Aug 12, 2026 11:51 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 12, 2026 11:53 PM by C C.)
AFTER PARTY with guest Spencer Klavan
https://youtu.be/EezgXHlnjrg
VIDEO EXCERPTS: So Spider-Man and the Odyssey are two movies this summer that have made basically a billion dollars.
This summer has been really amazing. Hollywood broke out of its iterative cycle and suddenly found their way back onto the road. It started with Project Hail Mary, which was a book adaptation, but was kind of unusual and family-friendly and really well done.
And then we had a month when these two indie horror movies, Backrooms and Obsession, were huge and all the kids were going to them.
And at the same time, not to rejoice in the failure of others, but, The Mandalorian and Grogu did really badly. Disclosure Day totally underperformed, the Steven Spielberg movie. Masters of the Universe. These are all movies I will confess to you that I was rooting for them to fail because I just don't think that it's good to have these movies exist.
And importantly, it's because these are children's movies that don't cater to children. Like these are children's movies for adults and there's something unhealthy about that.
>> The Disney adult. >>
Yeah, these are Disney adult movies, big time. They once made money and therefore the studios have to make them in order to support the making of movies generally. But if they stop making money, that's a horse of a different color, right?
Then we're in a world where audiences are actually hungry for something new, and they're hungry for these creators whom they know and love through YouTube. Because the latter have been shut out of the studio system because the studio system is in hawk to this gazillion dollar model where they have to make these giant, meaningless trash movies about superheroes, you know.
And so we kind of felt like we were achieving lift-off from that pattern. Even with the Odyssey, which love it or hate it, right? It's a movie based on a Greek poem. Like there's a real unusualness to that movie, and it was thought-provoking and people had substantive meaningful discussions about it. And like if you think Nolan has unduly Christianized the Odyssey or if you think that he has legitimately inserted Christian values into it, you know, that's a really sophisticated conversation for the whole country to be having.
And so when Spider-Man made a billion dollars, I was kind of like, "Oh, no. Like, are we going to revert to that old mess?" And we might. We might just go back to more schlock. But I haven't seen Spider-Man. I know Matt Walsh hates it and I know there's some people that are upset about it.
But it's got Tom Holland in it who's incredibly charming. It's got a romance at the center of it which a lot of these movies lack. It doesn't do any weird woke stuff. It just kind of goes through the usual story beats of a superhero movie. And so I think we're going to always live in a world where those movies make a lot of money. I don't actually think that's the problem. The problem was that was the only kind of movie we seem to be able to make...
Hollywood faces a reckoning ... https://youtu.be/EezgXHlnjrg
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/EezgXHlnjrg
https://youtu.be/EezgXHlnjrg
VIDEO EXCERPTS: So Spider-Man and the Odyssey are two movies this summer that have made basically a billion dollars.
This summer has been really amazing. Hollywood broke out of its iterative cycle and suddenly found their way back onto the road. It started with Project Hail Mary, which was a book adaptation, but was kind of unusual and family-friendly and really well done.
And then we had a month when these two indie horror movies, Backrooms and Obsession, were huge and all the kids were going to them.
And at the same time, not to rejoice in the failure of others, but, The Mandalorian and Grogu did really badly. Disclosure Day totally underperformed, the Steven Spielberg movie. Masters of the Universe. These are all movies I will confess to you that I was rooting for them to fail because I just don't think that it's good to have these movies exist.
And importantly, it's because these are children's movies that don't cater to children. Like these are children's movies for adults and there's something unhealthy about that.
>> The Disney adult. >>
Yeah, these are Disney adult movies, big time. They once made money and therefore the studios have to make them in order to support the making of movies generally. But if they stop making money, that's a horse of a different color, right?
Then we're in a world where audiences are actually hungry for something new, and they're hungry for these creators whom they know and love through YouTube. Because the latter have been shut out of the studio system because the studio system is in hawk to this gazillion dollar model where they have to make these giant, meaningless trash movies about superheroes, you know.
And so we kind of felt like we were achieving lift-off from that pattern. Even with the Odyssey, which love it or hate it, right? It's a movie based on a Greek poem. Like there's a real unusualness to that movie, and it was thought-provoking and people had substantive meaningful discussions about it. And like if you think Nolan has unduly Christianized the Odyssey or if you think that he has legitimately inserted Christian values into it, you know, that's a really sophisticated conversation for the whole country to be having.
And so when Spider-Man made a billion dollars, I was kind of like, "Oh, no. Like, are we going to revert to that old mess?" And we might. We might just go back to more schlock. But I haven't seen Spider-Man. I know Matt Walsh hates it and I know there's some people that are upset about it.
But it's got Tom Holland in it who's incredibly charming. It's got a romance at the center of it which a lot of these movies lack. It doesn't do any weird woke stuff. It just kind of goes through the usual story beats of a superhero movie. And so I think we're going to always live in a world where those movies make a lot of money. I don't actually think that's the problem. The problem was that was the only kind of movie we seem to be able to make...
Hollywood faces a reckoning ... https://youtu.be/EezgXHlnjrg
