Kevin Kortum

Aster once quipped that he couldn’t believe A24 was “stupid enough” to give him $35M to make “Beau Is Afraid.” They shelled out another $30M for “Eddington,” which also failed to ignite. Maybe that’s the end of that partnership. Bless their twisted hearts, they are back again for another dip into Aster-world.

Ari Aster is one of my favorite filmmakers working today. Beau Is Afraid is a masterpiece in my opinion and his other three movies are all terrific. I'm so glad A24 continues to roll the dice on him and hope he can make something that finds a bit more success without sacrificing his own vision.

She argued that the genre has “Marvel-ized” storytelling, flattening characters into predictable heroes and villains, whereas real life — and more interesting cinema — involves morally complex, “messier” people with mixed traits.

She's absolutely right, but we have ourselves to blame. We all flocked to every Marvel movie during the first 2-3 waves, or whatever they call them. So the capitalistic overlords of Hollywood decided that's where they wanted to put their money. The stars in Hollywood realized they could grab a huge bag from these places, and we continued to go. Now we—and the actors, producers, writers, etc. who care about the art form and not just the check—have to deal with that outcome.

In some ways it feels like the death of an art form. In other ways, there are still places like Neon and, to a lesser extent at this point, A24, trying to do things differently and put out original, exciting films with a point of view that don't regurgitate the same thing over and over. But it's going to be on us as the so-called "consumers" to actually go to the theaters for those movies so they continue to get made. No matter what you say, movies are an art created by humans for humans to go and feel things. It's not just supposed to be a bunch of computer generated song and beautiful people fighting each other.