Movies

I've been very down on Hollywood. Almost happy to see it burn down. But, I've occasionally gotten carried away there, and I've also gotten caught up with other people who are also carried away, like Critical Drinker, Nerdrotic, Geeks & Gamers, etc. about how bad movies are. The truth is, most of the movies that I've seen this year so far haven't been terrible. They also haven't been great; I doubt there are many at all that I'll care to ever even see again much less buy on blu-ray, but there's been few that I really actively hated too. My wife loves movies, and refuses to see the truth that Hollywood hates her because she's the mother of three boys who are as white as she is and that's her identity instead of some kind of Fake Man identity. So, to indulge her, I often go see movies that I'd much rather not go and see. But I find that sometimes they aren't nearly as bad as I expect them to be.

No Time To Die, the newest James Bond is one such. The marketing, the trailers, the comments from the writers, and even the cast, all pointed to a terrible movie. The reality was... not that bad. Actually, most of what they hinted that the movie would be, it isn't. There's a few jarring things, probably the scenes written by Phoebe... whatever her hyphenated name is, that come across as both gratuitous grrl-power petty fantasies and oddly out of place screwball comedy moments at the same time. 

I wonder if the delays that the movie had—over a year, by my count—allowed them to correct for the fan backlash that they were getting with some reshoots or at least some re-edits... although if they re-edited the film and it's still nearly three hours long, that's kind of crazy, honestly. I'd like to think that Hollywood is able to be a little bit responsive to their disastrous and hate-filled binge of whatever the heck it is that they're doing, but I'm kind of skeptical, honestly. They seem to do little other than double down. After all, we saw two trailers for the 355, a terrible looking movie about girls pretending to be men, banding together from their diverse backgrounds to save the world from a new threat—white masculinity, from the looks of it. No, thanks, I think I'll be giving that one a hard pass. It has new Charlie's Angels written all over it, except with more middle-aged women that are even more diverse than the new Angels were.

The African sheboon that gets the 007 designation isn't nearly as abrasive and obnoxious as she appeared she was going to be, and while I still don't like her, I didn't find her to be even half as unlikable as they made her out to be, her role was seriously downplayed and she didn't appear on screen nearly as much as they made her out to in the trailers, and she didn't really ever get around to upstaging Bond after all. There's a brief hinted implication that Q is gay, although I didn't even catch it until I saw someone mention it after the fact. On the other hand, given that he's a completely beta-looking British guy who probably was molested in boarding school as a kid, that isn't even shocking, to be honest. And they already race-swapped Moneypenny. I'm actually more or less gratified that they corrected the sex-swapping of M in the Craig series. The fact that the brought Voldemort on to be a more traditional M actually makes Judi Dench's earlier M seem more likeable and interesting in retrospect than had they simply sex-swapped the role and never acknowledged that they'd done so. All in all, anything bad in this movie is mostly (mostly, mind you) a continuation of other woke moves already done in the Craig run of movies. And ultimately, it was designed so as to get Craig out of the way to they can reboot and do something else. Presumably with LaFhonda Lynch, or whatever other caricaturish black name she actually has. That wasn't strictly speaking necessary; they've changed the actor many times in the past. But because they want to do a much harder reboot, where "James" Bond comes back as a black woman, or whatever the devil they think that they're going to do next, they wanted to kill off the past more authoritatively. 

Narratively, this is fine. The idea that both James Bond and his enemies just continue to exist completely as is, static and unchanging, is kind of absurd. If there are going to be enemies and conflicts, there should be resolution to those enemies and conflicts. Not sure why some see that as a controversial statement. If they're going to be killed off or ended, doing it in a respectful way, utilizing good storytelling, is certainly preferable to the Rian Johnson-style alternative. And disliking this movie because of things that were already done a decade ago, or which are likely to happen in the next few years hardly seems fair. Sure, sure... this movie is probably only as good as it is because they had time in between the original release date and the actual release date to react to the fan backlash against the direction that they were telegraphing. And yes, the franchise will probably be unwatchable going forward. But does that really have anything to do with this movie? I'm not sure. Nerdrotic made the tongue-in-cheek yet interestingly telling comment that "No women were harmed in the making of this movie." He seemed to be more put out that Bond didn't hook up with any hot chicks in bikinis than anything else. (Again, maybe he never watched The Living Daylights, one of my favorite of the pre-Craig movies in the series.)

Maybe my expectations for a Bond film are a little different than most, too. Kinda sounds like it given some of the things that I've heard youtube talking heads complain about.

After James Bond, we had a small break to refill our drinks and take a leak, and then we walked over to a different screen and watched Teen Suicide: The Musical. My wife is very sympathetic to such things as depression and anxiety disorder, so I knew what she'd want to see the movie for and what she'd think about it even before we saw it or I knew much about it, to be honest with you. And it was very much as I expected; except that the emotional manipulation was even more over-the-top than I thought it would be. 

I couldn't help, on looking at the most stereotypically Jewish looking kid that they could get to play Evan whatshisface, the main character, reading about how the twin genetic signatures for psychopathy and neuroticism are more common in the Ashkenazi population than in any other population group on earth. And I remember reading about how most of Freud's theories are based on projection of the ills that he found in his primarily Swiss Jewish clientele on to the Gentile population that surrounded him, whether it applied or not (it didn't.)

Check out the list of staff on the movie; the writers, the director, etc. 

Anyway, it wasn't a terrible movie either, and maybe there's a decent message buried in it, if you can get past the aggressive unlikableness of most of the main characters. And I know; that's kind of the point; the characters aren't likeable because they're all struggling with mental or emotional issues. Unfortunately, they did it in such a way that it's hard to feel too much sympathy for them, because they're too unlikeable. Anyway, it was hardly the kind of movie that I expected to like, and I didn't really, but it also wasn't terrible. And the main guy actually growing up enough to face his issues, as well as his own behavior, was kind of admirable in a way.