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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2912 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 9, 2023

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With “the death of the author” attitudes among lifelong fandoms, and corporate franchise owners/milkers calling them “toxic fandoms,” we’re reaching a point where the storytellers are caught between their audiences and their patrons. The Matrix subthreads in particular reminded me of this.

So, for a fun fandom kerfuffle, I’d like to know, what stories and characters do you believe you know better than their (current) authors/production team?

Reaching? I think we’ve been there since the rise of fandom. Or hatedom.

Something of a bias, but the Stranger Things series. Season 3 was unnecessary but fine. Season 4 wrecked a lot of previous characterization and abandoned the sense of mystery that made Season 1 so good in favor of a generic action show.

OTOH Season 4 did have that song...

we’re reaching a point where the storytellers are caught between their audiences and their patrons. The Matrix subthreads in particular reminded me of this.

I'm very curious, what's an example matrix thread like that? Who do you mean by "storytellers"? From what I've seen, most storytellers are still pretty religiously sticking to the tactic of labeling the actual fans as toxic. But I'd be very happy if this trend were slowing down or stopping, so I'd love to see that.

Here.

I saw that thread, but I'm not sure I understand, though. Who's the storytellers in that thread? For the Wachowskis, they're not caught between anyone. I think the Wachowskis side entirely with the woke folk who want to cheer on that the Matrix is (retroactively) a trans allegory, and they are against the original fans of the Matrix who like it just for being a fun and thought provoking movie.

I don’t really agree with the premise, either. People act really surprised when artists dabble in commentary or subversion. But it’s the natural response to an industry which fetishizes novelty.

Tolkien is the easy answer here.

The funny thing about The Matrix is that except for trans people who take at face value the Wachowskis saying it was an un/subconscious trans allegory (something I don’t think is entirely wrong, actually, but which was also clearly declared retroactively with minimal real evidence) everyone basically accuses them of playing with ideas they themselves didn’t really understand to make a point they didn’t think they were making.

Well, (cracks knuckles) I am going to say Star Wars, and before I am challenged, let me say I understand it as it was pre-the prequels, before costume design and retconning and attempts to make sense of who-is-supposed-to-be-how-old-and-when came into play. I won't say I understand it better than, say, Lucas himself, but I think even he veered from his original stated vision at various points (cough, C3P0, cough). I definitely think I understand it better than Deborah Chow (who directed the Obi Wan series) and probably at least as well as Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, who have had some swell ideas I guess but who have to answer to producers and higher-ups. And better than about 99% of redditors, in particular those who post regularly in any subreddit associated with the franchise.

Short of Rogue One and now the Andor series I've been left dumbfounded since Return of the Jedi, though unlike many SW fans I count The Phantom Menace as one of the best post-OT films.

"The last thing we need are any more trigger-happy fly boys."

They purposefully made an anti-Star Wars film that has the characters clearly state they will not be delivering according to viewer expectations. And later Finn makes a desperate suicidal attack on the bad guys and again a character plainly states that is wrong and stops him. They did everything but look at the camera and say "we aren't going to make space combat pilots look cool, here's a purple haired HR manager to explain why that's actually bad".

Then strangely had a very good lightsaber battle a bit later that delivers according to what fans would expect. And the following film went big on trigger-happy fly boys gunning down their enemies and desperate suicidal attacks repeatedly used to win. Which is back on brand for Star Wars. So they ultimately couldn't commit to subverting fan expectations. I assume Disney executives put them back on track.

Or—hear me out—they thought they could throw in Something For Everyone, and get money from Tumblristas in addition to the existing grognards.

Of course, incoherent jumbles don’t lead to cultural cachet. The diehard fans want some semblance of an artistic vision. But it’s the kind of oversight that I’d expect from a sufficiently large committee.

Takeshi Kovacs from Altered Carbon. My god did they butcher him and his entire character arc for no good reason, and the worst part is that the author, Richard Morgan, was involved. They did him dirty, let alone some of the characters who came along in the later books.

Altered Carbon was incredible at how strong it started and how utter dogshit it became after a couple episodes. We watched the season finale drunk and jeering just for the fun of seeing how stupid it can all get

Uh Foundation lol. By a country mile.

I actually haven't even seen a single second of the show and I can still say that with absolute certainty.

If you mean the Amazon's Foundation, I have seen the first season, and except for the initial premise, it has very little to do with Azmiov's vision so far, IMO. It will probably get worse as it goes - I probably won't watch the second season unless I hear an excellent review from a trusted source.

It’s Apple, not Amazon. I watched the first season because it stars Jared Harris, who is probably one of the best actors currently working and who steals almost every scene of every show or movie that he’s in, from Mad Men to The Crown to this. But I agree it was pretty bad. I’m not sure how I’d have made it better though, a lot of what they did was less ‘woke’ and more ‘the kind of thing you do to make an unfilmable story filmable’, even if it was executed poorly.

Should have done Prelude to Foundation. It's a much more standard action/adventure/mystery story to adapt.

Oh, I confused them. Not that there's any substantial difference... Yes, Jared Harris' performance was one of the bright spots, but not enough to make the whole thing worth it.

Not so current any more, but I think I and virtually everyone here understands Superman better than Zack Synder. I think we all could answer the question: "Do we make Jimmy Olsen a brunette CIA agent and shoot him in the face? Y/N?" correctly.

I feel like the obvious anwser has to be Star Trek. From TOS through Enterprise Star Trek had always maintained a certain sense of optimism about the future even when dealing with dark subject matter that I feel is distinctly lacking from the recent films/series IE JJ Abrams' Reboot, Discovery, and Picard...

I've actually been meaning to write an effort-post on this very subject, I suppose I should get off my ass and do so.

If you do that effort post, I'll be interested to hear what you think of DS9. Basically all the Star Trek fans I know have low opinions of the more recent stuff, but DS9 seems fairly divisive for the exact optimism reasons you're talking about.

The post I have in mind is less about start trek in particular and more about legacy sequels and adaptations in general. But to give my quick take on DS9...

For my I quite liked it but I can also see where the old school fans who didn't are coming from. Personally, I think Sisko's line from one of the early episodes where he says "It's easy to be a saint in paradise, but this is not paradise" aptly sums up the series' core thesis/recurring theme. and I feel like DS9 managed to walk a fine line of critiquing Rodenberry's utopianism while still respecting his ideals.

DS9 was in many respects a deconstruction, it was explicitly not about the Federation's flagship or it's best and brightest, it was about that shady industrial town on the border where the starfleet officer who's been assigned to keep the peace is just trying to make it to retirement rather than climb the ranks. And that's part of what I find frustrating about a lot of the rhetoric around nu-Trek, oh it's a deconstruction? We already had that, it was called DS9. It seems to me that the people currently running Star Trek genuinely don't understand what it was about Star Trek that people actually found appealing and are thus reduced to just throwing random shit at the wall to see what sticks.

DS9 is actually my favorite Star Trek series. I acknowledge that TNG is Better, I just like DS9 more. It's the side characters; people are allowed to be flawed and have conflicts. Garak and Odo and Quark make the whole series for me.

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