![[Weekly Update] March 8th, 2020](https://img5.samsuka.com/storage/1/xk/ox/c6f9d9-019e86f1-f67c-72db-a506-625e050a1725.jpg)
[Weekly Update] March 8th, 2020
Added 2020-03-09 02:55:39 +0000 UTCWoohoo, I can pin post in Patreon now! Remember to go to the top of the page and vote for your preferred topic for next month!
Before we begin, if you'd like your name in the credit to be different from your Patreon user name, please message me, or leave a comment below! We have a lot of new patrons since last month. Welcome aboard and thank you for the support!
ABOUT THE CHANNEL
- Script for our next episode is complete. It'll be updated in the next two days for preview, after some proof reading and last minute fact check.
- As expected, our next episode is way bigger than I thought. What else is new, right? As such, I'll be splitting the episode into a 2-parter.
- Unfortunately, the part one may come off as dry when compare to part two, since it'll be mostly set ups and very old movies. But the topic is important, and I think I should give it the proper length it needed, rather then cut it short.
- Either way, hey, if you are reading this, I'm sure it will interests you. More info to come.
ABOUT MEDIA
- So... What's up with Sonic and Birds of Prey?
- Oh no, we are going to be controversial now, aren't we?
- Oh yes, it's international women's day, and we are going to talk about women.
- Female team movies in recent years have been almost universally box office flops. Charlie's Angel, Ghostbusters, Ocean's Eight, Terminator Dark Fate, you name it.
- Now, to me, the reason for their failure is fairly clear: They are all unnecessary sequels and reboots, with often terrible marketings. Some of these films also suck pretty hard.
- But the reaction to many of these films are, however, downright toxic. Charlie's Angel, Ghostbusters and Birds of Prey got the blunt of the insults. The hatred they received are often so loud, it often covers up the message of the complain itself.
- Sure, Ghostbusters is an awful movie where Staypuff is defeated by getting shot in the dick. But why go through so much effort to hate it? Is it worth it?
- Why? Well, here is my guess: These films are perceived by people, mostly men, to be an intrusion of what was once a male dominant space.
- They are action films, comic book movies, male comedies, heist films, sequels or reboots to films that starred men. The deeper it cuts into a male fandom with its advertisement, the bigger the backlash.
- Compare to other traditional chick-flicks: Mean Girls, Girls Trip, Bridesmaids. Even if you haven't watch these films, just from the title, you know what they are about: Girly things.
- But now, girls are doing "boy films", suddenly, a large part of the fandom lost that special feeling, that feeling of exclusivity. It feels like the corporations are using a culture that belongs to them, and advertise it to outsiders.
- That's the moment the hate begins.
- But what do you think? Do you think I'm just an SJW? If you do, you'd be right! Congrats!
ABOUT LIFE
- I don't know why I keep including this section, since I'm a nerd and doesn't really have a life.
- But if you are interested, here is my latest shower thought. Of all the film related jobs available to me, I ended up picking video essay.
- When we were in school, one of the biggest talk we have is about the rapidly changing technology that makes no budget indie film easier by the day. It also effectively killed a lot of jobs. You can perceivably make a film with auto focus, now. That wasn't possible when I was in first year university.
- In some way, I actually future proofed myself from being replaced by an AI.
- Let's hope AI essay YouTuber is still a far away tech.
Well, that was a hot take update. I wonder how many people I'll angered with my talk about Birds of Prey.
It's tempting to indulge to hatred. I felt that burn when I was watching Pure Hearts: Into Chinese Showbiz. But let's not just shut each other down. What do you think? Leave a comment, let's discuss!
Comments
Movies like that make my inner eight year old come out and scream. "It's just not fair! I like these actors! Why is this so boring??!!?1?"
Michael Everett
2020-03-10 02:58:09 +0000 UTCHomework is such a good way to describe that movie lol...
Accented Cinema
2020-03-10 02:12:51 +0000 UTCI didn't think you were saying they were good, I just think there's more merit in the concept that they are outright terrible than in sexism ruining them. Both TMNT movies had fan outrage for the entire production. The first one clearly had intended for William Fincher to be Shredder, but when he went on a talk show and explained it things changed. There were issues with other casting choices too, like Johnny Knoxville and Tony Shalob. The second one ended up having similar problems when the pre-release footage reminded people of the version of Shredder from The Next Mutation, followed by misunderstood Tyler Perry quotes that made it sound like he wrote his own lines for Baxter (followed by the fact that he was playing Baxter at all). Birds of Prey does seem to have more vitriol than the average one of these, and I've wondered that too. But there are so many reads on what is going on with that film that it's hard to even know where to start. I have the same problem trying to reflect on what I thought about Captain Marvel as well, but to be fair there hasn't been a movie released that was essentially homework for an upcoming second part of a two part movie before.
Michael Everett
2020-03-09 18:34:41 +0000 UTCBirds of Prey feels very unfocused. And to this day, I'm not certain if that's a deliberate stylistic choice. It's Harley Quinn, she's crazy, so the narrative is all over the place. You know, it works. The F-Bombs in this movie is not the best written. There's certain humour that have to come with using F-Bombs, which this film fails to capture. If you consider the main purpose of the film probably isn't to sell tickets but to sell clothes... Yeah, I can understand why it's R rated.
Accented Cinema
2020-03-09 17:10:39 +0000 UTCI'm in no way claiming the films I listed are good movies. If anything, I'm deeply confused as to why female team movies are consistently bad. Rather, I'm more interested in discussing why these films received such massive backlash, which in my eyes, the lack of quality alone does not justify. I don't even remember the live action TMNT causing such aggressive hatred. Most people sound simply disappointed at how ugly the turtles look. And it seems to be a problem surrounds team movies, exclusively. The only solo women movie I can remember to have similar backlash is Captain Marvel, an underwhelming movie indeed. All these films have a thing in common: They were all advertised towards (Non-girly) women. Fandoms collided in these backlashes. At least from what I see, people's distastes against Birds of Prey is not really about its quality. When searching through news about the backlash, there is little to no discuss about the film's own content. Compare that to Justice League, a film I dislike with all my heart. There was backlash, the backlash never left beyond criticizing the film's content and certain behind the scene aspects. My guess is, people don't hate Birds of Prey itself, they hate what it stands for. And that's what I'm interested in finding out why. That said... There is no denying that some studio exec really do think shoving as much female stars into an existing property and it'll do well. It's lazy, and I think this is why these team movies have such consistently terrible quality.
Accented Cinema
2020-03-09 16:50:13 +0000 UTCI feel like the biggest problem with these 'female team box office bomb' films is that they aren't new stories, but instead reimagined versions of existing stories and the biggest change is...that they use all women. Period. No major changes required after that. Then add to that studios selling the narrative that anyone criticing these films is sexist and/or misogynistic, which deeply bothers me. No film has instant audience buy-in. They all need to earn the audience’s engagement, and I think studios are using other tactics than ‘make the best movie we can’ to try and gain this buy-in. When looking at these recent failures I can at least say that Dark Fate was kind of fun and I wish it had been better received, but it didn't bring anything new or interesting to the table. Instead, it was marketed by the director saying the new main character would 'scare the f*** out of closeted misogynists'. The last third of the movie is wonderfully tense and Carl the drapery making Terminator was delightful, but they lost the fight before the first trailer. Ghostbusters really feels like a film that was 90% improv, almost as if it was made the same way Iron Man was with only part of a script built around expensive set pieces. Why is it that the 'ghosts are real!' tape was leaked and not the actual proof of ghosts? How can they afford this equipment? Why is all of their equipment drawn from the original movie but with neon lights or other gimmicks? Is there a single original idea anywhere in here, or is it all just Melissa McCarthy doing fat jokes and Kristen Wiig doing cringe? Instead, we should look at the other end of the spectrum: women in a traditionally male role but not in an established IP. Lots of examples spring to mind for me here. Lucy is a superhero film in all but name, made by a writer/director who loves writing women who upstage their male counterparts. Though, fair warning to anyone who doesn't know that much about this director: do yourself a favor and don't look into Luc Besson's personal life. Just trust me on this. This movie did so well Besson got to make Valerian. Or Atomic Blonde, the next movie one of the two John Wick directors made after that production. This is an existing IP, Theron is amazing in it, and it would not work as well if it was a man in her role. Her vulnerability and strength both intersect in fascinating ways. It’s a bit annoying what they do to Soffia Boutella, but it also feels like an artifact from the time it was created. We could go back a few more years and look at Fury Road, a Mad Max movie in which Max is the lead supporting character. There were some small groups of obnoxious people online talking about Mad Max being (insert sexist concept or insult here) and how it should be his movie, but it isn’t, and it is glorious for it. Fury Road is a full hour of nonstop adrenaline followed by another hour of falling action and resolutions. Warner Brothers needed to simply hand George Miller whatever they owed him because if they had they would already have a Furiosa spin-off in theaters and know if a second is worth making. If we’re talking about Warner Brothers then let’s talk about Wonder Woman. Steve Trevor is written as a damsel in distress frequently, and Chris Pine sells it perfectly, but it’s all really Gal Gadot and her mix of wide-eyed innocence and unerring certainty, both of which are put to the test at the end. But let’s look at one more component of this argument: other films that are from an established IP that hit with assumed audience buy-in and failed. Just taking Wikipedia’s Box Office Bombs list, sorting by date and only selecting items from the last five years that have a widely recognizable IP gives us Dolittle, Dark Phoenix, Terminator: Dark Fate, Mortal Engines, Robin Hood, Solo, A Wrinkle in Way Too Much Time, Justice League Part One, King Arthur: Legend of the British Gangster, The Mummy, Power Rangers, Transformers: The Last Explosion, Alice Through The Looking Desperation, Ghostbusters: Don’t Bother Answering This Call, Huntsman: Winter’s Why Did They Make This, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of Good Ideas, Fantastic Fourth Time A Failure and Pan. Opinions will vary here, but of that list most people would agree the majority of these are simply bad movies. So ultimately I feel the issue isn’t an invasion of a perceived space but an overall lack of quality in certain kinds of movies, and that while toxic fandom or male audiences feeling threatened definitely aren’t blameless in all of this we’ve reached a new era of filmmaking in which creators are now gaslighting the audience over not going to see low quality films that have political ideologies inserted into them first and foremost. https://imgix.bustle.com/inverse/dd/30/a5/73/7a45/4eb7/8bcc/4af18b11d685/johnson-snokejpeg.jpeg?w=1200&h=630&q=70&fit=crop&crop=faces&fm=jpg
Michael Everett
2020-03-09 11:48:05 +0000 UTCI watched Charlie's Angels, Terminator: Dark Fate, and Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn--I didn't see Ghostbusters though simply because I wasn't particularly interested. Can't speak for or against it. I went & saw both Charlie's Angels and Dark Fate with my mother their respective opening weekends: we both had a lot of energetic discussion about CA and the ways it could be improved or benefit from slight alterations but on the whole would say we both enjoyed it. It mostly needed stronger stylization with cinematography and edits or something--like Guy Ritchie's (unfortunate flop) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. She really liked Dark Fate while I was incredibly "meh" on it. I felt like the story could've been tightened up a bit, some scene's given more weight and even arranged differently. BOP, on the other hand, I saw by myself: opening night, the following weekend, and the weekend after that. I came out of the film chewing over most of what I wanted or wished had happened, and ultimately boiled it down (to mix metaphors) to the single complaint that I simply wanted more--of characters, of interactions, of the story, all of it--which all things considered is actually more of a compliment than a criticism. The more I've seen it, the more I've grown to love it and appreciate so many wonderful things that it accomplishes. It isn't terribly deep or nuanced, but it was never meant to be anything but a feel good popcorn flick which it effectively fulfilled. The fight choreography was great, all the characters were fun (and yes, I was never too invested in comic Cassandra Cain so I'm less sensitive to the hard pivot from "source material"), and I can't honestly wait to see more. As I realised after the third screening: there is something to be said for a film that puts Harley Quinn in a white t-shirt, drenched by sprinklers fighting in three inches of water wherein not once did the camera ogle Margot Robbie's quite attractive form. Edit to Add: I hadn't realised that BOP was an R film until I was seeing redband trailers before the screening, and while I do understand the purpose of casual F-bombs, gratuitous violence, and more mature content in its removing the female character's from the societal restraints of what is "ladylike" thematically, narratively there was little to necessitate the higher rating which automatically excludes a larger portion of the populace of consuming the film. It might have done far better PG-13 with a wider audience, wherein parents wouldn't have to decide to purchase their teens tickets or the interested and creative youth wouldn't buy tickets to other films and sneak into BOP which would not help with its boxoffice numbers. In some ways, the rating lowered their potential earnings out the gate.
Uneducated & Enthused
2020-03-09 04:15:27 +0000 UTCI notice toxic fandoms tends to have a hard focus on numbers. In gaming it'd be resolutions and frame rates. Hell, even in movies people are talking about frame rates, as if higher is always better. It has to be remember that, when you hate something, chances are, you hate it before you have a reason. And your logical brain finds a reason for you to sustain that hatred later on.
Accented Cinema
2020-03-09 03:12:13 +0000 UTCI think even the failure narrative of Birds of Prey is overblown because of toxic fandom. Sure, it didn't meet studio projections or whatever, but neither did Bladerunner 2049 and no one is calling that movie a failure. There is undue focus on box office because those people need it to fail to fit their world view.
Jeff Good
2020-03-09 03:03:15 +0000 UTC
