> While I agree there are people like that, the pal in question isn’t upset about
> the fact that these characters exist in the MCU, he just thinks Disney is presenting
> them in ways that pander too hard in order to meet some corporate quota.
You get that the two halves of this statement are contradictory right? He's basically saying "I'm not a racist, BUT...." He is exactly the kind of toxic fan we're talking about. Someone attacking the content while spouting off about "quotas" in terms of diversity is being actively racist. He's just trying to hide it behind buzzwords, which is par for the course right now.
@Grenadier He's not racist and I know this for a fact. If he was racist, a movie like Everything Everywhere All At Once wouldn't be one of his favorites. One can feel a corporation is trying "too hard" to pander to the point of having a generally negative effect on the group of people in question, as opposed to being a genuine attempt at inclusivity, without that opinion being rooted in racism or bigotry. That said, the "pandering" comment he made to me was toward the MCU's female representation, so it wasn't even about race in the first place.
I'll put my essay in spoiler tags to save thread real estate:
The overt "girl power" team-up shots in Infinity War and Endgame (that I personally love) aside, he feels a show like She-Hulk went overboard with the "strong lady, bumbling men" trope instead of just writing a strong female character off her own merits. He suggests the writers didn't write a strong female character, they just wrote a female character in opposition to a bunch of poorly written male characters, which doesn't do a ton for either "side". While I enjoyed She-Hulk in a vacuum, I can honestly understand this opinion.
There's an adage in pro wrestling that a wrestler should never downplay the talents of their opponent, because if they then beat that opponent, they'd have only beaten someone they openly admitted wasn't talented. In order to come out on the other side looking truly strong, they'd want to beat an opponent who also looked strong. That concept can be applied to She-Hulk to an extent. A writer should write strong characters/villains so that the hero will come out the other side looking like a strong character. Writing the majority of men to either be buffoons, or to be so over-the-top villainous solely BECAUSE of their male identity, didn't necessarily make Jennifer Walters look like a strong female character - it just removed any nuance from the conflict and resulted in a "well, yeah, of course she's better than them" scenario. "Low hanging fruit", if you will. If you can pick it, that doesn't make you "tall", it just means you can reach the bottom branch. Instead of writing competent male characters for Jennifer Walters to seem superior or equal to, they wrote the men to be stereotypical idiots and/or monsters, which didn't really make the character herself look truly strong coming out the other side. I'm all for vilifying the weirdo incel community, I'm just not sure the hamfisted way this fourth wall-breaking comedy did was the best approach (even despite being thoroughly entertained watching it).
Like I said, I dug the show for the most part, but I also acknowledge that a lot of women I've personally talked to felt like it was an extremely neutered and dumbed down take on feminism designed solely to annoy as opposed to educate, with the fear that it would result in inevitable backlash and make the "movement" look bad. That's the "pandering" argument I can see parts of, even if I personally didn't feel miffed about it one way or the other. The backlash to a character like Rose Tico in the SW sequels, for example, is an entirely different story - a lot of the criticisms from the weirdo sect of the internet were solely BECAUSE she was another female main character in Star Wars, or because she was Asian, neither of which my pal in question agreed with.
This is the movie Zack Snyder originally pitched as a Star Wars spin-off, but they didn't want to do an R-rated movie with no established SW characters, so he retooled it to be his own sandbox to play in. Looks pretty cliche, with an equally cliche premise. Classic "chosen one leads a vulnerable community against a tyrannical group lead by a big bad" story... so pretty much Star Wars, complete with what look to be lightsabers. Some of the visuals, especially the enemy designs, look pretty neat though.
I was hoping it'd have more of a Kurosawa feel to it considering Snyder claimed that he was a major inspiration (again, similar to George Lucas & Star Wars), but the lack of vibrant color is the only thing that reminds me of a Kurosawa movie here.
I'll give it a go since it'll be on Netflix, but I'm about 50/50 on how much I care. The Snyder nuts of the internet are sure to go wild for it though.
I don't know, it doesn't hype me that much. I like those janky over-the-top action movies, but I'm not feeling this one. I'll probably watch it anyway.
New Japanese Godzilla movie coming out. Looks like they did a mix of CG and practical effects for Godzilla himself, which may be a first? I know Shin Godzilla was still decently reliant on practical. Either way, this trailer gets me hyped. It looks great, even to the point that the human drama looks like it could be a highlight of the film (which obviously isn't usually the case).
That's gotta be tough as far as marketing goes for them when the R-rated Strays movie just came out this year. I wonder how they'll title "Stray" to make it very clear that they aren't related. I think some people will assume they are at first.
Monarch : Legacy of Monsters. Godzilla, Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell, John Goodman. I'm in. Apple TV + has me a little nervous. Not that I think it will be bad, I just wonder if it'll be watered down. I wish it was a theater experience.
> Looks like the BBC finally gave Doctor Who a budget.
There were some quotes a while back that Disney+ being the new home for DW *greatly** increased the budget they have to work with at Bad Wolf Productions.
My wife and I are thinking of starting the Doctor Who series. (The new/modern stuff. I've seen only a few episodes of the early stuff -- mostly the Tom Baker days.)
I assume we can just dive in with the "new era" stuff starting in 2005? Do they kinda summarize stuff up to that point for those that didn't watch the early stuff? Or are you really supposed to start with the 1960s stuff to make it all work?
@John You can start from the 2005 season with the Ninth Doctor. That season was designed to reintroduce audiences to the whole premise and whatnot. Throughout the run, some older concepts/characters are brought back but it's never too daunting. They always give you enough info for the actual episodes you're watching, so you can enjoy it whether you have all the context or not. But if you end up enjoying the new series, you then have a whole catalog of older episodes to revisit. Part of the fun for me was watching those older episodes and learning more about things that I was introduced to via the modern run.
Just know that you'll definitely need to deal with some slower/less interesting episodes in Doctor Who... sometimes they can be very "problem of the week." And the effects have always famously been inconsistent, but I find that's part of the charm. Once you get to the Eleventh Doctor and on, they're not so bad though.
I really enjoyed watching Doctor Who while I was traveling for work for years there. I forget what season I left off at, I think it was like 11? What season did we go to the old dude? I'd love to get back to this
My wife and I will watch Doctor Who one of these days. We just have too much other stuff we want to watch at the moment, that we don't want to start up something that's going to require so much time.
> My wife and I will watch Doctor Who one of these days. We just have too much other
> stuff we want to watch at the moment, that we don't want to start up something that's
> going to require so much time.
Would you watch a random episode? Season 5 episode 2 was a very good one I think. It's called The Beast Below. If you're okay with watching out of order, and want to just watch a great episode, look up S5E2. (As always with these things, try to avoid spoilers if you do decide to watch it.)
Picture-perfect casting for Fritz and David, but Kevin and Kerry, not so much. That is, looks-wise. I'm sure their performances will be great. The movie looks real good. As a big fan of World Class Championship Wrestling and the Von Erich story, I'm definitely looking forward to it.
The only info I can find on it are from blog sites that most likely picked up on it from Reddit. Production Weekly apparently had some info on it -- but that's a site where users submit production updates. Of the few blogs I've seen post about it, most claim that it's to be set in WWII -- but "no man's land" commonly refers to the area of land between the two sides of World War I, not II. So it sorta feels like a fan-made idea that caught some wind and fooled a few bloggers.
