BahRamYou
2mo ago
Strictly speaking, who is losing here?
I don't know. I have a sense that Hollywood inside baseball is a strange, insular thing and not really legible to outsiders. Like you said, the execs making the business decisions aren't really risking their own money, and Disney has so many bllions that even a hundred million isn't such a big deal to them. And the artists making the shows clearly aren't that concerned with the aesthetic concerns of us plebs. I'm reminded of that Michael Chrichton quote, where he says there are things in Hollywood that are obvious to him as in insider, but which get reported completely backwards in the news. So I'm inclined to agree with you that it's all some internal status game. But tastes can change.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
I think to me it's about- what is the focus of these stories? because we don't have infinite time and attention span. Executing bandits would be fucked up if that were real life, but in a story it's just a minor thing you do to move on to the more interesting parts. Having a simple, cartoonish villain like the original Darth Vader allows for an operatic story where you can enjoy the heroes being awesome and explore the other parts of the world. It would just slow things down if the original Star Wars spent an hour discussing his traumatic past and how he's really not such a bad guy after all. If that stuff is actually interesting (debatable) it can go in its own, separate movie (the prequels).
BahRamYou
2mo ago
The past remains a foreign country.
I think thats really the crux of it. I wouldnt argue that TOS star trek is some sort of alt-right bedrock, but it's hardly modern woke either. Even the existence of a heroic straight white male main character would invalidate that. It's... its own weird thing. A weird mix of ww2 nostalgia, 60s california hippies, and Gene Roddenberry just being weird.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
Agreed, but writers should think about why they're adding these "shades of grey."
Like, if I go to a bakery and buy sugar cookies, I expect them to taste sweet. Sweet tastes good. Perhaps it might be interesting, sometimes, to dump in chili pepper or coffee grounds or whatever and "subvert expectations" with complex flavors. But unless you really know what you're doing, it mostly just tastes bad.
JRR Tolkien was not a stupid man. He fought in WW1, and was well familiar with the horrors of war against a morally complex foe. But he still used orcs as a simple, pure evil, because that gave him the space to focus on other elements of the human condition. Saying "well what if the orcs arent pure evil" would overwhelm the rest of the story.
I actually had that happen in a DnD game once, sorta. We were being attacked by bandits, and knocked them unconscious. We were lawful good, so we couldnt just execute them. It basically turned the rest of the campaign into a boring slog as we ran a prison camp to try to keep these stupid NPCs alive, instead of doing any fun adventuring stuff. If I wanted to hear a story about the human nature in prison, there are other, better places for that.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
Yeah I didn't mean to hold up RLM as an exemplar of the online right. More like, they made an impact criticizing pop-culture franchises, and lots of other people followed in their wake, and most of those others were on the rightwing. But like the other person said, RLM is not explicitly left-wing, and in today's world, that pretty much makes them right-wing by default.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
Yeah I think I'm pretty much on the same page as you. She's not a media critic at all, she normally does science education stuff, but it's obvious that she was a huge fan as a kid and put a lot of time and effort into that critique.
but Star Trek was originally a very liberal vision
Was it though...? It was set onboard a military ship, with a strict hierarchy, and the characters all strongly demonstrating classical virtues. It had some worldbuilding that could be seen as liberal, like the replicators that made everything free, but that's just sci-fi plot stuff. It certainly had some moments that would have been considered liberal for the 60s, like the famous "first interracial kiss on TV," but that was also, you know, a captain kissing his secretary. The themes of the show were classic western/hero's journey stuff, "wagon train to the stars." Most of the plots were along the lines of "a big bad Other shows up, and the heroic Captian Kirk must punch it to death."
What if the bad guys aren't really all bad?" "What if Orcs aren't all evil?" "What if the Jedi fucked up?"
The problem is, we get all that in real life. We look to entertainment to simplify and escape that sort of thing. If you want to write a story where the orcs aren't evil, it just ends up being a grimdark slog where Aragorn was ruthlessly genociding a sentient people and "we all need to feel sad, man, because that's just like what happened with the Native Americans, you know?" You can just read actual history for that. Or, perhaps, an avant-garde literary novel that assumes you've already read thousands of pages of both popular entertainment and criticism. It's not going to work for a normal human who just wants to experience the feeling of being heroic for once in their life, without having to feel guilt and shame for it.
Same thing with "what if the Jedi fucked up..." you mean like all politicians do? Just go watch the news for that. The Jedi were awesome as this mystical fictional ideal. We don't need to see that perverted into something corrupt. Surely you can find some other example of a corrupt politician, if that's what you're interested in.
edit: to me, that sort of criticism is like saying "what if the unobtanium is not really unobtainable?" It's not some profound insight, just poking at something that the writers used to tell an entertaining story in a simple way. Maybe that could be the basis for a great story, but you'd have to really think about why you want to tell that story, and make sure it's not just "because I want to depress the hell out of the audience."
BahRamYou
2mo ago
Yeah I hesitated a bit about whether to mention it. But I felt it necessary to, um, "notice" that this isn't a broad representative slice of America doing this stuff. It's a very niche, inbred culture of people who grew up in Hollywood and all know each other because of their family/religious connections. Maybe it worked out OK in the past because they were talented, but at this point it's just nepotism.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
Ah OK. I've heard of it but I would never think of it from just the acronym.
Bear in mind, it can take time for aesthetic taste to change. So many artists who are now famous died poverished and unknown during their own life. And others who were popular in their time are now mostly forgotten.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
Unlike the other shows it sticks with the original positive premise, even if it's modern, progressive and deconstructing star trek.
did it though? From the (two) episodes I watched, it seemed to be constantly taking the piss out of the optimistic naive male character that wanted to do good, while propping up the #girlboss# female character as a queen who could do know wrong, no matter how insufferable she was. Most of the jokes were just taking little bits of what the older shows did for convenience (eg, making a teleporter because filming a shuttlecraft was too expensive) and trying to seem "smart" by pointing out minor inconsistencies.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
To me, that's like saying "Bill Cosby has a new comedy series, and it's not that bad! A lot less terrible than his last season of the Cosby show!"
Like... why. Why do these people get to make so many mistakes, and still get the big chances to try again. We need to stop watching them.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
It's ironic that you resent the latest Star Trek shows being unrelentlessly grimdark, which is true, because Star Trek was originally a very optimistic view of the future
Sorry but how is that "ironic?" It's like you're saying that I'm "ironic" for hating new Star Trek for being something 100% against the core themes that it started with. That's not ironic that's just... natural? If anything I just want to acknowledge what a weird state we've arrived at, where these huge popular media franchises have been perverted into something that seems designed to antagonize all of its original fans, and we're not allowed to criticize them for it. I guess you could say it's our fault, as nerds, for not paying attention during high school English class- we were all so focused on the plot and worldbuilding that we missed what the teacher was saying how it's the theme and tones that really matter, so we let our ideological enemies take control of "our own" beloved media.
Like you said, it seems as though the writers hate optimism, hate fun, and genuinely hate anything good in life. I wouldn't mind so much if they just had a bunch of stupid plot holes. But these new sci-fi writers seem to genuinely want to inflict pain on their audience. I don't even know where they can go from here. Will the next season just be a long, extended, graphic scene of Patrick Stewart being raped? Because that seems to be the tone that they're going for.
Also like you said, "but what if the bad guys aren't really all bad?" is not really the innovative question that some writers think it is. It basically just marks the boundary between entertainment and literary fiction. But if you're going the literary route, you need to know that it's a tough road that will not be fun to follow, and you'll lose most of your audience along the way. Putting that into a normal genre fiction piece will destroy it.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
"highest grossing media franchises" isn't a good way to judge art, IMO. It might be cliche, but I still like French movies, even though they don't gross so much. Also Italy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Strangers_(2016_film)), Mexico (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo,_False_Chronicle_of_a_Handful_of_Truths), and... Uganda...!? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_Captain_Alex%3F)
BahRamYou
2mo ago
Personally I... enjoyed the new Star Trek films, in the sense that I thought they were a fun way to spend two hours but will probably never watch them again. But I absolutely hate the new series. So... I think you and I are in agreement?
BahRamYou
2mo ago
And ill nitpick you right back and say they started with their star trek movie reviews, and got a pretty decent following from them (including me) before they did the star wars ones (which admittedly got a much bigger reaction)
BahRamYou
2mo ago
To be honest, im just not plugged in enough to hollywood gossip to know. You might be right, i just dont know. The producers, especially, confuse me.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
I remember 8 being hugely contentious. Lots of people were saying it was great, and we "just didn't get it." The main star wars subreddit banned all criticism, to the point where people started a new one "saltier than crait" just so they could complain about it. I worked with nerds in a progressive area, so I was kind of afraid to discuss it with them. I feel like it started with a ton of apologia, and even ardent fans, and now that shit is finally dying away.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
Uh, GRR Martin is American and has been working in Hollywood for decades, long before he hit it big with Game of Thrones. It's very odd for him to publicly criticize his own baby. QT is a little old now but he's still a huge name, so the same thing applies.
I don't know why you'd look to aging actors who haven't been a big box office draw for a long time now, for opinions. They seem to just smile blandly for everything. So yeah, they'd be the last stones to roll- if they criticize something it'll only be long after everyone else has already done so.
What I'm seeing is that it started with (a) die-hard fans who would go see the latest "thing in franchise" no matter what and (b) progressives who would go see it to "own the chuds," and then give it critical acclaim and say that anyone who criticized it was just racist/sexist. But over time the right-wing chuds just stopped even bothering to complain, and the die-hard fans stopped watching. So there wasn't much for the progressive fans to do. It's not fun to watch a crappy movie and pretend you like it if you've got no righteous cause to fuel it.
Also kind of weird that Disney single-handedly controls so much IP. That should be a point of vulnerability. These days all the good stuff is coming from other countries.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
I feel like polite social life often requires a certain amount of lying. Not only to others, but even to yourself. It helps ease the tension in all sorts of awkward situations, if we can all just fib a little and pretend things don't exist. Autists really struggle with that. (And I say that as someone who is a bit autistic and a terrible liar)
BahRamYou
2mo ago
That's pretty much what I see as the best solution, given our current tech and culture. I just don't think it's possible for current-year Americans to really "share the road" with each other. Instead we've got this awkward compromise where most streets are frustratingly slow for cars and dangerously fast for anyone else.
I don't really hate the new Star Trek movies, they were stupid but at least kinda fun. it's the new TV shows I can't stand. Like you said, they went all in on the "strong female role models" angle and it became impossible to criticize them. But they were also this joyless slog through a grimdark universe of unrelenting misery. I do think some critics are finally waking up to that, or at least new critics are appearing who have noticed that the core audience is fed up.
I really do think it's becoming a more "normie" opinion that the Star Wars sequels were bad. If anything I hear more praise for the prequels now, people appreciate them for at least trying to be fun and being their own weird quirky thing.
Is this the beginning of a popular rebellion against woke Hollywood garbage?
Like (I imagine) a lot of you, I got fed up with mainstream Hollywood movies and TV a long time ago. For various reasons, but a big part of it was how they insisted on inserting heavy-handed woke propaganda into everything, even where it made no sense. I'm hardly the first to complain about that, but it seemed to be mostly anonymous online reactionaries complaining, while mainstream critics and everyone "respectable" still lapped it up. The Star Wars sequels, Nu-Trek, and all Marvel movies made $$$$$$$ while also gathering rave critical reviews, even though it became something of a joke when the "audience score" on rotten tomatoes was always so much lower than the "critic reviews" score.
And to be clear, I'm not (just) mad at those things because I disagree with their politics. I genuinely think those are terrible movies. They have bad plots, bad characters, bad dialogue, and often even bad at basic filmmaking stuff like editing, camera angles, and sound mixing. One theory I like is that, for quite a while, Hollywood was so focused on exporting big famous brands to foreign countries that they didn't care how it sounded in English. They'd all be watching it dubbed or with subtitles anyway, and then (hopefully) buying merch. But for a long time I felt like I couldn't say these things without getting labelled as a deranged culture warrior.
But now? I dunno. I'm seeing more and more open criticism of big hollywood brands, and some of it is coming from people who are not easily dismissed. Examples:
- https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/george-r-r-martin-everything-wrong-house-of-the-dragon-1235988012/
- https://ew.com/quentin-tarantino-refuses-watch-toy-story-4-8702960
- https://old.reddit.com/r/lordoftherings/comments/1f4lzx3/i_laughed_really_hard/ (orc family lol)
- https://old.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/19dspi4/barbie_and_the_oscars/ (personally I thought it was totally fair to only give an Oscar to Ryan Gosling, he totally stole the show in that movie)
- https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/03/lets-not-mince-words-beauty-and-the-beast-is-a-terrible-movie/
- (https://acoup.blog/2019/12/29/miscellanea-the-latest-jedi) (note that he is usually left wing in the culture wars, but this was an excellent summary of what some of the more right-wing chuds were saying about The Last Jedi)
- star wars the acolyte was recently cancelled after terrible reviews and ratings
- https://youtube.com/watch?v=MdLHKdn0JTY
The last one was what inspired me to write this post. Lots have people have already criticized Star Trek over the years, most notably the RedLetterMedia guys who kinda got famous from it. But I associate most of them with the online right. This is a 4 hour review from someone who doesn't normally do movie reviews, and she felt compelled to keep saying how she normally loves seeing pro-diversity left wing messages in Star Trek. But it's such an amazingly bad series that even its target audience can't defend it. I'm not woke, but I used to love Star Trek as a kid. Picard season 1 was so terrible I refused to watching anything after that, and it made me completely hate the franchise as a whole. I know that "some people say" that it got better, or that some other new Star Trek shows are good, or whatever. I don't care, I hate that pile of garbage so much that I'm never giving them another dollar or view unless they publically apologize for it. It felt like someone (maybe Patrick Stewart? Maybe Alex Kurtzman? Maybe all the Star Trek actors who have been stuck doing silly conventions with crazy fans for decades?) genuily hated their fanbase and wanted to give them the finger.
I don't know. Maybe I'm being too optimistic here. But I feel like we've finally crossed the threshold where everyone is fed up with Hollywood's crap. They've taken pretty much every bit of pop culture we loved as children, and burned it all down to make a quick buck. They kept recycling the same crap in their little clique of Jewish Hollywood elites and refused to listen to any criticism. You can only keep doing that for so long before the audience gets sick of it.
And at long last, we can finally agree that the new Star Trek movies are bad, right?
I haven't, and probablly won't. i'm just totally burned out on that entire franchise now.
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