Thomas and Lydia dissect Fox News' contradictory labeling of Project Hail Mary as anti-woke despite its climate themes, female lead, and diverse cast. They expose how commentators like Christian Toto and Ross Douthat misuse terms like "virtue signaling" while ignoring box office successes of films such as Barbie and Wicked for Good. Analyzing Andy Weir's claim of political neutrality against the film's inherent environmental messaging, they conclude that the debate is nonsensical, revealing the inconsistent application of "woke" rhetoric to challenge conservative narratives about Hollywood. [Automatically generated summary]
What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming?
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic can sound.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke.
I'm Thomas.
That over there's Lydia.
How you doing?
Hello.
You know, I'm excited about this one.
So I'm doing well.
How are you?
I'm excited too because it's been, God, how long have we been doing this show now?
Are we almost at like two years?
Three years?
Wow.
Well, I'm excited because after all that time, we're finally going to know less about what the word woke means.
It's been this long and we've still never gotten a definition that makes any sense.
And I'm excited to be even more confused about what the word is supposed to mean.
Uh-huh.
You will be.
Yeah.
Today, we're going to talk about how, well, you, you saw Project Hail Mary.
I saw Project Hail Mary.
We actually saw it together.
Yeah, I don't know why I presented it that way, but that's what I did.
And we're going to go with it.
But we saw that movie and enjoyed it.
And for whatever reason, Fox News put out this article saying that this is the headline.
Project Hail Mary wins rave reviews as anti-woke Hollywood blockbuster.
And you and I were both like, what?
We both went and watched it.
Great movie.
Enjoyed it.
I have an SIO coming out about some of the science of it soon.
So look out for that.
But we watched it and then you see that headline.
You're like, did I miss something?
Was there like an anti-you know, was there like anti-trans athletes in there somewhere I missed or something?
Like, what?
That's crazy.
Yeah.
So the article is obviously like super fun.
We're going to talk about it.
We're going to talk about a variety of other conservative commentators, you know, kind of rushing this exact same talking point.
And we're going to have a lot of fun.
It's more than just like some idiot at Fox News who needed like an article to write that day.
It's more than that.
Yes.
I can't wait because the minute I saw that, it was like, okay, I have to know how are they making this case?
Like, what in the world is woke to them?
Like, what does it even mean?
Yeah.
Are we going to find out that the author is like a super Republican guy or something?
Like, what's going to happen?
We'll have to take a break and find out after the break.
So, hey, if you want to not have to hear ads, go to patreon.com slash where there's woke.
You cannot hear ads.
You can get the goodies and support the show, support debunks and finally figuring out what woke is supposed to even mean.
So after this break, we'll find out.
I'm going to start us off by reading through the article, probably just about half of it, because then it takes this like religious turn that I don't think we need to get into today.
Just, you know, about how Ryan Gosling's character is a Christ-like figure.
Project Hail Mary is also in reference to the Virgin Mary.
I don't know.
No, it's a Hail Mary.
Yeah, but they recognize that.
They say, and the Hail Mary is also reminiscent of.
Ah, okay.
Yeah.
But we'll focus on this, this woke angle that they, of course, lead the article with.
I love how you can always, if you're a Christian, you can always say any character is Christ-like.
Like any main character.
And this one is not.
Ryan Gosling Christ Figure00:02:00
Like, there's not even really much spoilers.
he doesn't die at the end.
There's no like, he's just willing to die.
It's weird to have that be what you say.
Actually, he's not willing to die.
That's the other thing.
Yeah.
He's not Christ-like in any way.
They just said he was a blink.
They say about every main character, because usually the main character, there might be some self-sacrifice, but like it's just, he's just a character.
It's not stupid.
Yeah.
All right.
A new science fiction film is drawing praise from audiences who say it delivers something increasingly rare from Hollywood, a crowd-pleasing blockbuster that avoids overt political messaging.
Project Hail Mary, adapted from the novel by Andy Ware, stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, a biologist turned middle school science teacher who is chosen for a space mission to save the planet from an impending disaster.
The film has drawn strong audience and critical reaction, earning a 95% critic score and 96% audience score.
It also led the box office in its opening weekend, earning $80.5 million domestically and $140.9 million worldwide.
That reception has prompted praise from a number of conservative commentators who compared the movie to other crowd-pleasing hits, such as Top Gun Maverick.
Several commentators said the movie's success offers a lesson for Hollywood.
Okay, as always.
Quote, saw this last night.
Fantastic movie.
Zero foul language.
Nothing woke or inappropriate.
Just great humor and tons of suspense.
MRC TV managing editor Brittany Husso, who knows nobody, wrote on X, adding, Hollywood, take note.
Joel Berry, managing editor of The Babylon Bee, called the film a quote fun movie that is great, quote, to watch with the family.
I hope they make more like this.
Journalist Megan Basham echoed that sentiment.
Quote, so clearly Project Hail Mary, which is being roundly applauded for old school, wholesome entertainment, is going to be a massive hit, just like Maverick, and Hollywood will learn nothing from it.
She added, quote, again, Hollywood can thrive again.
Zero Foul Language Movie00:15:26
It just has to decide as an industry that it cares more about telling good, entertaining stories than in peddling political propaganda.
Yeah, I'm going to skip to the end because we're going to talk about this guy's website we're going to go to, or I'm going to go to, and I'll tell you guys about it.
But entertainment critic Christian Toto, host of the Hollywood in Toto podcast, told Fox News the movie's reception reflects audience hunger for hopeful storytelling.
Quote, there's a reason Project Hail Mary is causing a stir.
The film is brimming with imagination, hope, and humanity.
He says that the film, unlike many of its modern counterparts, avoids virtue signaling or quote, mocking the story's straight white hero.
What?
What are you talking about?
He goes on, it's a fiercely original story that feels all too human.
Yes, the lead actor is a handsome movie star, but his character isn't sure he'll be able to complete his mission.
That's very relatable on several levels.
The film is also- That's not woke.
The film is also clean, wholesome, and attractive to all ages.
Yeah.
No virtue signaling, no.
There's like litter around my film.
Just a little too much clutter.
Nothing but entertainment.
Sadly, in this day and age, those basic qualifiers make it a culture war conversation.
What movie do you have in mind that you're even thinking of?
Yeah, when you and I read this article, we were so confused and we were like, okay, I feel like there's elements of the movie that would actually bother conservatives.
So are they just like blinding themselves to that?
Like, well, I think that's great is I was just doing the exercise as you were reading.
I was thinking, okay, if we wanted to do the opposite, I could write that article right now.
Like the article of fucking woke Hollywood.
Well, first of all, it's about climate change because the sun is, oh, sure, they made it so that the sun's getting, you know, colder or whatever, but like they're just doing the opposite.
So it's about climate change.
And then it's about the world having to get together.
And by the way, who's in charge of the science of this?
A woman.
A woman.
She's in charge.
Of course, they got a woman scientist and DEI.
She's in charge.
I see people of all different races gathered around that table.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They got all the woman and then the multicultural, everybody, different languages they're speaking.
And not enough white people at that table.
And by the way, I'm probably just going to have to.
I'll try to try to not spoil the movie.
But and then they got the main character, the straight white guy who should be our hero.
He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing.
Yeah.
He's a bumbling idiot.
Bumbling idiot.
Yeah.
He's accidentally in space pretty much.
He's clumsy.
And sure, he knows a little bit, but like makes bad jokes.
Yeah, they can't have him just be competent.
Like, you just can't have a competent white guy anymore.
Like, you can't just be like a competent.
Like, you're just not allowed to be a white man and be like competent in the movies anymore.
Also, this is more propaganda against marriage and the family because he does not have a partner.
He doesn't have kids.
Yeah, that woman who DEI to the top of the science thing, she doesn't have family either.
Nobody has a family.
It's very anti-kid.
Yeah, it is.
They're fully against having families.
And then we meet an alien and instead of shooting it like we should, he tries to teamwork with an alien.
Yep.
Come on, fucking woke Hollywood and you're bullshit.
Isn't that crazy?
You know what he is too?
He's an evolutionist.
He's a science teacher.
That's his whole thing.
Yeah.
The science teachers and the DEIs are going to save us.
And they, of course, have to learn to communicate.
And it's not that he's going to teach the alien English as he should, right?
The universal language.
Yeah.
The alien can't even assimilate.
Yeah.
You know, it's crazy.
You could easily go the other way with it, like 100%.
Yeah.
So I go to because you know that that's like a brilliant little paragraph happening at the end of this article here.
And so I had to know more about this guy's website.
It's the Hollywood and Toto website.
I mean, it's brilliant because it's so insane.
It's clean, wholesome, attractive to all ages.
No virtue signaling.
So I go to his website, and the tagline is the right take on entertainment.
Ha ha.
Like, okay, cool.
This is just like a conservative website of gathering entertainment news.
Like, if you don't want to get stuff from like the Hollywood Reporter, because that's too woke, too, I guess, then you can go to this guy's website.
And he has an entire article about lifting up conservative movie critics and like linking to their work too, because you know, he thinks that most movie critics are liberal and the conservatives get hidden.
And what about DEI for conservative beliefs?
Blah, And that's how I found out that I didn't, I don't think I knew this.
Ross Doot Hat.
Sorry, guys, I call him Doot Hat.
That's his name.
He's a film critic for National Review.
Did you know that?
Yeah, that sounds right.
I didn't know that.
That's funny.
Another conservative critic that he lifts up here that I'm just checking folks out and stuff is John Nolte for Breitbart.
And he writes, he's arguably the most outspoken conservative movie critic in the game.
Now, this quote I'm going to read to you from John Nolte is not about Project Hail Mary, but just to kind of get you the idea of, again, what does woke mean?
Because this guy's obviously anti-woke.
And also the kinds of, you know, really well-considered movie reviews you're going to get.
So this is about, oh, this is about the Netflix Woman in the Window with Amy Adams and stuff.
Oh, yeah, I don't know.
So he writes, John Nolte for Breitbart.
What's really sad is how woke Tartary was able to turn this movie, a movie about voyeurism, into something as sexless and sterile as Bible study.
What is happening?
Yeah.
Oh, wait.
That's not fair.
There's sex in the Bible.
How did Hollywood become so broken that a movie about window peeping has zero sex, zero erotica?
A total waste of time and talent.
God.
Yeah.
Sorry, what?
Yeah.
Amy Adams wasn't sexy enough as she was spying on neighbors.
This wasn't Doot Hat, was it?
No, it wasn't Doot Hat.
This is John Nolte for Breitbart.
John Nolte for Breitbart.
Okay, so the reason that that now the woke Hollywood has taken over, now there's not enough.
Now there's not enough sex.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Wow.
We should be.
So complicated.
We should be having more sex in all of this stuff.
He I found this on Reddit where apparently his old muckrack tagline says, I'm a huge supporter of gay rights.
Just look at my folder of lesbian porn.
So this is some creep weirdo.
I don't feel like he speaks for like the Christian conservatives, though.
I mean, well, he's, he is a conservative critic that is being touted by Hollywood and Toto, which was cited as saying that Project Hail Mary, you know, is a triumph for anti-woke because there's no virtue signaling, no lectures.
It's clean, wholesome, and attractive to all ages.
Like this, it's so confusing.
Pick a lane.
Like, what is this?
I also love how they always do this thing.
They always do it.
Oh, maybe irrelevant Hollywood can finally get back to blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it's like, dude, it's one movie and it's, let's just look at the box office.
Like, it's, it's always, okay, yes, in 2026, Project Hail and Mary is doing well.
But let's look at some amazing grossing movies from 2025 because we're only, you know, a little bit in 2026.
Just going back, the months, Wicked for Good.
That one's DEI as hell.
We got two women of color, right?
As the main, as the one thing that's Cynthia Rivo is like double woman of color because she's a black woman in green paint.
Yeah.
Captain America, Brave New World.
That's, didn't they make a black Captain America?
They did.
DEI.
Snow White.
Weren't they specifically mad about Snow White?
I hate Snow White.
Yeah, well, that was the top March movie of last year.
So a year ago, that was the top grossing movie.
So when there's a good grossing movie that's woke, we have to go back to woke, right?
But when there's one that's allegedly not woke, then we get to go back.
I just don't even know.
They have to just switch back and forth so often.
Or could it be that the thing you're saying makes no fucking sense and it's just a movie?
It's just a goddamn movie.
So let me let me piggyback off of that because this is so ridiculous that you have a former Amazon executive.
He was the head of Amazon Studios.
He no longer is Roy Price wrote a New York Times opinion piece about Project Hail Mary and what this means for Hollywood also.
And he says, a possible reason for this rebound, movies are starting to feel fun again.
Okay.
What?
And then he talks about the history of movies a little bit.
Hollywood loves box office data, and the recent data suggests that there are two paths forward for the industry.
One path is the prestige message films that dominated the most recent Oscars, exemplified by this year's best picture winner, One Battle After Another.
The other path is represented by eight-cylinder entertainment like Project Hail Mary and the Housemaid, as well as pulpy films like Weapons and Sinners.
Housemaid?
Yeah.
Pulpy films like Weapons and Sinners.
Hold on.
Now Sinners counts.
That's not the woke left.
Well, it puts in parentheses, which had its political notions, but you could enjoy it for the music and vampires.
Yeah, again, if it's bad, woke.
If it's good, not woke.
Yeah.
If this new era of fun has a figurehead, it's the actress Sidney Sweeney who almost single-handedly revived the romantic comedy with anyone but you and the erotic thriller that was with Glenn Powell.
I know, but no.
Oh, I know.
Yeah.
Oh, you're saying sorry, but what about the whole sentence?
Nobody was, yeah, like nobody, was that good?
When did that come out?
I didn't even see it on the box office lists here.
Yeah, well, it came out last year.
And I think the thing is, is that what we're talking about any particular month.
So there.
What I think he is reflecting on, actually, is marketing success, not necessarily box office data.
Yeah.
Because the housemaid, like these are things that, at least for me on my social media, I see this stuff all the time.
And I see Sidney Sweeney, she like reshares people's TikToks of them going to see her movies and stuff.
So then other people are invested in like, oh, let's create a TikTok of us doing it too, because then Sidney Sweeney is going to repost our thing.
Like it's all marketing.
It's all marketing.
I guess I have not come.
I didn't even know what this was.
That came out.
Oh, wait.
Housemaid came out in 2025?
Oh.
Oh, in December.
Okay.
So that's not anywhere on the list.
But to be fair, it was outdone by Avatar, Fire, and Ash.
Yes.
Is Avatar, Fire, and Ash, D.I. or?
Second place, Zootopia 2.
Yeah.
Hold on.
What is this movie?
Okay.
Let's see what came out ahead of that.
Avatar, Fire and Ash, Zootopia 2, Five Nights at Freddy's 2.
That's such an important woke film.
Wicked for Good, which I think had already been out for a month.
So it's still Wicked is still beating it.
Wicked part 2, which I'll be honest, wasn't good.
You know what?
I'm a big wicked lover, and I also did not really enjoy it.
Yeah, it wasn't very good.
Part one was solid.
Now, to be fair, David, which is that stupid religious movie, that also outperformed the Housemaid.
Housemaid is in sixth for December.
Like, yeah, it's not, it wasn't.
It's a particular movie.
I was to tell you, it wasn't a big movie.
Yeah, it's fine.
It's just another movie that came out.
I don't understand the whole trying to make a whole thesis out of everything and then cherry-picking box office day.
Look, the Oscars is not trying to reward box office sales.
Yeah.
Because that seemed like the step he was doing, right?
It was like, well, exemplified by the Oscars.
Well, take a look at those performances.
It's like, yeah, they're not going to be based on ticket sales.
It never is.
The Avatar fucking Fire and Ash and the Minecraft movie would be the Oscar winners or whatever if it was based on ticket sales.
It's never going to be what it is.
Right, exactly.
By the way, how about the Minecraft movie?
That was pretty woke, right?
Got lots of people of color.
You got some pigs.
Yeah, I don't even, I actually don't even know what to make of that.
I don't know what it's like even to call everything.
Yeah.
Would you call it woke or not woke or neither?
I don't know.
Yeah.
I think it's confusing.
I think it's, I don't know.
You have to be in a particular brain space.
He also says, trying to say that sex, erotic thrillers, and humor were on the outs.
Romantic comedies essentially disappeared.
From 2012 to 2016, roughly 67 comedy films with budgets over 5 million were released a year on average.
From 2017 to 2023, excluding COVID in 2020, that average dropped by a third to 45 comedies a year.
It was an era when you could make Nomad Land a best picture Oscar winner in 2021, but championing the ribbaldry of a film like Bridesmaid seems suddenly out of the question.
And I think it's just, it's when I see all of this stuff about people like fun movies, like people are going to the movies again.
They haven't forgotten where their movie theater is.
They'll come out if it's fun, if it speaks to them.
And I look at like, to your point, when we're looking at the monthly data, I'm just looking at the best performing box office movie of the year.
And the amount of money that they make is consistent.
Like it's a lot off.
Oh, like whatever the top one.
Yeah.
And the movies, they are fun, but they're also, some of them were derided by like Ben Shapiro as woke.
Barbie, exactly.
They keep talking about how Top Gun Maverick was like, that's the one that said, okay, that was 2022 box office leader.
2023 was Barbie.
Yep.
Inside Out 2, is there anything more woke than emotions?
Yeah.
Inside Out 2 is 2024's top movie.
And to your point, you make a great point, which is they're all kind of around the same amount, though.
Like ultimately, obviously there was a huge dip after COVID.
So total gross of box offices leading up to COVID, it was 10 billion and it had hit 11 billion.
But look at the movies that are leading that.
We're talking about Marvel.
Yeah, that's Avengers Act.
Peak Marvel.
That's actually Panther.
That's actually a bigger part of it, honestly.
Yeah.
It was peak Marvel.
But then the other thing is, you know, COVID killed it.
So 2020, it goes from 11 billion to 2 billion.
That is actually shocking.
And the number one release that year, I'm sure you didn't see it.
I didn't see it.
Bad boys for life.
Yeah.
Well, it's probably just because it came out like in the months before.
January 2nd.
Exactly.
It came out before COVID hit.
So then it was the default winner.
It got two months.
So it's building back up from that COVID disaster.
But starting in 2023 with Barbie, by the way, not Top Gun, we got back to almost 9 billion, which is like pretty good recovery.
Yeah.
Like, especially with how much we thought, like, oh, streaming is just killing everything.
That's a great point too.
And the theaters actually went out of business because of COVID.
So I know there's a lot of like infrastructure, you know, that is gone that wasn't there anymore.
So yeah, okay, it took a $3 billion haircut because of COVID or whatever.
Like, yeah, that's going to be rough.
But now it's pretty consistent.
Like, it's not like there's a major change in the movies that are driving this, to your point.
I think it's a great point because it's like Barbie, Inside Out 2, Minecraft movie.
Like, yeah, there's a certain number of people who want to go see movies and they're probably mostly just going to see whatever, you know, and then there's people who are only going to go out to specific movies, but also those people usually find a specific movie.
Like it's not going to be like they're going to every movie, but they'll find their release that they want to go to.
Box Office Consistency Check00:15:31
I don't know.
I think it's not really dependent on fucking woke.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But this Hollywood and Toto guy is taking this, that op-ed and further kind of like, I don't know, turning it into this tornado of a situation where he says he's right, even if he shrewdly didn't use the W word, woke.
Yet few people within the industry were willing to vocalize this truth, let alone do something about it.
That artists chose to self-censor instead of fighting back in the wake of President Donald Trump hate and the overreaction to George Floyd's death or the mishandling of the Me Too revolution.
What is happening?
Is this about movies still?
I've lost track of what this is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then he says that either way, films often felt like a chore to watch, not a pleasure.
But then you look at the dollar mountain and the movies that have come out.
And I think like you're lying to yourself.
That's not actually reality at all.
And I guess like you could say maybe Barbie, like you didn't have fun watching Barbie if you're stick in the mud or whatever, or like super conservative or something.
But Oppenheimer came out that year.
That was a great movie.
Yeah, Barbenheimer.
Yeah.
There are movies that are fun to watch.
Contrary to what they think, like the wokists don't like, we just watch a movie.
It's just a movie.
I think it's good storytelling.
Sometimes there's movies that are more political.
Sometimes there's not.
Who fucking cares?
We don't want to see a movie that's like the Bible.
That's kind of boring.
I mean, you could probably make a good one if someone wanted to, like, actually make like a good movie that was kind of based on that.
But we're not going to watch morality porn tale or whatever, you know, the stupid like morality tales of whatever.
Like that's not going to be good.
But for the most part, your average people, even your average, like quote unquote woke person, if it's a good movie, we're going to watch a good fucking movie.
That's all people really care about.
Right.
Exactly.
I've got something interesting for you.
Yeah.
Here's what I just noticed.
I just noticed that we've got the total growth.
We've also got the number of releases.
Yes.
And if you look at this point, it's actually that the releases have gone down.
Yeah.
And if you, I just quickly took the average.
And this is, you know, obviously not like super scientific, but if you take total box office as reported by box officemojo.com, which I think they probably have pretty good info.
Yep.
And then you take the total releases, it was 12, 13 million before COVID on average.
So like your average movie was getting that.
Post-COVID in this recovery, it's actually a little higher.
Yeah.
So it's 14.6, 15.
Now, 2024 with that year that was Inside Out 2.
It's not specifically that one, but that year, Oh, wait, it has the average for us right there already.
I didn't, I thought that I just was letting you cook.
It's you should have just told me that because I thought that was the box office for that movie because it had the movie.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, you already did the work, so I wasn't going to interrupt you.
So, uh, so and I was checking the numbers, they line up, yep, they line up pretty good.
Yeah, yeah, they uh pretty accurate, seem to be you know, rounding, rounding.
Yeah, no, it's good.
Checking the rounding looks pretty good.
It looks like they're rounding down.
So, like, for example, for Barbie, uh, you know, for the that year, I got uh 818.92.
They round it to 818.
So, you know, a little dollar here and there, but different schools of thought, you know, yeah, okay.
Well, you know, when you have ADHD and you're also trying to listen to your wife's lovely podcast, yeah, you don't notice that that column is actually already the average.
So, anyway, the average has gone up.
Uh, you know, it's a little low in 2024, and I guess 2025 it was a little lower as well.
I think it's because the Barbenheimer year probably was like a bit of a that's probably an anomaly, yeah.
I think it was a good year, but point is they're doing fewer movies now.
Yeah, does that mean if they did more that we'd get the consistent box office and it would be back to the heydays of 2010s, the basically all of the 2010s?
I don't know.
I mean, maybe I don't, I guess I wouldn't know either way.
I'm nohere near an expert, but to try to derive all of this meaning either way, like woke or anti-woke because of these numbers is just stupid.
Like it doesn't fucking mean anything.
I think some of this is also like a self-fulfilling prophecy because when we're talking about the number of releases on this data set, it's box office releases and how many things are being released direct to streaming platforms.
And I think that a lot of studios think that people won't come, that they won't come to the box office, they won't come and actually watch movies in theaters, and they will if they are like pulled in by something that piques their interest.
And so, what you have is like studios deflating the numbers of things that they would normally release in a theatrical venue and putting them on a platform instead where people are consuming.
They're still consuming it.
I bet a number of things that were direct to platform had they been put out in theatrical releases in movie theaters and stuff, I bet a lot of people would still come.
I mean, you wouldn't see the number of people.
That might be the difference in the releases, it might just be that the studios decided, okay, about a third, a fourth of the movies roughly.
We think the market has changed.
Yeah, and so we're going to do this.
It also costs them less to do things straight to streaming for them.
So, they're able to turn a bigger profit on whatever gets watched.
And they probably have existing agreements with the streaming platforms about what that looks like.
You know, I think that there's a lot of data that's within this that when you get an op-ed like that in the New York Times, or you get this conservative person spinning that op-ed then to be even more anti-woke than it actually is, you end up with something that just doesn't make any sense.
And I think it's really unnuanced and unreasonable for how movie consumption actually works for the average person.
If it's not good, that's woke.
If it is good, it's not woke.
Here's the truth about Project Hail Mary: it's got a delightful alien guy.
That's why that's going to be the main reason it's delightful alien guy.
Love it.
Ooh, I want to write the same article, except replace any of the woke bullshit with just they're actually doing puppets instead of CGI.
That's my new, that's what that's the crank article we should be doing.
Hey, you know why this movie's doing so well?
It's because it's not a fucking CGI Yoda, like the timely reference, the Mandalorian sequels back in no, they went back to the puppet for the Mandalorian because it's better.
It's not, it's not that CGI bullshit.
We got an actual puppet, we got puppetry.
You know, that's the key.
You want to get people back in the box office?
Bring back the puppets.
Yeah.
That's actually a better thesis than yours.
I do think that's actually not totally wrong.
I think the poetry fucking rules.
It wasn't just that either.
I saw a thing that said that the way that they did the astrophage, you know, the actual like effect of the light was chicken wire and lights wrapped around that.
And I was like, well, that's freaking cool.
Like there's all these practical effects that people are so creative in using.
And I think it shows that when you're watching.
I'm tired of CGI.
I really am.
CGI AI.
I'm sure there's also plenty of CGI in the film.
Yeah, of course.
Especially like to clean things up.
I just like a better use of it, I think.
I think there's always a place for it, but you could write, yeah, you could write the same Old Man Yells at Cloud article, except about, wow, we're going back to more practical effects.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, speaking of Old Man Yells at Cloud, I thought we could hear the quartering.
He's not that old, I guess.
He's older than me.
He's insane fucking neckbeard incel yelling at a cloud.
Yeah, but I thought we could listen to him because he loved Project Hail Mary and he's also holding up Ryan Gosling as like a hero for calling out the Hollywood elite is kind of how he puts it.
So I thought we could listen to his take on what we can do.
I disagree.
I love the Hollywood Elite.
Like anyone's on the other side of that argument.
It's so fucking stupid.
It is stupid.
You're saying I have to watch this.
Yes.
I'm required to.
It's part of my job.
Yeah, it is.
Going on.
My name's Jeremy.
This channel's called The Quartering, and here's today's news.
So we all know that Hollywood has been struggling complete box office disaster after complete.
Yeah.
Here's today's news.
So we all know that Hollywood sucks and it's really bad.
It's today's news.
Anyway, the weather box office disaster.
Sometimes the videos are just movies are just bad.
Sometimes the actresses are really just Zegler, for example.
What?
Yeah.
I don't know if Snow White was any good.
I have no idea.
It's not a movie for me.
There's zero chance I was going to see it after the actor opened their mouth.
Oh, because you're misogynist.
That is what that is.
Especially also in TV where people really love a show, for example, like Reacher.
Then it turns out the main star has Trump derangement syndrome and says that Christians shouldn't like Donald Trump and all this kind of stuff.
And well, wouldn't you know it, viewership drops down.
Or they pump out something that is just woke trash from Jump Street, for example, Star Trek, Starfleet Academy, which has now been canceled.
Okay.
Next season will be its last season.
That's the new way of saying nobody watched this garbage.
And we don't want to say it's canceled.
We want to say that it was only going to be a two-year show.
They usually do that.
That's their new cope.
But the new movie.
Who's that?
The Hollywood Elite.
Project Hail Mary, which again, I wholeheartedly endorse.
I watch a lot of movies.
Not Snow White.
This was the best movie I've seen in the theater in 10 years.
Period.
It was an incredible ride.
Yes, the third act had a little pacing issues, but I mean, I even 3D printed this little guy.
If you know, you know.
You know, it was an incredible movie.
And so much of what I do on this channel is like dunking up.
If you're going to do that, you also have to tell people when something is very, very good.
And Ryan Gosling, the star of this film, came out and just put Hollywood on complete blast, proving us all right.
Remember after the lockdowns, they're like, you have to support the theaters.
Think about all the people who work at theaters are going to lose their jobs and think essentially it was the American people's fault that we had two million subscribers on YouTube.
Yes.
Folks.
So fucking dumb.
Please share our show.
Yeah.
You just, everything is so fucking stupid.
I don't, what are we doing?
Yeah.
I guess we're just, we're just fucked.
Not the fact that going to the theater started costing more than a month's rent, practically for some people.
Well, that's probably exaggeration.
Probably.
Going to the theater for a family four started costing more than $100.
Not for the fact that a string, an almost unbreakable turd of bad content had come out of Hollywood.
There was plenty of bad shots.
You're wrong.
There were gems that came out, but people were so gunshot.
No, they weren't.
They spent their money.
What is he talking about?
Okay, I'm looking at the box office.
We can go to the data.
Yeah, COVID was bad.
2020, bad year.
That's because it shut down.
Yeah.
2021, still pretty shut down, but already basically over doubled the year before.
Right.
2022, recovering.
Again, kind of almost doubled again, like went from 4.4 billion to 7.3 billion.
By the time you get to 2023, we're pretty much back.
It's not meaningfully different in those years, you know?
Like, so, okay, we'll do the Reddit thing, like exclamation point, remind me in.
Oh, yeah.
If we get to the end of 2026 and 2026 is actually like 11 billion or something, then I get maybe he will have had, well, he still doesn't have a point, but he would at least like support what he's saying rather than contradict it.
But like, again, Barbie, top movie of 2023 of a very good year.
2025 still didn't even touch that.
We'll see if 2026 touches it.
It's, you know, probably close.
Yeah.
But like, it's not real.
You're just fucking saying shit.
Well, Q Ryan Gossing saying exactly what we all knew.
Is he saying exactly a long string of turd, blah, blah, blah, like whatever bullshit you just hearing this out of a Hollywood actor, hearing this level of self-reflection and humbleness and like understanding the actual situation is so incredibly refreshing.
Well, thank you just for coming to the theater.
You know, I think obviously theaters need you, but it's not your job to keep them open.
Oh, what?
Based?
A thousand percent based.
It is not our job to keep them open.
And then he delivers the second half of this, which is incredible.
Open.
It's our job to make things that make it worth you coming out.
I'm sorry.
So that's what we did with this film.
Imagine being so fucking addled.
Your brain so melted by politics that someone's saying, hey, thanks for coming to the thing that we sell.
Yep.
Though it's not your job to keep us in business with the thing that we sell.
It's our job to sell a good product.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Imagine thinking that that's somehow a reinforcement of your entire worldview.
Right.
Right.
It's like a foundational capitalist principle.
It's what any business would say.
Like it's literally like the most basic fucking business guy thing.
Like, well, it's not the, you know, we have to make a good product for the customer so that they buy it.
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, God.
That was it.
No, yeah, you can stop there.
Keep theaters open.
No, I want to hear more.
Our job to make movies you want to see.
Yeah.
That's what they're trying to do all the time.
Exactly.
I'm so sick of these wokeists saying, hey, we're not even going to put on a movie.
You just have to come to the theater.
Yeah, you got to pay.
Then you're going to buy an empty box of popcorn for the same price.
Because you know what woke is like giving money to businesses for any products?
None of it makes any sense.
What is woke, everybody?
What is woke?
They are brain dead.
It's all nonsense.
It has flattened any sort of conversation, any sort of real conversation.
If you could have actually ever had a real conversation about any of this stuff, it's stupid and it's for people who've been brainwashed already.
Everything I hate is woke.
Exactly.
Yep.
Yep.
It was a good movie.
Yeah.
I was disappointed by the guy.
I think you're going to talk about it.
The guy's quote, I'm not a fan of.
Yeah, actually, why don't I just send it to you right now?
I think this is the one you're thinking of, but this is back when The Martian came out.
Oh, really?
Oh, I thought, okay, I saw people saying it recently.
So this is from when he was interviewed back during The Martian.
Oh, okay.
Let's see.
But that was a while ago now.
When did that come out?
Martian Interview Years Ago00:08:08
2015.
So he's writing, well, we'll get to what he says first, but that is very relevant information.
Okay.
None of my books have any message.
They never have like a mortal or a deeper meaning or anything like that.
For me, what's front and center is the science.
If you confine yourself to the real physics, then that's hard science fiction.
And it's considered even harder science fiction if the technologies used are, it actually exist.
So for instance, in The Martian, all the technology shown is stuff that actually exists.
In the face of overwhelming odds, I'm left with only one option.
I'm going to have to science the shit out of this.
I don't put politics in my novel because as soon as you can see the political slant of the author, you know that the universe of that book is going to conspire to validate the author's political viewpoint.
So as soon as you know that, then it makes the book boring because you can predict the sequence of events and you can predict the outcome or you can predict it to within a few, a very small subset of outcomes because you know that the author is not going to preach a political viewpoint and then it turns out to be wrong.
So that book was from 2011 and the movie was from 2015.
I think that's kind of important.
Now, this interview, though, seems to be from 2019.
So I guess maybe my point about that is wrong.
But I don't know.
I guess I could go either way.
I saw people quoting this and dunking on it.
And I think it's pretty rough to be like, my books, there's no message.
That first quote.
What was it?
There's no meaning in my book.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hold on.
I want to go back to that quote.
It's just a hell of a, hell of a way to start.
None of my books have any message.
Ah, yeah.
None of my books have any message.
Like there is a sense if I'm trying to be charitable.
There's a sense in which I agree in that good art as an often said thing, like good art doesn't answer questions.
It poses questions.
You know, like it's not good art if you just make a political, you know, movie or book or whatever.
And it's just the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad.
And it's because they agree with your politics.
I agree with that.
Like nobody, that's kind of boring.
Like nobody really likes that.
Well, I say that.
A lot of people love the West Wing.
So maybe I'm wrong about that.
I think it's boring, but I also don't even know if that's being too charitable to him because I feel like to say there's nothing in it that's political, that's silly.
Like science is political.
Yeah.
All of science.
And this is going to make me like this guy's stuff a lot less because I would like you to at least be grappling with issues that are interesting.
Here's the thing.
I think this is a blind spot.
I don't know that this is necessarily like coming from a bad place.
He grew up in the Bay Area.
And like me, I don't think he's really had to grapple with what the rest of America looks like.
I don't know.
I think so.
I mean, no, I'm just saying we have no way of knowing like what this is coming from.
Well, so he did a Reddit Ask Me Anything 14 years ago.
And he said Lydia is right.
Yeah, I am from the same.
He was born and raised in the Bay Area.
He confirms that.
Also, it's in his Wikipedia.
He grew up in Lamar.
No, I know.
He says, on social issues, I am very liberal, as you can probably expect from me growing up in the Bay Area.
But on fiscal matters, I'm conservative.
I work hard to keep my political views out of my stories.
Nobody wants to be pre-charged.
I don't think that I think that is like conservative.
I don't know.
I think that's what Bill Maher would say.
Yeah, okay, but 14 years ago, I think I don't know where he's at now.
Yeah.
But 14 years ago, I don't know.
When I was a teenager, that's kind of like the bottom that I thought I was.
Yeah, no, that's fair.
There's that old, yeah, it's interesting.
I imagine this guy is probably libertarian or something.
Like a lot of those.
Perhaps he's an older.
Yeah, exactly.
There's the joke that like the dating profile that says not political means conservative.
Like it's just that's I think in this day and age, yes.
Yeah.
I don't think that necessarily was the case 14 years ago.
I don't know.
I think I would have said that in 2007 or so.
You know, I would have said, ah, I'm not political.
And it's because I was kind of conservative and everyone around me was liberal.
And so I didn't really want to like talk about it.
Okay.
Yeah.
And I'm from sort of near the Bay Area.
Yeah, who knows?
My counter to him, I'd be, I'd be curious, like, again, being really charitable, I could see this being a statement that's like, okay, or a statement that's kind of dumb.
Like, if you're going to do the opposite and you're never going to be political, well, then I know that nothing in your story is going to happen that's political.
You know, so now it's spoilers for that, you know, like to counter his point of like, well, then you know what's going to happen because, you know, it has to be in accord with the political views.
Well, okay, first off, you don't always know the political views of the author.
Like, it could be that they start something and you think it's political a certain way, but even in something like one battle after another, is that supposed to be political?
Is that the wokists, that movie?
Are they labeling it as such?
Yeah, I think so.
I think because of like them making fun of white supremacy.
Oh, it's, you know, woke.
See, yeah.
So you can't do that because it's predictable that white supremacists are bad.
But they don't actually lose in the end, really.
So like, that's why I think good art also, it's not going to be a morality tale that's just like, and then all the white supremacists died.
It's like, yeah, okay, one character had a bad ending.
Right.
But like those white supremacists are still in charge of everything at the end.
They don't see any consequences.
So I don't, yeah, it's weird.
Yeah.
I guess the other piece that I'll say is like he might say that he doesn't put politics in his books.
But when we're talking about Project Hail Mary and like it literally is climate change as a result of something happening to the sun and how does the earth, how does humanity come together to try and face that existential crisis that is inherently political.
And the way that he has like the way that that piece is told, I don't know.
I think he is just saying, and maybe he doesn't necessarily intend for politics to come through in his writing, but it's just that's reality.
Yeah.
And so he gets kind of a cop out.
He doesn't have to like explicitly include it or explicitly call out that.
So this is like the white male privilege embodied of like, yeah, I don't have to be, my work doesn't have to be political.
And he just hasn't examined the parts that are.
Yeah.
Also, I love it.
Like when you're doing space travel, man, hey, we got a party in power that like almost doesn't even fucking believe in space.
Like that we're so far off the deep end science-wise, they're cutting funding.
Hey, did your book have NASA in it?
Well, guess what?
That's fucking political and they want to cut all of it.
You know, like it just is.
I do understand the impulse, though, as a, I could get it, I guess, as an artist of some kind to try to like not, you don't want to be seen as political so that your stuff can kind of appeal to everybody in a certain way.
I kind of get that in a sense.
You don't want to like turn into like a mouthpiece, you know, because that maybe that's not your job.
Like, I think that's like a legitimate way to be, but the whole like there's no message in any of my books, that's a weird thing to say.
It's just like there shouldn't be like a one-sentence cliche message at each at the heart of each of your books.
But the best books, the best stories will just make you think about a lot of stuff, you know, and that's that's a message in itself.
Like directing your focus and introspection to a particular thing is maybe not like a message in the sense that it tells you exactly what to think, but it is directing your attention towards something.
And I think that's the best way to do it.
I have to imagine, though, that that's that quote is probably why, and that mindset by him is probably why all these conservatives felt confident to be like, ha, exactly, this isn't woke, because we know the guy isn't a woke is trying to spread the woke messaging so they could go all in and then not be embarrassed later by the author being like, actually, it is kind of, you know what I mean?
Like, I feel like that's why they probably felt safe to do all these takes because it is pretty silly.
In the end, it's a cool space movie.
People like cool space movies.
They also liked Interstellar.
Cool Space Movie Reckoning00:01:46
I don't know.
Yeah.
That one wasn't by that guy, right?
That's a different guy, I think, or something.
They liked Interstellar, like space movies, and then mainly just the lovable alien.
He's just great.
It's fun.
It's a good movie.
Now seeing how much everybody else is liking it, I've kind of like, I do like it, but I do feel like it, you know, wasn't like a perfect movie.
The quarter ring saying it's the best movie he's seen in five years is so insane.
10 years ago.
No, did you say five?
No.
Either way.
Either way, it's wrong.
Yeah, it's not.
It's fun.
It's a fun movie.
Don't get me wrong.
But this like trying to figure out like that this is Hollywood's reckoning with woke movies and this anti-woke blockbuster is showing them what they could actually be doing.
Hopefully they're gonna get it now.
It's just like the weirdest interpretation of what's been going on.
Yep.
So I still, I guess we'll never know what woke is, but we still won't know.
Apparently, Project Hail Mary not woke, I guess.
I don't know.
Oh boy.
Well, that was fun.
It's a good movie.
People should see it.
Hopefully we didn't spoil anything.
But yeah, it was a bummer to see that quote by that guy.