I mentioned this absurdity in passing at the end of my warning about Velma. Yes, they really made a Winnie-the-Pooh horror film. Yes, it really is terrible. Yes, people went to see it anyway. Not many, people, but enough for that precious YouTube content.

And here we are, hate-watching, because the inversion of entertainment that began with Mystery Science Theater 3000 and all the Grimdark Reboots of the 90’s-00’s reaches it’s apotheosis here. Let’s take a beloved character, and make him Pure Evil, because the absurdity of that feels like hilarity, which feels like fun.

And as with Velma, it doesn’t matter how awful it is, or how much you hate it. It matters that you paid good money to watch it. Wikipedia says that this stinker was made on a budget of less than $100,000. It has grossed $3.2 million worldwide. It has already won. They’re considering a sequel. Game, Set, Match.

So we can complain about Megatainment Corp, Inc. (A division of GoogleDisneyApplePlus) and their cavalier treatment of franchises, but here’s a scrappy indie, and they’re doing the same thing. It’s almost as if the problem isn’t really with them, but with us, the viewing audience, who are so IP/Nostalgia-Conditioned, that we become incapable of Not Caring about what happened to amuse us in childhood. This will not get better until we learn to break the spell.

Destroy All Fandoms. I’m not joking. It’s the only way forward.