Comments by "ncwordman" (@ncwordman) on "The Critical Drinker"
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I tend to forget that big movies are corporate run, corporate owned, with casting done by corporate, hiring and firing, funded, and release or canned...all by the focus-group, money-driven whims of faceless corporate stooges. So when I wonder: Where's the art? Where's the heart? Why are they making something about Boba Fett, or the Adams Family? And why are those shows empty, vapid, stagnant, and forgettable as a Big Mac (as Drinker once so eloquently put it)? One word: corporate.
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Even if they didn't have the "identity politics," the writing and presentation would still fall flat. Granted, a lot of that flatness comes from the identity cliches. Drinker has already covered this, but I think it necessary to point these out again:
First, characters need to want something, even if it's just a glass of water. And they have to overcome obstacles, both outside of themselves and from within. That's what creates the drama and drives the plot. Everyone has weaknesses, even (or especially) the supposedly strong protagonist. There's nothing wrong with having faults, since it's perfectly human; unless you never face them, and at least try to overcome them. But a character (especially the protagonist) with no faults isn't human. This creates all sorts of problems, all of which are the main focus of my point here:
Without faults, we can't connect with them; and they have no personality; and they never learn to actually develop strength. Being strong can't really happen, until a person overcomes their weaknesses, or at least tries to. That's why Luke Skywalker got captured and nearly eaten by the wompa, and why Vader whipped him in Cloud City: Because he was young, inexperienced, and had never faced his own mortality, which would make him treasure life--and therefore fight for it.
Without those faults, there would be no experience, which would mean a very boring story.
Secondly, those obstacles have to be real and not easily overcome. If you win your first battle, and every single one after that, then there's no drama, which means no investment or interest from the audience. This is how storytelling works.
So you can't just have a Mary Sue blast through everything. Nor can you have any male character just blast through everything. If a character doesn't lose again and again, and thus never reach the point of the ultimate defeat, when all hope is lost, then they can't overcome their own fear and weaknesses. And anyone who can't overcome their own fear, especially in order to save others, is no hero at all.
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@@bamboocream2102 "Name one business that doesn't capitalize on opportunity lol. It would be pretty weird to put out a product you didn't think had an opportunity to sell, and at the right time."
Granted. But, if Drinker is correct, then the Daily Wire (an admittedly conservative company) is capitalizing for political reasons. And that seemed to be at least one of the Drinker's main problems with the Disney reboot/remake/reimagining. So, in that sense, they're just as wrong for doing what they're doing as Disney.
Regardless, your excuse for them doesn't change that Daily Wire is doing it for not only politics, but for money, and to sock it to their political rivals--i.e., not for art and to tell a good story. And that's also what Disney has been doing. So is it okay if they do the politics you like?
You know that picture (or video) Drinker always shows, the one with the SJW screaming in faux outrage on her knees? That's how conservatives have reacted to Disney's girl power garbage. So much crying and screaming! Must get revenge, and make a conservative Snow White movie! I dunno, bud, most movies in the past 20 years have been wretched. And I doubt this one will be any different: just made on the opposite side of the political line.
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It's difficult, if not (usually) impossible to switch from comics to movies. Comics are short episodes, taking a year for a story to work out. We get to know the characters. Things like M.O.D.O.K. are drawn, so you don't get the problems with the uncanny valley.
Characters like Thanos and Kang took decades of work. And, in comics, you didn't have to depend on sound, acting, special effects, directing, and music to join well with the writing. At least that's how it was from the '60s to the 90's, when I read comics. I've seen a few of the MCU movies. But none of them could really live up to the comics. It would be like if you tried to make a comic about Beethoven's 9th symphony: You'd be entirely missing the point.
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I haven't seen it yet. So feel free to ignore or dismiss my comment. That said, I love the other Guardians movies. They're my favorites of the MCU. Gunn has a lot on his plate here, maybe too much: 1) His final movie in the MCU; 2) the final Guardians, at least with the original cast (or so I've heard); 3) and therefore it's the resolution of all these characters; 4) specifically looking at Rocket's backstory; 5) introducing the High Evolutionary; 6) having Adam Warlock actually do stuff in the movie; 7) bringing some resolution to Gamora's weird death and return; 8) and, if at all possible, to leave the possibility of more Guardians movies without Gunn, or more cosmic movies involving Warlock, and who knows who else.
No wonder it's 2 and a half hours. By Grabthar's hammer, that's a lot of major plot points and themes to work through. If I were his editor, I'd insist he choose between Warlock and High Evolutionary. And/or that this be two different movies, introducing Warlock in the first part, and High Evolutionary in the second. They could have had two 90-minutes movies, with everyone fleshed out.
Doing it all in one film would be a master work though. And maybe Gunn wanted to see if he could pull it off. I hope he did. The Drinker doesn't think so. And, frankly, I doubt it to such a degree that I've put off watching it.
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The Drinker mentioned (and then dismissed) the possibility that, before, she was saying what Disney wanted her to say in those interviews. His reason for dismissing it was, apparently, because she talked similarly over different interviews. But couldn't that just as easily be evidence of Disney coaching her for those early interviews? I don't see any way of concluding decisively that it's evidence of her speaking her mind.
And what makes me question his reasoning further is the interview featured in the video. She was obviously coached on what to say. Now, if Disney was willing to do that, then isn't there a possibility that they would have done it before--in those early interviews? He went on to say that we aren't mind readers, so we're unable to know for sure. But then he seemed pretty darned sure about it. And most of the people in this comment section seem positive about it.
We have to remember that Disney is an out of control powerhouse, a supremely greedy corporation. What makes the most sense to me, and has since the Star Wars sequels they did, is that Disney had a focus group with statistics about a new audience, which no one else was appealing to yet: the woke audience. So they banked on tailoring their new content to this (as yet) untapped market.
But such a behemoth can't be stopped on dime. It has taken them longer than any non-powerhouse entertainment corporation to realize there was no such market, mostly because the mindless corporate stooges didn't even know what "woke" means. A lot of people don't. Still, a lot of people aren't spending billions of dollars on these movies flopping.
My point is this: We don't (and maybe can't) know for sure about this Snow White star, one way or the other. And so to assume she is the way you want her to be, or not to be, based on political bias is not critical thinking at all. We either know, or we don't know. And, here, we don't know.
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I think it's okay if there are no more Star Wars movies. If they can't do it right, then people won't pay them. While fan fiction can certainly go on forever, having TV shows and movies last forever is (usually) really bad. There are exceptions, here and there, like the last Godzilla movie and maybe South Park. Movies reflect the time in which they were made and released.
We are far removed now from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. Even the first James Bond movies in the '60s were a decade after Fleming wrote most of the books. But there was enough of the Cold War left, and Connery did such an awesome job. But the decades kept rolling by, with new Bonds, new ideas on what the character should be like. And by now the whole thing is lost, just another action-drama.
Same goes for Star Wars. I have the Star Wars I like already, the Bond, Indiana Jones, Kirk and Picard. I don't need to know what they're doing in the retirement home.
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There never should have been a Ghostbusters franchise. The first movie was a major win. They should have walked away after that. But then part 2, and, okay--why not? It had its moments. But that should have absolutely been the end of it. Then there was a cartoon. Okay, just a cartoon. But then we entered the era of sequels about movies and comic books from 40 years ago. How creatively bankrupt the modern big movies are! I don't even know if they're considered blockbusters anymore: the Jurassic Parks, Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, and DC. And, of course, Ghostbusters. Who are these movies supposed to be for? The 50-60 year olds who grew up with the originals, who see their heroes are now old and broken down? The kids who didn't grow up with it, and really don't care about the nostalgia baiting?
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It's really too bad that a movie about the distant past has to be done as if it was happening today. Of course, this is fantasy. Still, be nice to show a real "traditional marriage," in which the woman was bartered for like property. And what knights were like: most exclusively male. And, if you did have a same-sex relationship openly, you'd probably be burned at the stake by the Christians.
I know the past is messed up, barbaric, and insane, but wouldn't that be the point, even to the fake "woke" people? A "look how far we've come" kinda thing? Awakening has no meaning, if everyone has always been awake.
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With the exception of Lilo & Stitch and Fantasia, I never liked Disney. When I was a kid in the 70s, the Muppet Show was much more to my liking. Disney always had the corporate stench about them, and once I got into my teen years, I was well past any possible place they might have in my list of viable entertainment.
So when they bought Marvel AND Star Wars, two of my my childhood (and teenage) go-to entertainment venues, I knew what that would bring: eventual, complete failure. They don't understand the nuances of either of those two. They made Marvel less about comics, and more what the average, everyman wanted. And that worked for a while, but it couldn't last. Movies can't come out with the regularity of comics, and they can't rely on the mythologizing we get from a printed medium. They have to be more realistic. And, sorry, superheroes aren't realistic. That can't work for long, or often enough to build an active universe for the average movie watcher.
And since Disney doesn't understand mythology, and wants to appeal to more people than already established core fans, Star Wars was bound to fail too. Of course, those 2 are only part of Disney's failure, but they were something the corporation banked on being a sure thing.
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This problem has always come across to me as just a marketing ploy gone awry. Some research and statistics must have shown that reboots and girl power have an audience. The statistical algorithm factored in the various hashtags, and decided that showing diversity will make the corporations money. And, since they don't really understand what's actually going on with any of it, the research algorithm probably showed that a common thread, the antagonist through it all was the toxic Caucasian male.
These movies and TV shows don't get any part of feminism right. They don't seem to understand what diversity means, as they're merely shifting the males away from the dominant roles, and replacing them with females: But the toxic, dominating role is still there. And, what's worse, men didn't even really play that role to start with; it's just the soulless statistical analysis that reached such a clueless conclusion.
Without a doubt, their statistics didn't lie about how some people would be into this sort of thing. A lot of people, it turns out. The Last Jedi has some serious, diehard fans for example. As long as their corporations keep making money, then they'll likely not question the veracity of their robotic statistical analysis. But they certainly aren't doing any favors to the various "movements" they seemingly support.
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What's really pathetic is that comic book titles have lasted for decades, and the so-called MCU is struggling to make a halfway decent movie. For example, Thanos first appeared in Iron Man #55 in 1968. And it wasn't until 1991 that "The Infinity Gauntlet" happened. That's 23 years of Thanos showing up now and then, and the readers getting to know him and his love for Death. Not to mention the decades of getting to know Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, etc. before Thanos snapped his fingers.
And they kept the stories going, every month, for decades. I think the biggest problem with the movies is they either don't want to be comics, or they fail to understand what makes comics work: either too realistic or not realistic enough. Of course, many people of the average movie going public couldn't give a flip at a rolling donut for comics. So we get these one-hit wonder movies that run out of steam as soon as they build up steam.
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This has long been a point of confusion and outrage for some women, especially if they look at '90s female comic book heroines. Though Drinker did a great job explaining why being sexy sells, I'd like to add my own two cents.
Know why sexually appealing people are able to sell things (including movie tickets)? Because sex sells. Know why sex sells? Because, without sex, there would be no human race. it's that simple: Sex = survival. And, as organisms, our main goal in life is to survive.
Sure, this is often manipulated to sell things. And sex can easily become the only thing we see, when we look at a person. Very rarely are we seen as a human soul, or some such thing. It's much easier, and therefore natural, to see people in the simplest terms, which is to say sexually.
That's why people get put in the "friend zone," or why a particular kind of look (such as bad boy, brainiac, nerd, etc.) is an instant turn off, or turn on. This is natural. But it also depends on how far you take it, if this sexual stereotyping becomes a crime, such as murder, rape, kidnapping.
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Disney being political is not what I've been seeing. And I haven't been hearing this "message" either. They're a soulless corporation, just like all the rest, with a 2023 net worth of $150 billion. Does anyone really think the CEO of such a monster has the slightest tendency toward equality and empowerment of minorities? They're only moved by their quarterly returns, by losses and gains. At some point a few years ago, a Disney focus group must have determined that the latest fad to monetize is the aforementioned equality and empowerment.
But the way they handled it was tone deaf, and totally indicative of no one there having the slightest idea what they were talking about. It would be like someone who has never touched a drop of alcohol deciding to tell stories about raging alcoholics. Sure, you could see the drinks, hear the guzzling and hiccups, but it wouldn't take someone of the Drinker's status to recognize that the people in the movies weren't acting at all like drunks. This should be an obvious indication that, not only was Disney not part of "the message," but they were faking it, just to make money--either from the demographic their focus group pointed out, or the online controversy (and resulting publicity).
The message being seen, and totally misrepresented by these clueless money grubbers, was/is not a political one: It's only been made political by people who also have no idea what "being woke" means. The real, actual message is part of the ever growing zeitgeist that freed the slaves, gave women the right to vote and the right to credit cards in their names, and so on. As our society evolves, we conquer more ground, moving ever forward. Now people are either trying to deny that racism and sexism exists, or forcing themselves to admit that it does exist: That's what the African-American Vernacular English word "woke" means. Disney tried to make money from this. Their results were laughably incompetent.
This isn't a case of "Go woke and go broke." It's just a heartless corporation trying to take advantage of controversy, but lacking any understanding of the material.
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Disney is a corporation. And corporations work based on what focus groups tell them. There's seldom any personal involvement from the individuals in those groups: They are safely tucked away in a bubble, and far removed from their product. This is fine when we're talking about deciding a new slogan (e.g., "Wells Fargo: the bank of doing" ugh!), or the colors used on a box of Oreo cookies. But it falls flat when we're talking about art, or even simple, creative writing.
Corporations don't do very well at all, usually, with anything creative and artistic. And that's because they're completely detached from the life that results in creating art. That's why we get Rey Palpatine, Rian Johnson, and one remake/reboot after another. And, apparently, their focus groups have decided that Mary Sue = equality, and equality (or inequality) is a thing that's happening. Therefore, people want Mary Sue Palpatine, and a female director who is a real live girl boss, ostensibly.
What's really wretched here, besides hiring for purposes other than creative love of the work, is they don't even understand what "woke" is, or why equality is a thing that people are talking about. They're far removed from the reality of all that. They don't understand how they're alienating life-long Star Wars fans, who just want a good, fun movie.
Corporations are automated human beings. They are like androids, programmed for making money for already rich people. And those rich people are so wealthy, they apparently don't even care too much if they lose money by using automated human beings--who can't produce good stories, which would make them more money.
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