So, hey, what do you know, it turns out people like movies! Okay, so I’m looking at this thing a little harder now, and it seems that they like movies about the future, and even more specifically a future where things are not going so well. It turns out that there’s actually three times as many movies about an impending dystopia than ones where everyone’s driving hover cars and doing just dandy.
The question is: Why is everyone so hopeless, and how is this capitalism’s fault? You’ve got to admit that you’d probably rather pay money to see some topography-rearranging, apocalyptic, nuclear explosions on the big screen, than watch some slice of life film about how hard of a time Matthew McConaughey is having eating Cheerios in his space yacht, because artificial gravity hasn’t been invented yet. When it comes down to it, Hollywood doesn’t really dictate what kind of movies we want to see; they just make them. Maybe capitalism actually will have something to do with the fall of human civilization, but it’s not to blame for the evident implication that everyone seems so sure it’s going to happen. I mean take the Bible, for instance. That story doesn’t end on the best note, and I don’t imagine the guys who wrote it are collecting any royalty checks.
Are we all doomed? Who knows? But it’s probably just easier to assume that we are because it gives you the kind of nihilistic, reckless abandon that lets you justify spending your precious time seeing the new Hunger Games movie.
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