C’mon Hollywood: Is Film Criticism Often Agenda-Driven?

Welcome back to C’Mon Hollywood – a revival of a column we used to do focused on everything that’s wrong (or right) with the stuff coming out of our favourite land of make-believe. In this episode, our host, Taylor James Johnson, goes all in on what he sees as a kind of quasi-civil war between film critics. You can check out the video above, but here’s a taste:

What is the conflict between film critics all about?

Advocates of “Woke Cinema” (and Anti-Woke Cinema) have unfortunately created a kind of civil war of film criticism. It often feels that people who claim to be fans of certain things are more fans of what the character represents more so than the quality of the production itself. This is totally fine but this attitude has created a new type of fandom and a new way to critique a film. 

This film criticism war sounds a little something like this…

“She-Hulk was the worst thing ever!” – “Oh yeah? That means you hate women!”

“Sound of Freedom wasn’t the greatest film ever made!” – “Oh yeah? You support sex trafficking!”

That nonsense is all around us—it feels like we can’t have real, constructive conversations and disagreements on film anymore. 

Discussing movies used to be like, “Oh, how I just adored the pacing and suspense and camera movement! And how the characters grew and learned from the predicaments they overcame!” But now it feels like you have to also mention and praise or condemn the diversity of the film depending on what end of the spectrum you’re on.

Do people root for franchises to fail?

At times, I’ve even found myself hoping for franchises to fail. As a lifelong fan of film, for the first time ever, I found myself rooting for a film to fail… hoping for new instalments to be bad. Maybe in the back of my mind, I thought that this would teach those Hollywood fat cats not to push agendas over art. I have to admit, it was hilarious that Madame Web bombed but we should all want all movies to be good!  Right? We should be rooting for these filmmakers to make the best super duper cinema they can! But now it’s a political statement to not like a superhero movie… but it was also hilarious when Morbius bombed and sometimes Jared Leto appears to be a straight white cis male…so I’m not sexist! Hooray! 

I like inclusion and diversity when it seems natural, and we know the pandering and pushing of “the message” is all BS because the woke stuff gets cut out for the non-woke countries (Disney has been guilty of this numerous times). These big corporations don’t actually care about your cause or your gender identity or your skin colour…. green is the only colour they care about, and I ain’t talking about She-Hulk.

And that “green” new deal doesn’t seem to be working out;  a lot of so-called “woke” products keep flopping. And stock holders, chairpeople and even executives are beginning to speak out. But what will this all change? Or has the damage been done? Is there any coming back from this? Will I ever want to watch a Marvel/Disney/StarWars thing again? 

For more of this conversation and to weigh in – check out Taylor’s video (embedded above) and let us know in the comments if you like this kind of content.