Christmas has already raced past, which means that you’ve probably already begun the obligatory handful of days with your extended family. You’ve ‘been there and done that’ so many times you could literally write the script of what’s going to happen each year – including the usual cast of characters who never fail to make a repeat performance of what they did last year.

But in case Aunt Stephanie is running late and you’ve forgotten how she behaves with her gin – or in case your house is still a shambles from Uncle Jimmy’s rampage of yesterday, and you need reassurance that your weird family isn’t alone – here are the 10 people who are bound to make an appearance every year at every family’s Christmas party.





The pouter is usually a child under the age of 10, but occasionally it’s an emotionally stunted, spoiled adult. This person spends the entire evening impatiently waiting for present-opening time and complains about every event that precedes it. “Can’t we open presents before dinner?” he’ll beg. And when his request is denied he’ll slump in whatever chair is farthest away from the action and glare at his plate of food as if it were something not even a prisoner would eat.



When it’s finally time to open presents, don’t make the mistake of thinking a gift is all that is needed to boost his mood, as invariably, whatever the ingrate gets will be a disappointment or not as expensive as what someone else received.







The Inebriator may sound like a really cool superhero, but he’s usually just an uncle who can’t survive any family function without the assistance of booze, and his antics should look very familiar since you undoubtedly just saw them at Thanksgiving dinner. If he doesn’t arrive tipsy, as soon as he steps through the door he’ll make a beeline to the garage, kitchen, or wherever your family happens to store the hard stuff. Before long he’ll be slurring his words, talking too close, and doling out uncomfortably tight hugs to anyone and everyone – including your prudish Great Aunt Marge.



Some have tried to eliminate the drunkenness by having a “dry” holiday, but a little family prohibition is no match for the determined inebriator – he always brings his own. Whether it’s in a flask or hiding in an innocuous gas station fountain soda cup, he’ll never tackle the holidays without some liquid comfort.



Guests will oooo and ahhhh over her offerings, and she’ll just smile dismissively and act as if they’re no big deal and took no time at all. However, if you happen to live with the over-doer, you know she pulled an all-nighter trying to get everything together and sent her husband to the store multiple times, at least once after midnight, to fetch something he thought she didn’t really need (e.g. striped ribbon for the reindeer’s neck because the plain ribbon she already had didn’t look quite right).



The cheapskate doesn’t see drawing names as an opportunity to give someone a thoughtful, personalized gift. Instead, he thinks, “Yeah, I only have to buy ONE gift!” Then he proceeds to the dollar store where he’ll end up buying you a paperweight, a hacky sack, or an extra-large root beer mug. You hate to be an ingrate like the pouter, but c’mon, why even bother?







Teenagers and men usually take on the role of the indifferent. They could be at the party or not – they don’t care. What do they want for Christmas? Nothing. “Whatever” is their answer for every question, and you could tell them anything – the turkey’s burnt, Christmas is cancelled, their long-lost cousin Jeremy just arrived – and they’re still not getting their butts off the couch.



You feel bad for their kids because you know Santa isn’t going to visit their house, and despite how much indoctrination happens in a family, every kid wants a real present for Christmas.



Not to mention, there’s always the question of whether or not to get this person a gift. Naturally, it’d be awkward if everyone else is opening presents and the girlfriend/boyfriend has nothing under the tree, but what do you give a person whom you know nothing about?



If it weren’t for those living in their household, they swear they wouldn’t even have a tree, and they make sure all decorations come down promptly on Dec. 26th.



Christmas is one of the most joyful times of the year, as families and friends gather together to eat, drink and be merry. Given the traditional association of the holiday with fun and laughter, it is not surprising that most Christmas songs focus on the light side of the season, but not all of them.

There are some festive tunes that dwell on the black side, from depression to unemployment. So switch on your Christmas lights, because we think you will need them to banish the darkness that these songs bring.

Top 10 Fearsome Christmas Creatures

10 East 17 – ‘Stay Another Day’

During the 1990s East 17 were one of the UK’s two big boy bands alongside Take That. Their image was of the hipper and more streetwise of the two, but their biggest hit was a typical boy band ballad that dominated the UK charts at Christmas 1994. On the surface, ‘Stay Another Day’ seems to be just another sad song pleading with a girl not to leave. That is certainly not cheery, but there have been lots of popular festive songs about romantic love.

The real story behind ‘Stay Another Day’ is a whole lot darker than that though. It was composed by band member Tony Mortimer and, far from being about a random girl, was actually inspired by the suicide of his brother. Mortimer kept the words vague enough for people to interpret it in their own way, but opened up about its real meaning 25 years after it topped the UK Christmas charts. It is impossible to say whether it would have affected the success of the song at the time had people known about its very non-festive inspiration, but it makes the video with the band members trying to look mean while wearing fluffy white winter coats seem stranger now.^[1]

9 De La Soul – ‘Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa’

The title of this 1991 tune by ‘daisy age’ rappers De La Soul might seem like an extreme reaction to getting socks again for Christmas, but it is actually a jolly tale of child abuse and murder! Taken from the album called ‘De La Soul is Dead’ (clearly they were in a happy place that year) it tells the tale of Millie and her father Dillon, who is considered by everyone to be an upstanding man through his job as a social worker.

However, behind his family man image Dillon is a violent man who beats his daughter and forces her to take part in “the touchy-touchy game”. The lyrics cleverly switch between what is really happening and the public perception of Dillon, before Millie decides to get hold of a gun and end the abuse by shooting her father. She opts to do this while he is playing the role of Santa at a local department store and the words depict Dillon begging for mercy that he does not get. The song killed off the ‘hippy rappers’ image that the band had been saddled with since ‘3 Feet High and Rising’, but for some reason it rarely features on those television lists of favorite festive tunes.^[2]

8 Merle Haggard – ‘If We Make it Through December’

Country music has always been fond of a tear jerker and, as blue collar music, often deals with the troubled lives of people trying to make ends meet. Not many of its songs combine those themes with Christmas though, which is where ‘If We Make it Through December’ by Merle Haggard stands out. The plain speaking but effective lyrics tell the story of a man with a wife and child who has lost his factory job in the run up to Christmas and cannot afford to make the season as happy for his family as he wants to.

Although this will connect with anyone who is struggling financially during a period that is very expensive for all of us, the song is not totally without hope. The main character talks about his family pulling together to get through the cold month of December so that that they can look forward to a brighter time next year in lines like: “If we make it through December/ Everything’s gonna be all right, I know”. This combination of pain and hope is what gives country music its power for many people, and makes this song particularly relevant in 2020 – even if there is no mention of a plague!^[3]

7 Bing Crosby – ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’

Originally sung by crooner Crosby, this song has become a Christmas staple, but it has a tinge of sadness that makes it stand out from other festive favorites. Crosby recorded the song during 1943, at the height of World War Two, and it is sung from the point of view of a US soldier stationed overseas who is writing to his family to let them know he will be coming back for Christmas.

So far, so heartwarming, but the final lines of the song change everything. After talking about all of the things he wants to see when he arrives home – from mistletoe to gifts under the Christmas tree – the soldier adds: “I’ll be home for Christmas/ If only in my dreams.” Thus the song is actually about someone longing to be with his loved ones but knowing he almost certainly will not be. Unsurprisingly this really spoke to people during the war, but it has continued to do so ever since, as we are often separated from our families at Christmas. The feelings of loneliness and yearning that it creates are so powerful that the BBC actually banned it at the time, out of fear that it would sap morale! The wartime background also adds another layer of darkness, as those fighting in conflicts abroad know that there is a chance that they will never be going home.^[4]

6 LCD Soundsystem – ‘Christmas Will Break Your Heart’

Of all the artists releasing sad songs during what is supposed to be one of the happiest times of the year, LCD Soundsystem take the cake in that they actually reformed after five years just so they could do it! The dance-rockers split in 2011 and spent several years afterwards dismissing any suggestion that they would ever reform. Then along came Christmas 2015 and suddenly they decided that what we all needed was a lament about festive isolation and despair. Apparently, singer James Murphy had the song in his head for eight years, but instead of getting therapy, he decided to release it as a single.

‘Christmas Will Break Your Heart’ is full of such ho, ho, ho sentiments as “Christmas will break your heart/ like the armies of the unrelenting dark”, with Murphy describing it upon release as “depressing” (no kidding). He even joked that the lyrics had been trimmed back from their original 75 lines to avoid too many suicides! The eight remaining ones may still be a bit too much for most people after what we have been through in 2020 though, so this one is probably best avoided unless you have a sizeable stash of Prozac.^[5]

10 Times Christmas Was Saved

5 Band Aid – ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’

We are probably being a bit unfair in including this one, as no one wants a cheery lyric about famine and death, but the words of this charity song somehow manage to be clumsy and unsettling at the same time. ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ was written by Boomtown Rats front man Bob Geldof and Ultravox singer Midge Ure to raise money and awareness of the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, and features a roll call of the hottest pop stars in the UK at the time.

There is a lot that is embarrassing about the song – the title for one thing as around 45% of Africa is Christian and thus does know when it is Christmas – as well as lines about Christmas bells being “clanging chimes of doom”, but it does have a strange power despite that. The dark peak of the song comes early on, when Bono sings the famous line: “Tonight thank God it’s them/ instead of you” which was controversial at the time, but is a genuinely disturbing reminder to us of just how fortunate we are and how grateful we should be.^[6]

4 The Fall – ‘No Christmas for John Quays’

At first this might sound like it is a protest song for some unfortunate called John Quays who is stuck in prison or enduring some other horror, but things are never what they seem with The Fall. The Manchester band that was formed by true original Mark E. Smith during the mid-1970s produced songs full of fragmented lyrics inspired by the Vorticist art movement as well as writers like William Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft, and all that is reflected in ‘No Christmas for John Quays’.

Taken from their 1979 debut album ‘Live at the Witch Trials’, the title is a pun on the word ‘junkies’, with the lyrics talking about how the “powders reach you” and describing an addict who is “out of his face with the idle race” and does not even realize that it is Christmas because every day is exactly the same for drug addicts. Some might say that this is a bit like listening to records by The Fall, but we will not do so.^[7]

3 Nat King Cole – ‘The Little Boy that Santa Claus Forgot’

This weepy song was originally sung by the British ‘Forces Sweetheart’ Vera Lynn back in 1937, but it is the Nat King Cole version that has become more famous. The tale it tells of a child with no father who sends a letter to Santa asking for a drum and some toy soldiers for Christmas is like a Charles Dickens story – only without the redemptive happy ending that Dickens would have given us.

There is absolutely no festive cheer for the boy in this song as he wakes up on Christmas morning to find zero presents. He has to play with his old broken toys while all the other children are opening their gifts and is left wondering why Santa has abandoned him just like his father did. Despite being incredibly grim the song was a huge hit for both Lynn and Cole and has stayed popular ever since among people who prefer to spend Christmas sobbing rather than scoffing.^[8]

2 Judy Garland – ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’

The title of this song may make it sound like a typically jolly yuletide tune, but the melancholy melody is our first indication that things are a bit more complicated than that. The composers Ralph Blaine and Hugh Martin stated during an interview in 1989 that the tune was inspired by Spanish madrigals, but it is the lyrics that really tell us that this beloved song is a sad one.

Written for the movie ‘Meet Me in St Louis’, the song features in a scene where the Judy Garland character consoles her younger sister over their upcoming move away to New York. Garland thought some of the original words – such as “Have yourself a merry little Christmas/ It may be your last/ Next year we may all be living in the past” were too dark and demanded a rewrite. Given that the song and movie were created during World War Two, they start to seem even more morbid. The lyric that eventually got recorded combines more hopeful sentiments with a melody that suggests those hopes might not come true. That was still too much for Frank Sinatra though, who had them revised again before recording it in the 1950s.^[9]

1 John Denver – ‘Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)’

John Denver might be remembered by most of us as a happy go lucky country boy, but he also recorded a country Christmas song as gritty as anything the likes of Merle Haggard could manage. This song is written from the point of view of a young boy pleading with his alcoholic father not to get wasted over the festive season as “I don’t wanna see my mommy cry.”

The lyrics go on to recount a previous Christmas when he found his dad passed out under the tree. On the one hand it is pretty tough to listen to and on the other it comes across as almost a parody of a maudlin country tune – a bit like ‘D.I.V.O.R.C.E.’ by Billy Connolly but with less obvious laughs. Denver was deadly serious though and this tale of alcohol abuse and child neglect will certainly put a chill in your Christmas cheer if you steel yourself to listen to it.^[10]

10 Things You Didn’t Know About The First Christmas

…annnnnnd CUT! That’s a wrap! Great job everyone – way to change the filmmaking paradigm for the worse.

We’ve all heard the term “influential films”: movies whose innovative approaches inspired others to further the medium. Unfortunately, a trend also can devolve, leaving its originator – however creative or classic a film it might be – responsible for another chime in cinema’s death knell.

In chronological order, here are ten films – including several great ones – that have negatively impacted filmmaking.

Top 10 Ways Hollywood Ruined Your Favorite TV Shows

10 Jaws (1975)

We’re gonna need a bigger boa…uh, budget.

The term “blockbuster” first appeared in 1942, when Time Magazine recounted an Allied bombing of fascist Italy using explosives so powerful they could destroy entire city blocks. The following year, Time called the film adaptation of Mission to Moscow “audacious in the extreme” and “as explosive as a blockbuster” and, soon, the word began referring to a movie’s commercial success rather than artistic ambition.

Then, in 1975, one film permanently solidified the word’s meaning. Steven Spielberg’s breakout hit Jaws is generally regarded as Hollywood’s first true blockbuster. Not only did people literally queue up around the block for tickets, but it became the first film to earn $100 million. It also helped set the precedent that such movies are released in summertime, now known as blockbuster season.

Why, you ask, does a movie that won three Oscars and was nominated for Best Picture deserve inclusion on this list? On its own merit, it doesn’t. At least the original summer blockbuster was a critically-acclaimed classic.

But in Hollywood, the bigger issue is monkey see, monkey do – and most monkeys are far less talented than Spielberg. Today, mass appeal blockbusters squeeze out mid-budget films while offering little artistic value themselves. Are some good? Sure. But for every Independence Day, there’s a Wild Wild West, a Pearl Harbor and, God help us, an Independence Day Resurgence, which prompted many to root for the aliens.

9 Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

“Toyetic” refers to a movie’s potential for merchandising licensed toys, games and novelties. The term was coined by Kenner Toys executive Bernard Loomis, who used it disparagingly while discussing opportunities for 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Loomis felt differently about another sci-fi flick released that year – and he’d quickly be proven prescient.

Incredibly, “Star Wars” struggled to find a studio home. To get it greenlighted, George Lucas agreed to forgo a $500,000 director’s salary; in its place, he received the licensing and merchandising rights.

Good move, George. Upon the film’s May 1977 release, Kenner Toys was so overwhelmed by Star Wars’ surprise success – and the subsequent demand for toys – that they quickly ran out of stock. In fact, they still hadn’t caught up by Christmas, prompting the issuing of an “Early Bird Certificate Package.” Under the tree that year, kids everywhere opened empty boxes with IOUs for action figures unavailable until springtime (thanks, Santa). FORTY MILLION were sold by late 1978.

Those empty boxes were a Pandora’s Box. Like other entries on this list, a terrific film had paved the way for far less worthy flicks to think merch first, quality filmmaking second. Star Wars itself went on to pair worse films with worse merch. Lowlights include a Darth Vader yoga mat, a Yoda Magic 8-Ball and, for the incontinent Jedi in us all, Star Wars branded adult diapers.

8 Superman (1978)

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… a pretty good movie that set the stage for the film industry’s most mindless genre.

While films starring caped crusaders were a thing before its 1978 release, Superman: The Movie was the first mega-budget superhero blockbuster. In fact, at $55 million it was the most expensive film ever made to that point.

Its filmmakers took pains to get moviegoers to see superman as more than a comic book carryover. Two legendary actors, Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman, were cast in supporting roles, lending their gravitas despite the little-known star, Christopher Reeve – who only became the Man of Steel after superstars Robert Redford and Burt Reynolds both declined.

After producers flirted with the already sought-after Steven Spielberg, Richard Donner of “Omen” fame was tapped to direct. He had a campy script rewritten to a darker, more dramatic bend. It paid off. Superman made $300 million, earned four stars from influential critic Roger Ebert, and holds a 94% favorability rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Its success was the worst possible thing for moviemaking. Forty years and scores of cheesy, formulaic and plot-free comic book adaptations later, superhero movies continue to rake in money from the tasteless masses while limiting the number of interesting, risk-taking films Hollywood studios greenlight.

Are a few good? Sure. But for every Black Panther there are dozens of Ant-Man’s, Suicide Squads and Green Lanterns in a genre that has zapped filmmaking creativity like none other.

7 Halloween II & Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

The second installments of what became slasher film franchises were by no means the first prominent sequels. But while Jaws 2, Rocky 2 and The Godfather Part 2 were fairly well-received follow-ups to Academy Award-winning classics, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees were deservedly panned for exactly what they were: slapped-together sequels without a shred of their predecessors’ appeal.

Released in 1978, the original Halloween was filmed over just 20 days. Its $300,000 budget was low even for horror, and most costumes and props were handcrafted or purchased from thrift stores. Regardless, the movie made nearly $70 million partly because, by sheer necessity, it stripped down the plot to a simple yet suspenseful maniac-on-the-loose stabfest. The film holds an incredible 96% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The second instalment did less with more. Despite a more liberating $2.5 million budget, it managed to, per Roger Ebert, suffer “a fall from greatness” that “doesn’t even attempt to do justice to the original.” Its 32% Rotten Tomatoes rating – a 64% drop-off from the original – concurs.

Friday the 13th mirrors this money-grabbing sophomoritis. After the original earned critical praise and a $60 million haul from a $550,000 budget, the sequel – despite pivoting to the now-iconic Jason Vorhees – gets a putrid 28% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (admittedly that’s the heinously fake-news “critics” rating the media loves to push, but still . . . )

Unfortunately, enough people still came that the two franchises set the template for low-budget, low-effort horror sequels that accomplish little except pile up bodies.

6 Toy Story (1995)

Toy Story was another exceptional film that started an unfortunate trend. While it delivered on its promise to take viewers “to infinity and beyond,” the 1995 PIXAR classic did the exact opposite for traditional animated films.

Let’s be clear: Toy Story is a tremendous film. Excellent casting (even Tim Allen was tolerable!) and an endearing premise – toys competing for their owner’s love – helped it become the rare children’s movie that also appealed to adults. The result was $375 million in ticket sales.

Just as importantly, Toy Story became one of the few movies that holds a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, whose critical consensus reads: “Entertaining as it is innovative, Toy Story reinvigorated animation while heralding the arrival of Pixar as a family-friendly force to be reckoned with.”

And therein lies the problem: the reckoning. Toy Story’s revolutionary employment of three-dimensional computer graphics started a slow death for conventional hand-drawn animation movies (except in Japan). Hits like Shrek, Ice Age and the Incredibles furthered the push from the pen to the pixel.

While traditional animation hasn’t disappeared entirely, today even films that seem like conventional cartoons are typically supplemented with computer graphics; Frozen is a prominent example of this hybrid approach. It’s truly A Whole New World since 1992’s Aladdin.

5 Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Yikes – two in a row for Tom Hanks.

But again: not his fault. In fact, not anyone’s fault. Saving Private Ryan is one of the best war movies of all time. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, and won five – including Steven Spielberg for Best Director.

But it was Spielberg’s brilliance in the movie’s epic opening scene, an incredibly lifelike 20-minute depiction of the D-Day invasion of Normandy Beach, that shook things up – first for the better, and then decidedly for the worse.

To mimic the disorientation of battle, Spielberg employed a device previously associated with low-budget horror films: a shaking camera. And of course, it worked so well that far less talented filmmakers making far less worthwhile films decided to shake it up themselves.

Some, like this list’s next entry, pulled it off quite well. But most of the time, shaking cameras are used either to a) make a fighting scene seem more dramatic than it is while disorienting the audience (the Bourne movies are prime examples); or b) give crummy action or sci-fi flicks faux gravitas (SEE: Godzilla 2014, Awful).

4 The Blair Witch Project (1999)

“Josh? JOOOOOOSH?!? Oh my God. where are you. Josh?! You’re scaring everyone…”

And worse, you’re convincing every college film major he can make a box office phenomenon with a hand-held camera.

The Blair Witch Project was an experimental horror mockumentary released in 1999. The faux-amateur film told the story of three college filmmakers – Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and (of course) Joshua Leonard – who hike into the woods in Maryland to uncover the secret of a local legend, the Blair Witch.

According to the movie’s ingenious marketing strategy, the cast was listed as “missing” or “deceased” in the runup to release. The film, ads said, comprised the footage found on their recovered video camera. Though this was easily debunked, millions nonetheless entered theaters believing they were witnessing the final days of three vanished young adults.

Both the marketing strategy and the movie itself simply worked. Disorienting camera angles, leaf-rustling running and panicked hyperventilating were all convincingly lifelike as the cast descended deeper into the eerie, engulfing wilderness.

And boy did it pay off. From a budget of less than $500,000, the sleeper hit raked in nearly $250 million at the box office – a 500-fold profit that ranks among filmmaking’s highest ever.

Unfortunately, by showing that low-budget can make big bucks, The Blair Witch Project revived the “found footage” genre at a time when equipment was becoming affordable, giving amateur filmmakers the undue confidence to make increasingly insufferable films. Thanks a lot, Josh.

3 Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)

“Ruin Star Wars we must.”

Throw in moviemaking too, Master Yoda. According to online review personality Mr. Plinkett, “Star Wars Episode II is the worst thing ever made by humans, except for the bagpipes.”

First, it ruined the franchise forever. While its predecessor, 1999’s Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, was a shitshow all its own, the second prequel finds Anakin coming of age, with the events now shaping his dark destiny. The dialogue – including a widely mocked monologue about the annoyances of sand – was awkward, the acting rigid, and Yoda – he of “Judge me by my size, do you?” – was reduced to a tiny green back-flipping muppet who can’t best a lesser opponent because… you guessed it, his reach wasn’t long enough. Did we really need to see THIS (clip above), Mr. Lucas?

But the broader damage inflicted by Episode II was its wholesale incorporation of computer-generated imagery (CGI). Nearly EVERYTHING in the movie is fraudulent – and it shows. For example, actors clearly filmed in front of tiny green screens sit or slowly pace – and are then juxtaposed into wide-open spaces like fields, palaces and the cavernous Jedi Temple.

The whole thing just FEELS fake, and stands as Exhibit A of how technology can ruin a film. Of course, the film’s commercial success (because hey, it was a Star Wars movie) gave filmmakers the greenlight to forgo expensive real-life sets in lieu of cost-effective green-screen studios.

2 Transformers (2007)

It started out promisingly enough for Michael Bay. Starting in 1995, he went on a three-film winning streak by directing Bad Boys (1995), The Rock (1996) and Armageddon (1998). While by no means cinematic masterpieces, all were fun action films no one would point to as a threat to the future of cinema. And while Bay’s 2001 Pearl Harbor was (literally) a bomb, most figured he’d rebound with another entertaini…

… wait, is that Optimus Prime?

The 2007 release of Transformers is a reverse watershed moment: it lowered the bar for how far filmmakers could descend in replacing a functional storyline with special effects. It finds Michael Bay perfecting the “deceit via dazzle” art of distracting viewers from gaping plot holes and lack of character development by simply blowing stuff up.

Worse, Transformers was REWARDED for its utter abandonment of storytelling. The film raked in over $700 million and, unbelievably, was nominated for THREE ACADEMY AWARDS: Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects (note how none of those categories address the quality of the actual film). “While believable characters are hard to come by,” reads Rotten Tomatoes’ critical consensus, “the effects are staggering and the action is exhilarating.”

The message was clear: special effects could replace storytelling. Four awful Transformers sequels and countless visual-yet-vacuous action films later, the action genre is an unexploding shell of its former self.

1 Ghostbusters (the reboot) (2016)

Hollywood’s most recent ruinous trend is the notion that political correctness and inclusivity are more important in filmmaking than, well, making a good film. The most glaring of these is force-fed female-led films; oxymoronically, Hollywood seems intent on proving that girls can do anything boys can do… by making God-awful reboots of classic films that replace male characters with female casts (we are also now at the dawn of a similar “de-whiting” trend for the purposes of Hollywood virtue signalling).

We cannot explore this trend without mentioning the contrived, eye-rolling “Force is Female” marketing that preceded the 2015 release of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Audiences were more than ready to embrace a female protagonist… just not the colorless, invincible-without-even-training one Disney gave us (there’s actually a controversial term for such a trope: a Mary Sue).

But the most glaring example of an all-female facepalm was the 2016 reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise, which replaces the beloved Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson with Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon.

Those are four funny ladies, so the casting wasn’t the problem; the plot was. J.R. Kinnard of PopMatters put it best by noting that the film “feels like a safe, flavorless recipe prepared from gourmet ingredients.” It basically replaced men with meh, stubbing Girl Power’s foot along the way. Two years later, the all-female Ocean’s 8 would similarly underwhelm.

Standing up to sexism (real or imagined) by making terrible movies doesn’t seem like the right path to “equality”. Just sayin’.

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