Things That Bother You About Moving Pictures

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Weird alt-right dudes on YouTube and Twitter have poisoned credulous people's minds in the exact opposite way the social justice warriors of old on Tumblr and Gawker did five or so years ago. Internet sycophants have flipped from accusing Nintendo of being hateful for having a fat boss monster in Zelda to accusing Nintendo of being, uh, Marxist for making Samus' zero suit less overtly sexual. These days it's very rare to see a classical "SJW" in the wild, and even most social justice advocates will make fun of them. Outrage culture has changed, baby.

The amount of people who think Star Wars is pushing a communist agenda because it features an Asian woman and Laura Dern with purple hair in prominent roles is absolutely embarrassing. Strictly speaking, you are almost never going to see a film rooted in propaganda come out of Hollywood unless it's pro-CIA or something more explicitly political - usually in line with the beliefs of our government at large, because it would be funded by them. The Last Jedi is just an easily-marketable fun space adventure, same as all the previous films. It includes more female and non-white characters because producers are realizing that the core demographic of Hollywood blockbusters is much more diverse than they used to believe; that's it, really. I think it's a good thing, and it certainly isn't making our movies worse.

[Dr. Insomniac]

There's always going to be the annoying leftist who defeats their own message. The Jonathan McIntoshes. The MTV Decodeds. But as of late, for every single instance of that, there's been a hundred examples each of far-right whining. Videos getting mad at Doctor Who for casting a female lead. Essays hissing at the size of She-Ra's breasts. Those twitters losing their minds over Zombieland Saga having a trans character. And at least with the former, I can understand and agree with some of the opinions even if I heavily disagree with the execution. Whereas with people complaining about Star Wars or something having a leftist agenda, it always comes from xenophobic assholes who foam at the mouth at seeing a single non-white guy on the big screen.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The massive fan backlash at a female Thor movie is fucking stupid. I mean, as bad as SJW culture has gotten, we now have an equally idiotic group of anti-SJWs that will hate on anything that casts a female or person of color or varying sexuality in a dominant role.

It WOULD be understandable if people were concerned of Natalie Portman being the person in question cast in the role, since she notoriously joined in her performance in the first two Thor movies and walked away from the MCU essentially making it clear how low she thinks of the genre. Kind of odd that she would come back to something she was never truly committed to before, and it would be valid to be worried if she will truly make an effort here.

But, you know, I've hardly heard a mention of that. It really wouldn't matter who they cast. Female hero automatically equals bad for some reason, despite it coming from Jason Aaron's critically acclaimed run in the comics and the fact that Chris Hemsworth is still cast in the movie. Keep in mind that a lot if these people were also probably fans of Ragnarok, which was directed by Taika Waititi, who also directed the upcoming very un-SJW Jojo Rabbit (in which he casts himself as an imaginary friend version of Hitler), who is also directing Love and Thunder. How does that automatically make this an SJW movie when his prior work has been anything but that?

I'll grant you that Marvel's very shallow attempt to diversify their character roster while still relying on pre-existing brand recognition lead to a lot of mediocre to bad runs, but that doesn't automatically make every run bad, like Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel.

And for the record I found Captain Marvel to be fairly boring aside from a few interesting scenes, I couldn't get into the Spider-Gwen  comics despite slogging through four volumes of them before giving up on the series, and I found the A-Force shot in Endgame to be rather pandering (though it honestly didn't bother me since the movie was full of fan-service, anyways).

The problem I have with hating on these movies or comics so blindly because of their perceived SJW status is because it doesn't take into account any of the work or effort put into making any kind of art or the qualities and nuances of good writing and directing and what separates it from bad writing and directing, or good or bad performances.

If you aren't a fan of Taika's style or take on the Thor character and mythos, and are not happy about him returning to direct this movie, than fine. It's also fine to be pessimistic about it if it's an adaptation of a run that someone may not like but has actually read to properly critique. However, 99.9% of the hate is from angry ass-holes that just care about the most base, shallow, outward appearance of something. The true irony of all of this is that both the SJW and anti-SJW communities have become perfect mirror images of each other. They may take stances on opposing sides, but they are completely the same in judging anything and everything on a purely external basis, completely out of context rather than on the quality of the actual content itself.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Media discourse is so chaotic that anyone with a youtube channel can scream about the gender or race of a character and somehow accumulate a large audience. It doesn't even matter if the thing is aimed at them, like when that one youtuber spent video after video getting mad at the She-Ra reboot. And it sucks. Some of these people just aren't mentally well. They think stuff like a black Ariel or a female Thor are indications of a huge propaganda movement going on, and not just the director or producer hiring someone they liked for the role. It's insane.

[Foggle]

The term "SJW" devolved into a meaningless boogeyman for YouTube clicks around the time GamerGate went into full swing. Everything is supposedly SJW these days. Wolfenstein is SJW because killing Nazis is considered communist propaganda now. Marvel is SJW for making movies starring women and people who aren't white, but firing James Gunn for tweeting edgy jokes was actually good and based because he doesn't like Trump. If motherfucking Aliens or Terminator 2 were made today, and were the exact same films with no differences whatsoever, there would be at least 500 YouTube videos apiece dedicated to explaining how James Cameron is part of a propaganda campaign to eradicate white men or some shit. It's pathetic.

It's best to just never, ever look up what other people (outside of your friends, family, and this board I guess ) think about media these days, go in blind, and draw your own conclusions. No one with an obvious political agenda on YouTube or social media - and this not only includes, but especially applies to people who call themselves "apolitical," as that is almost always either a right-wing dogwhistle or a cowardly excuse used by corporations - can be trusted. I doubt many of these folks actually believe the vapid shit they're spewing and I'm sure they're all 100% in it for the ad revenue and Patreon subs, but that doesn't make things any better because they've completely ruined all art discourse and criticism for the foreseeable future.

The initial run of Spider-Gwen (the one collected in the TPB labeled "Vol. 0") was extremely good IMO, but the series lost steam fast due to being interrupted by Secret Wars, and I dropped it soon after the re-launch because it felt like a completely different book despite retaining the same creative team and not actually being affected by the event in any meaningful way. Those first few issues were creative, lean, and let the excellent artwork do a lot of the heavy lifting, but when it came back it became bizarrely text-heavy despite having a less-interesting story to tell. There were these gigantic info dump pages explaining important things about the characters once an issue that took longer to read than the rest of the fucking pages combined. I tapped out after Vol. 1.

Oh, and trust me, pundits will find a way to paint Jojo Rabbit as an SJW movie (though maybe they won't bother since it's an indie film). It has an anti-racism message and portrays Hitler in a negative light, after all. This alone is proof that Taika Waititi is a Stalinist who wants to enact sharia law in the US and sterilize all white people.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The initial run of Spider-Gwen (the one collected in the TPB labeled "Vol. 0") was extremely good IMO, but the series lost steam fast due to being interrupted by Secret Wars, and I dropped it soon after the re-launch because it felt like a completely different book despite retaining the same creative team and not actually being affected by the event in any meaningful way. Those first few issues were creative, lean, and let the excellent artwork do a lot of the heavy lifting, but when it came back it became bizarrely text-heavy despite having a less-interesting story to tell. There were these gigantic info dump pages explaining important things about the characters once an issue that took longer to read than the rest of the fucking pages combined. I tapped out after Vol. 1.

I read Vol. 0-3, and while it was never my kind of series, I do agree that Vol. 0 at least laid out a good foundation for the series, but that potential was soon squandered. I really like the character herself, though, and am glad that Spider-Verse did her justice. Also, yes, Robbi Rodriguez's artwork is so unique and rich in colors that just pop out at you. It's fucking gorgeous to look at. And Spider-Gwen"s costume design is one of the best from the current era of superhero books. As for Marvel series getting derailed after Secret Wars, Ms. Marvel suffered a similar fate, as did Miles Morales Spider-Man after Civil War II, though the current run by Saladin Ahmed is actually quite good so far, IMO. It's funny because I actually liked the Secret Wars book itself (Jonathan Hickman has been a pretty good writer from what I've read of his work so far), as it's one of the few event books to actually hold my interest with a coherent and easy enough to follow story. That said, it is a good indicator of how forced events can fuck up the momentum of other good runs that would be better off if they could just ignore the major events of a shared Universe.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I saw Knives Out last weekend and had mixed feelings on it. As usual Rian Johnson's directing is pretty well-executed and visually appealing. The writing on the other hand has several plot issues that I can't help but notice and holds the film back from really being great in my eyes, which is especially unfortunate for a murder mystery that hinges on a logical series of circumstances. That said, I still enjoyed watching it well enough. Really, this is pretty much how I've felt about all of RJ's movies so far.

The reason I'm bringing it up on this thread, though, is despite not being his biggest fan, the amount of whiney Star Wars fanboys that are vocal about never seeing this or any other RJ movie because he "killed" Star Wars is insufferable. Even worse are the haters who did see it only to bitch about how it's "more woke propaganda" (which is fucking ludicrous if you've actually seen the movie and can grasp the most basic of themes). Again, this is coming from someone who has had criticisms and mixed feelings on all of his movies, including The Last Jedi. It's perfectly understandable to not like that movie or his particular style and say it's not for you. But it gets outright stupid when you are treating boycotting any future movie he makes as some kind of campaign against him. Just don't see it then. What's the use of vocally bitching about a movie that you admit you will never watch anyways?

[Dr. Insomniac]

That part of the Star Wars fandom is pretty miasmic and two-faced. They spent decades screaming at George Lucas like he killed their firstborns, but now they act like he's a helpless victim of Disney's machinations (ignoring that he liked TLJ and gave some notes for the sequels). But what I don't like the most about the Rian situation is it's likely gonna turn off some potentially interesting and ambitious filmmakers from touching SW because they don't want to deal with awful fanboys attacking their character. And the worst case scenario is we'll get another incident like what happened to Jake Lloyd.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've kind of been in this weird internal divide on how I feel about the criticism of movies produced by Disney in the modern era. On the one hand, I pretty much agree with most people that Disney, as a corporation, has been pretty abysmal in how they conduct their business, especially on the movie end of things. For instance, there was that incident where they threatened a famous theater chain that they wouldn't let them show Star Wars: The Force Awakens in any of their theaters unless they extended their showing of it at a premiere venue of their's, which they tried to refuse since they had already made a deal to use that time to debut Tarantino's newest film at the time, The Hateful Eight. Disney was basically telling them to dishonor their deal to make a few extra bucks for them. I think Tarantino still got to have his debut honored as originally planned when the story went public and Disney wanted to avoid bad publicity, but the fact that this was even a situation that came up to begin with is horrendous. And that is just one of many instances of modern Disney throwing their weight around and abusing their money and power in pretty unethical ways. Their handling of the James Gunn situation also comes to mind when I think of why I can't stand their business sense. Again, they may have rectified the situation, but that doesn't excuse the fact that it even came up in the first place.

On the other hand, I feel like this has lead to a very one-sided mind-set in this day and age that anything produced by Disney is automatically bad or part of the corporate factory. I tend to agree that most, if not all, of their live-action remakes are pretty atrocious. Likewise, a lot of their products due have the sense of feeling on the more hollow and safe side of things. That said, I get a bit aggravated when this criticism in and of itself, ironically becomes a black and white monotonous mindset that many critics will use to apply to anything that is under the Disney brand, completing ignoring the actual hard-working talent that works on each individual product. This also gets applied to MCU films, Star Wars, and anything produced by Pixar from the last decade or so. To be fair, I do think that there is a legitimate complain to be had about Disney's corporate design limiting creative freedom and leading to subpar movies. On the other hand, I think this criticism can be unfairly overblown at times and used as a way to deny some genuinely good movies of being recognized as anything more than a "soulless factory product" as so many people like to claim. People of this nature will scrounge for any rationale that they can to try and make any of these movies seem worse than they actually are. Sort of like how YMS retroactively lowered his scores for Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man: Homecoming (despite clearly initially liking them) or every other YouTuber going on about how these movies are nothing more than passably forgettable.

It really irks me because I feel like that ends up encouraging people to overlook some genuinely great movies. I say this as someone who loves film in general and watches a shit-ton of movies from classic films to indie films to foreign films. I think more than anything it's disrespectful to the people making the movies who, themselves, are not really part of the corporate structure that people hate so much. It also feels like a way to peer-pressure fans of these movies and other people in general to turn on them because it's "uncool" to like something produced by the big corporation, regardless of the quality of the individual product itself.

It's just really annoying for me at this point. There are definitely a lot of modern Disney movies that I do feel deserve to be bashed as much as they have been. But there are others that I feel unfairly get lumped up in the mix for honestly pretty bad reasons. Just my two-cents, there.

[Dr. Insomniac]

It does seem like a broad stroke that's only applied to Disney over the other studios. You rarely hear people boycott NBC shows because of Comcast's practices, and a whole generation understands the people who make Fox movies and shows have nothing to do with the guys running Fox News. But for some reason, folks believe your average MCU director is in close contact with the guy who threatened to sue a family over a Spider-Man tombstone.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Since Francis Ford Coppola's back in the news for myopically calling Dune and No Time to Die the same kind of movie while betting $100 million on another one of his passion projects, I have to ask what was his last good film? I got curious and saw a little of Twixt, and thought "The guy who made The Godfather directed this? It looks like a DTV movie." And I know film buffs have grown on his Dracula, though I watched it a couple years ago and thought it was interesting but average.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've kind of learned to take everything that a lot of these big name directors say about modern films with a huge grain of salt. Like, I totally get that they just can't connect with these big modern Hollywood epics, and to be fair, a lot of them these days are pretty heavily filtered to meet corporate standards and desires. That said, there are of course genuinely great movies as well to the point where I think you'd have to either be blatantly ignorant and not actually watch the content in question, or be so out of touch that much of what these movies do so well is lost on you as a viewer. I tend to feel that Coppola is an example of the latter. Both Dune and No Time To Die are fundamentally different stories with different intents and messages to the point that you'd have to not find any meaning in their content to call them essentially the same thing.

Honestly, of all of these directors bashing the modern state of Hollywood in one way or another (mostly singularly focused on superhero movies), I'll say that Terry Gilliam probably had the most tact about it, IMO. He mostly criticized Marvel on a lack of variety (which even as a fan, is somewhat of a fair criticism) while still admitting that they were technically well made. I can at least respect that viewpoint whether or not I agree with it.

[Dr. Insomniac]

And the other thing is at least Gilliam still makes good movies. At least Scorsese still makes good movies. And you can understand their problems with Hollywood. Meanwhile, Coppola can hardly be considered the underdog when he's one of the richest directors of all time and his family is full of successful creators like Sofia Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, and Nicolas Cage. I mean, spending $100 million of his own money to make a film because studio don't want to finance it sounds shitty on the surface, but how many directors have $100 million to spare in the first place?

[Avaitor]

I'm too lazy to check, but Coppola has to be trailing only Spielberg as the richest director alive, right? He must have made more money with his wine than from any of his movies.

And I really like his Dracula in terms of production, but as an adaption, it's just fine. No better or worse than Universal or Hammer's versions IMO.

[Dr. Insomniac]

There's Lucas, but Coppola's up there.