BY OUR MOVIE CRITIC, D. W. FORD-ORSON III

IT’S AN ILL wind and all that, but all the metrics agree, films have suddenly improved dramatically since Hollywood’s actors and writers decided to withdraw their labor.

Who knows how long it will last, or what the long-term effects will be? But just for a while, we might be spared the standardized, franchised childish muck that Hollywood has been churning out these last few decades.

Movies reduced to McDonald’s meals; scripts so thin they could double as windows; acting so bland that the seat you’re sitting in seems to have more depth. And for Jesus’ sake, don’t mention the fucking superheroes. Like a brutal cancer, they just metastasized into tumor-like productions so swollen with their own self-importance that they inevitably consumed themselves.

Stale and reheated, the Hollywood product – because that is what it became – then began to poison its audiences, and was saved only by the arrival of the ultimate franchise facility, the streaming service. Nothing is too bland for the streaming industry, whose motto ought to be Movies – Fuck them, we just want your subscription. Well, now the actors and writers have become victims of the crap they helped create. Good luck with that.