No No No No No No No No
I will throw my body in front of Greta Gerwig adapting two "Chronicles of Narnia" films.
This sucks.
I know this is a rumor, but I need to get in front of this as quickly as possible.
No.
We can not have Greta Gerwig stuck in the movie purgatory that Netflix has become in order to adapt two Chronicles of Narnia books. I’m sure the payday is superb, and perhaps Gerwig has some ideas on how to best turn these (already adapted for the screen) stories into film, but this is the worst-case scenario for perhaps the best filmmaker we currently have.
Of course, Gerwig has been adapting as of late with Little Women and the forthcoming Barbie, but this is such a sad state of affairs for the industry. The woman wrote Lady Bird and Frances Ha for god’s sake. Let her do something more valuable and interesting with her time.
I’m so sick of the blockbuster machine sucking in compelling actors and directors and forcing them to work from within these massive conglomerations. Barry Jenkins directed Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk and then went over to Amazon to make an admittedly great The Underground Railroad series, which (frankly) few people watched or ever knew about. Do you know what he’s working on now? A prequel to The Lion King, not the original animated movie but the CGI trash fire from a few years back.
We already have the masterpiece that is The Lion King 1½. We’re good on Lion King stories.
It’s so depressing and the more of these BIG-budget movies I see from Disney and Netflix, the worse it all seems.
The new Black Panther film for instance is a mess. There’s a thread of a story in there about grief and yet a good portion of the story is centered on a new character called Ironheart, which already has a Disney+ television series in the works. Incredible actors like Angela Bassett, Winston Duke and Lupita Nyong'o and directors like Ryan Coogler are trapped in these stories that ultimately never end because that’s bad for the bottom line.
Maybe I’m just an asshole (Editor’s Note: He definitely is), but I can’t be the only one depressed about what’s happening. Yes, there are incredible movies coming out at a relatively decent pace from Nope to Everything Everywhere All at Once to plenty of others, but it’s such a bummer to know that some of the most important people in the industry are spending a good time yelling at nothing, which will eventually be turned into a talking raccoon.
Take Black Widow, for instance, which features Florence Pugh, Scarlett Johannson, David Harbour and Rachel Weisz. It’s a mishmash of a movie and a prequel for money’s sake, and yet imagine a bank heist story with that core four or a murder mystery or a family drama. Instead of corny one-liners and gratuitous cameos in which the filmmakers add in cinematic pauses for audience applause, there could be an actual story told featuring a cavalcade of fantastic performers.
Perhaps as equally painful as the Gerwig scuttlebutt are the replies.
Expect more.
Want something better than yet another adaptation of a book from your childhood.
At the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever showing I went to, a kid in front of us turned into the child from The Exorcist. She slammed her chair back and forth for what must’ve been an hour, stood up routinely and chatted with the person next to her at full volume. And you know what, I don’t blame her. Ultimately, this should be a family movie and instead, it’s a 160-or-so-minute slog that has no clue what it wants to be. I would be losing my mind too if I were a child sitting in a theater for so long. What are we doing? It’s a movie and future TV show and set-up for future films and intelligent look at pain and also a long fight scene in which people in robots say witty one-liners. It’s exhausting.
This needs to stop. It won’t, but it needs to.
Do you know who would be great at making an incisive film about trying to break out of a flawed industry and trying to create something that lasts?
Greta Gerwig.
Let her do that instead.
Please.