Breitbart Reports: The key to a healthy industry—audience goodwill—is evaporating quickly.

Sure, there have been some recent hits. Avatar: The Way of Water just became the second-highest worldwide grosser (not counting for inflation) in history. The last three or four Marvel movies have made money. But let’s not kid ourselves. Avatar 2, just like Avatar 1, has had no cultural impact whatsoever.

I know of one person who saw it, and when asked his opinion, he replied with a shrug. My guess, and this is just a guess, is that The Way of Water’s box office was driven by a small pool of fans who swallowed marijuana edibles and went to see it again and again and again… Hey, whatever works.

As far as Marvel, those films are making less money than ever before, are widely disliked, and leaking goodwill like a bucket with no bottom.

Don’t get me started on “prestige” films. For the last ten or so years (Shape of Water, Moonlight, Birdman), the Oscars have been a joke, a bat signal to avoid that title at all costs. This year’s winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once, was a 140-minute Tik Tok video.

The biggest problem is what many call woke or what I call “rhetoric.” Star Wars, Terminator, Charlie’s Angels, Men in Black, Toy Story, Shaft, X-Men, Space Jam, Magic Mike, Shazam, Disney animation, Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn… All of these franchises were murdered by insulting, spell-breaking, ham-handed rhetoric.

The movie industry’s addiction to pedantic, predictable rhetoric, to try to shape and alter society rather than reflect, inspire, entertain, and surprise us, has landed the movie business in its first existential crisis in more than 50 years.