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“The enemy is still America/Europeans. The victims this time: whales. For all its technological innovation, the sheer banality of its theme is the most remarkable thing about it.” - Acton

Discussion

Wed, 02/01/23

I haven’t seen it, but movies usually do really well because people are drawn to the story and the characters and their personal struggles. There’s a pretty long list of movies with the same basic narrative of “the west/capitalism/europe/Christianity is to blame for evils X, Y, and Z” that didn’t do well at the box office.

So the success of this one isn’t likely because people love the ‘save the whales from capitalism’ messaging. People are probably mostly just willing to overlook the politics/ideology/cliche because they like the personal struggles, the story telling, and visual spectacle.

These days, that tired old messaging is so ubiquitous, a test of almost any fiction or film out of the gate is “is there enough here that I like to make me willing to endure the cliches and sanctimony?” Movies don’t make billions unless a whole of people answer ‘yes’ to that.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Thu, 02/02/23

This also plays into Critical Theory, where the oppressed are viewed as innocent and the oppressed are viewed as evil. This can only make sense when viewed from an extraordinarily thin slice of time. I have not seen this movie, but viewing these clips, it appears quite obvious.