Comments by "TJ Marx" (@tjmarx) on "The Critical Drinker"
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I don't know why Banks called it Charles's Angles. It has nothing in common with the original series.
The original series is about a mysterious man who uses the pseudonym Charlie. He's rich, well connected and knows some dirty secrets. He also has enemies. So he creates a PRIVATE DETECTIVE AGENCY and staffs it with 3 BEAUTIFUL WOMEN.
His employees never see his face or know his identity, instead he communicates with them through a speaker phone. He also has an assistant named John Bosley, who also hasn't met Charlie but does his bidding and coordinates the other employees day to day.
Like a manager. Bosley isn't a spy, in fact he's often a hapless coward played as comedy relief. But he also sometimes stumbled his way into saving the angels at just the right moment. The 3 beautiful women are way out of Bosley's league so there's never any sxual tension. As they're a detective agency they sometimes take private cases but it somehow always manages to circle back to Charlie's enemies. Charlie's angels is like love boat if it was a detective agency and there were mild fight scenes. It was prime time programming, so it was a light hearted, sometimes funny, action adventure mixed with a detective mystery. It's called Charlie's Angels because that's the name of the detective agency, but also because they're hot women who work for Charlie.
Now contrast it with what Banks made. Suddenly they're government spies. Suddenly they assassinate people. Suddenly Charlie doesn't exist anymore and Bosley is in charge, powerful, skilled and dangerous. It's all about in fighting in the spy agency. None of the women involved are beautiful. The original starred Farah Fawvett ffs.
They're completely different in premise and execution. Banks shouldn't have called it Charlie's Angels. She should have given it another name and left it to stand on its own as a feminist spy movie.
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You know, when Marvel first started pumping out movies it was one a year, at a time when superhero movies hadn't really been a thing and the marvel ones were watchable. People had lots of other movies in between, so the prospect of watching a superhero movie every other year or so was fine.
But Disney did what Disney always do. They took the numbers from one movie and decided that they could just scale that indefinitely to just get infinite money. And even though this approach hasn't worked since Michael Eisner brought the approach in, in the 80s, they still keep using it. Disney's approach doesn't just think of their customers as numbers, it assumes it and removes human behaviour from them.
I have zero doubt that if Disney could have used AI to produce these movies faster, we'd have gotten one every hour for the last however long they've been going.
No one cares about superhero movies anymore and that's not going to change any time soon. If they want them to become profitable again they need to cancel all the films scheduled for this year, next year and the year after. Then release one, just one, superhero movie in 2028. Then no more for a few years, then just one somewhere around 2032.
People keep talking about a shift in the cultural landscape, but there hasn't been. The cultural landscape has been the same throughout. Just an extreme minority were screaming loudly. What changed is the majority got fed up and told the minority to sit down and be quiet. But the same movies that will do well now, would have done well then.
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I don't agree with your definition of canon, drinker. I don't think it has anything to do with copyright or the fans. I think canon is the narrative established by the original creator. For this reason, I don't believe canon can ever be changed, nor can the rights to it ever be transferred.
If I tell a story about an alien robot that has a heros arc battling lizards from neptune and learns how to be more human in the process, everything that occurs in my story is canon. Anything that comes after, any sequel, any prequel, any spin off, has to comply with the canon set up in the original story. If they do, their stories become part of the canon. If they don't, they aren't. They're just cheap knock offs, even if they're official.
If I invent a device that creates localised anti-gravity, I can patent it. I can't patent the concept of anti-gravity, that's just a concept. But I can patent my specific solution, the design, the formula, if you will, that I invented to make anti-gravity happen. That formula is my IP. That's the thing I can sell. That's the thing I can prevent competitors from selling. If I start manufacturing my invention under a company and down the line for one reason or another, I decide to sell my company, the buyer will own the rights to manufacture my invention. I might even include the patent itself in the sale. The buyer would then be in their legal right to make revisions to my invention as they see fit. But at that point it's no longer my invention. It's a new IP from them. Yes my IP was the inspiration, but it was also the inspiration for my competitors too. The new IP stands on its own and is the organic property of the new company who won't sue themselves for making a derivative work of the original IP. That's why such changes need to legally be disclosed and are usually done so as a "product name 2" or similar.
The same is true for works of fiction, whether they're literary, film or other. The canon is the specific formula, the way the characters are written, the things they've done, how they'll do things. That's the IP. That's the thing that's protected. When the rights to the work are brought up, they cannot magically go back in time and change how I originally created that work. They can make revisions, but in doing so they create a derivative work which is its own separate IP. They own the rights so they won't sue themselves but the new separate IP isn't canon to the original, it's separate. A knock-off.
That's why there can only ever be 3 star wars films and nothing else. No expanded universe. No prequels. No disney star wars. Just 3 original films and nothing else. The rest are their own separate derivative works that are not canon to the original even if they're "official". Just knock offs.
I also don't see how anyone can look at that "it's all just fiction what does it matter" argument with a straight face. They're all just cars, what does it matter what brand they are? They're all engagement rings, what does it matter what kind of stone it is or how much I spent? By this argument Batman and Spiderman inhabit the same city at the same time, ignoring each other, whilst Jaws stalks off the coast, and Michael Myers reaps havock across the river. But not to worry Sherman and Mr Peabody can alter the timeline whenever they want. It's intellectually incoherent and you should laugh in the fact of anyone trying to make it.
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I have a different take on why this show failed. I'm not part of brand knock off fandom, so maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe my distance from the brand gives me a clearer perspective, who knows.
But I think this show, can't even remember what it's called, failed for 3 reasons.
1. It's exclusive to Disney+
2. It's a kids show with a small marketing budget
3. It wasn't relevant to children
Disney+ subs are dwindling, and I'd bet dollars over doughnuts that active sign ins are even lower. That is, a fair chunk of people technically subscribed to Disney+ don't actually sign in and watch it.
Outside of your videos talking about this show, I've never heard of it. Maybe there's niche marketing, but there's no general marketing. The point of a kids show is to make new fans for your franchise. That means enticing people who didn't previously enjoy your brand to come watch. Niche ads won't hit those people so they won't know the show exists. But lastly, kids these days don't care about traditional media. They like watching some guy play a video game while they also play the video game. It's not relevant to them, or on a relevant platform.
If disney did something like released the show on YouTube, or at least the first few episodes to get young fans interested, then promoted the heck out of it on youtube through kid relevant "creators" then it probably would have gotten somewhere. Maybe. I dunno, I haven't watched it.
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