I am not a film critic, so take what I say with a grain of salt: I suppose there’s nothing inherently wrong with a movie review doubling as a blog post. Seeing as most if not all film criticism lives online (especially if it’s mean’t for the eyes of others) and blogs, which are defined in part by their web address, I can afford critic Walter Chaw some grace in his review of Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire (which i recommend you read). Though maybe only if I squint so hard all I can see is a white horizon amidst a black void not unlike the kind we scream our fears, anger, and desires into.

I have not yet seen Godzilla X Kong, a film barely a week into its release. Time will tell if it has legs, either financially or culturally, but speaking of culture, have you reckoned with any crimes against humanity today? If you have it’s likely been through the media, often with first person accounts on socials, be that in Palestine, The Congo, or Ukraine. I impotently think about these events, give to mutual aid when I can, and doom scroll. And in my strained, wage dictated life I may have forgotten to remember the violence of ISIS. Again, I am not a film critic, so perhaps that’s why their destruction of priceless artifacts back in 2014 does not immediately come to mind as a handy equivocation for a bad movie, a “cultural genocide” as Chaw quotes. I admit, the idea of art & culture irreparably smashed into oblivion is a haunting thought. Crass as this comparison may be I doubt Chaw would place it any higher than second to the genocide of the Yazidi people committed by ISIS on a scale of depravity. And if we are charging the latest blockbuster by director Adam Wingard with high crimes against the arts, a film that stinks of the end of culture and good judgement, then I’m afraid I have some good news or bad news depending on your persuasion.

Looking strictly at the 2020s, the film industry is crying “timber” as it slow motion collapses with the streaming bubble. In 2021 IATSE members, who voted over 90% in agreement to strike for PTO, longer turn around on work days, and higher pay, were betrayed by union bureaucrats who capitulated to the whims of industry. Last year the historic double strike of the WGA & SAG brought Hollywood to its knees (with IATSE support unlike in the 2007 WGA strike) only to see modest gains and tightening of belts as production overall has slowed. This year IATSE is due a contract renewal. That means closed door negotiations, keeping members and even anti-labor rags like The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline in the dark. After last years’s work stoppage, it is unlikely they will see gains in protections, now years behind where they should be. So, glass half full, the beast putting out such offensive material as Kong X Godzilla may be on its deathbed. Glass half empty, work dries up, workers scramble for the breadcrumbs that won’t go to nepotism hires, and all departments suffer. That’s too bad, I like movies.

In as much as Chaw’s writing on Godzilla X Kong is a movie review it cohabits with a sobbing wail into darkness as a world known to the critic dissolves before his eyes. A year ago the worries over AI replacing writers quickly proved valid as sites like CNET began printing stories with no human authors. Since then the media landscape has seen incredible layoffs at major publications such as The AV Club, Engadget, and Buzzfeed or worse at Sports Illustrated and Vice. To borrow an observation at the time, what quickly followed was a class of workers who had long conceptualized the automation of work as something that replaces the manual laborer suddenly finding kinship with the narrator of “First They Came…”. When I first saw Chaw’s review it was thru a retweet by game critic, Carolyn Petit, who posted in the same thread: “cinema is elevated as an art form by smart, piercing, even merciless critiques like this, because this says: movies matter. games can fucking handle it too.” The fear is real, the fear is justified, and Chaw is man enough to admit he’s steeped in it.

So am I. I’m not a film critic, but I work in the film industry and I’ve been scared for my job every year for a decade. I kid you not when I say I had my job threatened today after a safety meeting about proper ladder use, ironically hours after using a ladder climb a 20 foot shelf because both of our forklifts are dead but an order had to be fulfilled. I do not have the option to shadow box a decrepit industry, but I know what it’s like to shout into the void, I can’t imagine many don’t. I take to my blog, dick soft in hand, to spew my fears, anger and desires into, a message in a bottle with the sleight chance of being both read and felt.