10-04-2024, 12:47 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-04-2024, 12:50 AM by HaughtyFrank.)
(10-03-2024, 11:00 PM)PhoenixDark wrote:
https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/star-wars-lord-of-the-rings-bridgerton-toxic-fans-hollywood-response-1236166736/
There's a pretty simple solution and it doesn't involve coddling manchildren: hire better writers and make better shows/films. Or at least that would be the simple solution in a world where making good things was the goal, instead of making slop for specific demographics to consume. I remember when Fellowship Of The Ring came out and there were some LOTR message boards that were very critical of the changes. A lot of the Arwen stuff in that movie - making her a quasi warrior princess who out-rangers Aragorn and saves Frodo - would be viewed as "woke" or mary sue today. The manchildren will never admit that though, or they'll try to move the goal posts ("but it wasn't forced into my face nonstop back then!"). The fact is that most book readers didn't give a shit and loved the movie. And those who disliked the film still had their own space to argue and it never really felt that toxic.
To me the bigger problem is that so many writers do not read and don't appreciate art that doesn't coddle them or reinforce their worldview. This is how we produce allegedly literary people who don't read classic English literature because it's too white or too patriarchal. For television/film adaptions this is how you constantly get writers saying things like "I never read the books or saw the original film(s)." And these are the people who are constantly brought onto projects who tasked with providing a POC/LBGTQ/etc lens to something that is already struggling under the weight of its own emptiness. So you get half baked stories, half baked characters, no themes, etc but hey...we've got cool scenes with black people, which can be used in the advertising package for the streaming app! Shout outs to my parents who signed up for Disney+ to see Star Wars Acolyte only to then learn it has already been cancelled lol.
I love reading, I love films, and I enjoy some television shows. I've never read or watched anything that made me think "this character is white, I can't relate because I'm black." As a kid, I related to The Breakfast Club because I knew what it felt like to be mistreated, or to mistreat others, or to pretend to be brave, or to actually be brave. I saw myself on screen. In other cases, I saw or read about characters who were nothing like me, and that fascinated me as well. Villains who were nothing like me, themes I was unfamiliar with, settings I couldn't truly grasp...yet they still captured my attention and emotion. Because that's what art is supposed to fucking do lol. If your attention to art hinges entirely on whether it shows you what you want or who you are, you're just a rube. And sadly we have way too many rubes dictating where culture goes, what art does, etc.
I'm reminded of this Peter Jackson quote that got dug up when Rings of Power first aired
Quote:"There are certainly themes Tolkien felt were important."
"We made a promise to ourselves at the beginning of the process that we weren't going to put any of our own politics, our own messages or our own themes into these movies."
“What we were trying to do was to analyse what was important to Tolkien and to try to honour that. In a way, were trying to make these films for him, not for ourselves."
This kind of mindset just seems very rare now whenever something gets adapted or rebooted etc.
But also more importantly, whenever these new creators bring in their politics it's often just written like shit. Speaking of Rings of Power again, the first season had a bit where an elf arrived in a human city, and despite it being just a singular elf, they decided this was the perfect moment to have some commentary on migrant workers. So the human's were suddenly all like "these elfs are taking our jobs" (reminder, there's just one elf in town, one that isn't even working). The story beat than disappears as quickly as it came after a bad guy politician holds a speech that could be summed up with "We'll make Numenor great again".
Really great storytelling here. Real subtle and real inspired.
In comparison you got Star Wars Andor which is a very explicit examination of the rise of fascism and how ordinary people stand up against it, but instead of including some blatant Trump allegory or some contrived story point about "build the wall" they wrote it in a more universal way. One that feels true to Star Wars itself and true to the human condition. I have no doubt that the writers have a lot to say about Trump but they didn't forget that this shouldn't get in the way of a captivating narrative and characters. If you want to tell a story that actually means something it should have more longevity than just the election year 2024.
The Acolyte received a lot of hate, and some pretty blatant racist hate, but that's not why it failed. It failed because the writing was bad and even the people it was meant to pander to didn't really care for it resulting in a low viewership. To frame it as anything else just sounds like executives trying to shift the blame because god forbid anyone admits they gave a 200 million dollar show into the hands of someone who didn't know what they were doing.