Why Hollywood Continues To Lose Money

Mark Steyn explains that it’s political correctness:

…I stopped to buy the third boxed set in the ”Looney Tunes Golden Collection.” Loved the first two: Daffy, Bugs, Porky, beautifully restored, tons of special features. But, for some reason, this new set begins with a special announcement by Whoopi Goldberg explaining what it is we’re not meant to find funny: ”Unfortunately at that time racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in ways that may have embarrassed and even hurt people of color, women and ethnic groups,” she tells us sternly. ”These jokes were wrong then and they’re wrong today” — unlike, say, Whoopi Goldberg’s most memorable joke of recent years, the one at that 2004 all-star Democratic Party gala in New York where she compared President Bush to her, um, private parts. There’s a gag for the ages…

…”Stealth” was a high-tech action thriller about USAF pilots zapping about the skies in which the bad guy is the plane.

That’s right: An unmanned computer-flown plane goes rogue and starts attacking things. The money shot is — stop me if this rings a vague bell — a big downtown skyscraper with a jet heading toward it. Only there are no terrorists aboard the jet. The jet itself is the terrorist.

This is the pitiful state Hollywood’s been reduced to. Safer not to have any bad guys. Let’s make the plane the bad guy. No wonder it’s 20th century Britlit — ”Harry Potter,” ”Lord of the Rings,” ”Narnia” — keeping those Monday morning numbers up. It’s Hollywood’s yarn-spinning that’s really out of focus, and in the end even home entertainment revenue won’t save a storytelling business that no longer knows how to tell any.