You Either Die a Hero or Live Long Enough to See Yourself Become the Villain
Topher is in a new movie!
HUGE NEWS FOR THE TOPHER FANDOM! For the first time since 2020, actor Topher Grace will appear in a motion picture. Flight Risk is slated to be released on October 18, 2024.1
Yes, our boy has been freed from the bondage of network TV and Netflix (less sexy than it sounds), and will once again be on the big screen to give Cillian Murphy’s sleepy eyes a run for their money!
This is the moment I’ve waited for since I started this project in 2022, a brand new Topher Grace movie in the theater. I’ve long fantasized about how I would mark the occasion.
Finally, I will be able to buy a ticket and watch Topher as he was meant to be seen, 20 feet high and surrounded by the smells of popcorn and my fellow film-goers. Maybe I could even scam my way into a press screening. Or even THE PREMIER (I bet everyone will smell amazing there)!
Or will I?
I ask because what should have been a triumphant and joyful moment has been marred by an inconvenient fact. Topher Grace’s new film will be directed by the super problematic Mel Gibson.
Flight Risk will star Topher alongside Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery and burger-empire nepobaby Mark Walberg. Per Variety:
In “Flight Risk,” Wahlberg plays a balding and psychotic mob hitman who tricks a federal agent into allowing him to pilot a plane carrying an informant (Topher Grace) out of a remote area.
Honestly, it sounds pretty fun.
It’s almost sweet that Mel is letting his buddy Mark Walberg cosplay as the inflight hero who would’ve stopped 9/11 he knows himself to be.
I’m not even mad about Michelle Dockery getting to do something set in this century (Although wasn’t she also in that Liam Neeson plane movie? Did she make some deal with the Devil where the only movies she could appear in were period pieces and plane movies?)
But back to Mel Gibson. For my younger readers who maybe only know Mel from directing Hacksaw Ridge, starring in Daddy’s Home Two, or appearing in 22 other films since 2010 (you know, like a canceled person would), he is a controversial figure for some of us uptight film fans who don’t approve of the things he has done (domestic violence) and said (homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs).
Well, this is awkward. Just a few months ago, I was praising Topher for not cavorting with creeps. Now here we are. He is working with a notorious creep, and putting me in the weird position of wondering if I should see his latest movie.
This is an issue any media consumer with empathy is familiar with. I know intellectually that lots of different people work on movies, and movies are so much more than one person (even if they’re an “auteur”). I don’t object to seeing a movie even if it’s connected to a Bad Man. But also, my dollar is my vote, and if I pay to see this film, I am voting to keep Mel Gibson in Hollywood.
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME TOPHER?!?!
I didn’t see Mel Gibson’s last film Hacksaw Ridge, but I forgave its star Andrew Garfield, and showed up with bells on when he played a theater kid for Lin-Manuel Miranda. So maybe I can extend the same grace to Topher (no pun intended).
And maybe this problem will be solved for me. Maybe I won’t have to purchase a ticket at all. Get me an invite to that October 18 premiere, baby!!! So I can smell Topher and give Mel and Mark the stink eye.
Astrology babes, please lmk if this is good or bad timing.