Hollywood Is Rethinking Woke, and the New York Times Is Sad

Via David Strom at Hot Air, Hollywood has started to realize that they've lost an awful lot of money bankrolling expensive action movies designed to appeal to an audience -- women -- who don't really like expensive action movies.

They're also starting to be concerned that maybe just throwing people with no experience into jobs because of their race, sexuality, and gender isn't good for the movies, or for the people getting the jobs, and failing at those jobs, either.

Diversity, equity and inclusion executives say they are exhausted by an old-boy network that is continuously trying to reconstitute itself: Women who were hired for big jobs and held up as triumphant examples of a new era have been pushed aside, while some of the men who were sidelined by misconduct accusations are working again.

You mean they didn't just kill themselves like you intended them to do? You mean they stubbornly continue to exist despite your best efforts?

"For three years, we hired nothing but women and people of color," said a senior film executive, who like many leaders in the industry is a white male. He added that he did not think some of them were able to do the jobs they got.

In hushed conversations over lunch at Toscana Brentwood and cocktails at the San Vicente Bungalows, some powerful producers and agents have started to question the commercial viability of inclusion-minded films and shows.

They point to terrible ticket sales for films like "Bros," the first gay rom-com from a major studio, and "Easter Sunday," a comedy positioned as a watershed moment for Filipino representation. "Ms. Marvel," a critically adored Disney+ series about a teenage Muslim superhero, was lightly viewed, according to Nielsen's measurements.

One company that is so far pot-committed to the the Get Woke Go Broke algorithm is Disney.

Disney is determined to push the Gay Agenda into all of its children's films, as leaked video revealed earlier this year. They pushed out a marketing "story" that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever would feature an "LGBTQ storyline."

A friend asked me what this would be. I guessed it would be a new, barely-there spear-woman character, one of the "Dore Milaja" guards, that they could edit out for foreign markets.

Of course that's exactly what it is.

Mihaela Coel knows how important it is to have queer representation on-screen.

In an Oct. 6 interview with Vogue, Coel talked about her character Aneka, a captain and combat instructor in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," and revealed she decided to play the fearless warrior after learning her character was queer.

"That sold me on the role, the fact that my character's queer," Coel said. "I thought: I like that, I want to show that to Ghana."

If you're in the Middle East or China, you can call
this character The Invisible Woman

As the actor who played Black Panther unfortunately died, and the director and Marvel made the thoughtful but probably commercially poisonous decision to not recast the role, Black Panther's mantle will pass to another character, who everyone pretty much assumes will be T'Challa's annoying racist know-it-all sister, Shuri.

So we'll have a female Black Pather.

We'll also see the introduction of the black teenage female replacement for Iron Man, "Iron Heart." "RiRi Williams" was a failure in the comics and it looks like she'll fare no better on the movie screeen.

Also check out a pudgy Namor -- now Mayan rather than Atlantean, with his name pronounced "Nah-mour" as if he's Spanish instead of Nay-mor -- because More Representation.

Oh, and do drink in that Top Shelf Marvel CGI we've all come to know and love.

Nerdrotic, Az, and Nina Infinity discuss how awful the "Ironheart" costume looks.

This movie opens Friday -- well, Thursday night. I think it's going to be another Marvel stinker that people are going to pretend that they like because Pretending They Like Marvel Movies is progressives' new way to Own the Cons.

In further Marvel News, it sure looks like Marvel will be race-bending Reed Richards. They've already cast a black actor, Jonathan Majors (I think) as Kang the Conquerer, who, in the comics, is a descendant of Reed Richards. Thinking Critical points out that a black actor named William Jackson Harper is playing a highly secret role in the upcoming Ant-Man movie, which has been long rumored to include a link to the Fantastic Four movie. It would make sense if that secret link, and the secret role played by Harper, is none other than Reed Richards himself, ancestor of Nathaniel Richards, and it would make sense if Reed Richards was black as well.

It's not a deal breaker, exactly, but... well, Marvel is also promising that the X-Men will be largely race-swapped. And gender-swapped.

Speaking of that, Ryan George, who has generally been either a big woke or at best neutral in the culture wars, finally turned on Woke Marvel and gave She-Hulk a deservedly harsh Pitch Meeting treatment. He actually pointed out that the show seems to be using its #Woke posturing as a shield against criticism for its bad writing, and prioritizing attacking its critics over delivering actual entertainment.

posted by Ace at 03:55 PM

| Access Comments