Films are great. Films are so great, in fact, that I’ve made a few myself because I enjoy film so much. But you know what’s not always great? The Internet – and that got me thinking: what if some of the major films of history were re-made to be about the Internet. What would a world like that look like?
Let’s find out. We’ll start with…
5. Star Wars
Two major celebrities have found themselves suck in a feud and now the whole world is going to suffer from it. This is their story.
Whether you want to or not, you can’t get away from the 24 hour news cycle’s fundamental problem: there isn’t enough actual news in any 24 hour period to actually make a 24 hour news cycle work; but the channels have to fill that air time with something, so they might as well cater to the lowest common denominator. That’s where “celebrity news” (which the older people amongst us will remember used to be called “common, idle gossip”) comes in.
In a world where there is no real news any more, celebrity rivalries are everything. Join us as we enter a hellscape in which two major celebrities have had a monumental falling out and now the whole world is being forced to choose sides. Will you join the path of good, or will you join the path of darkness. Can you even tell which is which any more? It’s a nightmare horror story from which there is no escape. Welcome to the horror that is… Star Wars.
But if that’s not quite up your street, you could always try…
4. Mad Max
Max isn’t any ordinary guy, you can be sure of that. He’s discovered the truth and he needs you to know about it. Visit the creepy world of Max, a flat earther, and discover his quest to enlighten the world as he reveals the truth about the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind!
Join Max on his quest to battle the forces of “science” and “reasonable people” as he crusades across the country, uncovering new facts and new information while he slowly pieces together the details of the conspiracy he is up against. All the while, he’s being pursued by a shady government organisation that is hell-bent on making sure he doesn’t get the word out to anyone.
It’s a race against time as Max pushes ever onward, desperate to reach a safe zone where he can broadcast his message of truth. Can he find a wi-fi hotspot with enough bandwidth to take his insane ramblings and upload them to YouTube? Can he wheedle his way past the dreaded Algorithm to get his video any views? Watch Mad Max, in cinemas this summer!
But maybe a conspiracy theory film isn’t quite up your street. If that’s the case, how about…
3. One Hour Photo
Joe Bloggs posted a funny picture online and now the world is going to make him pay.
In a world where anyone can become the next hate target at any time, meet ordinary family man Joe Bloggs. He’s an average office worker who saw something funny on his morning commute and took a photo of it. Thinking nothing more about it than “hey, that’s funny”, he uploaded the photo to social media, then grabbed a coffee and stepped onto a train.
Half an hour later, his life was in ruins.
In this 95-minute thriller, watch as Joe’s entire world crumbles around him. Presented in real time, Joe will go from an average family man to Internet Target Number One. By the thirty-five minute mark, there’s no going back and over the next hour, Joe will have to battle insurmountable odds just to keep his head above water.
Can he make it out alive? Could anyone? You’ll find out in this Oscar-bait performance by [Insert hot new actor here] in… One Hour Photo. Coming to cinemas a few weeks before the Academy Award nominations open.
But if you thought this film would be the only one covering such a hot topic, you obviously haven’t heard of Hollywood’s long-standing tradition of releasing similarly-themed films in order to ensure that nobody can own a big new idea. So let’s take a look at the other of our dueling twin movies…
2. 12 Angry Men
… in your DMs.
Meet Carol. She’s an average twenty-something woman who somehow manages to live in a wonderfully spacious New York apartment while working a boring office job, because this is Hollywood and apparently rent control extends to everywhere in Film World.
Anyway, Carol posted something on twitter, as so many of us are wont to do, but Carol has made a terrible, unforgivable mistake: she expressed an opinion while owning a vagina, and that can’t be allowed to happen. Now a dozen dudes have her in their sights and they want to tell her why she’s wrong (and also probably why she should die/get raped/never use a computer again. The list is pretty much endless, really).
One of these angry men has sent Carol a photograph of the building she lives in. Another has composed a Reddit post so long and complex that only an idiot would read it all – but read it some people did, and now her life threatens to spiral into a whirlpool of madness and anarchy where nobody in her family is safe.
Can Carol hold out until someone else comes along and says something these Twelve Angry Men don’t like? If she can, that new victim will take the heat off her. If she can’t… well, you’ll see what happens then on the six o’clock news.
But maybe this one’s hitting a little too close to home for some of you. Let’s finish up with a blockbuster, something we can all chew popcorn to without having to think too much. How about…
1. Apocalypse Now
Welcome to the world of the anti-vaxxer. Discover the reasons why these people are so willing to endanger the lives of their children, your children, and everyone else as well simply because some stranger on the Internet told them some easily-disproven lies.
Then witness the death and destruction their utter stupidity has wrought on the world as diseases everyone thought were gone for good come back with a vengeance. Can we as a species survive?
Directed by Roland Emmerich (because of course it is) and featuring more explosions than you would normally associate with a medical drama, this is one hollywood blockbuster that will launch a million Hot Takes; all of which will be forgotten about five minutes after you’ve retweeted them alongside a nice animated .gif of a squirrel pounding its fist into its palm and saying “we’ve got to do something about this”.
We do have to do something about this, though. It’s important. Mind you, there’s that new film opening tonight and you promised your friend you’d go and see it with them, so…
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