Written by Zachary Reaves (Features Editor)
Since the last school year, there have been several big movie releases. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most if not all of the films released in this time have had to be released straight to home video or one of the many streaming services available online. Nonetheless, there has been a lot released in the past few months, including some record-breaking films. Unfortunately, there has also been a fair share of controversial movies and films at this time. Overall, a lot of movie and TV content has been revealed and made available over the summer.
A bunch of movies and shows have been released in the last four months or so. A lot haven’t really gotten a lot of publicity due to them not being able to be released in theaters. One of these is the newest Spongebob movie. Released on August 14th, it didn’t receive nearly as much acclaim as the last two. In fact, due to it not being advertised much, most people didn’t even hear about this one when it came out. Another movie is the adaptation of Artemis Fowl, which was released on June 12th. According to fans of the original 2001 novel, this movie adaptation was hilariously bad. In fact, it received some of the lowest ratings ever from movie review outlets such as Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb. There were also some big releases for shows as well. One example of this is Season 2 of The Umbrella Academy, a show available on Netflix about a bunch of super-powered kids who attempt to solve the mystery of their adoptive father and stop the oncoming apocalypse. Netflix also recently brought the classic TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender and its successor, The Legend of Korra onto its service. While both shows originally premiered on Nickelodeon, the channel has since stopped running both of them, meaning that this is the first time both shows have been able to be watched since then.
A couple of controversial movies have come out since the school was last in session as well. One big one is Disney’s live-action remake of their classic film Mulan. To start, it first released at a price of thirty dollars on top of the subscription fee for Disney+. This was seen as a money grab to most people, as the overall price was approaching nearly $40, which is just exorbitant. Those who actually paid to see the movie reported that the characters and writing were bland and not memorable at all. The lead actress was also flamed online for expressing support of the Hong Kong police in the ongoing protests. Disney was similarly fired upon due to thanking authorities of the Chinese Labor Camps in the credits of the movie. More recently, Netflix released a French movie known as Cuties onto their service. Though the movie’s original goal was to inform people about the problems in the sexualization of minors in our world, French-Senegalese director Maïmouna Doucouré used children as actors in the film, so in a twist of irony, the movie is now being ostracized for that exact reason. Netflix’s marketing made things infinitely worse due to its insensitivity. All in all, though the pandemic has significantly slowed movie production and viewership, the industry is still going strong. In fact, Dreamworks’ movie Trolls: World Tour has made the biggest profit from a non-theater release ever. This shows that movies don’t necessarily need to be released in theaters to succeed. Though there have been some bad movies and controversies recently, the movie scene is generally going just as well as it was before the quarantine.
The Claw 