As if 2023 wasn’t bad enough, a few seemingly went out of their way to make it worse. Photo / ITV
OPINION
Every year throws up its heroes and villains – whether it’s Ryan Gosling’s I Am Kenough hoodie in Barbie (hurrah) or Doctor Who’s Discman-inspired new Sonic Screwdriver (boo!).
But when it comes to proper moustache-twirlers, 2023 was in a league of its own.
Stock up on rotten veg and ready your finest jeers as we bring you the ultimate countdown of ne’er-do-wells from the past 12 months.
It takes a special talent for Taylor Swift, The Cure’s Robert Smith and Neil Young to all take potshots at you within 18 months. That’s what the ticketing wing of the all-powerful Live Nation has achieved.
The brickbats were flying with particular fury in 2023. Ticketmaster seemed to have learned nothing from the previous year’s debacle, during which Swift had criticised the company when the United States leg of her Eras tour sent its servers into meltdown. Ticketmaster carried on regardless.
Barely had 2023 dawned than it was drawing the ire of Smith. He hit out over sneaky mark-ups on tickets for the band’s North American tour. Smith labelled Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model – where prices rise according to demand – “a greedy scam – and all artists have the choice not to participate … if no artists participated, it would cease to exist”.
That message was echoed by grumpy granddad of grunge, Young. He said Ticketmaster’s opportunistic pricing had sucked all the fun out of touring.
“It’s over. The old days are gone. I get letters blaming me for US$3000 ($4833) tickets for a benefit I am doing. That money does not go to me or the benefit. Artists have to worry about ripped-off fans blaming them for Ticketmaster add-ons and scalpers. Concert tours are no longer fun. Concert tours not what they were.”
There was also criticism of the Bruce Springsteen tour, where use of dynamic pricing in the US sent prices for his shows soaring to more than US$5000 ($8055). Ticketmaster had achieved the impossible by dragging even Springsteen’s impeccable reputation into the controversy. Covid had threatened to destroy the concert industry. But in 2023, the contagion that riddled the business was unchecked greed.
This was merely the warm-up to another debacle when tickets for the European leg of Swift’s Eras dates went on sale. Or should that be “sale”? In France, Ticketmaster crashed. Elsewhere, the decision to allocate tickets by random lottery was regarded as a panicked response by Ticketmaster to its disastrous handling of Swift’s US dates. It was a cruel summer for Ticketmaster. Crueller yet for the punters forced to negotiate its hellscape of a website.
Since assuming control of the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery empire, chief executive Zaslav has seemingly tried to alienate as many people as possible. Over the northern summer, he was singled out as one of the villains of the Hollywood writers and actors strikes. “How many private jets does David Zaslav need?” Democratic Party politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wondered at an actors rally.
Zaslav’s typically tone-deaf response was to point out that, though he used the Warner Bros. Discovery jet, he did not own a private aircraft. Incredibly, after the WGA dispute was resolved, he claimed the striking writers were “right about almost everything”.
His lack of self-awareness was underscored by his decision to press ahead with a speech at Boston University in May, at the height of the strikes. To his shock, he was booed by students.
He then proceeded to seemingly taunt the writers by hosting a champagne-soaked party in Cannes, celebrating 100 years of Warner Bros. He was also the first Hollywood bigwig to bin already completed projects – first the Batgirl movie, then the Looney Tunes adaptation Coyote vs Acme – to avail of tax write-offs.
Zaslav then went one better and started scrubbing content off the HBO Max streaming service, which he had bafflingly renamed Max. That practice was taken up by Disney boss Bob Iger, who cast the Disney+ Willow sequel into the abyss.
Iffy graphics have been a fact of cinema-going life since Hollywood realised digital sorcery was cheaper and easier than practical effects. Even so, the onslaught of dire CGI was particularly noticeable in 2023.
For instance, Disney’s “live action” Little Mermaid reboot drowned in a muddy colour scheme of greys and browns. Mermaid was not an outright flop. Yet it fell short of the hit Disney had anticipated. As one executive told Deadline, the project was “Not a huge disappointment, but a disappointment, nonetheless”.
Meanwhile, the visually ghastly Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania underscored the decline in the quality of the Marvel movies. Here, the FX looked like a fever dream cooked up on an Atari ST. Privately, FX workers blamed Marvel executives for continuous interference – and for diverting resources to another Marvel feature, Black Panther sequel Wakanda Forever.
There was also the wider problem of special effects artists forced to do too much with too few resources – and pushed constantly to the brink of burnout.
“For Ant-Man, there were a lot of editorial changes happening toward the latter third and fourth of the project that were just too late. There’s a point of no return,” one insider told Vulture. “Why certain things were changed, why certain notes were nitpicked longer than they should have been – that’s on Marvel.”
Worst of all, though, was The Flash. So dreadful were its effects, director Andy Muschietti had to come out in their defence – claiming they were horrible on purpose.
“The idea, of course, is... we are in the perspective of The Flash,” Muschietti said. “Everything is distorted in terms of lights and textures. We enter this ‘waterworld’ which is basically being in [The Flash’s] POV [point of view]. It was part of the design, so if it looks a little weird to you, that was intended.”
The whole world is bored of Harry and Meghan v the Windsors. That didn’t stop previously obscure gossip mag writer Scobie from dishing further dirt.
He did so with the widely criticised Endgame – the Dutch edition of which erroneously named the royals alleged to have had posed questions about the skin colour of Harry and Meghan’s then-future child. Whatever about the Netherlands, in the US, where Scobie has made his home, Endgame has flopped, selling fewer than 10,000 copies on its week of release.
Levinson already had his critics following the success of the writer/producer’s explicit teen drama Euphoria. That show was accused of fetishising teen sexuality (featuring a cast who all looked to be knocking on their 30s).
But Levinson, son of Hollywood director Barry, went one further with the appalling and creepy The Idol – a collaboration with star The Weeknd that cast neither in a positive light.
The Idol lost its shine in April when original show-runner Amy Seimetz exited amid supposed creative differences with The Weeknd – and despite the fact that 80 per cent of the series was already filmed.
Seimetz’s miscalculation was seemingly to introduce too much of a female perspective to the story of a Britney Spears-esque female pop star (Lily-Rose Depp) who falls under the spell of a “charismatic” cult leader (The Weeknd).
Levinson stepped in and, according to a Rolling Stone exposé, turned The Idol into a ”degrading love story” with elements of “sexual torture porn” and “rape fantasy”. Reviews were vicious, and the show was quickly cancelled. The stain on the reputations of all involved may take a while to clear.
Swifties were appalled when their icon split with steady/boring long-term boyfriend Joe Alwyn and apparently took up with floppy-haired 1975 frontman Matty Healy.
Even before rumours of a Swift romance, Healy was doing a good job getting on everyone’s nerves with a 1975 tour where he irritatingly “deconstructed” the idea of a tour by watching himself on TV and snogging raw meat.
He would go on to cause an international incident when he kissed a male bandmate on stage in Malaysia – prompting authorities to shut down the festival. There was criticism over his participation in the juvenile Adam Friedland Show Podcast, where he appeared to laugh along as the hosts mocked the ethnicity of rapper Ice Spice. The world rejoiced when Swift moved on to another boring B-lister in American footballer Travis Kelce.
When 2023 dawned, Fallon was already neck and neck with James Corden for the title of most irritating American talk show host of all time – quite an achievement, as anyone who has suffered through an American talk show will testify.
It takes a lot to be more annoying than Corden. Fallon, though, exuded smarm the way the sun radiated deadly rays in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine - and sported the fakest TV grin this side of Zippy in Rainbow.
That plastic smile was seemingly exposed as a sham when Rolling Stone claimed “erratic behaviour” by Fallon on the set of his Tonight Show had cultivated a toxic work environment. Fallon apologised to his staffers, who, at that point, had downed tools as part of the writer’s strike.
“It’s embarrassing and I feel so bad,” said Fallon, ensuring his feelings were prioritised over his staff’s. “Sorry if I embarrassed you and your family and friends... I feel so bad I can’t even tell you.”
Brand’s Hollywood career has long since swirled down the gutter, and by 2023, he was an increasingly infrequent presence on the British comedy television circuit that had once been his staple.
He has instead reinvented himself as a conspiracy guru on social media. In September, a Channel 4 documentary made serious allegations about his private life – which Brand denied and claimed were an attempt to silence him.
He still hasn’t shut up, however – when riots broke out in Dublin in November, he took to YouTube to offer the characteristically woolly claim that the violence was a backlash against “globalism”.
Her hips may not lie – but what about her tax returns? In November, the Colombian singer agreed to pay a fine of €7.3 million ($12.8m) hours before she was due to go on trial for tax evasion in Barcelona, where the judge handed her a further three-year suspended sentence. She was accused of failing to pay €14.5m ($25.5m) in taxes from 2012 to 2014. Shakira listed her official residence as the Bahamas.
However, under Spanish law, anyone remaining in the country longer than six months is considered a resident for tax purposes. Before she settled, the prosecution was set to call 117 witnesses, including her driver, doctors, and beauticians, to testify that she had been allegedly based in Spain the whole time.
Radio-friendly country music deserves to be shunned at the best of times – but Nashville-based Aldean went even beyond mere sonic schmaltz with controversial hit Try That In A Small Town.
Celebrating rural communities, self-sufficiency and gun ownership, the song was a love letter to the American heartland and its values. But many saw a darker side – and Aldean was criticised for the accompanying video in which he performed in front of the same Tennessee courthouse where a black teenager was lynched in 1928.
“The most contemptible country song of the decade [and] the video is worse,” said Variety magazine, adding that it “is close to being the most cynical song ever written about the implicit moral superiority of having a limited number of neighbours”.
Viewers expressed their outrage, suggesting the team on the show was 'robbed'.