by Lee Duigon
August 10, 2023
I’m fascinated by what looks like the slow self-destruction of our movie industry.
For my generation, movies were huge. Every town had a movie-house or two. Circa 1973, if my friends and I felt like going to a movie, we had a breathtaking number of choices. I can remember some fifteen theaters we had within easy driving distance. Two full pages of movie listings in the newspapers—take your pick.
Today we have only one movie theater still open. It’s a multiplex, showing several films at once. But the big screen is a lot smaller than it used to be. In more ways than one.
The last time I went to the movies was some ten years ago: $20—and that was with a senior citizen’s discount. Don’t even think about popcorn or Good & Plenties. And on top of all that, they showed commercials!
Ach! I remember when Grandma took me to the old Forum Theater to see the first Godzilla movie, and we had to wait in a line that stretched all around the block. Certainly we never see that anymore.
What fascinates me the most is the way Disney Corp just keeps churning out box-office bombs, one after another. It’s as if they really don’t care if they lose money. Counting the latest fiasco, “The Haunted Mansion”—a movie based on a Disney theme park ride, for pete’s sake—they’ve had ten losers in a row, totaling not quite a billion dollars.
But those cock-ups are dwarfed (ha-ha!) by Disney’s newest and ongoing debacle, the new “Snow White.” They were going to spring it on us in 2024, if they can ever find their way out of the chaos they’ve created for themselves.
Leaks have sprung all over the project, amply reported on the Internet. The latest, just the other night, was a scheme to remove the Seven Dwarfs from the story: they’d already turned the Dwarfs into “Seven Magical Creatures.” That didn’t fly; so the new brainstorm is to make all the “magical creatures” female. And tall.
If you don’t like it, don’t worry—they’re sure to come up with something else by the weekend. But a movie do-over on this scale will surely cost another $100 million—and finally deciding which do-over to do, heaven only knows how much they’ve spent already.
There are certain features which all these Disney debacles, including “Snow White 2024,” have in common.
They’re all pumped so full of preachy, arrogant Wokeness that they can’t help but alienate normal people who just want to see a freakin’ movie. If they want a sermon, they can go to church. But for the Disney crew, this is church! Gender-bending is a sacred ritual. They are powerless to change their weird theology: it’s a cult.
There’s not an original thought to be found, it’s all live-action remakes of Disney’s feature-length cartoons. And they bought out Marvel Comics, so we’re bored silly by a mob of rubber-stamp superheroes. One after another after another…
Finally, as “Snow White” abundantly shows, the projects are just too big: there’s no hope of creative control. It’s as if all they want to do is crank out an endless series of Wokeness sermonizing, box-office be damned. We can’t imagine how many costly do-overs they’ll have before the release of a finished film—if that ever happens at all.
“Woke” is a bottomless pit. The Disney cult will never be able to satisfy itself, let alone the movie-going public that keeps rejecting their message.
What they need, and probably want, is a government **Mandate** forcing people to attend these movies—something to tide us over through the next lockdown.
You can bet that’s in the works, too.
I have discussed these and other issues throughout the week on my blog, http://leeduigon.com/ . Click the link and drop in for a visit: guaranteed free of magical creatures. My articles can also be found at www.chalcedon.edu/ .
© 2023 Lee Duigon – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Lee Duigon: leeduigon@verizon.net
