An Existential Blockbuster Crisis
Plus, a new podcast!
Before we get to the rambling mess that is Aerial Shot, I have some 🚨NEWS🚨. The inconsistent Aerial Shot podcast will be (hopefully) a bit more consistent. The plan is for a monthly episode, which will pop up here and in your respective podcast feeds.
Here’s the idea: A friend will stop by, pick out a movie of their choice, we’ll watch it together (or separately, depending on location, time and laziness) and then we’ll discuss it. As one does. We’ll mostly go on a bunch of tangents and say “like” and “umm” a lot, but that’s what podcasts are for.
We’re starting this Aerial Shot Movie Club NEXT WEEK. The podcast has already been recorded, and it’s with Molly Longman, a New York-based writer and very good person whose favorite movie is somehow Pearl Harbor. Fortunately or unfortunately, she went with The Lion King (1994), so that’ll be coming to your earholes next week.
You can rewatch it on Disney+ if you want to remember what happens, but also, it’s The Lion King. It’s a pretty well-known movie. “Long live the king” and whatnot. Please like, subscribe and tell your friends. I don’t know. It’ll be fun.
Okay, that’s that. Now onto Jurassic Park Rebirth and Superman. Sorry in advance.
In the past week, I’ve seen two new movies. They are Jurassic Park Rebirth and Superman. I don’t want to lump the two together, as the former is easily one of the worst movies of the year—an ill-begotten mess that’s both remarkably poorly written and a lame retread of the original Jurassic Park—and the latter is a perfectly whatever but bloated superhero extravaganza that at least has ideas, cultural resonance and solid acting. And yet, I felt the same thing coming out of both movies. Basically, what are we doing here?
It’s been a pretty good movie year overall. There’s, of course, Sinners, an original story that transfixed audiences, an impressive roster of documentaries (notably Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat and No Other Land), a new Wes Anderson, two new Steven Soderberghs, indie hits like Sorry, Baby and Friendship and a remarkably resonant sequel to 2002’s 28 Days Later. And then we get to the IP-driven stuff, and things have never been more disastrous.
The aforementioned Jurassic World Rebirth, Captain America: Brave New World, Lilo & Stitch, Snow White, The Electric State and A Minecraft Movie are all various forms of pushing intellectual property. “We haven’t had [insert movie here] in a while, let’s just remake it or push a retread back into theaters.” And each one of them is spiritually bankrupt at best, and actively harmful at worst.
I can’t stop thinking about Lilo & Stitch, a cash-grab of epic proportions to keep Stitch at the top of people’s minds and get rid of all of the original’s spark. Unfortunately, it’s been a tremendous success for Disney, making $975,163,443 and already greenlighting a sequel. These are just going to keep coming at us fast and furiously as long as we give the studios money for these garbage properties. At a certain point, you get what you ask for.
It feels like a last gasp for a floundering blockbuster industry trying to make money no matter what. There’s a reason people showed out to Lilo & Stitch instead of the similarly disastrous Snow White remake. The former is a millennial paradise, and all we know is IP remakes. We were brought up in Star Wars prequels, a half-dozen superhero stops and starts and Disney direct-to-video sequels for a quick buck. We’ve been groomed to accept these as a trade-off for actual creative art.
I’m not saying remakes are a new thing—they’ve of course been around forever—but with the state of the industry as topsy-turvy as it is, these movies that have a locked-in spot in the audience’s mind are the easiest to make, and the only “sure things” anymore. Which sucks.
At a certain point, one would think, they’re going to run out of movies to remake, and they’re either going to start from scratch à la Jurassic Park or have to think of something new.
Sidenote: Just wait until the Pocahontas remake, which will have so much discourse that it shuts down the World Wide Web. Blank Check may have put it best with this back-and-forth on whether or not Disney will ever try to put out a live-action Pocahontas.
They’ll never remake that, right?
I wouldn’t put it past them.
That is some TRICKY territory.
Like any proper medical lab has a wing that’s just trying to crack cancer 24/7, I guarantee you Disney has a whole story wing that’s just people being like, “Is there any way we can make this? There’s gotta be a way.”
How about the way is that they make the movie and all the proceeds go to Native Americans?
Yeah, well, that’s not going to work for them. For Disney?
Last week, Galen Clavio and I recorded a podcast in which we broke down what went wrong with ESPN. How did this media company that was once so creative and inspiring become a home for hot takes, bland broadcasts and Kendrick Perkins mumbling? Like these blockbusters, ESPN has put the bottom line above all else, especially since social media and the Internet in general have stolen some of its luster. Why wait for a highlight package on SportsCenter when you can see it at the touch of a button on your phone?
People don’t watch movies the way they once did. It’ll be on streaming soon enough or they’ll just flip on Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, a Netflix doc that quickly became a steady climber on the platform’s English-language film list.
I try not to be too negative on here—it’s tough—but we kinda need these movies to fail and fail quickly so something else can sneak in here. At a certain point, they’re going to run out of movies to remake. And then what? They’ll either start to remake the remakes. Or maybe, just maybe, we’ll get something new.1
I’m betting on the former, but let me have some hope.
For a lot of reasons, Sinners is the most important movie of the year so far. The fact that it worked, and worked at the box office, is fueling any optimism I have left.