It seems today that all Seth MacFarlane sees is violence in movies and dystopia on TV.
The Oscar nominee recently commented on the trend of “negative” storytelling in Hollywood, as he argued for more projects that “give people hope” amid uncertain times in the world.
“That’s why I did The Orville … because when I was a kid, Hollywood was providing that voice in various forms. There was a lot of hope, and some of the blame lies right here in this town. The dishes that we are serving up are so dystopian and so pessimistic,” he recently explained on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast. “And yeah, there’s a lot to be pessimistic about, but it’s so one-sided. There’s nothing we’re doing that’s providing anyone an image of hope.”
Noting there’s more projects in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale than Star Trek, MacFarlane added, “They’re certainly giving us a lot of cautionary tales, but where are the blueprints that they once gave us for how to do things correctly?
“It can’t all be just, ‘Here’s what’s going to happen to you if you f— up,’” he continued. “You do need, ‘Here’s what you can achieve if you change your ways and do things right.’”
Ever since The Sopranos, MacFarlane said “it’s all about the antihero” in Hollywood, as opposed to characters that provide hope.
“That’s the only thing really that Hollywood can do that’s worthwhile because as we all learned from this election, nobody gives a f— what celebrities think,” said MacFarlane. “We can tweet, we can talk. Like, people don’t care. They don’t care. What we do do well is tell stories. And we’re not doing the best job right now of telling those stories in a way that gives people hope.”
Although MacFarlane said Disney has “yet to do a Season 4” of The Orville, he sounded cautiously optimistic about the future of his Star Trek tribute, which premiered on Fox in 2017 and made the jump to Hulu for Season 3.
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