Originally posted October 24th, 2023.


I was recently forwarded a video of some obnoxious bugcreature movie critic named Patrick Willems. Sorry, Patrick (H) Willems.

I have no idea why he feels the need to include his initial in his name. There does not appear to be some famous Patrick Willems that he needs to differentiate himself from. This pretentious fag is already all the results when searching for his name.

Patrick Willems makes “video essays about movies,” and he is exactly as insufferable as you would expect him to be. Almost more obnoxious than his Made-In-Tel-Aviv “opinions” are the unfunny skits he does. If you feel the need to subject yourself to one of these, you can watch the first three minutes of his “video essay” on how AI filmmaking isn’t real art or something. 

Actually, I do need to quote this one part. Trust me, he isn’t doing self-satire.

1:50

*Watching a Wes Anderson Star Wars parody created with the help of AI*

What is this? Don’t people understand this isn’t real filmmaking?

 

Later he claims that the Wes Anderson Star Wars parody annoyed him so much that he just HAD to make a video about it.

For the record, I find the idea of machine learning replacing filmmakers hilarious but dubious, and it shows a tremendous misunderstanding of the subject matter. Neural net content creation is used for parodies more than anything else, because it never gives you a result that is actually accurate. Sometimes it gives you a result that is close enough that it can be useful, especially when combined with handwritten narration and plenty of tweaking. 

It’s annoying that we live in a world where people simultaneously think that neural nets are seconds away from replacing people, and also that they don’t provide any benefit, and that sixteen year olds should just go outside and film their magnum opus with $5,000 camera and lens setups that they don’t have right alongside an entire cast and crew that they also don’t have. 

No really, he actually said that. I skipped ahead to the “spread of AI” segment of his video.

I worry that young, aspiring filmmakers will see these and use AI instead of actually going outside and putting their hands on a camera.

As if using a tool to make films isn’t a form of filmmaking.

This argument is a rehash of the tedious “practical effects r better” refrain. First, they start by arguing that the new thing isn’t as good as the old thing. Then they shift to “but even if it is, it’s not real filmmaking.” Unfortunately, these types can’t just say that, they feel the need to bloviate for hours, saying nothing of importance.

Patrick Willems

I don’t have any inclination to respond to this garbage, but another commenter in the BANG thread that brought this to my attention summed up my feelings more eloquently than I could.

The AI one had come up in my feed and I watched maybe about half of it, skipping through some a few months ago.

I found it preposterous that he was treating film as if it’s some kind of high art.  First of all, all hollywood is capable of producing is shlock and it’s been that way for decades — and I personally have never been impressed by Wes Anderson’s artistic profundity either.  Second of all, “AI” is a tool and the talented wielder can create good things with it the same way a talented wielder of a chisel can create something cool.  Like seriously go give this guy a chisel and a block of marble and watch him produce garbage.  Will he blame the tool in that case, too?  A person wielding any tool will only ever release something that they are willing to release.  Maybe they can wield it effectively and make something good, maybe they can’t, but the incompetent artist shouldn’t blame their implement when they put out garbage.  They should have just kept it to themselves and switched to something they could competently use.

I think a big part of the negative reaction to “AI” from these types is that it gives normal people access to putting out certain types of content that simply had too high a barrier of entry before.  Does that mean there will be a proliferation of shit tons of low quality content? Absolutely.  Simply having access to create stuff for a medium that you previously couldn’t doesn’t instantly turn you into a competent artist. (Edit: I’ll remind everyone that the advent of fruityloops and rpgmaker software also saw the proliferation of a bunch of low quality content in their respective mediums)  But on the other hand, it’s not as though the quality of the content out there for film was particularly high these days in the first place so let’s not kid ourselves on that front.

One can bitch about the shitty AI content they personally are capable of producing all they want, Seth Rogan movies are huge piles of shit too and I’d rather watch even a shitty proompter’s content than sit through a viewing of ‘Sausage Party’ or ‘Santa Inc.’

With that out of the way, let’s move on to Patrick (H) Willems “Who Is Killing Cinema” video.

Unlike the one on AI, I watched the entirety of this garbage, albeit on 2x speed. In short, he names a bunch of Jews without telling you that they’re Jews, blames streaming, blames comic book movies, blames the lack of mid budget movies, and that’s pretty much it. You can see this in his Three Simple Fixes to (((Hollywood))) Making Money Again. 

Yes, his solution to Hollywood not making money is for them to keep making money. Someone get this Ideas Guy a medal. I’m sure (((Bog Iger))) never thought of that one before.

Bob Iger

During his tediously long video essay he manages only two side points that are almost correct. First, he mentions the poor quality of comic book movies specifically, and second, the ostensibly poor business model of streaming. Said streaming model has been at least partly responsible for movie theater audiences being down by more than half since 2018. They don’t seem to be making up the difference with streaming, considering that all these streaming services appear to be losing money.

It is mildly interesting to look at the filmmaking industry and question whether streaming has been a net positive or negative, versus the traditional box office + DVD revenue model. However, for all we know streaming should have been a boon to the movie industry. They get to cut out the middlemen, and shove the content directly onto our screens. It’s more convenient for the end user in almost every way, so you’d naturally think that they’d grow their audience with this model.

Whatever the pluses or minuses of streaming, it’s laughable to bloviate with certainty about how bad it’s been for the film industry without mentioning the absolute trash that (((Hollywood))) has been producing. So many streaming products that were licenses to print money, like Henry Cavill’s Witcher series, ended up being unwatchable garbage despite everyone liking the lead.

That’s because Netflix was staffed by these golems. 

It doesn’t appear any better for any other film studio. Remember Amazon Studios’ absolutely retarded Wheel of Time adaption?

They re-hired the gay simpleton responsible for that massacre, Rafe Judkins, to head their God of War adaption. Yes, he was rewarded for his spectacular failure.

Remember Rangz of the Kangz? A billion dollar piece of content that was astonishingly bad, even ignoring the anti-White casting and messaging.

Disney/Pixar have been getting in on the action, releasing that Strange World movie that was arguably the biggest box office bomb of all time.

 

Along with Buzz Lightyear With AIDS, which also, predictably, bombed hard.

And who could forget the Little Mermaid.

Hebrew Box Office, long upheld as a gold standard for Hollywood content, got in on the action with the universally hated Velma.

To be clear, all of these failures lost money, yet this soycreature named Patrick (H) Willems refuses to acknowledge their existence. You’d think that starting with the things that lose enormous sums of money would be the natural way to start a video essay that purports to explain the death of cinema. You’d think that, because it is that.

All of these movie studios are producing this garbage in lockstep. Were any one of them to break with this, the content they made would become wildly popular. The audience is starved for non-pozzed content, so much so that we’re seeing Disney Alogs praising idiotic garbage like Mission Impossible: Can Tom Cruise’s Ego Be Contained On One Screen, just because it isn’t blatantly anti-White or perverted.

It is precisely because anti-White pervertism is so unpopular that all the (((studios))) are unanimously pushing it. The example of the “fascist” film being popular simply cannot be allowed to exist, and (((Hollywood))) controls distribution, just like (((Google))) controls the distribution of online videos. Online content creators are censored after making their videos. Hollywood content creators are censored long before they’re put behind a camera. They simply refuse to give you what you want.

I don’t see any salvation for Hollywood on the horizon, but I’m also not entirely sure that it matters. Provided that they spit out a few movies each year that can make a profit, they can keep their political project going in perpetuity. Even if they don’t make money, they don’t care. YouTube loses billions per year because the point is political, not financial.

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