The Rise & Fall of "Hollywood Jr."

  So the other day I published a think-piece about why I think Star Wars films will continue to get canceled, or at the very least, stay in development hell for long periods of time. In that same article, I mentioned that I further believe this will be the case for other franchises, and Hollywood in general, as this is how things tended to go before Marvel’s “assembly-line model” came into play…

Towards the end of that post, I also provided an example of how, when it was announced a few months ago that The Batman: Part II was getting delayed to 2026, certain Internet personalities acted like the sky was falling… I would like to clarify now that I was alluding to John Campea.

Before I go any further, let me make one thing clear: I’m not bashing John Campea. Out of all the “movie news YouTubers” still around, he’s actually one of the more reasonable ones still. That said, I find myself agreeing with less and less stuff he says these days (he doesn’t seem too bothered about differing opinions, though). When he did his video covering the delay of The Batman: Part II, I couldn’t help but think the entire time “Dude, who cares about some Batman movie getting pushed back a year?” And I’m saying that as someone who considers 2022’s The Batman to be one of their favorite movies of all time…

But after writing my post the other day, I thought about Campea’s rant more, and came to the following conclusion: Delays like that of The Batman: Part II are another nail in the coffin of the “golden age” of blockbusters that we all got so used to in the 2010s. And for people like John, it’s another step towards the possible end of their very livelihood…

Think about it! Guys like Campea make an entire living off of movie news, and movie reviews. But if we go back to a pre-MCU age where franchise films take forever to make and don’t come out as often, people like him won’t be able to cover big movie news as often, nor would they be able to review big movies as often…

If you still don’t believe me, look at it this way: The early 2010s (mainly 2012) saw the rise of “bigger” franchises (MCU, DCEU, Disney buying Star Wars, etc.), as well as the rise of an entire internet culture built around discussing said franchises, and being excited for them. We had Campea leading AMC Movie Talk, which later became Collider Movie Talk, and introduced many of us to such personalities as Jeremy Jahns, Perri Nemiroff, Wendy Lee, Robert Burnett, John Rocha, Jon Schnepp (RIP), Tiffany Smith, Mark Ellis, Kristain Harloff, Marc Fernandez, Ken Napzok, Steve “Frosty” Weintraub, Dennis Tzeng, Mark Reilly, Scott Mantz, Ashley Mova, Roxy Striar… Maybe Collider had too many people…

Collider wasn’t the only game in town, either. There was also Screen Junkies. Most people know them for creating Honest Trailers, but during the peak of pop culture in the 2010s, they also had plenty of other film-related programs (Movie Fights, SJ News, etc.). In fact, at one point they even had their own STREAMING SERVICE, and funny enough, it was titled ScreenJunkies+, long before the likes of Disney+, AppleTV+, and Paramount+ all came into fruition. This service even had a program that involved Kevin Smith, of all people, unboxing toys. That’s how much money all these nerds used to have! And again, Screen Junkies allowed us all to get to know Dan Murrell, Roth Cornett, Danielle Radford, Joe Starr, Spencer Gilbert, Hal Rudnick, Nick Mundy, Billy Business, Eric Goldman, Andy Signore (more on him later), etc.

I like to refer to this whole culture that the likes of Collider and Screen Junkies pioneered as “Hollywood Jr.,” since it’s a culture that really only exists cause of Hollywood itself. So now the question is: What exactly happened to Hollywood Jr.? The first nail in the coffin came in 2017, which saw Campea having a falling out with Collider (leading to his departure), as well as movies becoming more divisive (The Last Jedi), franchises in general collapsing (Justice League), and the MeToo movement impacting Hollywood overall (and Screen Junkies directly).

Things limped on for another two years, and then 2019 saw the Infinity Saga, the Skywalker Saga, Game of Thrones, and Gotham all coming to an end, among other things. That same year also saw the launch of competitive streaming services (Disney+ and AppleTV+ mainly, with Max, Peacock, and Paramount+ all soon to follow). All of which have caused fatigue. Then at the start of 2020, Collider Movie Talk and its related programs were all dissolved, leading its staff to have to find their own individual voices on YouTube or elsewhere. Then Covid happened. Then the strikes. Recently, Screen Junkies was reduced down to nothing but Honest Trailers. And as I mentioned in my previous post, every major franchise is now struggling to get things off the ground as often as they used to, and I don’t see that ending any time soon (Blade just lost another director by the way).

So what does that mean now for people like John Campea? In all honesty, Campea himself will probably be fine, but that doesn’t mean everyone else in his position will. Marc Fernandez has already disappeared from YouTube entirely, whereas others like Andy Signore now sustain themselves by making clickbait videos of celebrity drama/gossip and outrage culture (Andy only has himself to blame for his own situation though, to be fair). Dan Murrell has made box office numbers his entire personality now, but I’m starting to worry that there won’t even be a box office for him to analyze in the near future…

If I had to guess, Campea specifically will probably keep coasting along on “smaller” movie news, in between the bigger events that will continue to become more and more rare (again)…

I’d like to close out by making the following point: If YouTube existed in the 1990s, back when Star Wars was in a coma and frequent superhero films were still a geek’s wet dream, none of the people mentioned in this post would’ve been able to sustain a living doing what they do. If we return to a time like that (which is starting to seem more and more likely), then all these folks should thank their lucky stars that they were able to build a following in the 2010s…

Peace!

PS: I’m also not a big fan of Campea’s rants, though I understand that most of his audience is…

UPDATE: Just saw that The Batman: Part II was delayed again to October 2027… Okay, now this is getting ridiculous! That said, I think Campea has started overreacting/ repeating things more than he even did before…

UPDATE 2: Looks like Campea has been relying less on actual movie news, and more so on the kinds of bullshit rumors he used to criticize (from obvious hacks like DanielRPK). He still makes good points about things sometimes, though, but I don’t really watch him much anymore…

UPDATE 3: Just to be clear, I don’t miss this era of pop culture anymore. Looking back, stuff like SJ and Collider hasn’t aged too well…

Star Wars Films Will Keep Getting Axed, Here's Why

  I haven’t done one of these “think pieces” in awhile, so I’m gonna start with a list:

Star Wars movies either canceled or in limbo:

Obi-Wan Kenobi (reworked as a show)

Boba Fett (reworked as a show)

Rian Johnson Trilogy

Benioff & Weiss Trilogy

Knights of the Old Republic

Kevin Feige Movie

Rogue Squadron

A Droid Story

Lando

Taika Waititi Movie

Damon Lindelof Movie

That’s fifteen movies. Quite a bit, eh? So now the question becomes: Why does this keep happening, and will it ever get better?

I can already answer the second part of the question: No.

But to understand why, we need to dissect the first part of the question…

Back in 1972, George Lucas began working on what would eventually become Star Wars. The movie came out in 1977. That means he had five entire years to work on the movie soup-to-nuts, without having to worry about fan expectations because, surprise, there were no fans yet…

Thankfully, the film received immediate universal praise. The following film, The Empire Strikes Back, was met with some initial criticism, but people quickly came around to it. Since then, each installment has been divisive, at best. Things became even more complex in 2012, when Disney acquired the property. Now, the franchise had to try to please both fans AND shareholders alike. Spoiler alert: both camps want as much content as possible, even if they don’t admit it…

To make matters worse, Disney launched its own streaming service in 2019, just as the mainline Skywalker Saga was coming to end. Similarly to Marvel, Star Wars now had to define a new, post-saga course for its movies, while also justifying the existence of multiple shows a year, all while still having to appeal to both fans and shareholders alike…

Therefore, as one would expect, Lucasfilm is under pressure to keep announcing content on a regular basis. Some of you reading this may go “they should at least write an outline before announcing something.” While I’m not on the inside, I can all but guarantee that every new movie they announce has at least an outline before they announce it. That said, a good outline doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good script, let alone a good movie. Speaking as a writer myself, I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve written an outline, thinking I have a hit on my hands, only to then start expanding said outline into an actual manuscript and realizing what I had was actually shit. In fact, it just happened to me again today…

So now you may be thinking “okay, well then they should write at least one full script draft before they announce something.” I think it’s pretty safe to say that, if it weren’t for having to keep the shareholders happy, that’s exactly what they would do. In fact, they even tried that a few times, but the problem is that scripts take quite a bit of time to write, and when it comes to Star Wars, it’s hard to keep things a secret, especially from scoop-hungry journalists. Keep in mind that the Kevin Feige movie was never officially announced by Disney or Lucasfilm themselves. They were secretly working on the script, and then someone on the inside talked to a journalist, and the rest is history. Same thing happened to the Damon Lindelof film.

This is all to say that, a lot of times, a project is either forced into announcement prematurely by the major studio (Disney, in this case), or its existence is leaked to the press while it’s still in the scripting phase. This even happens to small, non-IP projects that never get finished, let alone something like Star Wars…

Even Marvel’s beloved Infinity Saga hit some bumps in the road along the way (some entries were better than others, plus, remember when Inhumans was supposed to be a movie?). And while the Multiverse Saga continues to chug along, its reception seems to keep declining with each and every new release, and their plans are slowly becoming more “wobbly” now too (remember when Armor Wars was supposed to be a show? Is Kang still gonna be the new final boss?). I’ve also said this before, but even the Infinity Saga itself didn’t become “solidified” until the first Avengers film in 2012 (they didn’t know they were gonna pursue the Thanos story until then, hence why the cartoony-looking gauntlet full of stones in the first Thor film had to be retconned as a decoy). Either way, Marvel movies will keep chugging along, cause that’s what they’re known for…

Besides, do you think the people running Star Wars want to keep putting out multiple mediocre movies every year, like Marvel does? Especially when Star Wars seems to receive ten times as much scrutiny? As a matter of fact, no other franchise outside of Marvel has managed to pull off the assembly-line model that they themselves pioneered, and can barely still do themselves. I can’t even count on two hands how many abandoned film slates DC has had in the last decade, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole James Gunn thing doesn’t work out now either…

With that all being said, I think it’s time for all of us to accept that the Infinity Saga was a fluke, and that a pre-determined, decade-long film slate like that is never gonna happen ever again. When it comes to any franchise, movies are gonna keep getting announced because shareholders (as well as fans, to a lesser extent) want to keep knowing what’s going on. Some of those plans will happen, some of them won’t. It is what it is. In fact, we now live in a world where an entire movie can be filmed and yet still be canceled (RIP Batgirl). My best advice would be to just not take any of this stuff too seriously until you see a trailer for it…

I’d like to also remind everyone that good art usually takes time. It took Tolkien seventeen years to finally publish all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings, after all. I also think that the days of something getting announced and then being released just a few years later are over. Like I said at the start of this post, Lucas took five whole years to make the original film. Similarly, he announced The Phantom Menace in 1993, and the movie itself only came out six entire years later. On another similar note, the original Spider-Man movie was in development hell for like ten years and went through a few different directors (even James Cameron was supposed to do it, at one point). Terminator 2 and Aliens both took seven years to make (both by Cameron too, funny enough). Pixar sequels take a while too. The list goes on…

People these days expect a slate announcement for everything when, not that long ago, there were no slate announcements for franchises cause franchises as we know them now didn’t even exist yet. For a long time, there was no internet/ social media to even use for such announcements. Everything just got reported through trade magazines like Variety and whatnot. Also, up until 2008, superhero movies did not connect together to form cinematic universes, and other series like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Middle-Earth, etc. were nowhere near ready to think about spin-offs and whatnot. Furthermore, Marvel head Kevin Feige even said recently that, going forward, Marvel itself “will operate more like a normal development studio, so don’t expect every project that gets reported on to actually get made” (I’m paraphrasing there). Even he’s getting tired of these big slate announcements, cause they’re starting to backfire on him (remember when the Blade reboot movie was announced in 2019?).

I say all this because I’ve noticed movie nerds getting more and more anxious about this stuff. A few months ago, it was announced that the sequel to The Batman would only be released in late 2026 (four and a half years after the first one), and a bunch of people online threw a temper tantrum over it. Unfortunately, it seems that Marvel (and major studio culture in general) has conditioned everyone into thinking that we need content within a few years from announcement. We need to get out of that mindset…

If it’s any consolation, I’m sure all the in-limbo Star Wars projects listed at the top here will eventually get made. Some might mutate into shows (like Kenobi and Fett did). Some might change directors still. Some might only get released like ten or so years after they were originally announced. This was the world before Marvel, and it’s the world again now…

Peace!

UPDATE: I’m not saying that all future Marvel films will suck, nor am I saying that Star Wars shouldn’t start doing multiple movies a year like Marvel does. I’m not in a position to say what any of these brands should or shouldn’t do. Maybe all Marvel movies from here on out will be great. Maybe Star Wars will start doing multiple films a year and be able to do it just as well as Marvel does. Both of those cases would be nice, actually…

Poetry Repository: Holiday 2023 Edition

        Happy new year. Despite wanting to post more, I had to take a break for a month due to personal stuff. That said, while I was away, I wrote a bunch of new poems (24 to be exact). Rather than add to my last poetry repository, I figured I might as well just create a separate post instead…

        So without further ado, here you go:

OVERLAP

One man murders another man

Only to then be killed himself

One crime overlapping with another

Mistaken for a double-homicide…

A HAUNTED MOON

A broken, rusted starship

Caught in a planet’s orbit

Mistaken for a small moon

With a station built within

And an alien pilot

Like a tall, white jellyfish

Unable to communicate

Mistaken for a ghost…

SEEING FATE

An ancient building

Sees the modern one

Just across the street

A grim reminder

Of what is to come…

MORE THAN ENOUGH (HAIKU)

Dark trees and a dark-blue sky

Lit only by the small, crescent moon

But still enough light; more than enough

FLASHBACKS (HAIKU)

To cringe,

Or not to cringe?

…To cringe…

BLACK SHEEP

Woman, living with her husband and sons

Misunderstood by them all

Man, living with his wife and daughters

Misunderstood by them all

GUILT

Wallowing in the guilt of mistakes long passed

Wishing now for the happiness of others

When I should instead be wishing for my own

ALWAYS A REASON

Humans of the far future

Fly away to somewhere new

A lush, habitable world

Away from all the conflict

Of the Earth they left behind

A great opportunity

For a rare, fresh beginning

To erase the past mistakes

…But soon, new conflicts arise

Always a reason to fight…

IN ANOTHER LIFE

In another life

Maybe you became

The hero you always

Wanted to be

Or maybe you became

The villain instead

Or maybe in that life

You’re a nobody

Just like you are here

PAINTINGS (HAIKU)

The only way to see

The influencers of the past

How they wanted to look

REMNANTS

A faded billboard, barely visible

With an outdated logo and font

A relic of the past, soon forgotten

Like wrinkles, chipping away at youth

INVASION! (HAIKU)

Aliens invading the Earth,

In search of better opportunity…

Why does this sound familiar?

ONE AND THE SAME

A trio of travelers

One of The Roman Empire

One of Ancient Greece

And one of the old Norse lands

All at odds with one another

But together they enter

The realm of the Gods

Where they find a tall, bearded man

His face aged with eternal wisdom

“I am King of all Gods,” he says

“But which?” A traveler asks,

“Zeus? Odin? Jupiter?”

The God King raises an eyebrow,

“I am all those names, yet none.”

SOME THINGS REMAIN

Settlers arrive in America

Quickly, they construct a lighthouse

A design dating back to Ancient Greece

A sign of the things that remain

No matter how far humanity may go…

NOTHING LOST (HAIKU)

No matter the road taken

At least one thing will be missed out on

So nothing is lost, really…

FRIENDS

Real friends

Imaginary friends

Artificial friends

At this point,

What’s the difference?

IRONY OF A NAME

Foreign parents, now settled in America

Give their new-born a name from their culture

When an “American” name would have made more sense

Meanwhile, back in their home country

A different new-born is given an “American” name

By their Hollywood-obsessed parents

When a non-American one would have made more sense

REST AREAS

Rest areas on the highway

Different from continent to continent

Or even country to country

Let alone region to region

Not to mention state to state

Yet they all serve the same purpose…

ANCIENT ECHOES

Hercules and Thor, both sons of God-Kings

Both needing to learn the art of discipline

Hermes and Loki, Gods of tricks and thieves

Both with twisted senses of humor

Greek mythology and Norse mythology

Both, at times, echoes of one another…

ASTEROID COMMUNITY

Asteroids, large and far apart from one another

A far cry from the action set pieces of movies

But rather suitable homes for humans of the future

One such human makes their way from an asteroid of houses

To one of stores, restaurants, and the like

Just everyday living, for these “space boys and girls”

COME BACK DOWN TO EARTH

The boy sits beside his bed, playing with his toys

Imagining as many stories as he can

Until his mother walks in, “Come back down to Earth,”

She says, “Time for the story-maker to go to sleep.”

The man sits at the cafe, writing in his notebook

Imagining as many stories as he can

Until his wife shoots him a text, “Come back down to Earth,”

She says, “Time for the storyteller to head on home.”

TURNCOAT

An agent becomes a double agent

And then a triple agent after that

Always switching, caring just for themselves

Eventually ending up alone

ICE-OLATION

Lone, icy moon on the edge of the universe

Atmospheric, but dark, mountainous, and barren

A small station with a synthetic food printer

With a solar panel that barely still works

Is my only source for remaining alive

I could have been exiled anywhere

A misty swamp, a world of islands… Anywhere!

But, no. Of all places, it had to be here…

COMPETITION

Several different Private Investigators

All called upon simultaneously

To solve the same crime as one another

A crime staged by one of the PI’s themselves

So that he may “solve” it with great ease

A chance to beat the competition, at last

…If only he remembered that his rivals

We’re probably the greatest detectives in the world…

Peace!