When the announcement came this week that Mel Gibson would be starring in the TV series The Continental, spun off from the John Wick movies, a lot of fans were very upset. Two tweets sum up my own appalled reaction to the news:
The movies are lead by someone who is reported as being one of the nicest and most wholesome people ever.
For the series they choose Mel Gibson…
Whoooooosh!— Sylvester S. Poulsen (@PoulsenS) October 18, 2021
They keep saying cancel culture is real but this woman-beating, drunk driving, racist, homophobic, anti-semite seems to be doing just fine. https://t.co/gQP4OZu7Io
— 31 Daves of Halloween (@geeksofdoom) October 18, 2021
I adore John Wick, and I love the idea of The Continental, the secret club/neutral ground for assassins, but there’s no way in hell I’d be able to enjoy this show.
Is there an actor whose presence in a film or TV show guarantees that you won’t watch it? Who are your dealbreakers?
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Well, Mel Gibson isn’t someone I want to support, but, I confess I’ve watched things with him or by him since I learned he’s also personally an asshole. (Have not paid for them in any way tho’.)
Deal breakers for me are more people I just can’t stand watching. At the moment and for many years, that’s been Chris Pratt.
Well, Mel Gibson isn’t someone I want to support, but, I confess I’ve watched things with him or by him since I learned he’s also personally an asshole. (Have not paid for them in any way tho’.)
Deal breakers for me are more people I just can’t stand watching. At the moment and for many years, that’s been Chris Pratt.
My wife refuses to watch anything with Tom Cruise.
I avoid Quentin Tarantino.
David Cross not only makes me want to avoid a movie but makes me wonder if there’s a different species I can join.
There are two aspects to this for me. One, “actor is a horrible person” – which I don’t always know about when I watch the film (though, alas, I don’t suppose I’ll be able to enjoy Haywire as much as I did on first viewing). The other is that some people have faces that just look wrong to me, which is my problem more than theirs, but I find John Travolta, Jesse Eisenberg, Adam Driver, distractingly unpleasant to look at whatever character they’re playing. And Tom Cruise can hold my attention while he’s on screen but the moment the camera moves elsewhere I feel as though someone’s just done a con trick on me.
Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? If these horrible people would just keep the damn mouths shut about their awfulness, we wouldn’t know about it. But they seem to think their celebrity gives them immunity to be terrible.
I have such mixed feelings about Cruise! He’s clearly deeply problematic for his support of Scientology, which is simply awful and abusive, and every time I hear he’s in a new movie, I groan inwardly. But he has such movie star charisma: he’s really amazing onscreen.
Unfortunately, that is also true of Gibson… or at least it was, for me, in the past. He is a magnetic presence, still, but it’s increasing tough for me to get past what a terrible human being he is.