#she did manage to say something and give it personality when so many IP movies are soulless and meaningless
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speaking as someone who really enjoyed Barbie, I just don't think Barbie is deep enough to warrant all the dramatic takes and arguments on it
#like it's a fun movie!#the production design is amazing#i'm all here to gush about the filmmaking and art dept on that film#but I feel like it's getting hyped way beyond what it is#a fun movie that manages to say something and be entertaining despite being another big studio film only made bc it's based on popular IP#like Greta did make something entertaining and worth watching#she did manage to say something and give it personality when so many IP movies are soulless and meaningless#but it's not the big evil manipulative marketing people complain it is#becuase literally.....everything greenlit by studios nowadays is tied to some kind of IP or brand or intended to sell you something#i didn't see these complaints over the lego movies#it's not to blame for launching a big pointless ip franchise bc even if barbie had bombed you KNOW the other mattel movies would have#probably happened bc IP matters way more than what audiences are actually interested in#but it's also not like a revolutionary feminist masterpiece??#it says something yeah but it's not really groundbreaking and it's pretty simple#and it's certainly not like....revolutionary enough for all the negative backlash though we all know something doesn't HAVE#to be truly revolutionary or progressive for that kind of crowd to get all up in arms over the Woke Agenda#it's just like#it is what it is#a movie that would have happened whether competent storytellers and filmmakers got on board or not and at least they made something#worth watching which I can't say of a LOT of IP greenlight decisions#it's jsut like#I enjoyed the movie and it was well made and I'm glad it's doing well but every time I see a new argument about it or take#I just want to be like#it's not that deep lol#that doesn't include just analysis and discussion of the movie#that's different#i mean more discussion like it's bad this movie did well bc it's just an overhyped commercial!!!#anyways got that off my chest lol#i still would have killed to work on set dec for that film
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i'm about to spend WAY too many words talking about barbie movie meta btw just a warning. disclaimer this is just one guy's opinion i may not always hold these opinions forever i'm open to hearing other opinions i'm almost definitely missing something here etc etc
ngl i also loved the barbie movie but i feel like some people are hyping it up / expecting it to be Cutting Edge Radical Leftist Feminist Writing when like. it's definitely not that lol. greta gerwig is a great director and frankly i'm surprised she managed to get away with some of the things she did in a licensed movie based on such a major IP but at the end of the day she's riding a very fine line in making a corporate-approved toy ad that's also a satire with adult and feminist themes that's also a coming-of-age movie for tweens and young teens
like gerwig is spinning a LOT of plates with the barbie movie and whilst that gives it a lot of high energy and humour and wry commentary and the ability to touch on a lot of different topics, she's ultimately limited by runtime and also most likely by trying to toe a line set by mattel/WB about what is and isn't TOO far. and the end result is that whilst it's refreshing to see a high profile movie speak so candidly about how stressful it is to be a woman, some of the themes that it touches on end up feeling underbaked, shallow and performative. like the movie mentioning capitalism and white savourism without actually delving into any of that and whilst it's funny to point out how stupid it is for a company selling Girl Power™ to be run mostly by middle aged men the movie just Does Not Have The Time Or Space To Get Into it so we don't get an exploration of what that means for barbie's existence, for capitalist co-opting of feminism, etc and it easily comes off as a "where are all the woman CEOs???" #girlbossfeminism comment regardless of gerwig's intentions
i get the sense that gerwig & co. knew going in that there were going to be criticisms regardless about the limits of the movie's feminism, and included some of those comments nodding towards the "we don't have time to get into this right now" topics the movie touches on intending them to reassure the audience that she's not deliberately ignoring them. and the results of doing that were Decidedly Mixed. i can't really say if i think it was better for her to do that or not tbh i think that's a more individual judgement call
idk at the end of the day what the movie does best is not to make in-depth critiques about structural oppression but to speak directly to the experiences of modern young girls who grow up being told repeatedly that "girls can do anything" (whether in good faith by well-meaning adults or by capitalist marketing) but then start to realise that the world is still hostile to women in so many ways, who struggle to reconcile that message with the realities of how they're made to feel self-conscious and objectified and the observations they can make about the still patriarchal world around them. who are trying to process all this conflicting information while their sense of self and relationship with the society around them and also their physical body is still developing. and, in relation to that, to speak directly to the personal experiences of adult women in the audience who have internalised and tried to accomodate all those contradictions and become worn down by the stress. the priority of the movie is to tell women and girls that you don't have to be extraordinary or successful or pretty to be worthy of respect or personhood, that you don't need permission to be a full human being
through ken, to a lesser extent, the movie is also trying to speak directly to the experiences of young boys who are internalising patriarchal ideals as they mature and promised "rewards" if they live up to a hypermasculine ideal. except ken admits towards the end that being In Charge™ and hypermasculine did not make him happy, but that he doesn't know who he is if not his status symbols and "possessions" (his girlfriend, his house, his car). i have a few small gripes with how the conclusion of ken's arc was handled in that scene but barbie was speaking directly to the audience when she said that he (men in general) can and should find a sense of self-worth without domineering over others or feeling entitled to a woman simply because he's a man. it's feminism 101 lol it's hardly angela davis or simone de beauvoir but it's not an unimportant message to impart on young boys still wrapping their head around the way the world works
to a less direct extent the movie is also trying to grapple with the complex relationship the barbie brand has historically had with feminism, female empowerment/liberation, beauty standards and traditional gender roles, and the ways barbie has been progressive and regressive in turns. again you could have made a 2hr barbie movie about just this topic alone so your mileage may vary on whether barbie 2023 explored this in enough depth for you (i personally would have liked a bit more self-reflection on barbie's role in imparting beauty standards to young girls but maybe that would have been a bit too dark for mattel/WB lmao) but the movie isn't subtle about setting up the simplistic claim that "barbie saved women from sexism" only to repeatedly knock it down. barbieland is a Matriarchal Utopia™ but it's also explicitly in the text just an idea, a plastic stage onto which the real world projects its concept of an ideal world for women. it takes the slightest nudge from the "real world" - gloria being kind of bummed and stressed out by being a working mother with depression and cellulite - for the entire house of cards to wobble. i wish the movie's answer to this was a bit more complex than "what about an Ordinary Barbie?" but i think gerwig and baumbach knew what they were saying when the CEO called that a stupid idea until another suit whispered that it would make a lot of money lmao
and i think that last point is one of the most interesting things about analysing the movie for me, because you can almost see in these moments these little points of tension between gerwig/baumbach and mattel/WB - hints at the things gerwig/baumbach WANT to say more explicitly but can't without possibly upsetting the people bankrolling the project. i'm not smart enough to draw any intelligent conclusions or moral lessons about that btw i just think it would be interesting to look at these points in the movie where gerwig/baumbach noticeably gesture towards criticisms of Pink Capitalism™ without actually Getting Into It and what that says about the state of trying to make feminist/leftist media under the constraints of capitalism. like it shouldn't be lost on anyone that mattel/WB only bankrolled this project in the first place because we live at a point in time where a certain kind of feminism (and even the outrage generated by conservatives who think "women are people" is radical leftist rhetoric, and the ensuing wave of "let's support the thing that pisses of conservatives") is considered profitable
anyway this has devolved into rambling, my point is, outside of a) telling young boys and girls that patriarchy kinda sucks and they don't have to live up to specific ideals to have worth and b) grappling with the barbie brand's complicated relationship with feminism, the movie's feminist discourse is limited and we're kinda setting some viewers up for disappointment by propping up barbie as a radically feminist movie. that's not to say that barbie 2023 should be above criticism at all but yk. you're gonna have a better time with the movie and better be able to appreciate the prioritised messages if you temper expectations rather than being disappointed that the movie didn't advocate for marxism (or if you're not misled into thinking it's something that you wanna watch in the first place). also that no one should rely solely on big budget, heavily marketed movies based on highly profitable IPs for feminist perspectives or incisive commentary on the relationship between patriarchy and other forms of systemic oppression
also outside of the feminist discourse around it the movie is generally just funny, emotional, upbeat and a little surrealist if you think you'd be into that
#ok im done. i had Thoughts#no doubt they're imperfect thoughts but i wanted to ramble about it and im finding the responses to the barbie move interesting#gray.txt#barbie 2023#barbie spoilers#i guess?
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Quis Copyright Ipsos Custodes?
by Dan H
Wednesday, 06 June 2012
Dan rambles about copyright, DC, and the Watchmen Prequels~
Poking around the internets a couple of days ago I discovered the
following article
about the upcoming (or by the time this article is published, recently released) Watchmen Prequels.
I'm in two minds about this. Part of me says that this is a horrible shameless cash-in that pisses on the memory on one of the greatest graphic novels in history. Another part of me says that the first part of me is just being reactionary and fanboyish.
The Slate article I link at the top of this piece starts off with the oft-repeated observation that DC paid Siegel and Shuster $130 for the rights to Superman and went on to make a shit-ton of money out of the Man of Steel while his creators died in relative poverty. It also points out that the estate of Jack Kirby, who created most of the original Avengers saw nothing from the recent movie.
Now obviously there is a lot wrong with the comics industry. Comic book companies do treat a lot of their writers and artists like shit, and the comics fandom as a whole is as problematic as all fuck. But try as I might, I can't get angry about the fact that the rights to most comic book characters are owned by big companies, instead of by the people who created those characters for those companies.
Perhaps it's that my professional background is in Education while what limited creative background I have is in RPGs, so I'm very used to the idea that what I do in either my professional or my creative life ceases to be mine the moment I put it out into the world. If one of my D&D players wrote a book based on my campaign, I might expect a thank-you but I wouldn't expect royalties, and I obviously don't expect my students to cut me in on their future earnings just because I teach them things which help them get on in their lives (nor does it bother me that the various syllabus documents, schemes of work, and sets of revision notes I have produced as part of my work belong to my school and not to me).
Indeed thinking about it from the perspective of any industry apart from the creative media, the notion that somebody might deserve a share of the profits from a piece of work somebody else does based on work they did as part of their job ten years earlier is completely alien. It reminds me, tangentially, of that
SMBC
strip which suggests that the principle known in academia as “publish or perish” is known in the rest of the world as “do your job or get fired.” There's the same peculiar sense that something which is seen as the mother of all injustices in one industry is just par for the course in most others.
To put it another way, although like most human beings I'm prone to irrational and inconsistent ideas, I do make a vague effort to keep my beliefs consistent with one another. And I'm a big fan of Creative Commons, a supporter of fanfiction, and a strong believer in fair use and the value of transformative works. I am not sure that I could reconcile my belief that the Harry Potter Lexiconhad every right to compile information from the Harry Potter books into an accessible format, or that people have the right to write original stories using other people's characters and put them on the internet (fanfiction.net, for what it is worth, already hosts nine hundred and forty pieces of Watchmen fanfic), with the belief that it is unreasonable for the people who published the original Watchmen to publish sequels if they damned well want to.
I think what bugs me the most about this issue, and more specifically with the attitude that it is somehow self-evident that the person who “creates” a character is entitled to royalties in perpetuity, is that it seems grounded in a mindset with which I am all too familiar. I am, as I believe I have said in many previous articles, an overeducated underachiever. I am very, very good at coming up with ideas and very, very bad at following them through.
The reason people like me react so strongly to the story of Siegel and Shuster isn't that we have genuine sympathy for the hardworking Jewish immigrants who were screwed over by the cynical fatcats at DC, it's that we're all dreaming of the day when we will come up with that one “idea” that will make us millionaires without our having to do any actual work. We baulk at the idea of comic book companies making millions from an idea for which they paid $130 not because it was exploitative (although it probably was) but because we see no value whatsoever in all other work that went into turning a $130 character idea into a billion-dollar IP. This is particularly ironic since a lot of that work was, in fact, done by Siegel and Shuster themselves (and it was work for which they were in fact well paid, Wikipedia reliably informs me that while the pair were only paid $130 for the rights to Superman they were paid $75,000 a year to write Superman – and that was in the 1940s).
People like me love to pretend that ideas are all that matter, that because The Avengers was a pre-existing IP, that all the people who made the film had to do was show up and shuffle things into vaguely the right order. This is, of course, nonsense. Yes, The Avengers wouldn't have existed without Stan Lee or Jack Kirby, but nor would it have existed without Wayne T. Silva the assistant payroll accountant, or Nuo Sun the actor trainer, or Matthew Roper the set medic, or any of the literally hundreds of people who were directly involved in making the actual movie. Of course the original characters are part of what made the film successful, but so is the fact that the actors did their stunts right, or that the payrolls were correctly managed.
Valuable intellectual properties aren't created by individual geniuses – even when a single person owns the copyright the actual brand (and make no mistake about it, thats all a valuable artistic property is – a brand that people buy into and want to hear stories about) is created by a vast army of professionals. We might believe that Harry Potter was created by JK Rowling, but in truth it was partly created by Thomas Taylor (who drew the first cover for Bloomsbury), Mary GrandPre (who drew all of the US covers and seems to have created the distinctive “Harry Potter” font later used in the movies) and Daniel Radcliffe. Yes, the fact that JK Rowling started out as an unemployed single parent and is now one of the richest people in Britain makes for a lovely rags-to-riches story, but one could make the case that she is (in part) reaping the rewards of other people's work. Building a brand, after all, is the role of a corporate marketing department, not an individual artist.
To put it another way, Siegel and Shuster may have created Superman, but it was undoubtedly DC that turned him into a billion-dollar brand, and it is downright perverse to celebrate the success of that brand while at the same time condemning the company that created that success. Did the creators of Superman get screwed? I honestly don't know. Certainly DC negotiated a contract that was in the company's interests rather than the artists', but it is not inherently wrong to make a lot of money out of something for which you initially paid very little money. If DC had known for certain that the Superman property would make millions then it might have been immoral to encourage Siegel and Shuster to give up all rights to the character, but they almost certainly didn't. They took a punt on the property, and it paid off.
Of course money isn't the only issue here. Alan Moore is far more upset about control of his creations than anything else. But even this is a commercial issue. It's easy to be snooty about the way the comics industry exploits its IPs, but – well – that's kind of how they make their money. More than that, it's kind of what's good about the medium. As in, what's artistically good. If Superman had remained in the exclusive control of its original creators, it would still look
like this
. Batman, by a similar token, would still look
like this
. Enduring comic-book characters remain relevant to a modern audience precisely because they are continually created and recreated, and this is possible only because the rights to these characters are owned not by their individual creators but by corporations. This idea doesn't sit comfortably in the mind of the average comics reader, who I suspect likes to place themselves on the side of the artist (not least because so many of us believe ourselves to be artists), but the truth is that we benefit directly from the system being the way it is.
Which brings us all back to the Watchmen prequels. The instinctive reaction of, I expect, most of nerddom, will be to raise a hue and cry because blah blah capitalism blah blah integrity blah blah cash-in blah blah blah. Because apparently we've forgotten that doing new things with old characters is what comic books are all about. The question of whether they are actually any good or not will be entirely academic (as
this edition of Our Valued Customers
nicely illustrates).
The whole thing seems grounded in a kind of skeevy Great Man Theory. The prequels might be brilliant, or they might be terrible, but what people seem to be concerned about is the fact that they will no longer be the product of One Man's Genius, that the mere fact that the prequels will not be written by Alan Moore irrevocably taints them. The whole thing reminds me of the kerfuffle over the proposed (but I believe never realised) Buffy revamp, when people were up in arms about the idea of Buffy without Joss Whedon. Even more peculiarly, people were insisting that a de-Whedoned Buffy would be a terrible blow against feminism, despite the fact that the lead writer on the proposed revamp would have been an actual woman.
This last point – that taking a property away from its straight, white, male creator will be bad for women and ethnic minorities – was made quite explicitly in the Slate piece that inspired this article:
For example: Moore’s comics have often been concerned with feminism, and one theme of Watchmen is that the superhero genre is built in part on retrograde sexual politics and thuggish rape fantasies. And how does Before Watchmen address these issues? Like so. If this were some piece of fan fiction detritus—naked Dr. Manhattan, porn-faced Silk Spectre!—it would be funny. But given that this is an "official" product, it starts to be harder to laugh it off.
I'm not sure where to begin with this. The first thing I'd say is that I have no idea which version of Watchmen this person was reading if they (a) think that “naked Dr Manhattan” is in any way a deviation from the original text and (b) think it's remotely appropriate to describe the original comic as “feminist”. This is a comic in which the fact that Sally Jupiter had a relationship with, and became pregnant by, the man that raped her is the detail which convinces Dr Manhattan that humanity is beautiful and worth saving (this is a slightly uncharitable gloss to put on that moment in the comics, but only slightly).
The second thing I'd say is that I can't help but notice that the article not only assumes that you can deduce an entire comic's gender politics from the cover of one trade paperback, but also fairly deliberately chooses the only cover that could have remotely illustrated his point. You can look at all of the other covers
here
. Most of them don't feature women at all, but this is a consequence of there only being one significant female character in the original text, which is surely Moore's fault as much as anybody else's (and again, doesn't seem to say much for his “concern for feminism”). You might specifically want to take a closer look at the cover of the
Silk Spectre
prequel, which is not only a good not-especially-sexualised portrayal of the character, but which is also drawn by an actual woman.
I think what I find most ironic about the backlash against the Watchmen prequels is that it's grounded in the very same notions of heroism which the comic itself deconstructs. The only reason to believe that (as the Slate article puts it):
Rorschach and Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan have been raised from their resting place, and Moore—and the rest of us—now get to watch them stagger around, dripping bits of themselves across the decades, until everyone has utterly forgotten that they ever had souls.
Is if we accept that Alan Moore is somehow so uniquely talented that nobody except for him is capable of writing decent stories with those characters. As if somehow Moore's talent was so great that unlike Superman, Batman, the X-Men, the Avengers, or all of the characters he purloined for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen his creations would be uniquely tainted if they were touched by lesser mortals.
Perhaps even more tragically, this really does seem to be Moore's attitude. In
this interview
he makes a number of almost embarrassingly self-aggrandising claims about how uncreative, miserable and talentless pretty much everybody working in the mainstream comics industry is. He also, inexplicably, insists that his use of the character of Allan Quatermain in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is different from the Watchmen prequels because apparently nobody had heard of Allan Quatermain before he put him in a comic (whereas Dr Manhattan is – what – a literary icon?). And complains that the people who got his share of the money from the Watchmen and Extraordinary Gentlemen movies didn't ring him up and personally thank him.
Perhaps the most mystifying quote in the whole interview is the part where he claims that the people working on Before Watchmen are doing so because: “It will probably be the only opportunity they get in their careers to actually be attached to a project that anybody outside of comics has ever heard of”. Leaving aside the fact that one of the writers on the project is J. Michael Straczynski – who created one of the most respected (although perhaps also most overrated) works of TV SF ever made – what is Moore smoking if he believes that anybody outside of comics has heard of Watchmen at all other than as that movie that guy made in 2009.
The thing is, Alan Moore absolutely does have the right to be bitter and angry about this whole affair, because he did get screwed by DC. But whatever he might think, Watchmen is not some dazzling beacon that demonstrated to the outside world the true potential of the comic-book medium. It's an okay-but-slightly-dated long-form comic book which comics nerds (and only comics nerds) obsess about because they think it makes them look clever.
The Watchmen prequels are very likely to be dull and uninspiring, but that is because Watchmen is dull and uninspiring. And any spark or relevance they have for a modern audience will have come from the people who wrote and drew them, it will not have been reflected from Alan Moore's imaginary genius.
Themes:
Topical
,
Sci-fi / Fantasy
,
Comics
,
Watchmen
~
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Arthur B
at 14:31 on 2012-06-06I simultaneously have no sympathy for the "what about Alan Moore?" argument but also think
Before Watchmen
is highly likely to be an enormous waste of time.
On the first point, it's worth noting that originally Alan Moore
didn't intend to use original characters for Watchmen at all
. Moore wanted to use the characters from the Charlton Comics stable of superheroes, which DC had acquired after Charlton bit the dust. DC were like "ummmm... we'd prefer you didn't junk these characters, why not make some original ones anyway?", Moore acquiesced and cooked up the Watchmen we know and love as thinly-veiled re-imaginings of the Charlton chumps.
The important thing about this anecdote, vis-a-vis this discussion, is that
the entire concept of Watchmen came about as a result of the corporate ownership of characters created by people who were not Alan Moore, and Moore wanting to write a story very much at odds with the original intentions of the characters' creators.
So the idea that the
Watchmen
characters somehow get to be sacred and mustn't be tampered with when they owe their very existence to Moore wanting to tamper with other people's characters seems pretty hypocritical to me.
On the other hand, with respect to
Before Watchmen
itself, I can't see how it can really be very interesting.
Watchmen
was constructed like one of those really cool domino runs - the interesting thing is watching this very delicate setup collapsing as the result of one little push. Watching the dominos getting set up before the actual domino run is just going to be tedious and I'd rather not.
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Wardog
at 14:54 on 2012-06-06I'd have more sympathy for Moore in general if he was less of a complete dick...
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Arthur B
at 15:07 on 2012-06-06Theologically Moore says he believes that all fictions are real in some sense.
If that were the case it shouldn't matter that someone else is using those characters or messing with those stories because they were never Moore's in the first place, he just found them.
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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/
at 16:01 on 2012-06-06
The whole thing seems grounded in a kind of skeevy Great Man Theory.
This is a bit of a tangent, and I apologize if it goes too far off course.
I've been thinking about the Great Man Theory as it applies to capitalism and entrepreneurship, especially the popular notion that all great successes in business are the work of individual (male) supergeniuses. An entrepreneur has a Great Idea that works and makes him billions, he becomes a cultural icon, and he can then do no wrong until he does. Women can't have Great Ideas, because barefoot pregnant make me a sandwich.
The other day I hear a guy bring up that Sheryl Sandberg is the real brains behind Facebook, for taking that slack-ass Mark Zuckerberg's idea and finding a way to make it profitable. Another guy loudly counters that Zuckerberg was the "visionary" who had the "great idea" for Facebook and therefore deserves 100% of the credit and fame he's received at everyone else's expense.
Now obviously Zuckerberg's role in Facebook was much greater than simply coming up with the original idea, and his role in creating and running the company shouldn't be downplayed. And the second guy is a bitter, thwarted misogynist anyway, so if Sandberg and Zuckerberg's roles had been switched he'd be championing execution over ideas. It just strikes me that an idea rarely, if ever, starts out as a Great Idea, and only becomes so in hindsight. If we're not used to thinking of women's ideas as potentially Great Ideas, we're never going to get to the point where women have a reputation for Great Ideas to point to. And of course nascent ideas are a lot harder to judge fairly and objectively than, say, job performance.
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James D
at 17:35 on 2012-06-06
The important thing about this anecdote, vis-a-vis this discussion, is that the entire concept of Watchmen came about as a result of the corporate ownership of characters created by people who were not Alan Moore, and Moore wanting to write a story very much at odds with the original intentions of the characters' creators. So the idea that the Watchmen characters somehow get to be sacred and mustn't be tampered with when they owe their very existence to Moore wanting to tamper with other people's characters seems pretty hypocritical to me.
While you have a point, I think it's oversimplifying to some degree. I'm pretty sure that, had Moore been allowed to use those old characters, they would have been significantly and obviously different from the originals. They would have been almost totally reimagined. With the Watchmen prequels, they're supposedly about the actual characters themselves, so what happens in the prequels may directly relate to what happens in the original graphic novel itself.
Even so, I really just don't see what the big deal is, to be perfectly honest. It'd be one thing if Alan Moore were some poor downtrodden author whose works barely got any attention beyond a small but loyal cult following, and then some huge corporate giant came in and swindled him out of his rights and completely ran away with the man's franchise in a way he never intended and never credited him with anything. But The Watchmen is a very, very well-known graphic novel. There have been numerous sequels written to the Oz books by a variety authors, yet nobody really bitches and moans about those because the originals are firmly understood to be the originals. The millions of Star Wars tie-in books, games, action figures, etc. don't somehow warp the quality of the original movies.
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Arthur B
at 17:49 on 2012-06-06
While you have a point, I think it's oversimplifying to some degree. I'm pretty sure that, had Moore been allowed to use those old characters, they would have been significantly and obviously different from the originals. They would have been almost totally reimagined. With the Watchmen prequels, they're supposedly about the actual characters themselves, so what happens in the prequels may directly relate to what happens in the original graphic novel itself.
Actually, as I understand it the point was to use established characters with an established history to sucker in readers with a cosy sense of familiarity before exposing them to just how vile the characters really are, so had that plan gone ahead I imagine it would have involved more than a few callbacks to the Charlton stable's original stories.
But it's impossible to say one way or another because DC didn't let Moore do it.
The millions of Star Wars tie-in books, games, action figures, etc. don't somehow warp the quality of the original movies.
Of course, in the case of Star Wars George Lucas has proved himself perfectly capable of ruining it all by himself...
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http://scipiosmith.livejournal.com/
at 18:09 on 2012-06-06
The whole thing reminds me of the kerfuffle over the proposed (but I believe never realised) Buffy revamp, when people were up in arms about the idea of Buffy without Joss Whedon. Even more peculiarly, people were insisting that a de-Whedoned Buffy would be a terrible blow against feminism, despite the fact that the lead writer on the proposed revamp would have been an actual woman.
Disregarding Buffy's feminism (I never interpreted Buffy as a show about feminism but rather about vampires, becasue I was 10) I don't think you can argue that it would have been different. Star Trek was very different after Gene Roddenberry's death to what it was before; which some people preferred and some people hated, but the difference is undeniable. So if you thought that Buffy was perfect just the way it was I can see the idea of someone messing it about might be upsetting.
Of course people ought to be honest and admit that they don't like the idea because they don't want their cherished memories polluted instead of trying to conjure politics, but that wouldn't sound as good in Slate.
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http://scipiosmith.livejournal.com/
at 18:09 on 2012-06-06Sorry, wouldn't have been different.
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http://barefoottomboy.livejournal.com/
at 18:40 on 2012-06-06Not being overly attached to Watchmen (or Alan Moore in general), I may not be best placed to make this call, but I just can't get too worked up about the prospect of a prequel that isn't/might not be as good as the original. As James D says, the existence of (a) prequel(s) doesn't negate the existence of the original, or somehow retrospectively reduce its quality.
Not to say that all prequels/sequels/extensions/whatever are always a good idea, of course. But if you don't like them, there's nothing stopping you ignoring them and sticking to the originals you liked in the first place.
In terms of creators getting screwed over by copyright & the comic book industry, I really don't know enough about either to comment intelligently. Though I must confess that my immediate/gut reaction to Jack Kirby's *estate* losing out on a share of the profit of the Avengers film is "so freaking what? Why should I care about Jack Kirby's estate - what did they have to do with the creation of those characters?".
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Arthur B
at 19:29 on 2012-06-06
Though I must confess that my immediate/gut reaction to Jack Kirby's *estate* losing out on a share of the profit of the Avengers film is "so freaking what? Why should I care about Jack Kirby's estate - what did they have to do with the creation of those characters?".
We care because it's the 18th Century and people's copyrighted works aren't just meant to earn them money, it's also meant to be a way for them to provide for their wives and children.
This is
literally
the only reason why copyright has this weird "until the author's death plus X years" duration thing going on.
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http://scipiosmith.livejournal.com/
at 20:25 on 2012-06-06You say that like its such a bad thing.
I must say I'm of the opinion that if you can live on unearned income you probably should- and free up a slot in the job market for someone who needs it.
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James D
at 21:15 on 2012-06-06
Of course, in the case of Star Wars George Lucas has proved himself perfectly capable of ruining it all by himself...
One might say the same of Michael Moorcock and Elric, or any number of other creators who went on to ruin their creations. Honestly, when it comes to shoddy sequels, I can't really think of any corporation that did as much damage to other people's characters as those two did to their own. There are plenty of shoddy corporate sequels out there, to be sure, but does Alien: Resurrection really tarnish Alien at all? I certainly wouldn't say so. It's much harder to be that sure about the Star Wars prequels, or Moorcock's ill-advised later Elric stories that he shoehorned into the original chronology, when new viewers/readers could very well go into those series and take them as a whole, without differentiating much between the old and the new.
An argument might be made that the comics industry is unfairly entrenched in the practice of forcing authors to sign the rights of their characters over if they want to be published, but as I mentioned earlier it's not like Moore and his family are starving while corporate fat cats reap the benefits of his ideas. It's not like they're spuriously attaching Moore's name to projects he has no part of. There may be an argument to be made here, but The Watchmen is hardly the ideal battleground for it.
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http://melaniedavidson.livejournal.com/
at 21:53 on 2012-06-06
He also, inexplicably, insists that his use of the character of Allan Quatermain in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is different from the Watchmen prequels because apparently nobody had heard of Allan Quatermain before he put him in a comic
I think it's funny that he chose probably the most obscure character for that example. Because even if Allan Quatermain was "almost entirely forgotten" (I don't know if this is the case even though I personally hadn't heard of him), the others are all from pretty well-known classics. I'm sure he knew how ridiculous it would sound if he said Jekyll and Hyde were obscure and forgotten and only about six people had heard of the story.
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Arthur B
at 22:07 on 2012-06-06
You say that like its such a bad thing. I must say I'm of the opinion that if you can live on unearned income you probably should- and free up a slot in the job market for someone who needs it.
The number of copyrighted works which actually still rake in a substantial amount of royalties decades after publication is amazingly small. I don't know whether the Tolkien Estate rakes in enough loot from LOTR for Christopher Tolkien and his extended family to sustain themselves without working - I suspect not given the drip-drip-drip of unpublished works coming out from those quarters. In fact, a hell of a lot of the beneficiaries of properties which still rake in mad loot after decades aren't estates or widows or orphans at all. It's the Disney Corporation and people like them.
An argument might be made that the comics industry is unfairly entrenched in the practice of forcing authors to sign the rights of their characters over if they want to be published, but as I mentioned earlier it's not like Moore and his family are starving while corporate fat cats reap the benefits of his ideas.
And of course anything we can say about the state of comics industry author contracts with regards to Watchmen applies mainly to contracts as they existed in the 1980s, when the rights were actually handed over, and offers us little insight into contracts as they exist now.
The situation in the 1980s isn't one I've investigated much, but today I'm really not bothered about it. We exist in an age when if a comic creator wants to publish their work online for everyone to enjoy, they can do so - and in fact make some money out of it. Enough to live lavishly? Probably not, but unless you're writing/drawing a big heap of stuff for DC/Marvel as well as your own personal pet projects you're not likely to be earning great cash from them either. There's no
reason
to even offer your all-original creations up to DC or Marvel in the first place unless think signing over your rights to them is a worthwhile price to pay to get wider distribution and a higher profile - and if you don't think that's a worthwhile price, don't sign the contract in the first place.
Conversely, if you want to write for DC and Marvel because you want to write stories using their characters, it's only fair that they should have editorial control over what you do and only fair that they get to play with any original creations you add to their universes. If you want to play in the big sandpit which is Gotham City (or wherever) it's silly to expect to be allowed to take your sandcastle home with you, and short-sighted to imagine that another kid won't kick over or improve your sandcastle once you leave.
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Dan H
at 22:44 on 2012-06-06
I think it's funny that he chose probably the most obscure character for that example. Because even if Allan Quatermain was "almost entirely forgotten" (I don't know if this is the case even though I personally hadn't heard of him), the others are all from pretty well-known classics. I'm sure he knew how ridiculous it would sound if he said Jekyll and Hyde were obscure and forgotten and only about six people had heard of the story.
That's a good point and one I'd failed to notice.
(Sorry, I have no comment beyond that)
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https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkWbOwQVOANXVz3Xs8lGIILC0qzTMuEKS4
at 13:13 on 2012-06-07
Leaving aside the fact that one of the writers on the project is J. Michael Straczynski – who created one of the most respected (although perhaps also most overrated) works of TV SF ever made
Wow, I didn't realise Jeremiah was so popular!
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Sister Magpie
at 02:54 on 2012-06-09
I'm sure he knew how ridiculous it would sound if he said Jekyll and Hyde were obscure and forgotten and only about six people had heard of the story.
I'm not that familiar with LoEG but the little I remembered from it was making me ask just this question!
I must say I'm of the opinion that if you can live on unearned income you probably should- and free up a slot in the job market for someone who needs it.
But what's funny about that is that it's actually not about giving all money to someone for having the idea. Once you're talking about the estate you're saying that it's somehow more ethical to pay someone for being related to the person who created the character than for being the person who had something to do with making the character famous.
I really think people's real fright when it comes to things like this is that someone's going to tell a story they really don't like that bums them out--and I can sympathize because I hate it when comics play around with backstory in ways I don't like. Luckily if a story sucks it usually gets quietly dropped from continuity anyway. (There's a name for it I can't remember, referring to a bizarre alien who visited the Flash...)
With Watchman it seems like it's got a lot to do with the importance that Watchman is supposed to have, even though it's not really that tremendous.
Also, not only is it ironic that Moore was originally planning to use someone else's characters for the story, but it's not like Moore hasn't made some major changes to other peoples' characters and left others to sort them out. For instance, by paralyzing Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke. I know he says he never knew it would be in continuity, but it changed comics--and not because of his story (which gets imo overpraised) but because other people came in afterwards with an idea for the character.
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Sister Magpie
at 02:55 on 2012-06-09Oh, p.s. That reminds me, thinking of the TKJ that yeah, I am really confused by the idea that Watchman needs to be kept in the hands of AM because other writers--especially female ones--will mess up all the feminism.
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Arthur B
at 13:14 on 2012-06-09
I know he says he never knew it would be in continuity, but it changed comics--and not because of his story (which gets imo overpraised) but because other people came in afterwards with an idea for the character.
I think it would be incredibly short-sighted for any comics author to say "but I didn't know that this idea I put forward in a
Batman
story would become
Batman
continuity!"
I mean, I see that you genuinely wouldn't know whether any particular story of yours would become key canon, get banished to the outer darkness of non-canonicity, or linger somewhere in between. But to not at least consider the possibility that DC might declare that something you have done should stick seems to involve wilfully ignoring how comics continuity works in the first place.
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Adrienne
at 23:09 on 2012-06-09Arthur B: Not so much so, actually. There's a lot of stuff done by the major comix houses that's very specifically pitched and written from the start as not-in-continuity. All of the
Elseworlds
from DC, and similar "What If..." stories from Marvel are in this category, as are the "Ultimate [Whoever]" stories by Marvel that explore alternate origins.
I grant that a VERY FEW of the Elseworlds stories have eventually ended up with bits in continuity (they apparently wrote a sequel series to Kingdom Come, and brought bits of that timeline into continuity. Which makes me sad, mostly because i think Kingdom Come was a remarkably self-contained and lovely piece of storytelling!) But if Alan Moore was told that Killing Joke was Elseworlds, frex, it would not at all have been an unreasonable assumption that nothing in it was going to ever be in continuity.
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Arthur B
at 23:32 on 2012-06-09
Not so much so, actually. There's a lot of stuff done by the major comix houses that's very specifically pitched and written from the start as not-in-continuity. All of the Elseworlds from DC, and similar "What If..." stories from Marvel are in this category, as are the "Ultimate [Whoever]" stories by Marvel that explore alternate origins.
True enough, though
The Killing Joke
wasn't, to my knowledge, promoted as being any of these (and as you point out, if an idea in an Elseworlds thingy gets popular enough then it'll snake its way into canon anyway).
As you say, if Alan Moore was told that
The Killing Joke
was an Elseworlds but then it wasn't promoted as one that'd be kind of sucky on the part of DC, but I don't see any suggestion that that was the case. On the other hand, I don't see that this is one of the reasons why he's upset with his treatment by DC in any case. Surely any comics author would be
thrilled
to have a plot element they introduced become a major ongoing thread in Batman continuity rather than something retconned away within a story or two?
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Sonia Mitchell
at 13:08 on 2012-06-12I have to admit to feeling that Watchmen is a bit of a special case, not because of merit (although I do like it an awful lot) but because it's *specifically* about how characters interpret the past. The story's present is not the key date; it's the lead-up to the Keane Act that the narrative really revolves around.
Which does kind of mean that any 'glory days' Minute Men [II] prequel is going to be dipping into the same timeline Watchmen covers in the narrative, which to me blurs the line between 'prequel' and 'reinterpreting a story which has already been told'. Watchmen showed us the Minute Men days from a number of perspectives - either the prequels will show more of the same old thing (in which case why bother?) or they'll introduce something which will specifically challenge the parent narrative.
I'm sort of intrigued to see what they do, and I do agree that Watchmen can bear to be challenged, I just don't think it's quite as clear-cut as some other prequels. Yes, plenty of comics and other stories have had backstory added later, but I don't think all that many of them were specifically *about* backstory.
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https://me.yahoo.com/a/bpFlIkMVk4ZqOVtCOXzX2V_0665JvfqFHA--#af083
at 14:16 on 2012-06-13A thoughtful and thought provoking essay. Excellent stuff.
I wonder, though, if your focus on commerce and copyright doesn’t tend to swerve a bit around Alan Moore's concerns. I think that the argument is not that DC and the writers and artists involved can't produce Watchmen prequels but rather that, for aesthetic or artistic reasons, they ought to choose not to. And the question of who profits from the endeavour is, as far as I can see, neither here nor there for these purposes.
So Watchmen is, according to this view, a finished work of art, and by monkeying around with the characters and back story you monkey around also with the integrity of the work; you risk diluting its affect or altering its cultural resonance. You might legitimately argue that no amount of monkeying prevents Watchmen from continuing to exist as the thing that it is. However, there seem two reasonably valid counterpoints, both stemming from the basic assumption that art is rarely meaningful without context. First, as Sonia Mitchell very acutely pinpoints above, Watchmen is very much about time and continuity, the future and the past, and by filling in the backstory you almost necessarily, although perhaps in a limited sense, do damage to the extant work. Second, Watchmen speaks implicitly to comics as a medium, and part of its power may be that it remains separate from the usual retrofitting, rebooting, continuity errors and the associated slash and burn approach to narrative. These arguments still rather depend on a willingness to think of Watchmen as exceptional, I admit (although as far as US superhero comics go I think it takes a lot of work to say that it’s not).
What I suspect really gets Moore’s goat about this is the simple disrespect, in particular as evidenced by his fellow artists. Watchmen is his single best claim to cultural relevance and longevity, he has explicitly said he’d much rather they left it alone, and yet still a whole bunch of quite eminent comics dudes (many of whom seem to bang on about how much they like/admire/were influenced by Moore in general and Watchmen in particular) are happy to take a DC cheque to monkey about with a story which he feels is complete.
On Moore ‘the personality’ I tend to think that while he may be intemperate, a bit silly, creatively stalled and less unimpeachable on, in particular, gender politics than I’d like, he’s generally more consistent, principled, and intellectually interesting than his opponents.
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Arthur B
at 14:40 on 2012-06-13
What I suspect really gets Moore’s goat about this is the simple disrespect, in particular as evidenced by his fellow artists.
Again, though: is this really that different from Moore's original intention to take characters and stories from the Charlton stable and monkey around with
them
? The only substantive difference is that whilst we know Moore's feelings about
Before Watchmen
nobody seems to have asked the Charlton creators how they'd have felt to have their characters despoiled had Moore's original vision for
Watchmen
come about.
I have a simple stance on these things: if you don't want someone to slaughter your baby,
don't sell your baby to them
. If
Watchmen
really is Moore's best claim to cultural relevance and longevity*, then at least part of that is down to DC's promotion of the book as this big-time smart comic for smart people and in their efforts in keeping it in print.**
* I'd dispute this point too.
V For Vendetta
, surely, has attained a greater level of cultural ubiquity thanks to Anonymous.
From Hell
is arguably on a par with
Watchmen
when it comes to critical acclaim.
** I understand that Moore argues that DC swindled him by not letting
Watchmen
go out of print, thus ensuring that the "reversion clause" in his contract would never kick in (which would have caused the rights to revert to him and Gibbons). It's hard to say how truthful or accurate this statement is unless Moore or DC actually publish the contract. However, if that is the case it seems that Moore negotiated a contract with DC where they'd either have to keep his comic in print for perpetuity - which I would argue goes a long way towards reinforcing that cultural relevance and longevity shebang - or give the rights back to him. In other words, they have to do one of two things they wouldn't do for Joe C. Ordinarywriter, and they chose the first option over the second option. Who could blame 'em?
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James D
at 15:04 on 2012-06-13The difference between the Watchmen characters and the Charlton Comics characters is that they were conceived very differently. When DC discouraged him from using the Charlton Comics characters, he invented his own - not to be a series, but to be a one-off novel with a specific character arc for each that brings their stories to a close. Comics writers inventing series understand that their characters will be written by other people, and probably take great pains to introduce plotlines and conflicts that they know won't ever truly be resolved or will at least last a really long time - Batman vs. Joker, Darkseid's quest for the Anti-Life Equation, etc. Watchmen instead invents characters not for a series, but for a novel, and ends them decisively.
Had Moore used the Charlton Comics characters, it would have been clear that the Watchmen story was very separate from their original stories, and highly unlikely to be ever seen as 'canon' to the original series, especially since he permanently kills a lot of them. Instead, it would have been seen by those who knew about the characters as an ironic counterpoint to who they actually were - like if someone wrote a one-off graphic novel in which Batman and Superman were evil, or something. That's the difference as I see it.
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Arthur B
at 17:52 on 2012-06-13Well, Moore thought that there'd be scope for a prequel - back when the thing first came out he said he'd consider doing one if
Watchmen
did well enough.
Of course, that was under the assumption that it'd be Moore writing it rather than someone else, which he was always against. But again: if someone doing something with your characters is unacceptable, don't sign a piece of paper giving them the right to do that.
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James D
at 19:00 on 2012-06-13Yeah, no argument here. It's not like there weren't alternative comics publishers back then that might have offered him a better deal in terms of what rights he would retain, but that would probably have involved settling for smaller print runs, less distribution, and less money in the end too.
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https://me.yahoo.com/a/bpFlIkMVk4ZqOVtCOXzX2V_0665JvfqFHA--#af083
at 12:38 on 2012-06-15
Again, though: is this really that different from Moore's original intention to take characters and stories from the Charlton stable and monkey around with them?
I think it’s pretty easy to draw distinctions (see eg James D. above), even if only of nuance, and I don’t, in any event, have much interest in asserting that Alan Moore is a paragon of moral and philosophical consistency (although he may very well be). However, I suspect that the extent to which you find the distinctions convincing and the possibility of hypocrisy forgivable will in the end align with how highly you rate Watchmen.
I have a simple stance on these things: if you don't want someone to slaughter your baby, don't sell your baby to them.
I wonder if this simplification obscures more than it illuminates. Selling a baby might well reduce the stake you have in its future, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have neither say nor interest in how the new owner treats it, and nor does it mean that they have no responsibilities towards it, particularly in a world where baby-sale is the standard means by which babies are encouraged to fulfil their potential. However, this just takes us into contract law, and as I say there’s no suggestion that DC are doing anything illegal.
If Watchmen really is Moore's best claim to cultural relevance and longevity*, then at least part of that is down to DC's promotion of the book as this big-time smart comic for smart people and in their efforts in keeping it in print.**
Sure, I suppose so - good work DC! But so what?
It’s not directly relevant to this issue, but I’ve always struggled with the characterisation of Watchmen as a smart comic for smart people, it strikes me as at its best if understood as a smart superhero comic for smart superhero comics fans.
You may well be right about V for Vendetta, and From Hell - it’s probably an indication of my age that I still think of Watchmen as a sacred cow.
I’ll set out my stall for what it’s worth (the paper it’s written on, ie): I don’t care very much about Watchmen prequels, although I’d prefer it if they didn’t make them and I suspect DC of being a creatively bankrupt shower; I don’t think the prequels will do harm to Watchmen but I do think there’s a genuine risk that they might; I don’t find Alan Moore’s response to the decision particularly edifying; but I think he’s earnt the right to the respect of his peers and to be heard sympathetically.
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Arthur B
at 13:25 on 2012-06-15
Sure, I suppose so - good work DC! But so what?
So then Watchmen as a cultural institution is not purely a product of Alan Moore's unfettered genius or Dave Gibbons' stylish art; it's also a product of the promotion that DC has provided it with and DC's custodianship over the franchise as a whole. DC has a stake in the thing's success, and has more than earned it with said custodianship, so the idea that DC has no place to decide whether or not a prequel series would be a good idea because AUTHOR UBER ALLES seems a stretch. You can quibble as to whether DC is
practically capable
of doing a good job or whether the particular writers they have are up to the task, of course, though the arguments Dan's objecting to in the article aren't about such specifics; they're about general, absolutist claims that the prequels
cannot possibly be good because Alan Moore isn't involved
.
You may well be right about V for Vendetta, and From Hell - it’s probably an indication of my age that I still think of Watchmen as a sacred cow.
I dunno, I can't think of
any
pop cultural work which I'd describe as a sacred cow these days whereas I was much more inclined to do so when I was younger.
I don’t find Alan Moore’s response to the decision particularly edifying; but I think he’s earnt the right to the respect of his peers and to be heard sympathetically.
I think he has the right to be heard but how sympathetic I hear him kind of hinges on how much what he says makes sense to me. If someone's talking whiny, self-serving crap then I'm going to call it that whether it's Alan Moore or Random McWebcomicartist.
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James D
at 14:19 on 2012-06-15
So then Watchmen as a cultural institution is not purely a product of Alan Moore's unfettered genius or Dave Gibbons' stylish art; it's also a product of the promotion that DC has provided it with and DC's custodianship over the franchise as a whole. DC has a stake in the thing's success, and has more than earned it with said custodianship, so the idea that DC has no place to decide whether or not a prequel series would be a good idea because AUTHOR UBER ALLES seems a stretch.
I think this is oversimplifying things. The roles Moore and DC fulfilled in the production of the Watchmen were totally different; as far as I know, DC had little to nothing to do with the creative aspect of the novel, and Moore's objections to the prequels seem to be purely creative in nature. If on the other hand the dispute were on the business side, that Moore didn't think Watchmen prequels would sell and DC did, the shoe would be on the other foot.
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Arthur B
at 14:31 on 2012-06-15Again, since Moore a) wanted to do prequels back in 1985 and b) has said he'd have gladly accepted DC's offer to do the prequels (which was going to involve giving him the rights to
Watchmen
back if he said yes!!!) if they'd offered in 1985, then it seems to me that the dispute is entirely on the business side and the complete collapse of Moore and DC's professional relationship (and more particularly, the fact that Moore would rather keep sulking than engage in any sort of constructive dialogue with DC, even one which would lead to him getting what he'd wanted all along).
Also, FWIW Dave Gibbons is 100% fine with the prequels, so at half the original creative team is cool with the project.
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James D
at 17:37 on 2012-06-15Ah, I didn't know Gibbons was down with them. That does change things a bit. Moore is pretty much handling the whole thing like a big whiny baby. If there were prequels coming out to a book I'd written and there was nothing I could do about it, the first thing I'd say was "let me do them." If he didn't have ridiculous demands, DC would probably jump at the chance to slap Moore's name all over them.
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https://me.yahoo.com/a/bpFlIkMVk4ZqOVtCOXzX2V_0665JvfqFHA--#af083
at 09:39 on 2012-06-18
So then Watchmen as a cultural institution is not purely a product of Alan Moore's unfettered genius or Dave Gibbons' stylish art; it's also a product of the promotion that DC has provided it with and DC's custodianship over the franchise as a whole. DC has a stake in the thing's success, and has more than earned it with said custodianship, so the idea that DC has no place to decide whether or not a prequel series would be a good idea because AUTHOR UBER ALLES seems a stretch
.
Setting aside the perplexing CAPITALISED ALLUSION to the German national anthem (or possibly the Dead Kennedys), this is a fair point, although it seems designed to address a binary understanding of this dispute - I think everyone who has contributed to this thread has expressed a fairly mixed view, despite tending one way or the other. Meanwhile, the fact that DC are going ahead with this, in the face of Alan Moore’s explicit disapproval suggests that their interests are fairly well protected and represented. Your implicit notion that DC have earnt a right to a say in the artistic content of Watchmen (beyond questions of marketing, design and the commercially relevant business of protecting, managing and exploiting lucrative copyrights, I mean) is one that hadn’t really occurred to me, and that I instinctively don’t like, but I ought to go away and think about it properly. Thanks!
You can quibble as to whether DC is practically capable of doing a good job or whether the particular writers they have are up to the task, of course, though the arguments Dan's objecting to in the article aren't about such specifics; they're about general, absolutist claims that the prequels cannot possibly be good because Alan Moore isn't involved.
I’m not sure who you’re arguing with here so I’ll leave it.
I dunno, I can't think of any pop cultural work which I'd describe as a sacred cow these days whereas I was much more inclined to do so when I was younger. I think he has the right to be heard but how sympathetic I hear him kind of hinges on how much what he says makes sense to me. If someone's talking whiny, self-serving crap then I'm going to call it that whether it's Alan Moore or Random McWebcomicartist.
Quite a nice unintended irony here, but perhaps I’m just reeling from the old school ‘... yeah, I used to think that too … but then I grew up...’ dis. Is it possible, do you think, to imagine an
even older, even wiser Arthur
? I can just about manage it: he’s grizzled and twinkly-eyed, smoking a pipe, and, with a wry smile, looking down the years at his younger self’s righteous withholding of sympathy from both the mighty and the meek, his fearless enthusiasm for detecting 'whiny self-serving crap' in strangers, and his habit of slaying sacred cows while denying their existence.
JK! Before this degenerates into us chanting 'no YOU'RE immature!' at each other, I should also say, Arthur, that your precipitous enthusiasm for getting stuck in with the minimal possible delay is one of the things that make Ferretbrain fun for me, a fond reader.
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Arthur B
at 10:00 on 2012-06-18
Setting aside the perplexing CAPITALISED ALLUSION to the German national anthem (or possibly the Dead Kennedys), this is a fair point, although it seems designed to address a binary understanding of this dispute - I think everyone who has contributed to this thread has expressed a fairly mixed view, despite tending one way or the other.
Actually, it's a CAPITALISED ALLUSION to the extraordinarily pervasive idea that authors are an exalted form of being and anyone else's contribution to the success of a creative endeavour is secondary. Putting DC aside, I'd say there's a strong case that Dave Gibbons' contribution to the art, which extended to more than simply drawing stuff Moore described to him, is a part of the final package which can't be ignored, so Gibbons' support for the prequel project ought to be weighed against Moore's disapproval. And yet, so often in discussions about the subject Gibbons isn't even mentioned.
Is it possible, do you think, to imagine an even older, even wiser Arthur?
I can imagine all sorts of things, but winning an argument by hypothesising a version of your opponent who will agree with you is a strategem I hadn't even begun to conceive of. Bravo, I guess. ;)
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https://me.yahoo.com/a/bpFlIkMVk4ZqOVtCOXzX2V_0665JvfqFHA--#af083
at 10:16 on 2012-06-18Ha ha! Such a speedy reply, arguing so fiercely against points no one is currently making, is surely a nice intended irony!
I surrender the field to you Arthur - please continue to slag Alan Moore without any let or hindrance. I will instead exchange gentle, supportive imaginary emails with the imaginary future Arthur, who, you must concede, does at least seem like a jolly nice chap.
Good piece on the Soul Drinkers by the way.
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Arthur B
at 10:20 on 2012-06-18I anticipate being as confused by our future correspondence as I am by our present.
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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/
at 19:50 on 2012-06-18
I will instead exchange gentle, supportive imaginary emails with the imaginary future Arthur, who, you must concede, does at least seem like a jolly nice chap.
Best. Flounce. Ever.
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Fin
at 23:51 on 2012-06-18and now for the moment when it's revealed that you've been speaking with your future self all along.
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Arthur B
at 00:08 on 2012-06-19/decodes lottery numbers from posts in thread.
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Ibmiller
at 18:44 on 2012-07-02So, anyone check any of these out? I'm currently following Silk Specter, Minutemen, and Nite Owl, and liking them. Because his Superman story left me cold and his Wonder Woman story leaves me furious, I'm giving Azzerello's Comedian and Rorschach stories a pass. Plus, I'm not a huge fan of those characters by themselves - seeing a young Rorschach with a Nite Owl is much more interesting to me.
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WIBP (What I’ve Been Playing): A Hat in Time; Hollow Knight
One of the most recent trends in most entertainment and media (for better or for worse) is how everything is usually a remake, sequel, or reboot. Usually this is done as a result of wanting to appeal to people’s inner nostalgia; to a time when their lives were less difficult and money was more valuable than time. That’s not to say originality is dead (because that would be an incredibly ignorant statement to make), but among big-name companies and long-running franchises, we see constant attempts to appeal to one’s inner nostalgia. The game I’ve recently played over this last weekend however, is a bit different in this regard…at least in the entertainment world at large. It’s supposed to invoke nostalgia, yet has no previously existing IP to fall back on, instead relying on people’s nostalgia for a genre that’s been dead for years now. Like I hinted at earlier however, this is a phenomenon that seems to be exclusive to video games, rather than industries such as the TV industry or film industry. I bring this up because the game I played this weekend manages to not only faithfully recreate and innovate the genre of old 3D collect-a-thon platformers, but is also potentially better than those older games (though the older games I will always consider to be more important due to the impact and general important that those games still have).
This game is known as “A Hat in Time” developed by the indie developer known as “Gears for Breakfast”; and I consider it to be one of the greatest success stories to come out of Kickstarter. The game works on so many levels, however I feel as though the presentation and gameplay are the best aspects of the game.
For me, the most important thing in any platformer is that the jumping and movement mechanics need to feel fluid and keep your momentum, or at least give you multiple options for how to initiate a jump and try to stay in the air as well. This is why I enjoy games such as the 3D Mario platformers (Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, etc.) and the latest 2D Rayman platformers (such as Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends). If the jumping and movement mechanics aren’t about constantly keeping momentum and flow, then it needs to be about patience and precise jumps, and being meticulous and careful, while also being reactive much like in the original NES Super Mario Bros or Banjo-Kazooie.
This constant flow and motion while jumping and maintaining momentum is something that “A Hat in Time” does expertly. When you jump in the air, you have the option to then double jump, and then you have the option of doing a dive mid-air to get extra distance of the jump. Out of this dive, you can then press the jump button again to cancel it mid-air and be given more control over where you’ll land. This allows for precise platforming while also maintaining momentum. Furthermore, if you land on the ground after doing a dive, you can press the jump button almost immediately after you touch the ground in order to get a small hop forward that increases your speed for a moment. This is another layer to the platforming that makes the movement and jumping mechanics maintain momentum and make you constantly moving. This is brilliant, as the game rewards you for going the extra mile and timing your button presses by letting you maintain movement and momentum, and by doing so letting you complete objectives more smoothly.
Since “A Hat in Time” is meant to callback to classic 3D platformers such as Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64, the main goal of the game is similar to that of these older games; that being to collect and collect and collect. The main form of progression in these sort of games and in “A Hat in Time” is to usually go into some sort of world and then complete some sort of unique mission. Upon completion of said mission, you will be granted one of the main collectables in the game that you need to get in order to progress (which in this game is known as Time Pieces). However, in my opinion, one of the reasons why the genre began to die out and became boring in the first place was because the missions that were done in order to obtain the main collectables became increasingly less interesting and more boring with each subsequent game. They were usually “Collect X number of collectible item”, “Get to the end of this platforming section”, “Complete a minigame” or “Do a quick fetch quest.” One of the games that I felt suffered heavily from this problem was Jak and Daxter, which while mechanically was a fun game, the missions to obtain the main collectable were just uninteresting and boring. The only games that managed to keep it fresh was the Mario Galaxy games, and even then at times it felt like those games were being lazy.
I say all this because “A Hat in Time” manages to not only avoid this problem completely, but in fact I think that it’s creativity of the missions you complete is one its strongest aspects. There are two reasons for this, so let me go through both of them.
First and foremost, the game is short. At first, this seemed to be a criticism I had for the game, as I managed to obtain one hundred percent completion after only 13 hours and three days or playing. But after doing some thinking I realized that that the short length of the game helped with the creativity. Because there was less game to make, they could spend more time on each and every individual mission and Time Piece all in part of an effort to make the missions memorable and fun. Furthermore, because the game is short, each Time Piece sticks out in my mind. After only one playthrough, I can recite to you nearly every single mission I did in order to obtain one hundred percent completion.
This leads me into my second point about the creativity of the missions; the variety. There are four worlds in the game, and each world feels distinct from one another in terms of themes and overall aesthetic. One moment, you could be taking down the mafia, another you’re exploring a haunted mansion with a restless ghost haunting it and the game becomes something more akin to a horror game. Another moment you can be shooting a murder mystery movie and trying to solve a crime, and in another you can be exploring a city above the clouds. It’s the creativity and variety of each situation that helps to make each and every mission stand out in my mind.
Furthermore, the game has an excellent presentation. While the graphically fidelity isn’t all that high (it IS an indie game after all), I would still say the game is beautiful thanks to a very strong and colorful art style. Every stage’s colors pop vibrantly and each of them are designed with enough flavor and difference between each other to make them all feel distinct. This is something that is once again, helped by the short length of the game. The main protagonist, named Hat Girl, is one of the best protagonists in a 3D platformer. While she is a mostly silent protagonist, she still has a strong personality simply through her facial expression and the small amount of dialogue she has. In fact, most of the characters in the game have memorable designs and hilarious dialogue that adds to the charm and memorability of everything within the game.
“A Hat in Time” is one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time, and I really highly recommend it. Along with it, we’ve been seeing a resurgence in this genre with games such as Yooka-Laylee and Super Mario Odyssey, and I’m happy to see what I once thought was a dead genre have a revival. I also look forward to future games from Gears for Breakfast.
Now then, as for games I’m currently playing through; I went from one throwback indie platformer��to another throwback indie platformer, though of a different ilk then that of “A Hat in Time”. This other game is a Metroidvania 2D platformer known as Hollow Knight. This is a game that my brother had actually played quite a bit of and recommended to me due to his knowledge of my love for games such as Metroid and Dark Souls.
As of right now, I’m enjoying Hollow Knight. It has the difficulty and recovering lost items mechanic from Dark Souls, with the exploration and progression of a Metroid game, and RPG mechanics similar to that of Paper Mario; all three of which are games that I enjoy greatly.
One of the things that stands out to me most about Hollow Knight is how great the presentation is. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the game was completely hand-drawn, and while I haven’t really noticed the music much as it’s mostly ambient, the sound design is fantastic. The various different grunts that NPCs make give off a lot of personality, and even if they didn’t have any dialogue I could probably still tell you what they’d probably be thinking based on their animation and noises that they make. The sound design is also great when exploring as well, as each enemy has distinct sounds they make as they patrol around, letting you know what’s in store for you.
One thing I’m still trying to get used to however is platforming and combat. That’s not to say that the combat and platforming is bad, or that it’s even difficult to get the hang of, but rather after finishing A Hat In Time, wires are getting crossed in brain, as I keep attempting to double jump or do some sort of homing attack. Furthermore, the combat has this thing where every time you attack an enemy, there’s a little bit of pushback from attacking the enemy, and if you want to hit an enemy multiple times, you need to time your swings and move forward a little bit each time. This was something that threw me off initially, but it’s also something that I very quickly adapted to.
Something else that Hollow Knight is doing well, at least based on my first impressions anyways, is the Metroidvania aspects of it. There are multiple paths to explore, usually that have something at the end of them and many of the paths also wind around, all maze-like and eventually lead back into itself. However I need more time with the game before I can definitively say how well it handles this aspect.
I also unfortunately don’t have much to say about the Dark Souls and Paper Mario influences yet, as I haven’t played the game enough yet to make a decision about either of those yet.
Anyways, thanks for reading! I’ll be back next week with another post.
PS: If this post felt a little bit, Video Game Review-ish, that’s because this is the first post of the blog, and I needed something more to talk about than just Hollow Knight, which I didn’t have much to talk about yet. So I talked about the last game I finished, which was A Hat In Time, which I had so much to say that it basically became a review. Future blog posts will be more about my experiences with the game and my general impressions.
Also, a question. I play Street Fighter V a lot. Would anybody be curious about reading my experiences with my weekly Street Fighter V session as well? Let me know!
#video games#a hat in time#hollow knight#thinking too hard#game design#wibp#platforming#super mario#banjo-kazooie#jak and daxter#street fighter
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How do Video Games handle Female Protagonists?
(Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit unprofessional blog post written by an unprofessional blog poster. All purported facts and statement are little more than the subjective, biased opinion of said blog poster. In other words, don’t take anything I say too seriously.
Author's Note: The following concerns FEMINISM and VIDEO GAMES. If you don't wish to discuss FEMINISM and VIDEO GAMES, maybe you need to read this article. Don't worry, I'll post some movie reviews later).
How do Video Games handle Female Protagonists?
So, Horizon: Zero Dawn is going to come out next week and the general gaming public will experience what Ubisoft has been hyping up since E3. Horizon: Zero Dawn will take a bold risk; starring a big budgeted, AAA game with an original IP with a female protagonist.
It's true; there used to be a time when female protagonists were no big deal. But thanks to ballooning production budgets that can outspend even the most expensive Hollywood blockbuster and a divided gaming community, discussion of the topic has gotten heated.
And already, I can hear the endless chorus of thinkpieces of "Why aren't there more women protagonists in video games" being prepared once the game releases, from the usual sites of Polygon, Kotaku, IGN, Giantbomb, Destructoid, etc.
So far, word of mouth is that the game is pretty good. Even sites like Dualshockers are giving it a recommendation. (It gave it a 10 out of 10, hailing it as a masterpiece) while independent Youtubers, such as AngryCentaurGaming are giving it a Must Buy rating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7OP0g3Arzw
But, the question remains: In an industry that seems to be rivaling if not dominating other entertainment mediums such television and movies.
So, let's ask the question: Why aren't there more video games featuring female leads?
(CAVEAT: When I refer to video games, please note I'm mostly referring to games mostly found on PCs and consoles as opposed to iPhones. While I accept that games like Candy Crush or Pokemon GO 'are' video games, they are vastly different types of games with different control schemes, gameplay mechanics and monetary fees than those usually found in traditional games. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule).
Method #1: Pick your gender.
Examples: Any game which allows a character creator (such as Bioware games), or games where the game prompts you to select between a male and a female character (such as Dishonored 2)
This is the usual method when RPGs and other "simulators" want to give you a "personal" experience. They allow you to create your own character, give you a variety of options and let you decide how you want to play.
Overall, I'm fond of this message. It allows the player to explore themselves and potentially other options if they so choose. They don't dictate how you play; they just give you options.
But even this method has its setbacks. For one thing, the extent of how Non-Playable characters react or don't react to your gender is up to the individual game. And even with the most extensive character creator in the world, there's only so many options that can be allowed. Even the impressive Black Desert Online only has so many options. The game can handle so much.
Also, if the characters are voiced, that can add a HUGE production budget to the game. Voiceover work needs to be constantly recorded to cover EVERY aspect of the game and if you're doing the 1 male, 1 female voices, that can almost double the production budget.
But having a character creator also has its drawbacks. There's a certain amount of limitations that having a character avatar has that limits the potential in both the animation and the narrative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6PUReOuHVw
Some games opt to choose between choosing a set male and set female character, as to make things cheaper and manageable. Again, it's a valiant effort, but most of the expenses don't necessarily go away.
Method #2: Have 2 Protagonists in the video game, one male and one (or more) female, and split time between the both of them.
Examples: A game which features one male lead and one female lead and forces perspective switches between the two of them during set times. (Such as Tales from the Borderlands, Dreamfall: Chapters, The Last of Us and Broken Age).
This seems like another solution the medium is adopting. Instead of taking any sort of stance or having to pick between two, the game insists on having both. The game is divided up between a male protagonist and a female protagonist. Sometimes they go along with each other, other times they are separated from one another and switch perspectives as given moments of the game.
You can see this in a lot of "story focused" games such as games made by Telltale or other episodic adventures such as Dreamfall Chapters and Broken Age.
While dividing the game to a 50/50 split seems like a well-intentioned idea "on paper", the matter of fact is, it's almost impossible to measure when both protagonists are given equal screentime as player agency almost always throws this out the window. It's very likely someone gets stuck on a puzzle playing as one protagonist and can't advance until they look up a solution online.
And while more focus is given to the female protagonist compared to other games nowadays, there's no guarantee that the female protagonist's story is as interesting, if not less so, than the male protagonist's. I've been seeing this a lot lately, and while the male protagonist can be a bumbling idiot for which ridiculing him is common among the game, there's a good chance that his story is much better written than the female's.
Between Vella and Shay in Broken Age, Zoe and Kian in Dreamfall Chapters, Fiona and Rhys in Tales from the Borderlands, the strength of the writing shines in the male protagonist's story. Their actions are related and continue to relate to themes and plots found early in the episode. Their arcs are fully fleshed out. Their actions have consequences through ACTIONS, not simply lipservice. The female character might be more progressive and more forward-thinking, but without a substantive plot to carry said character, it's all going to waste.
Again, strength in storytelling should be about 'quality' not, 'quantity'. As much as it would be easy and well-intentioned to take a measure, divide gameplay and story time between two protagonists, if a male protagonist's story is more compelling and emotionally driven than the female one's is, it doesn't matter what gender ratio you have; people will be drawn to the male's regardless of what the developer's did.
Focus should be made on how the emotionally engaging the story is, not how much poster space a character takes up on a box cover.
Method #3: Have a singular Female Protagonist without a male one and focus on her.
Examples: Any game that stars a female protagonist and doesn't have a male protagonist to switch to or embody. (Such as Life is Strange, Metroid, Mirror's Edge or Horizon: Zero Dawn).
This is the most ambitious and most risky of the options. In an industry where Call of Duty can still print money and earn a net profit on an annual basis, starring a female protagonist is often very risky, especially for money conscious investors who would rather have money than say any social statement.
Usually, these games play it safe and don't do much outside the status quo of AAA gaming. They usually just swap out a normally male character and put a female character there, and she does the jumping, the running, the climbing and all sorts of action platforming. As such, the investors usually tie in these games with a franchise that's usually recognizable, such as Tomb Raider or Metroid.
Using an original IP is almost risky. If the general public and gaming community hasn't heard about your game, there's a good chance it won't make the money it needs to. As such, they decide to go small and release indie games or use a crowdfunding service such as Kickstarter, Patreon or Fig.
As such, investors, publishers and developers are hesitant to use this method. Sure, the industry thinks you're a genius when something like Life is Strange or Horizon: Zero Dawn goes gold, but if you manage to flop hard (such as the case of Mirror's Edge: Catalyst) or underperform but make up your money over a longer period of time (Such as the rebooted Tomb Raider franchise), don't be suprise if a sequel takes years to get made.
Method #4: Do a spin-off title which stars a secondary female protagonist and have it as a solo DLC.
Examples: Any game that features a female character that was originally a side character in a franchise and put it out in a cheaper DLC that may or may not require purchase of the original game. (Such as Infamous: First Light or Uncharted: The Lost Legacy).
This is usually a spin-off of a bigger title and costs much less to purchase. It also doesn't require the original game to play. As with the case of Infamous: First Light, the game is a solo title in which you play "Fetch", a female character found in Infamous: Second Son.
While it's cool to play the game, it also means it gets a reduced production budget, will not be quite as large as the original game. But, there's an incentive to playing the original game, as having a save file will unlock 'bonuses' (such as being to play as Delsin).
As of right now, there's not a whole lot of information to go on with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, but based on various articles, it seems like they'll be following in the footsteps of Infamous.
http://archive.is/vMvOM
Final Thoughts
I don't want to discourage any developers or publishers to shy away from making female characters. But, analysis shows that simply putting out a video game with a female lead doesn't necessarily generate sales and it's especially troublesome in an industry where the majority of the games cost 60 USD.
Overall, I think the video game industry needs variety. It needs variety of ideas. It needs variety of protagonists. It needs variety of outlets and pricing models. It needs a variety of perspectives and point of views. Most of all, it just needs variety.
#gamergate#gamergators#gg#ggers#video games#vidya#anita sarkeesian#sjw#sjws#social justice warrior#social justice warriors#female protagonists#protagonists#broken age#tales from the borderlands#dreamfall#dreamfall chapters#dreamfall: the longest journey#bioware#mass effect#dragon age#the witcher#acg#angrycentaurgaming#extra credits#horizon: zero dawn#horizon zero dawn#aloy#ashly burch
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