Forbes on TDF:"SADLY, Diversity Isn't Enough"
This clueless writer for Forbes has an epiphany. He's such a simple minded douchebag ignorant of movies!
www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2019/11/05/why-terminator-dark-fate-and-pacific-rim-failed-where-star-wars-the-force-awakens-and-hobbs--shaw-succeeded-box-office/#119f557f19ce
"Dark Fate applied the Force Awakens formula to Terminator, and its failure shows the cruel limits of onscreen diversity as a financial boost.
Two of the big movies dropping on DVD/Blu-Ray and “priced to rent” VOD today are Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema’s The Kitchen and Universal’s Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. The former is, in a nutshell, everything we claim to want as a result of a push for onscreen diversity. It’s a mid-budget ($38 million), R-rated, adult-skewing mob drama starring Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss from a major studio and courtesy of a first-time female director in Andrea Berloff. Yet, partially thanks to mixed-negative reviews, and frankly I thought it was a fine piece of B-movie, three-star Hollywood moviemaking, the film earned just $16 million worldwide. Meanwhile, David Leitch’s Hobbs & Shaw starred Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Vanessa Kirby and Idris Elba in a blustery and over-the-top actioner that grossed $758 million worldwide, still the year’s biggest non-Disney/comic book flick of the year.
The extreme success (relatively speaking) of the actioner and the extreme failure of the crime flick highlights a grim point, one that plays into the sadly predictable box office failure of Terminator: Dark Fate. Audiences may claim to want onscreen and offscreen inclusivity, or perhaps the online conversation disproportionately speaks for the general populace. But, simply put, while onscreen diversity and offscreen inclusivity can be a potent added value element in a film audiences already want to see, it will not persuade moviegoers to show up in theaters for a film in which they otherwise have little interest. It’s a cruel truth that has revealed itself over the last few years, especially as Hollywood has (finally) gotten its head out of its butt and started offering, on the semi-regular, old-school studio programmers that happen to feature diverse casts and slightly more behind-the-scenes inclusivity.
Audiences have little problem with onscreen diversity. They also have little awareness of offscreen inequalities for the same reason I can’t quote stats concerning black coaches in the NFL or NBA. Even the online folks who proclaim to want this stuff only mean that they want progressive casting in the movies they were already going to see. They want diversity in Star Wars movies, comic book superhero movies and branded mega-bucks action spectaculars because those are the movies they already want to see. The folks championing Captain Marvel ignore Alita: Battle Angel, the folks flocking psyched to see Naomi Harris in No Time to Die or possibly as a baddie in Venom 2 have no interest in (the very good and of-the-moment political) Black and Blue. The folks waiting with bated breath for Birds of Prey might have enjoyed The Kitchen or Widows."