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 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I dunno. Maybe media just isn't that good anymore or at least for my tastes.

This game kinda interests me. People said it's like The Expanse in computer game form.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=falling+frontier

I might also watch the new Dune movie. Also heard the latest James Bond movie wasn't too bad but you can only push James Bond so much. At least it isn't the millionth version of a horror movie franchise. Thank god i hate horror. I prefer psychological things more anyway. Action and comedy can be good. I'm really unsure what i'd want to watch next.

The new Bond is very solid, and I didn't like any of the Craig's previous episodes. It's also the conclusion of the current Bond's era and I think it was somehow epic. Highly recommended.

Dune on the other hand was quite disappointing, but I am a fan of Villeneuve's (loved every single previous work of the canadian director) not a Dune's fan boy. I found the plot and the characters to be completely flat and uninspiring while the movie is well directed but it's based on the very same settings, soundtrack, visual effects, etc that we've already experienced in Villeneuve's previous works. Nothing new here that deserved to be watched, performances of the actors were poor or just standard. I'd suggest to watch it only if you're deep into the Dune world.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I am really getting tired of "the back story" episode that tells us the backstory of each and every side character.

No one cares.

One thing I really love about Worm (the web-novel) is how you can infer so much about its vast cast of side-characters largely without knowing every detail of their background. A great deal about them can readily and easily be inferred from their actions, behaviors, and the in-universe power mechanics. It's a technique I think most writers would kill to have mastery of and would really benefit us if more media made use of it. Indeed, we do not need to know the origin story of everything. Point of fact, the origin story for most things is probably not that interesting. A good example is in Way of the House Husband, where we're never really told how Tatsu and Miku ended up together and it's probably for the best because the humor comes from the premise and no origin story would ever adequately explain or enhance it.

I find this technique more exciting as well, where you have to piece it together from the character themselves. However, many people may not ever pick up on those clues; so the writers/producers/studios feel the need to spell it all out, draw a picture of it, and put it in black and white.

I think this backstory problem comes from what fans actually claim they want!

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
So these days most entertainment seems to be re-makes or unimaginative cash grabs that wear a mask of a once beloved franchise and have none of the creativity. We get the same series over and over again. A lot of it re-hashes the same political talking points (and probably does it poorly) without something new or fresh up to the point smashing old tropes have made newer tropes. Anything halfway decent becomes milked dry and over-saturates the market like way back when space marine shooting games with grey metal corridors were in fashion, ww2 shooters were everywhere, isekai became too over-done and other such things.

I just can't get myself excited in entertainment anymore. Oh boy another franchise that's had it's last movie 15-20 years ago and already passed its 3rd movie so will likely be absolute crap. Oh man a movie that's had like 6, 9 or more movies after the point was already hammered home and fully delivered after the first or 2nd movie.

Even the comedy feels bland and unimaginative.

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I keep wanting to enjoy entertainment but everything is so lacking in substance or action or comedy or anything at all that i'm getting so frustrated i might make my own Tabletop Game and see where it goes. I want it to be really unique. I just don't know if i can but i'm so bored out of my skull i might have to. Most entertainment i consume just feels so hollow, fake and dry now and then it comes with a super inflated price tag and a multi-billion dollar company on the label.

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I suppose one of my biggest issues is i want entertainment to entertain me. I want characters to have a sensible purpose and goals which includes the bad guys and their goals and purpose. I want new content with new ideas that people generally don't think about these days. I want emotions backed up by understandable reasons and actions and consequences that make sense for the characters in a story. If we're gonna do something in the movie or game give us a sensible reason to do it where possible. Also remember character should have more than one interest or aspect to themselves. I can understand not fleshing out side characters much but it's so crappy when even the main characters feel unrelatable, unlikeable or have as much depth as paper.

Anyway i dunno. Maybe i'm asking too much these days and i've just gotten old and bored due to over-consumption of entertainment. Perhaps both things are an issue.

What do all of you guys think? Do you agree or disagree with things i've said? Let me know.

I was in the same boat as you for a while about 5 or so years ago. I felt like everything was a variation on either a procedural cop show, a medical drama, a reality show, a slightly different sitcom, a remake, or a combination of those. Don't get my wrong, I like the Marvel movies and some other things here and there, but it felt like every time something REALLY unqiue came out, it didn't last. (Exceptions, I got really into Sweet Tooth and Love, Death & Robots on Netflix recently, fingers crossed they stick around).

My solution, was to go beyond North America for entertainment, and for me, that was Anime. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of dumpster tier anime out there as with any medium, but I love it because it feels like (for better or worse) no one over there ever says "No, that idea is too crazy to work." Let me float a few concepts by you and you let me know if you've ever heard anything like these before:

Shadow's House: In a vast Victorian style mansion live the Shadows Family, people who have every inch of their body cover in black soot. They seem to have a similar structure to a Mafia family, but the specifics are unclear. Each young Shadow is assigned a living doll near their coming of age, a regular person with the same height/build/gender/ect as the shadow master to serve as their maid/butler and "face" becoming so in synch with their master that they show their master's expressions for them. Are they clones? it's unclear, but it's known that they are not exactly the same (one doll needs glasses while his master does not). Together they must past the "Debut" a mysterious right of passage designed to test their capabilities as Shadow and Doll and prove themselves worthy to their "Lord Grandfather."

Stein's;Gate: An eccentric amateur inventor (and self proclaimed mad scientist) creates a machine that can send text messages into the past, but only under certain unknown circumstances. As they begin testing the device to prove it however, he is contacted by John Titor (yes THAT John Titor if you are familiar with early internet) who claims to be a time traveler from the future claiming that CERN will eventually develop their own time machine and use it to create a tyrannical oligarchy by the year 2030. (Show is set in 2011). Things spiral out of control fast as small changes make the main character begin to loose sight of what reality he's even a part of, all while scrambling to try to prevent tragedy from befalling those closest to him.

Baccano!: Set in 1930's America, the story is a tightly wound knot of interconnecting stories about Mafia families coming into contact with a group of people who are unable to die (no other magic or superpowers or anything, they simply can't die). Train robberies, turf wards, swimming with the fishes. It's got it all. (Kinda like Highlander meets The Godfather.)

Cowboy Beebop: This is about as close as you'd get to something like Firefly if you were into that. I don't really need to say much more, Wild West in space, featuring down on their luck bounty hunters.

Re:Zero: A young man find himself suddenly in a Fantasy World with no explanation (though it's slowly hinted at over time.) He has no money, no understanding of the world or its customs, can't read or write (though fortunately he can at least speak to people). After nearly getting killed by some muggers, he's saved by a beautiful young woman who takes him under his wing and whom he instantly falls for. It's cut short however by a mysterious assailant who, while after the woman, kills them both. He then wakes up again earlier that day. With his only ability allowing him to revive in the past after dying (though he still feels all the pain), can he repay his perceived debt to a woman he knows virtually nothing about and save her life before going insane from being killed over and over and over again by fantasy monsters that will forever be way out of his league.

This was just a broad sampling, your milage based on your tastes will vary, but if you're looking for unique, it's certainly something anime has in spades.

trexmeyer wrote:
When did the last epic film come out that wasn't part of an established IP? Dunkirk? And before that? There have been barely any blockbuster-level live-action films in the last decade that weren't an adaptation or part of an otherwise established IP. Theatres are dominated by MCU, DCEU, and animated films. These movies are generally servicable, but repetitive and not for everyone.

It's the same issue with television.
Star Trek: Discovery and Picard aren't as good as previous Star Trek series.
MCU series are decent, but again, not for everyone.
I can't speak to any western animation, because outside of Invincible I generally really dislike the artstyles employed.
Oh, and Invincible and The Boys aren't MCU, but they are more of the super-hero genre and some people are sick to death of that.
The Mandalorian was good, but again, it's more of a pre-existing series.

Game of Thrones was decent/good for a few years, but it's over (and ended poorly).

The only critically-acclaimed, audience loved, live-action series that I can think of (that isn't tied into a larger IP) is The Expanse, and that's another adaptation. I guess Black Mirror would count.

A24 is producing good movies at least.

What about the Walking Dead? To my knowledge there has never been before a TV show about a zombie apocalypse. Was this also not good enough?

The Walking Dead was brilliant for 2-3 seasons, then started to decrease in quality. Currently is just a barely ok-ish show, but I still watch it.

It's VERY rare for anything to run for more than 3 seasons and remain satisfying. One of the big reasons I really lean towards anime is just that it rarely overstays its welcome unless its a weekly show.

Anime has the opposite problem, the anime market is so oversaturated in a race to the bottom line that most anime simply fail to make enough cash to be continued (and many are little more than oversized merchandizing for their respective manga or book)

There are the big household names that are the exception of course, but if you become interested in any of the smaller anime, you have to pray and maybe sell your soul for a continuation.

Yes, but that also means that things rarely get written on the assumption of their being more. Seasons end on a satisfying note, even if they leave you wanting more they don't feel unfinished the same way. It also means there's a batch of completely new things fighting for attention each season and a lot more quirkly little ideas like Vivi or Decadence or whatever that tell their tale and bow out for something else.

 LunarSol wrote:
It's VERY rare for anything to run for more than 3 seasons and remain satisfying. One of the big reasons I really lean towards anime is just that it rarely overstays its welcome unless its a weekly show.

They do sometimes have the problem of randomly just ending too, but a lot of that can be solved by doing a tiny bit of research beforehand to see how much source material it's based on.

Overall, totally agree, sometimes all you need to tell a compelling story is a season or two. My favorite example of this is Eden of the East. After their first season finished, they realized they didn't have enough story for a whole second season, so they released two movies (the functional length of half a season) to finish the story rather than stretch it out with nonsense.


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 Tyran wrote:
Anime has the opposite problem, the anime market is so oversaturated in a race to the bottom line that most anime simply fail to make enough cash to be continued (and many are little more than oversized merchandizing for their respective manga or book)

There are the big household names that are the exception of course, but if you become interested in any of the smaller anime, you have to pray and maybe sell your soul for a continuation.

While that's still certainly an issue, it has been getting a bit better lately, we've been seeing continuations of series from years and years ago that people never thought would get picked back up, and they've been successful which is slowly changing the idea behind the one and done methodology. Just in the last year or so we got continuations for Full Metal Panic (which last aired in 2005!), The Devil is a Part Timer! (From back in 2013), Log Horizon (from 2015), D-Gray man got a continuation a while back, Miss Kobyashi's Dragon Maid got a second season even after the KyotoAni fire, Code Geass got a continuation after 13 years (to be fair it was "finished" and didn't need one, but still). I'm sure there are more that I haven't seen, that's just off the top of my head.


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 LunarSol wrote:
Yes, but that also means that things rarely get written on the assumption of their being more. Seasons end on a satisfying note, even if they leave you wanting more they don't feel unfinished the same way. It also means there's a batch of completely new things fighting for attention each season and a lot more quirkly little ideas like Vivi or Decadence or whatever that tell their tale and bow out for something else.

Yes and no. Moreso yes recently and no in the past. There are a lot of older shows that had a "read the source material" ending, deliberatly leaving a great show unresolved so that you'd go and buy the LN's/Manga (see my shelf full of of Spice & Wolf light novels). However, it does seem that they have tended to shy away from that in more recent years and wrapping up their stories in satisfying ways. You're example of Decadence was a great one and I almost listed it above, but didn't think I could adequately sell the premise without spoiling the second episode twist.

 Tawnis wrote:

Miss Kobyashi's Dragon Maid got a second season even after the KyotoAni fire,

To be fair, the only reason Dragon Maid was ever in risk of discontinuation was because of said fire. Without it we would have gotten season 2 years ago.

Yes and no. Moreso yes recently and no in the past. There are a lot of older shows that had a "read the source material" ending, deliberatly leaving a great show unresolved so that you'd go and buy the LN's/Manga (see my shelf full of of Spice & Wolf light novels).

We still get that, Kumo Desu in this year's spring season being an example

 Tyran wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:

Miss Kobyashi's Dragon Maid got a second season even after the KyotoAni fire,

To be fair, the only reason Dragon Maid was ever in risk of discontinuation was because of said fire. Without it we would have gotten season 2 years ago.

Yes and no. Moreso yes recently and no in the past. There are a lot of older shows that had a "read the source material" ending, deliberatly leaving a great show unresolved so that you'd go and buy the LN's/Manga (see my shelf full of of Spice & Wolf light novels).

We still get that, Kumo Desu in this year's spring season being an example.

Perhaps. It was successful, but not like Violet Evergarden successful. It had a solid ending so, it was pretty up in the air. Even so, I guess that probably wasn't the best example.

Oh yeah, it's certainly not gone by any means, just saying that we see it less than we used to.

 Tawnis wrote:

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 LunarSol wrote:
Yes, but that also means that things rarely get written on the assumption of their being more. Seasons end on a satisfying note, even if they leave you wanting more they don't feel unfinished the same way. It also means there's a batch of completely new things fighting for attention each season and a lot more quirkly little ideas like Vivi or Decadence or whatever that tell their tale and bow out for something else.

Yes and no. Moreso yes recently and no in the past. There are a lot of older shows that had a "read the source material" ending, deliberatly leaving a great show unresolved so that you'd go and buy the LN's/Manga (see my shelf full of of Spice & Wolf light novels). However, it does seem that they have tended to shy away from that in more recent years and wrapping up their stories in satisfying ways. You're example of Decadence was a great one and I almost listed it above, but didn't think I could adequately sell the premise without spoiling the second episode twist.

Depends on how far back you mean in the past. The era of Bebop, Eva, Trigun and the like rarely left room for franchising. The mid 00's and early 10's definitely had some awful franchising dreams and the whole moe push that happened alongside the rise of streaming is where I lost interest for a while. Luckily, modern anime comes labeled with clear warnings like "That Time I Tried to Make a Franchise Out of Stock Cliches".

 LunarSol wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:

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 LunarSol wrote:
Yes, but that also means that things rarely get written on the assumption of their being more. Seasons end on a satisfying note, even if they leave you wanting more they don't feel unfinished the same way. It also means there's a batch of completely new things fighting for attention each season and a lot more quirkly little ideas like Vivi or Decadence or whatever that tell their tale and bow out for something else.

Yes and no. Moreso yes recently and no in the past. There are a lot of older shows that had a "read the source material" ending, deliberatly leaving a great show unresolved so that you'd go and buy the LN's/Manga (see my shelf full of of Spice & Wolf light novels). However, it does seem that they have tended to shy away from that in more recent years and wrapping up their stories in satisfying ways. You're example of Decadence was a great one and I almost listed it above, but didn't think I could adequately sell the premise without spoiling the second episode twist.

Depends on how far back you mean in the past. The era of Bebop, Eva, Trigun and the like rarely left room for franchising. The mid 00's and early 10's definitely had some awful franchising dreams and the whole moe push that happened alongside the rise of streaming is where I lost interest for a while. Luckily, modern anime comes labeled with clear warnings like "That Time I Tried to Make a Franchise Out of Stock Cliches".

True, go far enough back and you get past all that.

Ha ha, yeah. To That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime's credit though, it is pretty much the best at what it does. Kinda like the RWBY of the anime world. Yeah it's filled with tropes and cliché's but that kinda gives it it's charm as long as you don't take it too seriously.

I wasn't specifically calling out Slime. There's a full litany of shows where someone confused the the title with a plot summary. A few of them are actually solid, but most of the time its an easy way to flag something as skippable. At least until there's enough buzz to be worth catching up on.

I think one of the things to keep in mind is the business aspect of entertainment.

Remember when the Beetles came to the US and were a smashing hit? Shortly after, literally EVERY record label wanted their version of "the beetles", and as a result, you get bands like The Monkees and others.

In the big 4 of thrash you had one get on a major record label, and then everyone else wanted their version of Metallica. Then when Metallica releases a power ballad, the other bands were "forced" to follow suit.

You can pretty much pick any genre of music, and you'll see the same patterns bear out over and over again.

On the TV side of things, one network took a bit of a gamble, and released NYPD Blue, and suddenly, everyone needed their own super awesome cop drama show! This process plays out repeatedly with nearly every genre of television. We get stuck with "American Idol" and then other networks bring out their lesser version of the same show.


I'd say to an extent, if you're consuming mainstream media, you ARE getting inundated with carbon copies, or semi-clones of things that have happened before, or "peer shows", and of course, the nerds that we are, and we all /want/ shows we can get into and pay attention to, and see neat little details on and generally "nerd out" to, become rather non existent because so many shows rely on tropes and conditions set by other shows around them that you do feel like you've seen it all before.

This same phenomena plays out in books and just about everywhere you look. I mean, how many YA books can be boiled down to "odd ball youth who feels like they dont fit in anywhere has X thing revealed/happen to them, and now they know they are The Special, and the world is beset by a problem that only The Special can solve" ?? Like, its pretty much just a Madlibs game at this point, there's so little creativity in mainstream entertainment these days.


I guess ultimately the issue comes down to what sort of mindset you have going in to various things. Like, are you turning on the TV at 7pm because that's just what you're supposed to do? Is this something that is habitually or ritually done on a certain life schedule? This is one of the nice/liberating things about streaming services where I am no longer a "slave" to the time schedule set by media bigwigs. I am a big sports guy, and the advent of streaming services means that, when the 24h of Le Mans green flag drops at 5 am my time, I don't need to be up that early. Same is true for grand tour cycling races, or the Rugby World Cup. I can view whatever sporting event "live" once I am up and ready to view them on my time.

Keep in mind, this is far, far from a modern phenomenon. Shakespeare stole most of his plots from previous works- Romeo and Juliet is just a Pyramus and Thisbe reboot. The Roman gods are basically Greek gods- the Next Generation. Halloween is the sequel to the entirely too serious All Hallow's Eve, which was itself an attempt to make Samhuain less offensive to the Catholic Church. The groundbreaking horror novel Frankenstein.... is subtitled 'The Modern Prometheus' and is heavily based upon that ancient myth. The Chronicles of Narnia are a massive episode of Marvel's What if... Jesus was a Lion?

Sometimes you even get nonsensical spin offs, like Mari Lwyd, the Welsh tradition where a grinning horse's skull comes to your door and rap battles you- if you lose the horse skull drinks all of the beer in your house. Someone did a seriously dark and gritty reboot of Christmas Caroling for that one!

The old saying is that there's no story that hasn't been told. Watch and read what you enjoy!

While I'm not one to talk down the horror of running out of beer at Christmas, that last one could have turned out much worse.

Hell, I’d happily donate all the beer in my house to experience a rapping horse skull.

Knowing my luck, though, he would cringe-rap, “My name is Mari Lwyd and I’m here to say/ I’m a horse who loves beer in a major way/…”

Okay, I would actually enjoy that far too much.