Simon Pegg's Last Stand: Paying the Celluloid Price

Oh, you thought you could make a POINT BREAK remake
with no consequences? Lock and load, bitches...

Recently, the one and only Simon Pegg caused a bit of a stir in certain social circles due to some comments he made in an interview with the Radio Times and, subsequently, his follow-up comments on his website, which I discovered exists. Specifically, he made several comments in regards to the state of cinema today, especially the realm of science fiction and fantasy, which seemed to cause a great deal of butt hurt to residents of them thar parts. Before I even clicked on the click-baity article (I'm only mortal, after all), I was ready to chalk up all of the indignation and hurt butts to the current social default setting of Taking Offence To Everything. Then I read the brief snipits of the interview posted online and, as a huge fan of sci-fi and fantasy myself, couldn't help but begin to ruminate on his insights into these genres:

"Before Star Wars, the films that were box-office hits were The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Bonnie And Clyde and The French Connection--gritty, amoral art movies. Then suddenly the onus switched over to spectacle and everything changed... I don’t know if that is a good thing.

Spring Break 4 Eva... Cultural Dysphoria Armed to the Teeth. And Bikinis to Boot.

"Just pretend it's a video game. Like you're in a fucking movie."

This is the immortal advice given by one of the young protagonists of SPRING BREAKERS to her three partners in (future) crime as they make their way towards their first armed robbery. This is not the rousing call to arms that one might expect from warriors on their way to find glory on the field of battle, unless, of course, those warriors were four, young college-aged women in the early twenty-first century on their way to commit a felony, and the field of battle was a crowded restaurant filled with unsuspecting part-time employees, slack-jawed customers, and enough MSG to satisfy a village in China for a month.