Well, here we find ourselves dear reader, at the tail end of another year our homes cluttered up with unwanted presents that will probably find their way to the local charity shop within a week or two. Our stomach's uncomfortably bloated and our brains fogged with festive merry-making and unsave quantities of alcohol. New Year's Eve is a time to look forward to the year that lies ahead to make bold plans and inspiring resolutions, most of which you'll probably fall by the wayside before the end of January!
Nevertheless it's also a time of reflection, a chance to pause by the door and look back over our shoulders at the year that was, to contemplate the highs and lows of those 12 month before finally making our exits, and so welcome to my final Review of 2023. Now on the face of things 2023 seemed to have a lot of stuff going for it, since one year we enjoyed emerging from two long years of misery on and off restrictions and tedious regular relations, allegedly caused by the unspecified virus of Unknown Origin. The world had finally reopened, we were able to travel again, we could ditch the clown masks and most important to all, we could go back to the movies.🍿😎
We'd emerged from The Long Winter of discontent and what we all wanted was a glorious summer of Blockbuster crowd Pleasers that everyone could just lose themselves in. Unfortunately that's not exactly what we got. The once Unstoppable Juggernaut of the MCU continued to Creak and groan onwards with the release of three more forgettable movies to round out phase four, all of which were critical and Commercial underperformers. Doktor Strange 2 was a disaster of a film that basically wiped out one of the few remaining good characters in the MCU. Thor 4 proved that Taika Waititi really is just a one-trick pony when it comes to superhero movies and Black Panther 2 was a confused mess of a film that struggled to justify its own existence without his main character, which - to put it mildly - quickly diminishes the high hopes for next year in view of these experiences.
For the TV shows I have to say Moon Knight took a cool concept and rendered it moved by neutering the main character and turning him into a joke, Ms. Marvel was a bright colorful and completely forgettable teen bopper show that did nothing and went nowhere, while I have no words for the butt-swinging She-Hulk, who has officially dealt the final death blow to the MCU. You know it takes a lot to derail something with as much momentum as the MCU, but I do believe that Marvel may have found a way with phase 4, a series of movies and TV shows that seem to Value quantity over quality, which even die hard fans are starting to get turned off by.
What was once vibrant energetic and imaginative has become tedious predictable, bloated and formulaic and I think 2023 is the year when everyone collectively realized that. In fact superhero movies which have basically been the dominant Force at the cinema for the past 10 years really haven't fared that well at all this year! There was the occasional hit that turned out to be way better that it had ay right to, but for every Batman there was a Black Adam, Thor love and thunder or - God help us - Morbius.
Seriously, Jared Leto really knows how to pick them when it comes to superhero movies.👍😂
In fact, some films were so bad that they never even got the chance to fail! After years of flops and false starts Warner Brothers decided f**k it, we're done with this and promptly shredded their slate of upcoming movies and TV shows. Batgirl, Supergirl, Wonder Woman 3, all of them were gone like a fart in the winds. That's the funny thing about pushing "The Message" (hashtag: LGBTQ-Woke-Agenda), you see once the money Runs Out Move Studious tend to lose interest in it pretty quickly, but probably the biggest cultural battleground of the year was got to be the fantasy genre.
See, a war had been brewing over "The Lord of the Rings" for a long time, it was one of the last remaining IPS that hadn't yet Fallen to Identity politics and Amazon were determined to conquer it with the "Rings of Power", but damn, they picked the wrong fan base to mess with on this one!😡😤 Every single trailer that dared to come out got ratioed into Oblivion Legions of angry fans picked apart and mocked every single scrap of information, every interview and every element of this show. The battle lines were drawn and when Rings of Power finally came out war was declared! I honestly don't think I've ever seen a TV show that stirred up such hornet's nest of absolute rage.
The Rings of Power got Savage like no show ever got Savaged before and it was absolutely glorious to see, because they deserved it! It was a show that tried to rewrite history, twist and reshape beloved characters, subvert the work of great man and it was rejected by pretty much everyone! Rings of Power wasn't just a bad show that people laughed at, it was a message to every Film Studio that thought could buy their way to a fandom, hijacking IP and use it as a platform to stroke their own Egos and push their own political views. That message was simple: "We're NOT Gonna Take this 💩anymore!"
That atmosphere of rebellion and rejection was just as strong when it came to Absolute garbage like Willow and Witcher blood origin, both of which slunk out only to get completely annihilated by fans! Rings of Power might have stirred up The Hornet's Nest, but now everything that followed was getting stung by it, but hey, it wasn't all bad. There were the occasional bright spots in an otherwise Bleak and depressing year House of the dragon defied all our expectations, including Mine by turning out to be a smart well-written and brilliantly acted prequel that escaped the long shadow cast by Game of Thrones and delivered the best fantasy show of the entire year!
Everything everywhere all at once showed us that cool inventive quirky movies made by talented people were still getting Appeal. All Quiet on the Western Front was a brilliant and moving adaptation of a classic story, while RRR demonstrated The Growing Power and appeal of Foreign Cinema, because let's be honest here, if you don't give the customer what they want, then they'll find someone else who will! Speaking of giving the customer what they want, Top Gun: Maverick was for me the absolute standout movie of the decade, one of the very few films I've seen in recent memory that dared to be uplifting, inspiring, exciting and joyfully Old School.🎬😍
This film didn't try to cynically subvert your expectations or push some Bleak nihilistic revisionist view of its aging hero or update his story for a mythical modern audience that doesn't exist, it was and is a glorious clebration of the Classic Hollywood action movies and heroes that we grew up with and it gave people the thing they've been craving for so long, mit made and it makes me extremely happy to know that it succeeded when so many other films deservedly flopped. I also think in a lot of ways, 2023 will be remembered as the year the walk Hollywood bubble finally bursts!
It was a year where countless high profile movies and shows that tried to mild identity politics guilt people into watching them and shame anyone who criticized them promptly went down in flames! It was the year where there was no Fake-Pandemic and no Lockdowns to hide behind, no way of justifying the shock and decline in box office revenue except to face up to the simple unavoidable truth: People aren't buying what you're trying to sell them anymore!
Fans are not interessted in your dumb predictable hive mind political views, they don't want to be preached and pandered to and they especially don't want it from a bunch of corrupt out of touch narcissts that couldn't care less about the very causes! They shout so stridently about you're supposed to be the court Jesters of our society, so shut the f**k up and do your jobs!
If there's something good to be taken out of one of the most creatively bankrupt financially disastrous and politically divisive filmmaking years in living memory, it's that people have finally woken up to the garbage that they're being feds, they've realized how far we've Fallen. How many great franchises have been twisted and ruined in the process and they're angry about it and so they should be!
Now it's just a question how long it takes for Hollywood to get the message. They're sending it may be that things get worse before they get better, but I do believe that better they will get.