Joseph Holmes

One possible effect of MeToo is that now you see plenty of perfectly normal guys who are genuinely afraid of being accused of something—harassment, coercion, intimidation, whatever it may be. I think people misunderstood what young men are actually like and overinterpreted the problem. Yes, there’s always some small percentage of genuine predators out there—people who are basically immune to laws, shame, or stigma. They’re going to be predators no matter what barriers you put in front of them. But the average guy is not like that. The average young guy, when he’s repeatedly told about toxic masculinity, that men are the problem, “the future is female,” and that he constantly needs to prove he respects women, starts to internalize something different. He thinks, I should just hang back. I shouldn’t do anything. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. So he ends up walking on eggshells. When I think back to high school, the average guy already needed basically every condition to be perfect just to make a move. In some ways, it’s amazing anyone ever pairs up at all. I think about my best friend in high school—I lived with him our senior year. He had a crush on this girl in our class for ages. She liked him too; we knew from her friends. It was the classic setup where everyone knew, everyone was talking, and everyone was rooting for them. His friends told her friends. Her friends told him. I told my friend. The entire social machinery was working overtime to make this happen. And still, it felt impossible. Finally, he walks up to her, and I’m standing maybe ten feet away pretending not to listen. He says, “Hey, our friends have been talking, and I guess I should tell you I like you…” He was terrified. He even said, “I can’t believe how hard this is for me.” She was encouraging him: “It’s okay. You can ask.” He says, “I want to ask you something.” She says, “It’s okay. You can ask.” And he says, “I don’t know if I can.” That’s your typical 17-year-old boy. All the nerves, all the emotional energy, all the fear of asking a girl out for the first time. Finally, after all of that, he asks: “Will you go out with me?” She says yes. This is with mutual attraction, friend approval, social permission—basically a green light from the universe. And he was still terrified. Now imagine that same boy growing up hearing over and over: don’t bother women, leave them alone, don’t approach, don’t be creepy, don’t be a toxic male. At some point, the average guy doesn’t become more respectful—he just becomes more passive.

Those who read the Bible know that John the Baptist was the critic and everyone remembers his name.

If you ever doubt the importance of relationships in stories, think about how you felt when you learned Maverick and Iceman became lifelong friends. The first story meant something. It changed them, and it changed their lives. Compare that to sequels that try to start over and erase the first story. It leaves us empty, even feeling a little betrayed. "It was all for nothing? All of it?" That feeling is rarely about plot. It's almost always about the relationships.

Jackson and Co. made the right choice. Aragorn accepting his destiny works in the books as an archetypal story arc, but it would feel flat in the film as a dramatic story arc.

Alan Cummings says ‘AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY’ will include “secret” Avengers that haven’t been announced. “They didn’t want to let out this certain character was coming back, so they called them somebody else in the script. It was confusing.” (Source: Deadline)

Tom Cruise is rumored to be in talks to play the villain in Miami Vice '85, directed by Joseph Kosinski. With Top Gun 3 without a director and Edge of Tomorrow not coming anytime soon, Cruise would be a better fit for Kosinski's film, which stars Austin Butler and Michael B. Jordan.