In the midst of a pandemic Michael Bay is helping to produce a movie about….a pandemic. Think anyone’s trying to say something? Given that filming of the movie, Songbird, is taking place in California, which is tentatively reopening, almost like ripping off a bandage slowly and hoping it won’t hurt too much, it’s likely that he’ll have a few people saying a few different things. Tim Brinkhof of We Got This Covered is pretty certain it sounds like that people are going to be up in arm a bit about this since the whole quarantine process has been anything but what the public wanted, no matter that a lot of them didn’t see any other choice since the coronavirus needed to be contained. Still, given everything that’s happened and the state the country is in at the moment it’s kind of hard to believe that Michael Bay is really going this route when it’s obvious that people aren’t quite ready to think about another pandemic after still being stuck in one. Of course if it’s controversy of any sort then people are going to watch, that’s an immutable fact that’s been seen more than once and is hard to get around. Unfortunately that’s also what some folks tend to bank on since they know that once people are good and scared they’re far more susceptible to just about anything. If you don’t believe that then you’ve been living under a rock for the last hundred years or so.
Apparently several Hollywood guilds have seen fit to sign off on this project despite the fact that it was made pretty evident that filmmaking wasn’t seen as an essential job for a while. Either the hypocrisy is showing or things are finally starting to turn around as people have been wanting, though don’t hold your breath just yet since the pandemic has affected everyone so differently that trying to predict what’s going to happen next is more than a little difficult. The question of whether the movie will be using the coronavirus as its continuously-mutating disease is also up in the air since there’s a good chance that it might be what’s there to be used, though the wisdom of using it at this point is questionable despite the fact that it might not be a bad as people think. It could be that people are just freaking out about nothing when it comes to this movie since opportunity is something that most folks in show business are going to be grabbing for when the chance presents itself. They’re trying to get back to work after all, no matter that a lot of them aren’t likely to be hurting too badly when it comes to their finances.
The fact that the pandemic in the movie is still around after two years, and that seasons have been replaced by quarantine periods, is likely to irritate and even trouble a few people since taking an opportunity like this to remind people that they’ve been stuck at home for so long is kind of risky to be certain. Those that love to say that ‘we’re all in this together’ have become a little less inspirational and a little more irritating since quite often it’s said by those that have plenty of what they need to survive the pandemic or those that aren’t that bad off when it comes to what they need to get by. The whole ‘we’ in the ‘we’re all in this together’ is a highly subjective term that a lot of people don’t believe in at this point since the pinch has been felt in such a way that jobs have been lost, the lives lost are considered a huge failure on the part of the US, and the idea of a movie showing that a virus has persisted for two years is something that’s bound to make a few individuals lose their cool. Jeff Sneider of Collider has more to say on this matter. In other words it’s a little bit irresponsible to make such a movie at this time unless it’s bound to show a cure to the disease or something that can alleviate the crushing sense of despair that a lot of people have been living with lately. That might sound just a little overly dramatic, it does really, but this movie is going to be riding the edge as to whether it’s in good taste and is bound to lift people up or if it’s going to seriously irritate and anger enough people that the fact that it’s an Indie movie won’t save it from heavy scrutiny and criticism.
In all fairness it would be wise to wait and see just how the movie is going to turn out before seeking to crucify it, but all in all, making a movie about a pandemic while the world is still going through one is to be expected, but it’s still in kind of poor taste.
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