“That’s good, because she’s a predator posing as a house pet. Stay away from that one.” – Fight Club
While the other Roombas™ cleaned, my Roomba™ studied the blade.
It’s Friday night, 1985.
Me, back before the hair migrated from scalp to back, picked up my date. She’s spent two hours teasing her hair to defy gravity using enough hairspray to singlehandedly destroy the ozone layer over Peru.
It was before streaming, so we headed to the movie theater because that’s what you did. I chose the movie. I always chose the movie. I actually never asked my date what she would like to see, because I was paying for it. Choices? Well, Back to the Future or, hey, Predator!
Yeah. Predator. Hell yeah.
She’s along for the ride, giggling.
When IKEA® furniture is stolen, it activates a shelf-destruct sequence.
As we’ve already discussed, this was the golden age of cinema, when movies were made for the people who actually showed up: young guys trying to score, uh, points. Yeah, score points with their dates.
Now it’s 2025, and Hollywood is finally remembering who buttered its popcorn.
Feminism, in its quest to “fix” everything (men, the patriarchy, colonialism, pumpkin spice) has turned every movie into a lecture hall. The box office results show that the audience has been sneaking out the back. Why?
Movies over the last decade bore men, annoy women, and leave studio execs wondering why their company returns are flatter than Harvey Weinstein’s prison mattress. I’m sure Harv has the lower bunk, right?
Historically, movie decisions were simple. Young men, wallets stuffed with ambition and minimum-wage cash, picked the films to woo their dates.
Sure, exceptions existed. I once got dragged to Dangerous Liaisons, surrounded by women swooning over 18th century French literature. I guess the consolation prize for me was prime Uma Thurman, but she was stuck in a plot denser than a dutchman’s fruitcake. (I have no idea if the Dutch eat or make fruitcake, but the phrase “dutchman’s fruitcake” should exist. You’re welcome.)
I hear the Dutch are tall because all the short ones died in floods.
My point is, men drove the box office because they were the ones buying the tickets. And what do men want?
Let’s not kid ourselves: great quests, attractive women, preferably ones who don’t lecture them on how to be better feminists, and explosions.
What do men want out of their women?
Men want an attractive woman. They also want loyalty, and a woman who’s, well, womanly nurturing, supportive, maybe even a future mom who doesn’t bench press more than they do as I was taught was the norm in Eastern Europe.
In Soviet Russia, you not wait for tooth fairy, tooth fairy wait for you.
But Hollywood’s 2015 memo?
Men’s preferences are problematic. Instead, they gave us girlbosses who could arm-wrestle Thor and win, despite never having arm-wrestled. These characters aren’t meant to only break the glass ceiling; they shatter the laws of storytelling itself.
Women, on the other hand, have their own cinematic cravings, and they’re not what the feminist scriptwriters think. Women don’t want to see perfect, flawless heroines who never break a nail. They want the fantasy of a powerful, ruthless man, think Ted Bundy with cash, who could crush them but don’t, and who’s inexplicably obsessed with them despite their quirks or, let’s be honest, their past.
It’s why Pretty Woman still gets women, um, misty. We’ll go with misty. A billionaire Richard Gere, falling for a hooker, is peak fairy tale. It’s why The Handmaid’s Tale keeps spawning sequels despite all the women claiming it’s a dystopia. Women say they don’t want to be handmaids, but they keep coming back for more, uh, stimulation.
And do they imagine being held down?
Hollywood’s current slate of heroines are not women: they’re poorly written men with better haircuts played by actresses who average a 6 out of 10. They’re written as invincible, quip-dropping machines who never fail, never learn, and never need no man—unless he’s there to clap like a trained seal.
This isn’t the Hero’s Journey; it’s the Hero’s Freeway, a straight shot to victory with no pitstops for growth. The Hero’s Journey, for those who skipped English class, is the classic epic story arc: a flawed character faces trials, fails, learns, changes, and triumphs. Think The Odessey. Think Beowulf. Yes. It’s that old. Luke Skywalker®, and Rocky Balboa™ are cut from the same cloth, because that story is the story of humanity.
Failure is the crucible that forges heroes.
But Hollywood’s girlbosses? They start perfect, stay perfect, and win without breaking a sweat. It’s like playing a video game on invincible mode—boring as hell.
Men aren’t signing up for lectures disguised as blockbusters. They want women who are worth rooting for—gorgeous, loyal, maybe even a little vulnerable, not someone who can out-punch them, out-smart them, and out-sarcasm them while looking like they just rolled out of a CrossFit® gym.
She solidly would have fit better in episode 3 out of 10.
Hollywood’s response? Write male characters, slap on some lipstick, hire mid-looking women to play them, and call it empowerment. No wonder they’re all-in on the trans movement, it’s just their casting philosophy taken to its logical extreme.
Women aren’t really thrilled either. Women want strong, dangerous men who choose not to break them, men who are powerful but prioritize them (while not too much, because that’s clingy). It’s why war brides lined up with open arms and open legs for conquerors from Genghis Khan to G.I.s in post-WWII Europe.
It’s why women, despite demanding equal pay, still want a man who earns more than they do. Equal pay? Sure. But he better out-earn her. But she also wants equal pay. But also he better out earn her . . . you get it. It’s a merry-go-round of contradictions that only stops when the popcorn runs out.
So why are movies so bad? Because ideology hijacked the projector. Somewhere along the line, a cabal of GloboLeftists, yes, studio execs and “scientists” and journalists and professors, all with pronouns in their bios, decided men and women are exactly the same. This is the root of the trans nonsense, the girlboss epidemic, all of it. They pushed a narrative that ignores biology, psychology, and basic human nature.
Men and women aren’t interchangeable cogs; they’re different, and that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. And it’s not just in the crotch. But Hollywood, drunk on GloboLeftist dogma, decided to churn out films that lecture instead of entertain because that was the narrative.
The result? Box office receipts that now look like a clearance sale on Betamax™ tapes at Blockbuster Video®. Audiences aren’t stupid: they know when they’re being preached to.
I’m so old I rewind Netflix™ movies before logging out.
Men don’t want to watch a Captain Marvel™ who is flawless in every way, punch harder than any other character because she’s 100% girlboss. Women don’t want to see another flawless heroine who makes them feel inadequate and don’t care about those movies anyway. And studios? They’re bleeding cash faster than Taylor Swift crying over her impending divorce after her impending marriage. But, hey, think of the album sales!
If Hollywood wants to save itself, it’s simple: make movies for humans, not manifestos. Give men the eye candy and heroism and explosions they crave along with a boy who fails, and in that failure, becomes a man. Give women the powerful, complex men they dream of, not cardboard cutouts spouting feminist taglines that result in, um, uncomfortable dryness.
Let characters fail, grow, and earn their wins. Stop pretending men and women are the same, because the only thing that’s equal is how much everyone hates these preachy flops.
Until then, I’ll be at home, rewatching Predator. Because nothing says “date night” like Dutch bleeding, swearing, and chomping a cigar while saving the day and the dame.
Now that?
That’s a movie.
