Editor's Note: The following has been adapted with the author's permission from its original publication on Carolina Culture Warrior. To be fully transparent, the author also owns shares in ABC (as previously disclosed).
For a summer installment of the entertainment industry’s winners and losers, entries include a successful sequel to a hit Pixar movie having libertarian undertones, Rob Reiner’s latest liberal flop, and a kids’ cartoon of all things joining the grievance industry. Let’s get started and PLEASE be advised of spoilers!!
Winner – Disney Pixar's Incredibles 2
It’s summer again and, on cue, Disney’s Pixar subsidiary churns out another animated hit. The sequel to their hit movie The Incredibles was this summer’s pick. To put things mildly, it continues to do gangbusters at the box office. What you might not have known that there were accusations of director Brad Bird taking a page out of one of libertarian author Ayn Rand’s books.
Well, it turns out Incredibles 2 is even more libertarian than the original. According to The American Spectator (where this writer’s work was previously published), they make one of the heroes, Winston Deavor, a Koch brothers-like personality. However it turns out that Winston’s sister Evelyn doesn’t want to follow his ambitions, and she wants to make sure superhero work is never legalized again. Jack Shapiro's review for The Spectator explained how she trashed the free market:
As the plan to welcome supers back into society goes perfectly, it turns out that she is instead planning to manipulate the public into banning Supers forever. Her reasoning? Well, one, she blames supers for the death of her parents (her brother blames their death on the government for banning Supers). Two, she believes that Supers prevent people from actually keeping themselves safe. Essentially, she thinks that allowing exceptional people to do exceptional things has prevented society from mounting a collective response. To hammer home the point, she sneeringly derides “my free market brother” and his faith in Super’s in the same rant.
Ah...a villain that wants socialism! It’s rare you see that in other modern movies and television where the socialist is the hero. On an interesting note, Bird denied the libertarian tone of his Incredibles movies, but that didnn’t stop people from people accusing him of referencing Rand’s work, especially her most famous novel Atlas Shrugged. Politics aside, it’s still a fantastic movie, and that alone makes the film a winner.
Winner – Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer with Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer
After years of getting rejected by liberal Hollywood, a movie based on the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell is finally getting a release date this October with the title Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer. Ann McElhinney and her husband Phelim McAleer will co-produce of the film. Nick Searcy, who made an appearance in Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, will serve as the director.
It takes a lot of courage to tackle something as terrifying as the Gosnell story, and hopefully some pro-choice activists think twice after watching this movie. McElhinney, McAleer, and Searcy are clear winners for sure.
Loser – Rob Reiner's Shock and Awe
Reiner needs no introduction as the far-left director has made outrageous statements about Trump and other conservatives for seemingly ever, both in his media appearances and films. His most recent film, Shock and Awe – starring Woody Harrelson, James Marsden and Tommy Lee Jones, and himself, is an anti-Bush hit job focusing on a group of journalists (of course) on a mission to investigate the then-President’s “weapons of mass destruction” claim.
Of course, the film ended up like many other anti-Bush movies and bombed at the box office. Fox News reported that the film grossed a paltry $41,000 in 100 theaters on its opening weekend. Put simply, that’s a total disaster and there’s zero way anyone in the Resistance can spin that as a positive.
Labeling Reiner a summer loser doesn’t begin to cover it.
Loser – Cartoon Network’s The Amazing World of Gumball
Leave it to the Cartoon Network brand to invoke race and sex.
Just days after telecom and wireless giant AT&T acquired Time Warner and renamed it WarnerMedia earlier this summer, the network decided to go the way of left-wing sister channel CNN and use its popular original show The Amazing World of Gumball to trash President Trump.
According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, the series also engaged in race-baiting and gender-baiting by claiming women and minorities have been treated as inferior since the ’60s – when in realty, Martin Luther King actually helped race relations progress, which we take for granted today:
“Well, they’re from the 60s, but look only 20 cents for the whole palette!” Nicole says!
She then delivers the Trump burn: “I guess times were easier then…if you’re a man and not a minority and more comfortable with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Huh! How things have changed, huh!”
Again, this was on a children’s cartoon.
If there was another category below winners and losers, it’d be a perfect label for this show.
