Pretty much, the problem is Hollywood can only choose between "Make a good movie" or "Have a good message", when "Make an entertaining movie that deliver the message without being overly preachy" was always an option, gaming does it all the time. (Which is probably why Video Game Movies are such big money makers now)
PS: Waterworld is sadly the best movie you've listed here, TDAT is the second best.
If anything they beat the drum too much, I didn't see "Don't Look Up", because of Trump Fatigue. Like so much media from 2015-2020 that got made had one note, and that note was "Orange Man Bad", and I'm like "I know, I couldn't be more aware that orange man bad. I did everything I could to stop it, but Americans are idiots."
It's like.. I get it everything is fucked. You can stop blasting the despair in my face any second now.
Like I'm actually glad Hazbin Hotel got delayed for so long, because I just know Adam was basically just "Donald Trump with a harp and a halo" in an earlier draft, there's no way in literal Hell he wasn't.
the message went completely over the heads of the people it needed to reach
You had a series of very cynical and deliberately manipulative media coverage of the film which tried to spin it as anything but a climate change movie. And then you had a bunch of "man on the street" pieces intended to make viewers appear stupid.
But the core theory of media influenced economic change is rooted in the idea that a movie can shift people from their profit motives. No oil executive is going to watch a slapstick comedy and decide to shift his business's core financial model because of a few jokes. No bank executives are going to divest from carbon emitting industries because some Hollywood starlets made fun of them. No senior member of political leadership is going to change how mining permits and environmental regulations are written because Adam McKay posted big numbers at the box office.
The Network didn't change how Americans consumed their news media. Soylent Green didn't cause Americans to reconsider our policies on factory farming. Jarhead didn't cause any military personal to exit Iraq or Afghanistan. The only movie that seems to have really moved the dial on public policy is Idiocracy, the inspiration behind Elon Musk and Peter Thiel's quest to get more IT people to fuck.
Pretty much, see the endless amount of idiots who unironically see themselves as the antagonist and think it's a good thing.
(Trump's kids unfavorably comparing the Left to the Resistance in the newer Star Wars films which very blatantly had the First Order be a stand-in for America's Alt Right and Kylo Ren a warning about toxic masculinity, now that's something I'll never forget)
The people it needs to reach are world leaders, and that's just not going to happen. World leaders aren't blind to the problem, they're just fine with burning the earth for money.
I tried to watch that movie. But I quit it 15 minutes in.
What was even the point? It wasn't funny, it wasn't enjoyable, it wasn't dramatic.
It's like "look, here is a blatantly obvious metaphor on climate change" that's our whole movie.
It seemed aimed for a very particular subset of people that wanted to feel a pat on the head or something. I feel like it's the same people who enjoy that big ass climate change doom clock.
Just too much virtue signalling for my taste. Without actually making anything useful.
I disagree. The point of the movie is not to make people feel to feel smug, it is to provide catharsis for people who feel like the entire world is insane while simultaneously telling them that they are the insane one.
It's a movie, it doesn't need to be "useful". Some people were entertained, some people were emotionally affected. It was successful art. And we're still talking about it.
Yes, because we haven't been calling them fools for years, maybe we should try it! Maybe it'll work and not just drive them further and further away from sanity out of spite!
Demonizing the south as inbred yokels who can't read doesn't get them to listen to you, it just reinforces their xenophobic ideas about how the Liberal Elite are mocking them.
What was that one where the world was destroyed by climate change, but instead of burning everything froze? IIRC, the main character was played by John Cusack.
Telling myself that this is metaphorical and not some boomer taken in by the AI images of the Hollywood sign burning to keep myself from going on an unhinged rant about the exact location of Hollywood, the Hollywood sign, and the fires.
Kinda wish mine was a cartoon, but not a political cartoon. I mean the kind where everyone has an unlimited food budget, no one dies or gets seriously hurt they're just brusied for a scene then fine the next, and I can make my tits bigger by plugging air hoses to my nipples.
Sadly I live in a political cartoon, I hope my nightmarish existence is serving a good purpose, but I have feeling it's a Chick Tract from 1962 about how the future year of 2025 will be full of ignorance and vice because America was mad enough to elect a gasp Catholic for President the previous year. Why? Because I'm a transchick accustomed to tragedy, full of imposter syndrome, full of paranoia, and constantly disgusted with my own existence. So a Chick Tract about how evil, crazy, and sinful I am scans.
If you're listening pen that draws my existence. JFK was actually quite based, and he was assassinated by the CIA for trying to shut down the Federal Reserve and establish single player, it's not too late to become a furry and do a wacky story about how I turned into a fat-assed foxlady because I ate at a chinese buffet ran by a mischevious Kitsune.
Yes I know Kitsune are Japanese and Chinese Buffets are Chinese... Well they're not REALLY Chinese because Chinese Food in America and what people eat in China are vastly different, I just really like Chinese food and... don't know Chinese animals well enough to... oh wait, pleasantly plump lazy panda, I could work with that.
Ya listening to me you demonically devoted demiurge?