The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

SJWs Ruin New ‘Terminator’ Sequel

Posted on | July 11, 2019 | Comments Off on SJWs Ruin New ‘Terminator’ Sequel

 

Ace of Spades describes the SJW movie formula:

When you’ve got a piece of sh– on your hands, politicize the living f*** out of it, so when it flops, you can blame Toxic White Men.

Nailed it. Question: What is the purpose of a movie? To entertain audiences. To sell tickets. To make money. At least, that’s the purpose of all successful movies — appeal to a mass audience and maximize profit.

 

Casablanca had a political purpose, to promote sympathy for the Allied cause in World War II, but the producer (Hal Wallis, who later produced all those shlocky Elvis movies) also had a keen eye for the commercial prospects of the story, so that the romance between the cynical hero (Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine) and the glamorous Ingrid Bergman as refugee Ilsa Lund transcends everything else. Even if the 1942 moviegoer had been entirely indifferent about the Nazi occupation of Europe, well, hey, Ingrid Bergman is still a hot number. Let’s face it, even der Führer himself would agree — Nordic chicks are hot.

Oh, wait, guess what the original Terminator had going for it?

 

Yep, a Nordic blonde playing the damsel in distress, functionally analogous to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. It might seem farfetched to compare a schlocky science-fiction thriller to Casablanca, and you might object that Linda Hamilton is no Ingrid Bergman, but from the audience perspective, the theme of the beautiful young woman in peril, with the hero coming to rescue her from danger, is a winning formula. It’s transcendent, the stuff of classics. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, Han Solo and Princess Leia in Star Wars — all variations on this same timeless theme. In all of these blockbuster Hollywood classics, the damsel in distress is a spunky, resourceful kind of woman, and the hero is a cynical character who does the right thing despite his own selfish nature. If you watch the first Star Wars movie, it’s really sort of lame until Han Solo enters the picture, and the sparks that fly between him and Leia are what gives the film its best scenes.

Han Solo is Rick Blaine is Rhett Butler.

Princess Leia is Ilsa Lund is Scarlett O’Hara.

It’s a formula, see? And the reason it has been repeated so often is because it works — it sells tickets because audiences love it.

Well, what about the new Terminator sequel?

[Variety magazine]: An early “Dark Fate” poster received backlash, calling Davis and her co-stars “feminazis” and other chauvinist hate speech. How do you think she’ll be received in the room at Comic-Con?
[Director Tim Miller]: If you’re at all enlightened, she’ll play like gangbusters. If you’re a closet misogynist, she’ll scare the f–k out of you, because she’s tough and strong but very feminine. We did not trade certain gender traits for others; she’s just very strong, and that frightens some dudes. You can see online the responses to some of the early s–t that’s out there, trolls on the internet. I don’t give a f–k.

You see? The movie is aimed at an “enlightened” audience, so if you’re a sociology major at Oberlin College, you’re gonna love it. But if you don’t want to pay $12.50 to watch this Gender Studies lecture disguised as a science-fiction movie, that means you’re a “closet misogynist.”

Who decided that movies should be a litmus-test of the political attitudes of audiences? When did producers decide it was OK to sink millions of dollars into movies that appeal only to “enlightened” viewers? And why does Tim Miller think insulting “trolls on the internet” is sufficient justification for making a lousy movie with a $200 million budget?



 

Category: Hollywood

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