Is This Something?

Most of this will not be something.

I know what some of you are thinking: Hollywood may be so devoid of ideas that they're remaking every movie from the 80s and nineties, but there's no way they're now remaking "classics" from the early 2000s, and even if they are, they certainly won't be remaking I Know What You Did Last Summer, for the love of everything holy.

Well, guess what? You're wrong again. You're a black belt in Being Wrong About Everything.

Fox is determined to milk the Alien franchise, which started the same year as the Iranian revolution, forever. They now have a TV show about aliens coming to earth.

I don't get this. Yes, I liked Alien and I loved Aliens. But seriously, it's a limited concept. You can't just keep making movies and tv-shows and prequels about the same limited concept.

Or I guess you can. But I don't get it. I have no further questions about the Terminator, Alien, or Predator universes. Or the Robocop universe. I have enjoyed their early entries. I've loved many of them. But we need to move on. There is no more juice in these well-squeezed fruits.

Oh, and it turns out there is another Predator movie coming.

Great, Mr. Fabulous, the self-described "fifty-year-old Bougie Bitch" Pedro Pascal, is in yet another movie. It's about a brave and noble sheriff fighting disinformation and disobedience as he attempts to enforce covid lockdowns. There's a moment of someone watching a podcast on the internet, so you know that's about Dangerous and Divisive Medical Misinformation. The end of the clip shows someone firing a heavy machine gun so that's gotta be Radicalized Far-Right Extremists Incited Into Violence.

Now, I'm making a lot of assumptions. It could be that the movie is a more thoughtful look at the covid wars.

But I doubt it.

Nerdrotic says he has a Marvel source who says the new "Ironheart" Disney TV show is the worst thing that Marvel has ever done, and that includes their disastrous "Echo" show and "Secret Invasion" and "She-Hulk."

It's being dropped with three episodes on one night so that the show is finished and forgotten as soon as possible. They did something similar with Echo, though in that case they dropped all five episodes in one night. Like one of those poops where everything goes in one smooth uninterrupted motion and you can't even believe how efficient and accomplished you are at pooping.

The Superman movie continues to look over-stuffed with characters and plots but it also looks like it might be light and fun, like a comic book for kids.

Which is A-OK with me.

Let me get this off my chest:

I'm sick and tired of NERDS!!! demanding that superhero movies or any other juvenile fare be "dark" and "grim and gritty" and "realistic" and hyperviolent and filled with cursing.

This type of entertainment is -- or used to be, and should be -- kid-friendly.

I think a lot of NERDS!!! are a little embarrassed that they like entertainment which is made for kids or made to at least be kid-friendly because that would suggest they're immature. So they want these entertainments to be made more "adult," but by "adult," of course they don't mean thoughtful, contemplative, and nuanced. No, they mean they want to see Superman rip people's heads from their bodies and use his laser vision to shoot holes through people's chests.

And that he should say "f*ck" a lot.

I have to admit that when I was younger -- like, teens and early twenties -- I had the same kind of idea. That this kind of movie would be Even Betterer if it were "hardcore."

But as I've gotten older, and have approached, with increasing slowness, age 29, I've come to understand that I don't have to run away from my kid-self, or my teenaged self. My kid-self was right about a lot of things, and my teenaged self was too.

I don't need these kind of kid-friendly entertainments to be "aged up" just to validate me, so I don't feel like a stupid baby for going to see a Batman movie. It's perfectly fine for an adult to enjoy an entertainment whose primary audience is younger people and kids. Every adult, even one approaching age 29, still has his 5-year old self inside him, and his 13-year-old self, and his 18-year-old self.

Plus, a lot of children's entertainment can be pretty good. Disney cartoons from a bygone age often portrayed death in powerful and even traumatic way. Certainly Bambi portrays death much more realistically -- in that it has consequences -- than popcorn movies for "adults" that feature hundreds of people being killed with no one ever wondering if the dead enemies' wives and children will be looked after.

Kid-friendly entertainment doesn't have to be childish, either. The original Superman was kid-friendly, but it was very well done. The original Star Wars films as well. (Bit of trivia: They filmed the severed arm in the cantina sequence for the sole purpose of getting a PG rating rather than the G rating they would have gotten without it -- they felt that teenagers would not see a G-rated film because teenagers are always afraid to be mistaken for kids or little babies.)

The Indian Jones films are all basically kid-friendly, except for that one part in every Indiana Jones movie where someone gets his head chopped up by a propeller or something. Okay, maybe not for kids exactly, but a dad can watch that with his 12-year-old.

"Kid-friendly" doesn't mean "childish." You can avoid all the things that flag a movie as R-rated while also avoiding the stuff that makes a movie seem childish -- cornball kid humor, simple-minded plots, cartoony "bouncy" background music, unrealistic characters, etc. You can make a movie that avoids the tropes of actual child fare and presents semi-plausible characters with semi-realistic adult psychologies.

What Hollywood is doing is making very, very dumb movies with child-levels of nuance but throwing in R-rated violence to age it up.

I don't know if Superman will be any good. I kind of doubt it. I don't think I'll wind up seeing it.

But I do like the idea of making superhero movies and fantasy action movies with a younger audience in mind. I have fond memories of watching James Bond movies with my dad. Fathers need movies they can share with their kids. It can't all be about reassuring 25-year-old NERDS!!! that they're totally not babies because look, Superman just snapped this guy's neck. So hardcore!

(I think James Bond books are basically boy's adventure fiction too, except the boy in question "borrowed" his dad's credit card to subscribe to Playboy.)

I just don't get the idea that these Male Power Fantasy movies have to be "dark" and "mature." Having a Space Alien Cop snap the neck of a Space Alien Bad Guy isn't "mature." It's still children's entertainment with a veneer of graphic violence to seem mature.

And don't get me wrong-- I like graphic violence, too. But I don't think Batman movies should look like the last twenty minutes of Rambo. That kind of movie should be reserved for 17 year olds, or 15 year olds who borrow their older brother's ID.

Eh. I don't love Seth McFarlane but the director is Akiva Shaeffer or whoever The Other Guy from Lonely Island is.

Mel Brooks announces "Spaceballs 2" coming in 2027.

The teaser mocks Hollywood's sequel, prequel, reboot and side-quel mania.

DiscussingFilm
@DiscussingFilm

Rick Moranis will be coming out of retirement to reprise his role as Dark Helmet in
'SPACEBALLS 2'

Bill Pullman will also return...

Thanks to @rdbrewer4.

posted by Ace at 05:00 PM

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