ONCE upon a time you watched a film, enjoyed it or not and that was it. Now you have to avoid sex predators and try to ignore screaming identity politics rows. Here’s what you did not expect.
You must not watch sex criminals
You won’t be rewatching American Beauty any time soon, and there are plenty more Hollywood accusations in the pipeline. In principle we should also avoid everything by Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax, but that would mean boycotting films like Reservoir Dogs, Apocalypse Now and Trainspotting, so everyone quietly ignores that. Thank God people are disgusting hypocrites.
Your favourite films come with a vitriolic transgender controversy
Once it was adult fare like Straw Dogs that was controversial. Now it’s films about a f**king boy wizard going to a magical boarding school. Somehow it removes some of the enchantment when you make the mental connections between Hogwarts, people screaming about having a uterus and Graham Linehan manically posting pictures of trans sex offenders online.
Storylines have gone to shit
Films used to have fairly clear goals for characters, and a resolution. Then someone realised: ‘F**k that, let’s just have a horrible mess of unanswered questions.’ That person was probably JJ Abrams, during the making of Lost. Stick your Smoke Monster up your arse, JJ.
Wokeness
Hollywood likes to crow about its latest triumph of woke, usually the highly original idea of having a Strong Female Character in a film that turns out to be Not Very Good. Then the fans react as if Brie Larson or Daisy Ridley had personally strangled their dog. This didn’t happen with Superman in 1978. Although in fairness they didn’t team him up with a race-swapped gender-fluid Lois Lane who’s better at everything than the actual main character.
You have to do homework on massive franchises
It really helps if you know some background to Hulk, Captain Marvel or Jean Grey, because their significance certainly isn’t in the f**king films. The Force Awakens refuses to explain even its basic premise, so you need to google the crappy books and comics. Even Fast Z or whatever it is now requires some basic research into who the car people are. Sadly, after hours of nerdy swotting up on the vast, inconsequential Marvel universe, you discover it doesn’t matter a shit who Falcon is, except maybe to the actor who plays him and his mum.
Everyone’s so very old
No one minds an older actor bowing out with younger actors providing the action and sex appeal, but films are starting to resemble a sci-fi dystopia where no one dies anymore and the youngest human alive is 85. And, if the dialogue in The Expendables is anything to go by, there still isn’t a cure for senile dementia.
All creative works have been strip-mined
A gamer blasting the f**k out of things in Resident Evil in 1996 would not have predicted this limited content would be the basis of seven – yes, seven – films. Basically it’s Hollywood’s fear of making something that hasn’t already proved popular, and you can’t even make a lame joke like ‘What’s next, a big-budget version of Fred the Homepride flour man?’ without someone informing you Netflix has just bought the rights.
