Also the inciting incident to the 'verse of Firefly:

Mal: "Here's how it is: (The) Earth got used up, so we (moved out, and) terraformed a whole new galaxy of Earths, some rich and flush with new technologies, some not so much. (The) Central Planets, them as formed the Alliance, waged war to bring everyone under their rule; a few idiots tried to fight it, among them myself. I'm Malcolm Reynolds, captain of Serenity.

Was it explicitly climate change? I thought it was “blight” or whatever fictional disease killing crops.

I actually really liked the premise behind that one, the idea that collectively since we flooded our entertainment with cynical grimdark media, we all just accepted that ill use of technology leading to an apocalypse was an inevitability, and apathy let it happen.

It was an interesting message that I would've liked to see in a different vehicle.

One of the reasons I love Spec Ops: The Line. It’s marketed to the correct crowd. The exact type of person that needs to understand killing your way through a situation rarely works is the one who will see the cover and think “Aw cool, a shooting game about killing your way through an adventure”.

Ya know I was watching a Why Files episode on Reptilians who farm negative emotions from humans by keeping us in a cycle of reincarnation.

That makes, too much sense when shit like the DIC you're talking about exists.

Solid read. Thanks

Joan is a great writer! I'm glad to see a fellow lemming linking her work here.

My brother-in-law explicitly thought that the movie was commentary on "the liberal media."

The only movie that seems to have really moved the dial on public policy is Idiocracy, the inspiration behind Elon Musk and Peter Thiel’s quest to get more IT people to fuck.

And even then I have to remind people that saying "Idiocracy is a documentary!" that they're being too optimistic.

We are NOT in a fully-automated sex-positive polygamous future with leadership that acknowledges society's problems and places its best and brightest towards a solution, one where free speech is so alive you can even name your restaurant "Buttfuckers" and no one's even slightly offended, one where even the least educated people in our society can get good quality high-paying jobs in everything from the arts to medical, one where sex work is no longer demonized and is considered so valid a profession that you can get your ass rimmed at Starbucks while waiting for your coffee.

And I don't understand why people think we have it anywhere near that good.

Ellen DeGeneres saw Trump watching Finding Dory and tried to explain that the movie was about how it was wrong to separate families.

Trump loved it and had a viewing party at the White House.

ICE illegally separated families at the border, kicked parents back to Mexico, and adopted the kids into white families.... And those were the lucky ones, the unlucky ones died in a concentration camp composed solely of children where the teenagers were expected to take care of the kids who were in turn expected to take care of the toddlers.

Trump and his wife Melania showed up with the latter literally wearing a shirt that read "I don't really care, do you?"

You cannot appeal to the conscience of someone who doesn't have one, no matter how good your movie is or what it's about.

I really like the first half of the movie. That feeling of outrage as they try to get attention is just so well done. But the second half just gets too painful. I can’t watch it

Yeah, one of the few good movies I watched that felt emotionally draining. Joker is another good example.

I think that's a euphemism for "a pat in the head". As I said, I think is a movie aimed to a very specific subset of people, of which I don't belong. The set of people that also enjoy that doomsday climate clock that I keep bringing out because I think it gives away the same kind of emotions to people who liked that movie.

And for people that does not feel rewarded just for a movie, or a clock or whatever, saying to you "good for worrying", the movie becomes nothing, it's empty of anything else. It's a very simple 75 million dollar message that says "feel better than others, feel special for worrying". Also the whole message becomes a little ridiculous, when it's delivered on the biggest media platform, with millions in budget, a bunch of famous actors acting on it, and then praised by millions of people.

To me it feels like those conservative figures that say that they are being cancelled while they are live on national TV. It's just silly. And this movie gives the same vibes to me. Talking about the big ignored problem to an audience of millions of people that purposely went there to see the movie about the big ignored problem.

I'm just giving my opinion on why that movie is bad.

I know that probably in the States now even liking or not liking a movie is a political statement, and that some people "like it" just because they have to. But it's a bad movie. I've watch a lot of crap, and most times I power through it to at least see the ending. Imagine how bad had to be that I thought that it wasn't even worth to try to see the whole thing.