The pandemic has passed, the film industry has come back to life, and blockbusters have been released. However, the box office has disappointed time and time again, and Hollywood movies seem to have lost their charm.
A recent poll in the United States showed that 42 percent of people cited the declining quality of movies as their main reason for reluctance to go to the cinema. Why did the movie get so bad? Because Hollywood has long since abandoned original stories in favor of desperately making series of movies and using them to instill its own ideas and values.
The latest example is "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," a $300 million film that recouped only $1$200 million, it became a disaster.
Meanwhile, "Sound of Freedom," a movie made outside of Hollywood, earned $40 million in a week, proving that audiences pay for a good story. Now, audiences are tired of spending money to see "woke" movies, which are not for entertainment, but for education.
It could be a movie about a conservative Mennonite woman fleeing ** that suddenly features a transgender character ("Women Talking"), or a movie that kills or replaces traditional male heroes with women ("Star Wars", "No Time to Have a Good Time", "Indiana Jones and the Disk of Fate"), or a movie that makes the once-** female idol bland ("Charlie's Angel"), Or a film that forcibly adds LGBTQIA issues to children's films ("Lightyear" and "Elemental").
This is called "awakening".
The phenomenon of Top Gun M**erick
The first sign of a box office slump was the cold reception of Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story" when it was released during the Oscar season.
But "Top Gun 2" soared to $800 million, shattering all doubts. Word-of-mouth tells us two things: the film is great, and it's not "woke". Streaming has not replaced movies. The movie is alive. Maybe "West Side Story" is aimed at people who still wear masks outside, but it's like building a house out of straw, weatherless.
As a line from Indiana Jones says, they dig in the wrong places.
Top Gun 2 (Top Gun M**erick) is a film from the past, the script was written in 2012, the production was restarted in 2017 after the death of the original director Tony Scott, and it was originally scheduled to be released in 2019. Due to the pandemic, its release was postponed for several years. That's why the film was able to steer clear of the wave of "awakening" and bring a breath of fresh air to a tired world.
The film tells the story of a hero who saves the world and gets the girl. It's simple. It's full of humor, excitement, and fun that makes you want to repeat it. But most importantly, it meets the audience's expectations because it gives the audience what they want, not what Hollywood thinks they should want.
The film has few critics who consider it an Americanist and militaristic propaganda film. Indeed, it can be said that Top Gun, as well as many films in Hollywood history, extolled the greatness of the United States, not to mention the military. But if a movie is good enough and engaging enough, people will go to see it.
Gender swapping
For the male-dominated film industry, whether young, old, white or non-white, Hollywood has dealt a relentless blow to them. They wanted to know why the film failed at the box office.
This ironic ** is made by the "woke critics" pretending to praise Kathleen Kennedy, who took over the Star Wars franchise and pushed female characters to the forefront, taking the place that originally belonged to Luke Skywalker. At that time, no one questioned it much, or if there was, they didn't dare to say it. Hollywood seems to be pandering to people's thirst for change. But over time, this has led to many of Disney's brands (such as Marvel, Fox Studios, and Star Wars) becoming weaker and weaker.
The phenomenon of gender reversal is the "strong female character," which has left the United States facing not only a male crisis, but also a masculine crisis.
The last glorious year of Hollywood cinema was 2019, just before its downfall. That year, there were many excellent films nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture, including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Joker, 1917, and The Irishman. However, among these successful films, the Academy awarded the Best Picture award to a film from South Korea, "Parasite".
It's a great film, but it doesn't reward homegrown works in that year, which shows Hollywood's attitude towards itself. No wonder they gave up everything so easily. This is partly the reason for Hollywood's self-destruction. They no longer trust their audience, their country, and themselves.
Great movies can't survive in a repressive utopia. If Hollywood no longer understands its audience, it's time to reacquaint itself with them. As RED ("The Shawshank Redemption") says, be busy living, or be busy dying.