Tag: movies

Hollywood discovers fake reviews

Now that fake reviews are affecting film and potentially film revenue, review trolls are suddenly a major problem and laws should probably be passed!

It had taken years — and the passionate support of Kirk Kerkorian, who financed the film’s $100 million budget without expecting to ever make a profit — for The Promise, a historical romance set against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide and starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac, to reach the screen. Producers always knew it would be controversial: Descendants of the 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman Empire shortly after the onset of World War I have long pressed for the episode to be recognized as a genocide despite the Turkish government’s insistence the deaths were not a premeditated extermination.

The Promise, which opens April 21, finally would bring the untold saga to a mass audience. But at the Toronto Film Festival premiere in September, producer Mike Medavoy watched the late billionaire’s carefully laid plans upended by a digital swarm that appeared out of nowhere.

Before the critics in attendance even had the chance to exit Roy Thompson Hall, let alone write their reviews, The Promise’s IMDb page was flooded with tens of thousands of one-star ratings. “All I know is that we were in about a 900-seat house with a real ovation at the end, and then you see almost 100,000 people who claim the movie isn’t any good,” says Medavoy. Panicked calls were placed to IMDb, but there was nothing the site could do. “One thing that they can track is where the votes come from,” says Eric Esrailian, who also produced the film, and “the vast majority of people voting were not from Canada. So I know they weren’t in Toronto.”

The online campaign against The Promise appears to have originated on sites like Incisozluk, a Turkish version of 4chan, where there were calls for users to “downvote” the film’s ratings on IMDb and YouTube.

I look forward to hearing SJWs cry about how terrible it is that film producers are making efforts to ID those campaigning against their films. Because, as we are reliably informed, identifying fake reviewers is a crime against humanity.

However, it does underline the fact that if you want to support the authors, developers, and producers making stuff that you enjoy, it is very important to leave reviews, the more substantive, the better.

SJW convergence at Disney

Not that we didn’t know Disney was among the most evil and SJW-converged corporations on the planet, but it’s still a little remarkable that they’d rather not show the movie at all than sacrifice a few seconds of homosexual propaganda aimed at children:

Walt Disney has shelved the release of its new movie “Beauty and the Beast” in mainly Muslim Malaysia, even though film censors said Tuesday it had been approved with a minor cut involving a “gay moment.”

The country’s two main cinema chains said the movie, due to begin screening Thursday, has been postponed indefinitely. No reason was given.

Film Censorship Board chairman Abdul Halim Abdul Hamid said he did not know why the film was postponed as it was approved by the board after a minor gay scene was axed. He said scenes promoting homosexuality were forbidden and that the film was given a P13 rating, which requires parental guidance for children under 13 years of age.

“We have approved it but there is a minor cut involving a gay moment. It is only one short scene but it is inappropriate because many children will be watching this movie,” Abdul Halim told The Associated Press.

He said there was no appeal from Disney about the decision to cut the gay scene.

You literally cannot exaggerate an SJW’s commitment to convergence uber alles. It rivals on religious fanaticism, probably because it is, for all intents and purposes, their religion.

Zero interest in Rogue One

It was interesting and informative to watch a countdown show of the top 20 moments in Star Wars cinematic history. All of the top moments were from the first two movies, and the so-called “top moments” from the new movies – none of which I have seen – were almost uniformly lame. I had a hard time not laughing at the setup for the death of Han Solo, as all I could hear in my mind was Gandalf shouting “you shall not pass!”

Filmmakers really shouldn’t try to rip off great moments from other films. Sure, the visual is great, but it kicks the viewer out of the movie as surely as a poorly-timed product placement.

The only really good one was the fight between Darth Maul, the young Obi-wan, and Liam Neeson. Some of them, like Girl Luke and her Man Friday accidentally boarding the Millennium Falcon and recreating earlier flight combat scenes, were simply embarrassing.

So, I wasn’t inclined to bother seeing Rogue One anyhow, and the fact that Disney Wars is now fortified with feminism and multiculturalism only confirmed my indifference towards it.

Wait a minute, after thirty-nine years, it turns out that Star Wars is about race?

Sort of. You may not notice at first (I didn’t, until the second half of the movie), but in Rogue One there isn’t a single non-Hispanic white male among the large cast of heroes. The rebel band seeking to steal the plans for the Death Star from the Empire is led by a white woman (Felicity Jones), a Latino man (Diego Luna) and three ethnic Asians (Riz Ahmed, Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang), with advice from a black man (Forest Whitaker) and a droid (voice of Alan Tudyk). Among the rebels, non-Hispanic white dudes (for convenience, I’ll just call them white from now on) are relegated to the background, while the Empire is represented by brigades of sinister white men, led by Ben Mendelsohn and (the digital reincarnation of) Peter Cushing as Imperial officers. It’s as if the cast was meant to echo a Hillary Clinton speech in which she described her coalition as everybody but white males.

The casting was not accidental. The Empire is (now) a “white supremacist (human) organization,” Rogue One co-writer Chris Weitz Tweeted the Friday after Clinton was defeated in the election. Another writer for the film, Gary Whitta, replied with his own Tweet, “Opposed by a multi-cultural group led by brave women”—then deleted it.

Needless to say, this aggression will not stand, man. Look for a literary response to the nonsense from Castalia in 2017.

It’s also unsurprising to learn that SJW-converged Wired is up to its usual tricks. The reporter is evidently confused about the difference between “reporting” and “debating”, as can be seen in her impromptu debate with Mike Cernovich:

Hi Mike—WIRED is reporting on #DumpStarWars, which I see you’ve participated in. Any chance you’d like to chat about why you’re boycotting?

Star Wars writers hate Trump voters. Why give them money?

From what I’ve seen, what they really hate are white supremacists. You don’t see throwing alt-right/lite/west support behind the boycott as reinforcing the idea that trump supporters=white supremacists?

Buddy my wife is Persian, we have a daughter, the white supremacist stuff is stupid as hell.

To be clear, I wasn’t saying you were a white supremacist. But much of the backlash has focused on the idea that Rogue One is racist against white men. Are you saying that white supremacist sentiment isn’t a factor in the protest?

Nah that’s not it at all. I don’t see why this is hard to understand. Trump supporters are attacked. Giving money to people who attack them is pathetic. I am going to organize more boycotts.

I’m struggling to find evidence that Rogue One’s writers have been explicitly against anything but white supremacy. Could you point out an example?

What’s the matter, Mike? Why come you won’t make the argument I keep trying to stuff in your mouth instead of saying what you actually think?

Also, as it happens, the movie sucks:

Lobotomized and depersonalized, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” the latest entry in the film franchise, is a pure and perfect product that makes last year’s flavor, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” feel like an exemplar of hands-on humanistic warmth and dramatic intimacy…. “Rogue One” offers an international cast that, along with Jones, Whitaker, and Mikkelsen, features Diego Luna (as the rebel captain Cassian Andor, who is Jyn’s main cohort), Riz Ahmed (as the band’s intrepid pilot), and Donnie Yen (as a blind martial-arts spiritualist). But it seems as if the condition for assembling this diverse group is not letting them say or do anything of note, anything of any individual distinction, anything of any free-floating or idiosyncratic implication. 

Celebrities tell you how to vote

Nick Cole, who has no small amount of experience with Hollywood celebrities as an actor on shows like Scrubs and The West Wing, explains why you shouldn’t listen to them.

Most celebrities, especially the actors, are literally professional liars. And when you begin to look at their lifestyle, from the unrealistic wealth you and I will never see, to the amount of divorces, drug and alcohol problems and lawsuits they accumulate, they’re not actually savory people. Not even really nice people in fact, unless they’re making videos about how they’re donating to some charity. They are literally bragging on social media about what a giver they are conveniently timed around some theatrical release for their next filth laden flop you shouldn’t actually be watching with your kids.

(Wow what a coincidence! That drug addict rageaholic actor Everyman who parties with the House of Saud and Russian hookers and whose wife fears for her and her kid’s life, shows up at the cancer ward to pretend to be something he’s actually not). And what makes it occasionally creepier than it really is, happens during elections when a celebrity team of Social Avengers gets together to push a flailing political candidate known for her legendary amounts of corruption, avarice, greed and general failings as a human being in order to tell you the other guy is literally Hitler. Disregarding the fact that Hitler was Hitler because he killed millions of people.

Celebrities are lying scum.

I have to admit, I don’t pay celebrities any mind whatsoever, on the sound principle that I don’t listen to anything that anyone with an IQ less than half of mine says. I can honestly say that I am more inclined to pay heed to the opinion of my wife’s Ridgeback than I am to any opinion expressed by a Hollywood celebrity.

Celebrities are, by and large, a collection of shallow, low-IQ little people who spend their lives playing make-believe and pretending to be things that they are not. It’s nice that they can make a living that way, but one would do better to seek guidance by consulting the opinions of cosplayers.

NOW they worry about foreign control?

I find it bizarre that after decades of Jewish control of Hollywood, and the resultant tidal wave of Jewish propaganda in which Americans have been inundated, we’re supposed to be concerned about the dangerous prospects of Chinese control of the entertainment industry:

The rise of Chinese investment in Hollywood is raising alarms in Congress, which could complicate studios’ ambitions to strengthen ties to the Middle Kingdom.

The latest salvo came in a letter from 16 members of Congress last week, which called for closer scrutiny of Chinese investment in the U.S. entertainment and media sectors. The letter cited the Dalian Wanda Group’s acquisitions of Legendary Entertainment, AMC and Carmike Cinemas, and warned of “growing concerns” of Chinese efforts to exert “propaganda controls on American media.”

Wanda has been on a buying spree, of late, announcing a merger between AMC and Carmike that would make it the largest exhibitor in the world. Earlier this week, news broke that Wanda plans to form a multi-picture alliance with Sony Pictures.

Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, warned that growing Chinese investment could raise strategic concerns.

“Would we raise questions if Russia or Iran was buying large parts of U.S. media and entertainment companies? Of course we would,” Smith said in a statement to Variety. “Raising questions about Chinese investment is no different.”

I tend to suspect Chinese propaganda would probably be less anti-Christian, less anti-white and less anti-American than most of what we’ve seen out of Hollywood for the last 30 years.

This would be the Lambda review

Milo’s review of Grrlbusters stands in stark contrast to McRapey’s.

I’d have loved nothing more than to give Ghostbusters a glowing review. Seriously! Can you imagine a better troll? Extolling the virtues of a film that my loyal readership has been warring with social justice warriors over for months?

But I can’t. You see, I strive to be honest with my audience. I went into Ghostbusters with a clear and impartial mindset, like some tall, slim, and devastatingly handsome statue of justice. (But no blindfold. It would be a crime to cover up these eyes.)

Ugh, I don’t know what to tell you. Ghostbusters is terrible. It’s more obvious than the reading on an EKG-meter in Zuul’s bedroom. The only frame of reference in which this movie functions is as a meta-movie, in which the Ghostbusters franchise is treated like a vampire in a Hammer Horror from the 60s. The beloved franchise from our childhood with a stake driven through its heart, head chopped off, body burned and buried at a crossroads.

 The overarching problem with Ghostbusters is that the script is a greater abomination to God than any of the demons and ghosts in the franchise. I’m sure they could have done a worse job, but they’d have to study Tobin’s Spirit Guide to summon a script from an even deeper circle of Hell.

Mostly, it’s a lack of intelligence. In the original movie, the bad guys weren’t actually the ghosts — everybody loves Slimer and the Marshmallow Man. No, the bad guys were the clueless bureaucrats in the government, who set off a supernatural crisis through bumbling and red tape.

In this film, by contrast, the enemy is all men, while the government ends up playing dad. Every man in the movie is a combination of malevolent and moronic. The chick ‘busters shame the mayor so much they end up getting government funding at the end. Like all feminists, they can only survive by sucking on the teat of Big Government.

I’ll skip over the vacuous and incoherent plot. You won’t understand it watching the movie and you won’t understand it reading my summary so who cares. This, unlike any movie I’ve ever seen before, seems to have been conceived entirely out of spite, with the result that its plot is largely irrelevant.

Read the whole thing there. I leave it to you to determine whose review is more trustworthy.

The only reason that anyone cares about this movie is because it is a symbol; it is a battleground in the cultural war. As Milo correctly noted, the movie is a standard bearer for the cultural Left. The mere fact that the battle is being waged, and that the movie is being widely panned and ignored, is a very good sign for we Western Civilizationalists, because it means the SJWs and feminists are finally meeting overt opposition.

Gamma reviews

This is not a Gamma review:

Gamma Reviews: Advanced Review Copies

Advanced Review Copies, or ARCs, are the books that the publishers print out early with ordering information including print run size & co-op information instead of a back cover blurb. These are given out to bookstore buyers, professional reviewers, (and, in the case of Baen, lucky people at the Baen Roadshow.)

Now THIS is a Gamma review:

What I thought of the new Ghostbusters: I liked it, and would happily rewatch it. It’s definitely the second-best Ghostbusters movie, and much closer to the original in terms of enjoyment than the willfully forgotten Ghostbusters 2. There are legitimate criticisms to make of it: the plot is rote to the point of being slapdash, the action scenes are merely adequate, and Paul Feig is no Ivan Reitman, in terms of creating comedic ambiance. But the film got the two big things right: It has a crackerjack cast that’s great individually and together, and it has all the one-liners you can eat. And now that the origin story of these particular Ghostbusters is out of the way, I’m ready for the sequel.

But what about the Ghostbusters being all women?!??!?? Yes they were, and it was good. If you can’t enjoy Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones snarking it up while zapping ghosts with proton streams, one, the problem is you, not them, and two, no really, what the fuck is wrong with you. The actors and the characters had chemistry with one another and I would have happily watched these Ghostbusters eat lunch, just to listen to them zap on one another. And in particular I want to be McKinnon’s Holtzmann when I grow up; Holtzmann is brilliant and spectrum-y and yet pretty much social anxiety-free and I honestly can’t see any sort of super-nerd not wanting to cosplay the shit out of her forever and ever, amen.

BUT THEY’VE RUINED MY CHILDHOOD BY BEING WOMEN, wails a certain, entitled subset of male nerd on the Internet. Well, good, you pathetic little shitballs. If your entire childhood can be irrevocably destroyed by four women with proton packs, your childhood clearly sucked and it needs to go up in hearty, crackling flames. Now you are free, boys, free! Enjoy the now. Honestly, I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence that one of the weakest parts of this film is its villain, who (very minor spoiler) is literally a basement-dwelling man-boy just itchin’ to make the world pay for not making him its king, as he is so clearly meant to be. These feculent lads are annoying enough in the real world. It’s difficult to make them any more interesting on screen.

But this is just the latest chapter of man-boys whining about women in science fiction culture: Oh noes! Mad Max has womens in it! Yes, and Fury Road was stunning, arguably the best film of its franchise and of 2015, and was improbably but fittingly nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Oh noes! Star Wars has womens in it! Yes, and The Force Awakens was pretty damn good, the best Star Wars film since Empire, was the highest grossing film of 2015 and of all time in the domestic box office (not accounting for inflation. Accounting for inflation, it’s #11. #1 counting inflation? That super-manly epic, Gone With the Wind).

And now, Oh noes! Ghostbusters has womens in it! Yes, and it’s been well-reviewed and at $46 million, is the highest grossing opening for its director or any of its stars and perfectly in line with studio estimates for the weekend. Notably, all the surviving principals of the original film make cameos, suggesting they are fine with passing the torch (Harold Ramis is honored in the film too, which is a lovely touch), and Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd are producers of the film. If your childhood has been ruined, boys, then your alleged heroes happily did some of the kicking.

I’m an 80s kid; my youth is not forever stained by a Ghostbusters remake, any more than it was stained by remakes of Robocop or Point Break or Poltergeist or Endless Love or The Karate Kid or Clash of the Titans or Footloose or Total Recall and on and on. I think most of these remakes were unnecessary, and I don’t think most of them were particularly good, or as good as their originals, and I question why film companies bother, aside from the “all the originals were made before the global movie market matured and there’s money on the table that can be exploited with these existing brands,” which is, of course, its own excuse.

But after a certain and hopefully relatively early point in your life, you realize remakes are just a thing the film industry does — the first Frankenstein film listed on imdb was made in 1910, and the most recent, 2015, and Universal (maker of the classic 1931 version) is planning yet another reboot in 2018 or 2019 — and maybe you get over yourself and your opinion that your childhood is culturally inviolate, especially from the entities that actually, you know, own the properties you’ve invested so much of your psyche into. It’s fine to roll your eyes when someone announces yet another remake, tweet “UGH WHYYYYYY” and then go about your life. But it causes you genuine emotional upheaval, maybe a reconfigure of your life is not out of the question.

(Not, mind you, that I think these shitboys are genuinely that invested in Ghostbusters, per se; they’re invested in manprivilege and, as noted above, would have wailed their anguished testeria onto Reddit and 4chan regardless of which cultural property had women “suddenly” show up in it. This is particularly ironic with anything regarding science fiction, which arguably got its successful start in Western culture through the graces of Mary Shelley. Women have always been in it, dudes. Deal.)

The happy news in this case is that, whether or not this Ghostbusters reboot was necessary, it’s pretty good, and fun to watch. That’s the best argument for it. I’m looking forward to more.

So brave. But having finished demolishing his own reputation as a movie reviewer in the interest of virtue-signaling his feminist superiority to “manboys” and “shitboys”, whatever they are, McRapey also had to be the first to comment on his own post on his shrinking little blog.

John Scalzi says:
JULY 17, 2016 AT 12:15 PM
To get ahead of any potential “but there are women saying their childhood was ruined too!” nonsense: Maybe there were? But if there were, and they weren’t gamergate-like sockpuppet accounts, a) I didn’t see much of them, b) they were swamped by the wailing boys, c) the advice to them is the same as to the whining dudes: Remakes happen, maybe get over it.

To get ahead of “it’s sexist to bag on the men here,” argument, leaving the whole larger argument about power stuctures and sexism and all the stuff you recognize play into sexism when you think about sexism on a level higher than “this is a playing card I can slap down in this game called Rhetoric,” you can imagine me in that Wonka meme pose, saying “Tell me again as a man how I can’t criticize men, that’s adorable.”

Finally, to get ahead of any “beta cuck” stupidity, I’m not the one who just spent half a year wailing about the ruin of my childhood, boys. I do find there’s an correlation between the sort of dude who questions my masculinity and the sort of dude who whines excessively about how mean the world is to him, waaaaaaaaaaaah. And this is me in the Wonka pose again.

All of which is to say, Mallet is out for general whiny male bullshit. Behave, children.

Spacebunny cracks me up. Her entire response: “Isn’t he married? Why is he trying so hard?” Sadly, despite his brave and heroic efforts, Scalzi got it wrong in the end. You see, the official feminist line is that Grrlbusters is not only better than the original, but seeing it is important.

The nerdy guy doesn’t get the girl. That was a standard trope in the 80s, and the Ghostbusters of 1984 was no exception. The lack of consent factor that makes all of the Zhoul-possessed Sigourney Weaver scenes difficult to watch is not an issue here, because there is no romance in the new Ghostbusters, creepily possessed or otherwise. Yes, Erin (Kristin Wiig) awkwardly hits on Kevin (Chris Hemsworth) but it’s generally met with disapproval from her fellow Ghostbusters (if not laughter) and Kevin seeming to be oblivious to it. And even better than the nerdy guy being the hero is the fact that the nerdy guy is the villain and the nerdy girls save the world. Boom.

An appreciation for their receptionist by the Ghostbusters. I loved Janine as a kid. As a child, I thought that Janine pining quietly for Egon was romantic. Now it pisses me off. That and the fact that nobody paid any attention to her, generally speaking, because she was competent and therefore invisible. As doofy and dumb as Kevin is, and even though Erin hits on him, the team still values him and learns to work with him because they genuinely care about him. That’s not subtext. That’s actual text.

Using the “ghost” as an allegorical commentary. One of the themes in this movie is the importance of being believed. Yes, in this movie, it’s about being believed about ghosts. Erin talks about how she saw a ghost when she was 8, every night for a year. Her parents didn’t believe her, and she went into therapy. Abby (Melissa McCarthy) was the only one who believed her, which was one of the reasons they became friends. It’s not that much of a stretch to think about all the things that women are also often not believed about, as children or as adults. And that part of the movie, thankfully, and pointedly, doesn’t devolve into comedy. It lets the moment of remembered trauma be serious.

Real friendship between the Ghostbusters. The other moment of seriousness that is allowed to be serious is at the very end, when Jillian (Kate McKinnon) stands up to give the gals a toast. Up to this point, the majority of Kate McKinnon’s screentime has been devoted to sight gags and making straight girls question their sexuality, both of which she excels at.

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that sequel, Johnny. I expect it will be out around the same time that Paramount releases the Old Man’s War movie.  But at least we’ll have that television show based on Redshirts to look forward to.

“A horrifying mess”

The verdict is in: Grrlbusters is even worse than anticipated:

For months, controversy has swirled around the new “Ghostbusters” movie. The trailer was reportedly the most hated in YouTube history, for what that’s worth (or not worth), which led to some pundits saying some of that hate was rooted in sexism.

Others said the fact the Leslie Jones character wasn’t a scientist and seemed to have a role that called for her to play into stereotypes smacked of racism.

Of course, people were voicing these opinions without having seen the entire movie. Well, I have seen it — and while I believe the concerns about racial stereotypes were overblown, “Ghostbusters” is one of the worst movies of the year for multiple other reasons, including:

Bad acting.

Uninspired directing, editing, cinematography and music.

Cheesy special effects.

A forgettable villain.

A terrible script.

SJWs always destroy everything they converge.

Grrlbusters: lamer than expected

That’s not offensive to men, it’s just stupid, predictable, and not even a little bit funny.

When the punchline of your very expensive Grrrl Power movie, designed to prove that Women Can Too Be Funny in spite of the evidence to the contrary consisting of the entire written history of Man, builds up to a visual riff on… wait for it, wait for it… A WOMAN KICKING A MAN IN THE CROTCH, I think it’s safe to conclude that it’s going to fail.

And do so in a positively epic manner.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you’re dumb enough to let SJWs infest your organization. The problem isn’t that it’s going to be a failure. One has to take risks from time to time. But this failure was guaranteed from the very moment it was conceived.

As Stickwick observed, girl power is literal Idiocracy. A large collection of women spent $154 million to make a Ghostbusters-flavored OW MY BALLS.

SJW-convergence in Star Trek

Who would have thought that Star Trek, which has always been at the forefront of SJWism, could be further converged?

In the summer of 1968, George Takei attended a pool party at the Hollywood Hills home of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. The actor, then 31 and famous for his role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise, swam up to his boss and “had a conversation with him, a very private one. I was still closeted, so I did not want to come out to him.”

Nevertheless, Takei — who announced he was gay in 2005  — was fully attuned to the gay equality conversation gaining momentum at the time. He felt it was a topic worth exploring on the socially minded science-fiction series, which had previously tackled issues like the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War through keenly observed allegory.

But the show had recently seen its lowest ratings ever, with an episode featuring TV’s first interracial kiss between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura, which NBC affiliates in the South refused to air. While sympathetic to his star’s pitch, Roddenberry felt he was in no position to take those kinds of risks.

“He was a strong supporter of LGBT equality,” recalls Takei, now 79. “But he said he has been pushing the envelope and walking a very tight rope — and if he pushed too hard, the show would not be on the air.” Alas, the show was canceled the following season anyway.

But Star Trek has lived long and prospered for studio home Paramount, spawning six TV series and 13 feature films. True to its title, the latest big-screen outing, Star Trek Beyond, has gone where none have gone before: Star John Cho — who assumes the Sulu mantle for the third time in the reboots — has told Australia’s Herald Sun that the character is revealed to be gay….

Except Takei wasn’t overjoyed. He had never asked for Sulu to be gay. In fact, he’d much prefer that he stay straight. “I’m delighted that there’s a gay character,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Unfortunately, it’s a twisting of Gene’s creation, to which he put in so much thought. I think it’s really unfortunate.”

Takei explains that Roddenberry was exhaustive in conceiving his Star Trek characters. (The name Sulu, for example, was based on the Sulu Sea off the coast of the Philippines, so as to render his Asian nationality indeterminate.) And Roddenberry had always envisioned Sulu as heterosexual.

Straights attempting to virtue-signal on behalf of gays do their best, but they never get it right. I don’t know a single gay man who likes the Saint Gay couples that pervade Hollywood entertainment or think they are anything but dressed-up suburban married couples, about as convincing as urban fantasy’s kick-ass kung fu waifs, science fiction’s men with tits, and the Magic Negroes who like nothing better than to defy gangbangers and help out white folk in distress when they aren’t busy philosophizing, providing moral instruction, or being President.

One would think, at some point, someone would have asked George Takei, or at least understood that there is an insult implicit in the idea that he could not act.