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Director blames millennials for box office flop

Director Ridley Scott has placed the blame for his latest movie’s poor performance on millennials for a bizarre reason: their mobile phones. Scott’s medieval film, The Last Duel, is based on a real-life ritual duel between knight Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) and squire Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) after Jean’s wife, Marguerite (Jodie Comer) accuses Jacques of sexually assaulting her. Despite the A-list cast and positive reviews ahead of its release in cinemas, The Last Duel has bombed at the box office after raking in $4.8 million on its opening weekend. It currently has a domestic gross of $10 million, a sliver of its $100 million budget. The 83-year-old director behind hit films like Alien, Gladiator, and Blade Runner first mentioned his gripe with the millennial generation during an appearance on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> Today is Ridley Scott day on <a href="https://t.co/KBRiPQLutw">https://t.co/KBRiPQLutw</a>! Blade Runner, historical epics, his secret weapon in filmmaking, House of Gucci! Great talk! Do it up! Episode - <a href="https://t.co/PWcTZfeV3k">https://t.co/PWcTZfeV3k</a> On <a href="https://twitter.com/ApplePodcasts?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ApplePodcasts</a> - <a href="https://t.co/utE9C6ox5Z">https://t.co/utE9C6ox5Z</a> On <a href="https://twitter.com/Stitcher?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Stitcher</a> - <a href="https://t.co/r1E9mtQF2k">https://t.co/r1E9mtQF2k</a> <a href="https://t.co/dPkQXhplgA">pic.twitter.com/dPkQXhplgA</a> — WTF with Marc Maron (@WTFpod) <a href="https://twitter.com/WTFpod/status/1462823039213572100?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 22, 2021</a></blockquote> Though many were expecting Scott to lay the blame on Disney after the entertainment conglomerate snapped up 20th Century Fox and its slate of films, he said Disney was pleased with the movie and he was happy with how they handled its release. “Disney did a fantastic promotion job. The bosses loved the movie because I was concerned it was not for them,” Scott said. “I think what it boils down to - what we’ve got today [are] audiences who were brought up on these f**king cell phones. Scott accused the “millenian” generation of refusing to learn anything unless it was taught through their phone and believed their attitude came from social media. “This is a broad stroke, but I think we’re dealing with it right now with Facebook,” he continued. “This is a misdirection that has happened where it’s given the wrong kind of confidence to this latest generation, I think.” <blockquote style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CVd0ZWELMtO/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CVd0ZWELMtO/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank">A post shared by 20th Century Studios (@20thcenturystudios)</a> </div> </blockquote> The film’s poor performance could be partially blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic, which would have kept older audiences - the movie’s prime demographic - away from cinemas. Recent box office trends have also found that most audiences have been flocking to superhero, science fiction, and horror films, rather than historical dramas like The Last Duel. Plus, the film has debuted in a bumper month of releases, competing against the likes of superhero film Venom: Let There Be Carnage, sci-fi epic Dune and the long-awaited No Time to Die. The Last Duel’s lacklustre performance could also point to a change in audience expectations, reported by <a rel="noopener" href="https://screenrant.com/last-duel-movie-failure-ridley-scott-millennials-response/" target="_blank">Screen Rant</a>. With audiences coming to cinemas to see epic, blockbuster movies, smaller films and period pieces like The Last Duel have become films audiences will wait to watch until they can be streamed. Image: Getty Images

Movies

68% of millennials earn more than their parents, but boomers had it better

A lot of us are pessimistic about our children’s future. According to the most recent data from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey (in 2019), just 29% of Australians believe today’s children will be <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/question-search/?qid=1625&cntIDs=&stdIDs=">better off financially</a> than their parents. Such pessimism is common in many developed nations. In Japan, just 13% believe children will be better off, in France 16%, in Britain 22%. Australians are still marginally less optimistic than Canadians (30%) and Americans (31%), and significantly less optimistic than Swedes (40%) and Germans (48%). <a href="https://www.lifecoursecentre.org.au/research/journal-articles/working-paper-series/are-we-richer-than-our-parents-were-absolute-income-mobility-in-australia/">Our research shows</a> things aren’t as bad as many fear, with 68% of millennials (those born between 1981 and 1987 for our research) earning more income than their parents did at the same age. This is close to the highest percentage <a href="https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/13456/trends-in-absolute-income-mobility-in-north-america-and-europe">among countries</a> for which estimates are available. The experience of gen-Xers (born from the early 1960s to late 1970s) has been similar. But it’s not all good news. That percentage is lower than the upward mobility enjoyed by baby boomers (born from 1946 to the early 1960s). For those born around 1950, 84% earned more at age 30-34 than their own parents did at the same age. There are two prime reasons for this decline in absolute mobility since the 1980s. Lower economic growth leading to average incomes growing more slowly; and growing income inequality. How we did our research The share of people whose income is higher than their parents at the same age is known as “absolute income mobility”. It is an appealing indicator of economic progress because it captures aspirations for our children. It reflects economic growth, inequality and opportunity. Estimating absolute mobility, though, is quite hard. The data we need to measure it directly – information about what people earned at a particular age compared to their own parents – does not exist for Australia. To do this exercise, therefore, we’ve applied <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6336/398">new statistical methods</a> that have been developed in recent years to estimate absolute mobility without linked parent-child data. These methods, using separate generational data on income distribution, have been verified in research published <a href="https://4a2bc32e-a967-44a4-9e23-f2b3b9cf578e.usrfiles.com/ugd/4a2bc3_10d644c7d36c42eba03136cca93e56fc.pdf">in 2018</a> and <a href="https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/13456/trends-in-absolute-income-mobility-in-north-america-and-europe">in 2020</a>. Our own approach closely follows leading international studies. We used sources of data including the Melbourne Institute’s Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, data from Australian Bureau of Statistics surveys and income tax records. What our research shows The main results are below. Of people born in 1950, 84% had higher household incomes than their parents. This fell to about 68% for those born since the early 1960s. It has stayed roughly constant for gen-Xers and millennials. <hr /> <iframe id="CxoOP" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/CxoOP/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none;" frameborder="0"></iframe> <hr /> The main driver of this change is slower economic growth. Boomers’ incomes were much higher than their parents particularly due to decades of uninterrupted economic growth from World War II to the mid-1970s. <hr /> <iframe id="qjHQt" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/qjHQt/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none;" frameborder="0"></iframe> <hr /> The other driver has been rising income inequality over the past 40 years, after falling in earlier decades, as the next chart shows. The relationship between inequality and mobility is complicated, because high inequality for either generation lowers the rate of mobility. <hr /> <iframe id="8bQEW" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/8bQEW/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none;" frameborder="0"></iframe> <hr /> Absolute mobility would be higher if income was adjusted for family size – 78% for millennials, because the younger generation have smaller families than their parents did at the same age. Complicating factors Our results are for income earned in a single year (at about age 32). We have also found similar results when looking at income at around age 37. Ideally, we’d like to calculate absolute mobility of lifetime income. But methods to do this have not yet been developed. So we don’t know what mobility in lifetime income is. The same could be said for indicators of income inequality, which mostly use single-year income measures as well. You also might be wondering about how the cost of housing fits in – an important issue given the escalating cost of a home compared to the median wage. In all the results shown, income is adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index. Housing is a big part of the index though costs such as the price of land and mortgage interest payments are <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/6467.0Feature+Article1Mar+2017">not included</a>. The ABS does factor mortgage debts into its “Selected Living Cost Indices”, but these only go back to 1998, so couldn’t be used in these calculations. However, the changes in the CPI and the SLCI over the past 20 years are similar, which gives us some assurance our estimates account for the cost of housing. Further work could explore this in more detail. Valid concerns Australia has achieved high levels of absolute income mobility for all generations since at least the 1950s. This is still the case. But the pessimism about our children’s financial future is rooted in some valid concerns. Wage growth has been <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2017/mar/2.html">slow for years</a>. Income inequality has been <a href="https://wid.world/country/australia/">increasing for decades</a>. So has the gap <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/generation-gap/">between young and old</a>. So there are clear threats for the prosperity of today’s children – even without factoring in concerns such as climate change.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161647/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/peter-siminski-250958">Peter Siminski</a>, Professor of Economics, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-technology-sydney-936">University of Technology Sydney</a> This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/68-of-millennials-earn-more-than-their-parents-but-boomers-had-it-better-161647" target="_blank">original article</a>.

Retirement Income

The new baby name trend parents are obsessed with – is it the craziest yet?

Choosing baby names is no easy feat. Generally, parents must come to a mutual agreement on what to name their child, and then there are factors such as spelling, pronunciation and whether it suits the surname to consider. But amongst the millennial generation, there is now a major deciding factor added to the mix, and that’s if the name has an available domain (website) name. While you may be left confused and wondering who in their right mind would worry about something so trivial, a new survey of 2000 mums and dads who are millennial age have claimed that having an available domain name for their child is crucial when choosing their child’s name. According to research, which was conducted by <a rel="noopener" href="https://au.godaddy.com/" target="_blank">GoDaddy</a> – a web hosting and domain registration company – one in five (20 per cent) of millennial parents have said that they would choose their baby's name in accordance to what domain names were available at the time. Out of that 20 per cent, three in four people had actually “changed the top contenders for their baby’s name based on the availability of that domain name". Further studies revealed that there is a difference in mentalities between Generation X and millennials. With 48 per cent of millennials wanting their child to build an online presence early in their lifetime compared to only 27 per cent of Gen X who shared the same sentiments. Amongst the millennials, 38 per cent claimed that they’ve created or are considering creating a website for their kids, which is a greater amount than the 20 per cent of Gen X who felt the same. Top 3 reasons why parents purchased their child’s domain name before birth: <ul> <li>Wanted to reserve a name for future use – 45 per cent</li> <li>To use as a digital baby book – 42 per cent</li> <li>To use as a tool to teach kids how to use the internet – 42 per cent</li> </ul> Top 3 reasons parents plan to purchase domain names in the future: <ul> <li>To reserve their name for future use – 54 per cent</li> <li>To use as a tool to teach kids how to use the internet – 46 per cent</li> <li>Think it’s important for their child to own their name online – 41 per cent</li> </ul> Do you think this is the craziest baby name trend yet? Let us know in the comments below.

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Director blames millennials for box office flop

68% of millennials earn more than their parents, but boomers had it better

The new baby name trend parents are obsessed with – is it the craziest yet?

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