Film forum off topic/random chat thread

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

To be fair it's not just "fan boy nerds".

It's pretty desperate across a lot of TV too.

Done know if anyone watches The 100? Pretty decent show but impossible to have any kind of interaction about it online. The show runners get crucified for killing characters, the fan base ignores the actual plots and makes up their own, interpret things to suit themselves. It's ridiculous and it happens with a lot of media and it's not all nostalgia based.

Those 100 fans are still fan boys, just a new type. Generally this type of self entitlement has been the domain of comic fans but in recent times nerds have won the war and are getting everything their way, I have yet to read that article but I think that this sense of ownership that people have for media is dangerous. There is a whole thing now where people are campaigning to have one of the characters in Frozen 2 have a girlfriend. Sure it's a nice thought about being inclusive but the problem is that it's fans telling creators how to create, by all means listen to fan feed back but for fans to expect creators to bend to their will is utter nonsense. I have more respect for creators who tell fans where to shove it and do their own thing but in this age of Marvel movies retconning characters to appease fans it's setting a dangerous precedent in that fans think they have a voice and some input into media they enjoy. And that's a bad thing.

FunLover18

Deleted User wrote: »

It's because fan boy nerds are the most entitled people in the world, they think that they own these things they obsess over and honestly, if Captain America being an agent of Hydra or the Ghostbusters being women rapes or ruins your childhood then it wasn't very good to begin with.

I don't necessarily agree with you that it reflects on the property itself but I think people bringing their own experiences to the table is a factor and something I don't get. I've seen people bring up their memories of sneaking into the cinema when they were 12 to see Ghostbusters and I'm like 'you're still going to have those memories' but then I think they also use it to prove their fandom as well.

Deleted User wrote: »

Those 100 fans are still fan boys, just a new type. Generally this type of self entitlement has been the domain of comic fans but in recent times nerds have won the war and are getting everything their way, I have yet to read that article but I think that this sense of ownership that people have for media is dangerous. There is a whole thing now where people are campaigning to have one of the characters in Frozen 2 have a girlfriend. Sure it's a nice thought about being inclusive but the problem is that it's fans telling creators how to create, by all means listen to fan feed back but for fans to expect creators to bend to their will is utter nonsense. I have more respect for creators who tell fans where to shove it and do their own thing but in this age of Marvel movies retconning characters to appease fans it's setting a dangerous precedent in that fans think they have a voice and some input into media they enjoy. And that's a bad thing.

The article actually covers the Frozen 2 thing which is an interesting juxtaposition because where there is a certain sexist faction giving out about GB the Frozen thing is actually the opposite as people were clamouring for inclusion and representation., which I can understand but I agree with you as well that it's bad for the business when Hollywood does pander to the fans. I presume the Marvel thing you're talking about is the 'All Hail The King' one shot which retcons the mandarin reveal of IM3.

FunLover18

FunLover18 wrote: »

I don't necessarily agree with you that it reflects on the property itself but I think people bringing their own experiences to the table is a factor and something I don't get. I've seen people bring up their memories of sneaking into the cinema when they were 12 to see Ghostbusters and I'm like 'you're still going to have those memories' but then I think they also use it to prove their fandom as well.

As I said, if someone changing something about a character you like ruins your childhood then it wasn't all that great to begin with.

FunLover18 wrote: »

The article actually covers the Frozen 2 thing which is an interesting juxtaposition because where there is a certain sexist faction giving out about GB the Frozen thing is actually the opposite as people were clamouring for inclusion and representation., which I can understand but I agree with you as well that it's bad for the business when Hollywood does pander to the fans. I presume the Marvel thing you're talking about is the 'All Hail The King' one shot which retcons the mandarin reveal of IM3.

Let's not forget when they brought back a character who was killed off because fans cried about it. I think that the sooner creators just tell fans to fuck off the better, I don't want some social justice warrior trying to dictate aspects of a film or character as that's opening up a can of worms.

e_e

Out of the fan entitlement issue I see one side as being polite, well-meaning and inclusive and the other overtly toxic and aggressive. The most recent glaring examples of the latter were not in film though but in comics and video games. One over a Captain America twist and the other (gasp) a video game... getting delayed... by a few weeks.

https://twitter.com/NoMansSky/status/736686755139719168
https://twitter.com/brubaker/status/735969722001301506

johnny_ultimate

It's a big problem IMO, or at least a big internet problem :pac: In some ways it's killing the capacity for intelligent discourse in the mainstream arena, which perhaps should be expected but is rarely less than depressing in action.

Look: it's good to be passionate about things. But it's important to moderate that passion, and at least respect alternative opinions that are articulated clearly and honestly. The hysterical comments and abuse seen when a critic gives a 'fan friendly' film a bad review just boggles the mind. Hell, it's gotten well past the point of people having to actually have seen the film to fly into a blind rage about anybody who criticises / praises it.

In one particularly disheartening sense, it represents the complete victory of corporate Hollywood, having effectively turned at least some customers - and some of these films are glorified products - into basically zealots

FunLover18

Deleted User wrote: »

As I said, if someone changing something about a character you like ruins your childhood then it wasn't all that great to begin with.

I think I misunderstood. By 'it' do you mean their childhood?

Links234

e_e wrote: »

and the other (gasp) a video game... getting delayed... by a few weeks.

Paraphrasing a tweet I saw about this, but:

"What I loved most about this game was that it was released on time" said no-one, ever.

There's also the rather well known Miyamoto quote "A delayed game is good eventually, a rushed game is bad forever."

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

I always find it funny how many people who deal with the media on a regular basis seem to forget how an interview works. It's like they forget they're not just having a chat to one person and it's going out to the public for mass consumption.

https://twitter.com/TheShiftyShadow/status/738095771992608768

I'd be more inclined to believe his apology if he hadn't made similar comments in a previous interview, without actually naming Knightley.

Sad Professor

It's a well written apology. The norm in these situations is to claim you were misquoted or that you meant something different. And to Carney's credit he makes no excuses for himself.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Sad Professor wrote: »

It's a well written apology. The norm in these situations is to claim you were misquoted or that you meant something different. And to Carney's credit he makes no excuses for himself.

Yeah. Nothing worse than one of those "I'm sorry of YOU were offended" apologies.

pixelburp

Deleted User wrote: »

It's because fan boy nerds are the most entitled people in the world, they think that they own these things they obsess over and honestly, if Captain America being an agent of Hydra or the Ghostbusters being women rapes or ruins your childhood then it wasn't very good to begin with.

Feel I have to swoop in and defend the honour of 'fan boy nerds' here, having spent most of my life as one; as with most things in life it feels like the noisy, obnoxious minority are giving the majority a bad name. Just because some are freaking out over Captain America & clickbait news sites choose to spot-pick some of the juicier outrages shouldn't colour the community as a general whole.

Nor should 'Ownership' be seen as an entirely unreasonable by-product here, in fact it's completely understandable in some cases & more often than not is a simple force of positivity & creativity - particularly in the world of geeks and nerds. By definition, fans are the ones who love a property the deepest, consume its content the most, and the blunt reality can be that without those fans there'd be no end-product in the first place (if I recall my SciFi folklore, Star Trek's existence to this day on the cultural map was down to a core of fandom keeping the flames of enthusiasm alive during the barren 70s). Oh sure, that sense of ownership can be taken way too far & authors shouldn't kowtow to fan demand on a whim - we've seen the negative side of that plenty of times - but to ignore or dismiss any community, inflecting 'nerd' towards the pejorative, is a poor choice and destructive to the artists-audience relationship.

Nor has it been uncommon for artistic, niche content to strike a meaningful (insofar as it's possible with fiction) emotional connection with the reader, viewer, player, whatever - that's just the by-product of enjoyment if anything is consumed beyond as an intellectual exercise. This goes double when there's already a subtext bubbling underneath the top layer of something; I've seen it remarked more than once how minorities of various colours and creeds found X-Men a potent enabler & source of inspiration or comfort when dealing with their sense of self. Can't claim this to have been the case for me mind you, so I wouldn't beat that drum too heavily.

To me, fandom is great, and often presents itself as a vibrant and imaginative community, making your favourite thing that more FUN to enjoy: think of all the conventions, Cosplay, fan fiction, and so on. Of course, studios and companies have belatedly realised these people have money in their wallets. Having effectively shunned nerd culture for the best part of 50 years, it's now a demonstrably profitable beheamoth, and arguably we're witnessing the 'weaponisation' of fandom and nostalgia. Resulting in everything from those endless streams of remakes, to shallow and misplaced engorging of nostalgic cliché such as Kung Fury.

Where I think those mutations in the minority occur, especially nowadays, is through communal echo chambers such as the internet; social media in particular. It has never been easier to have your voice heard & so what was once the ignored minority has become reported clickbait. It's not just fiction fandom this is becoming a problem: you look at other avenues of human expression such as politics and social causes, and these have become equally infected by vocal cliques, who demonstrate their own miscalculated sense of worthiness and self-entitlement - the end result being the same needlessly aggressive, over protective zealots.

*breathes*

Hmm, that has come out as way more of a rambling rant than I intended, but I hate seeing 'nerd' culture poisoned by selective hounding over some passing Tweets or FB causes-de-jour. Most of us are actually OK and we just have fun enjoying our favourite film/TV/comicbooks.

The Black Oil

Hah :pac:

https://twitter.com/u_sylvie/status/742507648738721793

charlie_says

I'd never heard of The 100 before, just watched 10 mins of it.

Jesus.

Who are the people who write that? Even worse that people love it.

I'm not willing to see if it gets better, so corny beautiful American make up weird non people stupidness.

Bleurch!

pixelburp

charlie_says wrote: »

I'd never heard of The 100 before, just watched 10 mins of it.

Jesus.

Who are the people who write that? Even worse that people love it.

I'm not willing to see if it gets better, so corny beautiful American make up weird non people stupidness.

Bleurch!

You mean the post-apocalytpic TV show? If you do, give it a few more episodes. The pilot is all sorts of awful and felt like it was gearing itself towards the female tween market. That got abandoned quick enough & if you keep going you'll find things get dark, mature and pretty gripping fast. Put Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones and Lord of the Flies into a blender and that's what The 100 turns into after the first half of season 1.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

pixelburp wrote: »

You mean the post-apocalytpic TV show? If you do, give it a few more episodes. The pilot is all sorts of awful and felt like it was gearing itself towards the female tween market. That got abandoned quick enough & if you keep going you'll find things get dark, mature and pretty gripping fast. Put Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones and Lord of the Flies into a blender and that's what The 100 turns into after the first half of season 1.

Yes, definitely needs to be stuck with for more than a few episodes. If I remember rightly it was episode 4 that seemed like it was taking a different direction and it took off after that.

The Black Oil

Have always liked that little moment in Clear and Present Danger where Harrison Ford scrambles to find paper for the printer. :pac:

barryegan

It's a silly thing to get worked up over but I find it odd the number of television documentaries that are considered to be films. Noticed it first on Letterboxd with the appearance in my feed of Making a Murderer and now it's seeped into film critics favourite films of the year (just listened to the latest Filmspotting episode where they talk about O.J.: Made in America as being one of the best of the year).

But like I said, it's a dumb thing to be irked by but I can't help it.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

barryegan wrote: »

It's a silly thing to get worked up over but I find it odd the number of television documentaries that are considered to be films. Noticed it first on Letterboxd with the appearance in my feed of Making a Murderer and now it's seeped into film critics favourite films of the year (just listened to the latest Filmspotting episode where they talk about O.J.: Made in America as being one of the best of the year).

But like I said, it's a dumb thing to be irked by but I can't help it.

I agree. If it's episodic it's not a film. Simples.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

I agree. If it's episodic it's not a film. Simples.

+1 It really is that simple

With the output from Hollywood these days though they are likely having to look away from traditional films for substance...... thats a rant for another day I think :pac:

Sad Professor

I also hate documentaries being included with fictional films in end of year lists. Documentaries are highly manipulative in ways that people don't notice. Instead they go "yup, it's a documentary so it must be true". Unless it's doing something formally very groundbreaking (which 99.99999 percent of documentaries don't) then documentaries should be relegated to a separate list.

pixelburp

Interesting perspective from Kermode about the realities of films increasingly being released on VOD format rather than getting a dedicated theatrical run - centring specifically around the misleading reports of an Emma Watson film taking only £47 at the box office. It does demonstrate just how much the consumption of movies is changing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31NBqk-pDJA

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

^ Is it a bit of snobbery on the part of critics that they don't review things that aren't getting cinema releases? Do people consider "VOD" to mean the same thing as "straight to video" used to mean, ie. rubbish?

If you look at the Letterboxd homepage you can see what films are popular. I remember in December logging on and in the "recent activity" bit for people I follow it was all The Force Awakens. There are times though you log on and everyone has just watched Beasts of No Nation, or more recently The Fundamentals of Caring. They're both Netflix releases which I assume has a much bigger audience than something like Volta or Mubi (?) but it does prove that people are watching these VOD films in big numbers and in the initial days of release, just like in the cinema.

Agent Coulson

Beasts of No Nation had 3 million viewers on its first week of release on Netflix I doubt it would have had that many if it gotten a full cinema release first.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

^ Is it a bit of snobbery on the part of critics that they don't review things that aren't getting cinema releases? Do people consider "VOD" to mean the same thing as "straight to video" used to mean, ie. rubbish?

If you look at the Letterboxd homepage you can see what films are popular. I remember in December logging on and in the "recent activity" bit for people I follow it was all The Force Awakens. There are times though you log on and everyone has just watched Beasts of No Nation, or more recently The Fundamentals of Caring. They're both Netflix releases which I assume has a much bigger audience than something like Volta or Mubi (?) but it does prove that people are watching these VOD films in big numbers and in the initial days of release, just like in the cinema.

Basically it in a nut shell. But back in the straight to video days at least some those videos would actually get reviewed in some of the more popular/bigger movie magazines from what I recall. I haven't bought one in 15 years

It also ties to my thinking on how disposable a lot of media has become to many these days, it's all there on demand and the same value isn't placed on it as we would have placed on tapes and dvds back when ?

pixelburp

I dunno, I don't buy the snobbery argument, I think the reality is more an indication of the disparity present in the printed media, some of whom cling to the notion that theatrical releases are the sole legitimate avenue for release of a film. That's obviously and demonstrably changing but there are bound to be those slow to adapt to this change, or in the case of The Colony, completely igo rant of the state of play. Happens in all walks of life.

Besides, it can be easy to forget that film critics have to sit through ALL theatrical releases. They don't get to pick and choose, and the slurry or detritus we as consumers get to ignore, the critic has to endure. Add to that the current slew of VOD services all competing for attention and I could imagine how that currently seems like more trouble than its worth, or just a bewildering landscape to monitor. Or your paper is willing to pay for.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

I suppose the print media have limited amount of space for reviews. I quite often see online reviews of VOD films and some sites have a dedicated section for streaming media reviews.

Sad Professor

It should be noted that some of these films being discussed were acquired on the festival circuit, so even if they hadn't seen them already, critics already knew whether to ignore them or not. Beasts of No Nation, however, was a multi-platform release - theatrical and VOD simultaneously – but most of the theatre chains boycotted it for breaking the 90 day window. Tbh the fact that most people watched it on VOD didn't really do it any favours come award time and you have to wonder if that would have been different had there been a more substantial theatrical run.

For better or worse, people watch TV differently. One of the things that Netflix discovered was that if people have all 50+ hours of a show ready to play in front them they'll probably watch it all even if they hate it. I think there's still a strong feeling within the film industry that a movie isn't a movie unless it's shown theatrically. Even if it's only for a week in a few major US and European cities, at least some people will have experienced it as it meant to be experienced. And if anyone should see it that way it's probably critics since they are going to be writing about it.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Sad Professor wrote: »

Even if it's only for a week in a few major US and European cities, at least some people will have experienced it as it meant to be experienced. And if anyone should see it that way it's probably critics since they are going to be writing about it.

That's an interesting point about how films are meant to be seen. Something like Gravity, for example, was obviously made for a giant cinema screen not for watching on your iPhone. I know studios only care about making their money back so they'll sell distribution rights to the highest bidder but it must be somewhat annoying for the director or cinematographer to make something intended for the big screen and see it end up on Netflix.

The Black Oil

https://twitter.com/CBNostalgia/status/754487403243511809

:P

Sad Professor

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

That's an interesting point about how films are meant to be seen. Something like Gravity, for example, was obviously made for a giant cinema screen not for watching on your iPhone. I know studios only care about making their money back so they'll sell distribution rights to the highest bidder but it must be somewhat annoying for the director or cinematographer to make something intended for the big screen and see it end up on Netflix.

Also with films acquired at festivals there's usually deals in place contractually obliging distributors to give the film some sort of theatrical run. On the surface this is, as Kermode suggests, because everyone wants the press and promotion of a theatrical release, but it's also arguably a result of snobbishness on the part of the filmmakers themselves, who don't see what they do as being the same as television. The problem is that a lot of the artistic effort that goes into making smaller films cinematic isn't really noticed by audiences at large.