Thoughtful and intelligent. While I am not much of a fan of some of the movies you reviewed and I also didn’t watch many of the TV programs, the trend you’ve noted does indeed affect me as well as my enjoyment of a lot of popular entertainment. I love, or used to love, Avenger origin movies, but specifically found the Captain Marvel film to be horribly contrived, boring and as a result, irrelevant. That’s a damned shame, because I wanted to love the damned thing.

As an aside, I made the mistake of giving DeadPool 2 to my ex, who ran it 24/7 on my upstairs stereo system to the point where I very nearly burned the fucking DVD. It’s one thing to make fun of, it’s another to beat the holy shit out of a theme.

And that’s the whole point. Hollywood, just as does every other American money-making machine, seizes on a good thing and not only sucks it dry but continues to raise it from the dead literally and figuratively. We as a culture don’t understand ENOUGH already. Hollywood is perhaps the worst offender, offering up the same old shit year after year. Even Pixar sold out, one of the last bastions of wit and originality, after Disney gobbled it up.

I am sick unto death of sequels. I only saw a few, and one of the most famous, and famously so fucking good it outdid the original was Aliens. Talk about ladyboss. Nothing close to it ever since. Even Ridley Scott couldn’t outdo himself with his sequels, which continue to suck the life out of the monster, with exactly the same kinds of scenes and expectations, even as he continues to put badass women into the movies. Who, unfortunately, all get impregnated. Message to Ridley: go fuck yourself already. Aliens was enough.

The same could be said for Terminator. I was living in Australia when the original came out. I liked T2 as well, but after that the franchise began to bomb. When we drag aging stars out of retirement to breathe new life into a story that was one and done, we insult the original. But that’s just my opinion. Doesn’t make me right.

Look, I adore the films like Atomic Blond and Unlocked, and Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman was for me a bit of a revelation because right up front it made woman of a certain age gorgeous, badass and fabulous. No apologies. Robin Wright was superb. The film is fun, and without any pandering to the audience about Harvey Weinstein assholes.

It is American to saturate ourselves with something that worked for a while, and in the process simply kill it off to the point where the original cleverness and sweetness are long gone. I am weary. I love good film making, and am done with the nudge-nudge-wink-wink. We need good films by good women directors that use original and thoughtful and provocative story lines. Period full stop.

I for one don’t care about meta anything. I love a good yarn. For me, Ironman, the first one, was so goddamned good and funny and original and well-acted and well-written that I regularly play it (almost as much as the ex played Deadpool 2, but he’s not there anymore). That was a Very. Good. Story. Avengers Endgame SUCKED. But that’s just me. When studios try too hard, quality suffers.