Good, I hope this helps Wesley Snipes get his career back on track.
Reading about it, it feels like Snipes's beef was with writer/director David S. Goyer (and maybe Patton Oswalt for pointing out what an asshole Oswalt thought he was!), and whichever branch of Marvel was handling the BLADE movies. There are times on movies where you hear about stars behaving horribly—then years later, you discover it was because the producers or the studio was screwing them over, or they had personal or health issues they were dealing with at the time.
I remember everybody piling on Bruce Willis for his "Geezer Teaser" movies, where he'd do a couple of days' work and wouldn't learn his lines—well, don't you feel great knowing it was because he was suffering from cognitive issues, doing all these movies to give his family a financial cushion, and he didn't learn his lines because he no longer could?
"Financial cushion" - someone who's worth millions, making multi-milions per movie, cranks out a cool dozen over a decade which audiences are supposed to pay to see, but don't WE feel stupid? No, we don't. Maybe Willis' condition shifts our critcisms from the producers and actor to just the producers, but in a world where most of us can't even retire in comfort I'm not buying Bruce Willis' family requires multi-millions as a "financial cushion" that somehow cancels out all the criticism or ickiness of the Emmet/Furla situation they had with him.
I mean, as DR says, Willis was doing those movies in part because he was in serious cognitive decline, and appears to have been exploited when he wasn't mentally competent. It seems like it was an ugly situation.
That part is understandable, but it was information withheld from the public. What I'm not buying is DR saying we should feel stupid/bad for being sold shitty goods and commenting on that quality and questioning why, based on what we were allowed to know.
Wow, working class resentment much? "I don't have millions of dollars, so why should Bruce Willis?!?!?!?"
Maybe it's because he WASN'T always rich that he was determined his family should do better than he did when was younger. We're not talking Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, who could rely on trust funds while they got obscenely rich—we're talking about a former bartender.
As for his attitude? Have you ever suddenly discovered you can't do something you used to easily be able to? I saw that happen to my former wife, which gave her losing her temper some context, even if things got rough for us personally....
"Working class resentment", ah, so someone from the actual working class, according to you, should reign in any "resentment" but we should feel bad about criticizing the authentically shoddy products being pumped out by someone who's been a millionaire for decades for wanting to set his kids up with trust fund levels of "financial security". Man, the working class sure is the problem with everything, eh? The poor millionaires wanting us to support their pulling in more millions and then we go and say slightly negative things about their methods.
not to interfere with the expression of free speech, etc, but...this post really has little to nothing to do with Bruce Willis. If you all want to argue about that, maybe you should take it to notes or something?
Honestly, Noah, this isn't a hill I'm ready to die on.
None of Willis's Geezer Teasers sounded any good to me, so I didn't watch them—and I guess Mr. Baxter here doesn't follow my Substack, or else he MIGHT have been able to figure out why I feel some empathy for a talented performer struggling with cognitive decline (https://drdarkeny.substack.com/p/dementia-in-a-former-loved-one ).
It was that "FUCK THE SICK RICH MAN!" that...kind of rubbed me the wrong way, is all.
Sure, but I’m commenting on DR’s original comment here, which attempted to make a statement on the general public using Bruce as an example. My comment on your post was it’s own comment posted separately. It’s your Substack, but generally speaking this is how conversational back-and-forth works.
I watched the whole movie, even though 2/3 through it I still hadn’t seen any plot. As you said, they just kept hitting each other. Nothing else really happened. If I had paid to see it I would ask for my money back.
like, there's no real plot, and yet there's endless exposition?! like, if it were just a series of gags (like Airplane) that would be fine! but instead it's somehow the worst of all worlds, where nothing really happens and yet there's tons of screentime chewed up explaining pointless backstory that no one cares about.
Wow. Comparing DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE to Trump's victory, Noah? That's...kind of a reach.
My friend and I who saw it found it, like we find all the Deadpool movies, fun—but not as much fun as it thinks it is. I'm happy Ryan Reynolds finally found his franchise, and there are plenty of Looney Tunes-inspired gags with two guys who can inflict terrible injury on each other because both heal rapidly so it doesn't really mean anything (kind of like the joke where Wolverine drinks down a bottle of rubbing alcohol because the part that's poisonous won't affect him, but he can still get drunk off it—which has me wondering how Wolverine can get drunk, but Captain America can't!), and I did enjoy bits like Chris Evans turning out to be Johnny Storm instead of Steve Rogers—but there's also parts where the movies demand we take Deadpool's feelings (about Vanessa, about his dead-end life) seriously which...kind of jar because you know Deadpool knows it's all a construct anyway.
To me, it is what it is, and while I don't think it's great or anything, we enjoyed it while we watched it. It's certainly not the disaster Donald Trump winning the 2024 Election is....
I mean, I said it wasn't as horrifying as trump's election! for me the parallel is that I don't understand why so many of my fellow americans like what they do...Deadpool and Wolverine is pretty terrible, but people love it. I don't know why.
Why do so many people love Roquefort and Feta cheeses then even the smell of them makes me gag?
Why do I like to eat seafood when my ex-wife hates it?
Why are so many people into true crime when it just creeps me the fuck out?
Why are so many people dead-set against Apple computers and electric vehicles?
Not everybody likes the same things. I love dark chocolate, my best friend loves milk chocolate—it's not the fall of the Republic, it just means she gets THAT half of the box of Godiva, and I get THIS half.
Donald Trump winning the election? THAT is the fall of the Republic....
Deadpool / Wolverine is an exhumation or autoposy of the superhero cinematic era. Not that they're going to just blink out of existence right away, but we all know we're in a dying empire when it comes to those. DP/W was the kind of final word/look at what it was all about, and what we could still do while it was here, taken to ridiculous extremes. A movie like this doen't even work without a decade and a half (plus the few extras from the 90's and 00's) of continuity to riff on. A movie like this had esentially never been made, because it was never before possible. It was a great capper to the whole shebang, while a $100+ million dollars could still be spent on such a thing.
I was disappointed by the movie (for many of the same reasons as you) but, at least, it does seem to have worked out well for Wesley Snipes: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-08-12/wesley-snipes-from-disgraced-action-hero-to-breaking-guinness-world-records.html
https://variety.com/2024/film/news/ryan-reynolds-wesley-snipes-deadpool-and-wolverine-blade-return-1236114428/
that's cool. ryan reynolds seems like a decent sort even if he is often in pretty terrible movies.
Yes, sometimes it seems like he’s trying too hard, but also charming:
https://ew.com/celebrity/rick-moranis-mint-commercial-ryan-reynolds/
https://ew.com/celebrity/ryan-reynolds-levar-burton-aviation-gin-spokesperson/
Good, I hope this helps Wesley Snipes get his career back on track.
Reading about it, it feels like Snipes's beef was with writer/director David S. Goyer (and maybe Patton Oswalt for pointing out what an asshole Oswalt thought he was!), and whichever branch of Marvel was handling the BLADE movies. There are times on movies where you hear about stars behaving horribly—then years later, you discover it was because the producers or the studio was screwing them over, or they had personal or health issues they were dealing with at the time.
I remember everybody piling on Bruce Willis for his "Geezer Teaser" movies, where he'd do a couple of days' work and wouldn't learn his lines—well, don't you feel great knowing it was because he was suffering from cognitive issues, doing all these movies to give his family a financial cushion, and he didn't learn his lines because he no longer could?
"Financial cushion" - someone who's worth millions, making multi-milions per movie, cranks out a cool dozen over a decade which audiences are supposed to pay to see, but don't WE feel stupid? No, we don't. Maybe Willis' condition shifts our critcisms from the producers and actor to just the producers, but in a world where most of us can't even retire in comfort I'm not buying Bruce Willis' family requires multi-millions as a "financial cushion" that somehow cancels out all the criticism or ickiness of the Emmet/Furla situation they had with him.
I mean, as DR says, Willis was doing those movies in part because he was in serious cognitive decline, and appears to have been exploited when he wasn't mentally competent. It seems like it was an ugly situation.
That part is understandable, but it was information withheld from the public. What I'm not buying is DR saying we should feel stupid/bad for being sold shitty goods and commenting on that quality and questioning why, based on what we were allowed to know.
Wow, working class resentment much? "I don't have millions of dollars, so why should Bruce Willis?!?!?!?"
Maybe it's because he WASN'T always rich that he was determined his family should do better than he did when was younger. We're not talking Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, who could rely on trust funds while they got obscenely rich—we're talking about a former bartender.
As for his attitude? Have you ever suddenly discovered you can't do something you used to easily be able to? I saw that happen to my former wife, which gave her losing her temper some context, even if things got rough for us personally....
"Working class resentment", ah, so someone from the actual working class, according to you, should reign in any "resentment" but we should feel bad about criticizing the authentically shoddy products being pumped out by someone who's been a millionaire for decades for wanting to set his kids up with trust fund levels of "financial security". Man, the working class sure is the problem with everything, eh? The poor millionaires wanting us to support their pulling in more millions and then we go and say slightly negative things about their methods.
not to interfere with the expression of free speech, etc, but...this post really has little to nothing to do with Bruce Willis. If you all want to argue about that, maybe you should take it to notes or something?
Honestly, Noah, this isn't a hill I'm ready to die on.
None of Willis's Geezer Teasers sounded any good to me, so I didn't watch them—and I guess Mr. Baxter here doesn't follow my Substack, or else he MIGHT have been able to figure out why I feel some empathy for a talented performer struggling with cognitive decline (https://drdarkeny.substack.com/p/dementia-in-a-former-loved-one ).
It was that "FUCK THE SICK RICH MAN!" that...kind of rubbed me the wrong way, is all.
And with that, I'm bowing out.
Sure, but I’m commenting on DR’s original comment here, which attempted to make a statement on the general public using Bruce as an example. My comment on your post was it’s own comment posted separately. It’s your Substack, but generally speaking this is how conversational back-and-forth works.
I watched the whole movie, even though 2/3 through it I still hadn’t seen any plot. As you said, they just kept hitting each other. Nothing else really happened. If I had paid to see it I would ask for my money back.
right?
like, there's no real plot, and yet there's endless exposition?! like, if it were just a series of gags (like Airplane) that would be fine! but instead it's somehow the worst of all worlds, where nothing really happens and yet there's tons of screentime chewed up explaining pointless backstory that no one cares about.
I wish it was as funny as the first two Deadpool movies. Or even half as funny as one of them.
On the other hand, your writing is both entertaining and intelligent. I appreciate you!
aw, thanks!
Wow. Comparing DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE to Trump's victory, Noah? That's...kind of a reach.
My friend and I who saw it found it, like we find all the Deadpool movies, fun—but not as much fun as it thinks it is. I'm happy Ryan Reynolds finally found his franchise, and there are plenty of Looney Tunes-inspired gags with two guys who can inflict terrible injury on each other because both heal rapidly so it doesn't really mean anything (kind of like the joke where Wolverine drinks down a bottle of rubbing alcohol because the part that's poisonous won't affect him, but he can still get drunk off it—which has me wondering how Wolverine can get drunk, but Captain America can't!), and I did enjoy bits like Chris Evans turning out to be Johnny Storm instead of Steve Rogers—but there's also parts where the movies demand we take Deadpool's feelings (about Vanessa, about his dead-end life) seriously which...kind of jar because you know Deadpool knows it's all a construct anyway.
To me, it is what it is, and while I don't think it's great or anything, we enjoyed it while we watched it. It's certainly not the disaster Donald Trump winning the 2024 Election is....
I mean, I said it wasn't as horrifying as trump's election! for me the parallel is that I don't understand why so many of my fellow americans like what they do...Deadpool and Wolverine is pretty terrible, but people love it. I don't know why.
Why do so many people love Roquefort and Feta cheeses then even the smell of them makes me gag?
Why do I like to eat seafood when my ex-wife hates it?
Why are so many people into true crime when it just creeps me the fuck out?
Why are so many people dead-set against Apple computers and electric vehicles?
Not everybody likes the same things. I love dark chocolate, my best friend loves milk chocolate—it's not the fall of the Republic, it just means she gets THAT half of the box of Godiva, and I get THIS half.
Donald Trump winning the election? THAT is the fall of the Republic....
I always admire anyone’s use of the word “husk“.
And in another recent piece you use “ept”, for the opposite of inept.
Hats off.
Deadpool / Wolverine is an exhumation or autoposy of the superhero cinematic era. Not that they're going to just blink out of existence right away, but we all know we're in a dying empire when it comes to those. DP/W was the kind of final word/look at what it was all about, and what we could still do while it was here, taken to ridiculous extremes. A movie like this doen't even work without a decade and a half (plus the few extras from the 90's and 00's) of continuity to riff on. A movie like this had esentially never been made, because it was never before possible. It was a great capper to the whole shebang, while a $100+ million dollars could still be spent on such a thing.
but...they kind of didn't do anything with it?
it's so inert and pointless...idk. it's just hard for me to see it as a triumph of any sort.