Hollywood Can't Remember How to Make Movies Anymore

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After almost three years of delays (or 3 weeks if you measure time based on Tom Cruise's creepingly unaging face), the sequel to Top Gun hits the theatres with chances of joining the $1B club. Hell of an opening week. I don't know what percentage of the revenue has to go into Scientology's checking account but Catholics better have the second coming of Christ ready to drop before the winter or they ain't keeping up with the fundraising.

This is good news for the movie industry as a whole.

The Hollywood factory sure took a hit in 2020 back when people were buying more toilet paper rolls than movie tickets but c'mon, two years later and they are still blaming the pandemic for not having recovered? The problem is in the listings; no amount of booster shots is gonna make someone pay $15 to go watch yet another soft reboot, nostalgia cash-grab or superhero origin story—even if the memes say otherwise.

Hard to argue with this: gone are the days of treating Hollywood celebs like the haloed paragons of our society. Now they can't make us care unless they post dumb shit on Twitter, slap Chris Rock across the face at the Oscars or televise their own defamation trial—and we only watch those cause they're free.

So what does Tom Cruise's movie do well?

For one, it doesn't recast the lead role with a more ethnically diverse, pansexual Lacto-vegetarian actress/activist with custom-made pronouns just because Tom Cruise is too white and straight for the "modern times." Most movies and TV shows today are so obsessed with preaching ideology and meeting social justice quotas they're a life vest away from becoming a pre-flight safety demonstration.

Jump to this conclusion: there's clearly nothing wrong with expanding Hollywood's genetic variety and conducting job interviews that don't involve tickling Harvey Weinstein's ballsack with a feather—but when the Academy won't even consider a movie for Best Picture unless the studio limits the number of white people they hire across every department, we might be looking at an SJW bullshit overload here.

There's still the problem with "legacy sequels" though.

Top Gun: Maverick still rides on the success of the first one, in what is one of Hollywood's most annoying subgenres—soft reboots, cash-grab remakes, and all kinds of lazy-ass productions designed to milk the same 3 or 4 IPs hoping nostalgia will get our asses off the couch. It was all too tempting to remake the exact same movie featuring a “diverse” cast with the character arc of a Pantene commercial, so I’m glad they decided to eulogise the past instead of defecating on it, like others have done.

So, technically...

Hollywood can't remember how to make movies anymore. It used to be about compelling scripts, original concepts, and unforgettable characters. Now it's nought but a propaganda machine with overprized popcorn on the side, and people can smell the stench of bullshit from their homes. Maybe one day they'll back off and start making good movies again, otherwise they better put Tom Cruise in a rocket ship and send him to the Moon cause I'm sure he’s out of Earth-bound stunts to outdo himself with.