This morning, news broke that Taylor Swift will immediate her initial function movie for Searchlight Photographs. She will publish it and direct it, in simple fact, and we know practically nothing far more about it than this. I am now going to inform you how I truly feel about that prospect.
This is not my 1st day on earth. I know that creating nearly anything remotely crucial of the Taylor Swift challenge hazards incurring the wrath of some of the most dangerous and organized persons on the world-wide-web. So let me preface all of this by expressing: I am a Swiftie. Taylor is my female. I, way too, have rinse-repeat listened to “All Far too Properly (10 Minute Variation) (Taylor’s Model)” and indulged in vengeful views about my ex-boyfriends. 1 of my most cherished memories is screaming “You Belong With Me” in my greatest friend’s experience on the dance flooring at her marriage. I am in a team chat called Taylor’s Diversion, in which we swap theories about future albums. I have planned and attended Taylor-only karaoke occasions. I am mentally making ready to spend a month’s earnings on the “Eras” tour.
Now, all of that mentioned, I do not consider this motion picture is a very good notion.
I savored the tunes video clip Swift directed for the prolonged edition of All Much too Nicely, simply because it was like listening to remarkable gossip about an outdated buddy, apart from it’s about unbelievably incredibly hot A-list famous people. It was only 10 minutes very long, and I am sufficiently mind-dead due to the fact of fandom that I was likely to get a kick out of it even if it was just 10 minutes of Sadie Sink holding up a sign saying “Fuck you, Jake Gyllenhaal.” But a entire film? A feature-length movie? About what, precisely? Can Taylor’s worldview, which can (I’m sorry! I enjoy her!) have a particular type of somewhat cringe, entry-degree feminist bent, be tolerable at this scale?
There’s a universe in which she surprises us and does a little something completely out of her wheelhouse. I want to see Taylor Swift does David Cronenberg, girls with internal organs spilling out of their plaid shirts. Consider, if you will, Blade Runner (Taylor’s Version). I would scream with delight for the total 120 minutes and toss up my popcorn in the street afterward if she casts all her actor exes in it: a comprehensive-scale function of self-mythologizing as opposed to nearly anything even she, the best auteur in this area, has at any time reached. Or if it’s, like, a Muppets film, and she’s the only human character. There are alternatives in this article.
My anxiety is that she will not just take any of them. My fear is that it will come to be an additional stick in an previously really significant battery of sticks with which to defeat individuals of us unfortunate enough to be terminal Swifties. My dread is that it will be too Taylor. A naïve young girl moves to New York from a tiny town and kicks ass in cat eyeliner. Or, heaven forfend, Status: The Film.
Probably I’m becoming unduly pessimistic. Have musicians built very good films? I couldn’t consider of any off the leading of my head, so I seemed it up. Both equally Madonna and Bob Dylan have directed flicks usually agreed to be stinkers and swept under the rug (a plea for mercy from these fandoms also). I necessarily mean, Rob Zombie? There isn’t a ton of good precedent for this.
I would adore it if I am incorrect and this is a triumph, not just for Taylor’s sake, but for everybody’s. I shudder to imagine of the working day the film is unveiled if it’s poor, or even just not that excellent. Critics will lose their life at the palms of teenage women that evening about 3 ½-star reviews. Martin Scorsese will say the improper factor about it in an job interview and have to go into witness defense.
It is of excellent societal import that this film does not blow. Possibly there is some hope. I discover that normally when a new Taylor undertaking is introduced, I’m not confident about it. I will hold up my fingers and say that on a to start with listen, I didn’t get Midnights. But absolutely sure plenty of, a week later on, I had “Maroon” on repeat like every person else. She has proved me erroneous right before. Could it make sure you God that she does it again.
