Category: Uncategorized

Faux Controversy

Here’s a phenomenon that’s been going on for a decade (or more?) that shows no signs of slowing down.

A reboot/sequel to a popular franchise happens. The newest iteration has a diverse cast (as it should). A few social media accounts (typically a new account with few followers) blast the newest iteration for being “woke” and harkening back to the “good old days” when everything was white, male, and heterosexual.

Now, this will happen regardless of how diverse the original/earlier iterations of the media were. This often leads to people who actually understand, and have engaged with, the original iteration scratching their heads wondering what on Earth this person can be on about. It makes no sense. It’s not even worth reacting to. This is obviously a troll. It is obviously someone who is just trying to start some shit.

Predictably someone with 100 followers spots this and is compelled to share it and virtue signal that they disagree and believe diversity is great. One of their followers, with 1000 followers, does the same, and then 10,000, and then 100,000, and eventually the people involved in the new media respond by sharing the original sentiment and attacking it with vigor, and denouncing the masses of racist/misogynist/homophobic fans of the franchise. “Hate has no place in our fanbase!” Millions of eyes are on it now.

Eventually the story gets carried into the mainstream news and is woven into a narrative of how racist/misogynist/homophobic the “old fans” of the franchise are.

Remember, this starts with only a few people making troll statements.

It’s a predictable cycle. It happens to every-single-franchise now. Even franchises that have been traditionally diverse, like Star Trek. The producers often work this controversy into their own marketing to try and generate buzz for their property among people who traditionally didn’t watch it.

Makes you wonder who actually started the controversy in the first place if in the end it only benefits the people making the show/movie.

Stranger Things Watch Notes S04E01 – The Hellfire Club

I held off posting this, just in case I spoiled a bunch of shit, but I don’t think anyone is reading, so it’s not like it matters. 😂

These were just my thoughts as the episode progressed. I now know some of it is wrong, but I’m not going to go back and correct anything.

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Analyzing Five Minutes of Red Tails

I caught a few minutes of the end of the movie Red Tails earlier. I’ve never seen the whole movie. I started it, realized it was terrible, and shut it off. But here I was watching an action scene late in the film with historical inaccuracies my 9 year-old nephew could probably point out. (Seriously, he knows a lot about fighter planes)

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The Gold Standard of “So Bad It’s Good”

I just re-watched Dolemite Is My Name. It’s a wonderful film. I recommend it to everyone, whether you’re a fan of Rudy Ray Moore, or have never even heard of him. Eddie Murphy doesn’t do a Moore impersonation, instead he plays the man sincerely and lovingly, which was absolutely the best approach. because it never distracts you from the story being told.

The best I can hope for is white audiences watch it for Eddie Murphy and through it discover one of the greatest stars of the blaxploitation era.

Dolemite is probably the gold standard for “so bad it’s good” movies. It was made on a shoestring budget with an inexperienced crew, but made by a group of people who loved what they were doing. It fails on almost every single level except its sincerity. It never feels cynical, like so many exploitation movies of the era. It’s a group of people who had no idea what they were doing but they really wanted the audience to have a good time.

WWII SO WHITE

I finally got around to watching the movie Overlord. I won’t spoil the whole movie, but it’s a sci-fi film set in WWII that starts with the 101st Airborne dropping into France. Our protagonist is a black dude. I wondered if the movie would explain why there was a black soldier in the 101st Airborne. It does not. He’s not alone. Their sergeant is a black dude as well (played by Black Hand Jack from Black Dynamite) and there’s another black guy that survives the initial drop (Grey Worm from Game of Thrones).

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The Hobbit: The Tolkien Cut and the un-aching of my ass.

I’m taking a break from writing about Star Trek to bring you something not all all nerdy or geekish.

I watched The Hobbit: The Tolkien Cut. It’s a 4 hour and 28 minute fan edit of all three Hobbit movies that removes the majority of the fluff that wasn’t in the original book.

Just a reminder that the original three films run back to back to back clock in at 7 hours and 34 minutes if you truncate 10-ish minutes of credits from each of the first two movies. So this edit is only around 60% of the original released footage.

Despite being a fan edit it’s surprisingly well put together. There are maybe two “WTF just happened?” cuts that would baffle someone who had not seen the original edit of the films, but otherwise it’s very coherent and really clips along.

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Fill your hand!

A few weeks ago I watched (the original) Death Wish. If I’d ever seen all of it I don’t recall, so for all intents and purposes this was my first time watching the movie. To summarize: liberal wishy-washy architect, Charles Bronson, has his wife murdered and his daughter raped into a coma by random street thugs. He decides there is no justice in the law and takes the law into his own hands by luring thugs into assaulting him and then blowing them away with his big gun (that’s not a euphemism).
For its time the movie really spoke to people. New York in 1974 was a crime ridden shit hole and many people thought the cops and the government in general weren’t doing enough to keep people safe. So the idea of a good man doing the job the cops wouldn’t (or couldn’t) was really exciting.
I love a good vigilante story as much as the next guy. After all, that’s the core of most super hero narratives. But what something like Death Wish, or even Batman, are missing are the instances when the guy taking the law into his own hands gets it wrong.
In these stories the heroes have an almost omnipotent power to know who is doing right and who is doing wrong. A real human, which is what police officers are, lacks this. They can’t just immediately shoot anyone who looks suspicious…
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong! Cops are all evil and shoot black people all the time!”
Point proven. Humans are flawed. When a human, officer of the law or otherwise, just assumes someone is up to no good and blasts them, they will eventually make a bad call.
That’s what more vigilante stories need, that moment when our hero is on a winning streak and sees some young kid, probably a person of color, in a suspicious situation. He chases him down and brutally executes him, followed by a triumphant catch phrase. Only this kid wasn’t up to no good. He was just being a kid, out walking with no real purpose. He just wanted to get out of the house for a bit while his parents were arguing. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and by that I mean he was in the cross-hairs of a dangerous psychopath who thought he had all the answers to the world’s problems.
And then the sequel can be the young kid’s brother taking the law into his own hands because there is no justice in this world.
And then the third film can be about the sister of an innocent person the brother blew away seeking justice… and so on, and so on, and so on.