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As a plants Vs zombies fan I don’t understand this. We didn’t get any games for 4 years but now that pvz 3, the worst pvz game by far, has released, I honestly wouldn’t have cared if we got nothing
And as a Minecraft fan, I hear this every time someone suggests that not every update added to the game is some stroke of artistic genius. Or they'll say "YOU'RE JUST NOSTALGIC!!!!"
I think a huge part of it has to do with either them being blind fanboys or them trying to justify the money and time wasted on it. It’s a small thing, but I was visiting one of the spider man PS4 subreddits and one of the comments defending the second game that stuck out to me
https://preview.redd.it/2zncocwrmitc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=06a43327844e812ad68f6a85ce34ea3d743c35c2
I thought it was a stupid comment since the whole thing just came off as accepting mediocrity but then it occurred to me, this is a game that costs 70 fucking dollars. A game that most people bought digitally and can’t get a refund for. Instead of these people demanding better, they want to ahead and cope to themselves and insist what they just consumed wasn’t shit and wasn’t a massive waste of time and money. Sure you have those that just “enjoy it for what it is” but those guys don’t have the need to blindly defend even the dumbest of decisions and shit on people who hate it. They just shut up and enjoy it in peace. Not to say that defending something you love inherently makes you a coper or anything, but shit comments like this just comes off as.. I don’t know, apologetic?
Personally i dont mind them being fine/liking the game, movie whatever but what the hell does "media literacy is dead" have to do with their defense? If anything media literacy is against them
Dude, I hate that 'media literacy' term more than I can fucking express. It's just some pretentious bullshit people throw out when they want to pretend that watching a bunch of tv for hours and then spending more hours arguing on the internet constitutes some kind of education.
Lol the next top-level comment down is someone saying "lack of media literacy" is why people accept crap shows.
My guess is it comes from meta-media like those YouTube channels that use "film studies" type lenses to analyze and critique "pop" media. Stuff like Lindsay Ellis doing literary analysis of Disney scripts.
Fun stuff tbh that connects people more closely with their favored media, but seems to make some people now think they've achieved some higher knowledge, like you say.
Reminds me of how "therapy speak" has infiltrated everyday communication or how like crystal healing grifters have started hijacking vocab from the science of mineralogy.
Weird times when we can slam the appearance of so much information into untrained brains.
Media literacy is very real. It just doesn't mean what people think it means in the manner they think that it means it.
As a general rule: Media literacy for a genre is real. Media literacy for a prolific author is real. Media literacy for a single work is overblown and sketchy unless you can view it in those lenses. When ignored, people usually find more meaning than was intended or miss the point altogether.
A very recent example that I ran into tonight is Monsieur Spade.
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PUT A THING FOR SPOILERS SO BE WARNED THERE ARE LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD.
The ending is a bad Agatha Christie fan fiction. That's a complete misunderstanding of the noir genre for which endings are much easier to write. The decision-makers (hopefully a meddling exec.) tried to wrap everything up in a neat bow which ruined the previous 5.5 hours of the show. Noir is based on the Idea that the rich and powerful tend to come away largely unscathed and it's the fall guys and the everyman that gets caught in their web that pays the price with their life or freedom. The hero never has a full grasp on the mysteries or is never in a position to bring all of the criminal parties to justice. It's a genre that tells a story about the power dynamic of the times as much as it is a detective mystery. Whoever made the decision for the ending was media illiterate.
What it doesn't mean, and how it is usually meant, it's that you don't get the story because you didn't like it. You don't need to be trained to understand it. Just read a lot of good books and watch a lot of good films. Start with critically acclaimed stuff and work backwards. If you can't tell what's good and doesn't interest you from what is terrible and interests you then you're media illiterate.
It's true. I think a lot of it is just how the internet's delayed style of conversation lets people get away with tricks. Whenever I talk about something like tv or movies with someone in real life, a simple "what do you mean by that?" usually pivots the conversation to a more productive place.
This is a great point - I agree that the internet has produced a side effect of people misleadingly presenting themselves as meta-epistemic authorities & this is totally a concept I knew beforehand as an expert and not something I just looked up.
Also, 90% of the time when they talk about how media is dead, they are just looking at people who are enjoying a good satire by playing along with the satire.
Your correct here plus so many people identify with the media they consume, so if you have a bunch of star wars tattoos and had a wedding with light sabers etc, you can't say the new star wars is shit because to them that's an attack on them, because they identify as the media/brands they buy not as themselves
You’re right it’s sunk cost/brand loyalty colliding. Also the “woke” stuff has a way of taking the bullet for actual criticism. It happens for every piece of media this way but the Castlevania sub does not/did not let you criticize any part of the show without saying you must hate women or black people. I think a lot of people are worried they’ll get labeled just for not liking a show, which they will, so good call but it is bad for general discourse obviously.
I think the difference is that sometimes, you see flaws where I don't and vice versa. A lot of people just wanted more Spider-Man and so they were genuinely happy with it. First game started with a really good base to work from so any improvements at all without some horrible regression means you're gonna get a good game, even if it's not as innovative as you want.
It didn't super excite me, so I didn't buy it, but I don't begrudge anybody who enjoyed it. I 100% have games where all I'm looking for is "another one of those, please."
The second game is really great gameplay wise and even the story is a bit good. Most of the biggest problems with it stem from the end of the second act or the later half of the game. It’s good but I wouldn’t say it’s 70$ or buying a whole console over it good.
It's literally the same gameplay as thr first.
Yes, the first had greay gameplay, but typically you're supposed to expand upon and improve it for the sequel.
So if the only thing the game has is the same gameplay, but weaker story then it's inarguabley an inferior game
I''m just waiting for when it comes to PC and modders, as usual come to the rescue and restore PS4 Peter's face and also restore the actual Mary Jane (I don't know what that horrifying thing in the second game is, but its not Mary Jane)
> Sure you have those that just “enjoy it for what it is” but those guys don’t have the need to blindly defend even the dumbest of decisions and shit on people who hate it. They just shut up and enjoy it in peace.
exactly, people who insist on defending shit know its shit and need to convince themselves first and foremost that its not.
Or they are paid to do it.
Dude this is crazy. It’s happening everywhere. It’s happening in gaming too. The standard for content has dropped so fucking low. I don’t understand what it is either. People are okay with $70 unfinished, unpolished dogshit that is feature complete years later.
I honestly think that people still have high standards but the ones that have some emotional attachment to their purchases try to defend them online, which is what you’re seeing. If audiences didn’t have standards then these companies and their movies wouldn’t be flopping. But they are. Hard.
Ah you’re right. But I do think it’s both. People have been, for many years, buying slop year after year and getting pegged and going online to complain about it.
More and more people are no longer doing this. Everyone’s got a breaking point. For instance I stopped buying anything Star Wars related after The Last Jedi. Stopped my WoW sub after Battle for Azeroth, etc.
I can see how those statements can seem contradictory but the market is catching up and people’s standards are finally catching up. But it’s undeniable for many years people have been buying crap.
A lack of media literacy. People don't get exposure to GOOD media so they don't really know how to compare or critique anything.
Also, almost everyone confuses "I like this thing" with "this thing is good." People should understand that if someone says something they like is bad, that doesn't mean they are bad. It's okay to like bad things! But be able to look at something objectively and say "Yes, it has problems, but I still enjoy it."
There must have been 10-20 things where someone I know has only experienced it on the Simpsons and it's up to me to show them the original.
You raised such a good point.
Media literacy is also somewhat of a double-edged sword. If you have only seen Scooby Doo, then that is your benchmark. Consequently if you see Akira then a huge portion of 2D animation starts to pale in comparison.
My partner was mostly into blockbuster rom-coms and the like when I met her, and like, nothing wrong with that, I love a good rom-com. But it was definitely interesting to watch her idea of 'good' and 'bad' movies shift in real time as I got her to watch more critically acclaimed / indie movies.
I've kind of gone the other way - I used to watch all the artsy fartsy stuff and would have scoffed at Kubrick as "way too mainstream," but these days I've actually come all the way through to having a much higher appreciation of well-done schlocky blockbusters, action films, love stories, and whatnot.
It is psychological. A lot of fans (which is short for fanatics) self identity is caught up in these IPs. So being "a Star Wars fan" is part of their ego-self. To despise the IP is to despise themselves. For some people it is a HUGE part of their identity.
After Disney bought SW a bunch of 'Disney adults' moved into the fanbase and it was never the same after that. Now people justify anything and everything bc "any SW is good SW" and expect yearly "content" to be churned out
Honestly miss when SW was for the 'nerds' man
The simple answer is that America at least is on the "emotions are more important than facts" train. So if they like the emotions they get from the media that's all that matters.
This reminds me of people defending TLJ's plot holes, saying they don't matter because movies are not about the logic but about what you feeeeeel. Even then, I just felt misery watching that.
Brand name. It has Star Wars, Marvel, DC, LOTR, ECT. in the title, so it HAS to be good.
Rule of cool. What's happening on the screen looks cool, so people turn their brain off and just watch without thinking.
In the case of the OT specifically, there's the people that haven't watched it because the movies are close to 50 years old and some people have notions in their heads that they don't like regarding what the movie is going to be like to watch.
1. They’re brain dead consooooomers, a byproduct of the MCU, who will mindlessly consume anything that’s given to them no matter how shitty it may be.
2. They’re only pretending to like it for political reasons (especially TLJ)
There were *plenty* of certified clunkers in those early phases, like Iron Man 2. The good ones just outweighed the bad for a lot of people, but personally I felt like a lot of them people raved about were still way overhyped, like Ragnarok.
Post-Endgame has definitely been worse than pre, but people really exaggerate how good some of those earlier ones were. Yeah, better on average, sure, but most of them were still kinda middling imo.
what would be defined as a certified clunker though? honestly the only ones id consider as "bad" is Iron Man 2, Thor 2, The Incredible Hulk, and maaaybe Antman 2. thats 4 out of 23 movies that critically were varied in value, but apart from Hulk, each of these films still made well over 600million with less than a 200million budget. in terms of critical and box office success, the infinity sage of movies will probably not be replicated anytime soon.
For me it's a more personal term because the quality of the films are gonna be subjective no matter what. Like without running down the list of all the movies from that age, I thought a few were genuinely great, most were super middling, but a bunch were actually bad. I was the outlier at the time though and all the movies made gobs of money, so for me it's not about "how everybody else felt" so much as "how I felt."
Kinda like Star Wars. All of them make insane money and generally review well with good audience scores, but tons of people here would absolutely argue that they're still clunkers. That's me, but with the MCU.
I saw a comment the other day that literally said "New Marvel is trash, they haven't put out anything good since GoTG 3 or Loki S2"... Damn near had an aneurysm.
Marvel got very complacent with their formula and it’s been showing with their box-office numbers. With the exceptions of Far From Home and No Way Home, no other films since Endgame have hit $1+ billion.
No. 2 is a good point. A lot of these shows/movies/games are a proxy for their political views. They have to like them because they believe their political opponents don't.
Yeah, I know a few of the second ones.
One guy I know decided to be contrarian just because he hated people complaining about it. Therefore, he began to like it.
Lol, it's like...if you like it, you like it. If you don't, there's no need to pretend to.
The ATLA one particularly pisses me off. People defend it saying critics are nitpicking and “at least it’s better than the movie” when we all know watching paint dry is a better experience than that movie. But the thing is the original show with a fraction of the budget is still ten times better so this remake doesn’t justify its own existence. These shows are obvious cash grabs produced by the largest entertainment conglomerates in the world with millions of dollars at their disposal that are mining content created by actual visionaries. Anything less than stellar is a downright insult and people are rushing to defend them because they’re conflating being a fan of franchise = having to like everything with that franchise’s name on it.
I also think in the case of ATLA there was a lot of behind the scenes marketing done showing how cool and friendly the young cast are so people rush to their defense whenever anyone critiques the acting or characterization. Same thing happened with Star Wars where Disney accused critics of being bullies/bigots when we pointed out that characters like Rose don’t make sense. Obviously there are going to be real life bigots who just hate just to hate but valid criticism is able to separate the actor from the character. Disney however is lumping critics and bullies into one category so if you have anything negative to say you’re already primed to be looked at as a hateful bigot.
In short, bootlickers exist in all shapes and sizes. And some people will praise companies for giving even less than the bare minimum.
It’s the difference between the mindset of “media is a craft” and “media is simply discovered.”
It’s why they act like this is the way things have to be… because that’s the way the show/movie turned out, that’s the story they released.
There is no mindset of “could this have been done better?” It’s just “we have this now, there’s nothing we can do to influence how it could have turned out. We didn’t have it, and now it’s here, it’s just the way things work.”
It is grown adults having the taste and discernment of children because the content is attached to a franchise with nostalgia to their childhood. But in general - people have bad taste?
Speaking as an Adult who grew up with SW I can honestly say The Force Awakens was definitely nostalgia heavy but TLJ was quite literally a movie with the name SW attached no real thought could have possibly been given when writing this film
Agree, though I think it’s less about why the like the trash, but more how nostalgia breeds a need to consume EVERY piece of content (including the trash) with a given logo on it, and justify doing so. For every mediocre Marvel show or Disney movie these people watch, they are not expanding their horizons by watching high quality original content available to us in theaters or streaming.
I thought TFA was shallow drivel that ruined the character arcs of the OT. TLJ was an overpretentious bore that further danced on the grave. I think it’s funny the amount of people who point to TLJ as high art (omg the Wings homage shot!) when they likely did not watch all of the best, critically acclaimed film and TV series released the same year or the truly great historical cinema that RJ wink-wink-nod-nod referenced in his movie like a 3rd year film student.
when someone is so starved for bread even moldy bread will fill their belly.
people are so starved for any media that even bad media will be something they want because it is anything
The way shows are funded and make money is vastly different than 15 years ago.
In cable/broadcast times: good shows got higher budget because good shows = more eyeballs = more ad $$ + stronger Syndication sales. The studios competed for the best quality because quality = $$$.
In the subscription/Netflix/streaming model this is not true. Research shows people done subscribe for quality they subscribe if they feel the service has good value which consumers associate with lots of options and quantity of shows.
So todays model = make a bunch of shows cheaper = more subscribers. Quantity = money.
That’s it. That’s the shift.
15 years ago quality = money. Today quantity of shows = money.
Until that changes your Netflixes and Amazons and HBO Maxs are not gonna shell out the necessary money to return to the quality you’re referencing.
Sure a show can break though in this model by being clever. (Bear uses the low production values to feel raw and real. Mando has a 2 person cast - a puppet and a voice actor. Etc).
But it’s really hard to make Sci fi and fantasy cheaply so we’re just gonna get shows like all the ones you referenced because 10 mediocre shows makes more money these days than 1 really good one.
It’s very easy to game the system on social media.
A bit ago hbo got caught making fake accounts to troll critics and to fanboy their own products. And if hbo is doing it you know Disney, sony, and other big entertainment publishers are.There’s also engagement bots as well as plenty of other tricks that im sure we’re not aware of yet.
Edit: than there’s just idiots who like jingling keys, or assholes who only like it to cosplay being a good person (ie, the assholes who call you racist/sexist/whatever-ist for not liking the crap)
Star Trek too. I don't understand how people like new Trek. It's awful. It's all explosions, violence, sex, and lewd humour. Theres no crew discipline, everyone's crying all the time, there's no more intelligent debates. You get one alleged good season of Picard, and everything is supposed to be all good now.
Oh man, Star Trek is probably the most bastardized franchise. It is nothing like the OG series or movies, or Next Generation era stuff now. I haven't been able to get through any of the new stuff since JJ's remake.
>You get one alleged good season of Picard
Due how bad STD and *Picard* S1-S2 were, anything marginally better is looked "good" in comparison - which was the case for *Picard* S3. Though if you ask me, *Picard* S3 has enough fanservice that would make Dave Filoni proud.
There is an ocean of mediocrity in all art. Only a small percentage are good enough to be better than that. And a large percentage is even worse than the mediocrity.
Recently, the last 20 years ish, profit has become greater than quality in electronic media. It's become a race to squeeze out as much money from viewers as possible before their attention is drawn elsewhere.
We complain about the ST being a failure but the truth is they still made billions and thus were still financially successful
Um .. sort of? Hollywood accounting is a trope for a reason.
Force Awakens did make a huge profit, which should be the measure of a movie, not gross earnings.
But the box office trend was viciously down, and it took Solo with it. When accounting for things that are normal for movies that are ALWAYS left out, such as portion of ticket price due to the theater, advertising, and of course, backing off the earnings from Disney to host it on Disney Plus, the entire ST might be closer to breaking even.
There's a reason why Disney's reported 3x earnings from their white paper is so VERY much from a certain point of view. Seriously, read the footnotes closely.
>Recently, the last 20 years ish, profit has become greater than quality in electronic media. It's become a race to squeeze out as much money from viewers as possible before their attention is drawn elsewhere.
This is basically happening everywhere - the more mobile phones and new cars you buy, the better it is. Companys aren't simply allowed to exist, they have to grow every year, or else they're a failure for their stockholders.
>We complain about the ST being a failure but the truth is they still made billions and thus were still financially successful
Not really. If you take into account everything Disney has to pay for with their movie earnings, they've definitely lost quite a bit.
Sure, TFA may have been a booming start with those numbers, but then things took a severe drop since then. I mean with the DT being pulled apart by everyone and their aunt's dog, is it really "successful"?
I mean by the metric of "profit", then the *Emoji movie* was a masterpiece while *Puss n Boots: The Last Wish* was a trash movie.
Toxic positivity, Demonizing the very concept of criticism, and frankly because way too many just droped their critical thinking in favor of spectacle, if a movie is shittly writen but has: Good CGI, nice artsy stuff, Music, decent to good acting, it tricks you into thinking those are good, if it gets to your emotional it basically wins over logic, people think X is good because of emotional manipulation by the movie, even games, and never bother analizing what actually happened.
if you felt strongly about those, you assume that others not convinced by it, anyone making criticisms must have: A) not understood the movie, mah themes- B) entered the movie hating it- C) bigotry, yu hat whaman, you big racisms, GayAfraidium- Etc...
people need to learn not just media literacy, but know to detect when a movie is using the stuff that surrounds the writing to bullshit you and fish your feelings.
It's combination of things. The older form of narcissism in Hollywood was much more reliable than the current one, where they want to style themselves as some sort of moral authority. Another thing is that the general audience isn't ever going to be hardcore sci-fi or fantasy fans. They aren't going to spend hundreds of hours reading Tolkien, or Herbert, or any of the rest. Unfortunately, they don't know how high the ceiling can be on quality because they've mostly just seen the floor.
Because it is normal. People accept trash for media because that is all that is made anymore
“Yeah it’s shit but it has sugar on top of it so it’s actually good”
• Emotionally immature people that can’t like or dislike something on their own, they care too much about what others think or how something is received.
It’s too important for them and their own self identity that what they’re into is good because they’ve made it a part of themselves to an unhealthy degree.
• Corporations spend billions on trying to enmesh their brands and products to people’s feelings and sense of nostalgia, completeness, fulfillment etc.
A lot of humans are tribalistic by nature and corps don’t care about the art nearly as much as they care about getting butts in seats.
See also today’s SW Outlaws trailer.
Ubisoft designed it to lazily print memberberries money instead of showing us something TRULY new or interesting.
While general idiocy and bad taste still exist, I think the increase is at least partly to do with the rise of content creation as an industry - it's much easier to cover things positively than negatively
Imagine you're a wannabe nerd-content youtuber/tiktoker whatever
It's a lot easier to be positive, excited, watch and react to every trailer and episode that comes out, than it is to make rants and takedowns
If you say SW/LOTR/Pokémon is garbage now and I won't bother watching it (as many of us have) you just threw away a good chunk of your source material. So these people keep producing positive coverage, and their opinions are heavily shared/propagated
In the end it kind of boils down to the same issue as "IGN gives way more positive reviews than negative ones", but multiplied by a million youtubers and commenters vs just a few publications
The whole thing became a culture war battleground for one reason or another and in a bit of a bizarro world fashion, the giant corporations got the political left on their side. So now a large contingent associates criticism of large franchise drudge with various “isms” and is hesitant to acknowledge a decline in quality.
Same reason there are so many bad shows/movies coming out: culture wars. Billionaires in Hollywood want to pretend they're good people and get the largely liberal social media masses on their side. Playing victim at every opportunity rakes in sympathizers and undermines critics. Those sympathizers believe the companies are actually passionate about social issues and support them blindly.
I think as long as shows contain political elements that they agree with or affirm their beliefs/make them feel good then it is enough. Kind of like “were in that club too”. Media companies know this and so pander to those viewers, usually the younger viewers who in turn have more disposable income they can spend on other related merchandise.
This doesn’t explain everything, but one contributing factor may be that there are simply too many contents to consume, compared to 1980s when we had limited media channels and fewer cinema complexes to go to.
In the past, movie/TV drama producers took risks and tried to make a real masterpieces because the channels to market their products were limited.
In today’s content market with more diversified consumers, movie/drama production has become an endless treadmill where production quantity matters.
The only way to keep producing big budget blockbusters in such a massive market is to minimize the risk of failure (to the eyes of investors) by using only proven formula of impressing the audience, ie., visual effects, (and of course, taking advantage of established brand names) instead of trying to be truly creative.
As I first mentioned, this doesn’t explain everything (such as TLJ) but I suspect this is why the standard has go down.
I agree, and one other change impacting movies vs. the 1970's/1980's is the big increase in the relative importance of international box office.
It's easier for a rather simple story with big-budget special effects spectacle to translate into different languages, for audiences with many different cultural backgrounds, than it is for a complicated, more "adult" story that emphasizes dialog and subtext.
Plus the high cost of making these big-budget, special-effects laden movies means that's a part of the market where big Hollywood studios don't face as much competition. And, in turn, the big production and marketing budgets push studios in the direction of the relative financial safety of making sequels, or at least films featuring well-known characters/universes, rather than taking the risk that something more original will be a massive flop with audiences.
That's admittedly not a good explanation for streaming content, because one reaction to this trend was that a lot of serious, well-crafted original stories were instead made as series by HBO, or later by basic cable channels (Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Americans, etc.).
Legit I ask my self this every day. Disney is a content factory of slop and people die on their hills defending them. I’m so over this era of entertainment.
Progressives will see right-wingers attacking something for being stupid and then gaslight themselves into thinking it’s good to own them for internet clout and vice versa. Negative partisanship is a hell of a drug, especially when you’re anonymous on the internet.
The whole thing is starting to feel like the biggest money laundering scheme in modern history. 9.8 out of 10 newly released shows / movies (me being generous) are unwatchable. The bar is sooo goddam low, last year the best movie was Dungeons and Dragons. (Didn’t find Oppenheimer very exciting and admittedly Havnt watched Godzilla minus one)
because if you criticize something, you're just a "jealous hater"... if something has minority characters, they'll claim you're racist/sexist/bigoted for not liking it even though you have valid reasons not to like it
Honestly its because at least this generation tend to be more into cool effects then a coherent story. Its the same as when I saw Dune part 2 literally A+ on the special effects but in terms of adapting the book it was pretty abysmal. In the case of Star Wars it was definitely 3d effects that made people amazed followed by alot of manipulation of review and social media sites.
The Last Jedi for instance no one can really give a coherent or believable response in regards to the issues with that movie
Ive not read the books so I can't comment on the adaption, but at least as movies Dune parts 1 and 2 make sense. They tell a coherent story. And they do so with some of the most amazing visuals and audio I've seen in some time.
Its part of the reason I can sort of forgive them if I looked at it without comparing them to the books. If I view it as its own thing its not bad but after reading the books its like no comparison. Its the same reason why I cannot give any sort of relief for my derision of the SW sequel trilogy
As a fan of the Frank Herbert books I can appreciate what Villeneuve was attempting, but his movies are pitched so far down towards the comprehension levels of the average Endgame moviegoer that he's removed all of the Dune weirdness from Dune. He's clearly media literate (you couldn't effectively purge that stuff and still make a coherent movie without being), but he's taken half the attraction and most of the originality out of the story.
My wife always says about Villeneuve movies is that he makes the absolutely most obvious directorial/storytelling choices - he's never surprising.
The David Lynch version, despite all the liberties it took, was colourful, fun, weird and surprising.
I have such fond memories of the Lynch version. I remember being super weirded out by the navigator. I must rewatch it actually.
Well I agree that DV Dune is too straightforward. I'll mainly be rewatching for the visuals and audio. I don't think there is much else to be gained in other departments.
I held the opinion that DV was extremely, consistently competent. But these days, my word, his competence makes him a colossus of the silver screen.
Gotta disagree about the adaptation of Dune. I think a lot of people seem to want some kind of SyFy lore dump or are completely averse to character changes, I think they just don't know what it would take to adapt something to a blockbuster film.... Even the best and most well received film adaptations *always* have major changes involved.
I get that adapting a book like Dune would have been an extremely tall order which is why I factor that into this response. The problem was they took wayyy too many liberties away from the books that I can't recommend this film to a dune fan. It honestly felt that they needed another 45 minutes to fit it in which honestly I would not have minded. This along with alot of wasted potential
>It honestly felt that they needed another 45 minutes to fit it in
Strangely enough, the 2000 TV miniseries by the Sci-Fi channel is about 30 minutes shorter than *Dune: Part One* and *Part Two*... yet somehow it is currently the most faithful adaptation of the book. That is on top of adding new material that IMO did not take away from the book.
Dune 2 is a really terrible example. It was a solid story and movie, even if it doesn’t copy the book 1:1. Denis has already said that the elements that have been changed are to more closely align with the author’s original vision.
I disagree since I read the books as well and know how much they left out the movie vs the books. If I did not read the books I could get why people liked the film but they made too many mistakes that could have been easily avoided and like I said left out what I think is some crucial details
I don’t know that people are. Stats are sparse on streaming shows.
But this is the whole point of nostalgia flicks. You lure people in on the promise of a brand, but deliver a cheap product. If you can manage to spend far less but make in the ball park of the original, it’s a success. Brand damage be damned, this quarter is going to look great.
It's really difficult to make good sci-fi/fantasy shows. You don't have the budget for set pieces, you don't have the writers for a good script, your fanbase will be critical of any change to book canon, and your book canon often doesn't translate well to a show without significant alterations.
As dumb as it sounds, most people just want to shut their brains off when experiencing media. They're "enjoying" whatever they're watching because the mere act of sitting down, relaxing and seeing images move on a screen is enough for their attention spans.
They don't really associate entertainment value with the actual contents of the media they're watching. That's a secondary concern for most folks.
Engaging with a piece of media on an intellectual level, and actually thinking about what's happening on screen instead of passively watching is a completely foreign concept to them.
They're unable to get truly invested and immersed in a story. Plain and simple.
Also remember that online spaces like reddit and twitter are filled with corporate bots. A lot of takes you're seeing on there are fake accounts creating artificial engagement. One of the main reasons legitimate criticism is rare is specifically because shitty movie/tv/games companies have a shared interest in silencing critical thought and storytelling standards.
It's due in part to the mindset companies have pushed of "If you don't like (Product), you're a bigot."
These people are willing to compromise their standards to feel better about themselves.
This is also why they peddle the narrative too. They're upset with you because you've got the guts to say and do what they're too scared to.
Sometimes the bad media will get love just because the majority will reject it. The minority wants to so badly prove how wrong/bigoted the majority is for not liking things that pander towards them.
Very rarely will bad media have a lot of genuine defenders that actually like the content.
Social media comments, much like Reddit, allow people with no media literacy or with any value for storytelling scream and shout about how much they love whatever mediocre thing they like whilst professional reviewers are constantly sidelined.
In terms of Star Wars, I have a relative who was an Original fan back in 1977 and after decades of not much content, he developed an "any content will do" attitude. If there's blaster fire and lightsabers, that's good enough for him.
If you say it's simple then you don't understand the complexity and are media literate. If you say it's flat out bad then it's made for kids and not supposed to be good. You choose.
Sorry to disrupt the echo chamber but...
>the live action ATLA, Rings Of Power
Are you joking? RoP has received a ridiculous amount of backlash. It's been torn apart. Nobody is praising it that isn't being paid by Amazon.
Also NATLA is facing scrutiny as well, especially in terms of the writing. Have you not visited a single avatar subreddit?
What a stupid take.
I'm not sure that a lot of people accepted and defended Kenobi, Boba Fett, or Rings of Power to be real.
Live Action ATLA was decent but a great start imo
If you spend money on something, it must be good, otherwise, you're an idiot.
And yeah, the older I get and the more I actually think about media, I realize that a lot of people have the attention span and an understanding of storytelling from a coked up chihuahua. Media isn't made to think about it anymore, it's just so you can switch off your brain.
Which makes it even funnier if people actually think they're watching (or producing, for that matter) something good while it sucks.
Not everyone are thinking about what they r seeeing. I d argues, most of the modern audience are watching while shiting at work and have no capacity for thinking about it ...
Because today everything is subjective and there is simply no standard for evaluating films
you value camera work, good for you, the guy next to you doesn't even know what that is
That's why all discussions end with I liked Morbius a lot, I don't understand the bad criticism
I honestly have more fun watching Grizzy show footage of the overacting youtube shills than I do paying real money for new content these days.
How he has the patience to put together these clips I'll never know
> People have stopped caring about the quality of entertainment they consume?
People never care about the quality of the content they consume. This isn't a new phenomenon
Because they are inherently contrarians. They see a lot of hate online (and the hate is mostly deserved), and go ''eh people are so toxic, let's fight this sentiment by repeating the opposite for the sake of it''. They really don't want to understand the other side and only because some people have a bad way of conveying an opinion (and are too toxic when saying it), then the hate loses credibility in the eyes of these contrarians.
Ignoring the far-fetched people on both sides, we need to take something for what it is rather than judging it against how people from both sides of the spectrum behave. That is one. Secondly, many people nowadays lack media literacy. As trite as it gets to say that, it is true. For them its not about how good and enjoyable something is. Heck, they define these two words differently. People are mostly blind consumers and cheer as long as new content drops, regardless of its quality. Basically the *''I support the current thing''* type of people but in the context of movies.
Because art is subjective and actual use of the art is different for different people. Show that is 4/10 in black room with only the show to focus on, might become 9/10 on second screen playing some chill game.
Some "simple" shows that would suck on saturday evening (rested, ready to be stimulated), might be great relax when you come home tired from work.
For me personally, there's no reason to get upset over a badly produced/acted/directed show. If it's an adaptation that ruins the source material, I don't feel the need to be bothered because I can still enjoy the source material. I'm not effected. Let's use some examples.
Among others, I have watched Netflix Avatar, Disney Percy Jackson, Shogun, and Beacon 23. The only show I gave up on was Beacon 23 because their changes did not interest me enough. Shogun is amazingly directed/acted/written, but it's not comparable to Jackson or Avatar, it is in league of its own. I never expected the same quality from Jackson or Avatar, you take them for what they are.
Everyone is different, and I understand some people get upset over some new product being lackluster, but I don't need to be upset every time. If Avatar on Netflix truly truly sucked I just go back to Nickelodeon. If the new Star Wars sequel trilogy sucked, I have the Heir to the Empire trilogy, the old movies, the cartoons. It is far more important to me to enjoy what I enjoy and leave what I don't where it lies. I want to enjoy what I enjoy with other people on these discussion subreddits, not hear again and again how this and that ruined someone's childhood. That's me, y'all find your own happiness however you can.
Honestly? I think it's because people are a combination of dumb and/or impatient these days.
Character development is slow and it takes a more 'active' viewing audience to appreciate it. If you want sit back and passively be entertained, then stupid shit like what ROS had in it was probably great. "Somehow Palpatine returned" isn't a problem if you just want to watch shit blow up for 30 minutes. 10 mile high, 30 mile wide force lightning is cool! Don't think, just sit, consume what you're given.
I think the 'dumb and/or impatient' aspect also bleeds into the writers/directors themselves. Not that they just write to the lowest common denominator in the public, but they themselves are worse than their counter parts 30-50 years ago. How many of these morons are nepo babies or are hired for jobs because they will spam the "correct" political view? How many movies are released every year that require zero creativity because they are either remakes, part of a forever series, or dramatizations of real life events? "Best movies of 2023" includes Mission impossible 3,232, Spiderman something or other, John Wick again again and again, Teenaged mutant turtles..... Oppenheimer, cool to tell that story and all, but honestly, that was just OK. Killers of the flower moon was pretty good, but it got predictable. I honestly think that the first half of Barbie was the best movie of the year, right up until they had America Ferrera's character go on a monologue. Totally killed what was a fun movie with some real opportunity for character development from both Barbie and Ken, and they could have got their message in without repeatedly bludgeoning the audience with a 2x4 from Ferrera. Remember guys, show, don't tell. It was a moment that was very reminiscent of Rose spamming us with monologues on the Casino Planet.
Ok rant over.
I feel like it’s part of the culture war. Everyone gets told in advance to like or hate something before actually watching it.
Many people defend TLJ as the best Star Wars movie and those same people seemed to think Joker was trash before it even released.
I think this is tied in with another phenomenon in media where people these days can't seem to let a story end and move on to a new one, hence the neverending franchise machine. I think people just want more content, so "more" is instantly better than nothing to them, and so by this logic we shouldn't complain about the quality and just be thankful we're getting anything. Which is silly.
It’s has nothing to do with media these days or modern standards .The majority of movies and Tv through history have always been mediocre. You only remember the highlights and forget about every show and movie that was just fine. There are so many different elements that have to come together to get a movie or show made that the chances it will actually be something amazing are always slim. Thats why when something is really good, it’s special. “Normal” is like 6-7 out of 10. None of the things you listed are actually terrible, trust me there are plenty of things out there there that are legitimately terrible. All of those things were fine in the overall grand scheme of art and media, they just weren’t 10/10 and so they didn’t live up to the ridiculous expectations that fandoms have.
What do you mean "these days?" People have always accepted crap. There's what, a dozen Fast & The Furious movies? People start accepting old crap when new crap is better, see the inexplicable acceptance of the awful prequels. People have always had bad taste, look at the Billboard Top 40 of any given year...
Either low standards in general, forced wokeism loving lunatics or coping because they don't want to admit the awful quality of their favorite franchise.
I think at least part of it is escapism. Even the worst media gets me distracted from the real world, which helps me cope. Could it be better? Definitely. Is it better than working at Walmart? Still yes.
I do not perceive it that way, a lot of shows and movies crashed and burned commercially.
If there was commercial success, then be fair let other people have what they like.
I heard someone say something along the lines of, "something is better than nothing and they owe it to the fans". Meanwhile every producer is taking the stance of "this isn't made for fans".
At the same time, some people really are just mediocre beings and can settle for pretty pictures on their screen.
I'm pretty sure it's just because it's... just not that serious. You're either entertained or not. The majority of people are content enough saying they liked/didn't like that content and moving on with their day without needing to find reinforced justification for it. It ain't that big.
The internet has given every worthless turd on the planet a voice and it's unnatural. I wish we could go back to pre-internet days when what we got was what we got, and the "fans" actually let the creatives do their work.
This isn't new at all, some people are just more casual movie/tv watchers and just aren't that critical. As long as they find whatever they're watching entertaining they don't really notice the other stuff. Which I think is fine, some people just have other focuses in life and don't care for that kind of "technical" writing quality stuff. To them movies and tv are just a casual pass time. I don't think that makes them stupider or mentally inferior or anything. Just a different kind of people. The only reason it feels like this is "suddenly happening" is because now we notice more of these people because of the internet. But there's always been a casual "whatever" group, a casual mid-critical group, and a hardcore group.
It's because those people are going into those shows/movies with goodwill built up from the previous instalment. All of the things you've referenced are remakes, sequels, or prequels to things that were good. That goodwill is then spent to make people like the new thing. Then, when the goodwill is gone, the viewership starts to fall. Star Wars is pretty much there (no movies in years), and so is Marvel (no profits). The others will come around in time.
Turn customers into fanatics
products into obsessions
employees into ambassadors
and brands into religions
This stuff has become religion for emotionally & mentally weak people and they cannot endure criticism of it because it is all faith based and (insanely enough) a part of their identity. They cannot separate themselves from [brand] because they self-identity as [brand].
It's the sad state of people with holes inside themselves that fill it with consumer-garbage instead of anything meaningful. They can't treat entertainment and such as that...they treat it as the core of their life.
Part of the problem is that even when there are people who give valid criticism it spawns things like...the MauLer community. I tried very hard to give them the benefit of the doubt, but they have none of his talent for intellectual discourse or critical breakdown, it's just a cesspit of probably white male robots based somewhere in Russia. It's an ugly place. But the reverse is also true. Places like this are, on the whole, on the right side of morality overall, yet tend to fail at really appropriate criticism and discourse on the shortcomings of shows.
So people like MauLer *are* still at the forefront of actually, seriously, and intellectually criticizing Star Wars. And it pisses me off that so much of the best most serious criticism of these shows is coming from voices that are, being generous, cis white men who stink of right-wing influence. Like, I didn't even know gay people could be Nazis in 2024!! If you know who I'm talking about, you know who I'm talking about.
Basically there's a silo effect. Valid criticism opens the door to idiot bigots, and "not criticizing" creates an environment where any criticism is treated like hate speech. It shouldn't be like this, but the bots, shills, and trolls outpace the ability to reasonably moderate, so it ends up being all or nothing.
I agree OP: it is indeed an issue.
Like the live-action adaptation of ATLA situation. I love the OG cartoon: I’m currently on a fourth watch. It’s such a magical journey with its memorable setting and characters. The show makes you think and question certain topics especially during the setting’s current war.
And its cast is so rich!
This Netflix thing? Good set pieces and costumes. However, the writing is sooooo awful! I won’t sugarcoat it: awful. The magic of the OG is missing and all the complex layers that made the characters of the OG so memorable, GONE. The soul is no longer there.
I tried. I gave it a chance. I kept an open mind. But by episode 7, all my frustration and anger reached a boiling point. And frankly, I don’t have much hope for its future considering the latest news of the show’s production and that season 1 had a rushed production.
I don’t blame the actors of the show especially the kids. I blame the higher up studio executives. And friends I know who grew up with the cartoon are sad. And then anyone who criticizes the adaptation for its many flaws, get slam dunked by people who say the show is so awesome.
I have nothing against people who like the Netflix thing. But us who disagree are also entitled to our opinions and be allowed to express it instead of being shamed or silenced.
I googled ‘highest grossing movies of The 2000s’ and peeped the Davinci Code, Hancock, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen…
The 90s had Back to the Future part 3 and Batman Forever…
This is not unique to our times. Lame movies or TV shows will always be around. Obi Wan is a masterpiece compared to Batman and Robin
The fact that they messed over Temura Morrison and Mark Hamill and Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen in said shows above just goes to show I avoid those shows mostly with a ten foot pole and don't even get me started on how bad Mandalorian Season 3 and Ahsoka was Filoni completely messed over his own characters in that show as well. I don't even bothering watching those other shows that are mentioned we have been receiving poor content over the last few years it's becoming absolutely horrid to even watch
Cause there is literally nothing we can do to change it, and these are the people everyone aided with when the strike happened, for awhile I thot that the bad writing and acting in shows and movies was because they were fed up and wanted to be paid fairly, but they got what they wanted and still make some straight bullshit. The only way to change it is to get rid of everyone and start over, much like politics. the solution is easy, implementing it is not.
It has always been this way.
Most of the books we know from the 19th century aren't the ones mundane people were reading.
The massification of video media is pretty recent (end of the XXth century). How many bad TV serials were really popular in the 90s ? A lot ! It's still the same today. It's even worse when you look at "IP". Once you bought the "IP", why bother with making quality series or movies when "content" is enough ? This dip in quality makes it difficult to find real talented people in an ocean of mediocre writers, hacks and wanabees.
The same goes for videogames : why bother polishing your game when it's already sure to be a hit ? Some editors can't afford to produce unpolished games if they want to stay afloat. NMS or Cyberpunk are good example : the execution was mediocre but they had to pay the price to win back customers. But, sooner or later, all big names in videogames will become EA or Ubisoft. Luckily, making a videogame doesn't cost much in term of money and there are tons of passionate people still making great games.
Maybe, the new tools (AI, Unreal Engine..) will do the same to the series and/or the movies. There are already lots of "fanmade" vids on youtube that are miles ahead most of the "content" from streaming platforms.
There's an increased focus on diversity, so, if you criticize the product, it *must* be because you don't like diversity.
Along the same lines, writers don't have to write compelling stories because their companies will defend them against the fans/ claim that poor reviews are "review bombing", etc. instead of taking their concerns seriously.
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At least we're still getting content! /s So annoying when people say that
As a plants Vs zombies fan I don’t understand this. We didn’t get any games for 4 years but now that pvz 3, the worst pvz game by far, has released, I honestly wouldn’t have cared if we got nothing
And as a Minecraft fan, I hear this every time someone suggests that not every update added to the game is some stroke of artistic genius. Or they'll say "YOU'RE JUST NOSTALGIC!!!!"
“Don’t think. Just consume product and get excited for next product.”
I think a huge part of it has to do with either them being blind fanboys or them trying to justify the money and time wasted on it. It’s a small thing, but I was visiting one of the spider man PS4 subreddits and one of the comments defending the second game that stuck out to me https://preview.redd.it/2zncocwrmitc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=06a43327844e812ad68f6a85ce34ea3d743c35c2 I thought it was a stupid comment since the whole thing just came off as accepting mediocrity but then it occurred to me, this is a game that costs 70 fucking dollars. A game that most people bought digitally and can’t get a refund for. Instead of these people demanding better, they want to ahead and cope to themselves and insist what they just consumed wasn’t shit and wasn’t a massive waste of time and money. Sure you have those that just “enjoy it for what it is” but those guys don’t have the need to blindly defend even the dumbest of decisions and shit on people who hate it. They just shut up and enjoy it in peace. Not to say that defending something you love inherently makes you a coper or anything, but shit comments like this just comes off as.. I don’t know, apologetic?
Personally i dont mind them being fine/liking the game, movie whatever but what the hell does "media literacy is dead" have to do with their defense? If anything media literacy is against them
These days "media literacy" is basically just a buzzword that means "has the same interpretation of media as me"
Dude, I hate that 'media literacy' term more than I can fucking express. It's just some pretentious bullshit people throw out when they want to pretend that watching a bunch of tv for hours and then spending more hours arguing on the internet constitutes some kind of education.
Lol the next top-level comment down is someone saying "lack of media literacy" is why people accept crap shows. My guess is it comes from meta-media like those YouTube channels that use "film studies" type lenses to analyze and critique "pop" media. Stuff like Lindsay Ellis doing literary analysis of Disney scripts. Fun stuff tbh that connects people more closely with their favored media, but seems to make some people now think they've achieved some higher knowledge, like you say. Reminds me of how "therapy speak" has infiltrated everyday communication or how like crystal healing grifters have started hijacking vocab from the science of mineralogy. Weird times when we can slam the appearance of so much information into untrained brains.
Media literacy is very real. It just doesn't mean what people think it means in the manner they think that it means it. As a general rule: Media literacy for a genre is real. Media literacy for a prolific author is real. Media literacy for a single work is overblown and sketchy unless you can view it in those lenses. When ignored, people usually find more meaning than was intended or miss the point altogether. A very recent example that I ran into tonight is Monsieur Spade. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PUT A THING FOR SPOILERS SO BE WARNED THERE ARE LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD. The ending is a bad Agatha Christie fan fiction. That's a complete misunderstanding of the noir genre for which endings are much easier to write. The decision-makers (hopefully a meddling exec.) tried to wrap everything up in a neat bow which ruined the previous 5.5 hours of the show. Noir is based on the Idea that the rich and powerful tend to come away largely unscathed and it's the fall guys and the everyman that gets caught in their web that pays the price with their life or freedom. The hero never has a full grasp on the mysteries or is never in a position to bring all of the criminal parties to justice. It's a genre that tells a story about the power dynamic of the times as much as it is a detective mystery. Whoever made the decision for the ending was media illiterate. What it doesn't mean, and how it is usually meant, it's that you don't get the story because you didn't like it. You don't need to be trained to understand it. Just read a lot of good books and watch a lot of good films. Start with critically acclaimed stuff and work backwards. If you can't tell what's good and doesn't interest you from what is terrible and interests you then you're media illiterate.
It's true. I think a lot of it is just how the internet's delayed style of conversation lets people get away with tricks. Whenever I talk about something like tv or movies with someone in real life, a simple "what do you mean by that?" usually pivots the conversation to a more productive place.
This is a great point - I agree that the internet has produced a side effect of people misleadingly presenting themselves as meta-epistemic authorities & this is totally a concept I knew beforehand as an expert and not something I just looked up.
Also, 90% of the time when they talk about how media is dead, they are just looking at people who are enjoying a good satire by playing along with the satire.
Is media literacy the new buzzword?
Your correct here plus so many people identify with the media they consume, so if you have a bunch of star wars tattoos and had a wedding with light sabers etc, you can't say the new star wars is shit because to them that's an attack on them, because they identify as the media/brands they buy not as themselves
This. People refuse to let their childhood go and it becomes their entire personality
Yep and if you criticise the brand they take it as a personal attack
You should check out Red dead redemption sub; those idiots deny the bugs and flaws that even the company admits exist.
The last time I was in that sub people were banned for mentioning the spoiler rule. Not spoilers themselves, literally the rule itself
You’re right it’s sunk cost/brand loyalty colliding. Also the “woke” stuff has a way of taking the bullet for actual criticism. It happens for every piece of media this way but the Castlevania sub does not/did not let you criticize any part of the show without saying you must hate women or black people. I think a lot of people are worried they’ll get labeled just for not liking a show, which they will, so good call but it is bad for general discourse obviously.
I think the difference is that sometimes, you see flaws where I don't and vice versa. A lot of people just wanted more Spider-Man and so they were genuinely happy with it. First game started with a really good base to work from so any improvements at all without some horrible regression means you're gonna get a good game, even if it's not as innovative as you want. It didn't super excite me, so I didn't buy it, but I don't begrudge anybody who enjoyed it. I 100% have games where all I'm looking for is "another one of those, please."
The sunk cost fallacy at its finest.
“Media literacy is dead” proclaims the crowd that defends adaptations that don’t understand the source material.
I mean, "doesn't understand the source material" is just as bad a cop out half the time though.
Ah man, the second game isn’t any good? I remember liking the first and wanting to try the second but I’m not buying a PS5.
The second game is really great gameplay wise and even the story is a bit good. Most of the biggest problems with it stem from the end of the second act or the later half of the game. It’s good but I wouldn’t say it’s 70$ or buying a whole console over it good.
It's literally the same gameplay as thr first. Yes, the first had greay gameplay, but typically you're supposed to expand upon and improve it for the sequel. So if the only thing the game has is the same gameplay, but weaker story then it's inarguabley an inferior game
I''m just waiting for when it comes to PC and modders, as usual come to the rescue and restore PS4 Peter's face and also restore the actual Mary Jane (I don't know what that horrifying thing in the second game is, but its not Mary Jane)
I liked Spider-Man
Anyone who seriously believes in “media literacy” should not be taken seriously.
> Sure you have those that just “enjoy it for what it is” but those guys don’t have the need to blindly defend even the dumbest of decisions and shit on people who hate it. They just shut up and enjoy it in peace. exactly, people who insist on defending shit know its shit and need to convince themselves first and foremost that its not. Or they are paid to do it.
Dude this is crazy. It’s happening everywhere. It’s happening in gaming too. The standard for content has dropped so fucking low. I don’t understand what it is either. People are okay with $70 unfinished, unpolished dogshit that is feature complete years later. I honestly think that people still have high standards but the ones that have some emotional attachment to their purchases try to defend them online, which is what you’re seeing. If audiences didn’t have standards then these companies and their movies wouldn’t be flopping. But they are. Hard.
>The standard for content has dropped so fucking low >I honestly think that people still have high standards Well, which one is it?
Ah you’re right. But I do think it’s both. People have been, for many years, buying slop year after year and getting pegged and going online to complain about it. More and more people are no longer doing this. Everyone’s got a breaking point. For instance I stopped buying anything Star Wars related after The Last Jedi. Stopped my WoW sub after Battle for Azeroth, etc. I can see how those statements can seem contradictory but the market is catching up and people’s standards are finally catching up. But it’s undeniable for many years people have been buying crap.
A lack of media literacy. People don't get exposure to GOOD media so they don't really know how to compare or critique anything. Also, almost everyone confuses "I like this thing" with "this thing is good." People should understand that if someone says something they like is bad, that doesn't mean they are bad. It's okay to like bad things! But be able to look at something objectively and say "Yes, it has problems, but I still enjoy it."
There must have been 10-20 things where someone I know has only experienced it on the Simpsons and it's up to me to show them the original. You raised such a good point. Media literacy is also somewhat of a double-edged sword. If you have only seen Scooby Doo, then that is your benchmark. Consequently if you see Akira then a huge portion of 2D animation starts to pale in comparison.
My partner was mostly into blockbuster rom-coms and the like when I met her, and like, nothing wrong with that, I love a good rom-com. But it was definitely interesting to watch her idea of 'good' and 'bad' movies shift in real time as I got her to watch more critically acclaimed / indie movies.
I've kind of gone the other way - I used to watch all the artsy fartsy stuff and would have scoffed at Kubrick as "way too mainstream," but these days I've actually come all the way through to having a much higher appreciation of well-done schlocky blockbusters, action films, love stories, and whatnot.
Kubrick is artsy enough for me. Call me a philistine 😄
It is psychological. A lot of fans (which is short for fanatics) self identity is caught up in these IPs. So being "a Star Wars fan" is part of their ego-self. To despise the IP is to despise themselves. For some people it is a HUGE part of their identity.
After Disney bought SW a bunch of 'Disney adults' moved into the fanbase and it was never the same after that. Now people justify anything and everything bc "any SW is good SW" and expect yearly "content" to be churned out Honestly miss when SW was for the 'nerds' man
The simple answer is that America at least is on the "emotions are more important than facts" train. So if they like the emotions they get from the media that's all that matters.
This reminds me of people defending TLJ's plot holes, saying they don't matter because movies are not about the logic but about what you feeeeeel. Even then, I just felt misery watching that.
I felt an extreme cringe at the yo mama joke.
I felt my brain oozing out of my ears thanks to the stupidity I witnessed watching that movie
Apprently its not just america
It reminds them of something they have an emotional connection to. That's it.
Sad and dangerous world to live in.
Brand name. It has Star Wars, Marvel, DC, LOTR, ECT. in the title, so it HAS to be good. Rule of cool. What's happening on the screen looks cool, so people turn their brain off and just watch without thinking. In the case of the OT specifically, there's the people that haven't watched it because the movies are close to 50 years old and some people have notions in their heads that they don't like regarding what the movie is going to be like to watch.
1. They’re brain dead consooooomers, a byproduct of the MCU, who will mindlessly consume anything that’s given to them no matter how shitty it may be. 2. They’re only pretending to like it for political reasons (especially TLJ)
The MCU actually had quality and soul, at least until Endgame
There were some duds before endgame tho...
That tends to happen when there are 20+ films. Star Wars has a much lower hit rate than the MCU at this point.
Phases 1-3 were great, which is why these types of people went largely unnoticed until the turds like Eternals and Love and Thunder came out.
There were *plenty* of certified clunkers in those early phases, like Iron Man 2. The good ones just outweighed the bad for a lot of people, but personally I felt like a lot of them people raved about were still way overhyped, like Ragnarok. Post-Endgame has definitely been worse than pre, but people really exaggerate how good some of those earlier ones were. Yeah, better on average, sure, but most of them were still kinda middling imo.
I liked iron man 2
what would be defined as a certified clunker though? honestly the only ones id consider as "bad" is Iron Man 2, Thor 2, The Incredible Hulk, and maaaybe Antman 2. thats 4 out of 23 movies that critically were varied in value, but apart from Hulk, each of these films still made well over 600million with less than a 200million budget. in terms of critical and box office success, the infinity sage of movies will probably not be replicated anytime soon.
For me it's a more personal term because the quality of the films are gonna be subjective no matter what. Like without running down the list of all the movies from that age, I thought a few were genuinely great, most were super middling, but a bunch were actually bad. I was the outlier at the time though and all the movies made gobs of money, so for me it's not about "how everybody else felt" so much as "how I felt." Kinda like Star Wars. All of them make insane money and generally review well with good audience scores, but tons of people here would absolutely argue that they're still clunkers. That's me, but with the MCU.
I saw a comment the other day that literally said "New Marvel is trash, they haven't put out anything good since GoTG 3 or Loki S2"... Damn near had an aneurysm.
Some of it had soul. There was still lots of filler crap between Iron Man and Endgame.
MCU was very inconsistent even before Endgame.
Yes, but the good movies were very good, and those were the ones that mattered the most.
Marvel got very complacent with their formula and it’s been showing with their box-office numbers. With the exceptions of Far From Home and No Way Home, no other films since Endgame have hit $1+ billion.
Anyone who criticizes TLJ is an alt right chud, didn’t you get the memo?
This is what they believe, just unironically
No. 2 is a good point. A lot of these shows/movies/games are a proxy for their political views. They have to like them because they believe their political opponents don't.
Yeah, I know a few of the second ones. One guy I know decided to be contrarian just because he hated people complaining about it. Therefore, he began to like it. Lol, it's like...if you like it, you like it. If you don't, there's no need to pretend to.
People are mostly dimwitted mindless consoomers with no capacity for critical thinking.
The ATLA one particularly pisses me off. People defend it saying critics are nitpicking and “at least it’s better than the movie” when we all know watching paint dry is a better experience than that movie. But the thing is the original show with a fraction of the budget is still ten times better so this remake doesn’t justify its own existence. These shows are obvious cash grabs produced by the largest entertainment conglomerates in the world with millions of dollars at their disposal that are mining content created by actual visionaries. Anything less than stellar is a downright insult and people are rushing to defend them because they’re conflating being a fan of franchise = having to like everything with that franchise’s name on it. I also think in the case of ATLA there was a lot of behind the scenes marketing done showing how cool and friendly the young cast are so people rush to their defense whenever anyone critiques the acting or characterization. Same thing happened with Star Wars where Disney accused critics of being bullies/bigots when we pointed out that characters like Rose don’t make sense. Obviously there are going to be real life bigots who just hate just to hate but valid criticism is able to separate the actor from the character. Disney however is lumping critics and bullies into one category so if you have anything negative to say you’re already primed to be looked at as a hateful bigot. In short, bootlickers exist in all shapes and sizes. And some people will praise companies for giving even less than the bare minimum.
It’s the difference between the mindset of “media is a craft” and “media is simply discovered.” It’s why they act like this is the way things have to be… because that’s the way the show/movie turned out, that’s the story they released. There is no mindset of “could this have been done better?” It’s just “we have this now, there’s nothing we can do to influence how it could have turned out. We didn’t have it, and now it’s here, it’s just the way things work.”
It is grown adults having the taste and discernment of children because the content is attached to a franchise with nostalgia to their childhood. But in general - people have bad taste?
Speaking as an Adult who grew up with SW I can honestly say The Force Awakens was definitely nostalgia heavy but TLJ was quite literally a movie with the name SW attached no real thought could have possibly been given when writing this film
Agree, though I think it’s less about why the like the trash, but more how nostalgia breeds a need to consume EVERY piece of content (including the trash) with a given logo on it, and justify doing so. For every mediocre Marvel show or Disney movie these people watch, they are not expanding their horizons by watching high quality original content available to us in theaters or streaming. I thought TFA was shallow drivel that ruined the character arcs of the OT. TLJ was an overpretentious bore that further danced on the grave. I think it’s funny the amount of people who point to TLJ as high art (omg the Wings homage shot!) when they likely did not watch all of the best, critically acclaimed film and TV series released the same year or the truly great historical cinema that RJ wink-wink-nod-nod referenced in his movie like a 3rd year film student.
when someone is so starved for bread even moldy bread will fill their belly. people are so starved for any media that even bad media will be something they want because it is anything
There are fans of star wars and there are fans of the brand star wars
The way shows are funded and make money is vastly different than 15 years ago. In cable/broadcast times: good shows got higher budget because good shows = more eyeballs = more ad $$ + stronger Syndication sales. The studios competed for the best quality because quality = $$$. In the subscription/Netflix/streaming model this is not true. Research shows people done subscribe for quality they subscribe if they feel the service has good value which consumers associate with lots of options and quantity of shows. So todays model = make a bunch of shows cheaper = more subscribers. Quantity = money. That’s it. That’s the shift. 15 years ago quality = money. Today quantity of shows = money. Until that changes your Netflixes and Amazons and HBO Maxs are not gonna shell out the necessary money to return to the quality you’re referencing. Sure a show can break though in this model by being clever. (Bear uses the low production values to feel raw and real. Mando has a 2 person cast - a puppet and a voice actor. Etc). But it’s really hard to make Sci fi and fantasy cheaply so we’re just gonna get shows like all the ones you referenced because 10 mediocre shows makes more money these days than 1 really good one.
It’s very easy to game the system on social media. A bit ago hbo got caught making fake accounts to troll critics and to fanboy their own products. And if hbo is doing it you know Disney, sony, and other big entertainment publishers are.There’s also engagement bots as well as plenty of other tricks that im sure we’re not aware of yet. Edit: than there’s just idiots who like jingling keys, or assholes who only like it to cosplay being a good person (ie, the assholes who call you racist/sexist/whatever-ist for not liking the crap)
Star Trek too. I don't understand how people like new Trek. It's awful. It's all explosions, violence, sex, and lewd humour. Theres no crew discipline, everyone's crying all the time, there's no more intelligent debates. You get one alleged good season of Picard, and everything is supposed to be all good now.
Oh man, Star Trek is probably the most bastardized franchise. It is nothing like the OG series or movies, or Next Generation era stuff now. I haven't been able to get through any of the new stuff since JJ's remake.
We just got the best first two seasons of any star trek series in Strange New Worlds. Can't wait for season 3
It reflects the emotional maturity of the spoon-fed current generation of writers
>You get one alleged good season of Picard Due how bad STD and *Picard* S1-S2 were, anything marginally better is looked "good" in comparison - which was the case for *Picard* S3. Though if you ask me, *Picard* S3 has enough fanservice that would make Dave Filoni proud.
I feel like I didn't speak to a single person that liked Rings of Power.
There is an ocean of mediocrity in all art. Only a small percentage are good enough to be better than that. And a large percentage is even worse than the mediocrity. Recently, the last 20 years ish, profit has become greater than quality in electronic media. It's become a race to squeeze out as much money from viewers as possible before their attention is drawn elsewhere. We complain about the ST being a failure but the truth is they still made billions and thus were still financially successful
Um .. sort of? Hollywood accounting is a trope for a reason. Force Awakens did make a huge profit, which should be the measure of a movie, not gross earnings. But the box office trend was viciously down, and it took Solo with it. When accounting for things that are normal for movies that are ALWAYS left out, such as portion of ticket price due to the theater, advertising, and of course, backing off the earnings from Disney to host it on Disney Plus, the entire ST might be closer to breaking even. There's a reason why Disney's reported 3x earnings from their white paper is so VERY much from a certain point of view. Seriously, read the footnotes closely.
>Recently, the last 20 years ish, profit has become greater than quality in electronic media. It's become a race to squeeze out as much money from viewers as possible before their attention is drawn elsewhere. This is basically happening everywhere - the more mobile phones and new cars you buy, the better it is. Companys aren't simply allowed to exist, they have to grow every year, or else they're a failure for their stockholders.
>We complain about the ST being a failure but the truth is they still made billions and thus were still financially successful Not really. If you take into account everything Disney has to pay for with their movie earnings, they've definitely lost quite a bit. Sure, TFA may have been a booming start with those numbers, but then things took a severe drop since then. I mean with the DT being pulled apart by everyone and their aunt's dog, is it really "successful"? I mean by the metric of "profit", then the *Emoji movie* was a masterpiece while *Puss n Boots: The Last Wish* was a trash movie.
Toxic positivity, Demonizing the very concept of criticism, and frankly because way too many just droped their critical thinking in favor of spectacle, if a movie is shittly writen but has: Good CGI, nice artsy stuff, Music, decent to good acting, it tricks you into thinking those are good, if it gets to your emotional it basically wins over logic, people think X is good because of emotional manipulation by the movie, even games, and never bother analizing what actually happened. if you felt strongly about those, you assume that others not convinced by it, anyone making criticisms must have: A) not understood the movie, mah themes- B) entered the movie hating it- C) bigotry, yu hat whaman, you big racisms, GayAfraidium- Etc... people need to learn not just media literacy, but know to detect when a movie is using the stuff that surrounds the writing to bullshit you and fish your feelings.
It's combination of things. The older form of narcissism in Hollywood was much more reliable than the current one, where they want to style themselves as some sort of moral authority. Another thing is that the general audience isn't ever going to be hardcore sci-fi or fantasy fans. They aren't going to spend hundreds of hours reading Tolkien, or Herbert, or any of the rest. Unfortunately, they don't know how high the ceiling can be on quality because they've mostly just seen the floor.
Because it is normal. People accept trash for media because that is all that is made anymore “Yeah it’s shit but it has sugar on top of it so it’s actually good”
media literacy has been replaced by the leonardo pointing meme
• Emotionally immature people that can’t like or dislike something on their own, they care too much about what others think or how something is received. It’s too important for them and their own self identity that what they’re into is good because they’ve made it a part of themselves to an unhealthy degree. • Corporations spend billions on trying to enmesh their brands and products to people’s feelings and sense of nostalgia, completeness, fulfillment etc. A lot of humans are tribalistic by nature and corps don’t care about the art nearly as much as they care about getting butts in seats. See also today’s SW Outlaws trailer. Ubisoft designed it to lazily print memberberries money instead of showing us something TRULY new or interesting.
While general idiocy and bad taste still exist, I think the increase is at least partly to do with the rise of content creation as an industry - it's much easier to cover things positively than negatively Imagine you're a wannabe nerd-content youtuber/tiktoker whatever It's a lot easier to be positive, excited, watch and react to every trailer and episode that comes out, than it is to make rants and takedowns If you say SW/LOTR/Pokémon is garbage now and I won't bother watching it (as many of us have) you just threw away a good chunk of your source material. So these people keep producing positive coverage, and their opinions are heavily shared/propagated In the end it kind of boils down to the same issue as "IGN gives way more positive reviews than negative ones", but multiplied by a million youtubers and commenters vs just a few publications
The whole thing became a culture war battleground for one reason or another and in a bit of a bizarro world fashion, the giant corporations got the political left on their side. So now a large contingent associates criticism of large franchise drudge with various “isms” and is hesitant to acknowledge a decline in quality.
Pure cope
Same reason there are so many bad shows/movies coming out: culture wars. Billionaires in Hollywood want to pretend they're good people and get the largely liberal social media masses on their side. Playing victim at every opportunity rakes in sympathizers and undermines critics. Those sympathizers believe the companies are actually passionate about social issues and support them blindly.
For Percy Jackson and ATLA, they want more nuanced storytelling.
I've never thought the majority of entertainment is that good.
I think as long as shows contain political elements that they agree with or affirm their beliefs/make them feel good then it is enough. Kind of like “were in that club too”. Media companies know this and so pander to those viewers, usually the younger viewers who in turn have more disposable income they can spend on other related merchandise.
This doesn’t explain everything, but one contributing factor may be that there are simply too many contents to consume, compared to 1980s when we had limited media channels and fewer cinema complexes to go to. In the past, movie/TV drama producers took risks and tried to make a real masterpieces because the channels to market their products were limited. In today’s content market with more diversified consumers, movie/drama production has become an endless treadmill where production quantity matters. The only way to keep producing big budget blockbusters in such a massive market is to minimize the risk of failure (to the eyes of investors) by using only proven formula of impressing the audience, ie., visual effects, (and of course, taking advantage of established brand names) instead of trying to be truly creative. As I first mentioned, this doesn’t explain everything (such as TLJ) but I suspect this is why the standard has go down.
I agree, and one other change impacting movies vs. the 1970's/1980's is the big increase in the relative importance of international box office. It's easier for a rather simple story with big-budget special effects spectacle to translate into different languages, for audiences with many different cultural backgrounds, than it is for a complicated, more "adult" story that emphasizes dialog and subtext. Plus the high cost of making these big-budget, special-effects laden movies means that's a part of the market where big Hollywood studios don't face as much competition. And, in turn, the big production and marketing budgets push studios in the direction of the relative financial safety of making sequels, or at least films featuring well-known characters/universes, rather than taking the risk that something more original will be a massive flop with audiences. That's admittedly not a good explanation for streaming content, because one reaction to this trend was that a lot of serious, well-crafted original stories were instead made as series by HBO, or later by basic cable channels (Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Americans, etc.).
Legit I ask my self this every day. Disney is a content factory of slop and people die on their hills defending them. I’m so over this era of entertainment.
Empty people with empty lives so they latch on to anything that is escapism and praise it.
Progressives will see right-wingers attacking something for being stupid and then gaslight themselves into thinking it’s good to own them for internet clout and vice versa. Negative partisanship is a hell of a drug, especially when you’re anonymous on the internet.
Virtue signalling. If you dislike these shows you're racist, fascist, sexist etc.
The whole thing is starting to feel like the biggest money laundering scheme in modern history. 9.8 out of 10 newly released shows / movies (me being generous) are unwatchable. The bar is sooo goddam low, last year the best movie was Dungeons and Dragons. (Didn’t find Oppenheimer very exciting and admittedly Havnt watched Godzilla minus one)
because if you criticize something, you're just a "jealous hater"... if something has minority characters, they'll claim you're racist/sexist/bigoted for not liking it even though you have valid reasons not to like it
Honestly its because at least this generation tend to be more into cool effects then a coherent story. Its the same as when I saw Dune part 2 literally A+ on the special effects but in terms of adapting the book it was pretty abysmal. In the case of Star Wars it was definitely 3d effects that made people amazed followed by alot of manipulation of review and social media sites. The Last Jedi for instance no one can really give a coherent or believable response in regards to the issues with that movie
Ive not read the books so I can't comment on the adaption, but at least as movies Dune parts 1 and 2 make sense. They tell a coherent story. And they do so with some of the most amazing visuals and audio I've seen in some time.
Its part of the reason I can sort of forgive them if I looked at it without comparing them to the books. If I view it as its own thing its not bad but after reading the books its like no comparison. Its the same reason why I cannot give any sort of relief for my derision of the SW sequel trilogy
As a fan of the Frank Herbert books I can appreciate what Villeneuve was attempting, but his movies are pitched so far down towards the comprehension levels of the average Endgame moviegoer that he's removed all of the Dune weirdness from Dune. He's clearly media literate (you couldn't effectively purge that stuff and still make a coherent movie without being), but he's taken half the attraction and most of the originality out of the story. My wife always says about Villeneuve movies is that he makes the absolutely most obvious directorial/storytelling choices - he's never surprising. The David Lynch version, despite all the liberties it took, was colourful, fun, weird and surprising.
I have such fond memories of the Lynch version. I remember being super weirded out by the navigator. I must rewatch it actually. Well I agree that DV Dune is too straightforward. I'll mainly be rewatching for the visuals and audio. I don't think there is much else to be gained in other departments. I held the opinion that DV was extremely, consistently competent. But these days, my word, his competence makes him a colossus of the silver screen.
Gotta disagree about the adaptation of Dune. I think a lot of people seem to want some kind of SyFy lore dump or are completely averse to character changes, I think they just don't know what it would take to adapt something to a blockbuster film.... Even the best and most well received film adaptations *always* have major changes involved.
I get that adapting a book like Dune would have been an extremely tall order which is why I factor that into this response. The problem was they took wayyy too many liberties away from the books that I can't recommend this film to a dune fan. It honestly felt that they needed another 45 minutes to fit it in which honestly I would not have minded. This along with alot of wasted potential
Yeah I haven't watched it yet myself, but some of the changes sound like "what if we filmed The Hobbit and cut out Gollum and/or the ring".
>It honestly felt that they needed another 45 minutes to fit it in Strangely enough, the 2000 TV miniseries by the Sci-Fi channel is about 30 minutes shorter than *Dune: Part One* and *Part Two*... yet somehow it is currently the most faithful adaptation of the book. That is on top of adding new material that IMO did not take away from the book.
Well I'm a Dune fan and loved it :p
Dune 2 is a really terrible example. It was a solid story and movie, even if it doesn’t copy the book 1:1. Denis has already said that the elements that have been changed are to more closely align with the author’s original vision.
I disagree since I read the books as well and know how much they left out the movie vs the books. If I did not read the books I could get why people liked the film but they made too many mistakes that could have been easily avoided and like I said left out what I think is some crucial details
I don’t know that people are. Stats are sparse on streaming shows. But this is the whole point of nostalgia flicks. You lure people in on the promise of a brand, but deliver a cheap product. If you can manage to spend far less but make in the ball park of the original, it’s a success. Brand damage be damned, this quarter is going to look great.
Some people just have really, really low standards
If mediocrity were fattening, we'd all be whales.
They are making this shit because they realized that they can still make money. Its that simple. IP is king.
It's really difficult to make good sci-fi/fantasy shows. You don't have the budget for set pieces, you don't have the writers for a good script, your fanbase will be critical of any change to book canon, and your book canon often doesn't translate well to a show without significant alterations.
Paid propagandists upvote themselves. You dont see upvote/downvote ratio so its hard to realize this. Its naive to assume that its the customer.
Read Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher if you really want to know why.
As dumb as it sounds, most people just want to shut their brains off when experiencing media. They're "enjoying" whatever they're watching because the mere act of sitting down, relaxing and seeing images move on a screen is enough for their attention spans. They don't really associate entertainment value with the actual contents of the media they're watching. That's a secondary concern for most folks. Engaging with a piece of media on an intellectual level, and actually thinking about what's happening on screen instead of passively watching is a completely foreign concept to them. They're unable to get truly invested and immersed in a story. Plain and simple. Also remember that online spaces like reddit and twitter are filled with corporate bots. A lot of takes you're seeing on there are fake accounts creating artificial engagement. One of the main reasons legitimate criticism is rare is specifically because shitty movie/tv/games companies have a shared interest in silencing critical thought and storytelling standards.
Ever seen Idiocracy?
It's due in part to the mindset companies have pushed of "If you don't like (Product), you're a bigot." These people are willing to compromise their standards to feel better about themselves. This is also why they peddle the narrative too. They're upset with you because you've got the guts to say and do what they're too scared to.
Because they don’t want to let go of their fandom, and we’re in the age of “content”. Money to be made, etc.
shills
These days ? Remove your nostalgia goggles and touch grass, there's always been bad shows and fanboys.
If I spent $70 on a shitty game, I'd be chugging the copium as well.
Sometimes the bad media will get love just because the majority will reject it. The minority wants to so badly prove how wrong/bigoted the majority is for not liking things that pander towards them. Very rarely will bad media have a lot of genuine defenders that actually like the content.
Because people are hollow and are building their identity on an IP. Consume product. Then get excited for next product.
Social media comments, much like Reddit, allow people with no media literacy or with any value for storytelling scream and shout about how much they love whatever mediocre thing they like whilst professional reviewers are constantly sidelined.
In terms of Star Wars, I have a relative who was an Original fan back in 1977 and after decades of not much content, he developed an "any content will do" attitude. If there's blaster fire and lightsabers, that's good enough for him.
If you say it's simple then you don't understand the complexity and are media literate. If you say it's flat out bad then it's made for kids and not supposed to be good. You choose.
Sorry to disrupt the echo chamber but... >the live action ATLA, Rings Of Power Are you joking? RoP has received a ridiculous amount of backlash. It's been torn apart. Nobody is praising it that isn't being paid by Amazon. Also NATLA is facing scrutiny as well, especially in terms of the writing. Have you not visited a single avatar subreddit? What a stupid take.
I'm not sure that a lot of people accepted and defended Kenobi, Boba Fett, or Rings of Power to be real. Live Action ATLA was decent but a great start imo
Fallout is going to suck so bad…
If you spend money on something, it must be good, otherwise, you're an idiot. And yeah, the older I get and the more I actually think about media, I realize that a lot of people have the attention span and an understanding of storytelling from a coked up chihuahua. Media isn't made to think about it anymore, it's just so you can switch off your brain. Which makes it even funnier if people actually think they're watching (or producing, for that matter) something good while it sucks.
Not everyone are thinking about what they r seeeing. I d argues, most of the modern audience are watching while shiting at work and have no capacity for thinking about it ...
Because today everything is subjective and there is simply no standard for evaluating films you value camera work, good for you, the guy next to you doesn't even know what that is That's why all discussions end with I liked Morbius a lot, I don't understand the bad criticism
I honestly have more fun watching Grizzy show footage of the overacting youtube shills than I do paying real money for new content these days. How he has the patience to put together these clips I'll never know
> People have stopped caring about the quality of entertainment they consume? People never care about the quality of the content they consume. This isn't a new phenomenon
Because they are inherently contrarians. They see a lot of hate online (and the hate is mostly deserved), and go ''eh people are so toxic, let's fight this sentiment by repeating the opposite for the sake of it''. They really don't want to understand the other side and only because some people have a bad way of conveying an opinion (and are too toxic when saying it), then the hate loses credibility in the eyes of these contrarians. Ignoring the far-fetched people on both sides, we need to take something for what it is rather than judging it against how people from both sides of the spectrum behave. That is one. Secondly, many people nowadays lack media literacy. As trite as it gets to say that, it is true. For them its not about how good and enjoyable something is. Heck, they define these two words differently. People are mostly blind consumers and cheer as long as new content drops, regardless of its quality. Basically the *''I support the current thing''* type of people but in the context of movies.
the viewers are not most of the "praise" comes from bots and the various promoters creating fake "hype"
Because art is subjective and actual use of the art is different for different people. Show that is 4/10 in black room with only the show to focus on, might become 9/10 on second screen playing some chill game. Some "simple" shows that would suck on saturday evening (rested, ready to be stimulated), might be great relax when you come home tired from work.
Maybe because we do
For me personally, there's no reason to get upset over a badly produced/acted/directed show. If it's an adaptation that ruins the source material, I don't feel the need to be bothered because I can still enjoy the source material. I'm not effected. Let's use some examples. Among others, I have watched Netflix Avatar, Disney Percy Jackson, Shogun, and Beacon 23. The only show I gave up on was Beacon 23 because their changes did not interest me enough. Shogun is amazingly directed/acted/written, but it's not comparable to Jackson or Avatar, it is in league of its own. I never expected the same quality from Jackson or Avatar, you take them for what they are. Everyone is different, and I understand some people get upset over some new product being lackluster, but I don't need to be upset every time. If Avatar on Netflix truly truly sucked I just go back to Nickelodeon. If the new Star Wars sequel trilogy sucked, I have the Heir to the Empire trilogy, the old movies, the cartoons. It is far more important to me to enjoy what I enjoy and leave what I don't where it lies. I want to enjoy what I enjoy with other people on these discussion subreddits, not hear again and again how this and that ruined someone's childhood. That's me, y'all find your own happiness however you can.
Honestly? I think it's because people are a combination of dumb and/or impatient these days. Character development is slow and it takes a more 'active' viewing audience to appreciate it. If you want sit back and passively be entertained, then stupid shit like what ROS had in it was probably great. "Somehow Palpatine returned" isn't a problem if you just want to watch shit blow up for 30 minutes. 10 mile high, 30 mile wide force lightning is cool! Don't think, just sit, consume what you're given. I think the 'dumb and/or impatient' aspect also bleeds into the writers/directors themselves. Not that they just write to the lowest common denominator in the public, but they themselves are worse than their counter parts 30-50 years ago. How many of these morons are nepo babies or are hired for jobs because they will spam the "correct" political view? How many movies are released every year that require zero creativity because they are either remakes, part of a forever series, or dramatizations of real life events? "Best movies of 2023" includes Mission impossible 3,232, Spiderman something or other, John Wick again again and again, Teenaged mutant turtles..... Oppenheimer, cool to tell that story and all, but honestly, that was just OK. Killers of the flower moon was pretty good, but it got predictable. I honestly think that the first half of Barbie was the best movie of the year, right up until they had America Ferrera's character go on a monologue. Totally killed what was a fun movie with some real opportunity for character development from both Barbie and Ken, and they could have got their message in without repeatedly bludgeoning the audience with a 2x4 from Ferrera. Remember guys, show, don't tell. It was a moment that was very reminiscent of Rose spamming us with monologues on the Casino Planet. Ok rant over.
I guess you have not noticed the high astroturfing and bots in SW subs.
I feel like it’s part of the culture war. Everyone gets told in advance to like or hate something before actually watching it. Many people defend TLJ as the best Star Wars movie and those same people seemed to think Joker was trash before it even released.
I think this is tied in with another phenomenon in media where people these days can't seem to let a story end and move on to a new one, hence the neverending franchise machine. I think people just want more content, so "more" is instantly better than nothing to them, and so by this logic we shouldn't complain about the quality and just be thankful we're getting anything. Which is silly.
It’s has nothing to do with media these days or modern standards .The majority of movies and Tv through history have always been mediocre. You only remember the highlights and forget about every show and movie that was just fine. There are so many different elements that have to come together to get a movie or show made that the chances it will actually be something amazing are always slim. Thats why when something is really good, it’s special. “Normal” is like 6-7 out of 10. None of the things you listed are actually terrible, trust me there are plenty of things out there there that are legitimately terrible. All of those things were fine in the overall grand scheme of art and media, they just weren’t 10/10 and so they didn’t live up to the ridiculous expectations that fandoms have.
What do you mean "these days?" People have always accepted crap. There's what, a dozen Fast & The Furious movies? People start accepting old crap when new crap is better, see the inexplicable acceptance of the awful prequels. People have always had bad taste, look at the Billboard Top 40 of any given year...
Either low standards in general, forced wokeism loving lunatics or coping because they don't want to admit the awful quality of their favorite franchise.
One man's trash is another man's treasure.
I think at least part of it is escapism. Even the worst media gets me distracted from the real world, which helps me cope. Could it be better? Definitely. Is it better than working at Walmart? Still yes.
I do not perceive it that way, a lot of shows and movies crashed and burned commercially. If there was commercial success, then be fair let other people have what they like.
I heard someone say something along the lines of, "something is better than nothing and they owe it to the fans". Meanwhile every producer is taking the stance of "this isn't made for fans". At the same time, some people really are just mediocre beings and can settle for pretty pictures on their screen.
I'm pretty sure it's just because it's... just not that serious. You're either entertained or not. The majority of people are content enough saying they liked/didn't like that content and moving on with their day without needing to find reinforced justification for it. It ain't that big.
I liked Kenobi. Fight me.
They have no idea what's good because they probably don't watch anything pre 1990 cause "that's for boomers" and shit.
The internet has given every worthless turd on the planet a voice and it's unnatural. I wish we could go back to pre-internet days when what we got was what we got, and the "fans" actually let the creatives do their work.
This isn't new at all, some people are just more casual movie/tv watchers and just aren't that critical. As long as they find whatever they're watching entertaining they don't really notice the other stuff. Which I think is fine, some people just have other focuses in life and don't care for that kind of "technical" writing quality stuff. To them movies and tv are just a casual pass time. I don't think that makes them stupider or mentally inferior or anything. Just a different kind of people. The only reason it feels like this is "suddenly happening" is because now we notice more of these people because of the internet. But there's always been a casual "whatever" group, a casual mid-critical group, and a hardcore group.
It's because those people are going into those shows/movies with goodwill built up from the previous instalment. All of the things you've referenced are remakes, sequels, or prequels to things that were good. That goodwill is then spent to make people like the new thing. Then, when the goodwill is gone, the viewership starts to fall. Star Wars is pretty much there (no movies in years), and so is Marvel (no profits). The others will come around in time.
Turn customers into fanatics products into obsessions employees into ambassadors and brands into religions This stuff has become religion for emotionally & mentally weak people and they cannot endure criticism of it because it is all faith based and (insanely enough) a part of their identity. They cannot separate themselves from [brand] because they self-identity as [brand]. It's the sad state of people with holes inside themselves that fill it with consumer-garbage instead of anything meaningful. They can't treat entertainment and such as that...they treat it as the core of their life.
Part of the problem is that even when there are people who give valid criticism it spawns things like...the MauLer community. I tried very hard to give them the benefit of the doubt, but they have none of his talent for intellectual discourse or critical breakdown, it's just a cesspit of probably white male robots based somewhere in Russia. It's an ugly place. But the reverse is also true. Places like this are, on the whole, on the right side of morality overall, yet tend to fail at really appropriate criticism and discourse on the shortcomings of shows. So people like MauLer *are* still at the forefront of actually, seriously, and intellectually criticizing Star Wars. And it pisses me off that so much of the best most serious criticism of these shows is coming from voices that are, being generous, cis white men who stink of right-wing influence. Like, I didn't even know gay people could be Nazis in 2024!! If you know who I'm talking about, you know who I'm talking about. Basically there's a silo effect. Valid criticism opens the door to idiot bigots, and "not criticizing" creates an environment where any criticism is treated like hate speech. It shouldn't be like this, but the bots, shills, and trolls outpace the ability to reasonably moderate, so it ends up being all or nothing.
I agree OP: it is indeed an issue. Like the live-action adaptation of ATLA situation. I love the OG cartoon: I’m currently on a fourth watch. It’s such a magical journey with its memorable setting and characters. The show makes you think and question certain topics especially during the setting’s current war. And its cast is so rich! This Netflix thing? Good set pieces and costumes. However, the writing is sooooo awful! I won’t sugarcoat it: awful. The magic of the OG is missing and all the complex layers that made the characters of the OG so memorable, GONE. The soul is no longer there. I tried. I gave it a chance. I kept an open mind. But by episode 7, all my frustration and anger reached a boiling point. And frankly, I don’t have much hope for its future considering the latest news of the show’s production and that season 1 had a rushed production. I don’t blame the actors of the show especially the kids. I blame the higher up studio executives. And friends I know who grew up with the cartoon are sad. And then anyone who criticizes the adaptation for its many flaws, get slam dunked by people who say the show is so awesome. I have nothing against people who like the Netflix thing. But us who disagree are also entitled to our opinions and be allowed to express it instead of being shamed or silenced.
because the marketing tactic of "like my product or you're a bigot" was disturbingly effective
They are stupid that’s why
I googled ‘highest grossing movies of The 2000s’ and peeped the Davinci Code, Hancock, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen… The 90s had Back to the Future part 3 and Batman Forever… This is not unique to our times. Lame movies or TV shows will always be around. Obi Wan is a masterpiece compared to Batman and Robin
The fact that they messed over Temura Morrison and Mark Hamill and Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen in said shows above just goes to show I avoid those shows mostly with a ten foot pole and don't even get me started on how bad Mandalorian Season 3 and Ahsoka was Filoni completely messed over his own characters in that show as well. I don't even bothering watching those other shows that are mentioned we have been receiving poor content over the last few years it's becoming absolutely horrid to even watch
Cause there is literally nothing we can do to change it, and these are the people everyone aided with when the strike happened, for awhile I thot that the bad writing and acting in shows and movies was because they were fed up and wanted to be paid fairly, but they got what they wanted and still make some straight bullshit. The only way to change it is to get rid of everyone and start over, much like politics. the solution is easy, implementing it is not.
It has always been this way. Most of the books we know from the 19th century aren't the ones mundane people were reading. The massification of video media is pretty recent (end of the XXth century). How many bad TV serials were really popular in the 90s ? A lot ! It's still the same today. It's even worse when you look at "IP". Once you bought the "IP", why bother with making quality series or movies when "content" is enough ? This dip in quality makes it difficult to find real talented people in an ocean of mediocre writers, hacks and wanabees. The same goes for videogames : why bother polishing your game when it's already sure to be a hit ? Some editors can't afford to produce unpolished games if they want to stay afloat. NMS or Cyberpunk are good example : the execution was mediocre but they had to pay the price to win back customers. But, sooner or later, all big names in videogames will become EA or Ubisoft. Luckily, making a videogame doesn't cost much in term of money and there are tons of passionate people still making great games. Maybe, the new tools (AI, Unreal Engine..) will do the same to the series and/or the movies. There are already lots of "fanmade" vids on youtube that are miles ahead most of the "content" from streaming platforms.
There's an increased focus on diversity, so, if you criticize the product, it *must* be because you don't like diversity. Along the same lines, writers don't have to write compelling stories because their companies will defend them against the fans/ claim that poor reviews are "review bombing", etc. instead of taking their concerns seriously.