Transcript
Matt Walsh (0:00)
We spent a lot of time focusing on the fact that Hollywood constantly churns out woke propaganda pieces disguised as cinema. And that's, of course, true, and a large part of the reason why audiences are losing interest in movies. This past Thanksgiving, box office tally, a time when theaters typically rake in massive amounts of money, saw the weakest performance in over 25 years. This in spite of the fact that there, or maybe because of the fact there were multiple sequels to blockbuster franchise films showing there was a new Steven Spielberg movie, there was a Disney cartoon about a gay teenage boy and a disabled dog. All these things were in theater and nobody went. Like I said, wokeness is certainly part of the problem here, but not the whole problem. Because the other issue is that so many movies are boring and dull and simply not anything to get excited about. And it seems that the people involved in making these cinematic versions of bland, stale graham crackers are aware at some level of how boring and uninteresting it all is. And that's why they have to go to increasingly desperate lengths to pretend that their films are somehow revolutionary and provocative, even as they serve up the same under seasoned dish that we've had a million times before. And I think that's part of what was happening this week when Jennifer Lawrence, now somewhat infamously, sat down for an interview with Variety and ended up claiming a title for herself that people older than 10 years old might find surprising, as it doesn't quite gel with our memories. Lawrence declared that she is the first actress to have ever starred in a Hollywood action film. Now, Jennifer Lawrence is 32. Okay? She's not in her 70s or 80s, which she would have to be in order for that claim to have any chance of legitimacy. But let's watch the clip first.
Jennifer Lawrence (1:46)
I remember when I was doing Hunger Games, nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn't work. We were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead.
Matt Walsh (2:00)
Oh, absolutely.
Jennifer Lawrence (2:01)
And it just makes me so happy every single time I see a movie come out that just blows through every single one of those beliefs and proves that it is just a lie to keep certain people out of the movies, to keep certain people in the same positions that they've always been in. And it's just amazing to watch it happen and watch you at the helm.
Matt Walsh (2:24)
Yes, the Hunger Games, released in 2012, was the. That was the first action film with a female lead. Lawrence then noted that it was also a great honor to co star in the Silver Linings Playbook so that she could get a front row seat to Robert De Niro's first film role. And she's especially humbled to realize that when she played Mystique in First Class, she was starring in the first superhero movie ever made. Truly a historic career in her own mind, if not in reality. Because in reality, of course, Sigourney Weaver exists. Linda Hamilton exists. Angelina Jolie exists. There have been many female action stars over the decades, going back to Carrie Fisher and Star Wars. Even before her, there were others. Jennifer Lawrence is not the first to do anything, nor the best. She didn't even come up with, like, a new way of doing something. She just followed a script that had long since been written, trying to pretend that she's breaking glass ceilings that have been laying in shards on the ground for decades. Glass ceilings that, in this case, we should note, never mattered much to begin with. Okay? The fact that there are more men starring in action films than women, who cares? It makes sense that most action stars are mentioned, as men typically make more compelling and believable action stars. Typically. Okay, it's a lot harder to make a female actioner into anything but a silly cartoon. Sigourney Weaver pulled it off, which is why her performance is still remembered by everyone except Jennifer Lawrence, apparently. And yet more often, it ends up being a kind of goofy girl power routine. Men can also see a man. It's easier for a male actor to elevate goofy action plots and lend them a certain gravitas. Batman is an absolutely ridiculous concept, okay?
