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Dec. 20, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
32:09
20241220_netflixs-polo-flops-disney-backtracks-hollywood-in
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Harry and Megan's Netflix Show 00:01:49
Harry and Megan, longtime friends of Uncensored, released their latest show on Netflix.
Do you not feel like the world's just got rather bored with them?
We're all kind of like, well, who cares what you got to say or do?
How many celebrities actually sell tickets to movies maybe outside of Tom Cruise?
There's nobody.
When the star of your latest movie insults and belittles 50% of their potential audience, it is box office cancer.
You know they kind of change Bond by one.
A steely-eyed dealer of shagging debt.
There are just this universe of man-children that are obsessed about every little thing that does not look like them.
You watch a TV ad here in Britain, you don't see like a straight white couple anywhere.
It's always a mixed race couple, for example.
Or it's always sort of, you know, a black woman and a ginger master.
And it's just like, where did you find this?
Superman is that important.
The only genre that they feel like they can rely on and it's fading is the superhero genre.
At their best, celebrities are the beautiful people who dazzle us with their talents for the purposes of escapism and entertainment.
At their worst, they are gas bags who pontificate from positions of great privilege.
This month, Harry and Megan, longtime friends of Uncensored, released their latest show on Netflix.
It was billed as a rousing docuseries, an unprecedented look into the world of elite polo.
Imagine going on a horse at 35 miles an hour with someone coming at you at full speed.
Yeah, China goes through your body.
It's addicting.
Polo is not just a sport.
Polo is a lifestyle.
We eat, we breathe, we sleep.
Polo.
For sure, it's glamorous.
It's a sexy sport, too.
Dirty, sweaty boys, riding.
Polo Lifestyle and Celebrity Privacy 00:15:31
Well, the show currently has an historically dire score of 27% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Times newspaper concluded that Prince Harry has made a show only he would watch.
And while the Sussexes may be an extreme example, they're not the only Hollywood elitists to face a repudiation in 2024.
The Harris campaign, for example, hit the U.S. with a tidal wave of celebrities after George Clooney played a starring role in ousting the sitting president.
We know how that worked out.
And there's increasing evidence that Hollywood executives are beginning to realize alienating half your audience, using entertainment as a vessel for their fringe worldview, is bad for business and very bloody boring.
So it is Hollywood Waking Up.
Joining me to review the year in culture.
I look forward to the next.
YouTuber and social commentator Gary Bucher, better known as Nerdrodic, Will Jordan, aka the Critical Drinker, uncensored contributor Esther Kraku, and the author of The Case for Cancelled Culture, Ernest Owens.
Well, welcome to all of you.
We're going to try and keep things merry, Christmassy, happy.
So let's start with you, Ernest.
Because you're always a bastion of happiness.
The Megan and Harry polo fiasco, coupled with their Christmas card, let's take a look at their Christmas card or their holiday season card, which was basically just about them.
And it sort of sends a message to the world.
We are still important.
We're relevant.
Look at us.
Look at all the good things we're doing.
When the world, it seems to me, Ernest, and you know, I'd be honest here, but do you not feel like the world's just got rather bored with them?
And that's the worst thing that could happen to them, where nothing they're doing is really making any more impact.
But once they stop trashing the royal family, we're all kind of like, well, who cares what you got to say or do?
Am I being unfair?
I mean, I think that the context in which you're making this assessment is a little unfair.
But I do think that to a certain extent, I think people are over them naturally.
I think that that wave is coming going.
I think Americans and the world has short attention spans.
And there's been other celebrities that have definitely drawn people's attention.
Think it's weird because in some sense they've demanded privacy and they kind of want privacy but at the same time they want us to buy their products, consume their content and engage with them on their own.
And I think that is a struggle because I think, with celebrity culture and the way that people want it, they want people that they can be all up in their business but at the same time get what they're selling, and I think that they're trying to do it both ways and it's not working there and I think that's why people got kind of moved on.
All right Nedrotic um, you've spared us all the hell of having to watch this polo thing.
Newsweek called it a pompous portrayal of privilege Telegraph, a tedious inside.
Look at posh polo, THE Times, as I say, Prince Harry's on his show.
Only he would watch.
Uh, it's obviously doing very badly as well.
How bad is it?
Um, i'm finding out right now that this was serious and earnest attempt to be a documentary, when I thought it was best in show, and the only difference is you can kind of see that the crew or the actors in it are kind of in on the joke and not in on the joke it was.
I got through.
Uh, the first episode unintentionally hilarious.
Uh, really really bad.
But for for um, Harry and Megan, I do believe that when somebody, when a South PARK episode is made about you, that should be a wake-up call as far as like your influence, particularly in this country, that doesn't even like our own celebrities anymore, thank god yeah, I mean Esther.
I want to show if we've got the card.
Have we got the holiday season card there?
Um, let's just take a look at this.
I mean it is utterly grotesque.
I mean this sort of self-aggrandizing, look at us, we're doing such wonderful charitable works for kids obviously, who they always want to try and protect their privacy, except when they're putting them on their christmas cards and so on.
Um, what does this say about them?
Well it's, it's quite pathetic because they're trying to appeal to an ever dwindling fan base.
So you have to think which other people have their own christmas cards where they've used curated images of themselves and the backs of their children, for example, which is kind of a tug-in-cheek way of like saying, look at us, but don't really look at us.
And and you're thinking, who is the fan base now?
Are they so disconnected from reality that they don't understand?
You know where they're, where they stand.
I mean, on the sort of polo series in the defense.
It's really difficult to make polo interesting.
It's a bunch of rich people on horses smacking the ball.
Well, in a way, it is them, isn't it?
It's a bunch of entitled rich, privileged people with no concept of the real world, running around on very expensive horses, whacking balls around and uh, and kind of to the most of the world irrelevant, which is kind of where they found themselves.
Yeah unintentionally, which is, which is, which is the funny thing, because these are the same people that were so convinced that, once they leave, you know the royal family they've now been.
They've walked into these massive contracts with Netflix and Spotify and i'm telling you now, this is one of the biggest financial regrets by Netflix, because they've got nothing out of that couple.
It's it's, it's incredible.
How could you find a more boring couple to throw this more, this money at?
Um, but now they're realizing actually, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
Uh, Megan is selling jam.
I mean, she left the royal family to sell jam.
Well yeah, I mean, critical drinker.
We've got the Megan cooking show coming apparently, and then this ridiculous ranger stuff coming out of her kitchen with jams and so on.
Uh, I just can't see any of this working.
I think the problem they have is their Real interest to the world was when they were being vile about their family, who happened to be very famous royals.
And the problem for them in the royal firmament is they're so down the food chain that actually a lot of A-list stars who want the king, the queen, the prince and princess of Wales to turn up at their events, their big premieres and so on, they don't want to be anywhere near the toxic duo in Montecito because they don't want to piss off the main event royals and stop them coming to support their stuff.
Yeah, 100%.
And I think, wow, Netflix must be really regretting that $100 million deal that they did with them because so far they produced one documentary where they complain about how hard their lives are from their multi-million dollar mansion and a documentary about Polo, which was possibly one of the most boring, pretentious and ridiculous things I've seen in months.
So yeah, it's not been a great investment for them.
And I think the wider fan base, the wider public has come to the conclusion that these people really don't have much to offer beyond their royal titles, which are kind of defunct at this point anyway.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's turn.
I'll start with you, Nedralic, on this.
The general theme of celebrities full stop, which is my sense that the power of being a celebrity outside of your own sphere of excellence has been massively eroded this year, culminating in the election where massive star after massive star rolled in behind Carmela Harris and nobody cared.
And you saw George Clooney try to play Kingmaker and Queen Maker and nobody cared.
Is it the final wake-up call we've been warning about?
Has it finally come, do you think?
Yeah, I think it's an awakening for the celebrities that they haven't been relevant for a very long time.
We've talked, God, ad infinitum about the death of the celebrity.
How many celebrities actually put butts in seats now?
How many celebrities actually sell tickets to movies, maybe outside of Tom Cruise?
There's nobody.
George Clooney is not a movie star.
They don't have influence.
As a matter of fact, I think more people are just aware that they are adult pretenders who get paid a lot of money, should be a lot more grateful that they get to read other people's lines for a living and then go home to a mansion instead of constantly complaining about our country and demonizing half the country.
And that just kind of propelled their descent more.
I don't know if you could propel a descent, but I just made it up.
What the hell?
So they dug their own hole.
They've made it much worse.
And now they're licking their wounds outside of apologizing, which they will never do.
You don't come back from this because you've lost so many clients, so many potential customers, so many potential audience members who just quietly walked away forever and aren't going to say anything about it.
They just don't care.
That's what Hollywood is facing now.
Yeah.
I mean, Ernest, you know, you look at someone like Taylor Swift.
She grossed $2 billion from her tour, the most successful tour in the history of music by a country mile.
The movie of the tour did nearly $300 million.
The merchandise, apparently she was selling like an average of $200 per person and 10 million people went to the shows, right?
I mean, an unbelievable money-making machine.
And yet when she unleashed all that firepower into the world of politics and backed Carmela Harris, nobody cared, right?
It didn't move the needle one inch.
And that says to me two things.
One, you can still be a massive star if you know what you're doing.
She's used to the proof.
She's bigger than Michael Jackson, bigger than Madonna, bigger than all of them, right?
Well, she is.
Well, no, I know.
You may not like it, but on pure stats alone, a music manager told me she's on a different level now to anybody in the history of entertainment.
There is no money machine like Taylor Swift.
It's incredible.
But Ernest, my point being, I think the political influence of all these stars has gone.
Nobody cares because actually Trump's a bigger star than all of them.
Elon Musk is a bigger star than all of them.
And they just didn't need regular celebrities.
In fact, the public were turned off by it.
So I think what's here is that it's about what they do and who they are, right?
They're billionaires.
You said, I mean, in many ways, Donald Trump was a celebrity before he was a politician, and he's more of a celebrity than a politician in some ways.
But what I will argue, though, is that I think this is a time we're in right now.
I think that the way that the economy is set up, there's a lot of class anxiety.
There's a lot of people who are pretty much focused on their own lives.
And I think celebrities, they look at them as entertainment.
And when they're entertaining, they do well.
Another actor that I think that gets butts to seats that you was mentioned, that you was talking about Tom Cruise, but I'm thinking about The Rock.
But if you notice with people like The Rock and some of those celebrities, they typically go apolitical.
They're not super political.
They focus on the thing that they do.
And I think to a certain extent, it's just that media, I do have to say that I do, to some extent, fault media, that you all keep making celebrity coach, like media as an overall make celebrity coach a little bit more.
They inflate them a little bit more.
Like I feel like, okay, the royal family were specifically, you know, Megan and Harry, we hear a lot about them because of what the British tabloids and what the media keep shoving down our throats.
Honestly, we wouldn't even care as much or even know that some of this stuff was going on if there was an obsession with covering their rise, their fall in between.
It's almost like if they're not important, then why do they get this cover?
Well, actually, you know what?
The truth is that they're not getting the front page treatment they used to get here.
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares.
Let me bring in Critical Drinker.
I mean, the epitome of getting it wrong in this space, I think, has been Rachel Ziegler, who's taken it upon herself to be the kind of high priestess of morals in Hollywood.
And in a way that we've seen so many stars go very quiet about Trump since the scale of his wing, she's gone a bit quiet too.
And I suspect it's because Disney has gone, will you shut up?
Because everything you say is damaging to our movies.
Because actually, you know what?
A lot of Republicans go and watch our films and always have done.
And we don't need you gobbing off about all your woke nonsense.
Well, I think if you look at it, what does Disney stand for?
What did they used to stand for?
They used to stand for family entertainment.
And family is something traditional.
It's what you, you know, Republicans have families just like the Democrats do.
And so they go to see Disney movies.
That is 50% of their audience right there.
And so, yeah, when the star of your latest movie not only disparages the original movie that it was based on, which was the film which created Disney as an animation studio, but also insults and belittles 50% of their potential audience, it is box office cancer.
And it's going to be fascinating when this movie actually comes out because, man, she is poisonous.
It's also very arrogant, actually.
I don't know if you remember many of these sort of female actresses that came up with these coming of age films back in the 1990s and early 2000s.
You never really knew their political views, mainly because they were just starting out.
And they knew, they didn't have to be told that they knew that alienating part of the audience would have been a bad idea.
I didn't remember Anne Hathaway getting political at all until like a few years ago.
And she started Princess Diaries, which is probably one of the biggest princess films of the early 2000s.
It's an arrogance of this modern generation that think they're untouchable, that think they can have a huge issue.
And also you're following in this case.
Right, but you're seeing a real sign of it, Esther, with this decision by Disney with this upcoming Pixar series, Win or Lose.
They've actually removed a storyline based on a transgender character.
And they said in a statement to Hollywood Reporter, when it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.
That's a really significant moment in this whole thing.
Disney's realized if they're going to keep shoving down very hot button issues like the trans debate down young, impressionable minds in their movies, parents are not going to have it.
They're just not going to have it.
Not because they're transphobic.
They just don't want their young, impressionable kids to have all this confusing messaging in cartoons.
Especially because they'll probably never meet a trans person either.
This is the thing.
It's talked about so normally as if like every other person in society is trans when it's actually a very, very, very small minority.
And I don't understand why they choose to do this.
There are no more coming of age films.
There are no more things talking about what young people are worried about, like boys and grades and going to certain universities or being popular or whatever.
It's all about your gender identity as a 15-year-old.
Like who cares?
Yeah, I think a lot of this stuff's changing.
Nadrotti, let's talk about no female James Bond.
Another positive moment here, because there was a growing little movement that was annoying me of, hey, why don't we have, why don't we have a female James Bond?
That would be cool.
Well, the Quantum of Solis star, Gemma Arterton, says a female James Bond would be too outrageous.
Isn't a female James Bond like Mary Poppins being played by a man?
She said, sometimes you just have to respect the tradition.
Hallelujah.
Gemma Artison, thank you for just stating the bleeding obvious.
I don't want a male Mary Poppins.
Why would anybody want a male Mary Poppins?
But I definitely don't want a female James Bond.
In fact, as we rein back about all this woke crap, you know the kind of James Bond I want?
I want a chest beating, shagging, seducing, hard-drinking, smoking assassin, a steely-eyed dealer of shagging death.
And you know why I want that?
Because why not?
That's what James Bond is.
I'll just describe the prostitution.
And by the way, women want him to be that.
Men want him to be that.
I'll just describe what?
A prostitute?
No.
No, he's not.
He's not.
But he's always been a man who, the last bonds, the last two that Daniel Craig did, he started crying.
He wasn't allowed to touch women.
He was like, what is going on here?
He's James Bond.
He's not a real person.
He's a character, fictitious character.
He's a steely-eyed assassin.
So Nadrotti, my point is, why can't we just go back to the good old days of a good old proper Bond?
Well, because a couple of years ago, if she had said that, or if I had said something as obvious as James Bond is a white, straight British dude, that would be considered an act of rebellion.
The Problem with James Bond 00:07:04
And I would probably be canceled and swarmed on Twitter by bots.
And now we can just come out and say we need to be able to come out and just say something as really as obvious as that.
Yeah.
James Bond's a dude.
The doctor from Doctor Who is a dude.
We saw that experiment completely fail.
The same thing would have happened with James Bond.
Nobody wants to see this stuff.
Nobody's ever wanted to see this stuff.
Nobody's ever wanted to see all these massive gender or race swaps that were completely unnecessary and solely just there to check a box.
They didn't progress like that.
Ernest, Ernest, when you say everyone, we may have a little eye roll from Ernest.
I mean, Ernest, are you seriously going to tell us you think we should have a female James Bond to go with an emasculated James Bond?
Honestly, I don't care.
I think it's interesting.
I find it fascinating that there are just this universe of man children that are obsessed about every little thing that does not look like them.
Like, oh my God, it's the end of the world.
These are first world problems, ladies and gentlemen.
These are first world problems.
Like, who cares?
I think most people are really irritated because I care.
Ernest, I care.
I care.
You care.
You do care, right?
But these are such man-child concerns.
Why?
Like, you're so, like, are you buying?
So I have to listen.
I have to listen.
There's been a real movement.
Ernest, hang on.
There's been a real movement recently.
Only gay men can play gay roles is the new thing, right?
Which even Rupert Everett said was nothing.
Hang on, let me finish.
Let me finish, Ernest.
Ernest, stop talking before I meet you.
Only gay, only gay people could play gay roles.
Only trans people can play trans roles.
We saw what happened to Eddie Redmain when he got hammered for playing a trans role, et cetera, et cetera.
Scarlett Hanson, I think, pulled out of a trans role because of all the furori over her being straight, being a straight woman and all this stuff.
Twitch, I say, okay, fine.
You want to play that role?
You want to be that hard about it.
Then I'm afraid James Bond can only be played by a white heterosexual man.
Someone like me.
It's the only option.
I mean, that's fair, right, Ernest?
I mean, can I talk?
I mean, I mean, you're okay.
I'm just saying, because it's like, you know, you're, it's the irony of this conversation is that when anybody of voice and difference shows any deflection or different ideas about things, the man children of the internet goes crazy if there's a slight difference, right?
And I think that's the reality here is it's like you think making James Bond a woman is a slight difference.
Slight difference.
Let me say, just got teeth.
Can I actually talk?
To answer your question, Piers, right?
The overall problem here is that there is a lack of representation.
Like there's like, there's several black people in different communities that felt like they weren't represented in different films.
And we can agree or disagree that maybe they should not necessarily replace traditional white, straight male characters.
Fine.
Okay.
We can, we can, we can have those takes.
But the issue here is...
Or female.
All female, like Mary Poppins.
Right.
For one group, everybody, you have so much opportunity and access to create so many different films.
So, okay, if you don't like this James Bond, you can create another one, but there's no other options for certain other characters in Rose and Hollywood.
We're starting to see a diversity.
And I want to say the past 10 years where we've seen this increase and any slight change of difference, it seems to be him.
I don't agree.
I don't agree.
Honestly, there are so many.
There's more options now than any time in the past.
There's 600 shows this year.
600 shows.
There's plenty of representation.
There's a lot of overrepresentation going on in Hollywood right now.
And why do we oh, yeah.
Oh, actually, no, he's right.
No, seriously.
If you watch, if you watch, if you watch the TV.
Hang on.
Okay, don't talk at once.
Nendronic first.
Finish that point and then come to Esther.
So if we go to the 4% gay population in America, 4% or 5%, something like that, where it's really at, it's not 30 Gen Z. What's the representation in Hollywood?
Do you think gays are underrepresented in Hollywood?
I don't think so.
I don't think there's any chance of that.
That's never been the case, by the way.
And that's just one example.
What we're talking about, why do I think it's interesting that the person who wrote the case for cancel culture is going, why do you care about something?
Why do you care?
I find that curious.
It is truly ironic.
Because it's culture telling us two plus two equals five when you're doing when you're trying to race swap and gender swap James Bond.
It's not everything we care about.
It's James Effing Bond.
It's one character, which sounds like activists, something, it's something the activists want to take away, which is something that's going to be a long time.
Yeah, and Esther, it would be like if I...
Hang on, Ernest.
Esther, it would be like me suddenly saying, okay, you know what?
For the sequel of Black Panther, I wanted to be a white guy.
Well, yeah, and you know, that's what I was thinking.
Can you imagine what Ernest would say if I suggested that?
Well, the point is it always moves in one direction.
They're not trying to replace characters of ethnic minorities.
They're always trying to replace the white, usually male characters.
There's a reason why I didn't play Memoirs of a Geisha because I'm not Japanese, right?
And if I did, everyone would have lost their minds because they're like, why are you having this black girl play a memoir of a geisha?
But somehow, you know, we can make James Bond Janet Bond, which is crazy.
And on the point that there's no overrepresentation, you watch a TV ad here in Britain and you think you're in Brazil.
I mean, you don't see like a straight white couple anywhere.
It's always a mixed race couple, for example, or it's always a sort of, you know, a black woman in a ginger matter.
And it's just like, where did you find this?
Yeah.
Let me ask Critical Drinker about Madonna and the Pope.
Because this alarming picture came out of Madonna next to an AI generated photograph of Pope Francis basically groping her.
Now, as a Catholic, I found this obviously offensive, obviously completely inappropriate, but also the most pathetic example, even by her standards, of wanton attention seeking.
Is it time Madonna was just put out to pasture, do you think?
I legit do not know what to do with these pictures.
I mean, she literally is.
Yeah, I mean, Madonna is quite a unique case, I suppose.
Whenever I've seen pictures of her recently, she looks unrecognizable.
I guess you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.
And it seems like she's gone down that road now.
And yeah, I think she's largely irrelevant at this point anyway.
So who even cares what she does?
Yeah.
I mean, Esther, it just was incredibly embarrassing, I thought.
Imagine doing that.
You create your own picture of the Pope, the leader of one of the great faiths of the world, who's, I think, in his 80s now.
And you want him groping you because it's shocking and it'll get everyone talking about it, which, of course, we are.
But I found it pathetic.
Well, clearly nothing is sacred to her or Hollywood, this industry that she operates in.
But it's so sad someone who's as iconic as Madonna feels the need to do this.
I mean, barring her plastic surgery and the things she's done to her face, she looks like a loaf of bread quite a bit.
She was great in the 80s.
Hollywood's Fading Superhero Genre 00:07:16
Well, yeah, exactly.
But the thing is, ever since it's been a long, slow, cringe-making descent into embarrassing.
We're not going to do the early 2000s.
They were great.
Early 2000s.
Well, yeah, early 2000s.
All right.
So you agree, Ernest, that she's been washed up for 25 years.
I'm not going to say washed up.
What are you going to say?
Embarrassing?
Listen, she's been in the game for a long time.
A lot of pop stars decline to a certain degree, like relevance.
But they don't all do what she's now doing.
This kind of pathetic, narcissistic attention seeking.
We've been doing this for years, though.
Why are we doing that?
Yeah, but it's just someone like Mariah Carey needs to pick up the phone and call her and be like, listen, legends are on the same par.
We need to maintain some dignity.
You've probably never seen Mariah Carey doing this.
Come on now.
Of course not.
All right.
Let me ask Nadrotic.
Can Superman save Hollywood?
Is the cavalry coming?
Is the cavalry coming?
That's the question.
I think it is that important of a movie because right now, Hollywood, the only genre that they feel like they can rely on and it's fading is the superhero genre.
And they've come out and said it.
And their excuse was, well, we have to keep making superhero movies because there's nothing else out there.
And we got to wait for another genre to come along, which is really great and innovative to wait for something to come along.
But Superman is that important.
Fantastic Four is coming out within a couple of weeks.
That's a pretty important film for Marvel, but Superman's way more important.
I tweeted about it or posted whatever the hell you call it now.
But I said, you know, I think it's fitting that the fate of the superhero film is on the shoulders of Superman because it is.
No pressure at all, James Gunn, to make what has to be a billion dollar, what we know of the budget.
It's over $300 million.
It has to be a billion dollar movie to make money and to save the superhero film and see if superhero fatigue is real or not.
Critical Drinker, are we going to see a slightly maggot Superman?
Is he going to be, you know, a bit of a broligarchy role model?
Chester.
I do think so, but what I want to see is a Superman that embodies hope and optimism and the human spirit.
And gosh, even a little bit of that old-fashioned truth, justice and the American way.
Yeah.
You know, I think we're overdue that.
I'm so sick of the bleak, hopeless, nihilistic kind of outlook that we had with the Zack Snyder universe and to some extent Hollywood in general, this idea that patriotism and optimism and stuff is a thing of the past.
Superman, above any other character as a superhero, embodies all of those things.
And if James Gunn can get that right, he will have a billion dollar movie on his hands.
Esther, I was watching Top Gun Maverick for about the 20th time last night.
And honestly, I just thought that's how you make a movie, right?
You just want people punching the air.
The good guys win.
The bad guys lose.
There's a bit of hot romance.
There's a bit of, you know, bromance.
There's a bit of everything going on.
And in the end, it's fantastically made.
It's all big budget.
There's a lot of action, incredibly enjoyable, not too long.
But ultimately, as Critical Drinker said, it's uplifting.
Makes you feel good as you come out, right?
You literally want to punch the air.
And that's my problem with so many Hollywood movies really.
They've made me miserable.
And, you know, you come out, you just feel worse than when you went in.
Who wants to go to the movies for that?
Should be escapism.
Uplifting.
Make us feel good.
Make our souls sing, Esther.
Well, I'm a bit sad that the fate of Hollywood basically depends on Superman because, you know, people used to go to the cinema for more than just like films of the boom, boom, kaboom variety.
They used to go to films about people's lives and things that they found interesting.
Entertainment, comedy, the American Pies, for example, are dead.
Meme Girls Would Never Be Made Today.
You know, forget coming of age films.
We used to go to the cinema for a lot more than just exploding cars and hot sexy women, which I have no problem with.
Actually, I'm quite fond of.
But I think it's...
That's why you're always welcome when I'm censored, Esther.
No, but I think a generation of filmgoers and people that used to love cinema have been lost.
I don't think, I mean, Superman is a great start, of course, because it just shows that Hollywood is kind of getting its act together.
But I think it's more about telling real stories, things that people care about.
I mean, I watched a Netflix film and it's really burnt into my retina.
The first like 15 minutes, there was like an LGBT flag literally on top of the girl's house, like on the roof.
And I'm like, this is completely irrelevant to the plot.
If that was the plot of the film, that would be fine.
It had nothing to do with the plot.
And yet it was just there for the first 15 minutes of the film.
And I just think, when is Hollywood going to get it?
I used to love going to the cinema and watching films.
Yeah.
Roll varieties.
But now I'm just thinking, if it's going to take Superman to save it, I think we're a bit too far gone.
Actually, I don't mind Superman saving it.
Ernest, what are you looking forward to in 2025?
Any cultural high point for you?
Well, I am looking forward to potentially coming to visit the UK.
Oh, my God.
Oh, yes.
Really?
Yes.
I'm going to most likely participate in an Oxon Oxford union debate.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Well, when you come, come on on Sensit on the set here.
I would like to come to the live studio and see you in person.
That would be great.
Why not?
Well, that's a major event.
Yeah, it's going to be in the spring.
Okay.
All right.
What about Conan O'Brien hosting the Oscars?
How do we feel about that?
It's better than Jimmy Kimmel.
Jimmy Kimmel's terrible, the worst host in history.
I really like their idea of trying to get Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds to do it.
That would have been fun.
Yeah.
As far as the old washed up late night talk show hoax host, Ferguson and O'Brien are my favorite.
I think they still stand tall.
Everybody else sucks.
So I think it might be okay.
Yeah.
Critical Drinker, what are you excited by in 2025?
What's coming that's going to get your juices flying?
I'm quite keen to see Nosferatu, that Robert Eggers horror movie.
Like he's never let us down in terms of what he's put out so far.
So I'm hoping this is really going to cement his reputation in Hollywood.
He makes interesting movies.
So that's probably my big one.
Esther?
I'm very much looking forward to Snow White.
I know I like to be popular.
Let's watch the trailer.
You mentioned it.
That's what they said with the trailer to Snow White.
This was my father's kingdom.
A place of fairness.
Let the queen change everything.
Take him away, Your Majesty.
Hello?
Is there anybody here?
The fairest of the men.
Somebody commented on YouTube about that trailer.
If I saw this movie on a plane, I would still walk out.
It'll be interesting how it does.
I mean, look, Disney have actually, I mean, despite all their problems, Disney have also had some phenomenally successful films in the last year.
There's no doubt about that.
Walking Out on Deadpool 00:00:27
Inside Out 2 and so on.
I mean, you know, Deadpool v. Wolverine, they've had some big hits amid some of the less successful stuff.
And they're going to chuck the kitchen sink at this.
But if it fails, I would say it's because Rachel Ziegler just went way too woke.
And actually, what the Trump winner's shown the world is that the woke world is kind of yesterday's news, even for you, Ernest.
But thank you to my panel.
Great to have you all and Merry Christmas.
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