The new “Karate Kid” movie has a surprising twist: older men teaching younger men to work hard, honor tradition, and develop a virtuous character. “Karate Kid: Legends” is exactly what you think it’s going to be — and thank God for that.
If, like me, you grew up trying to perfect the crane kick in the living room after watching the original “Karate Kid,” then this movie will hit all the right beats. It follows the classic formula: an underdog with raw talent, a wise mentor with quiet gravitas, a villain who cheats, and the enduring truth that virtue matters more than victory.
You might ask, “So ... it’s not a great movie?” No. It is just what you expect, and that’s what makes it great. It doesn’t pretend to be something else. It’s not trying to be edgy, subversive, or “reimagine the genre.” It isn’t the millionth movie in the “Sixth-Sense-twist-at-the-end” series of hackneyed films we’re all bored with. It’s just a good old-fashioned “Karate Kid” movie. And in an age when every studio seems bent on turning childhood memories into political lectures, this is a welcome roundhouse to the face.
The tradition here is simple and good: older men teaching younger men how to face suffering with courage and to live lives of virtue.
No woke sermon, no rainbow flag cameo character delivering predictable lines about systemic injustice, no Marxist backstory about how dojo hierarchies are tools of capitalist oppression — this isn’t a Disney film, and you can tell.
Instead, it asks a dangerous question, one so controversial it might get you fired from an English department faculty meeting: Do hard work, discipline, tradition, and honor still matter?
In the woke world, of course, the answer is no. Disney movies now teach that tradition is oppressive, virtue is repressive, and hard work is a tool of colonialist mind control. Your feelings are your truth — and your truth is sacred. If you feel like turning your back on your family to pursue LGBTQ+ sex, then you’re the greatest hero in human history. But “Karate Kid: Legends” doesn’t go there. It doesn’t need to.
It’s not a message movie. But it has a message. And it’s one even a child can understand: Be honorable. Do the right thing. Grievance and self-pity don’t lead to victory. And if they do, it’s a hollow one.
The film also manages to affirm tradition without being heavy-handed about mystical Eastern spiritualism or ancestral ghost sequences. Disney spews New Age spirituality in cartoons for kids at every opportunity.
The “tradition” here is simple and good: older men teaching younger men how to face suffering with courage and to live lives of virtue. That includes working through loss — deep loss, the kind that could break a person. But instead of turning to rage or self-indulgence, our young hero learns to endure, to persevere, to get back up — and maybe, just maybe, deliver that final clean kick.
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Of course, there’s a villain who cheats. You’ve got to have that. And yes, he’s detestable. That’s kind of the point. As the smug leftist professor at your local state university might say, “So it’s about childish morality?” Yes, professor — it’s about what even a child can know: Doing the right thing and building character matters. Wallowing in the self-pity of grievance culture will never get you there.
Somehow, this simple truth has become controversial. In a world where adults cry on TikTok about microaggressions and activist professors turn every syllabus into a therapy session about their own victimhood, it’s refreshing to see a film that reminds us that life is hard. But that doesn’t mean we give up. It means we get better. Stronger. Kinder. More honorable.
And that’s what “Legends” delivers — without apology, without postmodern irony, and without the cultural sludge we’ve come to expect from Hollywood.
It’s clean. It’s earnest. It’s nostalgic without being desperate. And it shows us a vision of manhood and mentorship we desperately need: older men guiding the next generation, not with snark or shame, but with honor, wisdom, and love.
So if you want a movie that will entertain your kids without corrupting them — and hopefully inspire them to build a virtuous character — go see “Karate Kid: Legends.” It may not win an Oscar (which already tells you it’s good), but it might just help restore your faith in simple, straightforward storytelling. And that’s worth more than a golden statue.
Last spring's "Civil War" treated audiences to the spectacle of America finally quelling a MAGA-coded revolt that had split it in two.
The movie's Trump-like villain played on fears that the defeated president's comeback bid — at the time building momentum — might actually work. His cowardly, ignominious death at the end offered reassurance that we would soon witness Donald J. Trump's permanent exit from the political scene.
'She’s the Mamala of all Mamalas,' gushes Daily Beast film critic Nick Schager.
Who knew that a scant few months later, reality would hew so literally to fantasy? Unlike his fictional counterpart, of course, Trump survived — and he did so with a stirring display of courage that arguably clinched his victory that November.
By now, the country has more or less accepted Trump 2.0. Yes, there is still a "resistance," but it lacks energy and focus; all but the most recalcitrant Democrats have started to turn their gaze inward.
Under the circumstances, a movie featuring a Kamala Harris-like president kicking butt and saving the world might be considered in poor taste. In fact, Harris' campaign was such a disaster that one would expect Amazon Prime to shelve the movie entirely, just as any cinematic depictions of skyscrapers toppling were pulled following 9/11.
Nevertheless, "G20" persists in trying to entertain a weary nation.
"G20" began production in January 2024, six months before Harris became the official Democratic candidate. Still, one can't help but sense a certain confident political prognostication in the setup. If so, the filmmakers were widely off the mark, and now the film must be enjoyed as a bittersweet, Quentin Tarantino-esque exercise in alternate history: What if Orange Hitler had been taken out?
The critics seem to have taken the bait. “She’s the Mamala of all Mamalas,” gushes Daily Beast film critic Nick Schager.
“[Viola Davis is] Kamala Harris via John McClane, John Wick, Rambo, and Harrison Ford’s 'Air Force One' leader. … Part 'Die Hard,' part wish-fulfillment saga for a post-2024 present that didn’t come to pass, it’s a fantasy of feminist and U.S. might that’s chockablock with implausibilities.”
"G20" follows President Danielle Sutton attempting to solve world hunger in third-world countries through an ambitious digital currency project. Due to her perceived weakness in diplomatic skills and a rowdy partying daughter running around embarrassing her, Sutton is struggling to get her plans taken seriously.
Attempting to sell the plan at the annual G20 Summit, she finds the event attacked by terrorists looking to enrich themselves through a global cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scheme. Having escaped the attack, Sutton is now locked in the building as the last hope to save the global economy by using her latent skills as a former soldier to fight back and sneak through the massive compound.
In other words, what we have here is indeed another version of Bruce Willis' John McClane. Not a problem in itself; many perfectly decent movies have emerged from the basic premise: "Under Siege," "Speed," "The Rock," "Run Hide Fight," as well as the rah-rah pro-Obama actioner "White House Down" — to which this film feels eerily similar.
But like all movies in the genre, what it does with the setup is what sets "G20" apart, especially given that it wears its politics on its sleeve.
Star Viola Davis ("Woman King," "Suicide Squad") has downplayed any overt comparison to Harris in her interviews, stressing that we never find out which party her character belongs to. She's been content to note with some melancholy that, “I do not think it’s a suspension of disbelief to imagine someone who looks like me as the president,” while stating that she just wants the film “to reach people.”
And yet her president Sutton parallels Kamala Harris to such an extent — from her fashion and haircut to the criticisms she endures — that it's impossible not to make the comparison. And while it’s a modestly entertaining actioner, the end product feels distracting and flawed.
For an action flick, it spends too much of its precious screen time dialoguing about the global monetary system and the perceived weakness of the dollar. As RogerEbert.com's Daniel Roberts puts it, “the script is so issues-based that it strangles the film’s mood.”
Wonkiness aside, at its core "G20" is the story of a strong woman of color triumphing over misogyny and racism to earn her place as the most powerful leader in the world. She’s doubted by everybody from the U.K. prime minister to the press, but slowly earns their respect until even her rebellious daughter is calling her a “badass.”
By the end of the movie, President Sutton can do no wrong. While we're never told her approval rating, we can only imagine she's putting up first-term Obama numbers. And so "G20" offers an escapist fantasy for anyone traumatized by Trump's relentless efforts to make good on his promises.
Remember the old protest sign — "If Hillary won we'd be at brunch right now"? It still holds true. Imagine if the media-generated cult of Kamala had had actual popular support. Instead of immigration and tariffs, our table talk would mostly concern the failure of Republicans to take the first black woman president seriously.
Another round of mimosas! Come to think of it, "G20" may be the scariest horror movie you've seen in years.
I don’t throw around the word “masterpiece” lightly. In fact, I’ve developed something of a reputation for being hard to impress. I don’t think that’s unfair. My standards aren’t unusually high — contemporary standards are just too low.
So when I find something that deserves real praise, I won’t hold back. And the new animated film “The King of Kings” comes about as close to a masterpiece as anything I’ve seen in a long time.
Sola scriptura doesn’t mean solo scriptura. Artistic license is perfectly legitimate — so long as it serves, rather than subverts, the gospel message.
The latest release from Angel Studios is the most compelling telling of the gospel for children I’ve ever encountered — and I’ve seen plenty as a homeschool dad. Honestly, it’s one of the best animated films I’ve seen in years, period.
Framing the story with Charles Dickens as narrator was a brilliant decision. Dickens, arguably the greatest storyteller in the Western canon, guides the audience through the life of Christ by telling it to his young son for the first time. That structure — Dickens’ son imagining the gospel story and entering the narrative — creates a vivid, emotionally immersive experience.
It works. In fact, it’s what makes the whole film so powerful.
To witness the gospel again, this time through a child’s innocent eyes, restored my own “faith like a child.” I choked up more than once, as did my wife. The film’s depiction of the great exchange — Christ’s life for ours — comes through in a way that a child can grasp and can move adults to tears.
The animation is exceptional. Multiple visual styles blend seamlessly. The voice cast includes familiar names, many with more major awards than Ralphie’s old man. This isn’t just Christian entertainment — it’s top-tier craftsmanship. The filmmakers took excellence seriously. They treated the source material with the respect it deserves.
Audiences noticed. “The King of Kings” became the top new release in the country.
There’s a message here — one Hollywood and faith-based filmmakers alike would do well to hear.
To Hollywood: Enough with the agitprop. Stop desecrating beloved stories with political sermons. Honor the source material. The audience will show up.
To faith-based creators: Make something great first. Let its moral or religious value emerge from its quality — not the other way around.
A final word to my fellow believers: I know it’s easy to nitpick. I do it myself. But don’t become the kind of person who’d complain about being hanged with a new rope. The Gospel of John ends with this:
Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
The Bible never claims to include every word or deed of Christ. And telling a story for modern audiences sometimes requires creative choices. That’s not heresy. That’s storytelling. Sola scriptura doesn’t mean solo scriptura. Artistic license is perfectly legitimate — so long as it serves, rather than subverts, the gospel message. That goes for more than just “The King of Kings.”
Soapbox dismounted. Time for you to get off the couch and go see this movie.
Editor's note: "The King of Kings" and distributor Angel Studios are sponsors of BlazeTV. The independent views of the author do not necessarily represent the views of Blaze Media.
Mary the mother of Jesus was remarkable for one very important reason: God chose her (and Joseph) to raise the Son of God.
"Mary," the new Netflix movie, is not remarkable. For a (heavenly) host of reasons.
My hopes were dashed when Mary announces somewhat defiantly, looking straight into the camera: 'You may think you know my story. Trust me. You don’t.'
First, let’s get this straight. Mary was not born holier than anyone else. She was just a normal girl with a heart to please the Lord, as evidenced by her reaction to the angel Gabriel giving her the news that would change her life forever. From this reaction, we can deduce that her family was likely devout. They had arranged an engagement for her, as was culturally customary. And her fiancé, Joseph, proved himself worthy by his kind intentions toward her even when he thought she had betrayed him.
You can read this whole narrative in Luke 1:26-38 and Matthew 1:18-25. And I suggest you do, because that’s the real story. Netflix could have made a beautiful movie telling that story — it’s full of drama and mystery and fear and hurt and love — but director D.J. Caruso, along with executive producer (and televangelist) Joel Osteen, chose to tell an entirely different story. An unbiblical story.
And it’s not even a good unbiblical story.
Film scripts based on the Bible run the gamut from straight scripture (like 2003’s "The Gospel of John"), to fanciful depictions that spin off so wildly from the Bible that the message and meaning of the biblical text is completely twisted (looking at you, Darren Aronofsky, for messing with "Noah").
Somewhere in the middle there I’d put "The Chosen," Dallas Jenkins’ multiple-season series on the life of Jesus. It’s firmly rooted in scripture, but Jenkins attempts to flesh out the story (with often-but-not-always historical and cultural context) to help us imagine what it must have been like for regular people who encountered Jesus Christ. Much of the time these efforts are successful; sometimes not so much.
I was hoping that "Mary" would be like a good episode of "The Chosen," but alas my hopes were dashed almost from the film’s first moments, when Mary announces somewhat defiantly, looking straight into the camera: “You may think you know my story. Trust me. You don’t.”
If a film billing itself as an “epic biblical” tale tells us from square one that it’s going to tell us the “real” story, it is no longer biblical (and probably not epic either).
The entire premise of this film is the entirely imagined idea that Mary was no humble teenage girl but was special from before she was born.
This is evidenced by the angel Gabriel visiting both her parents to inform them that their childlessness was about to end with a special daughter who would belong to God.
As a child, flocks of butterflies follow her around, and people stare at her, sensing ... something. Her parents eventually fill her in on her status and tearfully deliver her to the temple to serve God as part of some weird underage girl temple helper group, which I am fairly certain was not a thing (there’s certainly no biblical mention of girls being dropped off to live in the temple, and it doesn’t seem like it would be culturally acceptable).
Plus, the outfits the girls wear look a bit like "The Handmaid’s Tale," so it’s a bit creepy.
Reality check: Mary did not know she was chosen until it was time for her to know. Her family didn’t know until she told them, and we can imagine that was a difficult situation.
Again, that might have made for some powerful film storytelling, if the filmmaker could have just stuck to the scripture instead of the script.
Speaking of the script, it’s packed with foreshadowing of elements from the life of Christ, including a disturbing scene where wicked King Herod presses a crown of thorns into the Jewish high priest’s head, blinding him (after which Herod stares at young Mary, also sensing ... something).
Eventually, they get around to the real story, when the angel Gabriel visits Mary, but they only stay with the Bible briefly before the film transitions to an action movie.
Crowds of Jews who hate the Romans are shown rioting and also trying to stone Mary for her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Joseph is a full-on action hero who bravely fights his way out of this situation and a few others, eventually getting Mary to Bethlehem.
In the film, they went not to comply with the Roman census (the real reason they went there — see Luke 2:1-5) but because he “has family there.”
And this is where the movie’s plotline unravels completely. They make their way through the crowded streets of Bethlehem looking for a place to stay. Why? He just said he had family there. Mary then asks Joseph if all the people are there because of the census, but he tells her ominously, “No — this is something else.”
And then he finds out what that something else is, when a woman tells him: Everyone’s here because the Messiah is to be born here! And indeed later scenes after Jesus’ birth appear to show crowds of people coming to see Mary and the baby.
Mary was a devout “nobody” — exactly the kind of person God delights in using (and blessing). And almost nobody was reading the Old Testament scriptures looking for the Messiah.
Nobody was in Bethlehem expecting to be witness to the birth. Angels told a group of raggedy shepherds, and wise men (who did study the scriptures) followed the star.
There were no crowds. Most people, and certainly the religious authorities, were caught up in their conflict with the oppressive governing Romans, jockeying for position and obsessed with internal politics. Most were blind to the Messiah when he arrived on the scene 30 years later; they were certainly not interested in a humble teenage girl from Nazareth at this time.
"Mary" continues to spiral into nonsense.
Herod is enraged about a new king of the Jews being born and decrees all the baby boys in Bethlehem be killed (that really happened). He then asks them to bring back alive the one baby who is the actual problem baby (that didn’t happen, and why would it? In real life, he thought he was taking care of the problem by killing all the babies).
Also, please don’t fall into the giant plot pothole where huge crowds come to visit Mary and the baby but the murderous Roman soldiers could not find that same baby.
We haven’t even gotten to Joseph’s last action-hero scene where he fights off a platoon of fully armed Romans who are trying to set fire to them while Mary kicks out a window, action-hero style, and baby Jesus gets tossed down from a roof in a basket.
There's also some silly, self-empowerment dialogue, like when Elizabeth tells Mary to “trust the strength inside her,” which is simply not what a devout Jewish woman in first-century Israel would tell anyone to trust in. (It does sound suspiciously like the kind of thing televangelists like Osteen might say, though.)
But for all the foolishness of the action scenes, the real damage of this movie is perpetuating the myth that Mary was anything other than a normal human being.
She was chosen by God for a divinely appointed task, and he gifted her with everything she needed to fulfill that to his glory. But angels did not announce her coming, and butterflies didn’t follow her around. She was born in sin like every other human, and she was saved by his grace through her faith, like every other saint. Like all of us who call him Lord.
Of all the divisions troubling Protestantism today, perhaps none is as hotly debated as women’s ordination.
All seven mainline Protestant denominations have adopted the practice, while evangelical and fundamentalist denominations have defiantly refused to entertain the notion on biblical grounds.
Even progressives in the church were apprehensive about this direct assault on the 'patriarchal' status quo, fearing that it would undermine the legitimacy of the church.
Scripture seems to speak quite clearly on women’s capacity for leadership in 1 Timothy 2:12. As St. Paul writes, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man."
But as advocates for women’s ordination argue, female religious leaders in the New Testament like Phoebe, Priscilla, Lydia, and Mary seemed to hold positions of greater respect than St. Paul suggests. Many point out that Phoebe is described as a deacon or deaconess (diakonos) in Romans, which would suggest that there was a model of female authority within the church.
However, the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, which claim apostolic succession and a direct ecclesiastical connection to the apostles, are defiantly against the practice and defend male-only holy orders as the orthodox teaching of the church.
On July 29, 1974, 11 female priests were ordained in the Episcopal Church. The act was largely symbolic, but real change soon followed. Those ordinations became legitimate in 1976 when the House of Bishops conditionally recognized them.
In response, hundreds of parishes broke away from the Episcopal Church as part of the Continuing Anglican movement, paving the way for the founding of the rival Anglican Church in North America in 2009. Ironically enough, that denomination is now split over women’s ordination.
Margo Guernsey’s new documentary “The Philadelphia Eleven” commemorates the 50th anniversary of this watershed moment through interviews with several of the surviving 11.
It’s clear that Guernsey sees women’s ordination as a righteous act of liberationist defiance progress; these women, she writes, “provide a vision for what a just and inclusive community looks like in practice.”
The women in the film depict their quest for greater female participation in the church as inspired by the civil rights movement. It was also an act of “obedience to the Spirit,” which took precedence over adherence to tradition.
The film admits how radical this was. Even progressives in the church were apprehensive about this direct assault on the “patriarchal” status quo, fearing that it would undermine the legitimacy of the church.
In retrospect, it’s clear that their fears were justified.
The ceremony caused extensive turmoil within the Episcopal Church. Several clergy involved had their careers severely damaged. Dozens of bishops and priests condemned the ceremony as an illegal farce, even as the women publicly defended their ordinations as valid. One quoted St. Paul during a television appearance: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
It did little good in the short term, as none of the woman were able to find positions. Ultimately, however, they won. By 1988, the Episcopal Church would even ordinate its first female bishop.
“Half of the human population was acknowledged as being important enough to take on one of the strongest institutions in the world,” said Philadelphia 11 member Nancy Wittig.
That’s certainly one way to look at it. Another way is to acknowledge that the institution Wittig and her cohort defeated is now but a shadow of its former self.
The Episcopal Church has continued down the path the Philadelphia 11 set it on, abandoning traditional Christian teaching on other issues like sexuality and abortion. It revised its canons to the point that bishops aren’t allowed to deny women’s ordinations.
The church now is deeply committed to social justice and tolerance, and it does much admirable work in trying to address many of the world’s wrongs. But it is also on the precipice of demographic collapse and will functionally cease to exist by 2040.
The Philadelphia 11 may have turned the tide against the patriarchy within their church and given women permission to be priests, but the resulting schism may prove too deeply wounding to celebrate their victory beyond the passing of this generation. It leaves a film like “ThePhiladelphia Eleven” balancing awkwardly over the abyss.
"You create your own reality. The truth is malleable," Roy Cohn tells a young Donald Trump in the new movie "The Apprentice."
It's a lesson that the starry-eyed scion from Queens will take all the way to the White House.
The crude patriotism expressed by both Trump and Cohn may be self-serving, but it's hard not to see it as preferable to the pessimistic inertia dragging this once great city down.
But it could also serve as a warning to anyone trying to make a film about Trump: The reality-distortion field surrounding our 45th president affects his critics no less than his fans.
Trump is one of the most controversial human beings in contemporary history; a populist messiah or rage-fueled fascist, depending on who you ask.
It is almost impossible to portray him in a neutral or sympathetic light, to grapple with the humanity under the accumulated detritus of five decades of public life.
Past attempts, like Showtime’s “The Comey Rule" — a blatant piece of "resistance" propaganda uninterested in any coherent depiction of the Trump administration's inner workings — don't bother trying.
As a result, most film and TV versions of Trump barely rise above Alec Baldwin's crude "Saturday Night Live" caricature, driven by partisan resentment and mesmerized by Trump's often disagreeable public persona.
“The Apprentice” largely avoids this trap by approaching its subject indirectly. Instead of the fully-formed scourge of democracy, it gives us a portrait of the deal artist as a young man.
Set in the 1970s and 1980s, the film opens on boyish Donald Trump still struggling to break free from his boorish, domineering father and his modest, outer-borough real estate empire.
A company vice president whose duties include going door-to-door collecting overdue rent from disgruntled tenants, the young Trump dreams of turning the family business into something bigger but is hampered by a federal lawsuit alleging racist housing discrimination (a charge the movie suggests is true).
It isn't until a chance meeting with infamous Joseph McCarthy prosecutor and political fixer Roy Cohn that Trump sees a way out from under his father's shadow. Taking the aspiring mogul under his wing, Cohn guides him through the early stages of his career by teaching him the three cardinal rules of winning: attack, deny everything, and never admit defeat.
Echoing themes from “Citizen Kane” and classic Greek tragedies, "The Apprentice" presents the rise of Trump as a cautionary tale; director Ali Abbasi and writer Gabriel Sherman are smart enough to understand that their protagonist needs a sympathetic core if his hollowing out is to be effective.
Superficially, the movie isn’t shy about its contempt toward the man and his influences. Family patriarch Fred Sr. is unabashedly racist, Cohn drops homophobic slurs and rambles about liberals and socialists stealing from great men, and one of Trump’s opening scenes is him as a landlord threatening to evict Section 8 renters overburdened by medical bills.
Trump himself is depicted as a venal adulterer who goes as far as to rape his wife (as Ivana Trump alleged and later backtracked on in her 1990 divorce deposition). The movie works overtime to earn its bleak conclusion, in which the student callously discards the master.
"The Apprentice" emphasizes Trump's ultimate dehumanization and moral degradation in the graphic, close-up shots of scalp-reduction surgery and liposuction (on a patient coyly suggested to be Trump) with which it ends. Evoking both Darth Vader and Dr. Frankenstein's abomination, this clinical, creepy scene makes the movie's subtext clear: We've just witnessed the creation of a monster.
Trump may be a monster, but he's also very much a product of his environment. As "The Apprentice" takes care to establish, the New York City of this era is rotting, with even the iconic Chrysler building in foreclosure. The crude patriotism expressed by both Trump and Cohn may be self-serving, but it's hard not to see it as preferable to the pessimistic inertia dragging this once great city down.
According to Abbasi, his goal was not to portray Trump as “a caricature or a crooked politician or a hero or whatever you might think, but as a human being.” As Politico puts it, he’s an anti-hero. “He’s tragic, not evil.”
Sebastian Stan brings this tragic note to his portrayal of Trump, especially in scenes with his alcoholic older brother, Freddy (a suitably dissolute Charlie Carrick), summoning a tenderness not often associated with the former president. Stan ably captures his subject's more peculiar eccentricities, speech patterns, and mannerisms — even if the face of the Winter Soldier occasionally proves distracting.
This is a quality film, to use one of Trump's favorite descriptors. But its nuance may well have hurt its commercial prospects. Despite being marketed as "the movie Donald Trump doesn't want you to see" (bolstered by Trump's threats to sue the filmmakers for "pure malicious defamation"), "The Apprentice" hasn't done much business after a week in theaters.
Not much of an October surprise after all. But then, maybe it was too much to ask a well-crafted period piece like "The Apprentice" to compete with the riveting drama playing out before us in real time.
Trump isn't one for dwelling on the past, and neither are those drawn to him, whether out of love or hate. Where's he's been has always been far less compelling than what he'll do next.
The Babylon Bee has come a long way since its days as a small comedy website making in-jokes about dispensational theology.
In a mere eight years, it's become a major media company with the clout to land interviews with Elon Musk and John Cleese, while arguably overtaking the Onion as America's best satire website.
Mann's shrewd portrayal of an overconfident yet ignorant man-child who sees the world through the simplistic lens of superheroes and supervillains deftly mocks what passes for journalism these days.
Like that formerly great institution, the Bee can be a little hacky or partisan at times, but it's consistently funny and regularly risks the occasional big swing.
The Bee's books "The Postmodern Pilgrim's Progress" and "How to Be a Perfect Christian," for example, are both funny and surprisingly honest about modern challenges in the evangelical world. Having met a few of the Bee's writers and seeing them grow, I’m generally impressed by the wit and cultural relevance the site exhibits.
So I was particularly eager for the release of the company's first feature film, "January 6: The Most Deadliest Day."
The film follows "investigative journalist" Garth Strudelfudd (Babylon Bee editor Kyle Mann, also credited as writer) as he bumbles his way through interviews with conservative pundits and January 6 participants in an attempt to uncover the truth about the darkest day in American history.
Much of the joke here is Mann's earnest investigative journalist persona: He is a deluded crusader convinced that his efforts are crucial to both saving democracy and honoring the “billions” of people who died that day.
There's no mistaking the movie's target audience; it's unlikely that anyone who sees January 6 as a brush with a fascist coup will have his mind changed by what Michael Knowles or Dennis Prager has to say. The pundits in the film are content to make the usual observations about media malfeasance and declining public trust, while pointing out once again that Trump never actually called for violence.
"The Most Deadliest Day" flirts with actual journalism when it focuses on infamous January 6 participants like Jacob Chansley and Adam Johnson. But instead of taking this opportunity to humanize the people labeled as "insurrectionists" by the mainstream media, the movie mostly uses them as props to expose the vacuousness of its fake journalists.
And ultimately it is the media that "The Most Deadliest Day" means to target. This isn't meant to be a hard-hitting expose in the manner of Tucker Carlson or the Epoch Times. Nor is it meant to reach out to those for whom January 6 is one of the high holidays of the liberal liturgical calendar. Unlike Matt Walsh's recent "Am I Racist?" "The Most Deadliest Day" stays behind a subscriber paywall, explicitly marking it for those already in on the joke.
As I’ve written previously, the great risk of every conservative documentary is that it sacrifices persuasion on the altar of reassuring propaganda. But sometimes reassuring propaganda is what's called for.
The Bee knows its audience, and the audience is fed up with media-fueled January 6 hysteria, especially as it ramps up ahead of next month's contentious election. Mann's shrewd portrayal of an overconfident yet ignorant man-child who sees the world through the simplistic lens of superheroes and supervillains deftly mocks what passes for journalism these days, and it's both satisfying and often hilarious.
A Pixar artist admitted that the studio’s latest box-office disappointment Elio had no substance besides pushing an agenda about LGBT identity, telling The Hollywood Reporter this week that the movie was “totally nothing” without its original gay agenda. “Suddenly, you remove this big, key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing,” the artist […]
The film’s message is almost the literal embodiment of Kamala Harris’s much-mocked sentiment of 'what can be unburdened by what has been.'
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