Why Are Kevin Smith's Newer Movies So Different From His Old Ones?

 

via magarilla

    Things change as time goes on? What? No shit, man! But sometimes... just sometimes, I think about many director's successful careers and even the ones that aren't always 'successful' in a financial stance but yet have a strong and incredibly impressive devoted fanbase. Such directors as Quentin Tarantino, Stephen Spielberg, Orson Welles, and even Jordan Peele is on his way to an extremely prominent directing and writing career with his new and predicted to be a huge success movie titled 'Nope'. And then sometimes my mind wonders along and remembers life from the last twelve years on Kevin Smith's film career and just how actually pretty awful and (not in a good way) kind of sad his 'creative ideas' have been.

    Speaking of the last twelve years, let's just start off with his 2010 film 'Cop Out' that starred Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, and what seems to be Seann William Scott's last large scale and actually funny film appearance. The film was a success in the box office, grossing well over 50 million dollars but was not so great with the critics. And in all actuality, this movie just wasn't very good despite the fact that I liked Seann William Scott's performance; luckily for Kevin Smith he didn't write it and any re-write he might've done to some scenes it's probably best that he left his name off of the writers tab.

    Kevin Smith has oddly always had a fascination with religion and religious cultures in general. 2011's Red State is one of the most interesting of Smith's career in my opinion. I actually haven't seen this film, but I do know about it obviously; nothing has exactly drawn me in to want to actually watch it any time soon. The story of the film to me seems over the top and not exactly appealing; not exactly even terrifying, just sounds to me like Deliverance meets Texas Chainsaw but without the chainsaw or the want to watch it. Nicholas Braun stars in the film as the character Billy Ray, and that might be the only okay thing about Red State to me. He's been in several enjoyable films I have seen from the last seven years like The Stanford Prison Experiment, an incredibly badass movie. I do recommend that one.

    Moving on, 2014's Tusk and 2016's Yoga Hosers are two films that are apart of what was supposed to be a trilogy that takes place entirely in Canada. The third and final film is supposedly still going to get made sadly, it's titled Moose Jaws and is most likely going to be made after Clerks III is out. Tusk and Yoga Hosers are two incredibly cheap films, but Tusk gets a ton of respect and has somewhat of a cult following of fans because of its distributor being the now legendary A24, one of the finest film production and distribution companies to emerge in the last twenty years. They've released a lot of odd and imaginatively artsy films like Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers in 2013 and as of lately put out an awesome movie by Sean Baker starring Simon Rex, 2021's Red Rocket.

via Bloody Disgusting

    As most could've guessed if they didn't know by now, Tusk didn't do as well as most A24 movies were doing at the time. Even 2014's Life After Beth gained a cult fanbase rather quickly after it came out, my friends and I really liked that movie. And I really like Tusk honestly, it's Yoga Hosers that I really didn't and couldn't possibly care for. It's badass Kevin Smith could put Lily Rose Depp in one of her first ever motion picture leading roles, but it's awful for Lily that it had to be Yoga Hosers; a movie that made only a little over 38,000 dollars worldwide against a budget of about 5 million. Major loss, who could've guessed that would've happened when your movie is about mini-Nazi bratwurst's that are trying to kill everyone. I think that was the plot, I don't fucking know and even I've seen the movie before. Shaking my head.

    One of the saddest things I've ever had to write in my entire life. This next sentence. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot was a ginormous disappointment to me as a Kevin Smith fan. I can't tell you how excited I was to hear this movie was being made. Then I saw the cheesy poster and trailer and I couldn't believe it... another cheapy kind-of stinker? But with my boys Jay and Bob are you kidding me? Reboot was stacked to the core with all sorts of awful blunders and reboot/sequel cliché's; major try-hard moments that stick out like the sorest infected thumb like incorporating a cheesy weird Ku Klux Klan scene; hardcore LGBTQ+ references (which aren't a bad thing) but they push it in your face a little bit in the film to be honest. This film is like another live-action Scooby Doo adaption, except most of those live-action Scooby Doo movies are original in the sense that they don't recycle a monster. Reboot just is a monster.

    Now the last atrocity that almost nobody on Earth has really seen yet, including myself because I'm an average joe working in a restaurant that doesn't do NFT's or anything Crypto related. Kevin Smith made this ridiculous and almost childishly stupid anthology horror film called Killroy Was Here; after viewing the trailer I already knew I would not be viewing this movie. And now I don't know when I'll ever be able to actually view the movie anyway since it's THE FIRST MOVIE RELEASED AS AN NFT. Huh? What the fuck did I read? Kevin Smith, that has to be your worst idea yet. Especially because I read online that only a little over 5,000 of these NFT's of the movie exist online which means only 5,000 have viewed it. And they probably didn't like it very much.

    Clerks III is set to be released on September 13th, 2022 in the USA and even though the posters make the film seem promising, the trailer for the film that was released earlier this month does not. My exact theory is that Kevin Smith is now a huge pothead, and has been since about 2008 after working with Seth Rogen on Zach & Miri (his last good/actually comedic film ironically enough). So yeah, I blame all the pot smoking. It's done some major damage on his humor, philanthropy, and life in general. Pretentious memories is all I really see from Kevin Smith on his socials. Oh well, I'm truly hoping for the best for this film and for Kevin Smith all around. I hope that Clerks III does tremendously well in theaters in September. I know that if my local cinema is showing it, I'll definitely grab a ticket.

    - Rhett Rhodes