[Weekly Update] Contemplation on Gen Z cinema (Patreon)

There was a Japanese street food festival in Montreal. I went to get some yummy.

I got an upset stomach instead.

CHANNEL UPDATE

The final video of our dynasty series is still being written. It's the finale of the ambitious series, and I want to do it right. Still, I hope to get it done as soon as possible, and move onto other topics that have been in the back burner for a while. These topics includes depiction of America and Americans in Chinese movies, the history of Ninjas in Movies, A Maggie Cheung Retrospective, etc.

But immediately after our Dynasty series, I want to continue our bad movies world tour and take a stop in India. I've come to realize there is no way for me to get a copy of Deshdrohi, so I'll have to settle with perhaps the second worse: Race 3. While not quite the meme material, Race 3 is by far the more mainstream film, and also probably actually worse. I have not seen this film in years, so I'll have to refresh my memory a bit. Let's hope it's not too painful.

As I recently watched the new Mean Girls remake for no particular reasons, I think I'll just talk about the original Mean Girls for our bonus video. I've used clips from that movie more than you'd realize. The film is weirdly quotable.

MEDIA TALK

Remember when it was a big deal with millennial teens were presented as heavily sexualized in movies wearing revealing clothings?

What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, so I watched the 2024 remake of Mean Girls. I went in expecting a soul crushingly lame movie (kinda like Mean Girls 2), and came out genuinely impressed by how well made the movie is. The songs are... appropriate. Wether they are good or not depends on your musical taste, but they fit really well. The entire cast is charismatic, and the characters are over the top to a point of iconic. I can't believed how much I enjoy this movie.

That's when I looked back and asked myself why I expected this film to be bad. Obviously, it's an unnecessary remake. In an age of endless remakes, it's hard not to go in with a negative expectation.

But mostly, it was because the movie is so... Get Z. the surrealist humor, the Gen Z Internet culture. The extremely flamboyant expression of identity. It's like snoring chilly pepper: your senses get overwhelmed to a point of physical pain.

But once I set that aside, I realized underneath all of that youthful non-sense (which I suspect the Gen Z audience merely enjoyed with a side of irony), this film is closer to old school remakes that update existing classics for a new generation.

That makes me wonder: What is Gen Z cinema?

Starting this year, Gen Z became the primary moviegoing generation (age 14-24, iirc). From here on out, movies will progressively cater more towards this generation's sensibility and interests. In a way, I think we have already seen this happening: Gen Z meme culture is often rooted in absurdism and surrealism. Think Untitled Goose Game. This absurdity is seen in many recent movies, many of which I enjoyed: Barbie, Cocaine Bear, The Fall Guy, Godzilla X Kong, Everything Everywhere All at Once.

In a way, all of these movies have one thing in common: Nothing is serious, except for its core emotion. It seemed that these films do not focuses on how its emotion is expressed, so long as it is expressed to its fullest. Barbie, throughout the entire movie, is a comedy character with minimal realism. Yet she gets a touching moment towards the end. Godzilla X Kong had Kong bashing other apes with another apes at one point, yet the movie does its best to loop back and show Kong bonding with his new adopted son. This absurdity in the face of a world that makes no sense, and the value of sincere emotional expression is a refreshing step forward for me.

Of course, these movies were still made by, at best, Millennial filmmakers. So how will the Gen Z childhood experience shaped the future remains to be seen. I'm trying my best not to be judgemental in the face of a culture that does not includes me. And, at least from the outside looking in, the culture looks pretty neat.

That's the update for this week! Any Gen Z filmgoers here that would like to share their perspectives? I'll see you soon with a new video!