Yeah Captain Marvel was just an example, the whole Marvel universe is pretty awful in that regard. Captain Marvel was just the most blatant example because of the fact that they literally produced ads in conjunction with the Air Force, and there was a whole “woke” fight around Larson that never really broached her…

Yeah I’d love to see someone grill any of the actors on that terrible Sorkin Chicago 7 movie lol. No leftist was happy with that piece of shit, it basically co-opted a group of leftists to make a centrist liberal propaganda movie, but no one involved was asked any tough questions about it.

If the film is receiving Air Force support and has a deal to do Air Force advertisements with the main star, it is Air Force propaganda. It was constructed specifically around the fact that the Air Force was having trouble recruiting women, so the whole idea of it was to show a character overcoming obstacles to…

Michael Bay is often a military propagandist yes. I just picked random examples. However, especially given the production practices used on them I don’t think it can be denied that Captain Marvel and Zero Dark Thirty were explicitly propaganda films.

Captain Marvel is just an obvious example, in part because there was a big “woke” fight over it and also because there was an explicit deal with the Air Force that the film would be used as a recruiting tool. (Air Force promos featuring Brie Larson before the film at all screenings, etc.) But sure, those films also…

Bigelow and the producers did, but I’m referring to the actors who were pretty unscathed by that whole thing.

Bigelow did, but not the actors so much. I think it was generally agreed that they were just actors taking a role and couldn’t be held accountable for what the creators of the film did. Which, I’m not saying I agree or disagree, but if we’re holding actors accountable for taking roles in an anti-abortion movie I don’t…

Like literally everything about it.

They ran Air Force ads before the film bud. They had Larson literally sitting with Air Force captains and shit and talking about how they wanted to make a film that would honor them. You’re not looking very closely if you don’t think that a film that had an extensive deal with the Air Force wasn’t at least partly…

I mean, I don’t disagree with the criticism per se, but I don’t know how anyone squares this moral righteousness over an actor taking a role with the fact that actors taking roles in pro-military propaganda blockbusters like Captain Marvel and Zero Dark Thirty never receive a fraction of this criticism. In fact, we’re…

(Pretty late since I wasn’t checking notifications sorry) I think part of what it comes down to is these mega blockbusters are not really the underdogs anymore. Sure in the 1990s comic books were largely looked down upon and Marvel in particular was actually in danger of going under, for better or worse, but that time…

Pretty late because I wasn’t checking notifications, but again you just really couldn’t be more wrong about that, e.g.:

Yeah that’s such a weird one to lead the article with. Ellen is definitely by a lot of accounts a terrible person and I’ve never heard any good stories about working at that show, but....that one wasn’t an example of a toxic environment, it’s an example of another entitled celebrity also throwing a fit because they…

Nolan’s not really speaking as a viewer though. He’s speaking as a creative, and HBO Max/Warner’s treatment of the creatives recently has been basically objectively bad.

You don’t have to! It still stands that you clearly didn’t read what he actually said, or considered it on its own terms. You’ve read a headline and then formulated what you think he said in your head, and then reacted to that. If you hate every single Scorsese film ever made, that’s fine, I don’t care, but it’s…

I guess it depends on what we’re talking about here. Partly what I’m reacting to is the idea that simply by virtue of something existing in the capitalist framework, or having to aim to make some kind of money, that it isn’t art. I think the capitalist framework is harmful to art and often compromises it, *but* that…

Aside from that description not matching quite a bit of his filmography, few filmmakers, or even just people on earth, have done more to elevate world cinema, films by women and people of color, etc, than Scorsese has. A shit ton of movies would just be out of circulation if not for Scorsese himself being involved in…

Look, like Jesse I like Pixar (used to love before Cars 2 started a sequel-happy last decade+ for them). But aside from the fact that they’ve just made way fewer films than Touchstone has in total, they’re all kind of the same movie. I don’t even mean that disparagingly, but look, they’re all kids’ movies,…

In his actual essay he talks about how it can be done better and explicitly references a couple of them that do. As usual someone trying to do that “old man” thing with him has not actually read what he said or considered it beyond a headline.

In capitalism the former is not really possible. That’s the thing. Barring the occasional passion project where the person making it knows they’re going to lose money (and I mean *they* will lose money, not financial backers), all art is made with the goal of making money in some capacity, because artists have to…