Is it a tad too late to cash in on this kind of satire of millennial lifestyle? Possibly. Millennial Hunter’s story kicks off with a boomer responsible for writing all those “Millennials Are Killing the X Industry” articles facing undue tragedy when his wife is killed, his son goes missing, and his vintage car explodes as a result of a crazed millennial streamer/influencer. Taking on a vow to kill the millennial responsible and then any millennial he comes across, his path for revenge culminates in the uncovering of a dark conspiracy to replace the boomers of the world with millennials.
You see, if Millennial Hunter is making any satire then it is doing so with the understanding that under a capitalistic structure that aging comes with planned obsolescence. The elderly have to make way for the younger generation, something they have refused to do time and time again, affecting Gen X and then Millennials, and then now in the modern sense Gen Z. As Gen Alpha enters the work force, this struggle for power will come to affect them as well, with most of the wealth and power still consolidated among the Baby Boomers. Millennial Hunter ramps up that fear to the extremes, creating a world where Millennials are but a pawn in the plan of a crazed and powerful Millennial who wishes to kill off all the Baby Boomers, taking all the power for his own generation, allowing Gen X to fade into obscurity and building up Gen Z as mirror images of Millennials purely to serve them. It’s a genuinely smart way of exploring this, even if that seemingly comes a little too late.
The tongue-in-cheek references to Millennial pop culture is pertinent here as well. With so much of the culture that Gen Z came up in being dominated by franchise after franchise and reboot after reboot, Millennials were the last generation to experience a “slow” pop culture, if that makes sense. We were the testing ground for a lot of how the internet works today and the most powerful among our number are simply replicating the structures that were put into place by the Baby Boomers. Sure, it may be a bit more progressive, but for a lot of them they are co-opting more radical language in order to prop up a more conservative ideal - there is no “working within capitalism” to take it down, not truly.
Am I giving Millennial Hunter too much credit? Possibly. The references are tired a lot of the signifiers of Millennial behavior in the film are mostly just ways “young people” in general act in the internet age regardless of generation. When you take into account the arrested development of Millennials - again, something that was brought about by Boomers consolidating more and more for themselves and leaving not much else for the generations coming up after them - the more biting stereotypes about Millennials that are touched on such as being unable to afford a house in any form whatsoever or not being able to have healthcare without a job are biting indictments of those that raised us. At the very least Millennial Hunter uses that sort of “adult animation” aesthetic to good use. It does help to give the film a bit more of a feel for sarcasm and irony when that limited animation style is used. Aesthetic is the name of the game for Millennials, after all
Is it a tad too late to cash in on this kind of satire of millennial lifestyle? Possibly. Millennial Hunter’s story kicks off with a boomer responsible for writing all those “Millennials Are Killing the X Industry” articles facing undue tragedy when his wife is killed, his son goes missing, and his vintage car explodes as a result of a crazed millennial streamer/influencer. Taking on a vow to kill the millennial responsible and then any millennial he comes across, his path for revenge culminates in the uncovering of a dark conspiracy to replace the boomers of the world with millennials.
You see, if Millennial Hunter is making any satire then it is doing so with the understanding that under a capitalistic structure that aging comes with planned obsolescence. The elderly have to make way for the younger generation, something they have refused to do time and time again, affecting Gen X and then Millennials, and then now in the modern sense Gen Z. As Gen Alpha enters the work force, this struggle for power will come to affect them as well, with most of the wealth and power still consolidated among the Baby Boomers. Millennial Hunter ramps up that fear to the extremes, creating a world where Millennials are but a pawn in the plan of a crazed and powerful Millennial who wishes to kill off all the Baby Boomers, taking all the power for his own generation, allowing Gen X to fade into obscurity and building up Gen Z as mirror images of Millennials purely to serve them. It’s a genuinely smart way of exploring this, even if that seemingly comes a little too late.
The tongue-in-cheek references to Millennial pop culture is pertinent here as well. With so much of the culture that Gen Z came up in being dominated by franchise after franchise and reboot after reboot, Millennials were the last generation to experience a “slow” pop culture, if that makes sense. We were the testing ground for a lot of how the internet works today and the most powerful among our number are simply replicating the structures that were put into place by the Baby Boomers. Sure, it may be a bit more progressive, but for a lot of them they are co-opting more radical language in order to prop up a more conservative ideal - there is no “working within capitalism” to take it down, not truly.
Am I giving Millennial Hunter too much credit? Possibly. The references are tired a lot of the signifiers of Millennial behavior in the film are mostly just ways “young people” in general act in the internet age regardless of generation. When you take into account the arrested development of Millennials - again, something that was brought about by Boomers consolidating more and more for themselves and leaving not much else for the generations coming up after them - the more biting stereotypes about Millennials that are touched on such as being unable to afford a house in any form whatsoever or not being able to have healthcare without a job are biting indictments of those that raised us. At the very least Millennial Hunter uses that sort of “adult animation” aesthetic to good use. It does help to give the film a bit more of a feel for sarcasm and irony when that limited animation style is used. Aesthetic is the name of the game for Millennials, after all
