In a 3.28 N.Y. Times Op-Ed titled “Project Hail Mary Is Fun — Maybe That’s All It Takes“, former Amazon exec Roy Price cheers on the relatively recent, non-woke, non-ideological drift of five commercially successful Hollywood films.
Price not only praises the super-bountiful Project Hail Mary, which I didn’t exactly hate but which left me feeling semi-exhausted, excluded and vaguely bummed out, but also Avatar: Fire and Ash (refused to see it…totally uninterested in sitting through a third installment…the once-phenomenal James Cameron has damn near thrown his career away on this shite), The Housemaid (thoroughly despised it due to the obvious fact that it’s basically ludicrous airport chick fiction…pure garbage), Scream 7 (even fouler garbage), Wuthering Heights (over-heated and, for me, truly agonizing to sit through).
These and other films, Price says, are largely responsible for a 20% surge in the domestic box office over 2025.
It’s obviously a great relief that mainstream Hollywood has, to a significant extent, blown off wokeism, but dear God in heaven, the five “fun” films that have revitalized the box-office are nothing to shout and cheer about in a spiritual sense. (I understand why impressionable people like PHM, but it’s such a calculating emotional suck-up thing,)
This reminds me, by the way, that PHM star Ryan Gosling, who has been annoying me over the last several years, is locked into the next film from “the Daniels”…good Lord!
Price on the woke quake that kicked in six years ago: “The Dionysian elements of popular entertainment — irreverence, sexual frankness and broad, even scatological humor — were cast aside as the industry sought to correct historic wrongs and resist current ones.
“An unmistakable censoriousness and fear of saying or doing the wrong thing seemed to settle over the creative process. Cultural and political considerations played an outsize role — not only in what movies got made, but in how success for these movies was defined.
“What didn’t seem to matter as much? Making sure that audiences were filling seats.”
Likely to make big money, I’m guessing, but I can already feel the pain I’ll be experiencing when I watch it. No, I don’t know what it’s about, but if it’s anything like EEAAO….
