Director Taika Waititi promises his upcoming Star Wars movie is “gonna piss people off” after he emasculated Thor in Thor: Love and Thunder.
According to Variety:
When asked if his addition to the popular franchise would still show fans the same “Star Wars” they know and love, the “Thor: love and thunder” director animatedly told Variety on the red carpet of his “Next Goal Wins” premiere, “It will be … dramatic pause… a Taika Waititi film.”
“It’s gonna piss people off,” he added with a laugh.
Now, do you understand just how much Disney hates you, how much contempt and scorn it holds for you?
In the Golden Age, Hollywood wanted to please everyone by producing universal movies for everyone. The goal was to create a unifying and tolerant melting pot: one culture out of many. But Hollywood also made movies aimed at different cultures: teens, Southerners, racial minorities, urbanites, Westerners, women, etc.
Then, sometime after George W. Bush “stole” the 2000 election, Hollywood became too intolerant to do that anymore. But the industry still wanted to make money. So, it produced movies designed to make money but within strict left-wing political and social boundaries. This damaged the art, no question, but the Bush II era now feels like the good old days.
Today, Hollywood cares nothing about the art, profit, or preserving the golden geese of its franchises and icons. Oh, and the audience? It hates us, which is why today’s entertainment industry is only about one thing: heaping scorn on normal people.
Simply put, Hollywood is a billion-dollar troll, and Waititi can’t wait to further alienate and insult the very people who made Star Wars Hollywood’s greatest franchise.
Here’s some perspective…
I just finished reading Scott Eyman’s superb Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided, which serves as an overall biography with a special focus on how the American people, Hollywood, and our government all shamed themselves by turning against Charlie Chaplin, one of our greatest artists — a man guilty of nothing more than being attracted to young women, adopting America without becoming a citizen, and being right about the threat of Hitler.
During this injustice, Chaplin made the black comedy Monsieur Verdoux (1947). In this cynical, funny, frequently mean-spirited movie, America’s beloved Little Tramp plays a serial murderer, a gentleman who poisons women for money. Eyman points out that Monsieur Verdoux is almost certainly a product of Chaplin’s anger at the U.S. government, the media, and even the American people for turning against him. Basically, Chaplin wanted to take the Tramp away from us and stick a finger in our eye.
And he did. The movie launched a thousand angry columns written by the purity police (that century’s version of film Twitter) and then flopped.
Monsieur Verdoux was Chaplin’s tantrum.
But here’s the difference between Chaplin’s tantrum and the tantrum all of Hollywood is having today — and it’s all the difference.
Monsieur Verdoux is a masterpiece (Eyman disagrees and makes a pretty good case). Moreso, unlike present-day Hollywood, Chaplin learned from this backlash and failure. Most importantly, he was humbled by it.
Chaplin didn’t get angry over the critical and public backlash against Monsieur Verdoux and then decide (like Kathleen Kennedy) to double down with a second movie that’s really “gonna piss people off.” Instead, he had the humility to make Limelight (1952), a lovely, funny, nostalgic, and heartrending story bursting with sincerity and humanism. Eyman describes it as “rigorously apolitical” and a summing up of what Chaplin was then going through — the story of Calvero, an aging clown who had lost his audience. The result? It made $8 million globally off a $900,000 budget.
Unlike the spoiled and entitled babies having a tantrum in their movies today, Chaplin had every right to be bitter and angry. What this country did to him was indefensible, highly personal, and undeserved. And still, as an artist, he came back to us.
Compare that to today’s spoiled brats, like Waititi, who spend $300 million to jab us in the eye again and again and again. They’re not angry because the FBI is looking to deport them or because they lost a paternity suit even after three blood tests exonerated them. They’re mad because they lost an election.
While trying to sell Monsieur Verdoux, Chaplin told the publicity people, “Neither do I want politics of any nature connected to the picture. It is bad showmanship and will create the impression that the picture is dull and not funny.”
Sure, Chaplin was a leftist, but he respected and was grateful for his audience, even when we didn’t deserve it.
And this is why I’m done.
For all I care, today’s entertainment industry can burn to the ground.
You know why…?
Because less than 20 feet from me, except for two made in exile, I have all of Charlie Chaplin’s feature films on Blu-ray. Why would any sane person sit through Waititi’s smug Star Wars movie when you can watch The Kid (1921) or Modern Times (1936)?
John Nolte’s debut novel Borrowed Time (Bombardier Books) is available today. You can read an exclusive excerpt here and a review of the novel here.
Jesus Christ is King
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