Why I Think The ‘Charlie’s Angels’ Reboot Flopped

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Now, I went into Elizabeth Banks’ reboot of Charlie’s Angels pumped. I love the concept and thought it might be interesting. I lasted until just about the inciting incident then walked out. This says a lot more about me than it does the movie, however. But given how everyone is talking about what a flop the movie was and why, I thought I would put my 2 cents in.

The star of the movie was Kristen Stewart. But I found her extremely miscast. She tried to come off as a dumb-dumb, but it was off putting because we all know she’s not and she’s not that good an actress. I would cast her as a more dominate role. Lean into native strength as an actor and person. Don’t try to ignore that who she actually is. I am aware of the difficulties they had finding the other two actresses and it showed. The movie definitely needed better actresses. But given what it was meant to be — a feminist action-adventure romp — I’m willing to grade it on a curve.

But the moment when I knew I was outtie was the montage of young girls running around for no apparent reason. It made no sense. I guess it was meant to set the tone of the film, but it was at that moment that I realized this was NOT the movie for me. I felt the movie suffered from creeping Bookstmart-itis in the sense that it was so wrapped up in smelling the farts of its message that it was to the detriment of the overall story.

In passing, I would note that one problem with franchises like Charlie’s Angels is it has what I call the Scooby Doo Paradox. This is when your audience is adults who remember something fondly so you think what they want is an over-the-top comedy, when the story might actually be best served by playing it a bit more serious because the conceit is actually really strong and timeless. So, might have made this latest reboot of Charlie’s Angels a little bit more John Wick than it was. That would have been cool. And, remember, Hustlers is how you slip in a feminist message into your story in a way that gets people’s asses in the theatres. Hustlers was a well written movie with just enough T&A (especially J.Lo’s ass) that men went into it not realizing the movie is actually extremely girl-power in its message. Something similar could have been done with Charlie’s Angels.

Make the audience not bi-curious girls in high school, but maybe couples in their late 20s. Have a just enough sex in it to get the guys going — I really liked Kristen Stewart’s flirty butt cheek flash — but if you were more honest about what this story really was then I think you could have a much, much better movie on a number of different levels. If you poured Hustlers and John Wick into Charlie’s Angels, it would have been a hit.

Struggling With Character Ages

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I think I have my ages figured out. But it took me a lot longer than I thought it would. The issue is the older my Hero is, the more gravitas he is accrued. But at the same time, if I have a fixed age for my Heroine, then the older he gets, the creepier any romantic connection between the two of them will be.

So, I have split the difference in a sense. He’s just old enough to benefit from being just about middle-aged, but young enough that the average person wouldn’t wince that he’s 20 years older than the Heroine. I keep thinking about basing my Hero on Daniel Craig, but he’s just too old. I can’t help that men at 50 are white hot career-wise when it comes to leading man roles. That says more about how men are given more power as their careers mature in Hollywood than anything else. It really warps storytelling.

But anyway, I have come up with men who are about the age of my Hero to use as a reference point. The real struggle at this point is my natural inclination to make my Hero a “proxy me” and as such far more of a doofus than maybe the audience would like. I need this to be a dark story with a strong Hero, not some Protestant Alvie Singer character who just is nervous and gets beat up. So, that’s a real issue right now. How to make my Hero, well, a Hero.

But, in general, the story is moving a long quite well. The real task at this point is making the second act — which covers a much longer span of time — interesting enough for the readers to spend the time necessary to finish the story.

Mulling The Potential Impact Of The Durham Investigation

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

So MAGA is waiting with baited breath for the Durham Investigation to save Der Fuhrer from being impeached. This is very possible. The impeachment is supposed to wrap up on Dec. 9th as I understand it. It could drop a big turd in the impeachment process and Trump will yet again survive to tyrant another day.

If you are looking forward to this, please eat shit. Fuck you. Rot in hell. I say this only because Trump is such a racist misogynist tyrant that if you support him you’re a piece of shit.

But the question is, of course, will the Durham Report do what MAGA expects it to do? Given how Trump was able to escape justice after the Mueller Report — only to turn around and do the same thing 24 hours after the “poor optics” of Mueller’s testimony to Congressional pardoned him — I’m inclined to think that our criminally incompetent “president” is likely to escape even being formally impeached.

It’s all very tragic. The only thing keeping us from going full autocratic plutocratic theocracy is, well, Trump’s a piss-poor president. I’m not saying he won’t somehow manage to pull this off in his second term, I’m just saying it may be The Kooch, or Kris Kobach or Tom Cotton that history ultimately decides finished the job.

As such, I’m patiently waiting for an ICE agent to track me down at some point in Trump’s second — or third — administration put me in a camp and murder me after torturing me for some time. I’m a man of peace, words and ideas, so all I can do is just work on my novel and brood. I feel a little like the Man in a High Castle in that respect. Whenever I get mad about how fucking insane Trump is on a criminal level, I use that as motivation to keep plugging along on the political thriller I’m writing.

There are a number of different possibilities. One is that the plot works. Another is it all just gets muddled and yet Trump is still at least impeached. And, lastly, it’s possible that 60% of the population realizes the whole thing is bullshit and it doesn’t work.

Only time will tell.

Fuck Trump. Fuck MAGA.

A Ping From The Darkness About Trump’s Potential Mental State

Why would someone from the Washington D.C. area look at what I’ve been writing about the consequences of Trump going bonkers in the context of impeachment?
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I am a nobody. No one listens to me. So when someone, anyone — especially someone from notable like Washington D.C. — looks at anything I’ve written it at least makes me curious.

It’s probably nothing. But all I know is, Trump is hanging out in the White House’s private residence a lot these days. And the whole administration is a bunch of criminal liars. So, it could be nothing, it could be that someone, somewhere knows enough about Trump’s mental and or physical condition to want to know what I’ve written on the political implications of him getting far, far worse.

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Trump’s Mental Decline Is A Real Problem — What If His Insanity Merged With His Criminality?

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The issue with whatever the fuck is wrong with Trump’s mind is it’s chronic and degenerative. It’s getting worse day by day, if in a somewhat subtle manner. I thought there was a chance he would snap under the pressure of impeachment, but I think he’s going to make out well enough to win a second term, weaponize ICE and ship me to an American Killing Fields whenever my ICE agent notices my anti-MAGA ranting online.

Mental issues are very difficult to predict. So, the absolute worst case scenario would be whatever it wrong with him reaches a critical stage at some point late enough in the 2020 election cycle that there is absolutely nothing politically we can do about it. The 25th Amendment is a dead letter and if at some point at around July 2020 Trump is obviously completely batshit insane, our entire political system will jam up. There simply wouldn’t be any way to do anything about it. Even if Trump was demonstrably fucking insane, he would still win re-election.

My absolute worst case scenario is Trump after he gets re-nominated simply says, “Fuck you, why even vote? I’m going to bribe the Electors and then pardon everyone anyway.” Legally, there would be nothing we could do. Politically, we would have exhausted the impeachment option AND Republicans would say “Let the people decide.” I don’t really expect anything that bad to happen, but it’s a least a possibility given what’s going on right now.

I honestly don’t know what the endgame would be in that respect.

Update On My Novel

Shelton Bumgarner

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Things continue to go quite well with my novel. I’m kinda working on the scene summary for v1.5 right now. I’m very tired from working on it all day. I’m doing all of the work in longhand, so that tires me out. And things are going a lot slower than I’d like. But I definitely have a lot of forward momentum.

I’m trying to read as much a I can about how to write a novel. The story is strong and I’m pushing myself to the limits of my ability. I’m a pretty good storyteller, but not that great a writer. And there are a lot of things about writing a novel on a basic level that I continue to learn about every day.

One thing that kind of bothers me is I’m too old to do anything creatively successfully in real terms. I should just lay in bed and stare at the ceiling all day and feel sorry for myself. But I can’t help that I’m 20 years too late to the party. I just want to write a novel that I, myself, would enjoy. In large part, the whole thing is just a way for me to see what it would be like to go through the process of writing a novel to see how far I would get before it becomes too painfully obvious that I’ve made a fool out of myself.

But, in real terms, I don’t have anything else to do with my life right now. And I really, really, really like the concept. It’s great. It’s really strong and interesting and flips the script on some tropes more than once. And my characters are growing strong by the day. A lot of my characters are in my head still, though, and not on the page. But that’s changing quickly.

I’m just so tired right this second that it’s difficult for me to get much more work done tonight, even though I really want to. I hope to lay the entire second POV list scenes in front of me on one page then figure out how to make the whole thing as cogent as possible before I got much farther.

Anyway, wish me luck.

Republicans Have No Shame & Crave Power For Power’s Sake

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m not feeling so great about the chances that Trump will be convicted in the Senate. I say this because Republican defenses for Trump right now are pretty much just, “You don’t like our politics, fuck you.” So, all the Twitter liberals you attempt to use any fact-based logic with fucking fucktwit Republicans are wasting their time. Republicans are such cult that the moment a Democrat ever happens to be president again, they will impeach him or her the moment they have the power to do so. They will want to prove the point and also take some of the sigma away from being impeached so Trump doesn’t look so bad.

Not that I think there will ever be another Democrat president the way things are going. The dystopia is here. The bad guys have won. For the autocrat, all that matters is remaining in power. Everything else is a lulz. So we could have Trump dead-to-rights (which we do) and he will be acquitted and turn around and do the exact same thing. He will grow even more brazen to such an extent that election 2020 will be American Brexit. The whole thing will be such a massive clusterfuck — that Trump will win in the end — that it will be pretty self-evident our democracy, our Republic, is dead.

Trump will push for a Constitutional Convention at some point in his second term and I will promptly be “vanished” by a weaponized ICE.

Now, having said all that, there are still a few issues that I simply don’t know how they will play out. Trump’s mental state is getting worse and Republicans are so bloodthirsty on a rhetorical level that some pretty tragic things may happen when someone takes them both seriously and literally. Those two issues might be the things that bring down Trump at some point.

And, really, if you are MAGA reading this because my worst case scenario is your best case scenario — you’re a piece of shit.

But I think while it is exciting and interesting to see the impeachment process take place, we have to prepare ourselves for the absolute worst. MAGA will start murdering people in cold blood soon enough. Those of us lucky to be able to leave the country when that starts to happen will do so.

Impeachment’s Endgame Will Be Messy

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I just don’t see any clear-cut end to the impeachment process. Now, I’m not saying this doesn’t mean Trump won’t be impeached. And I’m not saying there isn’t at least a growing chance he won’t be convicted (somehow.)

But what I am saying is the macro trend in the United States is towards authoritarianism, fascism, plutocracy and theocracy. So, first, let’s look at it from the Republican side.

We’re reached a point where Republicans will have gotten their strategic goals for the near term, no matter what happens. They’ve gotten their plutocrat tax cuts and they’ve gotten their young hack MAGA judges. Thus, even if Trump is somehow miraculously removed from office, it will, in real terms, be only a symbolic victory for the center-Left. We still have a solid 20 years before the youngest of the Baby Boomers begin to drop dead and the Browning of America really begins to have a demographic — and political — impact.

Remember, if Pence becomes president, there’s a non-zero chance that while he’s a more traditional pol, he won’t get rid of Barr and he won’t get rid of Pompeo. Though the latter is likely to quit simply to run for Senator. Lulz! Pence will simple sugarcoat the fascism of Trump with a thin veneer of norm-respecting and theology. He’ll wait until just after he wins the presidency in his own right and then pardon Trump. Pence will assume that voters will have calmed down by the time he runs again in 2024.

But let’s look at it another way –what happens if the center-Left gets its best case scenario and, say, Nancy Pelosi becomes president? Republicans will use their plutocrat tax cut to demand we gut the social safety net at a minimum and may even use it as a bludgeon to get a Constitutional Convention to “to pass a balanced budget amendment.” So, in real terms, we would probably have just at about a year before Republicans win not only the presidency, but the House. Then we’re right back where we started from.

As I’ve said before, in a sense, our best case scenario might be either Nikki Haley or even Ivanka Trump becoming president because their far more likely to at least allow a free-and-fair election in 2020. And, if the economy goes south, they will get the blame, not the Democrats. But, remember, if a Democrat becomes president in 2020, they will likely have just about two years before the Republicans take the House and turn around and impeachment for simply not being MAGA.

The point of all of this is manage people’s expectations. We’re in for a bumpy few months, no matter what. And there’s a really good chance Trump will escape political justice AGAIN and he’ll go full Hitler if he somehow manages not to go insane.