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I think I only said that once? No, it's not an important part of my argument, though I think reactiveness does describe a lot of these incidents. They get screamed at by fans angry at space lesbians or black hobbits, and react by saying "Fuck you, maybe you aren't the audience for this." I have never denied there are a lot of woke Hollywood people and they do like to troll and antagonize "deplorable" fans; I don't think they actually consider those people to be a significant part of their fanbase (and indeed, the people screaming about "Woke Disney" probably aren't).
Since we keep going back and forth about exactly what the other person is claiming, here's my claim:
Hollywood is very woke. They like to make woke movies. They also like to make money. I submit they like to make money more than they like being woke (at least the really important people, the people who make money decisions, do). Will they choose to make a woke movie if they think it will make money? Absolutely. Will they choose to give a middle finger to fans they consider deplorable, if they think they will still make money? Maybe (but I think the Big Men in Hollywood are less woke than the frontline people, the writers and actors popping off on Twitter). Will they intentionally create a product they know is bad, just to shit on deplorable fans? I do not think so. Will they make a shitty product aimed at fans they don't like, which they actually don't expect to be profitable, and not care, because it pleases them so much that it will piss off the right people? No. I think that's ridiculous. This goes directly back to the OP, and the claim that Joker 2 is a "humiliation ritual." That is, the entire production chain created this movie, knowing it was crap, not expecting it to be profitable, just to "punish" a bunch of incels who supposedly were the primary fans of the first movie. Just to say "Oh, you liked that movie? Fuck you." It is ridiculous.
Additionally, I think most of the people involved in making these things genuinely believe they are making a good product. I think the writers of The Acolyte and the Rings of Power, and so on, probably think their stories are great! Maybe some of them are hacks who don't care, but it does not fit my mental model of incentive-driven human beings, even woke ones, that anyone is deliberately choosing to tell a bad story they expect to be unpopular and lose ratings just because they want to add lesbians or black elves.
If I understand you correctly, you believe that they do this, and they do it regularly, and that every "woke" product in recent years that has (arguably) failed, from Joker 2 to Star Wars to Star Trek to Rings of Power to the latest MCU offerings, fell into this category: products that were made with little or no thought to profit, only to whether they would send the right (virtue) signals. And that the money men signed off on this, because they were okay with shitty virtue-signaling that doesn't make money.
Is that correct?
Then that's kind of lame. What's the point of bringing up the reactive nature of something, if proving it's not actually reactive won't change your mind in any significant way?
They don't have to be representative to be right about why Disney's stuff fails to resonate with wider audiences.
This is all fine, except, as you noted, it's just a claim. You shouldn't get call disagreement with this claim "ridiculous", and your portrayal of yourself as the more moderate and gracious, further down the chain, is in especially poor taste given your behavior.
This would be the crux of the disagreement. If this was true, we would routinely be seeing them sacrificing wokeness, for money, not the other way around. Sure, they need money, and there's a boundary on how much losses they can tolerate, but they're clearly willing to tolerate monetary losses, if it means more wokeness.
There might be an element of incompetence, in that they underestimate how much a given movie release will cost them, but the lack of significant colourse correction shows that they're not too bothered about it, this showing that they don't necessarily like to make money more that they like being woke.
Yeah, but they think that what makes it good is the wokeness. And while I can't tell what's going on in their minds, my guess is that even when they think it's good, they are aware it's not going to be that popular, or a moneymaker.
I already contradicted enough of the points you raised, that you should know that it isn't.
I already pointed out that "Oh, you liked that movie? Fuck you." is just one of the possibilities, and "made with little or no thought to profit" is a return to the kind of binary thinking I already criticized.
Whether these money men exist in the way you are implying, and if they do, do they have all that much influence over the creative process, is an open question.
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If that were true there wouldn't have been a rural purge of television programs in the 70's. In view of this, I don't think you can or know how to model the mindset of the "really important people, the people who make money decisions" and I posit that it's in your best interest to update your priors to the more reasonable takes expressed in the thread.
At least offer your own arguments rather than pretending you didn't just crib off of Dean. The rural purge of TV stations is not the same as these "reasonable takes" you are seal-clapping for, which do not appear reasonable or even attempting to engage with any other take to me, merely kneejerk Grand Unified Theories of Wokeness.
mhh, someone is angy now (sorry if it's babying you, but you are better than whatever pissy personality you are adopting here). The rural purge was due to ideology and almost everyone raking you over the coals is saying it: the sequel is due to ideology with varying degrees of conspiracy mixed in; you are one of the few ones here aserting that it is due to money with nothing to show for it. At least on this side of the argument we have a really prominent historic example.
I subscribe to the principal agent problem myself, thank you very much. And it perfectly explains everything it is happening right now with respect to wokeness, you will notice that private companies like valve suffer much less than public companies like Ubisoft or Blizzard.
"You mad bro" is not a compelling argument, it's just an attempt to assert a dunk by projecting your own emotions. I am not angry, I'm annoyed at poor argumentation and boo outgroup, but I moderate my own disdain because I have to be the more charitable and gracious one.
that's a wordy way of saying "no u" in view of expressions like "you are seal-clapping for" and "pretending you didn't just crib off of Dean" (didn't know facts had owners by the way).
if you can point the errors in what I have said in these responses it would be more useful than vague gesticulations.
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Wait, we are talking about two separate claims here. One is the desire to punish incels. You can want to punish incels and still want to make money. Losing money is not a necessary condition for the existence of that motivation. A movie can be a humiliation ritual even when it makes bank.
However, deliberately choosing a strategy that they must know by now is at least suboptimal at making money is an indication that the motivation is to a large degree ideological. It's a revealed preference, in addition to the stated preference about not wanting to make movies for a specific audience, and a costly one at that.
They are buying something, their preferred ideological messaging, and they are paying for it in terms of foregone sales. There is really no other explanation than consistently shouting over and over again that they do not care for a segment of their potential audience. Are they underestimating the price or are they fully aware of it but do not care due to a misalignment of their incentives with the studio's?
Sure, and I said I don't doubt they might take shots at their ideological enemies in a movie they expect to be successful. What I don't find plausible is the claim some are making here that they will make a movie for the purpose of taking shots at their ideological enemies, with making money a secondary or non-consideration.
This is the part I also doubt. Lots of would-be experts think they "know" whether or not a movie will be good and that it's obvious (always in hindsight) that it will be a bomb, and thus conclude the makers of the film knew they were making a bomb and didn't care. I doubt very much that anyone deliberately chooses a suboptimal strategy. I think a lot of people are just high on their own supply and/or bad at actually making good films and knowing what will be well-received.
I remember muttering before the first Black Panther movie came out that it would be a woke disaster. All the usual suspects were pretty sure that this movie about a C-list black superhero was going to bomb. If it had bombed, the same folks here would be proclaiming that it was obvious it was going to fail but Hollywood didn't care because woke. @Jiro would have confidently asserted that nobody puts a black man on the screen unless you're trying to be woke.
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