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Comment by anticodon | Hacker News Reader

Also, something that is forbidden to talk about in "free societies": by forcefully showing in movies something that contradicts everyday life but is aligned with the woke ideology, you don't make movies interesting, you make them shallow and sometimes even loathsome.

But it's a zugzwang: impossible to avoid woke ideology in movies, because minorities had become such a powerful entity that they have ability to destroy the company or a life of any person if they don't like what you do or say.

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I hear a lot of complaining about "woke content" and I think the real problem is shitty writing. There was plenty of "woke" messaging in movies and TV shows in the 90s (just look at Star Trek TNG), but the writers has the good sense to provide a layer of abstraction through allegory or metaphor.

Transposing 2023 American social problems 1:1 into a fictional universe, as many productions do today, has the effect of breaking suspension of disbelief completely. It's not interesting or insightful. To someone like myself who actually agrees with this stuff it comes off as cheap pandering. I can imagine how fucking annoying it is to see if you have a different worldview.

It also doesn't help that the veil of mystery around a writer's or director's intention is often intentionally removed by endless interviews, teasers, and press junkets. Again, the "woke" media of the 90s did not suffer from this nearly as much. What the author intended was often a mystery and up to the viewer's interpretation. Combined with the aforementioned allegory or metaphor, it made it possible to enjoy media made by someone whose views you would 100% disagree with.

> Transposing 2023 American social problems 1:1 into a fictional universe, as many productions do today, has the effect of breaking suspension of disbelief completely. It's not interesting or insightful. To someone like myself who actually agrees with this stuff it comes off as cheap pandering.

Yes. It's just not very well thought out. And unfortunately the "critical" ecosystem on youtube and social media makes this even worse, when films are torn apart by people who can't read subtext and misinterpret the views of a character for the views of a writer.

Doing "wokeness" by box-ticking also has counterproductive effects when writers try to get too many things into one film, resulting in lots of one-dimensional characters. It works a lot better when the diversity originates from somewhere slightly outside the system but intrinsic to the film, such as Everything Everywhere All At Once.

> And unfortunately the "critical" ecosystem on youtube and social media makes this even worse, when films are torn apart by people who can't read subtext and misinterpret the views of a character for the views of a writer.

Or worse, confuse the character as-written with the actor performing that role. I'm sure this happened before the internet, but people couldn't reach out and send vitriol towards the actor quite as easily. I still remember when Anna Gunn got a bunch of hate mail for "being mean to Walt". It's a miracle that good movies/TV shows still manage to get made in this environment.

Care to elaborate with an example? The point you are making seems quite abstract and incomprehensible to me.

Colossal losses of Disney due to "rethinking" of classical plots in a "new ideology" way. People just don't want to watch it. But for some reason it's not possible for Disney to avoid it and continue making movies in a way that was mainstream maybe 20-30 years ago.

Disney losses are because of other factors, like a whole world of new content being available... including engaging video games in all platforms and all phone apps and content and remember that any and all entertainment content competes with them.

The entire history of art relies on rethinking of classical plots in new ideology.

I don't think Disney can seriously blame competition from video games when they hire a notorious "mystery box" writer to write/direct the first movie of a new trilogy for their most valuable IP, and predictably he sets up ticking time-bombs of unsolvable mysteries that future writers/directors don't know what the hell to do with.

People like to slag on Rian Johnson, but it was JJ Abrams that trashed the trilogy and left the mess to Johnson. And none of this has anything to do with video games anyway, Disney executives dropped the ball with bad hiring and that turned the Star Wars fanbase sour to future movies.

Recent flops: nearly all new star wars content, Indiana Jones, buzz lifhtyear, Thor love and thunder, Ant-Man quantumania. All should have been hits. People did not want to watch new content. Why? You mostly anwered in comments. Most of you complain that writing is bad, and I believe this majority. That would also mean that critical drinker and nerdeotic are correct in their analysis. I think it all comes to inflation of woke. Woke is the goal, nothing else really matters. The movies become predictable. Fame character cannot loose a fight. It is a checklist driven scenarios, where you have tick all the same boxes. You cannot depict unlikeable bad gay person. There were in history movies about racism, gender, but they were not preachy. They were discussing the issue. That's the difference.

>All should have been hits.

Why? Is it not possible the proportion of the population that wants to watch movies (especially non novel ones) in movie theaters is trending lower and lower?

Based on the fact that the examples you listed are all sequels, the quality of the content is also suffering, but it is very possible that even if it was not suffering, the demand would be lower.

Disney profits have been strong and generally upward or steady from 2010 through to present with the sole exception of a massive hit to their Park revenue segment ( early 2020 - third quarter 2021 )

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/gross-p...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/193140/revenue-of-the-wa...

The only apparent "colossal losses" to Disney seem to be due to Disney World attendances cratering during the pandemic.

Disney's accountants have very powerful magic, but the fact remains that Disney is trashing all the Lucasfilms IP at an alarming rate. Lots of cancelled sequels, projects on hold, and the movies that do get released get lukewarm receptions from lifelong fanboys who should have been ecstatic for it.

> Disney is trashing all the Lucasfilms IP at an alarming rate.

Seems a bit unfair to blame Disney for upholding the work started by George Lucas.

Are they even capable of trashing Lucasfilms IP to any degree greater than that already demonstrated?

You're not going to see me defending Lucas's slop, but I think the fanboys have a lot more goodwill for even the worst aspects of the prequel trilogy than they have for Disney right now.

I won't defend either nor step on the judgement of the true fans, etc.

However we are both commenting on a sub branch headed by a comment:

    Colossal losses of Disney ...

You mentioned Rian Johnson and his work on Part two of trilogy ?? (I honestly don't bother with anything past the original version of the first film) Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Regardless of its trashiness in the eyes of fans it still box officed $1.334 billion after a budget < $320 million (according to wikipedia).

Let's agree that it was slop ... but it was slop that made bank for Disney.

I think this kind of analysis basically exemplifies the MBA disease Hollywood has. They think that as long as they can show a profit, things are going fine. But in the meantime fans are catching on and goodwill is being burnt. The fanboys become less fanatical and the performance of future movies begins to suffer.

We are in furious agreement it seems.

I'm only commenting here to counter the upstream claim that "going woke is sending Disney broke".

I'm seeing the counter position that "pushing trash is pumping cash" (for now at least).

The thing Disney added to the mix is massive overexposure. Getting 3 movies every 20 years, even if they're bad, doesn't instill a sense of fatigue like an annual release schedule and several continuously running TV shows do. I have a hard time understanding people who are still excited for this stuff. Even if something looks promising it's just item n+1 in an endless conveyor belt of content.

The MCU suffers from largely the same problem.

Can you give an example of that?

Tell me you don't know the meaning of a word without telling me.

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