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obnoticus@adultswim.fan

'War of the Worlds' Isn’t Just Bad. It’s Also Shameless Tech Propaganda (www.wired.com)

submitted 1 week ago by obnoticus@adultswim.fan to c/tv_film@adultswim.fan

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By making Big Tech the hero in a movie about government surveillance, the dismally rated remake feels more like an ad for Amazon than anything else.

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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

This is going to keep getting worse.

Giant corporations will keep gobbling up everything, and some c suite douche is going to start asking why they don't use the movies they make for propaganda for their other revenue streams. To an Executive this is an easy and obvious choice.

Definitely not the biggest issue right now, but they'll keep pushing, maybe enough that smaller studios that won't sell out start making shit.

There's already a growing market for it. A24 isn't making all those amazing movies, independent productions are and A24 is releasing and distributibg it.

Hopefully we'll see more companies like them show up.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

some c suite douche is going to start asking why they don’t use the movies they make for propaganda for their other revenue streams

I mean... Hollywood has been turning out cheap propaganda flicks for over a century. Not to say some dipshit c-level in 2025 won't take credit for the idea, but this isn't even the first time this book has been turned into a bit of war-time propaganda (not unlike the why-won't-it-die-already? Superhero Movie epidemic).

There's actually a book Area 51: An Uncensored History whose first chapters detail how the 1938 radio play spawned a host of plots - both foreign and domestic - to use the fear of an alien invasion to manufacture consent for the Cold War.

A24 isn’t making all those amazing movies, independent productions are and A24 is releasing and distributibg it.

They figured out a model to rent-seek off the distribution of movie festival hits and underdog directors. And I won't complain too loudly, because it means getting access to more than just the Disney/Universal slop bucket.

But one of the easiest and most popular ways to budget a war movie is to turn to the Pentagon and say "You get X minutes and some amount of directorial control for a percentage of the budget and rights to shoot some of your cool surplus military equipment". Michael Bay owes his personal fortune to the US Navy.