Project Hail Mary is a heartfelt space voyage with showmanship to spare

Rocky as seen in Project Hail Mary

Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller know their way around visuals. Having cut their teeth in animated storytelling on Clone High and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, the duo understands the power of impactful imagery or a killer visual gag. Even when they're just writing and producing, like on the two Spider-Verse masterpieces, dazzling eye candy and moving visual details abound.  Project Hail Mary (which is based on an Andy Weir novel of the same name) constantly reaffirms those skills so perfectly well-suited to adapting novels. Dialogue-free segments or grandiose set pieces reveling in outer space's beauty offer something new compared to the wondrous word-driven literature realm. 

Lord & Miller's sensibilities ensure Project Hail Mary stands on its own two feet as a motion picture. They also guarantee that this production crackles as an excellent time at the movies. Turns out the guys with a tremendous filmmaking track record have done it again.

After making 21 Jump Street and Lego toys into delightful movie projects, Lord & Miller, working alongside folks like screenwriter Drew Goddard, have set their sights on astronaut Grace Ryland (Ryan Gosling). He begins Project Hail Mary waking up in deep space with no memory of how he got there or who he is. Recurring flashbacks reveal Ryland is a middle school teacher reluctantly recruited by Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) to help with a critical project. The solar system's sun is dying thanks to microscopic organisms that nobody understands. Eventually, a plan is concocted to send three astronauts to the distant star Tau Ceti, which is somehow not dimming. Perhaps answers lie there for how to save the Earth's sun.

As these non-linear digressions crop up, Ryland tries to control his spaceship (bound for Tau Ceti) all on his lonesome. He's a scientist, not an astronaut, pilot, or anyone who should be out amongst the stars. Soon, though, this underdog lead makes a shocking discovery. He's not the only one trying to figure out what's going on with a dying sun. There's also an alien named Rocky (voiced and puppeteered by James Ortiz) on the same mission. Otherworldly life is real, and Ryland quickly finds that such organisms are fun to socialize with. This inexplicable friendship could prove critical on the duo's daunting quest. It truly is a hail mary operation...hey, that's the name of the show!

Perhaps my saying that I adored Project Hail Mary is unsurprising and not worth much. After all, I've adored so many other Lord & Miller projects (though even their producing credit couldn't make Strays tolerable), hopeful sci-fi movies like The Martian are my jam, and I can't get enough of puppets. Still, it's one thing to assemble yummy ingredients on a counter. It's another to actually boil them into a taste gumbo. The wide array of artists assembled for this sci-fi epic remarkably coalesces these promising elements into an excellent final form. Ironically, despite the production's grand, star-hopping scope (which is all the more towering if you watch it on an IMAX 70MM screen like I did), Project Hail Mary's joys come from more nonchalant circumstances.

Early on in the film's runtime, an enjoyable montage occurs concerning two characters making a run to the hardware store. It's an adorable sequence featuring elements like creating an impromptu bowling alley in an aisle, tossing objects into a cart, and realizing at the last minute you really need Sour Skittles. Meanwhile, Stratt's most memorable scene involves her crooning Harry Styles at karaoke in a cramped aircraft carrier bar. Ryalnd and Rocky have so many enthralling sequences where they're just trading banter or acting like roommates. Project Hail Mary is about imperiled stars and interstellar travel, but it never loses sight of the people threatened by elements like the sun dying out.

Another benefit of that intimate scope? It offers plenty of chances for Rocky to excel as a character. District 9 writer/director Neil Blomkamp lamented back in 2009 how he wanted to go even weirder with the designs of that film's "Prawns" aliens. However, "they had to be human-esque because our psychology doesn't allow us to really empathize with something unless it has a face and an anthropomorphic shape." Like Mickey17's gigantic beetle-esque critters, Rocky is the culmination of Blomkamp's vision of totally otherworldly-looking aliens anchoring mainstream cinema. Rocky's got no face. No eyes. There are so many design elements ingrained into this figure that should, in theory, make it impossible to invest in him.

However, that commitment to such an unorthodox look for Rocky only makes him more endearing and specific. Unbridled enthusiasm radiates off this creature (particularly when he's in his own little hamster ball inspecting Ryland's spaceship domain) that's impossible to resist. Meanwhile, without a face, James Ortiz, the other puppeteers, and digital effects artists instead suggest so much about his personality with tiny gestures or the way he holds his body. It's incredible how I could fully see and believe Rocky's interior world even with his impenetrable exterior. Project Hail Mary compels audience to see the humanity and spirit within a creature that doesn't look like them to outstanding effect. Blomkamp, your dream has come to fruition!

Ortiz's voice work and puppeteering as Rocky is so impressive that this cosmic being fully registers as another co-star, not a visual effect or a potential ploy for toys. That feat means Ryan Gosling has a terrific co-star to bounce off of. So much of Project Hail Mary is just a two-hander between Rocky and Ryland. It often has more in common with The Dumb Waiter than the sprawling ensemble casts of a typical MonsterVerse feature. Gosling makes that exercise totally transfixing. Even when he's alone at the film's start, he exudes an everyman spirit that feels so immediately authentic. 

While many modern American leading men (Alan Ritchson, Brandon Sklenar, Henry Cavill, etc.) look so brawny that it doesn't feel like anything could challenge them, Gosling (even with his abs and famous good looks) effortlessly suggests Ryland is a normal guy out of his depth. That makes nail-biter set pieces like Ryland trying to retrieve a container of important cosmic material on top of the spaceship so extra engrossing. He's no superhero or Chosen One! He's just a middle school teacher! Get him down from there!

The tremendously involving Project Hail Mary lead characters are emblematic of how this is a movie where everything's firing on all cylinders. Composer Daniel Pemberton, for instance, here continues his hot streak delivering inventive film scores. Of course the Across the Spider-Verse composers would make a space movie score that sometimes sounds like a French jazz group performance. Just as a voyage to the cosmos is rife with unknown variables, so too are Pemberton's orchestral tracks excitingly unpredictable. Cinematiographer Greig Fraser, meanwhile, ensures Project Hail Mary is a glorious-looking enterprise unafraid of bright colors.

Luscious hues of green and red dominate the scene in the film's most spellbinding set pieces. Even in the intentionally drabber Earthbound sequences, Fraser's work still oozes visual specificity (like the camera tilting motif). That includes the varying aspect ratios, which involve Ryland's flashbacks being filtered through narrow widescreen while his outer space exploits take up every inch of the IMAX 70MM screen. Among its many virtues, this choice suggests how Ryland only has fragments of the past. He doesn't have as much information about these events as the adventures he's experiencing right now. Plus, it just looks cool, an incredibly crucial factor for any movie. 

Project Hail Mary is incredibly satisfying. On paper, its accomplishments might seem like no-brainer decisions, but it's shocking how little showmanship or gusto so many modern American blockbusters exhibit. Whereas those titles are wary of bright colors and emotional sincerity, Project Hail Mary embraces them with open arms. Even details like its non-linear storytelling approach, shifting aspect ratios, or use of puppetry feel like rebukes to ham-fisted, visually static tendencies in modern American filmmaking. Best of all, it just leaves your spirit feeling refreshed and heart full without coming off as manipulative. Such accomplishments feel as natural as the wind blowing through your hair when a character like Rocky is around on-screen. I love this alien so much, I'd follow him to the ends of the cosmos.

Why Are Streaming Platforms Overrun With Buddy Action Comedies?

Streaming platforms (Apple TV, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video) have more money than God. The mind reels at what they could accomplish with all the cash at their disposal. They could cure world hunger. They could supply movie theaters with a plethora of movies. They could ensure artists like Eliza Hittman, Dee Rees, Mike Leigh, Karyn Kusama, and others never have to worry about getting their dream projects off the ground. Instead, they spend this tremendous influence on titles like Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser's Balls Up, a Brazil-set comedy that Amazon just dropped a trailer for this morning.

It looks bad, because of course it does, it's a 21st-century Peter Farrelly directorial effort. Watching Wahlberg and Hauser scream through endless dick jokes and gunfire calcified a reality that had always lurked under my nose. Streaming services had no greater ambition than cranking out monthly Xerox copies of Jay Leno and Pat Morita's Collision Course. This is what cinematic Hell looks like. An endless string of buddy cop/mismatched duo action comedies where everyone talks like Ryan Reynolds and all the action sequences are inert.

But why? Why is this the specific mold of streaming TV movies? Why are spy movies focused on mismatched buddy comedy duos the de facto mold of Netflix, Apple, and (especially) Amazon cinema? What have we done to deserve this Hell? And to quote a wise fish from SpongeBob SquarePants, "Why am I asking you all these questions?"

The Enduring Popularity of Buddy Comedies

The comedic potential of mismatched duos has long been a staple of art, so of course, it would prove a fixture of cinema. Abbott and Costello comedies, for instance, were the precursors to Lethal Weapon or Men in Black. Ditto all those Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movies. Modern theatrical movies have also gotten lots of mileage out of this cinematic storytelling mold. Deadpool & Wolverine was 2024's biggest live-action movie because audiences couldn't get enough of Ryan Reynolds making gay panic jokes while Hugh Jackman rolled his eyes. Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Red One, and The Accountant 2 have all kept this trend alive in the 2020s.

But what about the specific mold of the streaming buddy action comedy? This mold is defined by the following films (among many others):

Back in Action

Ghosted

Balls Up

The Instigators

The Wrecking Crew

Heads of State

Wolfs 

The Family Plan

The Pickup

The Union

Jackpot! 

Playdate

Brothers

My Spy

Jesus Christ, what a collection of cinema.

A key pragmatic reason why streamers are making these movies is simply that theatrical movie studios largely dumped the mid-budget movie around 2014 and 2015. Titles like The Other Guys were deemed no longer viable to recieve $100+ million budgets and theatrical launchpads. Amazon, Netflix, and Apple, hungry for projects that could fill up their respective original film libraries, were more than happy to fill up that gap. 16 years ago, Balls Up probably would've been an August Sony/Columbia Pictures release.

Still, even back in 2008, Universal and Columbia weren't cranking these titles every month like Amazon is doing now. The ubiquity of these titles now is tied to streamers' mandates to flood the marketplace with "content." You don't need to market these titles for months on end and delicately make sure they each do well. You just throw them onto people's Amazon accounts, hope they take off. Plus, these titles are designed to be background noise while people fiddle on their phones and fold laundry. That's why Netflix allegedly asks its writers and directors to make sure exposition is constantly rehashed. 

Why buddy action comedies and not, say, superhero movies, remakes of old musicals, or other vintage molds of crowdpleaser cinema? My guess is that the buddy action comedy (almost always told with an espionage twist) is just a lot more practical and easier to realize for these streamers. All the big superhero IPs are tied up at Warner Bros., Disney, and Sony. Apple and Netflix, meanwhile, don't have extensive libraries of old movies to reboot and imitate. Just redoing the Lethal Weapon formula ad nauseum is an easier way to create lots of new crowdpleaser entertainment within these confines. After all, these were always star-driven projects (Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, together at last!). 

That makes them perfect for streamers looking for enticing tiles and thumbnails on their home page screen. Look! It's Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa standing together! It's easy to tell viewers exactly what they're getting into by making Heads of State or The Union.

Hollywood Loves Making Action Movies Because "Boys Rule"

Let's also not beat around the bush here: the buddy action comedy is perceived as more "viable" to make in gigantic quantities because Hollywood always prioritizes "boys movies". Obviously, gender is a societal construct. People identifying as any genre can like any movie. I know plenty of women and enby's (including me, a bimbo lady who adores Hard Target) who are master experts in the history of action cinema. However, the big film studios don't think like that. These are, after all, the executives who saw Elektra and Catwoman bombing as reason enough to abandon women-led superhero films. They think in very simplified, arcane terms. That means movies with explosions are "for boys". In an industry where Rapunzel gets retitled as Tangled so boys aren't "scared away," the perceived tastes of male-identifying audiences get prioritized every single time.

Amazon and other streamers will totally make "girly" romantic movies like Merv, Relationship Goals, or the two Your Christmas or Mine features. They, however, don't make them nearly as frequently. In just the last six months, Alan Ritchson & Kevin James, Jason Momoa & Dave Bautista, and Mark Wahlberg & LaKeith Stanfield have all headlined action movies that dropped on Amazon Prime Video. It's clear these kinds of titles are also popular with streamers because they can make companion pieces to popular TV shows. Amazon especially has become famous for delivering basically CBS+ shows like Reacher, Cross, The Terminal List, Jack Ryan, and more. Movies like The Wrecking Crew and Play Dirty are "perfect" to flash up as "play next" options on these platforms when people are done consuming Terminal List mush.

Combining Hollywood's tragically persistent male-focused ambitions in Hollywood with the desire of streamers to just crank out "content" endlessly means the marketplace is flooded with Temu Shane Black movies. The prevalence of these movies on Amazon Prime Video especially perversely fascinates me because this platform wasn't always emphasizing these kinds of movies. 

You Either Die a Hero or Live Long Enough to See Yourself Become the Villain

It's no surprise that jingoistic action fare like Alan Ritchson's War Machine are the M.O. of Netflix, a streamer that started its existence with The Ridiculous Six. As I noted back in 2020, though, Amazon's initial original film ambitions were artsier and grander. In that original piece, I lingered on a declaration from then-Vice President of Amazon Studios, Roy Price, that went:

"We look forward to expanding our production efforts into feature films. Our goal is to create close to 12 movies a year, with production starting later this year. Not only will we bring Prime Instant Video customers exciting, unique and exclusive films soon after a movie's theatrical run, but we hope this program will also benefit filmmakers, who too often struggle to mount fresh and daring stories that deserve an audience."

Price also emphasized in another interview that Amazon Studios would be making titles that were more Miramax and Annapurna than Disney. Initially, Amazon's cinematic forays reflected these ambitions. In its first three years of existence, Amazon Studios handled new films from Spike Lee, Park Chan-wook, Jim Jarmusch, Kenneth Lonergan, Asghar Farhadi, Gillian Robespierre, Lynne Ramsay, Paweł Pawlikowski, and Todd Haynes, among others. Acquiring Borat Subsequent Moviefilm in 2020 (when the original theatrical film was sent to streaming because of COVID-19), though, sent Amazon in a whole new direction. The floodgates were open for more commercial, traditional fare. Originally just acquiring titles like Coming 2 America and The Tomorrow War from other studios, Amazon has quickly created a pipeline to create monthly action movies in-house.

Only the occasional title from Orion Pictures (a label Amazon bought in 2022 with its MGM merger) reflects those initial grander cinematic aspirations. Rather than distributing movies that challenge conventions, Amazon MGM Studios (its new name since 2023) is creating works like Mercy that lionize cops surveilling citizens all day and night. The Handmaiden and its exciting depiction of lesbian heroes is too icky and gross. Paterson's nonchalant chronicling of working-class existence is similarly off-limits. Now Amazon's committed to Red One and the absolute worst buddy action comedies you've ever seen. Oh, and heroic portrayals of cops, the CIA, and the FBI.

Why try? Why make something new or excitingly unpredictable? These are the declarations streamers often build their works on. These TV movies are derivative projects feeling as algorithmically driven as you'd expect from something with the Amazon brand name stamped on it. Buddy action comedies are the cinematic mold that Netflix, Apple, and especially Amazon have seized upon as a realm they can produce in mass quantities to keep people glued to their couches. Next month's Balls Up isn't the first example of this phenomenon, and it won't be the last. To be clear, the problem isn't every movie needs to be weighty or visually transgressive. The issue is streamers cranking out the laziest versions of buddy action comedy movies. These features can be enjoyable! Mightily so!

However, from the limp lighting in these productions to the stale writing to the inert action sequences, these buddy action comedies radiate mechanical laziness. This is the future streaming platforms want. They could bankroll more challenging projects that let artists express unique and vital visions. But they won't. Why would rich people do anything useful? Instead, Amazon and Netflix's vision of "peak cinema" is Mark Wahlberg's firing a gun and screaming profanities in features people won't remember the moment the credits begin rolling. So many streaming buddy action comedies, so little artistry or even just fun to speak of.

Cancel culture and wokeness aren't a problem. They never were.

A candid snapshot of the people who think "cancel culture" is the biggest problem facing society today

The Scary Movie 6 trailer has irritated me.

Ever since I saw a leaked print of it on YouTube last Friday, this trailer and its idea of "transgressive" humor have persistently frustrated me. Scary Movie 6's inaugural piece of marketing begins with a stupid joke where a stabbed person corrects an onlooker by infuratingly saying "my pronouns are they/them!" Later, the trailer concludes with a tagline declaring "there are no safe spaces" when it comes to this tired legacy sequel.

For starters, these jokes are incredibly tired. Stupid pronoun gags have been run into the ground for over ten years. Meanwhile, the 2017 film The Hitman's Bodyguard already had a poster featuring the tagline "Get Triggered" while that same year's Bright was released with a production company entitled "Trigger Warning Entertianment." The right-wing paranoia documentary No Safe Spaces was released in December 2018. In short: are we still doing lampoonings of mid-2010s left-leaning college terminology? At least move on to new terms like ACAB or something. 

Laziness is one thing. What really sent my frustration into overdrive was Scary Movie 6 leading man and writer Marlon Wayans yesterday declaring that this film intends to "[bring back comedy to the way it used to be...the only way to do that is to cancel the cancel culture." That's the most important mission as America drops bombs on Iranian citizens, Dallas, Texas engages in voter suppression, and Kansas strips trans people of their rights. The priorities of the bourgeoisie are cool. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" in the modern world is "Pay not attention to how much power the wealthy weild, instead get mad at nebulous 'cancel culture' concepts and gay people!"

It's time for a Lisa Laman screed. It's time for this idiotic "cancel culture" boogeyman nonsense to die. Just because rich people with microphones and Netflix comedy specials keep saying "censorship is everywhere!" doesn't make it so.

"Wokeness" Never Took Over Culture

Human beings are shaped by narratives. We organize history, people's careers, artistic mediums, and so much more into easily digestible passages of time. "A narrative has begun cropping up. The Age of Enlightenment. The Industrial Revolution. Recently, there's been a growing perception that an "era of political correctness" has come to an end. This perception hinges on the idea that, circa. 2014 or 2015, college students and their trigger warnings/safe spaces/pronouns ushered in a new age of excessive sensitivity. The "powers that be" "suppressed" all speech, you just couldn't say anything anymore!

Donald Trump winning the popular vote in 2024 meant that "woke is dead." The r-word suddenly came back into general society. Pronouns in emails from federal employees have been banned. High-profile articles have hammered home being progressive is passe. Now comedy can return! Scary Movie 6 is possible!

In reality, none of this is true. Just keeping our gaze restricted to the film field for a moment (since Scary Movie 6 inspired this rant), but in this industry, systemic hostility towards marginalized identities hasn't budged. No matter how many pieces The New York Times writes lamenting how "out of control" woke college students are (as if these individuals under 25 can impact public policy), the reality is that long-standing challenges for trans and non-white people have endured in the last decade.

Heck, even the term "woke" or "diverse" were seen as "icky" by Hollywood brass. During 2015-2021, when Hollywood was supposedly "shoving diversity down people's throats", major studios kept doing everything possible to not use words or depict oppressed communities that could "offend" right-wingers. 

In 2017, Amy Pascal reassured an interviewer that Spider-Man: Homecoming wouldn't be "annoying" with its diverse cast. Former 20th Century Fox head Stacy Snider scrambled to make excuses for why more women weren't directing studio films. Netflix shelled out so much money to turn J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy into a movie, while feature films about Marsha P. Johnson, Angela Davis, or other non-white historical figures languished in development. In early 2022, Pixar artists alleged that Disney had constantly cut and censored queer material from this animation studio's films. Meanwhile, Nimona's creative team has alleged that, when the project was set up at Disney, Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn and other Mouse House brass were very hostile towards the film's queer material.

Meanwhile, as late as 2019, theatrical comedies like Little and Shaft were throwing in transphobic jokes for cheap laughs. South Park, the show now being vomit-inducingly heralded as some sort of "bastion" of transgressive comedy (they said Donald Trump was fat!!), was centering whole episodes on mocking trans athletes that same year. Joker director Todd Phillips, responsible for so many homophobic and transphobic jokes in his Hangover films, was whining about how "wokeness killed comedy" movies. In early 2019, conservative producer Dallas Sonnier (who now works on "films" and "TV shows" for The Daily Wire) dismissed any complaints of right-wing or fascist tendencies in his films, saying "people are too quick to be offended right now." We'll come back to that phrase later. 

I'm not seeing a lot of "cancel culture" ruining lives or keeping careers down or suddenly unleashing an avalanche of queer/PoC/disabled representation. I do see, however, a lot of rich people bitching about how it's less socially acceptable to say certain slurs now or how someone was critical of them on Twitter. I see streaming platforms like Netflix handing over millions to transphobic comedians like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais while failing to foster trans voices. I see major publications like The Hollywood Reporter acting like people watching "secret" screenings of new Woody Allen movies is a "revolutionary" act. Jesus Christ, you're not Cassian Andor/a French 75 member because you want to watch new features from an alleged sexual predator. I see multiple major entertainment companies firing countless executives of color in the summer of 2023 and, in the case of WarnerDiscovery, summer 2022 (long before Trump retook office). 

Claiming "cancel culture" has been some "grave threat" to "free speech" or "the entertainment industry" isn't just incorrect. It's ludicrously out of touch with reality. The era where Tim Allen claimed conservative celebrities were being targeted like Jewish people during the Holocaust was instead an era tragically like any other. Specifically, the class-based status quo remained the same, and opportunities for marginalized voices were few and far between. To boot, institutional forces and people upholding those forces continued to demonize any ideology or communities that could challenge capitalism and white supremacy.

The American Entertainment Industry Isn't "Liberal". It Suppreses Disenfranchised Voices

Despite all the "liberal Hollywood" bashing, the American entertainment industry is largely a centrist, right-leaning entity. After all, it's a capitalist industry run by massive corporations. Openly conservative folks like Jerry Bruckheimer are among the most prolific figures in Hollywood. Thus, much of the American media skewers "political correctness" and ignores marginalized lives. Even before the mid-2010s, this was true with projects like 90s comedy PCU. After all, it's better to make progressive political figures or "overly sensitive" college kids antagonists rather than rich people destroying the world or racists that divide the working class.

This is an extension of far worse manifestations of Hollywood depicting marginalized groups as ominous boogeymen that must be either slaughtered or assimilated. White settlers committed a genocide against America's indigenous people. Yet the default norm for Western movies (both classic and modern) is to depict indigenous individuals as monsters that only white men settlers can properly vanquish. Women advocating for themselves or equality are depicted as shrews or nags that need to be domesticated. Countless action films, like the Death Wish sequels, only have room for non-white faces when they can be depicted as terrifying figures white male protaganists can slaughter. While Ronald Reagan was overseeing a genocide of gay people and normalizing cruel stereotypes about Black people, action films reassured viewers that the REAL threat to the world was poor Black and brown people.

Power structures are to be revered. Any populations or rhetoric threatening white supremacy and the bourgeoisie must be eliminated. This is a microcosm of America as a capitalist society and who that society prioritizes. These priorities are how we get HUAC and its dehumanization of communists. This is how we get Paramount+ housing TV shows lionizing Israel border officers while Palestinian cinema can't get major U.S. distribution. Barack Obama will tsk-tsk Ferguson protestors who damage property while approving drone strikes that killed women and children. Joe Biden will label all pro-Palestine protests as "anti-semetic" while turning a blind eye to genocide and refusing to get into the trenches of condemning transphobic legislation.

Protect the status quo. Suppress challengers to the white supremacist and capitalist power structures. These are American norms that inevitably infiltrate our movies and media. Because of that infiltration, tired jokes about "college students are so SENSITIVE" that were tired in Where's the Money nine years ago or mockeries of people existing outside of the gender binary are still being trotted out like they're fresh. 

It's also why "cancel culture" has become a go-to crutch and cloud to yell at for old comedians who hate that language is always evolving. Oh no, privileged people might suffer consequences for being assholes, what a terrible idea. That very concept is so terrifying that it's warped the brains of most comedians and media executives. They don't exist in a world where Louie C.K. quickly returned to making stand-up specials after allegations about him broke or David O. Russell got $80 million to make a new movie in 2022. They also don't exist in worlds with actual challenges (like how A.I. data centers are adversely impacting your hometown, legislation targeting your existence, etc.), so "cancel culture" occupies their every thought, every moment. Plus, it provides a "Goliath" that uber-wealthy comedians can pretend they're the "David" to. 

It's out of step with reality...but then again, isn't so much of American society built on such warped visions of the real world?

Comedy Movies Didn't Vanish Because of Cancel Culture

Let's wrap this up (and wind down my excessive ramblings) by returning to Marlon Wayans. Specifically, his quote about how "bringing comedy back." It's true, theatrical comedy movies have dwindled in quantity in the last eight years. That's not because of college students or non-binary people existing, surprise surprise. Per usual, it has to do with wealthy executives and Silicon Valley. In the mid-2010s, studios began eschewing mid-budget films of all genres and began focusing just on blockbusters. Once the COVID-19 pandemic closed down theaters, theatrical studios sent their comedies once set to hit theaters in 2020 (The Lovebirds, Coming 2 America, Happiest Season, My Spy, Bad Trip, Bill & Ted Face the Music, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, etc.) to streamers for some easy cash.

The perception was that the big-budget superhero movies, with all their spectacle, would be easier sells to people who hadn't returned to the theater in over a year. Grounded comedies, they TOTALLY belong on your iPad. Thus, even a gem like Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar was banished to premium-video-on-demand in February 2021. 

Once all North American theaters reopened in March 2021, studios opted to eschew "risky" theatrical comedies in favor of more "reliable" theatrical fare. Given that the surviving studios were releasing fewer films (and studios that previously released tons of comedies, like 20th Century Fox, were gone), there were fewer chances for comedy movies in theaters. Given that Paramount, Warner Bros., and other labels were all set to release tons of theatrical comedies in 2020, it's clear "cancel culture" didn't temporarily kill the theatrical comedy. Streaming executives dangling lots of money and the terrifying consolidation of the film industry made that possible.

Ah, but those forces are terrifying and immense. It's much easier to pin everything on trans people, immigrants, or "people being too sensitive these days," the go-to refrain of rich white people who're made they can't drop the N-word whenever they want. So the cancel culture myth persists. The most vulnerable people become scapegoats. A new study dropped this week, suggesting Black trans women are at the center of modern-day lynchings. There's also that group chat that just leaked of Miami Republicans gleefully trading anti-Semitic, racist, and disgusting verbiage. Elon Musk's happily dropping Nazi salutes in public...but the biggest threat is "they/them" pronouns.

Three years before she directed the anarchic comedy gem The People's Joker, writer/director/editor Vera Drew was interviewed by Them and asked about stand-up comics whining "about how comedy needs to be free to make fun of marginilized people or it's no longer 'challenging'." I'll let her words do the talking from here: 

"Well, for starters, I think that racism and transphobia are not challenging comedy at all. Especially when racism is so deeply ingrained in every institution imaginable. There’s nothing more mainstream than racism and transphobia. So relying on those as a crutch in your comedy is not edgy or interesting. 

I’ve definitely heard some pretty funny off-color jokes in my day, but generally speaking, it’s usually coming from a place of punching up and not punching down. I think that if you’re doing the kind of comedy that really calls people out or is mocking people or taking them down a peg, it shouldn’t be towards marginalized groups, because we’re already put down in the mainstream. 

It should be more about stripping power from corrupt people and the people who are taking advantage of those marginalized groups...I have yet to hear a cisgender comedian tell a joke about trans people that makes me laugh. They’re always so lazy and trite and just a bummer."

You're not transgressive or funny because you're transphobic or railing against cancel culture. It's not even that it's offensive...it's that you're just rehashing comedy beats that were tired in 2015. Congratulations, your punchlines could've been delivered in 1955, aren't you special. I've been hearing privileged people whine about "cancel culture," "Pronouns," "safe spaces," and all this shit for over a decade and I'm. So. Sick. Of. It. If you're so oppressed, with your multi-million dollar Netflix deals and constant elevation in the pop culture landscape, then why don't you shut the fuck up? Join the real world, where people of all genders, nationalities, ethnicities, and backgrounds are fighting against actual menaces to humanity, like white supremacy, fascism, and colonialism. Just for a few seconds, leave your fantasy world where some made-up 20-year-old college student will sniper you on sight if you don't know every Ethel Caine song by heart.

Also, instead of giving even more attention to tantrums about "cancel culture" and "wokeness" from Todd Phillips, Marlon Wayans, and other dinguses, why don't we appreciate the great comedy movies of the 2020s so far? The aforementioned People's Joker is a chaotic middle finger to corporate America, rife with hysterical visual imagination. Hundreds of Beavers is my favorite movie (of any genre) of 2024 for a reason. That movies a rib-tickling miracle, complete with an adorable frog puppet, ingenious homages to everything from silent comedies and video games, and so many unforgettable visual gags.

Last year's The Naked Gun was funny from start to finish, including in its end credits. They even did a great joke involving the R-word. See Deadpool & Wolverine, you can make that slur funny! Nirvanna: The Band - the Show - the Movie is my favorite movie of 2026 so far, I was cackling so hard throughout the whole movie. Never have jokes about the past-tense word for "skydive" been so funny. 

2023's Joy Ride a super giggle-inducing treat (Stephanie Hsu gets so much comedic mileage out of one annoyed "HMMM"), while Barbie was a miracle movie that channeled vintage Conan O'Brien Simpsons silliness to masterful effect. That same year gave the world Bottoms, which I quote incessantly (Ayo Edebiri's comic timing in that is insane). Do Not Expect Much From the End of the World had so many bleakly hilarious punchlines rooted in our late capitalist Hellscape, while Kneecap combined laughs with unforgettably catchy Irish rap tunes. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, if you haven't seen it, go watch it now and then proceed to climb up a palm tree like a cat up a palm tree whose decided to go up a palm tree.

Conner O'Malley's Rap World, which went straight to YouTube, showed that great comedy movies can truly appear anywhere these days. That feature's eerily on-point portrait of late 2000s white boys living in suburbia is a riot. At the start of the decade, indie comedies Palm Springs and especially Saint Frances got the ball rolling by setting a high bar for the next nine years of comedic filmmaking. Last year, Friendship, The Naked Gun, and One of Them Days were tremendously funny exercises reminding the world that modern theatrical comedies don't have to look like CBS sitcoms (what a concept!). 

The folks behind Scary Movie, its fans, and right-wing folks will inevitably read about me rolling my eyes at Scary Movie's transphobic jokes and once again bellow their war cry of "EVERYONE IS TOO SENSITIVE THESE DAYS" before sipping out of a Liberal Tears mug. First of all, leftist here, not a liberal. Secondly, what's really galling about this Scary Movie trailer is its laziness, especially compared to the feature-length 2020s comedies that have been keeping this medium alive in the face of corporate consolidation and Silicon Valley entities. You're really just going to regurgitate "HA THEY/THEM" and "kids are too sensitive" jokes in a post-Hundreds of Beavers world? 

Equally insulting is the idea of Scary Movie being some crusader against the non-existent "cancel culture" boogeyman. Please don't piss on me and call it rain by acting like a new movie from the Fifty Shades of Black and A Haunted House director will either "save" comedy motion pictures or defeat an "enemy force" that doesn't actually exist. Come to reality, filmmakers and comedians. Leave behind the nonsensical idea that the greatest societal threat is young people on college campuses or social media. And maybe, just maybe, come up with some fresh jokes that are actually funny. I'm sure it's not too late to do some reshoots and get a person in a beaver costume into Scary Movie.