Hmm - there is a practice lately which has only really started being a thing over the past 2-3 years called “fan-baiting”. Its used both as a way to gain attention, as well as to insulate a product from criticism.
The process is that a studio or production will take isolated criticisms from a few trolls. This is easy to do because in the online world there are always going to be a tiny fringe who say things to be edgy, or to get attention, or just to get a rise.
The fringes do not represent the majority opinion or anything close to it. However, these fringe attacks are cherry picked by the studio / production and get portrayed as if they were the predominant sentiment of any and all criticism.
The vast majority of dislike for Rings of Power, or She Hulk, or Blood Origins, or Velma has nothing to do with race, gender, or orientation. Most of the criticism is because of very simple and legitimate things. The writing is awful. The characters are unlikable. The show uses an IP that is inappropriate, off-target, and doesn’t respect its source. Or (as in Velma’s case) all of the above.
Fan-baiting only works when the cherry-picked fringe examples are controversial. So the targets of the practice are fairly predictable.
I think we all need to start replacing the phrase “This movie/TV show/Video game/whatever is bad” with the phrase, “This movie/TV Show/Video Game/Whatever does not meet my needs.” There’s something absolute about calling something “bad” that implies that it is universally percieved this way, when in fact it never is.
Is She-Hulk good or bad? I dunno. It completely met my needs.
I loved it. In fact, it was probably my favorite out of all of the Marvel TV shows Disney has done so far. I thought it was brilliant and funny and it was refreshing to have a superhero show that didn’t end in a big punch-fest.
The good thing about reboots that are bad (or that don’t meet your needs) is that we live in an age of plenty where you can just ignore the new thing and keep watching the old thing. I did not need a new Conan or Total Recall movie. I heard they have been made, but since they didn’t contain the key element of both these films for me, I chose not to engage. And since the originals have not been erased, that worked out just fine for me.
Put me on the side of trying new things, switching character characteristics, whatever. I loved women Ghostbusters! So glad someone tried that, gave something a new flavour. Give it a go! Switch it up! But if I don’t like it, I don’t like it, and I can move on.
To keep it on topic, I have no love for the original but this particular show seems abrasive and not particularly funny. So non merci.
I meant the concept of diversity, not the people involved. The amount of agency (and cynicism) varies from person to person. Kaling apparently came right out and said nobody was interested in her story unless she pretended to make it about Velma. So, she certainly had agency, and I’m in no position to judge her choices.
And, hey, sometimes it works. You make your show called She-Ra that’s not really about She-Ra at all, but it finds its own audience, anyway. (From what I’ve heard about She-Ra.)
Now, on the other hand, the producers clearly saw something they could exploit to drum up controversy. Otherwise, why not just give Kaling the show she wanted?
It’s not even a new phenomenon, though it is more strident than it has been in my lifetime. Certain shows have been pimped out as “you support the troops by watching this”, .e.g., ISTR during various recent wars. I can’t swear to it, but I get that vibe off of some WWII stuff, too. (And back then the real-life social pressure was probably much greater.)
Nobody says you’re a bad person if you don’t like a Seth Rogan film. In fact, I’m sure I’ve seen plenty of think pieces on why you’re a bad person if you do like Seth Rogan.
Yeah, I agree. There’s a thread on this very board called The Remake is Never Better? where I point out all the cases of the remake being so good, it obliterates the memory of the past versions.
I feel like a lot of modern movies are obliterated by the shadows of their predecessors. Someone mentioned Total Recall and Conan, and those are in the categories of movies for me where I have to think really hard to remember that they have been remade.
So, why does “A Christmas Carol” work then? And Shakespeare, and Austen, and Poe? It’s an interesting question. I wonder if it’s because nobody owns them—and nobody tries to claim them.
Studios of course own all these properties they’re rebooting and so they have a tremendous amount of pressure that more-or-less guarantees the worst possible artistic choices. They’ll do it up all in the modern tech and styles but they’ll be terrified of putting any life into it. It’s an embalmed corpse in mortician’s makeup.
And then generations feel like they “own” the things they grew up with, were fans of. In the past people tended to set those things aside when they became adults, and maybe give a little eyeroll when they were “updated”. Now there’s a kind of paralysis.
But nobody “owns” the classics. Everybody accepts that there are different ways to tell the same stories, and everyone brings their own flavor to it, whether it’s to our taste or not.
This is why we must limit copyright to 4 years.
My dream project was always Pride and Prejudice, but with entirely black actors, no changes, no explanations or rationales. Denzel would’ve made such a great Mr. Darcy.
Very true.
Which is maybe why she couldn’t get it made in the first place.
But srsly, folks, anyone saying anything is almost always expressing their opinion or what they think. Even “facts” like the speed of a coconut-laden swallow. (African or European?) Even if they’re talking about someone else. Ex:
“Roger hates chocolate.”
“[I think] Roger hates chocolate.”
This is why the Buddha say we should cultivate equanimity.*
But I don’t understand that headline. Dragonball: Evolution has a score of 2.5, which means it towers over the likes of Birdemic (1.7) , The Hottie and the Nottie (remember that? 2.4!) and Manos, The Hands of Fate (2.2), and of course, Everything Uwe Boll Has Ever Done.
There’s some of that probably. All of it? That’s hard to imagine. IMDB is a place where popularity and unpopularity move the meter. Is it sincere or insincere? People love and dislike passionately and in this era that means expressing it. I perceive a majority is sincere dislike not a cynical manipulation. I hear nothing good about Velma. It may simply be that bad. I watched the trailer and it was enough to tell me to stay away.