#the 90s one not whatever that remake or reboot is

[stephantom]

Unpopular opinion but people are just so whiny about ‘the state of media/film today”

[abbinurmel]

I spent the past couple hours tailoring this aimless rant on YT, in response to a person merely saying how much they'd love for a reboot of 'Cow & Chicken' on adult swim, cos they could say whatever they like on there. I posted it here, cos YT doesn't wanna allow me to post anything right now, which is probably for the best.

This is gonna be a dumb rant. I got sucked down a rabbit hole, cos this is a favorite topic of mine to talk about and I'm procrastinating horribly on purpose on a lot of dull paperwork. So strap in before reading my garbage. You're warned now, don't hafta TLDR or whatever, thanks, I already know. …Anyways. For those who care about irrelevant, shitty opinions:…I love Cow & Chicken. A lot. On paper I know exactly why it seems like a great idea to reboot on 'adultswim', purely on the merit they do things more outrageously. I'm certain many would watch this. It's actually kinda weird there hasn't been one yet, when you think about it, given this age of rehashes. It already has the raunchy humor and gross art down, seems like a match made in heaven, right?- It'd be easy too, "Cow & Chicken" wasn't exactly lavishly drawn or had a big cast. Well… Much as I think there could be a slim possibility of it happening, for it to be good, and IF they do good, to be wildly entertaining…I don't think "Cow & Chicken" is going to ever get actually rebooted. And I don't think it benefits from being rebooted, either, which is really the only reason you should try to reboot things ever in the first place. The lore of an IP needs to benefit in being revisited, somehow, and ESPECIALLY, SPECIFICALLY, if brought back for adults. It is very unlikely gonna be executed right, ironically BECAUSE of this show's already semi-adult nature. And the reasons why, is endemic to why a whole lot of current modern shows, and movie/live action series remakes, are suffering too. -And no, it is NOT due to the reasons some of you're likely thinking of. It is NOT cos of any tired old: "things are just too safe and WOKE /PC culture now!" theories. (That sort of affair is highly subjective/means basically nothing or very different things to different people. Pretty impossible to gauge due to how all over the place/ludicrously out of touch with general fans censors and networks can be, no matter what their political leanings or personality is. Which can and do range all over the place. So I won't go into that topic as it's an entirely different problem to what I am talking about. Plus I was there for the 80s and 90s, its pretty silly to say we can not get away with any wild things these days, cos let me assure you, by comparison, there is a LOT technically more we CAN do and say now, in both kid's and adult shows, that would never get by in a million years 30 years ago. You couldn't even just say the word 'kill', 'poop' or 'die' then, most the time. Let that sink in.)

…See to me, if it ironically hadn't ever been restrained by censors/made for kids, C&C might've been NOWHERE as good. Like. At all. It might've actually been one of the worst CN shows aired. Just 100% annoying gross-out show laziness, like a lot of shows of its era. The main reason it didn't flop was cuz 1) duh, Charles Adler, the main voice, and 2) it did its 'thing' the way original 'Ren & Stimpy' did. It didn't beat for beat copy them. Their writing/visuals just simply knew how to cross the line JUST enough, keeping the raunchy humor tucked in JUST as far as they could push it, but knew also on the whole how to always stay utterly light hearted, simple and goofy. That's where its core identity is. It's the dumb blithe enthusiastic Innocence of pretty much the entire cast, and the goofy simplicity of the plots/gags, while they get to say out the side of the mouth much more 'mature' sinister things….It works purely b/c of that contrast; sometimes with innuendo being camoflauged extremely subtly, sometimes NOT subtly at all. -But it would always go ping-ponging gracefully between the two. Never too much Idiotically Innocent, or too Smugly Adult and Crass. It would do this, with actual wit. It didn't JUST have gross visuals or say dirty jokes. It did all this with a theatrical, self-known flair. Shows like C&C and its fellow Golden Age shows basically are very good at doing what franchises like Monty Python were known for, and what Regular Show and Gravity Falls and similar would do later on, just with more visual ugliness.

…Meanwhile, a lot of other 1990's/current shows DO NOT have this memo. They do not have that balance, they lack the awareness of what is the difference between 'sneaking in occasional very dirty jokes with wit' and "throwing every and any kinda joke at a wall and not even bothering to look at what sticks." A LOT of 'gritty comedy parody reboot' things are doing this, and also doing this same idea just with the "dramatic tropes" instead of comedic tropes too. ….Including Ren & Stimpy itself. -Once 'The Ren & Stimpy Show' moved to SpikeTV, they went fully 'adult', and by direct result went 1000% downhill. I don't ascribe that to just poor writing(the original has flat stupid writing too), or ugly looking animation (so is the original). Not even John K.'s…ahem, history. If you fixed his behavior, and abusive attitude; made all his notoriously horrible bad jokes tamer, I still think 'Adult Party' would've tanked, because doing this concept in of itself is a fool's errand. It's not just rebooting nostalgic childhood IPs that's the problem, but specifically attempting to repackage something that was already a mild bit 'tawdry', so now that it is INTENTIONALLY for adults only. Whenever the entertainment industry does that 'gritty effect', be it games or movies or Netflix or comic books, it's 8/10 doomed, because you essentially neutered the core joke or appeal. You've taken away the cool 'taboo' point of saying hidden naughty/clever things, in a story you're not SUPPOSED to. You're able to state and do whatever you want, and so there's not only no leash to hold down any of the weaker ideas, there's almost no "rebellious challenge" to its bite whatsoever, even when those jokes/story ideas succeed. Noone is gonna be shocked or laugh nearly as much when a Red Guy says "KISS MY ASS!" unironically in an adultswim show, as they would if he says "KISS MY ASS!!!!!!….-Her name is GERTRUDE! :D" -and then happily pulls onstage a donkey wearing a big bowtie in on a rope, because this renders it now a pun and technically 'child safe' to flaunt now. (This isn't a real joke from the show btw, I'm only making this up for convenience. But you get the idea. It's the precise sort of silly thing you know he'll do. :P )

Neither the audience nor execs are 'prey' anymore for the writers to be creatively poking the boundaries with, when you remove that expectation. It's different if your IP started with an already adult geared story to begin with, but, when it's a full on polar opposite shift in tone and/or age demographics like that, it's almost always pulled off in a confused messy way, because even the original work's creators themselves, (IF they're even kept around, or are familiar with the source material if they are new), are trapped now in completely unfamiliar territory. Without a deeply wild reinventing of the show's lore or main tenets(a thing which nobody has ever been upset by on the internet!), it usually doesn't have anything else to stand on, especially with a purely episodic comedy show, like Cow and Chicken is. Once you take out this 'vulnerability' in our dynamic, between child/censor guardians, and writers, this main core joke of not knowing what the writers are and are NOT actually going to get away with is gone, and so much of the stakes now is irreversibly lost. Sometimes being hidden from the details is what makes a gag all the more funnier, or a scary scene all the scarier, or a cringe scene all the cringier. If we take away this, things lack a lot more of the colorful shock & ridiculousness. The main DNA in these classic "deranged shows", like Ed, Edd n Eddy, Ren&Stimpy, Rocko and C&C, that a lot of nostalgic fans, and current show-runners often alike forget; is the simple fact that such shows had to weigh the balance of: 'being a sincere kid show' and 'trying to get away with something they're not supposed to'. …With very deep emphasis on the words: "GET AWAY WITH". To me, a show is not getting "away" with something good, be it a message, a joke, a deeper sense of drama, if you constantly always spell it out for us, and we know you lose nothing and have to take no creative risk by displaying it for the audience. You're not really earning a prize, if someone just right at the start, hands you a medal. In other words….Every good memorable/subversive classic cartoon show, is not beloved just because they got to have crazy visuals, or say and do unhinged jokes. …You needed to be MEMORABLY STRANGER for having those qualities, in the first place. If you do something unhinged and bizarre, but coming in I expect to see it, is it really an unhinged show?

See, there's a reason why most of the frequent reboots of Scooby Doo like 'Velma' atrociously fail. And it's not because they changed someone that was formerly white, or made someone like Shaggy have a different name, or backstory. Or even because they overhauled an old wholesome character into a rude, toxically mean, judgemental unpleasant character. Yes this does affect some tastes, but on the whole, that wasn't the core problem for most watchers. LOADS of shows have a morally awful, pompous, or an incompetent, chaotic mess for a central protagonist, or reinvent them in some way if they come from an old property. Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast did more or less exactly what "Velma" does, where they took an old IP and completely transformed their roles/upgraded their style of humor for a more adult audience. Rick & Morty has a toxic main protagonist. South Park has four of them. Family Guy and American Dad has them, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, the list goes on. Even kid shows do this, and sometimes get away with it well too: Dan Versus did it well so did Ren and Stimpy, again, back when it understood how it worked. Having a mean protag or changed fundamentals, isn't why so many reboots don't work. …What happens with bad modern remakes of Scooby Doo, (and not just in shows like Velma), is often that they forget how to make things have that beautiful sense of contrast, that Cow and Chicken does, in its writing. They do not know how to both show this is a show rooted in something sincere, WHILE ALSO saying outrageously dirty/surreal/mean/pompous or dark things inside that vessel. The appreciation for the context of its background, is what makes shows like 'Mystery Inc.' and 'Zombie Island' work, while Velma and other SBs, do not. If we took Cow & Chicken, stripped it of it's irony, what else do we have except yet another dime a dozen weaker show, constantly going 'haha, me say the rude words!/do the gross bad thing again!' adult oriented show, with no fangs? Another exhausting reboot, which takes yet another unoriginal idea, robs its reputation, and wastes our time? …There's a way to do this kind of thing right. I just do not think most people, not even some of the most talented in the business, have the freedom or ability to do so. Not even Samurai Jack, a legend of an animated program, escaped this 'update it for adults!' treatment unscathed. If you're gonna update something for adults, you really have to think about WHY it was good in the first place. Not take just what you had, and stamp lots of expletetives or flashes of red to indicate actual blood on there. You need either to actually SAY something, completely useful and different, or, just stick to your guns with the old formula, and do it so well it exceeds the hype for the original. Which is also near being impossible to do. Hence, it begs the question, why do it at all?

…Sorry for this TEDTalk, I just love being an absurd mess at 2AM when I have better more boring adult things to do.

[juniperhillpatient]

Alright, so I'm done with 'That 90's Show' season 1. Here are a few takeaways from someone who LOVED the original show:

Bad parts:

The theme song is really annoying & it just bugs me as someone who has spent a somewhat insane amount of time watching & re-watching the original & singing along. This probably won't bother most people but it's irritating to me

Ozzie as a character is borderline offensive to me. I'm not sure that I'd go so far as to say his characterization is racist or homophobic EXACTLY but...there's something uncomfortable about it. He's literally just a sassy quip machine awkward ham-fisted joke deliverer & he makes me cringe. If there's a second season I really hope they delve into him just a little more since he is part of the main group.

It's annoying & weird that Laurie & Hyde are both absent without reference. I can understand not wanting to replace actors who can't be there, but these were 2 important characters to the group & they could've very easily given us a throwaway comment about where they were. It's just....bad writing, & incredibly noticeable & uncomfortable.

Good parts:

Let's just get this one out there first - every single OG cameo had me cheering. Yes, I claim to hate reboots & remakes & I scream about letting things end & I stand by that but if they're going to do it, I want it done well damn it & this show did in my opinion. I just absolutely loved every single appearance from the original cast members.

I love Jackie & Michale as the couple in a perpetual cycle of getting divorced & back together. I loved Fez as a hair salon owner living his best life. Donn & Eric were iconic. I cheered for Leo's hilarious & fun cameos & same with Fenton's. They did justice to my faves who appeared.

The new characters are interesting & fun for the most part. I like that they reference the original characters without being stand-ins. These characters have their own stuff going on & their conflicts are funny & entertaining. It took a while to get me truly invested but I was always entertained. This show has the same funny charm & humor as the original. The chemistry between the main cast & the humor works really well.

KITTY & RED!!!!!!!! This one I'm not even sure if it needs to be explained but god...I just fucking love Kitty & Red Forman so much & seeing them with a house full of teens being their awesome selves filled me with joy. I just fucking love them.

Not a good part or a bad part but something I'm speculating about:

I'm fine with the little last minute Jay Nate Leia Nicky triangle / square whatever & the canon romance drama. It feels similar to early seasons 'That 70's Show' conflicts & I'm certainly entertained. And I like Jay. He's fun & cute & he's totally SUCH a Kelso. But.....

I SWEAR I almost thought there was going to be something canon between Leia & Gwen SEVERAL times. I mean, sure, me shipping the two girls? Yeah, that's typical but it almost felt like there might be something canon there. Their entire dynamic is SO reminiscent of Eric & Donna. The dork who lives next door to the cool girl? The moments on the hood of the Vista Cruiser? Sneaking through windows? I'm not delusional am I like PLEASE tell me y'all saw it too? Also, there's a textual (not even subtextual!) love triangle between Gwen, Jay, & Leia! Leia literally promises them both her time & does the whole sitcom double-booking her afternoon thing. She talks about loving them both! What??? Like....I don't know if I'm crazy but it REALLY feels like the show might just be going somewhere with this if it gets renewed.

Alright, that's all I have for this post! Those are my main reactions to this show.

[elfwreck]

Media producers/distributors are hitting the same issue that fanfic fans run into: Getting into new things is harder than reading (watching, listening to) new content for existing things that you like.

If they reboot a 90s era cartoon, it has an existing fanbase. They don't have to carefully introduce the characters - they need something for new viewers, but they can count on people to explain the basics to their friends and families.

They don't have to decide the character relationships or personality traits, either. They have easy choices: (1) stick with what the original did, or (2) shake things up. (Sometimes that goes... very badly. Lookin' at you, Velma.) But they don't have to create a whole world and its characters; someone else already did that. They don't have to decide who's funny when they're depressed or who gets angry at slow clerks at the bank or who spends all their after-school time on the phone. It's SO much easier to write new episode - even with a whole new basic twist behind everything ("they're all grown up now" or "we're putting them on a spaceship" or "they're superheros" or whatever) than to have to do all that worldbuilding, character design, and so on...

...for a series that might flop in the first half a dozen episodes.

Because Hollywood etc are absolutely clueless about what people actually want to see.

(See also: Book publishers who turned down mega-bestsellers multiple times before they found their way to one that worked.)

For years - for nearly a century - Hollywood and, later, tv producers, were able to decide what to make, and everyone would watch it, because that's all their was. In the 60s, there were 3 network tv channels and maybe a handful of local ones, if you lived in a big city. At 7pm after dinner, you had your choice of 3-5 tv shows to watch. Or you could go out to watch one of the 3-5 movies currently in the cinemas. Or you could read one of the maybe two local papers.

If you were into science fiction, you could read one of the maybe two hundred science fiction novels published that year.

They didn't have to figure out what the public liked, what their target market liked. They got to pitch shows to a very broad group like "kids 11-16" or "people 18-40" (...like that's a group) (that was a group, and the name of that group was "boomers") and they could count on the majority of people in there target group watching the show, seeing that movie.

They can't anymore. At all. But the production companies haven't caught up with the tech changes; they don't know how to figure out what kind of new show will appeal to enough people to justify the expense of making it.

But they know damn well that any remake will get a huge rush of people who liked the original.

So remakes and sequels have stopped being "I think there's more to this story" and have become "this has a near-guaranteed 15 million viewers to begin with."

(This is not helped by the fact that production companies really really don't like to mention the people actually MAKING the stuff... they don't want to say "a new series by the author of Foster's" because they don't want you, the viewer, to think about the author instead of the network channel that owns the rights to his current project.)

fucking constant reboot remake reboot remake reboot remake reboot remake!!!!!!!!!! the tv has only been around for like a century you literally cannot be out of ideas already

[gothicprep]

did they ever change the simpson's cars? they've gone from extremely common decade-ish old beaters to so ancient they'd stand out on the road almost as much as an Edsel. the modern equivalent would be like ~2000s oblong cars. like a dodge intrepid and a ford escort wagon.

I'll never stop being fascinated by the anachronism of Late Simpsons. so many iconic/archetypical elements of the characters that are fixed in a certain time and place, and they try to change them but can't really change them too much, so you end up with a weird temporal mutant. the simpsons began in 1989, roughly concurrent with the fall of the berlin wall and the 'end of history', so it seems oddly appropriate it'd become symbolic of this deathless atemporal eternal past-present, changing but not changing, decaying but deathless, a zombie.

the simpsons are supposed to be very working class, not terribly well off, but people now pay a small fortune to buy a house of comparable size and quality, and not in or near a major city. and they often need help from affluent relatives getting there in the first place.

a variety show hosted by a clown, bart's banana board, homer's unionized industry job, the autocrat sole-owner industrialist, the stay-at-home housewife, the show was in some ways already anachronistic from the jump, the world it depicted already slipping away. the characters’ core traits, those things that can be exaggerated and smoothed down and, well "Flanderized", are still inextricable from their context. the simpsons were a caricature, but a relatable one, to a family in 1990.

but do any of the characters, their core malleable but inalienable traits, their whole dynamic, make any sense as a family of millennials raising zoomer kids? does Homer make sense as a guy born in 1986 who grew up with PlayStation, Nickolodeon, and AngelFire webpages? This isn't a criticism of the show. “New Simpsons Bad” is an observation so far beyond banal. but the fact that it persists like this just pricks at my brain. nothing about it makes any sense. I don't even know who's watching it. It's a thing out of time lurching on under pure inertia.

i remember occasionally reading those old newspaper comic strips as a kid, and though I couldn't describe it, I'd pick up on their crude form of this same sense. beetle bailey and the family circus made about as much sense in 1998 as the simpsons does today. although not as weird, because these were just artifacts for older people. they didn't really change that much or try to. the simpsons is constantly on a quixotic quest to make itself contemporary. if in simpsons-world, the 90s simply never ended, it'd be less jarring.

I wish I could put a name or more precise description to this concept/feeling, the thing that is always changing but never changes, the always present future-past, this breakdown of historical progression, context and continuity, that I think so dominates contemporary media. either in the awful megalithic form of marvel movies (cartoon characters from our's and our parent's childhoods recast into every variation of 80s-90s blockbuster formulae), constant remakes and reboots, live-action disney cartoons, and other acts of cultural necromancy.

the simpsons has done multiple episodes imagining their futures, adult bart and lisa, elderly homer and marge, and yet we've arrived at those futures and bart is still 10 and lisa is still 8. comic book characters have this same problem, but comic books are more niche (we'll see what the movies do), and the cartoons reboot themselves every generation... but the comics maintain a nominal continuity. or at least, attempt to, and it's bizarre. there's an old joke about superhero comics, that the only character that stays dead is uncle ben. nobody dies, nobody gets old, nothing changes, batman gets meaner, or nicer, gets a new batmobile, a touch screen batphone, whatever, but he never stops being batman.

I think it speaks to some problem with letting go. being so overawed by the present/near-past as to not be able to imagine any break with it. we can't let things die, or let them grow and evolve so much they become unrecognizable (and thus dead). they become stunted mutants. on some level, for whatever set of reasons, I think we've come to accept the belief that we can't ever really do better than this. that to toss away these rotten and decrepit things is to lose something irreplaceable, not make room for something greater.

anyway, I let this go on long enough as it is. didn't mean to post a bunch, it's just the thought train leaving the station without breaks. ah well. anyway share your thoughts, or post what cars you think modern simpsons should drive.

[transfemstarscream]

i actually meant everyone calling the WHOLE of bw ugly, as if a cgi cartoon made for weekly syndication in the mid 90s should have perfect animation like it's the ff7 remake or whatever

oh, i HATE that sentiment even more. "hurrdurr beast wars ugly" beast wars SAVED this franchise. this is 1996, of course the CGI isn't going to be million-dollar film budget animation; beast wars was already one of the most expensive shows to produce at the time alongside reboot. we're talking 1996 computers holding character models with more polygons than the backgrounds and baked-in JPEG textures.

and the show doesn't look bad. it doesn't. the colors are rich, the characters are expressive, and the "janky" animation is engaging to watch. the animators are working within their limitations to deliver excellent character animation. no matter how "dated" you say the show looks, the scenes are visually fascinating.

nothing onscreen is wasted! there's no cheap tricks like recent transformer CGI shows pre-earthspark to hide poor animation! everything onscreen matters to tell the story it wants. beast wars is full of stories, and the visuals deliver them. the characters have functional and memorable designs. the settings, although limited, are creative.

beast wars' animation limitations meant writing was prioritized. even if beast wars was ugly, the writing saves it. so many stories told in beast wars could not be told by any other transformers media, and this is a good thing. beast wars is a fantastic show outside of its transformers label. it doesn't need to rely on only its visuals to tell such stories (unlike some other transformers media).

like i'm sorry, but in a franchise where cheap roosterteeth web series such as the prime wars & WFC trilogies moving at 6 frames per second, the actually aired-on-TV energon show, and the many IDW stories that rely on pretty art to carry subpar stories exist—beast wars is phenomenal.

[janiedean]

Wait they fucked the SPN ending for Walker? How? And now the show is more conservative than the original, which was headlined by known conservative dumbass Chuck Norris? Ugh

tldr (I can attest in the sense that I did watch the very last episode and with everything I've seen until now...... it holds up)

basically from what it seems like they pushed so that the finale ep was sam focused so it would make ppl idk stick with jared and they didn't give dean time to shine or a basic excuse of a storyline at all before the dumbest death he could have had and jensen's obviously pissed

like... can imagine why he would be

also like nothing happened in that ep is2g I watched it live while it was happening and it was all..... filler? like I swear even the fillerest filler episode for any show I've watched had more stuff happening in it than the spn series finale which... was... bad

and like I remember walker promos airing every ten seconds when the ep was airing sssoooo

anyway apparently the cw got heavy on walker promoting and shit and got both jensen & misha shafted which like... I mean misha was def in vancouver for the finale but he wasn't in the ep and jensen spends 15 years playing dean for that?

and like now idk if the background rumors re jared not opposing any of that and basically screwing them over because it was convenient for his new show are true or not but if he is like... ofc jensen is pissed off

anyway like as stated I'm catching up on the whole thing now and with that in mind the finale looked like 'okay we wanted to do a thing but you execs told us that we couldn't and we had to do this this and that so we're going to do it in a way that sucks ass on purpose but that delivers what you wanted' even moreso than it did in the beginning like... it's not bad in the way any other bad finale I watched is bc AT LEAST SOMETHING HAPPENED IN THE OTHERS LITERALLY NOTHING HAPPENED IN THIS ONE I'm still trying to wrap my head around it tbh

NOW with this in mind I'mma gonna say what I told @emilysnora when the first walker casting stuff came out but basically

the remake has jared being walker blah blah and honestly I'm not even pronouncing myself on the whole 'I got the idea when reading the interview with the ICE policeman who felt conflicted abt putting kids in cages' because it's not my place to but honestly as your resident white european person it's... really... I mean the nicest I can say it's that it's a very privileged way of looking at it and he probably didn't mean it to be a racist thing buuuuuttt thaaat kind of iiiiisssss so there's that and on top of that we have that it's him plus: - hispanic partner in the force - gay brother who's like AN ATTORNEY FOR THE STATE so like... right wing gay dude? okay - his wife was dead before the entire shebang began so hello fridging before the plot even starts - I gave a quick look at the main cast and like there's one biracial dude plus lindsey morgan and they're the only two nonwhite ppl in the entire main cast (idk about the recurring but I'm talking about the MAINS) add to that the... background premise it's really not as progressive as it looks like honestly

now not to be like your resident person who's like BUT THE REP but like if y'all gonna do a show in 2021 about ppl in texas doing that job having to deal with keeping children in cages or latin american immigrants having all white ppl in the main cast except two of them is like.... kind of... not exactly what I'd do in this time and age

now with the premise that as stated I hate chuck norris's politics and I don't thing great of him as a person or anything else so like pls don't take this as chuck norris endorsement or anything

my grandfather used to be obsessed with it same as like apparently 90% of italian grandfathers bc everyone I know had at least one who loved that show so like I've seen my fair share of it back in the day and to my best recollection - basically no one was presuming it was like.... there to make a political statement it was basically chuck norris roundhouse kicking bad dudes coming from whichever background and saving the day the end but - walker himself had native american ancestry bc he was raised after his parents' death by his uncle who was played by floyd westerman who was like a prominent NA actor so like technically you had the lead who had NA ancestry himself plus there was like actual NA actors having a relevant role which like... bros not to be that asshole but last time I saw that in pseudo mainstream tv in the last ten years it was on a netflix show that lasted one season so make of that what you will, also there were at least two other NA supportive chars from the reservation they all came from like one was the sheriff and the other was a spiritual leader or smth but anyway it had three NA chars played by NA actors - walker's police partner/bff was black - he had the ongoing willtheywon'tthey romance with the district attorney or smth but she didn't get fridged actually she lasted the entire show but anyway like... there was no 'ah he had a wife who DIED BEFORE THE SHOW EVEN STARTED' plotline - in the last two seasons they had rookie rangers showing up and like I went to check on wikipedia to be sure but the girl is half filipina which again not a category that gets exactly much rep on american tv - there was a recurring dude who helped them out in cases but was from another police branch who was def latino (don't remember the background sorry but he def was) also like walker was a vietnam vet which imvho would be an improvement over 'I was undercover for eleven months and my wife died :((((' when it comes to give your main like.... a srs background but anyway the point was that new walker in between the mains has like two nonwhite ppl and if I look at the recurrings it looks like there's four ppl who are latin* but three of them are undocumented immigrants so like... bro there's some typecasting going on I see, old walker had NA/black/hispanic/filipino people in the main/supporting cast and none of them was like... typecast in the sense that they were all cops except two of the NA ones so it's not like they went out of their way to typecast and like obv og walker wasn't making the whole thing a political statement but looking at it...... it's still way more progressive than whatever the new one wants to be

yes even if chuck norris was headlining it

and I mean... again when you manage to reboot a show starring chuck norris of all ppl and you manage to make it less progressive than the og while thinking you're being progressive while rebooting it I mean as we say here ask yourself a few questions and give yourself a few answers, also like the entire point of og walker was crack where he kicks ppl and says doing drugs is bad, I honestly don't get why the fuck they had to reboot it instead of like having the guts to say we wanna do an original thing, bc like in order to say hey I wanna do a show about a conflicted cop on the texas border you really can just make it an original thing and own it not go like I'M REBOOTING WALKER TEXAS RANGER ROUNDHOUSE KICK CENTRAL EXTRAORDINAIRE but that's my two cents make of that what you will

[kingofthewilderwest]

See, Voltron? Voltron is a franchise I'm fine with a new iteration happening, whatever the medium. I don't have faith that the new adaptation will be good in our current live action remake landscape, and I'm not screaming on main about a live action remake in theoretical works, but I don't care. I'm chill with it! Go wild, bitches. Keep the cycle of Voltron content going!

Voltron has been through a delightful amount of crappy, mediocre, and fantastic franchise expansions. We've had multiple reboots or sequels or reinterpretations or timelines or spinoffs in 2D Eastern animation, 2D Western animation, 3D animation (1990s 3D animation! oh dear oh my!), and various comic runs.

Once you get to that point in a franchise, every new material is a boon because it adds lore and legacy. It gives you more archives to uncover in all their quirks. It means affectionately looking at yet another way something went well or didn't. It means Voltron keeps living. It's meant to continue being told in different ways.

I can't care about the quality of new Voltron materials. If it's bad? I'll smile affectionately. If it's great? I'll screech in glory.

Heck, the very existence of Voltron is an amalgamated mess, and it's only fair we keep stirring the stew. This is a show that began when a US American studio vaguely requested a mecha show ("the one with the lion" lol), received the wrong show from the Japanese studio, then shrugged, ran with it, combined it with material from two other mecha shows, and campily reworked plot and worldbuilding points to align with American censorship standards. While having, like, three voice actors for 90% of the characters. And then when we branched off that, then branched off that branch, then branched off that first branch with another branch, we kept remixing the ideas of previous iterations together. Ideas made from ideas made from ideas, circling back down to previous ideas and mixing them with new ideas -- it's great.

Like, keep playing with the ideas, motherfuckers. Go wild. This is a world about a human team inhabiting a medieval-style castle riding sentient ancient robot lions that merge into a sword-wielding robot man to fight purple imperialistic space elves. There's a subplot where a magical space witch's cat gets in tangles with a mini mouse!Voltron and its mouse crew wearing little mouse helmets. The Voltron team has been chased by mall cops on a flying cow. It's also a franchise with decapitation, cannibalism, slavery, gladiator fights, the grimness of war, and some of the most heartfelt scenes you could imagine. You cannot mess Voltron up.

ROTFLHHHHH I was literally thinking, "Man, I would've preferred hearing more about the Voltron live action than the HTTYD live action," and here's more news on casting just now

[firelxdykatara]

I'm confused. If the Avatar live action ever comes out, are we supposed to accept it as canon? Is it another universe? If anything about the characters changes (story, sexuality, etc) do we treat it as one character or different versions of it? Idk how to feel about it.

I don’t think it’d be particularly different than any other remake, tbh! It being live action doesn’t change the fact that it’s essentially a reboot of the series--which means that the original is still there, in its entirety, to be enjoyed, particularly if you don’t like whatever the remake does!

Take Sailor Moon, for instance. (And this is, I’d argue, an [rare, to be sure] example of a Live Action remake done extremely well.) In 2004, there was a Live Action series called Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, which is pretty widely regarded as one of the best installments in the entire franchise. This is largely because, while it dealt with the same source material and kept a lot of the spirit and heart of the original, it also did its own thing with the story, and so was easily regarded as an entirely separate universe (and even did some things, like character and relationship development, better than the manga or Classic anime did). For fans of the original manga, that is still there--as is the Classic 90s anime, which was even remastered and redubbed quite recently for modern audiences, just as AtLA and now LoK were re-released on Netflix for a new generation of viewers. (To... the detriment of the fandom as a whole, in my view, but that is neither here nor there.)

However, there was also a reboot of the anime itself, called Sailor Moon Crystal--once again based on the same source material, and even animated in a new style, but this installment in the franchise was not nearly as widely well-received. Most fans seem to have rejected it and stick to their other preferred installments, which are there and easily viewed and enjoyed. SMC didn’t ‘ruin’ anything about the franchise as a whole, because it was just one part, and pretty easily ignored by those who didn’t like what it did with their favorite plots and characters.

The same, I believe, could easily be true of the AtLA Live Action. If it’s good (and, yes, that’s a big if) it will probably be because they did something new and innovative with the story (I’m not saying ‘make zutara canon’, but I’m not not saying it, either), or even many things, which make it a new thing in its entirety and sets it apart from the original. That being the case, like with PGSM, it will likely be regarded as a separate universe, a different telling of the story, and even if it’s well-received, still won’t change anything about the original cartoon, which is there to be seen and enjoyed by anyone who prefers it!

On the other hand, if it’s bad (much less of a stretch to believe, I know--this is why I’m not getting my hopes up; I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than bitterly disappointed), it will likely fade into fandom obscurity and people will remember it as ‘that time Netflix tried to re-imagine the show and we all decided to just watch the cartoon again instead’. Either way, I’d say to treat it just like any other remake--its own thing, and it should stand or fall on its own merits. It doesn’t have to be your ‘new’ canon unless you want it to be, because the original show is right there, completely unchanged! Even if some people in the fandom decide to start mixing and matching what they consider their personal canon, you don’t have to do that.

After all, fandom is what you make of it for yourself. You don’t have to accept anyone else’s fanon, anymore than you have to accept the bits of canon you don’t like. Just take whatever you do like, toss away the rest if you don’t vibe with it, and have a good time!

[lookwhatilost]

did they ever change the simpson's cars? they've gone from extremely common decade-ish old beaters to so ancient they'd stand out on the road almost as much as an Edsel. the modern equivalent would be like ~2000s oblong cars. like a dodge intrepid and a ford escort wagon.

I'll never stop being fascinated by the anachronism of Late Simpsons. so many iconic/archetypical elements of the characters that are fixed in a certain time and place, and they try to change them but can't really change them too much, so you end up with a weird temporal mutant. the simpsons began in 1989, roughly concurrent with the fall of the berlin wall and the 'end of history', so it seems oddly appropriate it'd become symbolic of this deathless atemporal eternal past-present, changing but changing, decaying but deathless, a zombie.

the simpsons are supposed to be very working class, not terribly well off, but people now pay a small fortune to buy a house of comparable size and quality, and not in or near a major city. and they often need help from affluent relatives getting there in the first place.

a variety show hosted by a clown, bart's banana board, homer's unionized industry job, the autocrat sole-owner industrialist, the stay at home housewife, the show was in some ways already anachronistic from jump st, the world it depicted already slipping away. the characters’ core traits, those things that can be exaggerated and smoothed down and, well "Flanderized", are still inextricable from their context. the simpsons were a caricature, but a relatable one, to a family in 1990.

but do any of the characters, their core malleable but inaliable traits, their whole dynamic, make any sense as a family of millennials raising zoomer kids? does Homer make sense as a guy born in 1986 who grew up with PlayStation, Nickolodeon and AngelFire webpages? This isn't a criticism of the show. “New Simpsons Bad” is observation so far beyond banal. but the fact that it persists like this just pricks at my brain. nothing about it makes any sense. I don't even know who's watching it. It's a thing out of time lurching on under pure inertia.

i remember occaisionally reading those old newspaper comic strips as a kid, and though I couldn't describe it, I'd get some crude from of this same sense. beetle bailey and the family circus made about as much sense in 1998 as the simpsons does today. although not as weird, because these where just artifacts for older people. they didn't really change that much or try to. the simpsons is constantly on a quixotic quest to make itself contemporary. if in simpsons-world, the 90s simply never ended, it'd be less jarring.

I wish I could put name or more precise description to this concept/feeling, the thing that is always changing but never changes, the always present future-past, this breakdown of historical progression, context and continuity, that I think so dominates contemporary media. either in the awful megalithic form of marvel movies (cartoon characters from our's and our parent's childhoods recast into every variation of 80s-90s blockbuster formulae), constant remakes and reboots, live action disney cartoons, and other acts of cultural necromancy.

the simpsons has done multiple episodes imagining their futures, adult bart and lisa, elderly homer and marge, and yet we've arrived at those futures and bart is still 10 and lisa is still 8. comic book characters have this same problem, but comic books are more niche (we'll see what the movies do), and the cartoons reboot themselves every generation... but the comics maintain a nominal continuity. or at least, attempt to, and it's bizarre. there's an old joke about superhero comics, that the only character that stays dead is uncle ben. nobody dies, nobody gets old, nothing changes, batman gets meaner, or nicer, gets a new batmobile, a touch screen batphone, whatever, but he never stops being batman.

I think it speaks to some problem with letting go. being so overawed by the present/near-past as to not be able to imagine any break with it. we can't let things die, or let them grow and evolve so much they become unrecognizable (and thus dead). they become stunted mutants. on some level, for whatever set of reasons, I think we've come to accept the belief that we can't ever really do better than this. that to toss away these rotten and decrepit things is to lose something irreplaceable, not make room for something greater.

anyway, I let this go on long enough as it is. didn't mean to post a bunch, it's just the thought train leaving the station without breaks. ah well. anyway share your thoughts, or post what cars you think modern simpsons should drive.

[fishoutofcamelot]

Zombie symbolism in media? Body snatchers? That sounds extremely interesting 👀👀👀

OOOOOOOOOOH ARE YOU READY FOR ME TO RANT? CUZ I’M GONNA RANT BABY. YALL WANNA SEE HOW HARD I CAN HYPERFIXATE???

I’ll leave my ramblings under the cut.

The Bodysnatchers thing is a bit quicker to explain so I’ll start with that. Basically, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was released in 1956, about a small town where the people are slowly but surely replaced and replicated by emotionless hivemind pod aliens. It was a pretty obvious metaphor for the red scare and America’s fear of the ‘growing threat of communism’ invading their society. A communist could look like anyone and be anyone, after all.

Naturally, the bodysnatcher concept got rebooted a few times - Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1978), Body Snatchers (1993), and The Invasion (2007), just off the top of my head. You’re all probably very familiar with the core concept: people are slowly being replaced by foreign duplicates. 

But while the monster has remained roughly the same, the theme has not. In earlier renditions, Bodysnatchers symbolized communism. But in later renditions, the narratives shifted to symbolize freedom of expression and individualism - that is, people’s ability to express and think for themselves being taken away. That’s because freedom of thought/individuality is a much more pressing threat on our minds in the current climate. Most people aren’t scared of communists anymore, but we are scared of having our free will taken away from us. 

The best indicator of the era in which a story is created is its villain. Stories written circa 9/11 have villains that are foreign, because foreign terrorism was a big fear in the early 2000s. In the past, villains were black people, because white people were racist (and still are, but more blatantly so in the past). 

Alright, now for the fun part.

ZOMBIES

Although the concept has existed in Haitian voodooism for ages, the first instance of zombies in western fiction was a book called The Magic Island written by William Seabrook in 1929. Basically ol Seabrook took a trip to Haiti and saw all the slaves acting tired and ‘brutish’ and, having learned about the voodoo ‘zombi’, believed the slaves were zombies, and thus put them in his book.

The first zombie story in film was actually an adaptation of Seabrook’s accounts, called White Zombie (1932). It was about a couple who takes a trip to Haiti, only for the woman to be turned into a zombie and enchanted into being a Haitian’s romantic slave. SUPER racist, if you couldn’t tell, but not only does it reflect the state of entertainment of the era - Dracula and Frankenstein had both been released around the same time - but it also reflects American cultural fears. That is, the fear of white people losing their authoritative control over the world. White fright.

Naturally, the box office success of White Zombie inspired a whole bunch of other remakes and spinoffs in the newly minted zombie genre, most of them taking a similar Haitian voodoo approach. Within a decade, zombies had grown from an obscure bit of Haitian lore to a fully integrated part of American pop culture. Movies, songs, books, cocktails, etc. 

But this was also a time for WWII to roll around and, much like the Bodysnatchers, zombie symbolism evolved to fit the times. Now zombies experienced a shift from white fright and ethnic spirituality to something a bit more secular. Now they were a product of foreign science created to perpetuate warmongering schemes. In King of Zombies (1941), a spy uses zombies to try and force a US Admiral to share his secrets. And Steve Sekely’s Revenge of the Zombies (1943) became the first instance of Nazi zombies. 

Then came the atom bomb, and once more zombie symbolism shifted to fears of radiation and communism. The most on-the-nose example of this is Creature With the Atom Brain (1955).

Then came the Vietnam War, and people started fearing an uncontrollable, unconscionable military. In Night of the Living Dead (1968), zombies were caused by radiation from a space probe, combining both nuclear and space-race motifs, as well as a harsh government that would cause you just as much problems as the zombies. One could argue that the zombies in the Living Dead series represent military soldiers, or more likely the military-industrial complex as a whole, which is presented as mindless in its pursuit of violence.

The Living Dead series also introduced a new mainstay to the genre: guns. Military stuff. Fighting. Battle. And that became a major milestone in the evolution of zombie representation in media. This was only exacerbated by the political climate of the time. In the latter half of the 20th century, there were a lot of wars. Vietnam, Korea, Arab Spring, Bay of Pigs, America’s various invasions and attacks on Middle Eastern nations, etc. Naturally the public were concerned by all this fighting, and the nature of zombie fiction very much evolved to match this.

But the late 1900s weren’t just a place of war. They were also a place of increasing economic disparity and inequal wealth distribution. In the 70s and 80s, the wage gap widened astronomically, while consumerism remained steadily on the rise. And so, zombies symbolized something else: late-stage capitalism. Specifically, capitalist consumption - mindless consumption. For example, in Dawn of the Dead (1978), zombies attack a mall, and with it the hedonistic lifestyles of the people taking refuge there. This iteration props up zombies as the consumers, and it is their mindless consumption that causes the fall of the very system they were overindulging in.

Then there was the AIDS scare, and the zombie threat evolved to match something that we can all vibe with here in the time of COVID: contagion. Now the zombie condition was something you could get infected with and turn into. In a video game called Resident Evil (1996), the main antagonist was a pharmaceutical company called the Umbrella Corporation that’s been experimenting with viruses and bio-warfare. In 28 Days Later (2002), viral apes escape a research lab and infect an unsuspecting public.

Nowadays, zombies are a means of expressing our contemporary fears of apocalypse. It’s no secret that the world has been on the brink for a while now, and everyone is waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop. Post-apocalypse zombie movies act as simultaneous male power fantasy, expression of contemporary cynicism, an expression of war sentiments, and a product of the zombie’s storied symbolic history. People are no longer able to trust the government, and in many ways people have a hard time trusting each other, and this manifests as an every-man-for-himself survivalist narrative. 

So why have zombies endured for so long, despite changing so much? Why are we so fascinated by them? Well, many say that it’s because zombies are a way for us to express our fears of apocalypse. Communism, radiation, contagion - these are all threats to the country’s wellbeing. Some might even say that zombies represent a threat to conversative America/white nationalism, what with the inclusion of voodooism, foreign entities, and late-stage capitalism being viewed as enemies.

Personally, I might partly agree with the conservative America thing, but I don’t think zombies exist to project our fears onto. That’s just how villains and monsters work in general. In fiction, the conflict’s stakes don’t hit home unless the villain is intimidating. The hero has to fight something scary for us to be invested in their struggles. But the definition of what makes something scary is different for every different generation and social group. Maybe that scary thing is foreign invaders, or illness, or losing a loved one, or a government takeover. As such, the stories of that era mold to fit the fears of that era. It’s why we see so many government conspiracy thrillers right now; it’s because we’re all afraid of the government and what it can do to us.

So if projecting societal fears onto the story’s villain is a commonplace practice, then what makes zombies so special? Why have they lasted so long and so prevalently? I would argue it’s because the concept of a zombie, at its core, plays at a long-standing American ideal: freedom.

Why did people migrate to the New World? Religious freedom. Why did we start the Revolutionary War and become our own country? Freedom from England’s authority. Why was the Civil War a thing? The south wanted freedom from the north - and in a remarkable display of irony, they wanted to use that freedom to oppress black people. Why are we so obsessed with capitalism? Economic freedom.

Look back at each symbolic iteration of the zombie. What’s the common thread? In the 20s/30s, it was about white fright. The fear that black people could rise up against them and take away their perceived ‘freedom’ (which was really just tyrannical authority, but whatever). During WWII, it was about foreign threats coming in and taking over our country. During Vietnam, it became about our military spinning out of control and hecking things up for the rest of us. In the 80s/90s, it was about capitalism turning us into mindless consumers. Then it was about plagues and hiveminds and the collapse of society as a whole, destroying everything we thought we knew and throwing our whole lives into disarray. In just about every symbolic iteration, freedom and power have been major elements under threat.

And even deeper than that, what is a zombie? It’s someone who, for whatever reason, is a mindlessly violent creature that cannot think beyond base animal impulses and a desire to consume flesh. You can no longer think for yourself. Everything that made you who you are is gone.

Becoming a zombie is the ultimate violation of someone’s personal freedom. And that terrifies Americans.

Although an interesting - and concerning - phenomenon is this new wave of wish fulfillment zombie-ism. You know, the gun-toting action movie hero who has the personality of soggy toast and a jaw so chiseled it could decapitate the undead. That violent survivalist notion of living off the grid and being a total badass all the while. It speaks to men who, for whatever reason, feel their masculinity and dominance is under threat. So they project their desires to compensate for their lack of masculine control onto zombie fiction, granting them personal freedom from obligations and expectations (and feminism) to live out their solo macho fantasies by engaging in low- to no-consequence combat. And in doing so, completely disregarding the fact that those same zombies were once people who cruelly had their freedom of self ripped away from them. Gaining their own freedom through the persecution of others (zombies). And if that doesn’t sum up the white conservative experience, I don’t know what does.

So yeah. That’s zombies, y’all.

Thanks for the ask!

[vagrantblvrd]

Did the Instacart-ening for groceries and while the shopper was texting me about substitutions I was just.

Wondering what Home Alone would be like if they did a remake/reboot now?

I mean, cell phones alone? Plus Kevin’s family would definitely have NEST or something similar because that house, okay.

Amazon, Instacart, GrubHub, and other similar services would mean Kevin wouldn’t need to go out to get food or essentials and just the internet itself?

Like.

I would honestly love to see someone do Home Alone with today’s world?

Like.

I totally imagine it would be a Gritty Reboot because that’s what all the Cool Kids are doing these days? But all the major story beats/plot points/shenanigans are still in it?

Still have the Wet Bandits trying to rob his house and all the classic shenanigans. That Moment with the Scary Old Guy who turns out not be be so bad himself, and just.

Set to Cool Music a la the 90s when they were trying to appeal to the “Youths” and botched it.

Stuff like that.

And it would - naturally - be all dark and washed out the way Gritty Reboots are or just use that - filter? Color-thingy that movies use to let you know what genre movie you’re watching in case you were confused going in.

ALSO THOUGH.

FAHC AU Hacker!Gavin who uses things like Instacart and so on and meets Shopper Jeremy or Matt or whoever - no, wait.

Totally Shopper Matt who uses that job to fund his Cool Sekrit Hacker life because he’s new-ish to Los Santos and still trying to make a name for himself?

Meanwhile Gavin keeps coming up against this newcomer Axial who thwarts/nearly thwarts Gavin’s Hacking-ening about town and then, like.

The two of them fail-flirting when Matt delivers Gavin’s groceries or food and being all *____* at one another and trying to keep it low-key so as not to be found out but they’re both idiots so neither of them realize.

AND THEN.

One night Matt brings Gavin’s stuff and Jeremy’s been giving him pep talks and such about just asking Gavin out?

But of course that’s when the big guys with gun show up and and Gavin and Matt have to make a Daring Escape to not die horribly?

Typical action-y movie shenanigans in running from baddies and when they reach a safehouse one of them knows about try to apologize for dragging the the other into this mess?

Only like, Gavin thinks it’s his fault and Matt thinks it’s his, so you get the :O! reaction of them realizing they’re in the same line of work?

(And also the realization that the little dickless bastard - Gavin’s words whilst cursing Matt/Axial out as he’s engaged in Hacker Warfare, which makes Matt snort because what even??? - is goofy, adorably endearing Matt of Instacart/whatever that Gavin’s been crushing on since they first met, so yes.)

Turns out they’re both right!

Someone hiring both of them to take on a job from opposite sides because, idk, working for a third party and wanted things to go to hell, and thinks since they’ve met/are sekritly working together.

(Because Gavin and food orders and Matt delivering them - they’re working together and Know Too Much or whatever and could expose them to the people they’re trying to fuck over, and it’s just best to kill both of the little bastards and figure shit out later?)

Anyway, anyway.

Ridiculous shenanigans and suchlike and Gavin being like, “I know someone who can help” and Matt being like “Awesome,” because for some reason Jeremy’s not answering his phone, and long story short they go to Ryan, right?

Because that time he kind of sort of tried to kill Gavin and now he owes him one - “I’ll tell you about it later, Matt,” - and oh, hey, isn’t that the guy Jeremy’s got a Tragic Backstory with?

Because why not toss the Battle Buddies into this and another long story short they all end up working for the Fakes afterwards, because of course they do.

[b-e-h-o-l-d-e-r]

Ghost in the Shell (2017) review

I came into this movie with an open mind. Despite every fibre of my fanboy teenage ghost rejecting this alien reincarnation. I even set aside the whitewashing criticisms to just see if the movie can achieve something significant in spite of it.

Within roughly 5 minutes, this movie assured me I was going to be treated like a lobotomised baby. I shit you not, within seconds of a beautifully rendered manufacture sequence we watch two introduced characters in a room blatantly tell us what "ghost in the shell" means in the most uninspired way imaginable.

I wish I could tell you that this was just me getting off on the wrong foot but throughout, the movie is so uncertain in how to portray the themes, symbolisms and spiritual/ religious references that make up the brain in GitS' cyberpunk action body. The script just glitches between lame exposition by talking heads and still reflection in its precise composition but the two hardly work together.

It's like the film can't find its centre and as a result is neither a compelling action sci-fi or a meditative exploration of its philosophies. If this were Aaronofsky/ Gilliam or Bay/ Snyder perhaps (for better or worse) at least this movie would have a distinct direction to go in but instead it sits in the middle and suffers at both.

Hell, I'm sure many fans would be happy if this just took the Dredd approach. If they just accepted that the fans know the backstory and the non fans don't need it and made this simply about the Section 9 anti cyber crimes team doing their job, kicking ass n taking names, it would at least have a better chance of success amongst its primary demographic.

Instead Hollywood thinks big and wants to initiate a new franchise, origin story and all, n crams so much bullshit to try and get new audiences into it that Section 9 itself gets pushed way back in the corner. Audiences spend more time getting to know the Majors mum/s than they do with any her team.

They ditch the cerebral plot of the '95 anime whereby Major Motoko Kusanagi working within Section 9 are tracking a hacker who turns out not only to be an AI secretly created by the government to assassinate political targets but has become sentient, claims asylum and ends up merging consciousness with Major Kusanagi by the end.

Here we get Major Motoko Kusanagi of Section 9, pissed that many innocent people were murdered in experiments to create her and super shitty that her entire identity was a lie and she's actually a bratty anti establishment punk.

After all is said and done, what we get is Robocop-Lite (and thats the reboot mind you). All the nuance, intrigue and head scratching ideology that we got in the shorter length '95 anime is reduced here to identity theft and yet another unremarkable corporate business villain to cover it up. We've seen this shit SO often. I'm beginning to think Hollywood just doesn't know how to do it any other way. They weren't all bad mind you, Robocop, Total Recall, The Matrix, these are all great films but GitS in its initial reception really broke the mould and here to see it put back in the cage of "been here, done that" is so incredibly disappointing.

As far as anime/manga Hollywood adaptations are concerned, the bar is INCREDIBLY low. I'd argue the only good one amongst them is Edge of Tomorrow/ Live Die Repeat. Aside from that, every otaku since the 90's is used to being made fun of in the result of America trying to morph them into something that works amongst their style of cinema. Japan has made some great adaptations partly because they don't feel the need to repackage the story.

This GitS remake tries desperately to be on the fans side by copying much of the '95 movies look (with varying degrees of success, some scenes are very accurate in their reproduction but the hair in this film is more reminiscent of X-men (2000) and seems cosplay-ish at times).

There are few scenes lifted from the original but most get twisted to accommodate the new storyline, at which point I ask why bother? Half measures don't tend to turn many heads and whilst paying homage by really making the effort to be exact duplications in some ways is applaudable, you're giving yourself less room to do your version of it. At least then, whether the film turns out to be shit or not, I'll respect that you tried to do your own thing.

ok, casting. this argument has already been done to death and I've just about run outta energy already on the whole Scarlett Johanson thing but a few things that never seem to come up: first of all, acting wise, I gotta say it's all much of a fucking muchness isn't it? Kusanagi does not outwardly express much so its mostly a headgame for an actress with the chance to throw in some subtleties in the voice acting.

I don't really like Scarlet Johansson's performances but that its preposterous for anyone to come to the conclusion that her resume would land her this gig is a bit of a stretch. Do people realise how rare it is to find an A-list celebrity that has an extensive list of both highly demanding physical action blockbusters and subtle minimalist detail performances? Of course they are going to cast her. Before anyone throws ME personally into somehow being against ethnic minorities in blockbuster films (which would be absurd for anyone who knows me) '95 GitS director Mamoru Oshii also gave his stamp of approval.

They really tried with the marketing to dodge the bullet by just not bringing it up but it's really not dealt with well in the film and leads to some pretty fucking awkward moments for a racial debate charged audience to watch.

I would have preferred the role to go to a Japanese actress but remember, this is Hollywood and if a studio is gonna push bringing THIS film out, you bet your bottom dollar that they're going with someone that is a household name in America.

The only internationally known Japanese name out there right now is Rinko Kikuchi (who to date has 2 American films out there, both not big successes). I love most of her films and there ARE a few other Japanese actresses I would love to see in the role but Hollywood studios are not gonna bank on the success of Japanese films. Hell, the fact that they put Takeshi Kitano in bit part in this movie is as far as they are willing go to get in on that market. Few seem to point at his casting as some kind of justification and I laugh quite hard. Seriously, you're gonna give this guy (who's acted AND directed in over 20 brilliant films) a few minutes of screen time and applaud that as some kind of cultural milestone?

Which brings me to the big casting shame that NO ONE is fucking talking about because they're so caught up with the Johansson shit. Aside from Kusanagi, there are 6 Japanese members of the Section 9 taskforce. How many are Japanese? Kitano, yes. Who else? Saito. Did you remember him? He's the guy that snipes the helicopter at the very end of the film. You see his face for like 10 seconds. Pretty big step in casting mulitculturally, right? Don't get me wrong, the cast IS incredibly multicultural. We got actors from all over the world pretending to be Japanese:

A Danish guy as Batou A Chinese guy as Togusa An Australian as Ishikawa A Zimbabwean as Borma

Why keep the names?! Just call them whatever, it doesn't matter. You don't give them anything important to do anyway. Have a mulit-ethnic team but when they're all speaking clearly in their national accents and supposed to be portraying Japanese characters, THAT'S what should really piss people off because THESE roles could have gone out to Japanese people and it would not have even been a risk for the studio.

Ultimately, the one real positive thing I have to say is a great job for the WETA production team on some fantastic animatronics and moulds...that's pretty much it. Shame it couldn't be in a better film.

- dug out from the depths of https://letterboxd.com/Do_oM/

[lovemesomesurveys]

1. When you have a container of Neapolitan ice cream, what flavor do you leave for last? Chocolate. 

2. Would you rather be caught in a thunderstorm without an umbrella or a snowstorm without boots? Snowstorm without boots. As someone in a wheelchair, boots wouldn’t make a difference for me.

3. Let’s say you have access to a time machine, but it can only go either backward or forward. One or the other. Which do you choose and where do you go? Backwards. I would probably go just a few years back so I could change some things that are affecting me now.

4. If you could choose to have any superpower ever, what would you pick? Time travel would be pretty dope.

5. Tomorrow morning, you wake up in the body of a celebrity, like in a ’90s body-swap movie. Who is it? How do they react to your life? What do you do when you’re “them”? Would you choose to switch back? Hmm. Maybe Oprah. She’s a billionaire and lives a pretty low key life. Ha, not sure how she’d react to waking up as a 31 year old paraplegic who is dealing with physical and mental health issues and spends most of their time in bed, not doing a whole lot, and is certainly not rich. Maybe she’d be able to catch up on rest if needed? ha. As for me, I’d like to just go to a nice private getaway somewhere. Buy a house for real me and my family to have when we switch back and furnish it. If we weren’t in a pandemic, I’d love to travel. I’m sure she has a private jet. I’d have to remember I’m Oprah, though, so I couldn’t just go out and about freely without being bombarded. I’d figure out something. Anyway, I definitely would switch back, but it would be fun for a little bit. I could feel what it’s like to be successful and a functioning adult with a very comfortable income.

6. Any allergies? Just seasonal ones. 

7. What would you be more embarrassed to buy: sex toys or adult diapers? Sex toys.

8. Did you get enough sleep last night? I never do.

9. You’re the sole witness to a Mafia murder. Witness protection has to set you up with a whole new life in a totally new country. You have to leave everything behind, but you can pick where you move to. Where do you go? Uhhh. Wow, I have no idea. That would be horrible.

10. If you could star in a biopic about any famous person ever, who would it be? I don’t want to be in a movie or TV show.

11. What’s the biggest animal you’ve ever killed? I’ve never killed any animal.

12. Would you rather have millions of dollars but always feel nauseous when you go outside, or be dirt poor forever but never get sick again in your entire life? Oh man. Not be to sick ever again sounds amazing, but... that’s tough.  Can I take Dramamine for the nausea? ha. 

13. A wizard offers you immortality in exchange for your two front teeth. Do you take it? No.

14. Could you win the Hunger Games? Absolutely not.

15. What was your favorite Halloween costume as a kid? How about as a teen/adult? Hm. I was a witch or a vampire a lot as a kid. As an adult I was a vampire a few times, but a “cool” one cause I had a leather jacket. haha.

16. Do you bite your nails? I pick at and clip my nails. Constantly.

17. What was the first movie you remember seeing in the theater? The first one I remember is The Rugrats Movie, but I know that’s not the first one I ever saw.

18. Do you prefer music with male or female vocalists? I enjoy a variety of music from both.

19. You and the love of your life are having a baby, and you get to choose the name! There’s only one catch: your partner INSISTS that it be the name of a place, real or fictional. What do you name your baby? Sydney. 

20. If you could reboot or remake any movie, what would it be and who would you cast? I don’t know, man.

21. If you could automatically know how to speak any language or play any instrument, which would you choose? I’d love to be able to play the piano. I took lessons when I was younger, but was just alright. I think I had potential had I taken it more seriously and practiced more. But yeah, I’d love to be a fabulous pianist. 

22. For you, would getting amnesia be a good thing? Um, no.

23. If you curse loudly and then realize that there are children nearby, what is your reaction? I don’t curse very often as it is and I’m pretty good about who’s around when I do, but I’d just be like, “whoops, sorry.”

24. Of what animal are you most afraid? I have this irrational fear of killer whales. I never encounter them, thankfully, but the fear is still real. I can’t even look at a photo of one. However, I don’t really have like an active fear of animals, if that makes sense. I just avoid any photos or videos or anything of killer whales. And like, there are many animals that could rip me apart and that’s terrifying, but it’s not as present or active or whatever as my fear of bugs, which I do encounter and are much more likely to.

25. Pizza or oral sex? Odd combo, but I’ll take the pizza.

26. Without looking them up, can you explain the rules of football? How about Quidditch? Nope.

27. You’re in the car, switching channels on the radio when you hear a song that makes you go “OH SHIT, THAT’S MY JAM!” What song is it? It could be a lot of songs, from something more recent to something from back when I was growing up. 

28. Have you ever paid to see a Step Up movie? No.

29. If you were being executed tonight, what would you choose for your last meal? I really don’t think I’d have an appetite. 

30. Have you ever bought an item of clothing because it reminded you of something a fictional character would wear? No.

31. If you were invisible for a day, what would you do? Would I be immune to the virus if I were invisible? If so, then I’d travel.

32. Have you ever been punched in the face? No.

33. How do you take your ramen noodles? I like to add shredded cheese to mine. It’s so good.

34. Do you ever rehearse or plan conversations before you actually have them? Yeppp.

35. How much black do you wear on a regular basis? That’s a lot of my wardrobe.

36. Do you have any tattoos? Do you want any? No. I’ve kinda wanted one for years, but I really don’t see myself ever getting one.

37. If someone offered you a free pet snake, would you take it? NOOO.

38. Do you know how to pronounce the word “pinochle”? I don’t know if I’m saying it right, I’m not familiar with the word.

39. Can you think of anything more boring than bird watching? Watching paint dry.

40. Are you better with numbers or words? Words, definitely. 

41. At the movies, do you stay for the credits? Only for certain movies that have end credit scenes, like the Marvel movies.

42. Is morality universal or relative? Hm.

43. Let’s say you’re getting married to someone you absolutely adore. The only catch is that you met them through a Craigslist hookup ad that was supposed to be just for one night of casual sex. Would you tell your friends how you and your fiance met? I might leave out it was just supposed to be for one night of casual sex.

44. What’s the worst name you’ve ever been called? I’ve said the worst things to myself.

45. Would you eat human flesh if it had been harvested and prepared humanely? Um, HELL no. It would make no difference to me how it was prepared, it’s not happening.

46. At what age did you stop believing in Santa? I think I was 8.

47. Do you get along better with old people or little kids? Older people.

48. If you had to choose, would you rather become a nun/monk or a drug dealer? None.

49. What’s your best bodily feature, objectively speaking? I hate my body, I’m very self-conscious about it.

50. Who is your favorite late night talk show host? I don’t have one anymore, but back in the day I used to watch Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien. I was around for the whole late night TV drama that went down years ago between them.

[preppymayhem]

talk mighty ducks to me ;)

Mighty Ducks, The Film Trilogy (Not the weird Furry Saturday Morning Cartoon Show) is one of those 90s properties that 1) was a bigger thing than you remember it being 2) holds up a lot better than you think it will. A lot of Disney’s 90s Live Action output was terrible (Here’s looking at you every film starring Tim Allen) but taking into account the time and place where these films started, they are surprisingly still good. Not masterpieces, but enjoyable and they make me sad that they really don’t make movies like this anymore.

Also the movies sort of touch on some things that you normally wouldn’t think of, like particularly the first one where the movie implies that had the rich hotshot, Adam, played for the proper team from the beginning the kids would have been able to have access to better coaching and resources. So surprisingly timely in some small scale instances.

Now it does have that 90s era “Here’s our idealistic colorblind dynamic that was devised as a marketing scheme” that is unfortunate but at the end of the die I just want to see these wacky underdogs win, and prank around as kids in 90s movies often do.

Also it is quite frankly somehow my main fandom, and is the only fic I read because I apparently like small and dead fandoms where I can just play by myself. But whatever it’s fun.

I don’t have high hopes for the Disney+ series because me and Current Disney aren’t on great terms especially when it comes to reboots/remakes and my only wish is that it is a full scale reboot and not a revival where it hets everything up.