Movies – palingenesia

I’ve written before about the creative bankruptcy that fuels the Disney engine. Whether driven by cynicism or fear, it’s become clear that Disney won’t let any of its properties stand on their own legs. Instead, they need to be propped up by references, homages, allusions, self-awareness, or multiverses.

I grew up watching and loving the Alien movies, and have always enjoyed the installments that tried something new. A franchise doesn’t need to be a formula. It can be a framework. I was really looking forward to Alien: Romulus, despite all my instincts warning me to temper my expectations — instincts I should have listened to.

Spoilers ahead¹, so reader beware.

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During New Year’s Eve I had some friends over who berated me for dismissing one particular movie—Bird Box—out of hand. Rightly so. All movies deserve a chance. But after seeing more than the normal share of memes and retweets, I grew skeptical and contrarian. I cynically assumed the movie was the product of The Algorithm, designed and churned out by The Netflix Machine for maximum meme-ability and profit (and even more cynically, I assumed the memes had been bought and paid for and propagated by some mysterious group of meme machines).

After a few drinks one of my friends challenged me, with money, to actually watch the movie and record my thoughts on it. I typically refrain from writing movie reviews because, to put it simply, the last thing the Internet needs is a straight white man spewing his opinions about movies into the ether. There’s not much I could say, in my opinion, that would truly add to The Discourse, so I usually don’t say anything at all. Just this once I’m obligated.

For a quick seat-of-the-pants summary of my thoughts, you can see my Letterboxd review here. For an even quicker review, I would say Bird Box is a perfectly fine movie, decent for streaming on a quiet Friday night, but don’t expect to it to leave any lasting trace.

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