UPDATE: Simon Pegg Responds to the Critics, Mainly Me
Simon Pegg may have just pulled a Metallica on us!
Pegg has been one of the founding fathers of the popularity of nerdom, but in an interview with the Radio Times he might have just told us to put our toys away and grow up.
“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.”
This is where Pegg could have challenged audiences to find better science fiction films or that Pegg himself was going to make better films. This is a Hollywood money grab issue, super hero films make a billion dollars.
“Now, I don’t know if that is a good thing. Obviously I’m very much a self-confessed fan of science fiction and genre cinema. But part of me looks at society as it is now and just thinks we’ve been infantilised by our own taste.”
“Now we’re essentially all consuming very childish things – comic books, superheroes. Adults are watching this stuff, and taking it seriously!”
“It is a kind of dumbing down in a way, because it’s taking our focus away from real-world issues.”
“Films used to be about challenging, emotional journeys or moral questions that might make you walk away and re-evaluate how you felt about… whatever. Now we’re walking out of the cinema really not thinking about anything, other than the fact that the Hulk had a fight with a robot.”
“I’d quite like to go off and do some serious acting.”
“I turned 40, quit drinking, and decided that I’d quite like to live a bit longer than if I’d continued with that particular lifestyle. I also kind of made a conscious decision to stop dressing like a teenager.”
Instead of calling the audience childish, Pegg should have recommended a film like Ex Machina.
