Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Politics outside of the movie itself can have a rather huge impact on the quality of the writing even if the movie plot is non political. It sets up outside restraints that doesn't reflect how either the world in the IP works or how human works or both. Possible to write a good story with that constraint but it makes it more difficult and increases the need of good writers, something which Disney clearly lacks.

The most obvious example is of course that Dr Strange have nothing to do with what happens in Wandavision. That make it so the world building won't feel natural to those who know that Dr Strange exists in the MCU and messes with the whole idea of connecting everything.

There has also been a quite obvious focus on moving away from white men to women and minorities. In itself not a problem but it seems they focused more on the demographics of the cast than the story that would elevate the new cast to the popularity of the old cast. At least it hasn't been to the level of some of the fantasy shows in which the increased diversity without thought, messes up the world building in major ways.

The aversion to have female main characters fail or show real weakness before overcoming the obstacles in the end (often with help of mentor figures) make them harder to connect with and often make them feel stand offish. The modern HERo's journey is different from the standard hero's journey that has been successful for the length of human history.

Men and women are different and should perhaps also be depicted a bit different to make for engaging characters. Just taking a male archetype and putting a woman in the role and then removing the weaknesses (the only real part we often can relate to when it comes to people with super powers since our strengths are quite different) is making everyone a disservice. I have seen some recent media in which the white male villain is the more sympathetic and likable character just because he is allowed to fail and have weaknesses so he is the person most acting like an actual human.

"Failing" like what Rey does and then immediately succeed above what previous Jedi have done without having to pay a price or need someone to do it for her isn't showing weaknesses. Iron Man failing with having meaningful relationships and suffering from PTSD or Luke losing limbs and family is the kind of thing we want to see our heroes subjected to. Make it so much more rewarding in the end when they win.

A few movies here and there with just pure action can be fun and probably successful for years to come in the super hero genre but I think we need to have more relatable and liked characters for entire franchises to be able to live on.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Spoilering just in case...

Spoiler:

Gamora died sometime between GotG 2 and 3... In a non-GotG movie.
Also there's a new psychic Russian dog who showed up as semi-part of their crew between them as well.

Not a minor detail.

I didn't know either of those, which would make a bit more sense.

I'll need to figure out which movies they happened in to see if I should have known that!

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Certainly, when folks say a film is political they typically aren't referring to its stance on governance or economy, what they mean is "I can't sympathize with characters who aren't straight white men"

noooo?

Take the disney "snowwhite" exemple. Beyond gaking on the cultural significant background in a way that insults basically everyone down from denmark to the gotthard to the polish border including the czecks, (nvm also fething over dwarf actors which have anyways a scarcity of employment options but let's ignore this aswell) the attitude is also hillariously patronising to the minorities "uptlifted" into roles as such because it also ignore stories out of those cultural circles. So basically it's a dismantling of one culture whilest disavowing in a way the worth of other cultures stories at the same time. And when they do look into other cultural spheres it is often marked by a significant lack of knowledge in history. (or just flat out incorrect for political reasons as seen in the forced artificial creation of gender neutral pronouns in spanish against especially the wishes of latin americans.)

Could of made her Indian and made some comment about that countries obsession with fairness...

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Could of made her Indian and made some comment about that countries obsession with fairness...

Nah, the only countries you're basically allowed to criticize are western ones, look how much they kowtowed to China in Mulan that they actually thanked them in the credits for being able to film in the region of Xinjiang while the Uyghur genocide was happening next door. South Korea would be another one who would be fair game because lookism is a serious thing in their culture (and the Snow "white" part would make more sense at least with their complexion).

 Grimskul wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Could of made her Indian and made some comment about that countries obsession with fairness...

Nah, the only countries you're basically allowed to criticize are western ones, look how much they kowtowed to China in Mulan that they actually thanked them in the credits for being able to film in the region of Xinjiang while the Uyghur genocide was happening next door. South Korea would be another one who would be fair game because lookism is a serious thing in their culture (and the Snow "white" part would make more sense at least with their complexion).

Never forget, they thanked the province running concentration camps in the credits of mulan

Anyway, on the home streaming front, I also wonder how much technology is feeding into it. One of my friends has a 4K TV that literally fills one wall of his lounge; OK, not everyone is going to be able to afford that, but it’s also not that expensive. And that sort of home tech makes the differentiation with a cinema that much smaller.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And that’s before you get into Gen Z who seem content to watch anything and everything on their phone and also don’t seem to be interested in group viewing experiences. I get the impression that they’re happy to all watch it individually and then chat about it later.

Honestly considering how my viewing is very different to the rest of the family I'm already quite used to viewing things on my own rather than in a group.

That said yeah I don't get the love of watching things on a mobile phone - a Switch Screen maybe as at least you can see something on that; but a phone - gosh those are still tiny. Plus if given the choice I'd rather a bigger screen - not half a room big, but at least good enough to see what's going on .

 Jadenim wrote:
Anyway, on the home streaming front, I also wonder how much technology is feeding into it. One of my friends has a 4K TV that literally fills one wall of his lounge; OK, not everyone is going to be able to afford that, but it’s also not that expensive. And that sort of home tech makes the differentiation with a cinema that much smaller.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And that’s before you get into Gen Z who seem content to watch anything and everything on their phone and also don’t seem to be interested in group viewing experiences. I get the impression that they’re happy to all watch it individually and then chat about it later.

I mean, unless its a bomb and the theater is empty, the audience is effectively watching a film individually and discussing it later (that's basic movie theater etiquette). They're just seated on top of each other for the duration.

A lot of good points made by folks,

I'd agree that it's not all (or even mainly) down to superhero fatigue, but i do think we're beginning to see some of that coming in

and that's not a surprise, there have been many genre's of movies that have captured the public imagination, and then eventually fallen out of favour (although you'll still get examples popping up, some of them excellent), but Westerns, War Movies, Cop Movies, Action Movies have all come and gone both because audiences get bored eventually and because it gets steadily harder to tell new, interesting and exciting stories without feeling it's all been done before (which tends to mean the writers and directors also find it harder to be really inspired)

 Overread wrote:

That said yeah I don't get the love of watching things on a mobile phone - a Switch Screen maybe as at least you can see something on that; but a phone - gosh those are still tiny. Plus if given the choice I'd rather a bigger screen - not half a room big, but at least good enough to see what's going on .

It's all about perspective and audio.
For perspective, a phone screen being held may not be much smaller than a TV from across the room.
For audio, it tends to be the defining factor in enjoying a movie - people are generally able to tolerate jumpy/glitchy video as long as the sound is still OK, but won't do the opposite. Now obviously 4K is better to watch than 1080, 720, or even 480, but for most people most things are still perfectly watchable on a 5" screen. I watch a lot of shows/movies on my phone whilst eating lunch, or if I'm waiting in the car or whatever.

I'd say there's also an element of burn-out. Even if you're producing quality works, if there are a lot of them all at once people get burned out.

Personally I'm hoping that Fantasy gets a chance. Lord of the Rings kind of appeared and blasted any competition out of the water, esp with Harry Potter alongside. They didn't seem to spark so much as smother competition. We kind of saw the same with Pirates of the Caribbean.


So I'm hoping fantasy gets a turn - and freaking heck not Skyrim grey/brown/mud colourpallet fantasy!

I do wish there was a good ol fashioned Sinbad movie once in a while.

Given the current capabilities of special effects, I feel it's a good time for someone to finally tackle McCaffrey's Pern books.


Would also love to see a proper Earthsea adaption.

Or Dragonlance. If ever there was a fantasy setting that was ripe for mainstream movie fodder, it's Dragonlance.

Harry Harrison's Eden books. Neverending Story done properly. And Barbara Hambly's Darwath Trilogy would be fantastic if done right.

Definitely DragonLance! Or even Ravenloft! Oh my!

I don’t know why no one’s tried a Turtledove Worldwar series. WW2 with aliens? And the aliens use Gulf War era technology with the edges smoothed out? And the main way to tell individual puppets aliens apart is their paint job? Sounds budgetlicious and crowd pleasing.

 insaniak wrote:
Given the current capabilities of special effects, I feel it's a good time for someone to finally tackle McCaffrey's Pern books.


Would also love to see a proper Earthsea adaption.

Considering Earthsea's entire premise you'd think that Hollywood would be die hard to get it as a franchise right now. Then again it got horribly mangled by the Sci-fi channel in an adaptation so chances are its on the list of things that likely doesn't want to hand over all creative control to another cinema group.

As for dragons there were rumblings ages ago that Peter Jackson was looking at Temeraire novels as a potential film (and that would seriously stretch budgets considering the size and nature of dragons in that, at least if you do live action); but it never came to anything.




And I agree I'd love a more adventuring tale like Sinbad or the old Conan comics or such. Ergo a high adventure that isn't about saving the whole universe/world/country/everyone in existence. Just good high seas adventure

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Wondering exactly what politics is being objected to here.

"White man bad! This movie is not for you!"

Okay. Then I won't go see it. Since, y'know, you just told me it's not a movie for me.

"You didn't go see our movie so our movie is a huge economic failure! You're a terrible racist misogynist person!"

So not politics, just a problem you've made up.

Moving on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Considering Earthsea's entire premise you'd think that Hollywood would be die hard to get it as a franchise right now. Then again it got horribly mangled by the Sci-fi channel in an adaptation so chances are its on the list of things that likely doesn't want to hand over all creative control to another cinema group.

Ursula Le Guin was not a fan of the Tv adaption, and the director annoyed her with some off-base interpretations of the themes of the stories. Licensing on her collection since her death appears to be handled by an agency, so it's anyone's guess what would or wouldn't be approved. It would be nice for someone to get the chance to do it justice, though.

 insaniak wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Considering Earthsea's entire premise you'd think that Hollywood would be die hard to get it as a franchise right now. Then again it got horribly mangled by the Sci-fi channel in an adaptation so chances are its on the list of things that likely doesn't want to hand over all creative control to another cinema group.

Ursula Le Guin was not a fan of the Tv adaption, and the director annoyed her with some off-base interpretations of the themes of the stories. Licensing on her collection since her death appears to be handled by an agency, so it's anyone's guess what would or wouldn't be approved. It would be nice for someone to get the chance to do it justice, though.

Considering one of the big reasons Earthsea was written, the Sci-fi adaptation was honestly a complete insult as it was an all white cast with a "token" coloured actor. From what I recall of interview/article Earthsea was Ursula's move to very specifically make a fantasy story and series that wasn't rooted in European Western culture and peoples. A fact that might have skipped some by on a casual read, but for an adaptation it should have been a massive cornerstone.

But honestly time and time again we see the issue that, esp the Hollywood/US, system of production really likes to mess with whatever it gets its hands on. Heck even when they adapt completed things like anime, they've often changed vast amounts of the story and structure by cutting/chopping/changing bits. And that's when they've a complete production and all they should need to do is provide translation.

I’d love to see a good Earthsea adaptation, but whoever does it does need to grasp that the Archipelago is essentially native Americans / Pacific Islanders living in Ancient Greece. It needs to look different.

World War would be fun, but would likely get bogged down in the historical politics; I do wonder whether you could do a modernised version, with The Race still having technology 10-minutes into the future, but versus current protagonists (USA, China)? Don’t know whether that would be better or worse.

Sky TV did try to do a Sinbad TV series a few years ago, but I got the impression it never got better than fine. To me, it suits a high-end streaming model better, as you can have a different tale each week, potentially recurring characters / locations, etc. I think at the time it probably suffered from the “filming on water doubles the production cost” problem, but with the level of CGI available today, plus technologies like the Volume, maybe it wouldn’t have that issue.

Honestly I'm actually keen to see where animation goes. To me fantasy has often been best in animation because you don't have to compromise the fantasy vision.

With real actors, even in the CGI world, you still have to invest in a lot of infrastructure to build up good fantasy. The more elaborate you get the more you have to spend.

With things like Invincible, Hellofaboss and other stuff there's a bit of a resurgance in western animation being an actual viable product and for adult markets without it being the crude animation style of Southpark (where basically they are using animation to tell super crude/rough jokes that wouldn't work with live actors - at least not without getting hit with so many complaints no producer/executive would want it on their system/sign their name to it).


So I'm eager to see if that takes off in a big way as that would be ideal for fantasy. Take something like Vox Machina 2nd season. The opening alone to that would be a huge undertaking for a live-action series with CGI. With animation its a lot lot simpler. Not cheap and not simple, but simpler than live action

I mean there's clearly a market for a good fantasy epic too, in animation at least it's been filled by anime for quite a while (though more for isekais than most subgenres).

 insaniak wrote:
So not politics, just a problem you've made up.

If by 'made up' you mean 'reported in the trade magazines and spoken in interviews', sure.

 Vulcan wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
So not politics, just a problem you've made up.

If by 'made up' you mean 'reported in the trade magazines and spoken in interviews', sure.

By all means, link these articles.

Or don't.

The fact that more movies are being made with protagonists who aren't male and white is only a matter of politics if you choose to make it one.

Alternatively, we can just accept that white men have had the lion's share of leading roles in western movies for pretty much the entire existence of film media, and choose to enjoy seeing a wider range of people in those roles moving forwards, and be happy for the people who get to feel good about that additional representation.


As a father of daughters, I for one am more than happy to see more movies featuring roles for strong women. As are they. If I find myself feeling the need to see manly men on screen, the next Tom Cruise / Chris Pratt / Vin Diesel / Jason Statham / whoever epic blockbuster will be along soon enough. They've not actually gone anywhere.

Nobody cares that there are movies with more diverse leads/casts. That's a strawman.
Everybody loves Sarah Connor from Terminator 2, Ripley from Aliens, Princess Leia from the original trilogy, Marion from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lara Croft from the good Tomb Raider games, Blade, etc. etc. etc.
It's not the audience who cares about the race/sex of the people on screen, but current Hollywood producers/show runners etc.

It's when the desire to add more diversity harms the narrative/and or characters, or becomes the focus rather than telling a good story that people take issue.

The Wandavision example is illustrative of the narrative being harmed by the desire not to feature a 'non-diverse' character. The characters of Doctor Strange and Wan are also harmed by their total failure to act on an entire town being tortured by Wanda.

You saw something similar with The Eternals, when it was stated that the reason they were chosen for the focus of a film was that since they were lesser known heroes the characters could be altered to make them more 'diverse'.
Then that diversity is pushed a/the major selling point of the movie (it was going to save lives!)

 insaniak wrote:
Or don't.

The fact that more movies are being made with protagonists who aren't male and white is only a matter of politics if you choose to make it one.

Vandalising established cultural things is. See above exemple with disney snowwhite.

Alternatively, we can just accept that white men have had the lion's share of leading roles in western movies for pretty much the entire existence of film media, and choose to enjoy seeing a wider range of people in those roles moving forwards, and be happy for the people who get to feel good about that additional representation.

Which if it were done propperly with new IPs and charachters would not have been a Problem, except that isn't what happened.

As a father of daughters, I for one am more than happy to see more movies featuring roles for strong women. As are they. If I find myself feeling the need to see manly men on screen, the next Tom Cruise / Chris Pratt / Vin Diesel / Jason Statham / whoever epic blockbuster will be along soon enough. They've not actually gone anywhere.

That wasn't the point of contention raised and you know it.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Or don't.

The fact that more movies are being made with protagonists who aren't male and white is only a matter of politics if you choose to make it one.

Vandalising established cultural things is. See above exemple with disney snowwhite.

Nobody is 'vandalising' anything. The original animated Snow White still exists for anyone who wants to watch it.

Story tellers have been reimagining existing characters and stories for as long as people have been making up stories. Characters have been gender swapped. Stories have been shifted to different cultures, or different times, or whatever else the teller of that version of the story felt like doing with it. It's only in recent years, as this sort of thing became more obvious in mainstream media, that it was suddenly declared to be 'political'.

 insaniak wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Or don't.

The fact that more movies are being made with protagonists who aren't male and white is only a matter of politics if you choose to make it one.

Vandalising established cultural things is. See above exemple with disney snowwhite.

Nobody is 'vandalising' anything. The original animated Snow White still exists for anyone who wants to watch it.

Mhm no, sorry, as someone from that cultural background it is vandalising and insulting. It's doubly insulting to boot because there'd been more than enough money lying around to actually make something unique and or adapt a story from another place in a respectable manner.

Story tellers have been reimagining existing characters and stories for as long as people have been making up stories. Characters have been gender swapped. Stories have been shifted to different cultures, or different times, or whatever else the teller of that version of the story felt like doing with it. It's only in recent years, as this sort of thing became more obvious in mainstream media, that it was suddenly declared to be 'political'.

Yeah, no, when you are done shifting straw and are actually willing to have an open discussion tell me but before that no.

For the record the original animation was a reimaginening done well. Of a love story fairy tale. Genderswaps "HERos" journey etc became an issue especially in conjunction with actors, directors and publishing companies feeling a need to belittle people that liked the original or pointed out the lack of actual storytelling integrity, especially with snow white and Rachel Ziegler with some really high quality interviews as but one exemple.