's just about respect. We just got to respect their intelligence and let them make art and try to make art that respects them. I made some slop for those Gen Z queves. Ah, hi. Also, so what?

Listen, I have been talking to a lot of children around here, you know, buying them booze and crossbows and whatnot. And I got them to tell Warmbo, to tell Grok to make us a sizzle reel. That's gonna blow the butts off of those finances. You let Warmbo talk to children? It's fine, I burned the car afterwards. What car? Car? Wait, sorry, that was a different thing.

Okay, I can't hear this. Enjoy your trip. Cannot be a witness. Courthouse makes you get up at like 6 a.m. for that. Nice try. I should call my lawyer now, actually. So, where is my phone? That's weird.

My hand is going through the carpet? Huh. Didn't know we had a crawl space. It smelled like funerals in here. Welcome to my house, Mr. Cody. The back news. A new horror, comedy, romance, drama, short-form, long-form, vertical clip module featuring the hot new YouTube starlet, Cody Johnston. Also, it's that other movie, too.

You know the other one. It's obsession and, like, warm romance. made the wish that Cody loves him. Wouldn't that be great? Let's see what that looks like. I love you so. I love you too, Mr. Cody. So.

So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so very much. So very much. So very much. So very much. Much. So very much. Now feed Wobo a cat. The warm session.

Be careful who you wish for. And so on. Also, for some reason, everyone can only have sex one day or a year. And there's a cyclops and cyclops. And this guy screaming like, a lot. CNAX, GMAX, GMAX, 7,000 millimeter on X screen, 5DX, or real and that, just your phone or maybe never. Because we're so cool, we don't even need your stupid money.

Give us money, what you hate you. Whoa! That was weird. You know when you bend down and all the blood rushes your head? Anyway, movies. Good movies. Please. Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching.

Make sure to like and subscribe, do the comments, and do all the YouTube stuff that we would appreciate you doing. One more thing about the end of Spider-Man brand new day. Okay, so they go to the credits, and then there are these... And then there are these names and people are all like, Alright, just kidding. So check out our other podcast called Even More News is on this channel twice a week or where the podcasts are.

You can listen to Some More News, which is this show as a podcast. And we've got the Patreon.com slash Some More News that you can go to and support us there. We've got merch with, oh my gosh, look at it. The merch is there. Oh, for one night only. You can have sex with our merch. Bye.