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Al Borland Corp. posted:There should be a dog Captain America 
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Jan 3, 2018 18:18
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I Before E posted:How much of this is audiences not knowing how to interpret film and how much is the cultural mentality that these films, pop films, aren't deserving of close reading, that all they have to say is what they say in explicit terms? It's the mentality you see when people say "it's not Citizen Kane, it's just a popcorn movie", where some films fit a certain artistic mode and are "allowed" closer inspection, and some don't, and looking into those with a degree of granularity becomes pretentious or "putting too much thought into it". It's not that they're cinematically illiterate, it's that the way film, and art in general, but specifically popular art, is treated in modern consumerist society encourages a passive engagement rather than active interpretation. It's the same phenomenon that leads to people not picking up a book for years after leaving school: they're not unable or even unwilling to read, it's just easier not to. josh04 posted:There's a consensus about what it means to make a 'good' popular movie that's grown alongside Rotten Tomatoes and the expansion of social media, almost entirely focused around it hitting a particular set of aesthetic markers, and beyond that discussion of plotting in very cynical terms. People talk lots about whether characters had a 'full arc', about whether there were many 'plot holes', and about whether big moments were 'earned'. None of these words mean very much and it's very difficult to actually express what you did and didn't like about a movie using them. It's the language of a script doctor, and necessarily ignores almost every other aspect of filmmaking. There's a scale by which the films are judged intellectually based on picking up a few aesthetic references to an otherwise irrelevant genre, a la Winter Soldier, or else featuring some ornate narrative construction, a la Inception, but beyond that it's gut instinct or CinemaSins as far as the eye can see. We now have this geek culture where as soon as a 30-second teaser drops, a bunch of lovely YouTube channels make a hour-long video about it. The series of trailers is met with even more disproportionately long and chatty videos. Whatever rumours leak out of the studio, whatever news comes out at ComiCon gets endlessly discussed. Then the movie comes out. Then there are endless reviews, culminating in negative reviews that are three-quarters the length of the movie itself. It's now ordinary for a popular show to have a follow-up show that's just another hour of people talking about it. For some people these blockbusters can never live up to expectations because they are [extremely Zizek voice] an unattainable ideal that they can never fully engage with. It also seems to me that for some other people, the movie itself is an obscenity to be dispensed with as quickly and cleanly as possible. The movie gets dissected, each part sealed in a plastic bag labeled with the correct TVTrope. This is compatible with reading fiction in terms of its imaginary physical characteristics--like, what is Iron Man's armor made of, how does its power source work, and what happens when his lasers hit Captain America's shield. It's not compatible with literacy and the ability to read meaning.
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Jan 3, 2018 18:29
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AFoolAndHisMoney posted:Civil War is an extremely cowardly movie that avoids any sense of political discourse by being deliberately vague and focusing on Cap and Iron Man fighting over Bucky instead of an actual ideology. Civil War is hilarious in retrospect because it's got the exact same problem as Star Trek III: The Search for Spock--all of its so-called drama requires the characters to act like complete morons, and the only sequences that people remember (the airport fight in Civil War, stealing the Enterprise / destroying the Enterprise in Trek) had the least input from the directors and were driven by the effects teams. Jeb! Repetition posted:Yeah it's mainly this. BvS looks like a huge slog Having just watched the Ultimate Cut a couple of weeks ago, nah, it's excellent. People get mad at it because it makes explicit what the Nolan movies had as steadily growing subtext throughout the trilogy: Batman as a concept is genuinely hosed up and makes things worse, not better.
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Jan 3, 2018 18:50
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Ghosthotel posted:This was great but the spooky voice disguise out of an alien abductee interview turned me off a little bit at first. You can't begrudge K. Waste for wanting to disguise his voice and protect his family since he's speaking in defense of MoS. But seriously tho, that was an excellent video essay, I need to rewatch MoS again, it's been awhile.
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Jan 3, 2018 19:29
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Good news: WB released their copyright claim against my Man of Steel video, so we have at least another year before their bots automatically flag it and we go through the same process all over again.Guy A. Person posted:You can't begrudge K. Waste for wanting to disguise his voice and protect his family since he's speaking in defense of MoS. I literally only do it 'cause it sounds cool. Well, part that, and part that I'm trying to get as far away from this whole YT-personality style of film criticism as possible. Also, double feature it with Unbreakable. Timby posted:Having just watched the Ultimate Cut a couple of weeks ago, nah, it's excellent. People get mad at it because it makes explicit what the Nolan movies had as steadily growing subtext throughout the trilogy: Batman as a concept is genuinely hosed up and makes things worse, not better. [breaths heavily, desperate for attention, trying to remember if I emailed him the B/W cut]
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Jan 3, 2018 19:34
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K Waste you're a forum treasure. Keep on keeping on.
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Jan 3, 2018 19:39
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SMG has been the protector of the Cine D hive mind for too long. It is time that K Waste assumes the mantle.
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Jan 3, 2018 19:43
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Guy A. Person posted:You can't begrudge K. Waste for wanting to disguise his voice and protect his family since he's speaking in defense of MoS. That's just his normal voice. Don'tcha know? People who like Zack Snyder's films are part of the Zack Snyder cult. Us cultists have unique voices - it's the result of us ascending!
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Jan 3, 2018 19:45
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Marvel's cinematic foundation is that society stays the same even if you introduce free energy and aliens and gods from other dimensions and self-aware self-directed AI robots. Only the weapons get potentially deadlier. This is not considered to be a "plot hole" and things that happen in one movie carry over to other movies. Honest. We can imagine the end of the world, but not the end of capitalism.
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Jan 3, 2018 19:48
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I appreciate K Waste because he says exactly what he means from the start. SMG makes seemingly outlandish statements out of left field, waits for multiple people to go "WTF!?" and a page or two before explaining what he was talking about, which he should have done in the first place.
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Jan 3, 2018 19:55
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I thought Civil War did a pretty good job setting up the "whose side are you on" part and showing how both sides had legitimate concerns and motivations. It wasn't a masterpiece but I enjoyed it well enough.
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Jan 3, 2018 19:56
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Halloween Jack posted:Lack of engagement is definitely a factor--a professor who teaches these films has told me that her biggest barrier is just getting the students to actually critique these films at all, and I quote, "people watch these movies because they think nothing is required of them [selves as viewers]." But I don't think there's a universal bias against "putting too much thought into it," rather... The rise of autism in america If no movies came out in 2017 except something like Killing of a Sacred Deer, would things improve?
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Jan 3, 2018 19:59
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Al Borland Corp. posted:I appreciate K Waste because he says exactly what he means from the start. SMG makes seemingly outlandish statements out of left field, waits for multiple people to go "WTF!?" and a page or two before explaining what he was talking about, which he should have done in the first place. This is because SMG is a troll who huffs his own farts. He's film criticism is actually legitamtely good, but the presentation is combative and obtuse. He should of had it modded out of him years ago but he's basically CineD's God.
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Jan 3, 2018 20:08
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K. Waste posted:I literally only do it 'cause it sounds cool. Well, part that, and part that I'm trying to get as far away from this whole YT-personality style of film criticism as possible. Yeah I get that second part for sure. Filmed a review / what the gently caress happened type video for JL and when I went back and watched it I realized I was putting on a "voice" without even realizing it.
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Jan 3, 2018 20:09
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Marvel's cinematic foundation is that society stays the same even if you introduce free energy and aliens and gods from other dimensions and self-aware self-directed AI robots. Only the weapons get potentially deadlier. This is not considered to be a "plot hole" and things that happen in one movie carry over to other movies. Honest. I think it's funny that despite SHIELD existing and all that, The Punisher TV show tells us that the regular NSA is also out there doing SHIELD-lite things. I wonder who decides which operation gets which tasks. got any sevens posted:The rise of autism in america Hey don't.
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Jan 3, 2018 20:12
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PriorMarcus posted:This is because SMG is a troll who huffs his own farts. He's film criticism is actually legitamtely good, but the presentation is combative and obtuse. He should of had it modded out of him years ago but he's basically CineD's God. He's not...he frequently gets probated. I've talked to him in threads and he's always been cordial with me and willing to expound his viewpoints, but I don't call him an insane idiot who I hate and want to be banned...I imagine that helps.
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Jan 3, 2018 20:14
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PriorMarcus posted:This is because SMG is a troll who huffs his own farts. He's film criticism is actually legitamtely good, but the presentation is combative and obtuse. He should of had it modded out of him years ago but he's basically CineD's God. The presentation is part of the criticism.
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Jan 3, 2018 20:14
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Snowman_McK posted:It's not a coincidence that Wonder Woman, the movie that spells out its themes, has been the best received. It's not coincidence that Winter Soldier and Civil War, that have their themes spelled out in extended shot-reverse shot dialogue scenes, are also really well praised, just as Nolan's were. This is going to sound snobbier than I mean it to, but a good chunk of the cinematic audience (or at least, a good chunk of people who theoretically know and write about film) are cinematically illiterate. And the funny thing is, all those films, except Civil War, had already communicated all their themes in other ways. They just also spelled it out. My god you're an amazing poo poo stirrer. You're not a grand guardian of cinematic wisdom. People like these movies because they responded to those movies solid narrative structure and its ability to give them something they actually like watching. But brew and mutter about the unwashed masses not getting it, I'm over here, being a cinema socialist dammit. e: the last couple pages of discussion are gag inducing.
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Jan 3, 2018 20:17
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Shageletic posted:My god you're an amazing poo poo stirrer. You're not a grand guardian of cinematic wisdom. People like these movies because they responded to those movies solid narrative structure and its ability to give them something they actually like watching. This is some A+ tautological thinking. "People liked these movies because they gave them something they liked."
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Jan 3, 2018 20:19
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got any sevens posted:If no movies came out in 2017 except something like Killing of a Sacred Deer, would things improve? I do know I don't want to see Everything Wrong with It Comes at Night in 117 Minutes, or a webpage explaining that Thomasin is the Boisterous Bruiser and Black Philip is the Crystal Dragon Jesus.
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Jan 3, 2018 20:23
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Shageletic is famously the guy who said that nothing in BvS meant anything. Now he's saying that people like what they like and only a fool attempts to analyze why. That's not socialism. That's nihilism.
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Jan 3, 2018 20:24
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I mean, it's not like it's a complaint about the inadequacies of the modern film-goer. Audiences in the 80's weren't particularly more sophisticated or more engaged. Most people aren't going to be doing lit crit on every film they see because they don't want to and that's fair enough. The issue at hand is just explaining the meaning of a couple of phenomenon which are specific-ish to now: the public appetite for pseudo-serial films, he clash between public and critical opinion on several major blockbusters in the last few years, and the affronted distaste which gets expressed for, e.g. the prequels or Zack Snyder films or whatever when people claim to like them. Saying "the public have adopted a strange sort of film criticism popularised on social media" isn't snobbery, it's just flat description.
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Jan 3, 2018 20:35
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josh04 posted:The presentation is part of the criticism. Yeah there are plenty of posters who come in with how something sucks and people who like it or don’t are stupid and whatnot. He also presents outright but people don’t take a step back and think about what he’s presenting and take offense cause they’re more sensitive to tone and insecure at not understanding what’s being said.
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Jan 3, 2018 20:41
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Mechafunkzilla posted:This is some A+ tautological thinking. "People liked these movies because they gave them something they liked." So if I like Ridley Scott films, I shouldn't see Ridley Scott films, because I'll like them?
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Jan 3, 2018 20:44
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JordanKai posted:
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Jan 3, 2018 20:45
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Presumably regarding the use of "autistic" as a pejorative.
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Jan 3, 2018 21:01
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The rise of the internet didn't lead to more polarization in film criticism, I don't think. It just made it more noticeable. The people who really liked something or hated it now simply have more of a voice. There have been scores of films released this year where the large majority of viewers simply went "yeah, it was all right". I'd guess the ratio of this to what it was in 1999 is roughly the same.
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Jan 3, 2018 21:05
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josh04 posted:I mean, it's not like it's a complaint about the inadequacies of the modern film-goer. Audiences in the 80's weren't particularly more sophisticated or more engaged. Most people aren't going to be doing lit crit on every film they see because they don't want to and that's fair enough. Yeah, there's a pretty big difference between just going to films and enjoying them and moving on with your day and styling yourself a critic because you post loving hour long youtube videos about how good the new Transformers film is because it didn't have any plot holes but this new Godzilla film had too many plot holes. Like I see a bunch of movies and I can notice and comment on things that 90% of my friends and family miss, although I am nowhere near as perceptive or knowledgeable as a lot of people in this forum. I don't look down on any of them tho because none of them have deluded themselves into thinking they are well versed in film theory, we just talk about what we did and didn't like and that's enough. None of us have to be "right" when we disagree about something.
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Jan 3, 2018 21:06
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Ghosthotel posted:Yeah I get that second part for sure. Filmed a review / what the gently caress happened type video for JL and when I went back and watched it I realized I was putting on a "voice" without even realizing it. Fuckin' go back in my channel under the Devotional Criticism playlist and watch the second one, you can both hear my actual voice and also what a giant oval office I sound like without even trying.
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Jan 3, 2018 21:09
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Halloween Jack posted:We now have this geek culture where as soon as a 30-second teaser drops, a bunch of lovely YouTube channels make a hour-long video about it. The series of trailers is met with even more disproportionately long and chatty videos. Whatever rumours leak out of the studio, whatever news comes out at ComiCon gets endlessly discussed. Then the movie comes out. Then there are endless reviews, culminating in negative reviews that are three-quarters the length of the movie itself. People have always talked about art, it's just that a lot of the conversations are publicly available now.
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Jan 3, 2018 21:17
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Jeb! Repetition posted:People have always talked about art, it's just that a lot of the conversations are publicly available now. exactly, forming/expressing opinions on media is increasingly a performative act and that changes how people do it
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Jan 3, 2018 21:21
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Brother Entropy posted:exactly, forming/expressing opinions on media is increasingly a performative act and that changes how people do it Yeah but it's always been kind of performative in that you have to pretend/convince yourself to like the right stuff.
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Jan 3, 2018 21:24
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I had a theory that all the people who say "it's always been like this" are young kids whose memories begin sometime in the late 90s but STAC Goat was alive in the 80s and as near as I can tell subscribes to a version of that theory as well so I just don't know what to think. I guess there's this real human need to convince yourself you're living at the end of history and things aren't actually substantially changing - just finding new modes of expression or w/e. I don't know. Very confusing to me, since IMO the way we talk about movies and criticism/analysis of them has changed so radically over the last decade.
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Jan 3, 2018 21:42
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josh04 posted:I mean, it's not like it's a complaint about the inadequacies of the modern film-goer. Audiences in the 80's weren't particularly more sophisticated or more engaged. Most people aren't going to be doing lit crit on every film they see because they don't want to and that's fair enough. My next question would be to then ask how do we ascertain this has happened? Personally, while I might not have a particularly high opinion on Snyder's film making abilities, my sense talking to people in the real world is that the animus against him is a perception wholly created from endless discussion of not particularly interesting films online in forums like SA, which makes it even more puzzling to see posters in this thread creating out of whole cloth an argument painting everyone else out there in the world in the pocket of Big Anti-Snyder. These movies aren't that important, no one cares that much except a small percentage of the geekish population, this is all just different degrees of blockbuster schlock. This myopism and vague assertions of the wanting characteristics and supposed fallibility of the greater public smacks me of some of the writings found in the Temperance movement, or for a more filmic reference, some of the arguments leading into the Hay Codes. Its presumptious and inevitably places the person raising as an untouchable arbiter of what is truly good. Mechafunkzilla posted:This is some A+ tautological thinking. "People liked these movies because they gave them something they liked." Well, how about "People don't like Snyder movies because they don't like movies made by Snyder." Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Shageletic is famously the guy who said that nothing in BvS meant anything. Now he's saying that people like what they like and only a fool attempts to analyze why. Glad to be famous I guess, even though I don't remember writing that, but it seems like something I would have. Nihilism IS pretty cool.
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Jan 3, 2018 21:45
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BiggerBoat posted:The rise of the internet didn't lead to more polarization in film criticism, I don't think. It just made it more noticeable. The people who really liked something or hated it now simply have more of a voice. There have been scores of films released this year where the large majority of viewers simply went "yeah, it was all right". Yeah, I feel like in general, social media makes this stuff immediately noticeable moreso than it exacerbates this stuff. I'm always wary of the theory that back in the day people were more even-keeled or something.
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Jan 3, 2018 22:28
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It's not like the Internet hasn't changed pop culture and how we talk about it, not that I have charts and graphs explaining exactly how and why. Edit: VVV We're still seeing the fallout from when the Internet became widely accessible and, among other things, suddenly anybody can write very long reviews "This loving sucks! Anyone who likes this is retarded! The people who made this should be drowned in piss!" Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Jan 3, 2018 |
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Jan 3, 2018 22:34
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Yeah, I feel like in general, social media makes this stuff immediately noticeable moreso than it exacerbates this stuff. I'm always wary of the theory that back in the day people were more even-keeled or something. I dunno, I was alive in the 80s and 90s and don’t remember anything like the speed, ubiquity, and tenacity of consensus formation you get now. The internet is basically just a big opinion reinforcing feedback loop so it shouldn’t be surprising that opinions harden stronger and faster in the age of the internet. Add in the performative nature of online behavior and it just gets exacerbated further.
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Jan 3, 2018 22:40
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I'm always wary of the theory that back in the day people were more even-keeled or something. It's bullshit, as you might think. Back in the early '80s, Gene Roddenberry was so incensed A) over being removed from any actual authority on the Star Trek movies and B) what Harve Bennett was doing with the movies that he leaked Spock's death in The Wrath of Khan and the destruction of the Enterprise in The Search for Spock to the fanzines, and the response was as hyperbolic and ridiculous as you can imagine, with people raising holy hell about what Bennett & Co. were doing to "the Great Bird's vision" or whatever poo poo. One of the fanzines, I think it was either General Quarters or Orion Press, literally published an entire issue of letters from readers petitioning Paramount to not kill Spock.
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Jan 3, 2018 22:49
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Yeah, I feel like in general, social media makes this stuff immediately noticeable moreso than it exacerbates this stuff. I'm always wary of the theory that back in the day people were more even-keeled or something. There's verifiable research that the average "conservative" is an even bigger piece of poo poo now than they were in the 80s and 90s. Their beliefs have changed in response to Fox News and Facebook, which lets these chuds get together and reinforce each other's worse tendencies. I think my position is getting misconstrued a little bit. People aren't any different. They are the same they've always been, and that is reacting to their environment. Online discussion is now largely dominated by nerds calling each other mentally ill for not agreeing with critical consensus and Youtube videos from know-nothing dipshits who spend 2 hours braying about "plot holes", so that's the way the discourse is being shaped and that's how people talk about movies. The loving CinemaSins way. Back in the 80s your only outlet was your personal friends (who would razz your poo poo if you said something stupid) or writing a letter to the editor, which was filtered out based on how constructive and interesting it was. Fanzines did not have near the level of presence as Twitter or Reddit. I mean the level of insane Trek fandom that got you weird looks in the 80s is now the norm for every single franchise. That's the kind of thing I'm observing. Edit: like Timby's is the perfect example, I liked Star Trek and saw all the movies in the theater and I never heard about any of that. Those people were freaks. Now Vox and Verge and StarTrekFan or whatever would run that as a major story on their site. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Jan 3, 2018 |
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Jan 3, 2018 22:50
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Timby posted:It's bullshit, as you might think. Back in the early '80s, Gene Roddenberry was so incensed A) over being removed from any actual authority on the Star Trek movies and B) what Harve Bennett was doing with the movies that he leaked Spock's death in The Wrath of Khan and the destruction of the Enterprise in The Search for Spock to the fanzines, and the response was as hyperbolic and ridiculous as you can imagine, with people raising holy hell about what Bennett & Co. were doing to "the Great Bird's vision" or whatever poo poo. One of the fanzines, I think it was either General Quarters or Orion Press, literally published an entire issue of letters from readers petitioning Paramount to not kill Spock. Yeah, I remember as a kid knowing that people hated the Ewoks and thought Kirk's death in Generations sucked, and that was well before there was a computer in my house. I feel that something like The Simpsons helped drive the nerd opinion into the mainstream, and the internet now makes it immediate and intense.
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Jan 3, 2018 22:59
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