Flaming Hot As Cinematic Decay

It’s 2045. The studios have gone mad, it’s been ten years since the last non-IP based film broke the top five at the box office, and John Deere: The Movie is set to go head-to-head with Trojan on the prized July 4th release date. A dystopian future for cinephiles, and perhaps even casual filmgoers, but it’s not that unlikely. Supposing Christopher Nolan and James Cameron won’t be making films in 2045, it’s difficult to imagine the current system of studio-IP servitude will enable a new auteur-king-of-the-box-office to come forth. Oppenheimer’s $100,000,000 budget will be part of our cinematic past. Or, perhaps even worse, we will be on our fourth film in the dark-IP, J Robert Oppenheimer-verse.

Whatever sadistic future awaits us in 2045, I believe it because I saw the slate of films in 2023. This was the year marked by Barbie, Blackberry, Air, Tetris, and the most unbelievable of all, Flamin’ Hot. And if you add in sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and, of course, comic-book adaptations, the war over the American box office has been lost to the marketers. Corporate and brand recognition have replaced movie stars as the main attractions of the multiplex.

Eva Longoria’s feature directorial debut Flamin’ Hot, a film that will surely be no more than a vapor in our societal memory in just ten months, is more interesting as a symbol of our national film programming than it is as a movie.

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