can you summarize the video: Intro
The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol of  a snake eating its own tail. There are
many interpretations of it: One is the endless  cycle of nature and time. Another is renewal,
as the snake eats more of its back, the  fresh front will replace it. But the
most literal is destruction, the snake  will eventually eat itself to death.
This is the worst era in film history. I don’t  mean financially. I haven’t run the numbers,
I don’t know if there are more flops than  usual. I don’t mean critically, I don’t know if movies are getting more bad reviews than in  prior eras. I mean artistically. Artistically,
we are in the worst era in film history. My reasoning for this claim is simple:
for the past ten years mainstream culture has been  inundated with terrible movies, lacking in vision,
mired with problem after problem, shackled  to nostalgia without substance or care for
what made those original nostalgic movies  good in the first place, and they are now trying to deny the sacredness of death, yes you  heard me right, deny the sacredness of death.
You’ve heard the opinion: “there’s too many  remakes and sequels these days” so much that its become cliché. The more accurate problem is that  there’s too many bad remakes and sequels these
days, I doubt many people would be complaining if  all these franchise additions were good. However,
I also don’t think a landscape filled with  remakes and sequels and little else is likely
to be good. You may say “well hang on, that’s  just the super mainstream what about all these
original indie and low budget films coming  out?” And I will retort; “those are good to have but mainstream culture is important, it’s  where the most money is, it’s what gets the most
eyeballs. I think it says something about us and  it says something about the creative limitations
of some of our most paid artists that mainstream  culture is so derivative right now.” We are in
an age of not just copies, but bad copies, and  I intend to watch it all burn to the ground.
Psst, there’s something I want to tell you  about: My Heritage. Last time I told you that
My Heritage
our family has a picture on our kitchen island  with several ancestors in it and they all look pretty radical. Problem is, we don’t have any idea  who most of them are. That’s why MyHeritage is
an illuminating website. It can search through  20 billion historical records and all you need
are a few names and dates and it will start to  fill in your family tree with better and even new information. Instant Discoveries is a way for  new people to be added to your tree automatically,
I can add people I know are in my past which can  connect with me with more potential ancestors.
Hey Mom, I’m on the MyHeritage website again. I loved how you found-there was that other photo
of my Grandmother when she was probably  3 years old. I don’t know man it really activates that section of my brain that’s  dedicated to my Grandmother. Even at the
age of 3 I’m looking at her in that touched  up photo and it’s like oh my gosh I see her.
Can you tell me who this person is? Yeah I have no idea. Was  there a clue on MyHeritage?
I found an alternative photo and I’m pretty  certain, that’s probably the same person.
This is <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON>. Born 1855, she was born  in Tennesse, grandmother of your grandmother.
If this kind of family sleuthing interests you,  sign up for a 14-day free trial with the link below and enjoy all MyHeritage has to offer.  Thanks to MyHeritage for sponsoring this video.
Sequels
SEQUELS The Star Wars franchise has got to be  the most analyzed franchise in the 21st
century. The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy has  been critiqued possibly more than any other
franchise addition in history--even more  than the infamous prequel trilogy that came
before it. But why is that? I won’t belabor  this point, because you’ve heard it a lot:
The sequel trilogy and a vast majority of star  wars media under Disney is heavily flawed,
and this is not something that  is simply my personal opinion. Watch the entirety of the original three  star wars movies and count things that are
mistakes—objective mistakes: A stormtrooper  in the background hitting his head on a door
or Luke kicking too far from an actor  to look like it connected. But what about coincidences or contrivances in  the plot? Take the sequence where Luke
gets more and more of his friends captured  in Jabba’s palace in an attempt to rescue Han Solo. If you really analyze this  plan it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
And if you tallied up these problems across the  entire original trilogy---at the upper end you’d
probably have 100 problems some big some small,  which by no means is unusual when creating a
large and complicated fictional story and world.  When you get to the prequel trilogy these problems
become more numerous and more severe; why do  the Jedi use force run once and never again?
Why does Obi Wan smash through a window to latch  onto this drone when he could easily plummet to his death? Why isn’t this assassination drone  built to self destruct so know one can track
it back? I know Obi Wan is a Jedi but this is  downright suicidal. How is an electrified spear
thrown very hard capable of shattering star  cruiser windows? But I think the worst of the
prequels flaws have to do with characters: like  how Anakin Skywalker goes from being tempted to
the dark side and maiming someone to defend  another, to slaughtering innocent children,
in mere minutes. Or how Obi Wan leaves Anakin  to brutally die. What compounds problems like
these is that the prequels affect the continuity  of the original trilogy. Across all the prequels
I would estimate there may be a thousand  problems some big some small. Which is a lot.
Again these are estimates, the exact number  doesn’t matter too much—the point is that
from trilogy to trilogy these problems  increase in quantity dramatically. And
when I talk about problems—I’m not talking  about stilted acting or whether I have an emotional connection to the films. I’m talking  about things that don’t logically follow,
errors that may not be noticed by the audience at  first but are nonetheless still there and tend to
damage the work upon further contemplation, and  if fixed would make that piece of media better.
When you get to the sequel trilogy, across  all three films, I estimate, there are
thousands of problems. A knife is painted out of  the background to keep Rey from dying during a
fight scene, the half-sunken wreckage of  the Death Star is used as a marker for a knife map that can only work while standing at  a specific point on the landscape while pointed
at a specific part of the wreckage, (all of  this while ignoring the fact this wreckage should not exist in huge pieces like this  anyway) Kylo Ren’s tie fighter gets damaged,
rolls across the desert at 200 mph and explodes.  He walks out of it perfectly fine moments later.
Even if you like these films you have to admit  these moments do not work, they cannot function
in a coherent story. You have to admit these films  would be better without these problems. Yet these
films are riddled with them, it is rare for any  given scene to not have a problem within it.
The Force Awakens was hugely influential on  the film industry in ways we have only recently begun to comprehend. Much of the teasing in the  movie and trailer is echoed in sequels of similar
franchise giants. The Force Awakens rehashes the  general plot structure, themes, and iconography
of a New Hope which satisfied most people at the  time, but in hindsight the film had very little
substance in itself, beyond a few concepts of  concepts it had no merits that stood on their own.
The Last Jedi also borrows iconography  and themes of The Empire Strikes Back, such as the rebels being scattered and hunted  throughout the film, but you’re left wondering
why the resistance, which should be in power, is  being chased and outgunned by those who…shouldn’t
have an overwhelming force? Sure there are  plenty of original ideas in the film too, but they only seek to cut short plot lines  that had been established in the Force Awakens.
And finally you have the Rise of Skywalker  which is so blatant in its borrowing
that it resurrects a villain from the original  trilogy who exploded twice. Throughout the whole
sequel trilogy even things like spaceships are  simply original trilogy ships but painted black,
or soft reboots of original trilogy ships--there  is no natural evolution in technology, there is
no changing of the power dynamics in the galaxy,  there is no change in the strategies or behaviors
of the warring factions from the decades before,  and even though they tease us with potential ideas, there is no change in how we understand the  villains or the heroes. After the conclusion of
this trilogy it became blatantly obvious that they  had no overarching plan. You don’t end up with
this many problems within a trilogy because of a  few slip ups, your priorities have to be seriously
out of whack from the very beginning. There was  clearly a lack of communication between teams,
a lack of time, a lack of care. From the very  beginning Disney wanted to recapture the magic,
feel, and success of the original trilogy but  did not have the planning, skills, vision,
or originality to do that. If they did just rehash  the original trilogy it might have done okay,
the problem is the sequel trilogy isn’t  just a copy of the original trilogy, it’s a bad copy. All they could do was chew  up what they had before and spit it back out.
In the Ahsoka TV series, based off of a character  in the animated Star Wars the Clone Wars series,
they have to bring back Hayden Christensen’s  Anakin Skywalker, they have to tease us with Darth Vader, in the Book of Boba Fett they have to  bring back Cad Bane, one of the coolest characters
in the animated clone wars, just to kill him off  after a couple of scenes. Truly baffling they put
in the effort to bring in this character in  live action just to unceremoniously end his story forever. At the end of the Han Solo film  they have to tease us with Darth Maul of all
people. I just remembered this, at the end of Obi  Wan, they tease us with force ghost Qui-Gon Jinn.
Even in The Acolyte, despite how terrible it is,  is a show with 90% brand new, never before seen
or referenced characters. But still it has to have  a sith with a black spooky mask and unconventional
red lightsaber, and has to tease us at the very  end with Darth Plageius and Yoda. They cannot help
themselves. Could Star Wars TV shows utilize these  existing characters to enhance their stories? Yes.
Will they ever use them as anything else than as  a crutch to prop up their own terrible scripts
with memories of better things? No. That’s all  they’ve done that’s all they’ll ever do. Andor
is their one good show which makes it miles  ahead of these other shows and it doesn’t have any of these silly character teases. The  only thing against it is that it’s slower.
The original Star Wars was a product of multiple  influences reforged into one work from a genuine
artist during a time where innovation was  necessary. I don’t think Disney in its current
form is capable of replicating that right now. The  Star Wars brand now has significantly more movies
and shows that are bad and forgettable than it  does movies and shows which are good and special.
Disney has diluted the brand and its identity.  In the trailer for the Skeleton Crew we see alien
environments that don’t feel alien; there are  aliens walking alien pets, aliens going to school,
taking tests, and wearing backpacks, aliens  walking down concrete roads and sidewalks
that go to homes with pitched roofs. This isn’t a  Star Wars neighborhood! This is a Disney channel
original movie suburb with a coat of paint! It  speaks to such a lack of imagination. As long as
artists are making things that are only references  to their own brand, that are only inspired by this
incest of ideation, I don’t think we’re going  to get good movies, let alone worthy sequels.
When you look at the recent Marvel Movies  and TV shows they are also riddled with problems just like this. In Endgame  they spend a good chunk of the movie
simply revisiting Marvel’s greatest hits  in the form of time travel. Spiderman: No Way Home is a better movie than you’d expect  but it does rub me the wrong way how they have
to bring back Sam Raimi’s villains and previous  iterations of Spiderman in this convoluted way.
At least the film has the balls to re-handle  characters in previous films that were not well received but I fear Hollywood learned the  wrong lessons from the success of this movie.
Doctor Strange in the Multi-verse of Madness was  the last Marvel project I ever saw in theaters,
and it was so bad it gave me a headache by the  time it was over. Besides constantly not making sense and fundamentally not understanding what  infinity actually means, they for some reason,
bring in recognizable characters such as  Professor X played by the Patrick Stewart,
Mr. Fantastic played by John Krasinski, Captain  Carter, Captain Marvel, and Blackbolt just to
five minutes later kill them all violently in  the dumbest ways possible because Wanda wants
to be with her imaginary kids. It’s baffling.  When you look at the Rings of Power series it’s
also riddled with problems and callbacks.  When you look at Deadpool and the Wolverine it’s riddled with problems and callbacks. Alien  Romulus is riddled with problems and callbacks.
Oh god I haven’t even mentioned all the Jurassic  World films, all the new Terminator sequels,
Wonder Woman 1984, Matrix Resurrections, yet  another old Indiana Jones. Ever since 2015
there has not just been a bunch  of sequels released every year, but there has been at least one infamous sequel  released every single year. The year before that
Dumb and Dumber To was released which I saw but I  don’t think anyone remembers. All I can recall is
how gross and old Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels  looked, what actually happened in that movie?
Wait “the United States Department of Justice  charged that money used to produce the film was stolen from a Malaysian government investment  fund.” huh learn something new everyday.
If you look at the announcements for Disney movies  it is bleak. At D23, 4 out of the 17 films are
not sequels or remakes, and only 3 are seemingly  original. If you look further into the future it
does not get much better. People would probably  not be worried about the state of entertainment if most of these sequels were stellar, but  there are signs most of these are going to
be awful. The Snow White remake is ludicrously  expensive, has been hit with controversy after
controversy and a one year delay. The Toy Story  franchise concluded well with the 3rd one and
has no idea where to go. The Lion King remake  prequel does not have the writing or nostalgia
of the original Lion King to use as a crutch.  Nearly every Marvel project since Endgame has
been a disaster. Incredibles 2 did not live up  to the original and frankly I don’t think Disney
has the teeth to ever make a good Incredibles  film. Is it possible these project could turn out
well? Yes. Is it likely? No. A landscape of purely  derivative art is not healthy for creative minds.
Adaptations
ADAPTATIONS I used to think there were no bad ideas, only  bad executions, now I’m not so sure about this.
The existence of a live action Harold and the  Purple Crayon movie is hilarious on the face of
it. An animated film adapting Harold would  have plenty of potential but a live action
film seems...(maybe I’m being dramatic here)  kind of impossible to be good? The appeal of
the children’s book is that it’s a story about  someone creating their own world through drawing,
everything he does in the book is 2-dimensional  and simplified. There’s a visual joke where Harold shakes his crayon and unintentionally creates  wavy water that he falls into. And they animate
this...in fact they fully animate the first five  minutes of the film just to pivot to the real
world. WHY? If you have to have live action why  not do it Roger Rabbit style and have 2d animation
interact with the real world? Making this cute  toddler into a grown man and then putting him into the boring, already made real world that  spawns glossy hyper-realistic objects out of his
drawings instead of taking the obvious path and  creating an animated 2D film is just a bad idea.
While we’re on children’s books a “The Giving  Tree” feature length movie would be a bad idea,
(and I know damn well a producer has looked at  the giving tree sale numbers and thought about it)
the book is so concise in its message and  purposefully leaves out a lot of information to convey its message that there is very little  you can add to it without actively undermining it.
A typical Hollywood screenwriter would probably  expand on the boy’s life or give the tree more to do in the story and god forbid we’d have a bunch  of scenes like this: “Come boy come swing from
my branches and play in my shade...” “whoa did  that tree just...talk?! That’s a talking tree!
I must be going crazy?!” Is it possible for a  Giving Tree movie to be made that’s good? Yes,
but it would have to be very creative  in its story telling, so unusual and new in a way I can’t even fathom and I think  that’s very unlikely to happen. Furthermore,
is it possible for a Giving Tree movie to be  made that’s even better than the book? I say
that’s damn near impossible without  just making your own original story.
This is what makes the Joker movie kind of  an oddity. The Joker is a decent movie about mental illness and living in a culture lacking in  empathy that is only tenuously connected to the DC
universe. It’s a Trojan horse movie: sneaking in  an original story into something masquerading as
a DC super-villain film. After Joker’s success  I was kind of expecting more original stories
with “Big Franchise” paint on them, but I  can’t recall any more examples like this.
The Lego Movie is a film that  you would not expect to be good, but surprisingly is. I owe most of its success  to two things: prioritizing creating an enjoyable
story before trying to sell its product,  and treating the property with sincerity.
The film really ties everything together by  connecting it to the real world at the end, yes, but only as a way to emphasize what the purpose  of a build-able toy like LEGO is at its core.
The Super Mario Brothers Movie is possibly the  most generic and safe kids movie I have ever
seen. (I’m not talking about the original which  is the opposite of that.) If you saw the trailer,
yeah that’s the movie. There is not a single thing  in this film that will surprise you. However,
it’s not bad--it’s nice, its fine. This film was  very well received and I believe that’s because
the story was not insulting and the movie treats  the Mushroom Kingdom with awe and sincerity—a
lesser film might be irritatingly sarcastic and  mock the whole idea of platforming and power-ups,
but because this film is faithful and interprets  these video game ideas sincerely people are more charitable to the film than it probably deserves. Judging by the trailer, The Minecraft Movie is
going to be profoundly mediocre. I can  just feel it dripping with insincerity.
Oh the main character you play as in the  game is named Steve how stupid is that?,
I’m gonna roll my eyes. *sigh* This guy is such a toolbag. Look at the animals and how derpy they look, wow the world is made of blocks isn’t that weird, isn’t that just heckin crazy?
What the hell? You don’t have to place things right on the crafting table to craft who cares? I hope  this trailer is just really misleading because
it depresses me that no matter what happens  it’s still going to make a billion dollars. Right in the middle of editing this the trailer  for The Electric State movie based off of Simon
Stalenhag’s graphic novel was released and I  am actually kind of shocked at how generic it
looks. This trailer is pure slop. More triple A  list actors we know are not going to play actual
characters. Looks like we’re getting another  Gus Fring. How do you take such atmospheric
artwork and turn it into this? “Son of a  bi- who throws a refrigerator-” SHUT UP
SHUT UP SHUT UP. I have never seen anyone  turn something so silent and somber into pure loud marvel action CRAP. Oh my god talk  about not understanding what you’re adapting.
They key to making a work based on an  existing non-film property is sincerity,
treating the thing you’re adapting seriously  and understanding it on its own merits and
if you understand it on its own merits you’ll  understand that the typical “fictional character enters the real world or vice versa” plot and  treating a property like any other property
isn’t going to cut it for most things.  You’re going to have to be unconventional, you’re going to have to work by and  understand the rules of that cultural
artifact or else you’re just taking something  in our culture and re-heating it for the masses.
Remakes
REMAKES Most Disney “Live Action” remakes are financially  successful, you should find this to be an
immensely sobering fact. The Lion King remake is  bad, I knew it was going to be bad from the first
trailer. The Aladdin remake is bad, I knew it  was going to be bad when I first saw Will Smith’s
blue mug. Guess what? The Lilo and Stitch movie  is going to be bad—the Hercules remake is going
to be bad-the Moana remake is going to be bad.  Not a single one of them has been worthwhile so
why does anyone expect the next one to be good?  I attribute the success of these films solely to
the fact it’s a recognizable property done up  in a new coat of paint, something you’ve seen before but with added spectacle. I can moan and  groan about Hollywood’s lack of originality and
artistic drive but people, regular common  people, continue to pay for these movies.
We’re paying for our culture to be cannibalized. What the general public needs to realize is these
remakes aren’t just copies they’re bad copies.  Just look at YMS’s video on the lion king remake
to see that this remake is demonstrably worse  than the beloved classic it’s trying to imitate
in seemingly every way. From the animation, to the  music, to the voice acting, to the story itself.
I expected the Aladdin 2019 Remake to be just  below average, I was genuinely surprised to
discover it is a film worse than its original in  every conceivable way. The film is gray, ugly,
and bloated beyond belief. You feel that extra  30 minutes. There were about 2 tiny additions I
liked, a bunch of things that made no difference,  and a whole lot of things that make the story
actively worse. To name just two: The added songs  sung by Jasmine are completely forgettable and
the second one literally pauses the universe of  the movie in the middle of a scene to be sung,
it’s the most jarring thing I’ve ever  seen in a musical. Abu touches treasure in the cave of wonders--the cave where you’re  explicitly not supposed to touch any treasure,
not the gem that comes later that causes the  cave to collapse, literally before that, and it doesn’t cave in or spew lava. Aladdin walks on  all these coins getting to the lamp. He’s touching
treasure!! They didn’t have to put these  coins here… Guess which version didn’t put treasure on major walkways. If you  think this is it no there’s so much more,
the mistakes in this film compound on themselves  so much I’d need half the video to explain them.
Disney could have had Will Smith play  a fresh interpretation of the Genie, which he does sparingly, but for the most part  they had no confidence in themselves so I’m sure
they spent a million dollars and thousands of  VFX dungeon hours just to make Will Smith blue
and make him repeat all of Robin Williams lines  but with less personality. I’ll give it to them,
they tried their damn best to make the “Friend  Like Me” sequence have the same energy in live
action, I mean their sequence uses so much CGI  it’s basically animated too, and still it pales
in comparison to the 2D original because animation  is practically real Goddamn magic compared to the
constraints of live action. It’s so dumb.  It’s so so dumb.
Evening. Evening. Guards are behind me.
Nearly everything they add is terrible and everything they rehash is rehashed in a worse way.
The Beauty and the Beast remake is  much more bearable but again bloated, adds very little I like, puts in a bunch of  things that make no difference and a whole lot
of things that make it worse. Gaston doesn’t  throat eggs in this version so how good could
it possibly be? It’s genuinely admirable how  much they try to make these animated characters
work in realistic CGI but they just can’t. The Little Mermaid is better than Aladdin but
still so boring and bloated, it adds 2 tiny thing  I like, puts in things that make no difference,
and adds a whole lot of things that make it worse.  Notice the pattern here? They add 3 new songs,
2 of which are not just forgettable but  legitimately some of the worst I’ve ever heard. The one sung by Prince Eric really helps  you appreciate musical choreography because for
most of the song he just drones on while walking  down a dirt path. Melissa McCarthy, alright even
good portrayal of Ursula. Nice job. They seemed  to try less with the design and animation of the
sea creatures, especially during the Under the Sea  sequence which has not a single animal playing a
nautical themed instrument. I find it comforting  that this film was a financial disappointment for Disney.
“No don’t put that sand dollar in your pocket, sir, not in your pocket it’ll get mixed in with the others and become  just a regular sand dollar—which it is.”
Besides parts of Aladdin, which is amazingly bad  in the second half, all these remakes left my mind
almost as soon as they entered, their greatest  sin is that they’re boring. Artistically there
is nothing to be gained from these because  they aren’t just copies, they’re bad copies.
Wait a second, Solar Sands, there are  good copies too! Come on, get outta here!
Hi guys solar sands roommate Kino Corner  here, I know it’s easy to say that all remakes are bad. *cheeky Trump impression*  Hollywood is running out of ideas! They
can’t stop running out of ideas! But, you know  what, this might be controversial for me to say,
but not all remakes are bad. In  fact, some of them are great. Would you guess that classic movies like The  Maltese Falcon, His Girl Friday, Ben Hur, The
Magnificent Seven, Invasion of the Body Snatchers,  The Fly, The Thing, and Sorcerer are all remakes.
Heck, even the most badass movie of all time,  Michael Mann’s Heat, is a remake. I mean, it’s a remake of a tv movie he made called LA Takedown,  so it was more like he wanted another go at the story to
make it better. And it worked out! Everyone loves  Heat but hardly anyone remembers LA Takedown.
I wanna take a look at two beloved movies that are  remakes - Scarface and A Fistful of Dollars. Let’s
start with Scarface. You hear that title and you  think of Al Pacino snorting coke, cutting up dudes with chainsaws, and introducing all his buddies  to his little friend. The movie is actually a
remake of a Howard Hawks film that released in  1932, which was also called Scarface. The two
films share some thematic similarities about the  rise and fall of the titular gangster, the famous line “the world is yours,” and so on, but they’re  basically two very distinct movies. In the 1932
version, Paul Muni plays as an Italian gangster  in early 30’s New York. For the 1983 film, its
director, Brian de Palma, set it clearly in South  Florida in the 1980s. The remake took a look at
the 80s drug trade, Cuban immigration, and 1980s  life. So what de Palma did was take a 51 year old
film as a baseline and he entirely reworked it so  that it would be modern and culturally relevant.
Now, as for A Fistful of Dollars, it’s a very  straight remake of Kurosawa’s classic Yojimbo.
It’s beat-for-beat almost the exact same film,  but Sergio Leone brought the story into color and traded samurai aesthetics for cowboy aesthetics.  It wasn’t a sanctioned remake, though, as Toho
sued the production for royalties and credits.  Kurosawa wrote to Leone, saying “Signor Leone,
I have just had the chance to see your film. It  is a very fine film, but it is my film. Since
Japan is a signatory of the Berne Convention on  the international copyright, you must pay me.”
Does that make A Fistful of Dollars bad? No!  It still rocks. I love both films. They have
the same story, same beats, and some of the same  jokes (though a few things were changed) but both films have excellent direction and Toshiro Mifune  and Clint Eastwood are both legendary leading men.
They can coexist and work as complementary  films and maybe a fun double-feature.
What I’m getting at is this: remakes can be  good but maybe they’re often not. They’re good,
or even great, when the people making them  love the source material and want to put their own spin on it. Sometimes, there are  films that have great ideas in them but were
just executed poorly. Those are great films to  remake because a good filmmaker can see where the original went wrong and make something  great out of it. However, remakes are NOT
good when it’s a person or a studio who just  wants to make a cheap buck by profiting off of people’s nostalgia. If the intention  is soulless, then the result is soulless.
CULTURAL CANNIBALISM
Cultural Cannibalism
When I first saw the CGI version of Peter  Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin show up in Rogue One the worst of my feelings were  that I could tell it was CGI. These days
I fear it was the beginning of  something much more insidious. While using old footage and “computer  manipulation” to create scenes using
the likeness of a long dead actor has been  tried as far back as 2004. It has become
more and more commonplace to simulate the  likenessess of long-deceased actors using CGI and AI and puppet them around in movies.  Harold Ramis who played Egon Spangler in the
original Ghostbusters shows up in Ghostbusters:  Afterlife as a ghost. Christopher Reeve shows up
in that awful Flash movie as a horribly uncanny  abomination along with half a dozen or so actors,
some dead some still alive, including  George Reeves who uh killed himself.
Just recently, Ian Holm’s likeness was  used in multiple scenes in Alien:Romulus
as another android. The director Fede Alverez,  says he reached out to the widow of Ian Holm and
received authorization from the rest of his  family. Ian Holm’s widow felt “he would have loved it”. Besides the fact she could not possibly  know that for certain. It kind of doesn’t matter
to me that Ian Holm’s wife and family approved of  it, that’s better than them not approving of it,
but my stance on this as a moral issue is  that we should not be puppeting around the face and voice of a dead person, as if they  were still alive, for our entertainment,
especially when it is entirely avoidable. Nothing about the existence of Romulus
required Ian Holm’s likeness, the android could  have been anyone, just a random actor. Fede
Alverez defends himself saying it was a genuine  attempt to honor him but there’s so much money
at stake with these kinds of films I just don’t  believe that. The fact that anyone excuses this
and that it’s not an instant reason to avoid this  film astonishes me. It’s one thing to use tricks
of editing or even a CGI model in the case that  an actor dies while making a film to complete
their scenes. It’s quite another to bring an  actor back from the dead when it is entirely
avoidable for---let’s face it—a cheap thrill  of nostalgia. I find it absolutely repulsive.
To be clear, it wouldn’t matter if these  uncanny recreations looked super convincing and it wouldn’t matter if they got permission  from everyone in the actor’s families for each
of these cameos. If they got consent from the  living person before they died to do something
like this while that would be better I would  still oppose it artistically. There are more
subtle and tasteful ways to honor a dead  actor—literally having them show up as some sort of action figure just speaks to a  lack of imagination. Creating projects with
the intention of using a long dead actor is  not just tacky but sociopathic. This isn’t
simply playing archival footage of an actor. This  isn’t simply an actor playing another dead actor,
who while is imitating a dead person can easily be  separated from the real person who once existed.
This is a trick of digital necromancy, an  attempt to bring back the living likeness and aura of a once real person. It’s not just  a copy, it’s a bad copy. It is fundamentally a
refusal of death and a denial of the sacredness  of death. In modern cinema nothing is allowed to
die. No franchise can simply end—if it does  end it must go out kicking and screaming.
No once living actor can rest if they can be  resurrected for profit later down the line.
If the film industry can’t stop themselves from  using AI to resurrect the dead I guarantee it
is salivating at the thought of being able to  use AI in every part of film making. They tried
to do it with the intro to Secret Invasion.  Even with the death of James Earl Jones I’m certain the only thing on Disney executives  minds is “do we re-create his voice with AI?”
Because even though Darth Vader’s Story has been  complete for decades they HAVE to bring him back,
he’s too popular NOT to bring back. They have  no self control, they cannot help themselves.
Christ, is there going to be a point we don’t  get new actors anymore because of AI? The whole system is based on intellectual properties  with a significantly weakened star-based system,
which doesn’t allow interesting scripts to succeed  without being attached to an IP. Are we seriously
going to resurrect actors just to play the  same stale characters? This
is why I call this the worst era in film  history. There’s been periods of remakes
and sequels in movie history, but I have  never seen anything like this before.
People have to stop paying for these movies  if you want things to change. I tend to avoid these movies because when I hear about them  I consistently hear bad things and once these
movies have been out for a few weeks no one talks  about them. Kung Fu Panda 4 was the 8th highest
grossing film in the US this year. When was the  last time someone talked about it? Wonka made a
ton of money last year. When was the last time  you saw someone mention that movie? There was
a live action Avatar remake on Netflix this year I  completely forgot that existed. Do you know that a
Pinocchio remake came out? Another Ghost-busters  film came out this year did you know that?
On the other hand, when Dune Part 2 was released  there was a solid month of very popular memes
about it, and yes it is a remake, but of a  book series and a film that is famously not
considered the most perfect film of the 80s  and it also has the advantage of being good.
I believe these films will have no cultural  impact. That’s the silver lining to all of this. They have no staying power. Disney has a  finite amount of good films they can remake in
their backlog and even if they remake every single  one of them they will run out and when they run
out they will be screwed. We saw them try and make  an original project again and it was terrible. The
music in a Disney musical was bad, can you believe  that? They have forgotten how to make good movies.
When people say that if you keep complaining about  all these movies, all these star wars projects, all these sequels and remakes and films based off  other properties maybe you won’t get any more,
as if the audience was some  sort of misbehaving child, they fail to realize I would rather have  no films than an abundance of films that
cannibalize our culture. These studio films  are products and over and over again we have
been sold significantly worse products than  what we had before. Yes I want these films
to fail. I want them to fail because they have  given me no reason to wish for their success.
But if it’s the case that these kinds of films  continue to be successful than I see a dark future
ahead, where the same handful of franchises are  restarted over and over and billions of dollars
are spent not on artists trying to move us into  the future but on trying to resurrect the past,
we will not only see the same ideas on the big  screen again and again but also the same faces.
Reminder that if family sleuthing interests  you, sign up for a 14-day free trial with the link below and enjoy all MyHeritage has to offer.  Thanks to MyHeritage for sponsoring this video.
Another announcement: FUTO, a tech  company who employs some friends I know, is holding a contest for all UI and UX designers.  The contest is to create a new cohesive design
language for their brand and apps. The grand  prize is $5000 along with a chance at a full
time position. It’s only open to US residents  over 18. If you’re interested in applying,
you can learn more at contest.futo.org  I’m not being paid to say this: it’s just a potential job opportunity for  any artists and designers in my audience.
A special thanks to the Kino Corner for his  segment and help with this video. His channel is linked in the description. The names  scrolling past are my patrons from Patreon,
who help support the channel. Their funds  allow me to make videos like this and more, if you want to become a patron you also  get access to behind the scenes material,
some of my writing, early video announcements,  and access to my fan Discord. Just click the
link in the description below. Anyway,  my name is Solar Sands, and goodbye.