The YouTuber renowned for his honest and hilarious analysis of movies, ‘The Critical Drinker’, joins Russell to share his assessments of the new Indiana Jones film, the controversy surrounding 'Sound of Freedom', which highlights the harrowing world of child trafficking and Tim Ballard's real-life quest to combat it. Plus, the way women are portrayed in Hollywood films today.My comedy special 'Brandemic' is out now! Order your tickets at https://moment.co/russellbrandFor a bit more from us join our Stay Free Community here: https://russellbrand.locals.com/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
Thanks for joining me on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
I'm very excited about today's show.
For the first 15 minutes I'm going to be on YouTube and that's going to be relevant to you 6.5 million Awakening Wonders over there because you surely love the critical drinker.
A man who has analysed and critiqued contemporary cinema with a perspective that you're unlikely to see in the mainstream.
I think We are definitely stuck in a rut as a culture when it comes to just relying on the past.
As you say, the motivation behind these IPs and these franchise movies is no one's willing to take a risk.
What they lack with these modern characters that they try to do is that they're not willing to take that step of have them fail and be vulnerable and have flaws and weaknesses.
We're going to talk about Sound of Freedom.
Why is this movie causing so much controversy?
I'm also going to start referring to the Critical Drinker by his actual human name, and I'm going to ask you to remove them aviators.
Not yet!
Not while we're still on YouTube!
Stay free with Russell Brand.
See it first on Rumble.
It is the critical drinker.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me on, man.
I can't believe it.
I'm sandwiched right between Tucker Carlson and Ron DeSantis.
I've got a lot to live up to on this one.
You better come up with some pretty powerful right wing ideology right now.
It better be sliding into your reviews somehow, if you can.
Otherwise, you simply will not fit in with the roster.
Thanks for joining us, mate.
No, it's a pleasure to be here.
Thanks for having me on, man.
One of your most recent videos that I enjoyed watching was your analysis and review of the latest Indiana Jones movie.
It seemed you kind of reached a, in a sense, a zenith of your analysis in itself, or what Lynch might call the duck's eye, the point within the point.
It seemed to me that what you were saying is that our culture is incapable of coming
up with new and novel and innovative content, and it's kind of like a Tomb Raider dragging
cadavers from the soil, reanimating them and then not even respecting them.
Is that the essence of your perspective on mainstream movie franchises?
What do you think that tells us more broadly, if indeed that is your perspective, Drinker?
I think that's wildly wrong, because that metaphor you just gave me would have at least
been entertaining, unlike this movie.
I think we are definitely stuck in a rut as a culture when it comes to just relying on
the past and just digging up old ideas, like you say, bringing back old characters, old
actors and just...
Kind of humiliating them on screen and trying to use them as this weird springboard to launch a new generation of characters, but they're never any good.
They're always unlikable idiots who just bore people to tears.
And that's the fundamental problem.
We've lost the ability to create new, innovative stuff.
What we do now is just reiterate the things that have been done before.
And you can apply it to movies, TV shows, music, anything!
We're just recycling the same things we've done so many times already.
It's such a sad thing to look back on.
Generations from now, they're going to look back on this time and just think of it as the time when everyone just lost their imagination.
They lost their spirit of creativity.
That's very interesting that you take it to something as essential as the spirit of creativity itself.
I've got young daughters, they're five and six, their favourite band is the Spice Girls.
Like we listen to the Spice Girls and then like some other kids were getting dropped off at the school, like similar age, they were listening to the Spice Girls.
It doesn't even, even something in the culture which I think at At the time, I would have certainly regarded as a sort of a commodity, even though it had a great deal of spirit, and there's aspects of the Spice Girls that I liked.
Details I certainly won't be going into right now.
What I'd like to say is that it's odd that even something that's commercial, you know, we're not talking about, like, Joan Jett.
We're talking about the Spice Girls.
Even, like, those kind of commodities aren't being replaced.
And also with, like, Glastonbury, Elton John being the sort of closing act, it makes you wonder, well, where's it going to go?
Now, do you think this is because of Economics, do you think it's because of technology?
For example, it's been sort of oft-stated that there isn't a new raft of movie stars coming through anymore.
Is that because of the culture?
Is that because of technology?
And of course, I know those two things are inextricably linked, but what do you put it down to?
Yeah, I mean, I think the last movie star that we have still active really now that's relevant is Tom Cruise and he's got Mission Impossible coming out soon.
That's probably going to do really well this summer.
Top Gun Maverick did great last year.
But yeah, like, There's a problem now in movies, particularly, where we don't have movie stars anymore.
We have characters that people are excited to see.
Particularly with comic book movies, with all this superhero stuff, it'll be a case of, hey, we're going to go and see the new Captain America movie.
We're going to see the new Thor movie.
We don't care about the actor that's playing him, really.
It's just the character that we're going to see.
Then doesn't translate into a star who can sell movies, who can get people to go to the movie theater and see his latest film.
You know, back when probably you and I were kids, the dominant forces at the box office were like, oh, I'm going to go and see the latest Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
I'm going to see the latest Stallone movie, the latest Bruce Willis movie.
All people like that.
They were stars that could sell films just on their star power.
We don't have that anymore.
And it's the same problem with You know, with, um...
Films in general.
We don't want to take the risk now of inventing new things because one, movies are massively expensive and so they don't want to take the risk of investing 200, 300 million dollars on something that's completely unproven.
And so all they'll do is say, well, what's a surefire hit?
Well, I don't know.
Star Wars used to be popular.
Let's do that.
Indiana Jones was popular.
Let's do that.
Let's just keep recycling the things that older people remember.
And two, we don't have the talented writers with really interesting life experiences that
they can translate into scripts.
And so they don't have the ability to create new things that are really interesting and
cool.
It seems like Mark Hamill has almost been trying to publicly say that he don't like
what the franchise has done to the character of Luke Skywalker, that he personally feels
offended and affronted by it.
Sometimes it seems to me that you're driven by a kind of a love of narrative and story
and almost like Joseph Campbell-like ideas of how a hero should function and what a story
should do.
I've got a few things I want to run by you.
I used to think, it's like a little hypothesis of mine, that American movie stars somehow embody how they regard how that nation in particular, and let's face it, it's still the nation that defines our planet, like how it sees itself at a particular time, like when it was Schwarzenegger and Stallone, it was a kind of rebooted 1980s America with heft and, you know, an overt masculinity.
Adam Sandler, who I did a movie with actually, and who I think is a really interesting and brilliant performer and comic, and he, like, At a time when we were starting to learn, for example, that there weren't actually weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Adam Sandler had this kind of, oh shucks, I didn't mean it, kind of mentality that aligned neatly with an America that's trying its best and erring sometimes.
Now perhaps what we have is an America that doesn't know what it's trying to sell itself anymore.
Trying to present a kind of ethical and moral face to the world while clearly being backed by commodity.
As you say, the motivation behind these IPs and these franchise movies is no one's willing to take a risk.
Matt Damon says that you'd never get a Good Will Hunting type movies no more because no one will back a $30 million movie like that.
They need to have IP behind them.
But what I want to get into just before, while we're still on YouTube, before we leave YouTube, so do bear that in mind, Drinker, that we're still in a place where censorship is possible, is how do we marry together the idea that you don't want movies all to be big, buff, white movie stars.
You want diversity.
You want, as a father of daughters, I want What do you think is the concession that should be made to make movies more, for want of a better word, more diverse?
I do for my girls. I want them to watch films and not always to be it's just guys and blokes
and you know, I want there to be diversity. But how do you marry that? What do you think
is the concession that should be made to make movies more for one of a better word, more
diverse? Where do you stand on that mate?
What is it like? Yeah, interesting points you've made there because it's like when you
talk about the stars of their different eras, like the 70s was like De Niro, Al Pacino,
Dustin Hoffman, like the interesting character actors, The 80s was the big buff muscle men.
It was the time of, like, American confidence.
We're going to kick ass.
We're going to dominate.
We're going to do awesome.
The 90s, it moved into like more, you know, ambiguous, like slightly more vulnerable heroes.
The 2000s was very much reflective of the war on terror.
So there was a lot of, you know, military themed stuff.
There was a lot of thrillers.
There was a lot of secret agent things going on.
And then, yeah, you look at now.
There's nothing!
We just- I literally just said there ain't no movie stars because, like, the country doesn't even know what it is now.
It's in a conflict of identity.
So I think I was- yeah, it's a self-evident point of, like, it doesn't even know what it wants to be anymore.
So that's kind of really sad to see because we always- you know, as a Brit, I always looked up to America as, like, the model of the world.
Like, this is the country that leads us, the free world.
But yeah, when it comes to marrying you talked about there, like the, rather than just having
straight white guys as like the movie stars, how do we, how do we include people of different genders,
ethnicities, all that stuff. I guess what I would say, hey, we did it 20, 30, 40 years ago, we
just didn't make such a big deal out of it like we have to do now. And that's the thing that annoys
people, that's the thing that turns people off, when you make the identity of the main
character, the main actor, the sole focus of everything. People are just like, well, why are you making
such big deal of this? Why?
Why should I care about this?
They used to just do it without having to make a big deal out of it.
When we talk about the great female characters in cinema, we have characters like Ellen Ripley.
They just didn't feel the need to make that the sole focus of these characters.
They were interesting characters first and foremost.
Whether they were female, whether they were women, sorry, whether they were black, white, whatever, it didn't matter.
The main focus was that they were a well-written character.
That's the difference.
That's what we can't do now.
Yeah, it offends you because it's, in a sense, hasn't got any art or care in it.
So you're contrasting the character like Ripley from Alien or Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies with, say, an example off the top of my head which I know will go over well on these platforms, Captain Marvel and the way that Captain Marvel was kind of presented as a hero.
It offends you, I think, Because I'm, as I've said before, I'm a fan of your content, that you don't get to see a vulnerable character evolve, a vulnerable character learn lessons, a character that is flawed and has to overcome obstacles.
In a sense, this is the function of story that precedes the medium of cinema.
We need to see that a character in position A at the start of the film is unable to achieve something but by, you know, they go through catharsis, challenges, whatever, and at the other side they're able.
And you think that this new ideology that's about presenting figures or characters in a particular way is unable to serve story and the function of story.
Is that what you're saying, Drinker?
What's the fundamental thing, like you said, that gets you to identify with a character?
Is you give a person that's somewhat likable, give them an obstacle to overcome, and have them struggle to do it.
Have them lots of things that get in their way, like they fall down, they pick themselves up, they eventually overcome.
That is the fundamental essence of what makes you like a character and identify with them.
It's so easy, it shouldn't even need to be said.
But what they lack with these modern characters that they try to do is that they're not willing
to take that step of have them fail and be vulnerable and have flaws and weaknesses.
Either because the writers don't know how to do it or because they've got this kind of prickly defensiveness
prickly defensiveness when it comes to writing things like female characters,
when it comes to writing things like female characters where they don't want them to be perceived as weak.
where they don't want them to be perceived as weak.
And so the only alternative they have is, well, they just have to be great at everything.
And so the only alternative they have is, well, they just have to be great at everything.
And so they're brilliant at everything right off the bat.
And so they're brilliant at everything right off the bat.
They have all the skills they need.
They have all the skills they need.
They don't need to learn everything.
They don't really have personalities because they don't have any flaws or weaknesses.
And the arc basically becomes them being amazing and being up here
and the rest of the world having to learn to accept how awesome they are
and like eventually come up and accept them.
There's no character arc there.
It's just a straight line.
That's that's that.
People don't find that satisfying.
That's the problem.
That's why nobody watches these movies anymore.
That's why the box office returns just go down and down.
Yeah, because when we meet, let's take the example of Sarah Connor,
we find her as a waitress, drifting through life listlessly.
But down the line, we see that this character is going to be a revolutionary figure that's met the challenge of knowing that she's carrying perhaps
the most sort of significant thing that a character could carry like the you know the
Essence or a symbol for the future. Hey, listen, we're gonna come off of YouTube now
And here are the reasons you should join us on rumble. We're gonna talk about sound of freedom
Why is this movie causing so much controversy as it appears to be beating Indiana Jones in the box office?
What does it tell us about films?
What does it tell us about new funding models?
What does it tell us about the appetite of us as movie audiences?
I'm also going to start referring to the Critical Drinker by his actual human name, and I'm going to ask you to remove them aviators.
Not yet, not while we're still Not while we're still on YouTube.
They can't handle them piercing Scottish eyes of a colour that I can't even begin to conject until I've seen them.
So if you're watching us on YouTube or anywhere else, click the link in the description.
Join us over on Rumble.
If you're on Rumble now, press the red button and join us on Locals.
You get to see content live when we record it in the event that it's pre-recorded.
You get meditations from me.
You get to be a member of our community and I would welcome you there.
I'd love it.
There's loads of great people in there.
Look at our Barry John Fox.
Woah!
expressing himself with an emoji even as we speak.
Xipher 2000, speaking of our man Will Jordan there, Will, get the fucking sunglasses off mate, and you're
allowed to swear now, significantly, so you can be your true-
WHOA!
I wasn't ready for them brown eyes!
You're beautiful, you've seared right into me soul there, for God's sake.
So, he's saying, what did he say there, he's gonna get lost in his gaze, and that has happened,
that has happened in almost every sense of the word gaze, in every possible spelling of that word.
Um, okay.
So, hey, Will, what do you think's happening around Sound of Freedom?
What do they object to?
Because I've heard, oh, what it is, is Sound of Freedom.
Because someone told me about it a little while ago.
A friend of mine actually said, you've got to see this movie and, you know, asked me if I would...
Support it, which I plan to do.
But I've subsequently seen people say, oh, it's connected to QAnon, and it's a conspiracy theory movie.
But of course, the plot of the movie is about a former Homeland Security agent who's rescuing children from child sex trafficking.
What's the issue with that, Will?
Why has it caused such controversy?
I mean, honestly, you'd think it would be a no-brainer.
I think we can all Come to the same conclusion that children being sold into child sex trafficking is a terrible thing and should absolutely be stopped at any cost.
And so a movie about trying, you know, a main hero who's trying to prevent that is trying to rescue children from the most horrifying situations imaginable.
Wow, that should be the sort of thing that you should really have no qualms about supporting.
And the fact that so many people in the mainstream media are against this, Wow, it really makes me question what their values are.
I do not understand it at all.
Yeah, I don't, because I... Look, we're all familiar now with like the Jeffrey Epstein story, and it does appear that paedophilia is, let's say, more popular than I'd imagined it was as a young man, blessedly.
But it's odd that a film like this, where, as far as I can understand it, the only roots for saying that there's a connection to QAnon or conspiracy theories is that once maybe Jim Caviezel, am I saying his name right, the lead actor, Yeah, Caviezel, I think it is.
Caviezel.
Caviezel.
He commented on that slightly wacky wardrobe manufacturing story where they were saying it was a front for paedophilia.
He maybe commented on it.
Maybe the lead actor commented on it, and I know it's funded by the same people that made The Chosen, and I knew the guy that played Jesus in that.
The guy that played Jesus in The Chosen, Will, body doubled for me, I think, in Ballers, an HBO show that I did.
Jesus is my body double!
That's my new catchphrase, man!
I'm taking that down!
My stigmata!
So, you know, do you think, this is a question I want to put to you as an expert in movies, or at least an authority on movies, do you think that what actually, you know, of course there's the idea that, oh wow, is there actually, is there something to hide around all this paedophile network stuff?
Let me know in the comments, guys, I know that's a subject you lot get into.
Or is it, or additionally, is it because of, this is a funding model And I distribute not necessarily distribution model, but PR model that's bypassing a lot of the gatekeepers.
You know, they're going on podcast that you're promoting it.
Tim Pool I've seen talking about it, but you know, it doesn't seem to have to go through that.
I don't know.
Green tomato, red tomato, fresh or whatever stuff.
What do you think about that?
I mean, it's twofold, really.
First of all, the movie doesn't try to make any connections to some ring that's operating at the top levels of American society or anything like that.
It's very much like, this is stuff that's going on in Colombia, Mexico, that sort of thing.
It's just a guy trying to rescue kids from a hostile situation.
And that's really the limit of it.
So it's not trying to make that connection at all, which is so weird that people seem to be getting so defensive about that.
And two, it's a cheap movie.
It was made for well under $20 million.
This isn't like an Indiana Jones job where it's like $300 million plus of God knows how much on marketing and stuff.
And so they don't have the budget to do TV commercials and all the fancy advertising that you can ask for.
They do this grassroots stuff where they just make themselves available to talk to podcasters and stuff and sell the movie on its own merits.
Imagine that.
Imagine a movie that's just actually good and people watch it because, hey, it's actually a really rewarding experience and it's tackling an important issue that we should learn more about.
Imagine that.
It's almost like that's foreign now to us.
Yeah, therefore it's an example, isn't it, of it's quite guerrilla and quite radical because it doesn't have to go through the processes that typically a movie would do.
The amount, as you've described, that's typically spent on advertising.
And, you know, you work in independent media, I work in independent media, and sometimes what I start to feel, and I wonder if you feel the same, is they're attacking the content.
They don't agree with my ideology.
Actually, I'm starting to think what they don't agree with is us existing at all.
There's more like an economic problem.
Oh no, this is where people are going to spend advertising.
Shit, we can't keep up with this.
What do you think about that?
Well, I mean, put it this way, like when I work here making my videos that I do, it's me in my office at home.
I got 0% overheads.
I spend zero dollars on anything, but I get millions of views because people are interested
to hear what I've got to say.
And that's the thing that they hate, where you've got news networks and you've got studios
with dozens if not hundreds of employees, they've got huge expenses that they go to,
and they get a fraction of the viewership that people like us get because people just
don't care about them anymore, because they know how fake they are.
I've heard it said before, it was a very smart man named Robert Meyer Burnett who said, the currency of our current age is authenticity.
And it's so fucking true. People care about presenters, whoever it is, who care about the
subject matter they're talking about, who actually are authentic. They might not be as polished,
they might not have the big production values, it doesn't matter. They're talking about things
that they care about and that they're invested in. That's what people want, honesty.
Yeah, in a sense that's the Joe Rogan superpower isn't it Will?
Like whether he's talking about mixed martial arts or whether he's talking about politics or psychedelics or hunting or diet or supplements or whatever you get the impression because it in my opinion it's true that he's saying what he believes and he's saying what he cares about and that seems sufficient to stand up against you know clear attempts to take him out around the Ivermectin horse pace time Which I, again, similarly, like, I reckon as well, there, they just don't want that.
You know, Carlin famous, George Carlin says it's like a, you know, you don't need conspiracy where convergent, where interests naturally converge.
And the mainstream media don't want powerful, independent voices that are able to just bypass their models.
Because like you say, you've got zero overhead, you can operate on your own.
And plainly, you're in a position where if you like a movie, you say you do.
And if you don't like a movie, you say that even more.
Yeah, and nobody pays me to do this as such.
I don't have relationships with studios that I can damage by slagging off their movie, and that's the thing.
I can just be honest about it.
But I always try to be fair.
That's what I always want to be.
I don't want to just hate on a movie because it's made by a director I don't like.
Whatever.
Be fair.
That's all I expect from what I do.
And hopefully people understand that.
And that's why they watch my videos, because I'll give you an honest opinion about things.
In the Indiana Jones one you listed movies where you sort of where you were wrong you said like I thought Dungeons and Dragons wouldn't be any good and you were wrong about that and I feel like even some of the Disney TV shows you've sort of gone oh actually that's pretty good and you've you know so you've I guess to your point about authenticity being the currency, and in fact this is a broader point we find ourselves continually making on our channels, you need principles.
If you have a principle, then sometimes that principle is going to cost you, sometimes it's going to support you, but it remains consistent.
When you're just like, oh when I'm talking about this, you know, when cluster bombs, here's an example from the news this week, when cluster bombs are being used by Russia, they're bad.
When cluster bombs are being used by America, They're good!
Or Ukraine, sorry, via America.
You know, so that means, you know, that is the opposite of what you're discussing in terms of, sort of, veracity and an ability to trust.
Yeah, humane cluster bombs, I like that idea.
But, yeah, I mean, it's like, yeah, sometimes I'll watch the trailer for a movie, I'll give my thoughts on it and, like, make some predictions about what the film's going to be like.
Sometimes I'm right, or most of the time I am, but sometimes I'm wrong.
And, like, I'm happy to admit that.
If a movie, I go and watch it and it's better than I expected, I'm a happy man because I got to watch a good movie, so that's okay as far as I'm concerned.
So yeah, for me, there's nothing wrong with admitting that occasionally you call it wrong.
That's okay, as long as you're honest with people.
I think that's all they want.
What about, do you sometimes get a bit, let's say, supercharged by the Like, you know, if something isn't, for want of a better term, woke, do you think, oh my god, do you think it almost gets an extra bit of juice because of that?
I'm talking about films like maybe, um, you know, Maverick, or even the Mario Brothers movie, just by virtue of the fact that it's not pushing that message.
Or do you think that by not having the kind of, the sort of gravitational lag That wokeness can apply because it prevents, to use but one example, a character from having a meaningful arc because they're already presented as perfect on the basis of identity, which shouldn't be what's presented at the centre of a film.
And if it's freed of that, it's a little bit better.
Or do you think that you're sort of like, oh, thank God, bloody Mario Brothers isn't doing that, and you get a bit excited?
There's the initial emotional reaction of, like, hey, wow, this movie doesn't fucking hate me because I'm, like, a straight white man.
That's nice.
Like, that's a change of pace.
But, you know, you try to break the movie down, like, into its component parts and say, well, okay, this one I enjoyed it.
Why did I enjoy it?
Was the plot good?
Were the characters good?
Whatever.
So you try to be a bit more objective about it.
But it's also possible, this is an interesting discussion about, it's possible for something to be woke by the normal standards but also be good if it's well written.
The example that I've given before is a TV show called Arcane.
Which puts forward a lot of what we would consider to be woke politics, like extremely diverse cast, gay relationships front and center, a class struggle at the heart of the plot that's driving it forward, very strong female characters, all that stuff.
Um, that might be considered woke in other movies because it's badly handled, but it's extremely well integrated into a really good story in that TV show.
And so I was happy to say, hey, this is an example of, say, progressive politics or progressive ideology done well.
It can be done, but you've just got to write it well.
That's what we look for, a good story.
Right, don't use it instead of structure.
I suppose another film like The Matrix, Matrix is a good example, I'm talking about the first one obviously, of how sort of different ideals and identity transcendent of homogeneity and heterodoxy is presented as aspirational and cool and then the Wachowskis of course, Wachowskis?
I can't remember their name no more.
Like uh like they had a sort of uh obviously they changed gender during like you know the trajectory of those movies like that maybe that's something for you to touch upon but I also like again with my personal uh position as a father of girls and also as a person that do I do believe there should be stories for everyone there should be stories for everyone but I think I agree with you as a aesthete or as a critical thinker you know to sort of use the phrase from which your name is derived Like, I want things to reward me and to make sense, I suppose.
So, um, would you touch on, like, you know, sort of the Matrix and the Wachowskis, if I'm saying the name right, and also what films would I direct my girls to?
Because I don't even like it.
Sometimes if I watch an old Simpsons and Bart goes, girls are shit, or whatever, I'm like, oh, I don't want my daughters watching that, you know what I mean?
So, sort of touch on that sort of side of it as well, if you could.
Yeah, I mean, in terms of, like, if you're looking for movies with good female role models, like, damn, where do I begin?
Like, you've got the Terminator movies, I suppose, like we mentioned before.
You've got Ripley from the first two Aliens films.
You've got Marion from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
You've got Trinity from The Matrix.
You've got Gina Davis from Long Kiss Goodnight.
Like, all of these, these are very interesting characters that kind of You know, they've got flaws, they've got weaknesses, they've got problems along the way, but they overcome those things.
So yeah, there's been movies all throughout cinematic history that have given us this stuff.
It's just, really, in recent years, in trying to highlight this stuff and in trying to correct a problem that didn't really exist in the first place, they've made it infinitely worse.
That's the problem.
What about that analytic tool like I only know because I saw it in Rick and Morty where they say like an analysis of a feminist a movie from a feminist perspective is are there two female characters that have names that are talking about something other than a man like and also like There is an imbalance between films that, uh, don't you think?
Do you agree?
Like, that are sort of built around, like, let's call them, you know, white males or whatever.
There is a, do you think there's an imbalance that could be addressed?
And what do you think about, like, why is it a critique like that emerged?
Like the one that I learned on Rick and Morty that's got a proper name.
Someone tell me in the post.
It's a proper technique.
It's called the something test.
Yeah, the Bechdel test.
It's funny because the Bechdel test was actually created as a bit of a joke.
Is it a 4chan thing or something?
No, it was created by a woman, but she just did it as a bit of a laugh and it was meant to poke fun at the feminist critique of movies and stuff.
So it was never meant to be taken seriously, but it's become the benchmark across the industry for how movies are rated.
It's a meme that became reality, I suppose.
But yeah, in terms of...
How do you square that up?
I suppose part of the reason is, like, it depends what genre of movie you want to look at, and how mainstream you want to go, because the biggest movies at the box office tend to be action movies, they tend to be superhero movies, all those kind of things, but they're generally very male-oriented movies, and so the natural result is you tend to get a man in the lead, because that's what guys look for.
But if you're looking for other stuff, you just have to go into different genres.
It could be dramas, it could be romance, it could be historical epics, whatever you want to be.
There's plenty of movies with characters like that in it, they're just not the big blockbusters.
Get it, hey, I get it.
Because what it is, is it's not like, hey, we really love white men.
It's economic.
It's economic.
They just, these movies will sell well.
That's all.
They don't care.
They don't care at all.
Like the Bud Light thing.
They don't care if you're blue collar.
They don't care if you're trans.
They don't give a shit.
They just want to sell you Bud Light.
So this is the same thing with movies.
And so maybe this is what, perhaps, this is a question.
Like maybe what offends you is like they still want their cake of Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, a powerful IP from the 80s or 90s, but they also want to sort of attack, you shouldn't have these figures as the dominant figures, so they sort of live out their own dilemma almost in the movie of attacking and deconstructing the archetypes that they resent but rely on.
Is that a good bit of made-up analysis?
Yeah, what they want to do is use them as a springboard to launch their own new characters, but it's like trying to take a character that you've bonded with over a period of years, if not decades, like you grew up with and stuff, like Indiana Jones being a great example, or Luke Skywalker, for example.
Characters that you've really come to know and love, and then what they'll do is present them as old men who are Sad and lonely.
They've given up on life.
They are broken down and they're kind of pathetic now.
And they use that as an excuse to say, hey, they were never that good in the first place.
And then what they'll do is they'll bring in a new diverse female replacement who is stronger than them.
Smarter than them, more capable than them, doesn't have any of their weaknesses, and it's like they're trying to say, hey, see this guy that you really liked?
Well, we've got a new and improved version here, so you have to like them even more now.
Of course you do, because that's how human emotions work.
No, it's not.
People don't think that way.
And so, the more you try and slot these, like, fake pod people replacements in to, like, supplement these classic characters that we loved, the more people reject it.
And that's why Indiana Jones is fucking tanking at the box office.
This movie cost $300 million to make.
It needs to make, like, $900 million just to break even.
It ain't gonna get to $500 million.
No way!
There's a really funny line, this line from Seinfeld reminds me of you.
There's an episode of Seinfeld where he's dentist converts the Judaism Seinfeld offers so that it affords him to make Jewish jokes.
And Seinfeld's rabbi says to Seinfeld, does this offend you as a Jew?
And he says are more real to you Luke Skywalker's more real than like maybe your teacher or people that you know these are people that you know and that you're they've been vessels for your own personal development and your own understanding of your own darkness and your own aspirations and to see those things commodified when perhaps they don't even care about identity issues anyway it's um insulting maybe is that a good way of describing it?
Yes and it's uh I best described it as like a lot of these franchises are are things that have been created by geniuses and inherited by morons and that's the problem because they don't have the this creative skill to be able to make stuff like this by themselves like if you want to you want to make a shit movie with shit characters like oh fine I don't care like you're maybe you're just not very good at this stuff I'm not going to get offended by it though but if you want to cannibalize These existing characters that were made by someone way more intelligent and way more creative than you and humiliate them and try to use them to launch the shit things that you've made, that's when I've got a problem because you are exploiting someone else's work.
You are raping someone else's creativity.
That's what you're doing, but you're not adding anything productive to it.
You're creating something worse to try and replace it.
That as a writer, as a storyteller, that really offends me because I hate to see other people's work get taken advantage of.
Yeah, nice one, mate.
We've got some good questions.
This is some stuff from our community.
Donny Jep, question for the drinker.
Do you think there'll be a time in the future when Hollywood is making great movies again?
Or do you think that that time has passed and something else like gaming will take its place?
I think we're going to see a lot of gaming adaptations.
The Last of Us was a real benchmark for that.
I think we're going to see a lot more movie or TV show adaptations of video games because it's a massive, massive market.
But I think also the time of this mega blockbuster that cost $300 million is coming to an end.
And I think we're going to see a lot more smaller things that they take more risks on.
And yeah, they're going to have to start making better stuff.
Otherwise, they will just go bankrupt.
Yeah, that's interesting because that's almost like decentralised, localised movie audiences, the same way that everything is perhaps becoming federalised in that way.
This is from Barry John Fox.
Alright Critical Drinker, what are your top five films and have you seen all of David Lynch's films?
I have not seen all of David Lynch's films, no, but he does some good stuff, but like, yeah, he goes down some disturbing roads with his things.
Top five films, it's definitely not going to be done in terms of artistic merit or anything, but probably Terminator 2, Big Trouble in Little China, I think probably The Menu.
I really love that.
Uh, probably Nightcrawler, and yeah, I'm not sure what my last one would be.
I'll come back to that one in a minute.
The menu, the recent movie, the menu.
Yeah.
I ain't seen that.
It's really good.
Really interesting.
It's a very good critique of how we understand art.
Are you gonna do a video on My Arthur remake?
My Arthur?
My Arthur!
My Arthur!
When I remade the film offer now, maybe not offer what about game today?
I want to see a video by you on game to the Greek or Sarah Marshall and the last thing the last thing I want to see is alpha maybe I don't even want to see the my Like, when you were saying that stuff about reboots, I was thinking, oh man.
Like, because I love Dudley Moore.
I loved ARFA, the original film.
And I see, actually, in a way, that I've got an inside scoop on how that stuff happens.
Like, you know, I've done a few successful movies in Hollywood.
They recognize that there's a window for me, a moment for me.
Like, they've got the rights to ARFA.
cheap to do it then they say you know what I found out afterwards is that they were going
to make before Dudley Moore done ARFA they were going to make it with Belushi with John
Belushi like and I thought like after when it was too late when they you know when the
damage been done I found I was like oh that's the version of ARFA you want to do is a 18
or R registered version.
Like that's almost, you can see another take on that, but they, because it's economically motivated, they want it to be PG.
It gets softened to the point where you can't even show him drink driving, you know, like how can you, you know, and at the time I'm thinking this ain't gonna work.
And also, someone should have told me, don't do that voice.
Those two things could have saved us all a lot of time and trouble.
I'm not going to push you to make videos on films that I've done.
That's mental.
I can't even believe I brought it up.
I'm crazy.
Vulcan Liv says, Critical Drinker, I'm more excited about this than Dorsey, Tucker, or RFK.
And then TNBaseGirl says, his eyes look blue to me, but Russell said brown.
Oh, maybe they are blue.
Yeah.
Yeah, they are.
Hold on.
Oh, you've got the eyes of a husky.
Pure killer!
Oh, but this from Thomas Beard.
Getting to the Greek is like fine wine.
It gets better with age.
What film that I've been in or done are you willing to be nice about?
It might be Getting to the Greek, actually.
It got a chocolate out of me back in the day.
So, yeah, it's been a good long time since I've seen it, but I do remember quite enjoying it.
Well, you better watch it again.
Come on, mate.
Let's try and build a relationship here.
Instant Drinker recommends!
Um, okay, so what do you think about stuff like, um, the re-editing of the Roald Dahl books and the sort of conversation around, like, life of Brian and change and stuff like that?
Where do you stand on that, mate?
It makes me fucking sick.
I hate this idea of, uh, we need to, like, soften and we need to start altering these movies from the past without the permission of the people who made them, uh, just to make them more palatable to modern audiences, because God forbid someone might get offended by them somewhere.
Uh, no, leave them the fuck alone.
As far as I'm concerned, yeah, these are works of art.
They should be left alone as they were intended to be shown.
Yeah both with like in the case of Roald Dahl and in the case like because I know that people well Roald Dahl has in interviews outside of his fiction said some like overtly anti-semitic stuff like he's said some mad shit but like I mean but like within the work he doesn't say that in like Matilda or like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory like that like and again it's what people like Do you know why that happened?
I think Netflix did a deal and bought the Roald Dahl estate.
Netflix was like, oh shit, we live in this sort of territory where those things are monetized and mobilized, i.e.
issues around identity.
Let's push for the Roald Dahl estate to reissue those books with edits and stuff and I feel like I even like you know when I'm
I would never use the n-word I would never make a racist joke I like I'm against racism I'm
against hatred uh but like I feel like you know like Enid Blighton books and in a sense these are
artifacts of their time it's interesting because this cannibalism we talked about earlier like that
they have to use IP in order to keep their economic models going is in a sense what the culture
is doing anyway.
It's what the whole culture is pulling itself apart.
It's pulling itself apart without recognizing actually what you're gonna have to do if you continue down this line is you're gonna have to have a Totally different set of principles almost around everything.
You can't, you know, like the royal family, our whole class structure, everything is predicated on colonialism, imperialism.
You'd like, in a sense, you, as Kehinde Andrews, who's a sort of a professor of black studies that I've spoken to, is that once you start this conversation, you cannot have Great Britain.
Like, it's gone.
So it's like, you've got to work out where this, you know, what the deal is, you know?
I mean, I'm not a big fan of trying to erase history or trying to alter it to make it more palatable to people.
'Cause it's like you're trying to pretend that things, like mistakes that were made in the past
didn't actually exist.
And so it's like, you can't, there's like the good and the bad that comes with it.
And I think you should just be honest about this stuff.
And it filters through to movies and things like that.
Like you can look at movies that were made like "Gone with the Wind" or whatever
back in the 30s and 40s.
Yeah, they don't align with our current standards or our current like cultural zeitgeist,
but they're not meant to because they were made in a very different time,
but we respect the time in which they were made.
And we can look back on them now and say, well, yeah, okay, that's changed since then,
but it deserves to be shown because it's an artifact from when it was made.
Mate, thank you so much.
You're quite right.
It's pretty plain that all of your work comes from a place of genuine love of cinema and storytelling and, as you say, the currency of authenticity.
Thanks so much, Will, for joining us on the show.
I really hope we get to do some more stuff.
I'd love to come on your show if you'll have me.
Thank you so much for making time for us.
Absolutely.
Thank you, man.
It's been a pleasure.
Stay free with Russell Brand.
See you first on Rumble.
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