I think Hallmark Christmas romance movies are pretty silly, but I understand why they are so appealing to women, and I would never demand that Hallmark put in guns and karate to appeal to the male audience. And maybe instead of finding true love, maybe the male lead finds a really great Christmas Three-Way.
Now that would be stupid. That is destroying any entertainment value of the movie to its actual audience — women — in order to appeal to a very tiny segment of a possible audience, men.
And yet Hollywood will not stop making this insane trade-off in men’s entertainment properties.
James Bond movies used to insert fourth-wall self-parodying non-jokes all the time, and insert “We know this is stupid” self-parody moments. I always hated that. I wanted to take the Bond movies at least somewhat seriously — well, as seriously as an Indiana Jones movie, for example — but when James Bond gives a Tarzan yell as he swings on a vine, or when a pigeon double-takes at his hovercraft gondola, that is taking me out of the movie to tell me “This is stupid and you’re stupid for enjoying this and this is so stupid that we’re not going to let you forget this is stupid.”
And if that’s how you feel about this material — why the hell are you making it? Let someone who is more invested in the material make it.
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