Recap of summer:
BOOM SELECTA! Check it, it’s August and classes are about to start. Life is such that we have to do hard things to be in places that will make us “successful”, like working for BlackRock Financial!
I hope that everyone had a summer where they enjoyed the people around them, because I know that politics/science research was not that fun. I went around the world and now I am back again. Getting back was a little scary, considering that we flew past a live warzone and were 12 hours away from having to escape to the American Embassy (true story). Once I got back, that was when the real war began. For those of you who have never worked landscaping in July and August, congratulations! I cannot describe the highs of working on a fun landscaping crew and the lows of having heat exhaustion more days than not. This is a lot of useless information if you do not know/care about me. Because of that, I will start talking about the topic I am being paid to write about. The AI Overloads are making me write chud reviews to feed the data machine. Let’s hope that that AI bubble does not pop because I need to get at least a 10% ROI so that I can head to ********** next summer.
I think an adequate movie for analysis is the 1992 film adaptation of the John Grisham novel, The Pelican Brief. The movie is quite good if you do not pay attention to the bad writing. Julia Roberts’ looks and Denzel Washington’s screen presence help with that. The Pelican Brief highlights an oil and water contrast between the beliefs of Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials versus the view of Gen Z. I usually do not do recaps because they are boring, pointless, and asinine.
BORING RECAP ALERT: Two Supreme Court justices are murdered in D.C. Law student Julia Roberts theorizes the killings are tied to an oil tycoon’s plan to drill in protected Louisiana wetlands, home to endangered pelicans. Her theory proves right, costing her professor/boyfriend’s (Listen it was in 1992) life in a car bombing. She teams up with reporter Denzel Washington, uncovering a conspiracy involving the White House, FBI, and corporate power. Together they expose the plot in The Washington Post. Julia escapes to a Caribbean villa, while Denzel is celebrated as a heroic journalist.
What is interesting to me is that this conspiracy movie and almost all other movies in this genre end with the perpetrators of evil being exposed and brought to justice. This means that we can trust the institution again and give them more power. This is the institutional logic of Boomers, Gen X, and Millenials. This view point is also supported by our proud sponsors over at the Central Intelligence Agency.
In contrast, there has never been a conspiracy movie made that is designed for Gen Z. Obviously, Gen Z is very young. The audience for a movie like this is probably not that large, and movies in general are a tough business to be in right now, especially original IP/indie movies. The Gen Z version of this story would have had the conspiracy exposed, but the truth buried, the people discredited, and an ending with a sense of hopelessness due to the power that can wielded over people. The story of The Pelican Brief still resonates with Gen Z, however, the ending would need to be changed to accommodate that 70s feeling of fear and loathing.
Throughout the movie, we see a general trust in places like newspapers, the FBI, and journalists. The overwhelming feeling of our generation, due to current political issues and loads of information about previous government mischief, leads us to see the motive for the character of Julia Roberts to be flawed from her genesis. She believes that change can be brought to the institutions, that the truth will set the society free from corruption. That is not the milieu that I run in and no person that pays attention to Gen Z would reasonably observe. This pseudo-nihilism yields a skepticism that is earned and I am interested to see the type of art that our generation produces. There is already a movie that is being released this Halloween called Bugonia, that details the story of a kidnapping of a CEO by two conspiracy minded men.
The common sentiment about my generation is that change through the institutions is a lie told by powerful people in order to maintain order. Why do they maintain? Who knows? Pedophilic blackmail that is being set up by the intelligence services? Probably. And they wonder why there is a malaise among young men. The Pelican Brief is emblematic of an idealism that no longer exists for the adults of Gen Z that was previously instilled into the Baby Boomers, Gen X, and the Millenials.
To finish out the review with some hope and joy, here are 4 reasons why Boogie Fever is better than The Godfather: Part III (I have not seen it).
- Boogie Fever does not have Sofia Coppola in it
- Sofia Coppola acting in The Godfather Part III is horrible, Boogie Fever has no acting in it so it wins by default
- The Godfather Part III’s soundtrack was not used in Despicable Me, Boogie Fever was used in Despicable Me
- Despicable Me is a better movie than The Godfather: Part III, something the creators of Boogie Fever were surely aware of and ultimately was the reason why they wanted to be involved in the masterpiece that is Despicable Me
