To the millions of fans who’ve enjoyed their music over the past six decades, The Beatles will forever and always be regarded as the greatest rock band in history. In fact, they remain such a cultural force that the surviving members of the quartet recently used AI to polish off one final song — a song that will be up for two Grammy awards in 2025. All that said, however, the release of a new documentary about the band today on Disney+ has sparked one of the most annoying, preachy, and self-important Hollywood directors to tap out a few angry posts on X about the band.
That’s right, folks: Adam “look how smart I am” McKay is back at it again.
“Nothing is lamer/funnier than white liberals’ never ending fascination for the Beatles,” McKay tweeted, in a post that’s gotten 4 million impressions on the platform so far. “It’s so Neo-liberal. ‘They’re the best, right? So let’s never stop micro-focusing on them.’”
His rant continues: “Liberals always operate from a ‘must get the right answer on the test’ list of approved culture. It’s so lifeless and flat. Like yeah, Happiness is a Warm Gun and Day in the Life are great tunes but let’s move past age 13…” He then proceeds to bash the new Disney+ documentary, Beatles ’64, linking to an Associated Press story about it and commenting: “Like, really? This is something that we need at this point?”
I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to take seriously a diatribe that Beatles fans need to grow up from the director of Step Brothers. Seriously, you could actually unpack a lot of what people hate about Hollywood today from his newest tweet thread. The sanctimoniousness, the attitude that we are the tastemakers, that we know better than you, and that people can’t be trusted to decide for themselves what makes for great art — it’s all right there.
When I think about why the story of The Beatles is so endlessly fascinating to fans like me, I always find myself in awe of who they were and where they came from. The Beatles weren’t technically brilliant musicians; you could point to an endless number of guitarists, bass players, and drummers who’d rank higher in terms of musical chops. The Beatles also didn’t come from an industry town, like London. They were nobodies, from nowhere, yet through a magical combination of luck, talent, chutzpah, and infectious joy, they wrote the soundtrack for a generation.
When’s the last time you saw an Adam McKay film that had the joy of Hello, Goodbye and Penny Lane? Or which Adam McKay film can you point to that people will still be talking about 50 years from now, the way people do about The Beatles’ music? Say what you will about the group, but at least they weren’t holier-than-thou sermonizers.