In 'M3GAN,' Irony Has Finally Won The Culture War
#209: "M3GAN," "The Whale," "Master and Commander," "The Last Of Us," "Hank's Infinite Playlist"
Edition 209:
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
This week: Irony hits a new peak with surprise horror hit M3GAN, plus I finally got around to the surprisingly sincere The Whale. Then we’ll talk the year in movies 2003, the hit new HBO series, and a movies podcast you should check out. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Netflix previews their 2023 slate of movies.
M3GAN
We live in a world where it can feel like the only way to fully, unashamedly love something is to do so ironically.
That is the feeling that birthed M3GAN, a social experiment posing as a new horror movie about a murderous AI doll, which is lighting the January box office on fire (by this weekend it will pass $100 million worldwide). Everything you need to know about the phenomenon is on TikTok, where people are encouraged to laugh with, or at, the material. It makes no difference.
This new trend of “campy horror” (see also 2021’s Malignant) is designed for laughs far more than frights. Scary moments are so telegraphed and over-the-top that audiences cannot possibly be scared by them. To be scared is to be vulnerable, and audiences would prefer a wink and a nod and the assurance that they too are in on the joke.
It’s a nice circus trick for filmmakers, because suddenly bad writing and ridiculous premises can be seen as “so bad it’s good.” That’s certainly the case in this movie, which features more than it’s far share of dialogue that makes you cringe. Luckily, somewhere along the way cringe started being seen as a form of rebellion against the rest of us tryhards.
I don’t want to be the cranky old man yelling at clouds here. At the packed out screening I went to for this movie, people were laughing throughout the whole runtime (again, 1hr42min, bless up). I think the filmmakers purposely built in these moments of ridiculousness to draw this exact response. It breaks my brain, but irony has won the culture war.
Allison Williams was certainly cast knowingly, playing off her genuine persona in “Girls” and the well-known subversion in Get Out here as a robot designer in Seattle who takes custody of her sister’s daughter after a tragic car accident. She’s kinda evil, kinda nice, and kinda the world’s greatest inventor since like Thomas Edison? She creates a fully functioning AI robot child but forgets to install any protections or safeguards, because…well because everyone here acknowledges we’re in a movie and need that to happen to kick off the mayhem.
Things go poorly, SHOCKER, and the rest of the plot follows a series of obvious escalations. Things are strung along competently enough to get a viewer to the finish line satisfied. I just can’t imagine a scenario where anyone could walk out loving this movie.
Instead, it will be remembered as a miracle of movie marketing. Blumhouse Productions is one of the greatest indie success stories of the 21st century, and a lot of that success is due to their mastery of social media. This movie is probably their best example yet, spawning a TikTok dance trend that kickstarted a firestorm, which actually turned people out to the theaters. A reported $12 million budget is heading towards 10x and climbing.
All I know is that if we look up in a year or two and there’s then 10 movies as self-aware and as bad as this one, I’m going to have to shut this newsletter down.
Something New
The Whale (Theaters): Director Darren Aronofsky is not exactly known for his sentimentality. Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream and mother! are brutal films, which is why I was surprised to see this movie being pitched as a tearful redemption story for lead actor Brendan Fraser. But the narrative is too good to resist — Fraser went from matinee idol to movie star to has-been to one-episode guest on niche TV shows faster than you can say The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. A 2018 GQ profile by the great Zach Baron kind of resurrected his career, and a 2022 follow-up launched his Oscar campaign in earnest. Hollywood loves a comeback story, and the Oscars love an effortful performance with prosthetics, so Fraser’s turn here as a 600-pound recluse was catnip.
The movie is tragic and more than a little gross, but those qualities actually work in its favor. Fraser’s Charlie is dying of congestive heart failure and wants to make amends with his daughter, a plot that sounds hackney yet in practice I found very effective and the movie as a whole far better than I was expecting. All of the destructive behavior proves in the end to be in service to a warm-hearted core, and much like the running “Moby Dick” motif throughout the story, any tedium is included solely to delay inevitable future tragedy.
Mechanically, it’s simple. The story takes place in a single room, and there are only a handful of characters (no surprise it began as a play). Orbiting around Fraser’s “whale” is Sadie Sink of “Stranger Things” fame, Hong Chau from The Menu and “Watchmen,” and child actor veteran Ty Simpkins. They mostly serve to lob actorly softballs to Fraser, who gets all the best lines and speeches and character moments. Of course he knocks them out of the park, but awards given to him this season should get split with screenwriter Samuel D. Hunter.
In a time of blink-and-you-miss-it theater windows, The Whale offers an interesting counterpoint. Here in Los Angeles it’s been available at AMC for well over a month, sneaking past $11 million domestic gross against a $3 million budget (keep in mind Babylon is at $14 million domestic against $80 million-plus). I wonder if this movie really built word of mouth momentum or whether its longevity served as its own form of credibility. Like hey, if it’s still in theaters it must be good! The dollars are flowing in either way, which tells me there’s still some demand for “good-seeming movie X” at the theater from adults. It’s just that filmmakers better get used to $3 million budgets.
Something Old
Master and Commander: Far Side Of The World (2003, HBO Max): This week I was looking through the movies of 2003, looking for the best example of the “wow do you feel old” feeling created by realizing said movie was now 20 years old. What I realized was the 2003 was just a terrible year for movies. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King won Best Picture, which is cool and definitely a relic of its time but also signals there weren’t exactly a lot of cinematic masterpieces to compete with.
I legitimately think the first Pirates of the Caribbean was the best movie of that year — I’m on record as saying unironically it’s a perfect masterpiece — but other contenders include a heavy helping of genre (Old School, Something’s Gotta Give, Love Actually, The Italian Job) and second-tier entries from filmmaking masters (Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Intolerable Cruelty, Memories of Murder). So yeah, Mystic River and Lost in Translation are both pretty good, but my recommendation from 2003 if you haven’t seen it is Master and Commander, the platonic ideal of that mid-budget adult drama that would never be made 20 years later.
Russell Crowe stars in a Dad Movie hall-of-famer about a ship captain pursuing an infamous pirate vessel around South American waters. Director Peter Weir (Witness, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show) balances the starry-eyed charm of Hollywood entertainment with down-and-dirty drama to create a story that is both easy to consume and feels significant. It’s one of my favorites not only of this year but of the era in movies I so wish we could return to.
Something to Stream
The Last Of Us (HBO Max): HBO’s new blockbuster prestige show is an adaptation from a 2013 videogame, widely considered the most cinematic videogame ever…and this first episode is 1hr28min long, so that’s basically a movie. It also happens to be my favorite single player videogame of all time, so you could say I was just a tad excited for this series to premiere.
Yes, this is another zombie apocalypse show. There’s been The Walking Dead and Station 11 and a million others playing on the same scenario, and there were moments during the first episode when I found it difficult to avoid comparisons to other genre entries. Also, the first episode was almost a shot-for-shot remake of the game’s cutscenes, yet on the strength of lead actors Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, it felt well worth the effort — especially since a large percentage of the audience here is experiencing the incredible story for the first time. Knowing what’s coming in the next couple of weeks, I highly recommend everyone jump on board the train now.
Hank’s Infinite Playlist (Podcast): Shoutout to my good friend and this newsletter’s official Bad Movie Correspondent Justin Birnbaum, who’s got a new podcast going with his roommate Hank Tucker — both fellow Forbes writers! Each episode Justin introduces Hank to a movie he hasn’t seen, with this first season focusing on quotable 2000s comedies. They’re super short and very fun. Based on the ones I’ve listened to, Hank plays the sober-eyed morality police no matter how ridiculous the movie’s premise, and Justin takes any opportunity while talking about a good movie to mention (repeatedly) much worse movies he prefers (thus, the Bad Movie Correspondent). For fans of this newsletter, check out the episode on Wedding Crashers, in which I make short guest appearance.
Trailer Watch: Netflix 2023 Movie Slate
If there’s one thing Netflix knows how to do, it’s winning the anticipation game. The premises of their movies always sound like home runs, and their packages of talent are still the best in Hollywood. None of that is surprising in their now-annual tradition of “save the date” previews for their 2023 slate.
It’s just that the other thing Netflix has proven an ability to do is to underdeliver on almost all of their original movies. So this year I’m choosing to reserve my excitement, even when we’re talking about David Fincher’s The Killer, which under other circumstances would be among my most anticipated movies of the entire year. Regardless, this video is a reminder that for all the doomsday predictions, there are still big movies coming!