{"id":25523,"date":"2025-01-20T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-20T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=25523"},"modified":"2025-01-19T16:11:36","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T00:11:36","slug":"what-was-biden-era-cinema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/what-was-biden-era-cinema\/","title":{"rendered":"What Was Biden-Era Cinema?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It might seem odd to look at a character named \u201cMaverick\u201d as the cinematic stand-in for Joe Biden, a presidential candidate who ran on a platform of respect for the rule of law to \u201crestore the soul of the nation.\u201d But just as its predecessor embodied the chest-thumping jingoism of the Reagan era, box office savior Top Gun: Maverick<\/em><\/a> <\/em>epitomizes the ethos of another administration nearly four decades later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A man forged by the ethos of the Cold War returns to his old stomping grounds, now significantly advanced in years compared to his peers. Old losses haunt him, but he remains uniquely more qualified than the young guns to complete a tricky mission requiring precision and experience. This \u201clegacyquel\u201d to a beloved previous installment would indicate generational handoff by bringing younger rising stars aboard to train alongside the old master, yet it concludes with venerating the veteran for hanging in there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if those parallels are not enough, consider how Tom Cruise\u2019s ambassadorship for the institution of moviegoing reaching meme territory tracks to something like Biden\u2019s love of dying democratic norms. Both overread the mandates of early success, too. Cruise, riding high off Top Gun: Maverick<\/em>\u2019s narrative of saving movie theaters, glid directly into disappointing returns for a seventh Mission: Impossible<\/em> movie<\/a> just weeks after audiences rejected octogenarian Harrison Ford suiting up for another Indiana Jones<\/em> flick<\/a>. (Both films saw their grosses eclipsed that summer by sensationalist child sex trafficking thriller Sound of Freedom<\/em>, a canary in the coal mine for feelings overtaking facts.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summing up Biden\u2019s term with a film originally slated to open in Trump\u2019s America feels oddly fitting for a presidency undone by its inability to drive a narrative for itself. In my 2021 piece \u201cThoughts on a Biden-Era Cinema,\u201d<\/a> published four years ago today, I quipped that Biden\u2019s campaign promise \u201cmight as well have been \u2018Make America 2015 Again.\u2019\u201d As today\u2019s inauguration festivities usher in the Trump restoration, no one needs Ron Howard as the Arrested Development<\/em> narrator to underscore the comic irony: he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the rest of the world, cinema felt in constant flux during Biden\u2019s term. Between the slow recovery of production and exhibition alike coming out of the pandemic and the impact of the dual SAG-WGA strikes, \u201csurvive until \u201825\u201d became a mantra in the movie industry. That same spirit guided voting patterns across America in November 2024 as it felt like Biden\u2019s unspoken pledge for normalcy and stability never materialized, be it domestic (persistent inflation, perceptions of elevated crime) or abroad (Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza). Biden-era cinema now appears little more than the commercial break for a country that never changed the channel from the Trump show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never mind that the administration notched significant accomplishments, from historic climate legislation to a miraculous economic soft landing. The vibes never settled. Notably, two of the highest-grossing movies from the period \u2013 2021\u2019s Spider-Man: No Way Home<\/em> and 2022\u2019s Avatar: The Way of Water<\/em> \u2013 featured heroes fighting villains that seemed vanquished before. The past was present in more ways than one, and usually not in welcome ways. The persistence of such forces, beginning with the chaotic but necessary withdrawal from Afghanistan, gave the impression Biden lacked the strength to be a protector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No Country for Old Men<\/em> might be an apt title for Biden\u2019s term in office, never mind that Donald Trump will be the oldest person ever sworn in as president. In my previously cited piece, I outlined the lofty aspirations that his 2020 election seemed to represent, such as a return to decency, respect for good governance, and admiration for civil service. And yet the optics of Biden\u2019s age, not substance, emerged as the primary axis upon which his presidency was judged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A new recurring story motif, coined by critic Emily St. James<\/a> as the \u201cmillennial parental apology fantasy,\u201d emerged that recast elders from sages to scapegoats. Gone was the reverence of fellow Silent Generation icons like RBG and Mr. Rogers that seemed to precede Biden\u2019s term. Best exemplified by the journey of Michelle Yeoh\u2019s Evelyn in Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em><\/a>, the bill came due for these totems of an older generation\u2019s mistakes. Their children, revolted by having to inherit the world their forebearers built, demanded accountability and atonement. No amount of infrastructure repair would suffice for an impatient population who demanded structural overhaul, and they took out that anger on the figureheads \u2013 like Biden and his administration \u2013 who represented an untenable status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took a publicly televised debate debacle, which broadcast his infirmities live to the public, for Biden to realize the magnitude of this association with decrepitude and dissatisfaction. This prompted a last-minute pivot to Kamala Harris in the generational bridge implied, though never pledged explicitly, by his candidacy in 2020. But that it took such public embarrassment to force a humble exit for Kamala Harris to take over the ticket reinforces a central message echoed in the critical and commercial hit Dune <\/em>series: the quest for power proves so addictive that it\u2019s difficult to relinquish once reaching a pinnacle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That lack of responsiveness to public opinion calcified into a more widespread disgust with the political apparatus. The cinematic expressions of this malaise ranged as widely as David Ayer\u2019s silly action flick The Beekeeper<\/em> (which featured a transparent stand-in for Hunter Biden) and Clint Eastwood\u2019s autopsy of American justice and morality in courtroom drama Juror #2<\/em>. The warning signs of a popular rebellion appear like an unheeded warning, too, in the cultural sensation Barbie<\/em><\/a>. Lost in the sea of pink was the peril of Ryan Gosling\u2019s Ken, like many young men trapped in the \u201cmanosphere,\u201d foments a patriarchal revival without feeling an articulated sense of purpose and place inside the progressive Barbieland. In contrast to Greta Gerwig\u2019s rousing finale, America\u2019s Kens made it to the ballot box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may be hard to remember now, but Biden entered the Oval Office pitching himself as a contemporary FDR<\/a>. While certain progressive accomplishments dot his r\u00e9sum\u00e9, another World War II-era figure seems a more appropriate comparison as he leaves office: J. Robert Oppenheimer<\/a>, the subject of the final Best Picture winner under his regime. The two timelines of Christopher Nolan\u2019s intimate epic demonstrate the danger of winning one war without preparing for the next. Triumph in Oppenheimer<\/em> gives way to tragedy as the feted nuclear scientist, blinded by his hubris, fails to anticipate how craven and cynical actors will manipulate his legacy for their gain. The journey from exultation to expiation is often a quick one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reports from the administration\u2019s final days provide conflicting accounts of whether Biden, like Cillian Murphy\u2019s Oppenheimer in his last moments on screen, regrets the chain reaction he set off. But one thing is for certain: it seems the best America in 2025 can aspire to instead is to get a Top Gun: Maverick<\/em> ending and hope Glen Powell emerges out of nowhere to save the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As his administration comes to an end, what do the movies of the past four years reflect about Joe Biden\u2019s successes and failures?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":522,"featured_media":25525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381],"tags":[162],"class_list":["post-25523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/522"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25523"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25528,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25523\/revisions\/25528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}