Cinema Issues: The Death Of Joel [The Last Of Us Season Two]

In this edition of Cinema Issues we will be discussing The Last Of Us and its future.

 Well folks I thought they would push it to nearer the end of the season and have this season and the newly announced season three be the second game’s story, but no, they did it in episode two which was pretty bold of them.

The it I am referring to is the death of Joel, Pedro Pascal, the central character of the show. In the games this shocking subversion was met with outrage, as was the following journey to get vengeance on Abby. This is mainly because Joel is both the main character and also in this case he is played by Pedro Pascal and a lot of people like him, in both instances it caught people off guard and felt out of left field.

The fact remains that with Pedro leaving the show, he’ll be around for flashbacks but he will be stepping back for the most part, there will be audience members who leave. The question I am asking in this Cinema Issues article is how much of an effect will this have on the popularity of the show and will the discourse become as angry as it did surrounding the second game?

It is curious that the show decided to depict the scene in the same way the game did as other aspects of the second game have been changed, mainly that Abby, Kaitlyn Dever, is not the musclebound presence she is in the game. I thought perhaps they would tone it down a little bit so that it might be less off putting for people, but no.

I think the question really becomes is Ellie, Bella Ramsey, enough of a draw to get people to watch, and is Ramsey herself a good enough actress to centre the show around? Both of these questions are up in the air right now and time will tell, however, if enough of the audience do check out over the death of Joel it could be a massive blow to the show, possibly a mortal one.

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Cinema Issues: The Fresh Half-Blood Prince

As many of you know the adult casting for the Harry Potter TV series is now out. Whilst there are some spot on casting decisions such as Nick Frost as Hagrid, there are also some impractical ones such as John Lithgow as Dumbledore, given the actor’s age, but one stands out above all as being ill conceived.

This of course is the casting of Snape, now Snape is the central character to the Harry Potter narrative. He is a half blood wizard, this will now be a problem, and severs as a minor antagonist throughout the series for Harry before eventually helping him out of love for his mother.

The casting of Snape is notable for one key reason, they have race swapped the character turning from Alan Rickman to a young black male actor. Now why did they do this well that’s pretty obvious? The cast was too white for modern day Hollywood and even though it is supposed to be the UK in the nineties which was predominantly white, you have to hit your quota.

The reasons this is problematic are four fold, he doesn’t look like the character from a book’s perspective, he undermines other key black characters from the books, it was done for the negative headlines, and the whole everyone is now a racist thing.

So firstly in the books they give a pretty good physical description for Snape, sallow skin, pale, long greasy hair hanging like curtains, so straight, and a hooked nose. Now clearly this is not describing a young black man, and the fact that both HBO and WBD have said they want this to be a faithful adaptation of the books means this is a problem. They cannot claim that with his major change that they are respecting Rowling’s books anymore, and it will only be the first of many changes.

Secondly, characters like Kingsley Shackelbolt and Dean Thomas who were prominent characters of colour in the books, could have been brought in and explored in more detail rather than race swapping a character. This is irritating as rather than explore these underrepresented characters both of which could do with some fleshing out, they are instead taking a well known character and just making him black which adds no new depth or anything like that. Honestly it feels gimmicky.

Thirdly, you have the fact that if this wasn’t just done to tick a box it was done to make people angry and to get people talking. Hollywood is still under the belief that all press is good press and that if they get people angry and making content about their casting or other aspects of their productions that it will translate into more sales. This is wrong. I have seen many people say after the race swap that they won’t be watching the show, because as I said earlier this wont be the only change done to generate outrage, it will go further and it will go deeper, this is a symptom of a wider disease. Many people will stupidly think that someone not watching something over a race swap is racist, when in actual fact they can just see the red flag that something like that generates with regard to respecting the source material and making ‘changes’ and that’s all they need to stay away.

Fourthly in the world of Harry Potter you already have racism to a degree with the idea of half bloods and pure bloods, and now they are going to make this even more overt by having a black man be labelled the half-blood prince, and teach the dark arts it couldn’t be anymore on the nose. Moreover, Harry hates Snape all the kids do, is the show going to say they are all racist, all these white kids hate their only black teacher, seems like a school of bigots. Moreover, Harry’s father was Snape’s bully, and you are supposed to like him despite this, yet the tv show will now have all these kids picking on the half blood boy, or worse yet if Remus, Sirius, James and Peter are white, a group of white boys picking on a black boy. Again the optics are God awful.

There was no need for this change.

Maybe I am making things worse and giving them what they want by spending time writing about it, but I see a bad moon ahead, I see this series becoming a Rings Of Power esque situation wherein it has no resemblance to the source material anymore and just boils down to over produced fan fiction.

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The Looming Rape And Murder Of The James Bond IP By Amazon

James Bond is dead, he died in the closing minutes of No Time To Die though many would say the death happened earlier. However thanks to the ever corrupting influence of money the corpse will be resurrected made to wear a dress and call itself Shirley and tell you it’s preferred pronouns , it will dance to the agenda beat and apologise for ever existing in the first place.

For those unaware this Cinema Issues article is about Amazon buying out the few remaining guard rails on the James Bond IP so they now have complete and utter access to it. Those of you savvy may think ha-ha Jenifer Salke is out at Amazon the rape of the IP won’t happen, the woman who said that she deliberately ignores the male audience for these properties in order to put female characters centre focus and feminise the brand is gone. Her trailblazers a mix of bitter nobodies with shows soon to be seen the axe, however, I say to you her ideas didn’t come from her, oh no she may have believed similar things, but those pushing through the agenda are far higher and she is but a cog in a machine.

As of the moment of writing this, a month or maybe two since all this went down it is clear that the rape is still coming even without Salke. For a start Amy Pascal is being brought in to Shepard the project forward, yes the alleged coke fiend who once threw a sandwich a Kevin  Feige and one of the many voices behind the failed Venomverse. Follow that up with the rumoured goodies that Amazon is going to try and threaten us with over the coming years including an American spin off on Bond, without any of the British charm, a Money Penny series as we need to see the inner lives and no doubt lewd moments of Bond’s secretary, and of course the all important female Bond rebrand, when they get rid of that evil and sickening straight white lead and replace him with a young queer woman of colour who can do everything Bond ever could with ease. Janine Bond can save the day from the evil industrialist, or religious leader, whilst still having enough time to fly carbon neutral and also attack the terfs.

All of these projects would cost Amazon money and further damage the brand and push away fans, but possibly the thing that could kill it would be to do a new Bond film with a man, and have him spend the whole time being brow beaten and told how incompetent and bad he is whilst he apologises and says yes I am awful, that truly would kill the brand stone dead.

I have never counted Bond amongst beloved franchises of mine, I have seen most of them and some of them are better than others, but writing about this as someone who is a student of cinema and someone who is British the death of this franchise which seems all but certain if these are the plans, could forever change Hollywood for the worse

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A Corpse Is Defiled: The Second Death Of Doctor Who

Doctor Babes has left the building.

So as many of you know I have been pretty hands off with Doctor Who since the Whittaker era, I might write a Cinema Issues piece here or there about the declining ratings or review the Christmas special, but by and large I have checked out.

I am only here really to gloat. To laugh at the manbabies and shills who still defend it, I have shown up to the funeral and I am speaking some home truths.

So as many of you know the series has been bleeding viewers for a long time, since just before Whittaker, and that has only got worse. Disney came on board to fund and distribute the show on Disney + expecting a certain level of ratings, it has not provided them with that, and as such series three of the new run is looking increasingly like it is not happening. Disney want numbers, the BBC wants numbers.

Then there was the news this week that Doctor Babes himself has quit the show as he is running off to Hollywood to play even more stereotypical gay roles. He was perfectly fine in Sex Education but the various roles he has done since have just been variants on that, even his role in Who. It is not his fault he was such a terrible Doctor he was cast to tick a box and send a certain message and he was given bad scripts to work with, there is a level to this that is not his fault. I have a feeling that the BBC tried to claw this back and downplay it saying he hasn’t quit and that they are waiting to see how season two does, but of course they would say that they wouldn’t admit the series is about to be shelved as then people really would tune out the new episodes.

The BBC is wondering what went wrong, the blue haired people on Blue Sky like it why isn’t it massively successful, well the silent majority has spoken. Doctor Who has always been a progressive show but when you are hiring trans writers who have previously written books aimed at children that talk about the best apps for gay sex and positions for it, then you know things are in trouble.

Hopefully the failure of this show disgraces RTD, who let’s face it probably has some skeletons in his closet, and prevents him from ever coming near the franchise again.

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Where Have All The Good Guys Gone: The MCU Slips Into Apathy, A Retrospective

I haven’t seen the film and this isn’t a review, this is an assessment piece on the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from the perspective of audience engagement. The comments passed in this piece regarding Captain America Brave New World, are based on several key factors firstly the Cinema Score, a low b, which was lower than that of The Marvel’s and also Antman Quantomania, the critical Rotten Tomatoes score currently at 52% at the time of writing, on the broader fan consensus online which suggests that the film is middling not great not terrible. I would also like to address that on Rotten Tomatoes the film has an 82% audience score, though this could be inflated.

All of these things taken together paint a picture of the sorry state of the MCU, especially when you compare this release to the last few, sans Deadpool and Wolverine as it was disconnected and more of a love letter to the Fox X-Men films. The remaining films on the slate for this year also do little to reassure people that things are going to get better in the near term.

So the question is what went wrong and where do things go from here?

I would say the reasons why this film is struggling and why other Marvel films are struggling are numerous but also quite obvious. Firstly, folks don’t like homework, since the advent of Disney + not only has there been more content, perhaps too much, but also new requirements. To understand Brave New World fully folks would need to have watched The Incredible Hulk from almost twenty years ago, Falcon and the Winter Soldier and also The Eternals. That is 5+ hours of commitment just to watch the latest film in the universe and increasingly folks are getting sick of having to make it.

What can be done to fix this? At the current stage nothing, the projects that are already in development will suffer from it. However, for further down the line stuff there can be an importance placed on telling original and disconnected stories, there can also be an effort to cleverly use exposition within the films to bring folks up to speed on what they need to know from these other series, this would hurt Marvel’s numbers on rewatches but would encourage the casuals to return. They could also do a previously on at the start of each project including films, unorthodox but potentially a solution.

Secondly is the problem that these characters just are not a draw. Marvel got high on their own supply and started to believe the mythology surrounding them, thinking that they could turn anyone into a billion dollar grosser, and for a while when everything was seen as required viewing in order to get the Infinity Saga’s broader narrative it worked, however, in the disconnected and seemingly aimless Multiverse Saga this has been proven untrue. The issue here is twofold firstly the Multiverse Saga is objectively a failure, fans are not connecting, due to the glut of content things feel deluded and far to disconnected. Moreover there does not seem to be a clear direction in which it is going, yes to comics fans it is clear we are getting Battleworld the Beyonder and likely God Emperor Doom, however, for casuals it just seems to be without purpose at the moment. Secondly, it is clear that the MCU has tentpole characters that folks need to see often in order to stay invested, this can be Spider-Man, it could be Doctor Strange, it could be Wanda, it could be the founding Avengers, regardless, due to the massive uptick in production we are getting less and less projects with these tentpole characters and more and more ancillary stuff with characters people just don’t care about and that is leading to apathy. The idea that Marvel film are not events anymore sums this up rather well.

What can be done about it?

Well I have said it before and I’ll say it again, they need to do a purge. By that I mean, the Marvel slate no matter if they have announced it or not needs to be studied and second guessed, some of these films and tv shows with provably unpopular characters, I am looking at you Iron Heart with your multiple failed comics runs, should be written off and never released. It does not matter if they are done and ready to go or in production you need to trim back all this fat and get back to the core characters people care about. The Thunderbolts is the antithesis of my point, a group of mostly recent and Disney + era characters that no one cares about. The film will be met with apathy. Furthermore, there needs to be a cleaning house of the higher ups at Marvel that greenlit all these projects, who thought Echo and Agatha needed there own shows, as whoever did should not have a job. I would levy this at Feige himself, if his eye has come off the ball he should be replaced.

Finally, is the idea of escapism. Media should exist to provide audiences with a means of escaping from their lives, yes some cover real world issues, but superhero films should not. Again this is a twofold problem for Marvel, the MCU could use real world politics themes and ideas to influence it’s films, but they don’t have good writers. What I mean by that is that they don’t have writers who can be subtle and who can weave it in in a nuanced way, they have people who need to show scenes of Sam being denied a lone simply because he is black, as the scene tells it, in order to be incredibly heavy handed in its messaging. This is a problem as then audiences feel like they are being preached at and feel like the films are becoming political which is a turn off both for those that don’t agree with the politics but also those who don’t want to engage with politics. Secondly, bringing in heavy handed real world political issues such as presenting, according to reviews, Ross as a stand in for Trump, it stops the world from feeling different and new and instead makes it feel like a reflection of our own which isn’t what people want.

How can this be fixed?

Honestly this is probably the simplest, by hiring better writers, one who can use politics in a subtle way and put themes into films without it being overt and making the film politicised. 

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Cinema Issues: State Of The Box Office Address Start Of 2025

Written by Luke Barnes

In this cinema issues article we are discussing the contraction of the entertainment industry. If one was to cast their gaze upon the 2025 release schedule it would be perfectly acceptable for them to ask what happened to make it to 2025? For those of you that don’t know, with the destruction of COVID and the writer’s strikes, there was a mantra in Hollywood to make it to 2025 as this was seemingly the year when things would get back to the 2019 normal. This was pre the wildfires.

As such this mythical 2025 was going to also see the box office recover to 2019 levels, as it’s been steadily below over these past few years, and in order to do that there was going to be a lot more films releasing each month than in previous years. However, to go back to our opening image there is in fact not a lot of films releasing each week in 2025 so far. Whilst yes there will be some films set to come out in 2025 that have not yet been given formal announcements and release dates, it seems the idea of masses of new releases might be a pipe dream, why is this?

Crucially there are two things Hollywood didn’t account for with the 2025 dream, the first being an obvious and sustained change in audience viewing habits, with more people waiting to watch films at home, being more choosy with the films they watch due to higher ticket costs, and of course the audience’s rejection of slop. The second key fact is the death of the movie star. When discussing the death of the movie star it can’t be stressed enough how important the rise of social media has been, influences and youtubers have given the public new role models seemingly more accessible, more down to earth, and more like them. Audiences have begun craving authenticity, as such the very performative and fake world of Hollywood has lost its allure, the actors who still maintain rabid fanbases do so with a keen use of social media or by giving off the persona of being nice people, whether true or not.

The death of the movie star has left Hollywood unable to move forward, it needs radical change to continue to exist, yet if there’s one thing Hollywood executives are frightened of doing it’s doing anything new. As such I expect 2025’s box office to languish behind 2024 which wasn’t good to begin with, we’re miles off from 2019. I believe looking at the calendar now and of course there can always be new announcements and upsets, but I would say that there is one surefire billion grosser film in the fourth coming Jurassic World, and possibly another in Superman if the stars align. That aside the box office looks quite sick this year, there are not a lot of films and the ones that are don’t seem to have the draw that could make the box office healthy.

The worst thing is in its floundering attempt to combat these problems Hollywood won’t take drastic action, the action of course that’s needed is a slashing of film budgets in half or more, in addition, films need to stop pushing divisive messaging and being targeted towards niche and specific minorities rather than the widest possible audience. Hollywood needs to decentralise, it needs to move outside of the LA ecosystem, films need to be made on a budget of $50 million, a raft of new original films costing that amount or below could allow for greater creativity and potentially some new franchises rather than mining the same wells.

As we head towards the end of this piece you can expect to see Hollywood shrink in the coming year and become more reliant on re-releases.

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Cinema Issues: The Truth About Toxic Fans

Written by Luke Barnes

In this cinema issues article we are discussing the currently pushed idea of the toxic fan and using some critical thinking skills.

So firstly it would be remiss to say that no elements of racism and bigotry exist in fandom or that people getting doxed or sent death threats doesn’t happen as it does, by both sides frequently. There are always bad apples in every bunch, however, things are being twisted.

The first thing to address is the matter of proportion, this is that within a fandom be they left right or whatever there will be bad apples, but they are a small number, to say a whole fandom is anything based on a few people is inherently in bad faith.

Onto the next point, misuse. So people online use terms like racist and bigot like they are going out of fashion and crucially they use them incorrectly. The most common way of this is that they say anyone who says something they don’t like or who criticises something they like is bigoted. This is not only silly and degrading to the terms themselves but also it leads then for the echo chamber to echo that now the fandom are all bigoted when they may not be at all and the original inciting incident was just someone saying they didn’t like the sound design of a film.

A final thing to consider is the idea of tribalism and scapegoats, it is very nice for a studio when a film comes out and does badly to go we didn’t make a bad film the fans are just toxic. Moreover, those who like the film can just rally behind that line and not thinking critically buy into it and go yeah I really liked it so anyone that doesn’t must have another reason for not liking it, enter the they are bigots line.

Overall, whilst there is and always will be an element of toxicity in fandoms, criticising a film, casting choice, plot point or whatever is non toxic, someone disliking a film you like is non toxic, someone saying they didn’t like the costumes in a show is not bigoted or racist and you are devaluing those terms by using them so casually. The war against toxic fans by some online and by studios is not only blown up way out of proportion and enflamed by political tribalism, but also unwinnable and frankly wrongheaded. As often a lot of the people who are calling people toxic are being that themselves by going after people they don’t like online.

If you enjoyed this piece, then please head over to my Patreon to support me, I offer personalized shoutouts, customised film recommendations to suit your personality and tastes, the ability for you to pick what I review next and full access to my Patreon exclusive game reviews. Check it out!

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Cinema Issues: The Postmortem Of Doctor Who

Written by Luke Barnes

In this cinema issues article we are dissecting the first season of New, New Who and doing a post mortem to see what went so badly wrong with it.

So lets get something out of the way right quick, the series is in a bad way,  I don’t care if you think it was some of the most stunning and brave Who ever, the ratings are a slow death. The Legend Of Ruby Tuesday and another episode this season both posted record low viewership numbers for the show, some of the lowest in the shows history. Look it up. Things are bad, and there is even talk that the filmed season batch of episodes may not get released as the BBC debates what to do with them, likely they will get released and the show will just be put on ice come this time next year.

Anyway, as the BBC starts to question everything and panic about its in development Who spin-offs, we will look at what went wrong with these episodes.

I think the main issue a lot of people had with these season was that fundamentally it wasn’t Who, never before have I seen the Doctor have so many dance numbers and act more like a local tiktoker trying to make it big than an alien. In addition the fact that the Doctor called everyone ‘babes’ constantly didn’t make it feel like Who it made it feel as though the Doctor had suddenly become another person.

Moreover, the series was heavily political with a number of controversial hot button issues forced in, just for the show to keep a desperate hold of its increasingly radically progressive audience. Some of it didn’t even make sense like when those people who not be saved by the Doctor because he was black and would rather die, what horribly on the nose message was that supposed to be pushing as it felt like a straw man argument. These ideas where repeated over the course of the season, the issue with clearly taking a side politically is that it then alienates your audience and makes you start to loose chunks of people. It is always better to present two sides and let the audience make up their own mind.

Furthermore, who at Disney or the BBC thought it was a good idea to allow cast and creators to attack the fans, whoever it was I would say is the most responsible for the bad feeling and reception to this season. This is mainly due to the fact of actors telling fans to screw off and then being shocked when their show has bad viewership, you do not treat your fans like that you just don’t. Yet these people look down on their fans and think they don’t need them, how wrong they are.

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Cinema Issues: The Acolyte Is Cancelled Looks Like Star Wars Isn’t A YA Female Brand After All

Written by Luke Barnes

Image credit, What’s On Disney Plus

In this cinema issues article we are talking about the much deserved cancellation of the Acolyte.

So lets get a few things out of the way first, Disney is a business they cancel things if they  don’t have good ratings or make them money, the Acolyte did neither. Disney did not give in to the toxic fans, you overly assume the importance Disney places on any of their customers opinions or politics, it is as simple as did it make this number? No, then it is cancelled. Also Disney does not care about how some shows need a few seasons to find an audience, again did it hit the number they wanted? No, then it is cancelled.

Now let’s talk about why it was so poorly viewed.

Rumour has it that Disney is angry with star of the show Amandla Stenberg, saying that her diss track to own the haters, actually hurt the show in the long run as it caused people to turn off. Looks like Disney knows that attacking fans isn’t the way to go about it, I wonder if they will still do it when Skeleton Crew comes out.

It also might be time to call it on the idea of turning Star Wars into a girl-power brand. Audience data collected by the Wrap says that over 70% of Star Wars’ audience is older males, and the figure only seems to be increasing as time goes by, efforts like this to bring in a different sort of fan are not pushing the needle enough to change that and are also alienating that 70% therefore leading the series to not have enough viewers to stay on.

It may be time for Disney and Kathy to except Star Wars for what it is, a nerdy franchise mainly consumed by older guys and one that will become irrelevant in a few decades when these people start to die off. The idea of bringing in new fans by doing new things isn’t working, this show desperately tried to do that and had the worst viewing figures of all Disney + Star Wars so it might be time to accept new fans aren’t coming in big enough numbers to make the change over survivable for the brand.

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Rings Of Power Season 2: Can It Be Saved?

Written by Luke Barnes

In this cinema issues article we are talking about The Rings Of Power and what I believe it needs to do in order to be a better second season and in order to set the series up for long term success.

Now as a Tolkien fan I have a very complicated relationship with this show, there is a part of me that thinks it shouldn’t exist, and when I watched the first few episodes of the first season I was convinced it was little more than current year trash. However, as I advanced beyond that I did think there were some good ideas there, deeply buried but there, and I began to warm to it more by the end of the first season. As such I want to suggest ways that the second season could improve on the first and turn the show around, because lets face it by Amazon’s own admission, in the end, the majority of people didn’t finish the first season.

Before we get into it I want to say this is all just my opinion, nothing to cry about, some of it will be changes they can make this season and some will be possible changes they can make before a maybe possibly season 3. The idea of if this show can even be saved will also be discussed.

I think the fundamental issue with ROP that was there in the first season and will be there in season 2 is the fact that those who make the show do not understand or like the IP. As such they inject other things into in order to try and get more people in whilst driving away people who might actually like the show, take for example the fact in the new season they are teasing a romance between Galadriel, Morfydd Clarke, and Sauron, Charlie Vickers which just shows that the creators do not know these characters. They are doing this in an effort to try and get social media shippers to care, and to appear like it is A YA show, they are doing this when they could just use Celeborn instead. Doing things like the YA shipping makes me think that the show can’t be saved.

Moving on I think the show needs to focus on less characters, the Harfoots need to go away as do the Numenorian’s, I would also cut out the Dwarf’s and just have it be about Sauron trying to corrupt different groups of people with Galadriel and Elron in toe to stop him. All the stuff with the Stranger too I would cut out, we just don’t need it, the show is trying to tell too many stories at once.

I would also hype up events rather than going look guys the first black elf, this is tokenistic and irritating virtue signalling. You should have natural diversity and not make a big deal of it just be like yes this is the world, you don’t need to show them off its weird. Look at how House Of The Dragon does it for example, much better.   

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