Hollywood’s war on AI will go about as well as its war on Donald Trump. They’ll lose. They don’t really need to confront any problem, of course. They have a magic mirror in the trades and most media that will tell them what they want to hear and never challenge them on anything. That’s a real shame, considering we’re living through extraordinary times. All around us are great stories that will never be told by the cowards in Tinseltown. I was lucky to have been raised when everyone had more courage, before they traded that courage for a kind of puritanical fundamentalism and compliance.
What would be a great story Hollywood won’t tell? They’re all around us. They would never touch the extraordinary events at Evergreen College in 2017, nine years ago, when we saw the fruits of Woke 1 come to life as a group of students flipped out and called one of the most liberal colleges in the country “racist.”
Evergreen is an amazing story and yet not one man with a pair of balls or any woman with any critical thinking skills in Hollywood who would dare tell it, even though it happened almost a decade ago and laid the groundwork for what would happen to the Left as that generation came of age and joined the work force. The violence on the Left is escalating.
We’ve lived through three assassination attempts on Trump’s life and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and these freaked-out, paralyzed people in Hollywood couldn’t even say Charlie Kirk’s name at the Oscars or the Emmys or anywhere. They demanded everyone see him as an “ist” or a “phobe,” with no ability, ever, to turn that camera around and look at themselves.
Even the Chinese know what Americans don’t dare talk about.
Yes it got this crazy in 2020 and though Ari Aster remains the lone filmmaker who even tried to go there, and the new movie Fjord attempts to deal with the madness that has afflicted the Left, for the most part, they prefer to tell only one story one way: all of the bad people out there, outside of our utopian bubble, will destroy us and our way of life.
The explanation as to what happened to the Left is not that hard once you crawl out of the bubble. Amid the rise of the internet, in the post war America of 2008 and onward, the Democrats and the Left amassed more power over American society than any political party in history with the possible exception of the Conservatives after the Civil War and World War II.
That kind of power, with the help of the internet, formed an elite ruling class that defined itself on elevating the marginalized and the victimized and punishing everyone else. As social media gave rise to voices that never had power or representation in the past – Black Lives Matter, the Me Too movement — the ruling class (mostly white, mostly male) knew they had to make major changes to reflect the demands of the activists or they would come banging down the door.
As it happened, one of those groups was the American working class, normal people who wanted nothing to do with the new America as defined by the new Left. What we lived through in the aftermath was nothing less than mass hysteria, the kind experienced by a ruling class with too much power who cannot handle the populist revolt ushered in by Donald Trump.
Even now, we see them shapeshifting to still pretend they were ever the “resistance” or the “oppressed” side. They never were. Trump won twice because they failed to include the majority, true in Hollywood, true in politics. They want Trump to be the “party of billionaires,” and they’ll sell him that way even now. Helping them sell this false image of America’s real power will be several Hollywood film directors who push the ongoing apocalyptic worldview that Big Tech and AI are here to destroy humanity and the world.
The stories they won’t tell are the truth, because that would make them look bad. Instead, they seek to position themselves as our moral betters, that these wealthy, isolated celebrities are in any position to lecture the rest of America about what they should want or what they care about.
Here’s the truth: people are both wonderful and terrible. Your political party or your belief system does not determine who you are. On the Left, they still demand compliance or else. Go along with us or we WILL DESTROY you. Only the side with all of the power has the ability to control anyone who still wishes to work in Hollywood or even run a blog, like I do.
I’d rather be dead than give up my freedom of thought and speech and I remain shocked and disappointed that the majority of the Left does not believe that, despite their cosplaying to the contrary. Art and activism have fused as the Democrats and Hollywood have fused. There can be no objective or satirical art because it must always prop up the activism.
“A Movie for Our Time”
Whenever a critic says “it’s a movie for our time,” that’s a pretty good indicator that it will be trapped in time, in this bizarre moment of human history when wealthy, powerful people live every day in fear because they could not defeat Trump. The dramatic changes he’s already made to this country they seek to undo. Some of those even I would agree with, particularly with the National Parks but we can’t have people in power who see the other half of the country as human garbage at best, but worthy of being thrown in a gulag at worst.
We have a lot of movies that are “movies of our time,” like The Odyssey, which took Homer’s celebration of war and machismo and turned it into a “what have we done” screed that once again positions Hollywood and the Left as the side that knows better. Another is Wild Horse Nine, which is called a “movie of our time” though no one really knows why yet. The phrase is enough because it says: Trump bad. That’s usually the message.
Trump bad, Elon bad, Big Tech bad. That’s going to be the themes of the upcoming films like Artificial, The Social Reckoning, and the biggest one, Digger.
Empire Magazine’s Ben Travis has an interview with Alejandro G. Inarritu, who boldly preclaims: “It’s a disaster movie, and the disaster is us.”
“The disaster isn’t a comet or an earthquake, or an alien invasion. The disaster is us,” he tells Empire of his new movie, in which Cruise’s oil tycoon Digger Rockwell unwittingly unleashes ecological hell, and is charged with trying to undo the damage he’s wrought. “Most disaster movies ask, ‘What if something terrible happened to humanity?’ Our question was much simpler: ‘What if humanity happened to humanity?’”
Tom Cruise also covers the magazine with the following headline: “The biggest star takes the biggest swing.”
There are also “first look” photos hitting the internet of Sandra Huller:
The account Digger Cave has posted some photos depicting Tom Cruz, Riz Ahmed and Sandra Huller:
I’m guessing Digger will play to the arthouse crowd and to those inside of the Doomsday Bunker where every day is the end of the world and it will be handsomely rewarded with Oscars. Actor nomination for Cruz at the very least and probably one for Huller.
Wild Horse Nine is already getting strong buzz, though it being a “movie of our time” is a wee bit worrisome to me. But I’ve already heard from three different sources who say it’s top-notch, so we have to consider it as a major player.
As for Artificial and The Social Reckoning, not to mention Alex Gibney’s sure-to-be-on-the-nose, from-inside-the-bunker view of Elon Musk, it’s hard to know where they will land. One thing seems certain, however: those who vote on these awards, cover these awards, and watch these awards are all in agreement, so what will change? Not much. We cling to Fjord as the only one that even tries to dip a toe into some kind of self-examination or dissent.
Meanwhile, Big Tech really is moving fast and breaking things and AI won’t be stopped. All a person can do is refuse to use it. It will be the next arms race and it will forever change everything about our society now that we have a research tool and assistant at our beck and call. Hollywood can show anxiety against this dramatic change, and they will, but they can’t stop it.
The worst thing Hollywood ever did was give up its freedom because humanity without freedom isn’t interesting.
Venice and Telluride
We are just a week away from Venice and Telluride, wherein I expect Wild Horse Nine, at the very least, will be anointed. What else these festivals have to offer remains a mystery, but it seems fairly certain that The Odyssey is locked for Picture and Director. All other categories are open at the moment.
Here are my predictions.
Predictions
Best Picture
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
The Invite
La Bola Negra
Wild Horse Nine
Fjord
Obsession
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Dune III
Digger
Alt. Ink
Director
Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey
Olivia Wilde, The Invite
Martin McDonagh, Wild Horse Nine
Los Jovis, La Bola Negra
David Fincher, Adventures of Cliff Booth
Alt. Curry Barker, Obsession, Christian Mungiu, Fjord, Denis Villeneuve, Dune III, Danny Boyle, Ink
Actor
Matt Damon, The Odyssey
Tom Cruise, Digger
Seth Rogan, The Invite
Ryan Gosling, Project Hail Mary
John Malkovich, Wild Horse Nine
Alt. Brad Pitt, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, Andrew Scott, Elsinore, Guy Pearce, Ink
Actress
Ruth Madeley, Being Heumann
Inde Navarette, Obsession
Rosalind Eleazar, Misty Green
Julianne Moore, The Debut
Olivia Wilde, The Invite
Alt. Renate Reinsve, Fjord
Supporting Actor
Paul Giamatti, The Debut
Guitarricadelafuente, La Bola Negra
Sam Rockwell, Wild Horse Nine
Jeremy Strong, The Social Reckoning
Edward Norton, The Invite
Supporting Actress
Anne Hathaway, The Odyssey
Penelope Cruz, La Bola Negra
Carla Gugino, The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Sandra Huller, Digger
Penelope Cruz, The Invite
Original Screenplay
Wild Horse Nine
Misty Green
Fjord
Obsession
Ink
Adapted Screenplay
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
La Bola Negra
The Invite
Editing
Adventures of Cliff Booth
Wild Horse Nine
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
Dune III
Casting
The Odyssey
The Debut
Digger
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
La Bola Negra
Visual Effects
Dune: Part Three
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
Werwulf
Disclosure Day
Cinematography
Dune: Part Three
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
Werwulf
La Bolla Negra
Costumes
Werwulf
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Sense and Sensibility
Makeup and Hair
Digger
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
Wewulf
Adventures of Cliff Booth
Production Design
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
Project Hail Mary
Werwulf
Adventures of Cliff Booth
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