Why Modern Movies Suck - They Hate Men (Part 1)

man don't you just hate them all well if you happen to be a creative working in Hollywood today then the answer is probably yes either because you genuinely Believe it or because you think it's what you're expected to say these days just to get hired but whatever the reason there's been a bit of a change in the past few years in how men are portrayed on screen and here's a Hint it hasn't been a good one hard as it may be to believe now there was a time when we were practically spoiled for Choice when it came to cool awesome aspirational male Heroes on the big and the small screen whether they were Scrappy underdogs who had to rise to the challenge or Brave adventurers risking life and limb for fortune and Glory or hard bitten cops taking on the criminal underbelly of society they were a whole generation of men who kicked ass triumphed against the odds and saved the day I usually look pretty cool doing it that same however has passed and the once Mighty list of male cinematic Heroes has dwindled to just a handful of Aging characters living on borrowed time before they're ultimately cast rebooted or remade for modern audiences the traditional heroic male lead that was pretty much the Bedrock Foundation of Cinema for almost 100 years is apparently no longer a viable commodity in entertainment today they're too dated too toxic too dangerous to put into the limelights and so they've been replaced with more acceptable Alternatives don't believe me [ __ ] it go turn on your TV and watch basically any commercial break that comes up in the next hour or so tell me how many dumb hapless incompetent husbands fathers and boyfriends do you see constantly screwing up even the most simple household tasks and needing someone more diverse to bail them out go ahead I'll wait now this is a trend that I've noticed creeping into films and TV for quite some time now and I think the problem comes in a number of different flavors or tropes if you will so let's take some time to look at each one in turn and this is going to be a pretty big topic so I'll probably have to make this video a two-parter to give each one the attention it deserves and believe me they're gonna get plenty of my attention anyways strapping dear viewer as I take you through the tropes of modern male characters Trope number one the death of the stoic man pick out any random selection of mainstream movies that are more than 10 or 15 years old and give them a watch now pay particular attention to the men in those movies watch how they act how they communicate with each other the pace and tone and tempo of their conversations watch how they carry themselves think about the subtle shifts of power and dominance as their scenes progress the use of posies and facial expressions and eye contact to Clue the audience in on who's dictating the pace of the conversation do this and you'll probably begin to pick up on a few things like the fact that men in older movies are generally able to convey a lot more by saying less they're generally more reserved and project a kind of quiet confidence they're less prone to big emotional outbursts or energetic displays of high strung verbal diarrhea they spend less time talking about themselves and how things make them feel and more time grappling with whatever problem or issue is actually at hand when they decide to show aggression it's generally controlled and carefully measured and deployed at just the right moment for maximum impacts they're less likely to admit to personal weaknesses insecurity and emotional fragility or complain about physical discomfort and danger in writing terms this is what we refer to as stoicism a stoic character is one that's generally reserved and emotionally distant the kind of person who Bears their troubles and discomforts without too much complaining it's a character type most commonly associated with traditional ideas of masculine Behavior why because that's how men generally act around each other now take a look at men in mainstream movies today and pay attention to the same aspects that you looked at before I could pretty much guarantee you're going to notice a big difference between the two the men in movies and TV shows now tend to come across as annoyingly talkative and expressive reacting emotionally to what other people say and do instead of coolly observing and keeping their own feelings in check and this is important because here's a little secret for you boys and girls the ability to just show shut the [ __ ] up for a minute and let an uncomfortable silence stretch out before you is a pretty powerful weapon when it comes to tense conversations because you're making it clear that you don't care much whether the other person expects a response you'll speak to them when you're goddamn good and ready male characters today however mirror whatever they see in here instead of imposing their own pace and tone on the conversation they seem uncomfortable with the idea of protracted silence and feel the need to constantly talk to fill the gaps any real action that they take has to be undercut by ironic self-deprecating humor which instead of being funny it just makes them come across as insecure and lacking the confidence of their own convictions like the idea of being assertive and taking decisive action is so silly that it has to be made into a self-conscious joke generally speaking they're easily intimidated and outmatched by strong female personalities usually fold in like a house of cards the moment they're challenged on something and they're almost never able to hold their own in an argument even if the facts in general situation actually support their position they lack both the quick thinking and the belief in themselves needed to press their advantage and assert control over a situation in functional terms what you see on screen these days aren't really men in the normal sense they're basically hyperactive hyper emotional hyper talkative children forced into men's bodies they're a kind of shallow trite projection of what insecure effeminate emotionally fragile Hollywood screenwriters imagine meant to be either because they dislike the idea of the masculine stoic male archetype or they lack the breadth of life experience to be able to write characters like that in the first place there seems to be this weird belief that stoic personalities are inherently dangerous and unhealthy like men who don't constantly Express their every thought and feeling are nothing but Fountains of repressed rage and raw emotion that taken decisive action and wanting to assert control over a tense situation is somehow fundamentally wrong well if you're a man anyway and well to put it bluntly that's absolute [ __ ] the reality is that most of the time men just don't feel things as deeply as people seem to imagine they don't tend to get hung up on things in the same way that other people do they don't constantly fret and worry over trivial problems they don't like to be disrespected or treated as the weak Link in the chain and they generally don't complain about minor discomforts or things that nobody can actually fix because they find that kind of behavior annoying and off-putting in other people and yeah that seems to be what we're being First Fed in our fictional characters these days Jesus no wonder Cinemas are having their worst Years and [ __ ] decades whatever the reasoning behind it the result is a kind of frustrating neutered childlike interpretation of male behavior that doesn't really line up with what real normal people Experience day to day personally I find that I can't relate to more and more male characters in movies today because they simply don't talk act or look like any of the men I've actually known in my life and they're definitely not something I'd want to Aspire to Trump number two the deconstructed hero remember all those awesome heroic male characters that you liked when you were growing up well forget about them because they were never actually heroes in the first place and modern Hollywood is determined to prove it to you and truly what more quintessential example could I possibly give to start things off than Luke Skywalker who went from one of the most iconic and beloved heroes in all of Cinema to a sad broken miserable and forlorn man living alone on a Windswept Island and just running out the clock until he could eventually die truly Ryan Johnson understood exactly what he was doing with this one he performed the most epic character assassination of all time determined to kill not just the man but his legacy along with him or how about Rocky Balboa the ultimate Underdog and symbol of Scrappy determined optimism a man who fought his way to the top through sheer determination and willpower taken down men bigger and stronger than himself through sheer refusal to give up then you get to something like Creed where he's portrayed as a sad lonely old man who's given up on life a man who isn't even willing to go through life-saving cancer treatment because he just doesn't care about living anymore truly inspiring stuff or Jean-Luc Picard the cultured intelligent clear-headed Diplomat capable leader and brave Explorer from Star Trek the Next Generation once the epitome of the thinking man's hero now reduced to a confused frail old man who needs to be put firmly in his place by someone more diverse I'll teach you to get ideas above your station John Luke or how about Superman surely one of the most long-standing examples of the strong Square jawed patriotic male superhero well not in the mind of Zack Snyder who transformed him into a sullen brooding conflicted Outsider who doesn't even know if he can or should help Humanity in any way wow you really nailed the character there Zack well done son or perhaps James Bond surely the ultimate man's man a tough called ruthless Man of Action who could handle any threat and seduce any woman with ease but oh no we can't allow you harmful stereotypes like that to persist in the current ERA of Hollywood we have to make him sad and pouty and hung up on a woman who died like four movies ago and when he tries to flirt with women now it becomes a point of awkward comedy because gosh darn it why on Earth would they be attracted to a man like him yup that's what I want I want to be laughing at James Bond just like all the others he has to be carefully softened broken down his air of danger and sensuality and confidence slowly Stripped Away to make him less threatening less assertive less intelligent and well generally just less than what he was before and ultimately it points to one General problem we're not being given positive inspiring male Heroes to look up to anymore and the ones that we used to enjoy are having their legacies slowly eroded and undermined in an attempt to taint our whole perception of them we've got nothing to look forward to in the present and our past is being taken away from us you've got to love it Trump number three men are just dumb I guess one of the things that really seems to have taken hold in modern entertainment is the idea that the smartest person in the room can never possibly be a man whether it's comically brain dead morons like the Red Guardian from Black Widow whose one and only character trait is that he could punch things really hard well except when he has to actually fight someone important or supposedly ruthless military leaders like General Hawks getting suckered in and provoked into a rage buyer Your mom joke or the seemingly endless numbers of dumb corrupt abusive men in Westworld just lining up to be similarly executed for their crimes I'm not kidding pretty much every episode from season one onwards is just the same Trope repeated over and over again or how about Dr Henry Wu the brilliant genetic engineer who made Jurassic Park possible except it turns out that he wasn't actually all that brilliant after all because all he really did was piggyback off the research of Charlotte Lockwood a far more talented and intelligent scientist who nobody had ever heard of until she was reckoned into the story later the message is always the same men and everything that they do are stupid they didn't earn or deserve anything that they actually have and most of the time they need a smarter stronger and better female character to get them on track as another little example here take Kevin from Ghostbusters 2016. now his character is a counterpart for Janine in the original movie the difference though is that Janine was always portrayed as smart efficient and good at her job the comedy in her case mostly stemmed from her exasperation at the others either because she hadn't been paid or because she was wildly overworked yeah she was sassy and abrasive with people but one thing she wasn't was dumb Kevin on the other hand isn't just stupid he's ridiculously obscenely stupid to the point where you could probably make a genuine argument that his character had moderate to severe learning difficulties I feel like you're mocking The Afflicted here Paul the intended humor here was to contrast his physical attractiveness with his complete lack of brains and common sense in effect making him a male bimbo surely one of the most tired of all movie cliches but again it's apparently fine to portray men this way because as we all know men are dumb and that's funny they certainly don't have anything to teach other characters even if they're far older and more experienced than them taking the Luke Skywalker example from earlier consider how not only does he have no wisdom or lessons of value to impart to Rey despite his Decades of experience with the force the dangers of the dark side and the possibility of redemption but he actually learns things from her insteads because one of the other annoying tropes of modern Cinema is that you can't have male mentors teaching women anything about value and I think this problem was best articulated by Kevin feige when he was asked why Doctor Strange never made an appearance in the TV show One Division when it absolutely would have made sense for the mcu's best magic user to take part in a show that was specifically about magic quote some people might say oh it would have been so cool to see doctor strange but it would have taken away from Wonder we didn't want the end of the show to be commoditized to go to the next movie here is the white guy lets me show you how power works and that right there is the real reason why they didn't want him in the show because they couldn't stand the idea of a male character teaching a woman anything of value because it would violate the rules of modern writing which have apparently decided that men are dumb they don't know anything of value and they have nothing to teach anyone and trust me once you realize that's the thinking behind so much of modern movie making well you're never going to be able to unsee it now the thing is I'm not saying for one second that every male character now has to be some domineering super confident alpha male who eats raw me and destroys everyone around him just by looking at them that kind of crushing Conformity would be just as tedious and artistically limiting as the strong female character Trope that Emily Blunt recently spoke out about and don't worry I'm going to address that one in due course believe that but what I am saying is that it'd be nice to see a bit of balance and variety for a change instead of Hollywood trying to push the unhealthy message that masculinity in all its forms is toxic broken and needs to change how about showing us a range of positive male characters how about acknowledging that men actually have something to offer the world that the drive the focus the protectiveness the assertiveness and the competitiveness that comes so naturally to them can be a force for good instead of some destructive impulse that needs to be curbed and corrected trust me it won't kill you to acknowledge that men just like women can be pretty damn awesome at times and who knows your audience might just thank you for it too anyway that's gonna do it for part one I'm gonna come back and address the remaining tropes in my next video so stay tuned for the that so anyway that's all I've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 2,399,400

Keywords: critical drinker, review, funny, bes, best, feminist, feminism, star wars, marvel, mcu, lucasfilm, kathleen kennedy

Id: tUWe11I_7Oo

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 13 2023