Films that would not be made now

[Samcro]

I know it’s a topic that has been done before.
but what film do you think would not be made now and why?
mine is, every which way but loose.
yep the Clint Eastwood film with the orangutan

Yes indeed, I think the film really missed the mark with this.

I was telling my 16yo the plot of the Taming of the Shrew recently, and it's a hard sell. Abuse and gaslighting as comedy.

I'm sure there are other Shakespeare plays that are problematic too, and suspect they will not be staged at all in future.

But people have been discussing the problematic gender politics of Taming of the Shrew for a very long time — John Fletcher wrote a sequel after Shakespeare’s death about Petruchio remarrying after Kate’s death and being ‘tamed’ by his new wife. Many people also see it as a satire on controlling male behaviour and enforced female submission, and lots of productions from second-wave feminism on have found ways of highlighting this. I don’t think it will stop being staged any more than arguments about antisemitism have stopped productions of The Merchant of Venice.

I also enjoy the film (broadly) but like I said further up the thread, we don’t know if Rita and Sue are 15 or 16.

Well maybe I lack the subtlety of mind needed, but I've never seen a production of TTOTS that sat well with me and I can't imagine how it could be framed as a satire on male dominance without straining the script to breaking point, or becoming just too upsetting to watch.
Maybe the English-speaking world's love affair with Shakespeare will excuse and enable such productions to continue, but it's notable that you see far more productions of Midsummer Night's Dream, Tempest, Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet Romeo and Juliet, Othello etc (all of which have problematic elements but which are more easily smoothed over or reframed) than you see Merchant of Venice (good call) or Shrew. I see these two falling out of circulation in the next 100 years.

TMOV is on right now in London.

It's actually quite easy to work with the delivery of Katharina's final speech in TTOS and frame it as her victory - there are multiple interpretations. Modern productions tend to favour a more feminist interpretation.

I would have thought Othello is by far the most problematic of the plays you list in fact!

In terms of Shakespeare on film, it's been a while since a big film adaptation.

Re TTOS, the director of an RSC production said:

I don't believe for a second that the man who would be interested in Benedict and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet and all these strong lovers would have some misogynist aberration. It's very obviously a satire on this male behaviour and a cautionary tale [...] That's not how he views women and relationships, as demonstrated by the rest of the plays. This is him investigating misogyny, exploring it and animating it and obviously damning it because none of the men come out smelling of roses. When the chips are down they all default to power positions and self-protection and status and the one woman who was a challenge to them, with all with her wit and intellect, they are all gleeful and relieved to see crushed.

Not saying I agree with him, but it is an interesting take.

Back in the 80's I performed Katharina's final speech from The Taming of the Shrew for a drama exam. My drama teacher discussed it with me and gave me a feminist interpretation.

I do think on this thread that there is a tendency to forget that "The past is a foreign country...". Also many posters are referring to films as though they there was no controversy or discussion about them at the time and that they were completely accepted.

In 20 years time, people will be looking at films from this decade and comment that the attitudes differ from the contemporary ones.

I think Rita Sue and Bob Too is more likely to be an example of a film that would be made differently now rather than one that wouldn't be made. It's not that the film depicts an older man getting it on with a pair of girls who are still at school: more that it suggests there's no real harm in it: Bob's wife is depicted as a horrible cold shrew and so, the theory goes, Bob who is lonely in his marriage and the girls are just having some fun and they all have agency. The film absolutely could be made now but Bob would be a predator and the girls more clearly vulnerable.

I reckon Gregory's Girl is another example: in the film, a girl joins the football team and (after from some half-hearted attempts to exclude her) everyone thinks it's a great idea. And there are some peeping tom episodes at the start and end of the film. I suspect that if it were made now there would be angsty battles, tears, recriminations, maybe someone would try to poison Dorothy with ravioli while she battled her way to acceptance, perhaps the school would get set on fire. And no peeping tom stuff.

Crikey. I never knew that! I've never watched that film all the way through and I don't want to now.

It's "rape" in the sense of "sieze" or "abduction" from rapere although if it had happened no doubt rape in the sexual sense happened too. Alexander Pope's poem The Rape of the Lock is about cutting off a lock of hair.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is a great film. I have never had a problem with my daughter watching it. Yes, the brothers kidnap the girls, but Millie, the wife of the oldest brother is shown to be appalled at their behaviour. She is in charge, banishes the brothers (including her husband) from the house and looks after the girls until the snow melts and they can return to their families. The couples all fall in love and it is the girls' decisions to lie to their fathers so they can marry the brothers. So, after the initial kidnapping, the women of the film are the ones in control and the kidnapping is shown to be unacceptable.

Adding to my earlier post about Seven Brides and why I don't find it as problematic as some people do, there's also the scene near the very end where the parson asks the girls whose baby it is and is very very clear that none of them is to blame for what the townspeople think has happened and they mustn't be afraid to tell him.

Has anyone mentioned Top Gun? It is rarely shown on telly but after seeing it on one of the Freeview channels over Xmas I can see why. The 'iconic' scene where Cruise's Maverick serenades Kelly McGuillis is just horrible and cringey, it's like as if that's the way to 'win' a woman, with some standout display, rather than just going up and seeing if you get on at all. It's like a film for losers - to win an attractive woman, you'd have to do that.

Worse is the set up - it's all for a bet that Cruise can have 'carnal knowledge' of her on the premises. Thing is, speaking as a bloke, I can see why that might have seemed okay in the 80s, in a movie, a kind of derring-do but it really is awful, as well as Cruise's character following her into the the Ladies Room shortly after she's politely given him the brush off.
You could argue that the character is cocky and has to undergo a learning curve so this is an example, but it's too much really.

I think the belated sequel - which I think is brilliant - aimed at redressing some of these points