How he thought he looked in his outfits:
this is just incredibly wrong from various different levels and really is just sort of incoherent, he's brought up Bond a lot and I feel it's almost apt a comparison but only because it reveals an out of touchness with what Bond is as a franchise: Bond is more of a British cultural thing, hence its longevity, as well as creating the tuxedo and martini spy genre, so it's managed to last a long time but it's mostly off of nostalgia. It's not particularly successful at all, nor immortal, because where Bob has played mythmaker is by saying it came back "even stronger!!" but while GoldenEye is a 90s classic and Casino Royale a 2000s classic, the franchise has never reached its 60s popularity and that multimedia empire was a fad like Doctor Who for example was during the tumblr era. He would probably say "well Doctor Who is only hated on because of the racist sexist trolls and it'll get a new fanbase who will have nostalgia for Whittaker and Gatwa", but no it just won't. We can look at view numbers, the ubiquity of it on social media and most importantly merchandise sales
And this is where The Prequels are more of an outlier, whereas She Hulk and Doctor Who post-2017 won't ever get that. Because you need to get a ton of kids at the outset in order to even win that over, a ton of kids who got into GoldenEye didnt then return for TND or Die Another Day or Quantum or Spectre. The Bond franchise hasnt had an entry since the pandemic, which didn't even turn a profit
That's the special sauce the prequels had, that X Men had (which is funny that he is rewriting history to go "Fox Marvel was so bad u guize" as if that wasn't definitive X-Men and started the superhero boom, has the most pitch perfect casting in movie history with Jackman and didnt give us Logan) was that people y'know SAW the films. Whereas even The Hobbit films which grossed half a billion aren't really remembered as fondly as nostalgia items, compared to LOTR even tho zoomers like myself saw The Hobbit first
And again this all comes off as wishful thinking, he wants The MCU to continue on forever and has talked of it like a given thing and an admirable thing which is revolting culturally, but you don't continue on forever when nobody is watching it. The Marvels flopped, She Hulk flopped, they are just glut in a sea of a streaming service which has very little cultural impact. EVERYONE saw Endgame, EVERYONE saw Goldfinger, EVERYONE saw RotK, how many people watched these modern iterations by comparison, versus showing their kids the classics? Even with great nerdy media this happens, nobody considers Mads Mikklesen definitive Hannibal because that show didn't do well whereas Silence will be consistently rewatched for decades
And again he's hoping for the ticking timebomb of people suddenly liking his media, but right now Bob is pushing against a sea of zoomers shouting "chicken jockey!", "Shadow is peak" and "I love Dunemaxing", these people who are literally in the target demo of the MCU are making fun of him for still liking it approaching 50 and he's talking about how they SHOULD like it... so how the hell will this work? He's hoping for at best a tiny niche of people who will vindicate his enjoyment of pretty bad forgettable media, because it's tied to a franchise, but this pocket will be so niche that it'll be beaten out views wise by sigma edits of Patrick Bateman and Ken. The zoomers already have the control of social media and they are gravitating to things which he has himself said he doesn't understand and views as giving him an existential crisis
He will rope if gen alpha are still making fun of the Meghan Thee Stallion twerk scene, while giving Star Wars a billion dollar hit by adapting The Force Unleashed. It's actually fascinating to see him cope with this culturally, I find his media takes more interesting, because Bob is always been very much trying to be the "cool uncle" of fandom people - he liked all the kids media they liked, for a while, he shilled all the zoomers doing video essays, but ultimately is having to grapple with the fact he can't predict what they'll like and is trying to say what he hopes they'll like in order to seem not like a raging boomer
Because how does he square that "all of Youtube is sexist sports radio" with the fact most zoomers make fun of the MCU and by his own admission say it fell off? How does he square it with the fact kids liked Wonka and Sonic more than Snow White and The Marvels? How does he square it with the fact all the zoomers he argues with are part of his dreaded "film twitter"? The fact is the era of the nerd is over, imagine someone trying to suggest mid romantic comedies like Something's Gotta Give will make a comeback in the zeitgeist because kids will have seen it? This is something that he would only make as an argument because the nerd media given that it's for nerds is based around ritualistic consuming, but basic supply and demand states if something is consistently bad or flops, you get less converts. The Bond films actually did well for a while, that's how you grew the fanbase. Nobody is watching Octopussy, the Bond films have like five standout entries and then nobody is into them other than that. It's fallen behind M:I and Bourne, because they made a lot of bland movies
And again, not all franchises are created equal even if they are seen as untouchable for decades, hence why something like LittleBigPlanet or PaRappa could sell tens of millions and be unrecognizable. She Hulk isn't even Gwimbly, she's Blinx
And again if you have a strong enough foundation you can create a cult hit, Clone High came back based off its fandom, but the second season killed off any want for new material from that franchise. If the young people aren't into it, they don't transfer it to their kids or to even younger people, there's just not enough suckers born to rise up every niche flop into a new hit. Clone High got it, Pilgrim got it, The Critic didn't
And again, this is all about the merch sales. The Star Wars sequels' entire legacy is coining memberberries unintentionally. Sure, they made a billion each, but like the Hobbit movies the big issue is they don't have longevity other than as a box set with the original movies. In fact the thing I can point to is that in terms of modern media and video games and merchandise while Minecraft sells like Hot Cakes no kid is playing with a Rey. Zoomers went to see the Prequels and vacuumed up the merch, because great media was made back then and the bad media was so ubiquitous and so affective at selling toys nobody could escape it. You can tune out Andor, Acolyte, Echo or Moon Knight very easily because the franchises have tied themselves to Disney+ and the algo isn't gonna give you a cool youtube short of a shitty capeshit show if Breaking Bad clips are more likely to get clicked on. Hence zoomers are more likely to quote "i am the one who knocks" than "so that happened" from black widow or w/e
And to make what he'd think is an unintentional third Heisenverse reference because he doesnt read: the arrogance of believing nerdy stuff won't slowly niche is very much the kind of ego that Ozymandias, King of Kings displayed. Nothing lasts forever, even the greatest kingdoms turn to dust. Why should a spy that is a symbol of a dying empire and a franchise of 4/10 superhero movies be any different?
