Midweek Update: Comedies Now

In an interview with GamesRadar+ in 2020, Seth Rogen pointed out how much comedies had changed in the past decade.

At the time, Rogen was promoting An American Pickle, a comedy he made that came out on HBO Max and then was removed from the service entirely in July 2022 for tax purposes, so if someone knows about the tenuous state of feature comedies, it’s him.

This quote was kicking around in my head as I watched Andy Muschietti’s The Flash, which opens in theaters on Friday. If you don’t think of it as a comedy, that’s fair. The trailer for the film certainly doesn’t want you to think that:

There are some jokes sprinkled into that trailer, but like most trailers for superheroes, it leans mainly on spectacle as well as how many superheroes it can cram into that two minutes and thirty seconds so you’ll hopefully buy a ticket.

But the final film is largely a comedy sprinkled with moments of pathos. That’s neither good nor bad, but it does harken back to Rogen’s observation: what is a comedy in the 2020s? It’s a superhero movie that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and in this case, also has Batman (Michael Keaton).

It’s one of those ways you can feel the marketplace contracting. It’s almost like after the heyday of the 1970s coming to a close with blockbusters of the 1980s and 1990s, people bemoaned those kind of movies pushing out the darker, more mature fare. Now the 2010s and 2020s are saying, “Hold my beer,” as this four-quadrant madness simply obliterates every kind of cinema going experience it can. Say what you will about the 1980s and its popular cinema, but at least it has distinct genres. No one walked into Crocodile Dundee expecting spectacle. They expected an Australian man who was comically contrasted against the big city, and they got it. Granted, that film is awful, but at least it’s unambiguously a comedy that also didn’t cost $200 million.

I understand the marketplace is drastically different now, and that companies see regular comedies as unimpressive bets. Sure, you can spend $50 million on a comedy and maybe you’ll get $100 million back. But why not bet $200 million on The Flash, and if it’s a hit, you’ll get $1 billion back! Sure, you’re no longer telling smaller comic stories, but that’s what Sundance is for, I suppose (and to be fair, we’ll get those Sundance comedies this summer with stuff like Theatre Camp and Bottoms).

Watching The Flash, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of frustration. It’s a movie that feels like it had to be all things to all people—spectacle, comedy, drama, fan service, nostalgia package, etc.—because it is, above all, a product. Again, just to return to the 1980s, we can grouse about the success of something like Rambo: First Blood Part II, but that movie isn’t trying to get by with a bunch of jokes. And I don’t think The Flash is necessarily a “bad” movie (I had fun with it, but I also think it feels a little belabored and overly safe, especially coming just two weeks after Across the Spider-Verse), but it is a signal of our movies right now.

I really don’t want to be the pessimist about Hollywood. There are people who loathe what Hollywood became in the 1980s because they saw what it could be in the 1970s, but there are so many 1980s movies that I think are brilliant even though they don’t fit with a 1970s tone and aesthetic. And maybe I’m horribly out of touch with what today’s audiences want. I’m certainly apprehensive that today’s films both look bad and sound bad. But I do think that as entertainment options have expanded, the choices within those options have contracted. The Flash has to be a bunch of different things because it’s competing with streaming, social media, etc. in a way that Batman didn’t in 1989.

I don’t know how The Flash will fare over the weekend (it’s funny and has some memorable action scenes, so it may do well enough, but I’m horrible at predicting box office success), but it does seem like the clearest example yet of the new normal for mainstream cinema.

Recommendations

This is a little bit of a “What I’m Reading”, but my pal Brad sent me this recent article by Justin Cox over at This Week in Writing, and he makes the good point that Substack is a tenuous platform:

Cox goes on to note that you may want to have a life raft of sorts ready should Substack disappear tomorrow. I don't think that’s going to happen, but I haven’t missed the notion that, “Huh, this place is hosting a bunch of writing ad-free, and all it asks is a percentage of subscription revenue if you turn on paid subscriptions.”

In sunnier news, the 4K for Volume 1 of Universal Monsters is on sale for only $40, which shakes out to $10/per film and each film in the set—Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, and The Invisible Man—is a stone-cold classic. I’m not as sold on Volume 2 (I adore Bride of Frankenstein, but I’m not a big fan of The Mummy and I remain baffled as to why Phantom of the Opera was ever included in any of these sets), so I’m holding off. Anyway, I’d pick this up Volume 1 and then make it part of your spooky season.

What I’m Watching

I can’t believe I forgot to mention one of the best shows I’m watching in last week’s update: Platonic! If you’re a fan of Neighbors and Neighbors 2, then you’ll like the latest from director Nicholas Stoller and stars Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen. What’s great is that it isn’t (at least thus far) a will they/won’t they romance between friends (and given the tenor of the first half of the season, I’d be surprised if they got together). Instead, it’s a story about two close friends (Bryne and Rogen) who grew apart and have now come back together at a different point in each of their lives. The show is hilarious, winning, and Byrne and Rogen remain a perfect comic duo. It’s on AppleTV+ and episodes are only thirty minutes each.

It’s particularly fascinating watching Rogen since I feel like we’ve grown up together since he’s been acting since he was a teenager and we’re roughly the same age. He’s gone from the immature guy in stuff like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up to finding his own silly voice while acknowledging his age in a series like Platonic. I will grant you that he’s slightly more successful than I am. Sure, he got to star in Steven Spielberg movie, but I recently watched a Steven Spielberg movie so I’m doing okay.

What I’m Reading

I’m still working my way through Moby-Dick (Melville sure has a lot of thoughts about whales and whaling!) as well as Unmask Alice, which is driving me into a white-hot fury (I was under the impression that the follow-up book, Jay’s Journal, was also a fabrication, but no—the author, Beatrice Sparks, basically stole the journal of a teenage boy who died by suicide and then reworked it into Satanic Panic material).

In other reading:

• A Star Reporter’s Break with Reality by Elaina Plott Calabro [The Atlantic] - I don’t know why I’m fascinated by Lara Logan. I think what I find compelling about her story is that she went from the heights of serious journalism to the lows of crazy right-wing base world, and I don’t want to gloss over the personal trauma she suffered in between those two points (I also think it’s fair to note that guys like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, who also built their reputations during 2000s and 2010s, are now self-parodies). But I do think it’s sad that her answer to that personal trauma was to inflict it back out into the world. She’s left journalism behind in favor of unvarnished rage.

• Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept? by Ryan Cooper - Speaking of Greenwald, I recommend this article about why Reality Winner chose to leak to his publication and his feckless attempts to absolve himself of any responsibility for throwing her under the bus. It’s also a good primer if you’re planning to watch Reality on Max, which I’ve heard is quite good.

• The Binge Purge by Josef Adalian and Lane Brown [Vulture] - A must-read article about the state of streaming right now. I’ve always been a bit dubious about streaming’s reported numbers, and the entire landscape now feels like a house of cards. Its Silicon Valley mindset (take on mountains of debt and outspend everyone else until you’re the last service standing) never seemed particularly realistic in a landscape of established studios. Netflix had a head start, but that never changed the fact that there was no world where they could outspend Disney or other major studios into oblivion. I don’t know what the answer is in terms of revenue (while offering an ad-tier is a start, I don’t know if that offsets the ad-free tier), but it does feel like we’re lurching our way back to a cable model.

What I’m Hearing

I hate to say anything nice about A.I., but Spotify’s new little DJ thingy isn’t that bad! It takes me back to the days of Pandora, but with a bit more variety. While the A.I. voice (based off a real guy who works for Spotify) is still a little unnerving, I do like the set-it-and-forget-it of how it plays music as opposed to the typical Spotify playlist, which typically stars strong and about 10-15 songs goes downhill really fast.

What I’m Playing

I have a Zelda problem. The problem is this: I can’t play for short sessions. Every time I sit down and I’m like, “Okay, I’m only going to play for an hour and then I’ll do something else,” is that inevitably I keep going for two or three hours at least. There’s always something in the distance that catches my interest. They made the game that way!