Remember the show "Starfleet Academy" from earlier this year? I wouldn't be surprised if you've forgotten about it already. I imagine some of you didn't even know it existed.
It was, for all intents and purposes, an abuse of one of the most popular IP's in Western history. It took a franchise that was, effectively, a thinking man's sci-fi, and made it into a socio-political soapbox with plotlines and characters that were so stupid that it truthfully qualifies as a parody.
Read: Modern Star Trek Is the Poster Child for Everything Wrong About Modern Storytelling
I won't go into the details of the show again; you can click on the link above if you'd like to do that, but I want to focus on one of the core issues of the show, because it's an issue that a great deal of the shows produced by legacy studios have today.
The magic of Star Trek was that it contained a vast universe of races, and each of them felt unique. They had characteristics that you could easily identify them from without even looking at them. The Vulcans were hyper-logical and emotionless, the Ferengi were greedy and a bit snide, and the Klingons were a race of warriors who prized battle prowess over everything. Each of them had a unique way of speaking, reacting to situations, and of keeping to their principles.
"Starfleet Academy" brought all these races together and stripped all these characteristics away until they were, more or less, the same people, just with minor differences. You couldn't tell who was who just by listening to their manner of speech. The Klingon in the show wore women's clothes.
The voice in the back of your head is currently saying, "That doesn't sound like a Star Trek show at all," and it's correct. It's not a Star Trek show. It's a display of values from one specific community of socio-politically obsessed people. They turned what was a truly thought-provoking and immersive world into a representation of a Los Angeles writer's room in the modern day.
It only looks diverse because they demand diversity of race, sex, and more, but diversity of thought is not allowed, and thus, it's not really allowed in their writing either.
The sad part is, these people have seized quite a few legacy studios. Star Trek isn't the only franchise that's been transformed into a message delivery system. Hardly any popular IP has gone untouched.
They got Doctor Who, The Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Stranger Things, and Disney classics. They even got the Super Bowl.
Kids' movies aren't even immune. The latest Disney/Pixar film, "Hoppers," centers on a protagonist who is an eco-activist à la Greta Thunberg. The film is about a girl who finds a way to plug her mind into a robot beaver body, in which she lies, manipulates, and betrays people for her own beliefs with zero consequences.
Activism is another constant thing you see. Cassie Lang from "Ant-Man" is an activist. The Flag Smashers from "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" were activists the show wanted you to sympathize with.
Even "Star Wars" contained activist moments like the Canto Bight casino subplot that felt shoehorned in and went absolutely nowhere, all so that the movie could make a statement about the wealthy elite and exploitation of animals and working-class children.
Moreover, no one suffers blowback or consequences for their actions in any major way. I mentioned how the protagonist of "Hoppers" is literally caught betraying those who trusted her, and absolutely nothing happens as a consequence. The Falcon tells world leaders that they have to stop calling the Flag Smashers terrorists, despite them being literal terrorists who kill people.
Wanda Maximoff tortures an entire town for her own emotional needs in the show "WandaVision" and by the end of it, isn't held responsible for the actual evil she did to these innocents, but is borderline thanked for it.
Do you see a pattern developing here?
These characters, these universes, these galaxies far, far away, feel, look, and sound way too much like a room of people in Los Angeles in the mid 2020s.
All these stories that once reflected something that took you for a journey into a realm of wonder and made you think about the bigger picture have now been flattened into something that resembles a modern university liberal arts classroom, or at least something it would approve of.
It's an infection, and its characteristics are easily recognizable once you're able to focus on them.
Identity hierarchies, no consequences for characters who believe the right things, random injections of philosophical displays, and underneath it all, a sort of nihilistic approach to the world situated in a sense of moral relativism.
Once you see the pattern, you can easily spot it in many other creations, even those that do a better job of hiding it.
For instance, I recently finished "Spider-Noir," starring Nick Cage as "The Spider." He's part of Sony's Spider-Verse and made an appearance in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." For all intents and purposes, the show wasn't bad. I enjoyed it, but you could see the fingerprints of modernity on it at various times.
For instance, at one point, protagonist Ben Reilly (Nick Cage), a private investigator who's secretly "The Spider," tells his Latina secretary that she's a better P.I. than he is and that he's handing the business to her. The show, which takes place during the Great Depression, acknowledges segregation and racial tensions of the era but rarely ever displays them, giving you a sort of tonal inconsistency. Moreover, it makes anyone with a darker melanin level the good guys or misunderstood bad guys. The most brilliant person in the show is a female scientist. Not to say females can't be brilliant scientists, but the era wasn't exactly swimming with them. They certainly weren't heading up entire hospitals, but this one was.
Identity created a hierarchy, and even the main character had to sometimes kneel before that hierarchy.
But most noticeable — and I would say this is the most tiresome aspect — is the fact that the philosophical approach, either overall or displayed by prominent characters, is a nebulous morality. Reilly is often drunk, angry, sad, and even gets violent with some people at a bar who simply hurt his feelings.
Reeree Williams from "Iron Heart" is a legitimate criminal who hurts innocent people, including police officers, to rob the rich, and the show hardly justifies it. It just paints her as the good guy despite her obvious villainy. It doesn't seem to think it needs to address it because her race is meant to act as the pass. She's the good guy because she is.
The point of all of this is that modern writers don't allow for a lot of depth in their creations. They have to follow specific rules when writing, filming, and producing. Their ideological rigidity doesn't allow for real exploration of the human condition, or even a story that elicits any feeling besides the one that conforms to their socio-political attachments.
Anything that doesn't conform to it feels like an insult to them, or at the very least, a massive waste of time and opportunity. If it deviates from their rules, it has to be denounced, ridiculed, and, if possible, destroyed. There can be no opposing narrative. No argument to their worldview.
But the issue is that a one-trick pony becomes boring quickly, and if said pony's trick is to preach a brand of moral nebulousness that many people outside specific political circles don't agree with, then the pony starts to look an awful lot like an annoyance that insults your intelligence and character.
I don't think it's any accident that YouTubers, or citizen creators, have become the chief form of entertainment and news for the people. I especially don't think it's odd that some of these YouTubers have gone on to dominate the box office, unseating major brands like Star Wars.
Read: As Hollywood Continues to Prove It's Learned Nothing, Citizen Creators Are Rising
Hollywood and legacy studios are falling because the decades-long accusation is mostly true. Hollywood has run out of ideas. The reason is that they won't allow themselves to have new ones. Their ideas typically revolve around taking old IPs and infusing "modern" ideas into them, and while nostalgia is powerful, it's dangerous material to work with. Treat it right, and you'll have success, but mistreat it, and you'll wind up with a lot of angry people on your hands.
Better to explore the imaginative expanse and come back with something that provokes thoughts about the larger questions, gives hope, solidifies goodness from evil, and takes us to places we've never been, whether they give us wonder or even horror.
But the place we don't want to be, and the place they keep trying to shove us back into, are those "diverse" writing rooms.
