I had my fun poking at the whole Bird of Prey vs Sonic nonsense on Twitter but now, I think we need to start having a big look at ourselves and ask, how we got to a stage where movies that are meant for escapism, now became tools to fight this political war that ends up hurting everyone.
Remember when movies used to be movies? Where you’d go, sit down, turn your brain off for about two hours and let yourself be immersed into a whole new world. Experiencing the vision that the creator wanted you to see, while sprinkling his commentary on the world without it coming off as preachy? Now, we are at a stage where we’re celebrating one movies success, while laughing at the “failure” of another, all to push our own agenda.
This is getting out of hand this time around, and there’s no better example than with the Sonic vs Birds of Prey war. I mean just look at the two movies. There’s no ground to even compare the two, unless you want to look at their marketing strategy. Birds of Prey had a mad marketing strategy, unknown character aside from Hailey and admittedly a political tone around it. Sonic has a dedicated fan base with a 20+ years legacy behind it. There’s a stark difference between the two moves that sets them apart.
A normal person wouldn’t want a movie to outright fail just to get that victory point. However, there is something to be learned from this. The Sonic movie, despite the 20 year legacy would have “failed” just as badly, as Birds of Prey had the directors of the movie remained firm with the old design. The difference here is that the Sonic directors chose to respect the fans enough to take the risk in redesigning the character, which as we all know paid off. Whereas Birds of Prey was marketed in such a way that many people didn’t even know that it was a comic book movie, hence the recent name change.
Sonic’s success in the box office is something everyone, from any political background should be celebrating. Hollywood now sees that respecting a fanbase can pay back greatly. Yet here we are! Focusing one upping the other side, all in a pointless war. Films that are considered “woke” aren’t failing because people hate anything that isn’t “straight white-male” as they say, they’re failing because they not focusing on the fans, the people they want in the cinemas, buying the tickets.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand why some might consider Birds of Prey a failure, and I’ve talked about it numerous times, but I’m never happy when a film bombs, cause now we’ve lost on what could have been a great experience.
That’s my take on it.
