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Can we talk about how good Puss in Boots: The last wish is? It is culture war topic because unlike big projects from Disney, Marvel, Amazon and generally speaking Hollywood that underperformed (or flopped if you are into schadenfreude) it came out of nowhere, the reviews are off the scale and the movie itself is unapologetically culture war free. Simple story, tight writing, tight movie - there is barely anything to cut. Relatable and sympathetic characters you care about. Surprising depth and darkness for the more mature audience. A villain that is for the ages. Brilliant voice acting.
The message is about friendship family and trust - shave the heads of every male in the movie and it could be part from the Fast and Furious franchise.
It was a pleasant surprise and a datapoint for the theory that much of the DEI in Hollywood is defensive - to deflect criticisms.
I felt the same about Top Gun Maverick. It was good because it lacked any DEI not despite it.
It's hardly rocket science, "making good movie" at the top of the priority list produces better movies than any list where it isn't at the top.
Weasel phrase. Just talk about it. No need to ask for permission.
TG:M was decent at best.
I have no nostalgia for the original film, mainstream action blockbusters aren't really my thing, and a 'nostalgia sequel' several decades since is usually an instant write-off. I'm also very cynical of the modern Hollywood landscape and its output.
So I did raise my eyebrow at all the positive word of mouth for Maverick. I figured I'd sign myself up for an experiment and see what all the fuss was about, expecting to be pleasantly surprised by the movie being fine, but that's about it. So I can't overstate the level of shock I experienced when I left the theatre liking it. Like, really liking it to the point where it was my film of the year; painfully but decisively edging out Northman and Everything Everywhere (both films I loved and am more likely to rewatch). Those are certainly more 'interesting' films with stuff to chew on. But the sheer triumph of Maverick's execution felt anomalous and worthy of attention.
The plot was predictable, and I could see all the the filmmaker tricks for setting up drama, humor, and romance getting telegraphed in realtime... but by god, it worked on me. And I'm not sure I can tell you exactly why it worked on me, despite all my intellectual defenses manning the barricades. I'll admit that time and place probably have something to do with it. Maverick wouldn't have been notable to me ten years ago, whereas my experience at the cinema last year felt like an oasis in a desert of films compromising themselves one way or another for 'modern audiences' or tinsel town sensibilities.
One consequence of seeing Maverick is that I am now more askance towards films attempting to be 'clever', 'heady', 'subversive', or 'topical'. These are not bad things to aspire to be, but I lately feel like so much of the conventional wisdom for making good characters, tone-appropriate humor, and satisfying narratives has been sacrificed for those things. Like a film or show isn't really legit or worthy of one's attention outside of a lazy weekend afternoon unless it's busting tropes, sending up conventions, or lampshading itself with a too-proud self-awareness.
Then Maverick comes along and reminds me that films are experiences, not masturbatory intellectual exercises. And if the experience worked for you, questioning how it works is like questioning a magic spell. As Mr Plinkett said, 'you may not have noticed, but your brain did'. Maverick felt scientifically designed to positively engage my senses with such satisfaction that my cynical brain was effectively being told to STFU, and that can really only happen to me if it's doing its job well.
(Additionally, all my friends who saw it have had similarly glowing reactions. I took my grandfather to see it as well, and the level of enoyment he had would seemingly indicate this man hard been starved of films he likes for decades.)
I'm not writing from the perspective that only movies doing "unique" or subversive things are worthwhile or good. I think the movie is also decent at worst. It's competent enough because they had a simple plot and didn't take any bold directions. Not necessarily a problem, mind you, I thought the conflict between Maverick and his friend's son was interesting to start with.
But the film doesn't do anything with it because the romance subplot gets in the way. Scenes that could have been for delivering on the conflict between the two aren't delivered because the film is also trying to get Maverick back with that woman who owns the bar.
Had the film stuck with one or the other subplot, they would have the ability to explore the conflict or romance in more depth. But they didn't, so they lost out on the potential to invest audiences more. There's no guarantee it would have been done well, but we're then left with, as I said, just a decent movie.
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The only thing that felt a bit off for the film as a product was the middle-aged, divorced with a teenager romance subplot that seemed almost beat and bit copied from romcoms targeted at 30+ women. Weirdly wholesome and acknowledges the difficulties of relationships complicated by military service but a big tonal shift that absolutely leaned into the fact that neither of the leads of the subplot were in their 20s (or 30s for that matter).
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It's a simple formula, and the movie stuck to it: cool planes go whoosh! very fast and acrobatic.
I saw the first Top Gun movie and thought it was dumb. But cool planes go whoosh! very fast and acrobatic, and that part made me happy.
I haven't seen Maverick, except for clips here and there online, but the bits I saw were cool planes go whoosh! very fast and acrobatic, and that looked fine to me.
There is nothing wrong with a popcorn for the brain movie that is made without laughing up its sleeve or mocking the genre or undermining the premises of the movie. Cool planes go whoosh! very fast and acrobatic is all people wanted, and they got it, and there was no 'message' other than "sit back and enjoy the ride, and we won't laugh at you as a bunch of rubes who don't know any better".
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Your opinion is in the minority across critics/audiences and different levels of "film enthusiasts." It's quite rare for that to happen.
Not that rare, I've found several films which score poorly with critics, excellently with audiences, and my own rating in the middle. Regardless, I stand by my opinion.
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Movies can be great even if they go heavy on the DEI side of things: see Everything, Everywhere All At Once, which, although polarizing, definitely stands out in good ways.
I think there's pretty much no DEI -> bad quality relationship. It's more that, if a movie or show flops, there's a bunch of buck passing; gesticulating wildly at racist chuds is a useful strategy because it allows everyone involved to point to someone without implicating each other. So RoP gets to have lots of good press about how it's failing because of racism, while HotD is quietly stuck with people who want to watch it.
Everything Everywhere All At Once didn't go heavy on DEI, though. At best, it went somewhat light with some promotion highlighting the Asian/middle-aged woman/gay representation. For it to go heavy on DEI would require something more overt, like the Asian protagonist's daughter being inexplicably black or the protagonist being humiliated over her homophobia regarding her daughter's sexuality. A film that happens to feature minorities as the protagonists isn't one that's going DEI, heavily or otherwise.
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Well said.
I’m sure that someone on the Internet was bemoaning the nationalist racist propagandist whateverist style of Top Gun: Maverick. That got completely drowned out by the people excited about good art. Not high art, good art.
There’s less attack surface when something can stand on its own merits. Conversely, a design-by-committee show without vision is more likely to reach for a fig leaf because it’s more likely to need one.
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The point is that "being great" is no longer the top priority. Sure, it can still happen when it's a lesser priority, but it's going to be less likely.
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Can something be a culture topic war topic by being culture war free?
I agree that there's a lack of quality in modern film and TV. A family member recently bought Marvel's second Doctor Strange movie, Multiverse of Madness. We watched it and were pretty confused. I hadn't seen any of them since Strange's first movie which we only saw because said relative likes Benedict Cumberbatch. It was staggeringly badly written, even allowing for the fact that it was alluding to events in movies I hadn't seen.
At one point they introduce Reed Richards in another universe, who was announced as the smartest man on their planet, a board member of the Illuminati that led the planet from the shadows. When faced with a life or death battle against an extremely powerful sorceress, he tries to talk her down in person after she annihilates about a brigade of their combat robots! What kind of retard would do that when he's only got the power to be really stretchy? Can't he talk to her via telecommunications or something? Call in an airstrike or use some kind of standoff attack? Research her capabilities and find a counter? Or perhaps coordinate the other combatants so they deal with her in a coordinated way rather than being defeated in detail, one by one?
In addition to throwing his life away, he manages to lose the battle for them. He tells Scarlet Witch 'oh you should surrender since we have this really powerful guy here right in front of you who can kill you if he opens his mouth'. So naturally she melts his lips together so he can't, before killing them all. If you've got a trump card like that, use it! Don't declare it and let it be countered!
I suppose 100 IQ writers can't write 200 IQ characters. Even so, they could make an effort. I was also unimpressed with the hamfistedness of introducing a girl named America Chavez, raised on some idyllic true-communist world by two mothers and no understanding of property. After all the supposedly powerful and skilled combatants manage to lose, she saves the day.
Even if the main attraction of these movies is the pretty lightshow battles, can't they also make a coherent plot with characters who make intelligent decisions?
IMO the problem isn't so much that the writers aren't smart enough, it's that they aren't trying. They've already decided that the plot needs to go a particular way, so they write characters' actions to make the plot go that way. If characters took initiative, they would derail the plot, so they must not be allowed to be too clever.
They could at least think about it for 5 minutes. If they need Scarlet Witch to beat up the Illuminati, there are ways to do that and make them not look like morons. Reed could try using a hologram or something to negotiate with the sorceress, only for her to use some kind of sympathetic magic that can hurt him through the connection. Maybe his plan was to distract her with a facsmile while bringing in powerful reinforcements, maybe he'd have a plan at all. His whole thing is using technology, using his intellect! Not just turning into a stretchy corpse because he showed up in person to a fight way beyond his energy-level.
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Obviously. It's not enough to not be racist, you have to be actively anti-racist.
If you make a good story that's not promoting anti-racism and DEI, you're taking people attention away from DEI media that do promote social change.
You are, therefore, an enemy.
Everything has to be political, if you make good things that aren't, you're weakening the cause.
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Yes. Take Avatar 2: The way of water, for example. It features a stern but loving father. His tough love is not without flaws and is criticised by the mother in the movie, but it isn't completely deconstructed and its value is clearly demonstrated. It also features the fearsome rage of a mother when her children are threatened and shows how this, too, can go too far.
In stark contrast to other contemporary films, the heroines are more than just narcissistic men with long hair and a massive chip on their shoulder. The power of the main heroine that is featured on the posters, for example, is - empathy. With Gaia that is. It also does not feature the trope that all contemporary Disney movies are contractually obligated to feature: "You can't do the thing, you're a girl!!!" "Oh yeah? Watch me do the thing better than you! Girrrrrrrrrrlpower! #feminism"
The characters have quite a bit of depth. Each with interesting motivations and flaws. This allows for quite a bit of satisfying character development.
So of course the film is lambasted as having a boring, safe storyline that doesn't take any chances.
I know, that tendency is grating. I remember watching season 2 of the boys where they actually made fun of the whole obligated feminism thing. In universe, they were filming what was basically a Justice League Movie with all their superheroes working together. Their not-Wonder Woman was given the line 'Girls get it done!' at one point and it's so obviously stilted and fake. Outside the context of that film, we the audience know she's in an incredibly vulnerable position with regard to Homelander, the vaguely psychopathic not-Superman who's weirdly possessive of her.
But then we get to the last episode of the season. The unpowered male characters and 2 powered women are working together to kill Stormfront, this Nazi super with the powers of manipulating lightning, flight and healing very quickly. The men decide to rig up a bunch of RPGs hoping to get around her healing factor. That doesn't actually work but at least they tried to make a plan.
The women decide to charge right in and hit her really hard! They start losing, only to be saved by a third powered woman who then joins in on their strategy of kicking Stormfront on the ground. Eventually one of the unpowered males says 'I guess girls really do get it done'.
Two supposedly well trained superheroines don't try to grapple her or anything to stop her flying away. Nobody bothered to bring so much as a sword to decapitate. They don't even try to rip her head off with their bare hands (something the show would love given how gory it already is). They just punch and kick. So eventually Stormfront gets up, flies away and they can't follow. They've decisively lost the battle since she could heal in a few hours, come back and hunt them down piecemeal.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=SgAEexDFhV8
Everyone in the comments is saying 'oh this is such a good cringe-free example of girlpower' but they completely failed in their objective, solely due to their incompetence. Unlike the men, they had the raw power to win head-on but squandered it by failing to use any tactics at all. Even if you can't grapple someone with lightning powers, at least try? Bring rubber gloves (hey maybe they could dig out some 1970s style skintight suit and justify its usefulness)? Or a big hammer, something to get some mechanical advantage? Or if swords are too metallic, get an obsidian or glass blade?
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To be fair, the original was also lambasted for following a literal Disney plot. Not exactly subversive storytelling. Though I do expect recreating Pocahontas would see different sorts of criticism today.
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"Can something be a culture war topic by being culture war free?"
This reminds me of the notion of "radical centrist." It sounds oxymoronic but makes sense when a significant number of people move away from centrism such that centrism inches closer to an offensive abnormality.
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That's not culture war free....
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This is a common problem IMO.
See also Eliezer's Abridged Guide to Intelligent Characters.
That essay breaks off in the middle of a sentence! Did he ever get around to finishing it?
They're links to sub-articles.
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I think this is a get out of free card for the writers. here is a video from Brandon Sanderson on how he writes characters smarter than him: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YyaC7NmPsc0
His point boils down to a big part of smart characters is there ability to make difficult decisions well, quickly. But as the writer you can take all the time in the world to come up with the best action, allowing the writer to write characters much smarter than himself/herself.
He does have the advantage of writing fantasy, where the toolset can be absurd, even when the mental tricks are more reasonable. Combine that with Sanderson’s Three Laws of Magic and you get reasonable insurance against Doylist excess.
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You can Watosnianly blame most of that on the source material (solo series began publishing 2016, so that particular CW era of Marvel) of course Doylists would ask why that source material was chosen to be included in the first place. Of all the movies to include her, one involving the multiverse does make some sense.
To be honest, I find that vignette hilarious out of context. It’s like an SMBC punchline, but missing some philosophical setup.
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Apparently the first three phases of the MCU were all part of the Infinity Saga, which is ultimately about Thanos and the infinity stones. The next three phases are all about the Multiverse, so I assume those who actually watch these films will be seeing a lot more of Chavez.
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Jokes aside, I’m really not a big moviegoer. Would you say that lots of kids/family movies have been falling prey to CW? I’ve just assumed that they’re not particularly political outside of maybe casting. You can watch Moana or Despicable Me or whatever without much if any real-world drama.
I do think Marvel gets a bad rap, though. There really was a period where they were pumping out hit after hit! Sure, they couldn’t keep it going indefinitely, and part of that involves turning to CW. But their initial success was both real and unexpected.
I don't know about kid's movies, but I've seen a fair amount of kid's showns recently, for natural reasons. For instance, my daughter likes Gabby's Dollhouse, a cute colorful show with a little girl having imaginary adventures with her kitty toys. Try as I'd like, I haven't been able to spot anything even slightly political or culture-warry, even at the level of "girls can do whatever boys can" or "you should treat all the people the same no matter what they look like" or any basic cartoon lessons like that. It is, indeed, just a little girl having fun with cute kitties. The same applies to Finnish kids' shows, etc.
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I don't suppose you boycotted the Captain America movies as well, on account of them implying America is best represented by a white blonde athletic man?
Was best represented by a white blonde athletic man. Steve Rogers was portrayed as a remnant of the past that didn't fit in in modern America. Note also his symbolic passing of the torch to a "black athletic man" after returning to the past.
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Spoilers:
That Thor movie was not good, but it didn't do that. The tone whiplash scene to scene and criminal underuse of Christian Bale were the main problems, but Jane doesn't overshadow Thor at all. She's very inexperienced, makes up bad catchphrases (for which she is mocked) and is definitely less action competent than Thor through the movie. She has a couple of tricks he can't do but that is about it. She even sits out the first part of the final battle as taking part will kill her. Her contribution to winning wasn't even something from her, but Mjolnir which she only has because of Thor.
"Love and Thunder never shakes off the idea that Jane is a superhero only because Thor has allowed it. Instead, it explicitly suggests that!
In another Korg-narrated montage reliving the crumbling of the couple’s relationship, one scene tells us that Mjölnir, in a departure from the comics, is not just responsive to those who wield it but also sentient and able to follow commands. So when Thor realizes his relationship with Jane is ending and he commands Mjölnir to “always protect her,” what Love and Thunder is actually suggesting is not that Jane is deserving of the hammer but that she’s gotten it only because Thor permitted it."
I don't think it's worth making an effort to watch because it just isn't a good movie, but it definitely doesn't position Jane as better or more powerful. Stormbreaker and Thor himself outmatch her considerably. And it is as above suggested in the movie, Jane isn't able to wield Mjolnir because she is worthy, but because Thor altered the enchantment to always protect her.
The only real decision she makes is whether to die at the end of the movie by using the powers one last time to help or to die later from Stage 4 cancer.
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I love a good horseshoe statement though. Weev could say exactly the same thing except in a different tone of voice.
(Why do people keep going back to watch these things? I haven't been since getting dragged to the first star wars remake)
Nah. America is best represented by transgender gun toting killer clown. This is how AI sees it, and AI is always right.
https://twitter.com/CryptoTea_/status/1611017412648001543
I'm not seeing the transgender part, am I missing something?
Fucking sick art in that thread, though. Would love to see the original prompts.
The massively bulging chest? Could it be just cloak magnificently blowing in wind, could it be pockets full of money?
Yes.
Japan, US, UK, Australia, Spain and Mexico are 100% accurate.
Italy is about 1800 years out of date.
Some other choices are hard fail. WTF Ukraine? At least give the swamp thing Cossack sabre and attire ;-)
I think Ukraine's supposed to be a radioactive zombie.
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Chernobyl.
The point of the excercise was to create supervillain embodying unique spirit of the nation. This is just generic swamp monster no different from Brazilian one.
No one will look at this picture without label and think: "This is Ukraine!".
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Correction, a transgender gun-toting killer clown terminator.
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The last kids movie I saw (with my nephews) was Strange World. It's the latest offering, featuring a sensitively depicted gay main character, a harmonious multiracial family, and a plot that deals with intergenerational trauma and the need to accept reduced living standards for the sake of the environment. Not kidding. It's also pretty damn boring. (I could go into further detail.)
My first GF was black - we would've had kids had it not been for two entoptic pregnancies - her best friend was this small little gay dude we knew from HS who eventually got mega fucking ripped (and still super gay) - and they both had trauma from a shitty upbringing.
I am VERY (VERY!) sympathetic to being against woke shit - so much so that I mostly keep my thoughts private while touching grass - but there's a large difference between what you wrote being offensive and what you wrote making you offensive (not to me, perse). I haven't seen it yet but I was planning on seeing that and Maggie (the AI doll one?) tomorrow or just maybe Babylon (I enjoy famous people doing famous people things on screen) so I'll see how it goes when I do. There's also the point of course that in a vacuum this film might be fine, but of course, outside of itself it's the whole point that things that aren't normal are being normalized at potentially a psychotic degree.
The worst part here is if I do find the film boring ... there's absolutely nothing worse a film could be then boring.
I don't really understand, or what could be offensive about my entirely objective description of the elements of the movie, which I did not render any judgment on.
Wish I could say I wasn't envious.
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Is it? Walt Disney the person might have watched Tomorrowland lose $100M and vowed to try again immediately to find a new way to spark human optimism; Disney the modern company would probably turn up a risk-of-apocalypse dial themselves if it made profit projections look better. Maybe with Strange World set to lose $150M they might redirect again, though?
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I saw the trailer and my immediate reaction was that a movie featuring the adventures of the lost explorer grandfather would have been way better without the drippy son, Token Gay grandson, and the rest of it.
That, and "why do they all have potatoes for noses?" Honestly, that art style should have reached the end of its popularity!
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