From Bond to ‘Top Gun’: How PC Hollywood will mess with your fave franchises in 2020
Everyone from James Bond to Maverick appears to be going woke in 2020, proving again that Hollywood studios are willing to lose money and alienate audiences as long as they get to shove political messages down our throats.
2019 offered us plenty of examples of Hollywood studios investing big-time in agenda-driven content that pushed politically correct social agendas, but inspired few ticket sales (‘Late Night,’ ‘Bombshell,’ ‘Charlie’s Angels,’ ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’).
Despite the failures, though, 2020 has plenty more ‘woke’ content to offer us, including in some of our favorite movie franchises.
Birds of Prey - DCEU (DC Extended Universe):
‘Birds of Prey’ is Margot Robbie’s chance to take center-stage as the DC comics villain Harley Quinn – she first appeared as the character in 2016’s ‘Suicide Squad’ – and the trailers look suitably fun, but actor Ewan McGregor, who plays the antagonist in the movie, has already been trying to make the movie political by explaining how his villain is a play on Donald Trump.
In an interview with Men’s Journal, McGregor said his character Black Mask, a controlling misogynist facing off against Quinn and a group of other women, is just like Trump because he’s a “narcissist.”
“[Black Mask is] spoiled in his upbringing to the point of having no contact with what life or people are about, who has a skin this thin and wants nothing more than to be the center of attention,” the actor said.
Yet another movie taking inspiration from Hollywood’s biases about Trump? Yawn.
The Invisible Man – Universal Monsters … here we go again:
After attempting to reboot their stable of movie monsters with 2017’s ‘The Mummy’ starring Tom Cruise, Universal have now set their sights a little lower with the upcoming ‘The Invisible Man.’ With a smaller budget and a lead actress known more for television, Elisabeth Moss, the flick has also already been described as a horror film for the #MeToo era.
Following a woman who is seemingly being haunted by her deceased abusive boyfriend, 'The Invisible Man' is yet another woke Hollywood movie taking on that big, bad patriarchy they supposedly hate so much.
“We live in a patriarchy. If you’re telling a story about a woman, part of it will be about living in that patriarchy,” Moss said about the film, in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar.
She also describes the film’s “invisible” angle as a play on “not having a voice.” Huh. Doesn’t sound like much of a horror movie, does it? Makes you kinda even miss Tom Cruise and that epic scream.
No Time to Die – James Bond:
Hold on to your memories because this franchise is flying its politically correct wings straight into the sun. ‘No Time to Die’ was already a bit iffy considering the fact that Daniel Craig seems to be the Bond actor least interested in actually playing Bond, but things went from bad to worse when reports leaked that the movie will contain a passing of the torch scene that will introduce a female agent to possibly take over for Craig’s Bond, something woke crowds have been begging for years to get.
Not only will we get a female agent, but apparently the scene will also include this new character giving Bond a proper ribbing for his supposed misogyny. What a great way to send off a character people love...
Also on rt.com The 2020 Oscar nominees: From the woke to the goodFortunately, after extreme backlash, the producers of the franchise have at least acknowledged publicly at this point that the actual character of Bond will remain male in the future.
Legally Blonde 3 – the franchise you forgot existed!
While the ‘Legally Blonde’ franchise has never been anything more than fun fluff, that will likely change when the third instalment drops in 2020.
Actress Reese Witherspoon has actually said that failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is partly the inspiration for bringing her ‘Blonde’ character back. She told ‘Fashionably Late with Rachel Zoe’ in 2015 that her admiration for Clinton and the politician’s work had inspired her to revisit the character of Elle Woods, the bubbly lawyer who defied expectations through the first two comedies.
“I think it’d be kind of a cool thing to have her be a Supreme Court Justice, or someone who runs for office … president, I mean,” Witherspoon said of her character.
Top Gun: Maverick – just leave well-enough alone:
It was hard not to get excited over the trailer for the long-awaited sequel to 1986’s ‘Top Gun.’ Tom Cruise is doing his usual age-defying stunts and the two-minute video teased a level of patriotism almost never seen in modern movies. A closer look, though, showed that even Maverick can fall victim to the politically correct rules of modern Hollywood.
Attentive fans spotted a subtle appeasement to China, the second largest film market in the world, on Maverick’s leather jacket, which was first seen in the original movie. The jacket in the trailer appears to be missing the Japanese and Taiwanese flags that were originally on it. Many have theorized this is to appease Beijing in an attempt to get the film accepted to screen in the country, which has been known for turning films down in the past.
The jacket is enough to raise concern about what else the Hollywood overlords demanded of the sequel. Could we get a bland, politically correct ‘Top Gun’ this summer? Could be.
Purge 5 – stop beating a dead horse, please:
While ‘Purge’ began with an intriguing concept back in 2013 – all crime is legal for one day out of the year and this brings out the absolute worst in people – the sequels began leaning more heavily into agenda-driven politics. Nuance and layered characters were gone by the fourth movie – ‘The First Purge,’ released in 2018 – where it is revealed that the purge is really just an act by an ultra-right wing government to wipe out the poor and keep minority neighborhoods struggling.
The third film even introduced a slogan ripped straight from Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign – ‘Keep America Great’ instead of ‘Make America Great Again’ – and the television show, which just recently finished airing its second season, has simply doubled down on the left-wing preaching.
Franchise creator James DeMonaco has promised more of the same for the fifth and supposedly final sequel in the franchise, which he will write but not direct, and considering it’s an election year, this is bound to be one of the most insufferable movies to be dropped on us in 2020.
Eternals – Marvel Cinematic Universe:
Marvel has thus far been an unstoppable machine at the box office. Last year’s ‘Avengers: Endgame’ even became the highest grossing film of all time.
‘Eternals,’ however, is at the moment sounding a bit more like a film solely created for hashtagging social justice warriors than actual fans. Producer Kevin Feige has already promised that the film will include gay and deaf characters, and he recently implied that it may also be the Marvel movie to introduce a transgender character.
All of that is fine and dandy, but what’s concerning is these are the selling points for the movie so far. Instead of compelling characters and story, the flick is trying to sell us on labels which, as we know from the new ‘Star Wars’ saga, is not a great way to tell a story.
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