ticklefist said:
Kevin Smith movies were a photograph of us and how we perceived the world in our early adulthoods. It's an embarrassing thing to look at in hindsight but we weren't wrong about those movies, they were great. That is until Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. That was the point it all kinda became silly and stopped trying to be relevant. I would say Dogma but that would be dishonest. Everyone loved Dogma at the time. It's only now that we think it sucks.
And before you do it Bob, don't do it, Bob. Mallrats was the best one!
I don't think Bob would ever simplify it to this point, but I think what it comes down to is that Kevin Smith seemed like a misguided Social Justice Warrior, like Bob himself, and might have even inspired him to some extent when he was younger. Then it turned out that really wasn't who Kevin Smith ever really was, and it became more pronounced as time went on as he continued,and had more pull to really say some of the things he wanted to. Given that he ties a lot of his works together (sometimes subtly) and re-uses people while referencing characters from previous movies you might not expect to be related, it can be argued that once he became a disappointment to those who projected onto his message it changed the entire lens through which his entire body of work can be viewed. Sort of like a less awesome version of Steven King's "Dark Tower" series and how it can change your perspective on pretty much everything he's written.
To put things into perspective, it seems people really seemed to turn on Kevin Smith when he did "Red State", which a lot of people figured was going to be "alright, let's see one of our favorite film making SJWs tear into the right wing", and then found out that while he did indeed do that, he didn't exactly do what they wanted, and produced a fairly balanced piece, balanced to the point of being sort of offensive to certain people, especially seeing as the bad guys who represents the problem and/or focus of the story arguably changes several times during the entire movie which is kind of the point of the entire thing. While it inevitably went to the expected place, it wasn't quite the whole "Kevin Smith does a grindhouse horror movie where a bunch of Red State rejects wind up having the tables turned on them and die horribly" that a lot of people expected.
At the same time, as some people have pointed out 20-something slackers was kind of entertaining, 30 and 40 year old slackers was just kind of sad, and it can be argued that this might have been intentional. Something that can disturbs people who worship his movies and the worldview they propose, and might have been doing so and living in a similar fashion ever since he first started making them.
Even Jay and Silent Bob have retroactively gotten some criticism, Kevin Smith is on record as I remember as pretty much supporting pot, but at the same time he doesn't seem to promote it to the extent some others seem to think. After all viewed in a certain way which is probably intentional, he's arguably mocking "lifestyle stoners" more than he's worshipping them. The sheer silliness involved in say "Bluntman and Chronic" and the way it plays out can, and has been, argued as having the exact opposite message of what it at first seems to be. One could argue that the champion of the slacker-stoner, who seemed to be giving you a role-model, isn't anti-pot, but doesn't actually have much respect for those who are habitual/lifestyle users.
Now I could be wrong there, and I don't read Bob's blog, but given what a lot of other people similar to Bob seem to say, and the circles he seems to travel in, I'd imagine this is pretty much the gist of it. Although I suppose his Star Wars reference does say pretty much the same thing, as Kevin Smith was "supposed to be the guy who championed us and our world view" and like Anakin who was prophecied as the opposite of what Obi-Wan thought from the very beginning, it turned out he never was what you thought he was. You were pretty much worshipping a guy as one of your voices, who really had about zero respect for you, and as a result you actually became the punch line of the joke.
That said I think Kevin Smith is a decent film maker, but really I think he'd do better to move on to other styles of movies. It was nice to watch him gradually grow through his work, but really I think he should consider trying to move more into pure fantasy territory for a while as opposed to doing movies that are primarily social commentary with perhaps some metaphorical fantasy thrown in. Get away from that a bit, and give people some time to chill out, and other things to think about, and I think it will all be good. Right now I think half the problem is people who once thought "Jay and Silent Bob" were role models and positive societal commentary of a sort, would kind of like to feed them both into a wood chipper feet first upon realizing the truth.