Netflix’s ‘The Bubble’ Trailer Proves You Could Still Make ‘Tropic Thunder’ Today

After a week of teases centered on Cliff Beasts 6, the movie within the movie of Judd Apatow’s latest showbiz comedy, we now have an actual trailer for The Bubble. The Netflix comedy, starring Karen Gillan, Iris Apatow, Fred Armisen, Maria Bakalova (from the last Borat movie), David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key, Leslie Mann, Pedro Pascal and Peter Serafinowiz, concerns attempts to make a big-budget Hollywood tentpole in the middle of the pandemic. Yes, it’s a little odd that this is a world where a seemingly R-rated dinosaur sci-fi action franchise (there are at least two “f-words” in that fake trailer) has spawned five sequels, but I’m guessing the film is loosely based on Universal’s adventures with getting Jurassic World: Dominion finished in the dark days of summer 2020.

What’s doubly interesting about the film is that it’s arguably an of-the-moment riff on Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder. That 2008 comedy starred Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black as spoiled actors who end up getting dropped in a real-world conflict area while filming what’s supposed to be a fictional war flick. The film often gets thrown around as a key example of the kind of movie you couldn’t make because of (pick one) cancel culture, woke culture or other such excuses. But the general gist of Tropic Thunder, comedically obnoxious actors crashing headfirst into reality while shooting a big-budget studio flick… well, that’s The Bubble. The irony is that what remains true is that a movie like Tropic Thunder could only be made for a streaming platform.

Simply put, Tropic Thunder was only a modest hit in August of 2008, earning $110 million domestic and $196 million worldwide on a $92 million budget. That was an okay return, and the film earned $52.4 million in physical media sales which means the DreamWorks/Paramount flick made money in the end. However, that was 2008, back when audiences still showed up for star-driven, high-concept studio vehicles and back when the DVD market and general post-theatrical afterlife was a hell of a lot more lucrative than it was now.

Sure, I don’t know if a variation on Tropic Thunder made in 2022 would still feature an arrogant white actor donning blackface in order to play a Black soldier. There was plenty of online chatter and media controversy about that back when the film opened. However, the vast majority of moviegoers who saw it either took modest offense or took the film’s in-universe satire of obsessive “method acting” at face value and rolled with it. It helps that Brandon T. Jackson’s supporting character calls bulls** (with the not incorrect implication that Lazarus will get more acclaim for being a white guy playing a Black man than would an actual Black actor playing the same part) every step of the way. Ironically, Downey Jr. got an Oscar nomination for the film.

Tropic Thunder was only a modest hit in 2008, before streaming, copious VOD and the death of the theatrical movie star. A film like The Bubble (unless it’s cheaper than it looks) would be sadly DOA in theaters. You could still make Blazing Saddles today, you just couldn’t expect it to gross $119 million (in 1974/$578 million adjusted for inflation) in North American theaters. We’re actually getting a remake of Blazing Saddles in theaters this summer. It’s a $55 million-budgeted animated film titled Blazing Samurai, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Cera, Ricky Gervais and Mel Brooks. The Paramount release may not break out theatrically (we haven’t had a smash non-IP animated film since Coco in late 2017) when it opens on July 22, but you can make Blazing Saddles in 2022.

Yes, I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek, as I don’t expect The Bubble to be about how Hollywood rewards nationalistic and glamorous portrayals of American warfare (even while showing “war is hell” in a baptism-by-fire fashion). For that matter, I don’t expect Blazing Samurai to be an explicit satire about how institutional racism is used as a weapon by rich white people to screw over both minorities and ignorant white citizens, but I could be wrong. After all, that was the subtext of Jay Chandrasekhar and John O’Brien’s The Dukes of Hazard movie back in 2005. And I surely think you could make another one of those if Hollywood desired it. As for The Bubble, it looks amusing enough, and we’ll all sample it for ourselves on April 1.