First, pretensions fully on display, as fully as this movie’s—well, what I think it thinks about the problems that move the plot forward.
Print journalism resulting from hard-hitting investigative work, or maybe they just meant it more simply as “real” journalism—the “real” being a judgment it leaves to each individual viewer—whatever, Andy was a “journalist” who was nominated to receive and did receive an award for her year’s piece. I do not remember the name of her piece, but that could be a personal problem. The name of the piece does not matter.
“Tech” came in and whatever category of work McKinsey is, like consulting, yes, but about efficiencies disguising layoffs (which is something A.I. would write, because it loves its zingers). Evil tech came in and these hard-working, extremely valuable journalists who do extremely important work all just lost their jobs in one fell swoop. And they are quite literally powerless to stop it. A line or two is given to the hardships that follow from a layoff, especially to those with unique circumstances like a recent home purchase or pregnancy. Andy turns down a job immediately offered to her by her roommate. I admit I forget the line that she says when turning down the job, because that wasn’t enough, but she says something to the effect that it would basically be a last option to accept the job that just fell on her lap. I can be very easily fact-checked on this, but I’m not about to pay another ticket money to verify, if you don’t mind my vernacular. Maybe just trust me.
So, as it turns out—by the way, I’m just recounting as much of the movie as I need to make my point, so if you were worried about spoilers, that was like, the first block of plot. I’m sure there’s a cinematography term. So, as it turns out, Andy’s hiring was all Tucci’s character’s doing. Nigel? You see how little I care to verify any of this. But I do just need you to trust me. It’s one of the film’s last reveals. Let me get back to the plot in a little bit.
For now, what you need to understand is that the movie is reflecting a lot of modern society on the viewer, but with and without intention. The intentional reflection is the plot, the problems in the plot: the layoffs, the consolidation of industries, problems specific to the print industry such as shrinking subscription numbers, to say nothing of subscriptions alone, what the movie shows you is what it in one way or another is making some kind of commentary on. Usually it’s simple commentary, like, boo, job loss.
But its unintentional reflections are the methods it uses to move the plot forward. The first hurdle to overcome is this new scandal plaguing Runway about a misunderstanding, really, that some vendor Runway used didn’t meet Runway’s standards for vendors, or something, and the charge was that Runway was using something obviously exploitative, like child labor. Runway would never. Meryl was aghast for a good 45 minutes of that movie. She has one face. Just, at all times astounded. So, obviously no child labor. And the movie shows you this as screengrabs, like they make you look at a phone being held by Tucci or maybe it was B.J. Novak, and it looks like a PDF. I mean a Portable Document…File? Like, literally the file type. It looked like shit. And, oh, this vendor had something to do with fast fashion, so of course, boo, Shein and Temu. How could you incriminate Runway. And the movie does that same thing of repeating how the whole scandal is just a misunderstanding because Miranda would never! And we’re just supposed to say, Yeah, Miranda would never.
All I’m saying is that the plot always just requires you to keep it moving.
So, to make my point more succinctly, in the same way the movie believes it is criticizing fast fashion or its outlets for the effect that it has on, to put it generously, storied brands that are synonymous with cultural landmarks (according to the representatives of the brand, by the way), it itself just needs to quickly move from plot point to plot point, where a couple of montages and phone calls will solve any problem.
The movie intended to say…
What the movie did not intend to say was: we need to thank benevolent billionaires. If you haven’t seen the movie, I swear I’m not even remotely trying to be anti-capitalist revolutionary, just so you understand how I don’t understand that the plot can be summarized in some other way than: it was one billionaire (Novak) versus another billionaire (Liu) versus another billionaire (Emily’s patron).
The whole movie begins because evil-corporation-merger-whatever did a stock buyback or something super unnecessary and made $500 million dollars. Like, super unfair. That’s also where they talk about the hardships. But then we learn that Runway is owned by this other old billionaire, Vern?, and he was about to promote Miranda to be head of something, but then he died so Miranda’s fate hangs at the balance of billionaire B.J. Novak.
So Novak does the weird tech thing, where he’s weird in ways that suggest social ineptitude, and also performative wokeness, or maybe it’s sincere. Maybe someone can investigate whether we are shown enough about him to know, because what we are given is little more than the one joke that becomes his catchphrase. As I write this, I think they did intend to portray this guy as the bad guy—he does plenty of bad guy things—but I wonder if they intended to make him representative of the group of tech figures. Whatever causes they personally believe in, or identities they hold, the industries they lead are inherently destructive and weird. And it’s become a stated goal that, gee, I hope we figure out Universal Basic Income by then because, boy, will we need it.
The movie doesn’t intend to say that you need to get the good billionaires on your side. Good billionaires are not the weirdo tech bros—again, I think the movie was generalizing tech bros rather than any specific figure, and as such, its commentary is not so much against the tech industry, as it was a necessary evil for the sake of the plot. You need the Lucy Liu’s of the world, the good billionaires, to help solve problems through their charity. That’s the conclusion I got from the movie. I think the movie promotes the idea of benevolent billionaires.
To briefly re-cap: B.J. Novak is one of the billionaires.
We apparently were introduced to Emily’s Patron (billionaire #2) in newspaper clippings or something, about his divorce from Lucy Liu, who is also billionaire #3.
The movie intended to say…again, being generous, through the power of community we can preserve storied institutions?
But the problem is always Lucy Liu.
What the movie does not intend to say is that there’s enough money to save your magazine, and in fact expand it, should you earn the favor of billionaire Lucy Liu. She’s a philanthropist. She tells us it is her intention to give away all of her money by the time she dies. I forget if that obligation was continuous or solitary. We can assume it’s continuous because somehow they have more money than they can literally spend. What does that mean? I’ve heard Bezos’ ex-wife say it, and I don’t understand it. What do you mean it is impossible to spend all of your money in your entire life? It seems to me we should really think about this.
So you can see how earning the favor of a Lucy Liu is extremely valuable. Now, again, I would love to verify the following: whether Miranda was interested in seeing Lucy Liu for reasons that had to do with the values of the magazine, where Andy sought out Liu’s attention as a bargaining chip to curry favor with Miranda (and also have Miranda’s back so Miranda can get her promotion). But that’s beside the point.
The point is that Miranda spends a good three-fourths of that movie in a daze, contemptuously mute because as it turns out she has no plans at all for how to save her position or the magazine. And of course she’s out of touch. The movie intends to show a politically incorrect “fossil” who’s just gotta go. I mean, for Pete’s sake, get the dragon lady out of here. As I write this, I think that’s one self-referential thing they left out. Verify me.
What they didn’t intend to show was what turned out to be a lazy attempt to make Miranda look old. What in the first movie did Miranda say that was politically incorrect? Did she use some out of date slur? Like, her language wasn’t a problem then, was it? But it suddenly becomes one now, and resultingly makes her look like the head of a magazine who we would today say is becoming increasingly problematic. Why actually would we want to root for Miranda, for herself or for her promotion, while being shown her as an unlikable character? If the first movie didn’t exist, why would you root for Miranda in this one? We don’t need to talk about nostalgia, or the point of sequels. We all loved Miranda in the first one. I don’t see why we should here, which is in no way Streep’s fault—she literally had nothing to do! Miranda 1 is a likeable impatient bitch. Miranda 2 is an unlikable impatient bitch. We understood her to be a genius workaholic, but who spends most of this movie in a stupor and quite literally does not know what to do, other than keep from falling down as she’s being jostled among the billionaires. From meeting to meeting she goes, either with billionaires or about them.
When Miranda meets Andy for the first time here, in the sequel, she dead ass does not remember this woman. It was like the directorial direction was, “You don’t know this woman and you’re trying to figure a way out of this fast fashion scandal.” And that’s what Streep does. Against Andy’s best attempts to tap into Miranda’s memory, this woman does not react to a single goddamn thing. It’s not until, maybe the midpoint of the movie, that Miranda makes a single reference to always knowing that Andy would be successful, or do something good, or something. Like, that’s all we get. So, again, why care about Miranda?
Why care about anything? The love interest with the contractor who paid lip service to historic districts but still built on top of them, that guy ends up with Andy for some reason. I love how you can see him visibly confused when Andy starts talking at his door, because she says something about having met in an imperfect way, and their goodbye was imperfect, and so maybe they can just have an imperfect life—which I thought was a nice message—but he looks confused, because the last thing he says before he leaves her apartment, after their fight about the value of apartments compared to Miranda’s magazine, is, Goodbye and she can hit him up again after she comes back from her trip. Like, it didn’t sound like a breakup. He’s leaving the apartment because they had this disagreement, really, about apartments and Runway, but she’s about to go to Italy. Feel free to disagree with me, here, but Andy was making it sound like they had broken up and she came back to mend fences. But all that’s beside the point.
The point is that the plot moves from bad guy billionaire Novak who wants to downsize Runway—later we come to learn he really just wants to get rid of it—to bad guy billionaire #2, Emily’s Patron. I do not remember his name. He does the idiot billionaire schtick, so obviously, boo, we don’t want him to win. But he’s really buying Runway for Emily, so he’s doing it for love, so maybe, boo, it’s a little more complicated! Everyone’s jobs would be saved, but Miranda would lose her job. Boo! Bad! Would we have had a reason to care about Miranda yet? I don’t think so. She still has been basically sleepwalking from scene to scene, occasionally mouthing the dialogue of a tired housewife.
Like, this was not a good movie. Andy feels bad for Miranda even though billionaire #2’s pending purchase would save the magazine, as it is, but obviously that doesn’t include Miranda and that’s a problem, really, only for Andy. So then Miranda finally awakens, in the last quarter of the movie, possibly less, and remembers she has a rolodex filled with influential people, among them, Lucy Liu.
We’re shown Andy making a bunch of phone calls to a bunch of people in a short amount of time. It’s a montage. She must have been calling lawyers, Docusign folks, maybe some banks, like, flight booking agencies, maybe—she must have been figuring out a lot of logistics, because the only call that really seems to matter is the one she makes to Lucy Liu.
Billionaire #3 comes to save the day by buying the entire company, all the everything, from Billionaire #1, B.J. Novak, who apparently was about to sell just the magazine? To Billionaire #2. Maybe Novak was going to sell the whole company to Billionaire #2, it actually doesn’t matter. What matters is that benevolent Lucy Liu comes in, and there’s a line about fearing whether she’ll interfere with their independence, and we’re assured she wouldn’t.
And so Runway lives on, to continue to honor excellence and the best of humanity, or whatever, through fashion, I suppose, and the intersectionalities thereof, to borrow contemporary terms, but the problem of shrinking subscriptions remains untouched. The problem of the rising costs of print media, or paywalls, or corporate ownership, none of those problems exist now that Runway found a patron in Lucy Liu.
I wonder what she thinks of her character.
