Fandom and entitlement
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@Pandora I did have to click on the little reply thing to see which post you were replying to. You might wanna use the Quote option instead of Reply when it's a post that's not the most recent or two. That's the rule of thumb I use for myself, anyways. Just so people know exactly what I'm replying to.
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@Pandora said in Fandom and entitlement:
@Ghost said in Fandom and entitlement:
Apparently not. You mean the one from 11 hours ago? Uh, sure? Anyway my response was to insomniac's post but it wasn't directly to him so I didn't tag him.
Yes, 11 hours ago. We can't all be around 24/7 like you, @Ghost some of us have real lives.
Cool.
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@Ghost said in Fandom and entitlement:
Not that I think it's entirely right, but when you're attempting to finance a movie that costs over 170 million to make + 100 million in advertising, and you're told that not digging too deeply into any subject matter in the movie could be the difference between losing 10 million or profiting 50+ million...it may not be the entitlement answer people want, but for the super high budget money making projects these movies are, it makes sense.
There are movies where it's wrong to avoid the content, and movies where it's more reasonable to downplay it. In the end you've got to understand that the huge budget movie companies that fund these movies are less concerned about whether or not specific wishes are met and more about the investment.
I really don't think the Harry Potter films are at risk of losing $10mil unless the premier is literally shown on a rapidly-sinking raft made entirely out of $100 bills that is also on fire, and even then they'd probably break even.
I stand by my assertion that "we might lose potential profit from people who think gay people openly existing is controversial, so we're going to write around the gay ex-couple at the heart of the narrative" qualifies as "chickenshit."
Especially when the movie is supposedly commenting on social issues.
No, I don't expect Hollywood creatives to do the right thing--no, scratch that, "meet the basic standards of behavior"--if it might cost them money, but I don't feel any compunctions over calling them cowards for it.
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@insomniac7809 said in Fandom and entitlement:
"We wrote a gay couple but didn't acknowledge it" doesn't stop being chickenshit because it might annoy China or Russia.
You make it sound like producers are hiding in a corner scared, instead of making decisions that make money. These decisions aren't driven by fear. They're driven by greed.
Someone is making that decision. You have screenwriters, you have a director, you have producers. All these people have input into the final product. You think they're all scared of something? That seems downright silly. You must have a very, very different world view than me. If so, that's cool. To each their own.
But I doubt it.
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Yes, Hollywood will be greedy. Yes, capitalism encourages self-interest. Yes, there is bigotry of many forms in many places around the world still. Yes, we can and should still try to press people to do better.
"The world sucks" does not imply "and therefore we should accept this, and not bother to try to hold people to a higher standard".
Especially since I feel like "sorry, we can't acknowledge you exist in the world at all, much less as protagonists, because some people might be offended by your existence and money is more important than recognizing that you are people" is not, y'know, really a super great message to convey to LGBT folks in general, much less the younger ones.
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@Warma-Sheen said in Fandom and entitlement:
You make it sound like producers are hiding in a corner scared, instead of making decisions that make money. These decisions aren't driven by fear. They're driven by greed.
Oh the two are far from mutually exclusive. The political climate is quite volatile and with enough people out there looking hard to pick on any piece of controversy they can find (or manufacture) no one wants their super expensive $100m+ production derailed near its premier by the conversation shifting to boycotts and criticism.
Remember how much of a movie's total earnings comes down to front-loaded ticket sales - the first week (hell, the first weekend) counts for so much. Producers absolutely don't want anything to rain on that parade.
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@Sparks said in Fandom and entitlement:
In Captain Marvel, are Carol Danvers and Maria Rambeau in love? Like 70 or 80% of the fanbase say yes (and Brie Larsen sure as heck implies it constantly in interviews). Is that ever openly stated in the film? No. The subtext is, admittedly, extremely loud, but it remains subtext.
I loved the subtext.
In those scenes, Lashana Lynch eats every moment up. You can see that Brie Larson wants to break out of the subtext, but maybe she can't because Carol's brain isn't exactly together. Whatever. Am I looking forward to more Brie? Absolutely.
sigh
Here's to hoping that Maria and Carol get treated like Stuart and Freddie in Vicious. (Very under-rated TV series.)
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@insomniac7809 Yeah, I think it's fucking stupid. There's also this part of me that wants to be a hipster about it and declare that movies need to go back to being more about art and less about some rich fuckers financing these films as part of a wealth building project.
My friend in the industry bitches about this a lot. "Hollywood doesn't take chances" is pretty much his mantra. He's in the horror genre, and told me that ever since Blair Witch (horror example) that Hollywood wants those films that took $200,000 to shoot (low risk) but become a cult classic and nets them 200+ million.
That's why you get all of the ballsy films as lower budget. "Call Me By My Name" was a story about a young man exploring his homosexuality. Cost 3 million to shoot and made 41 million. Darren Aronofsky's "Mother!" was weird as hell and had a 30 million budget and ended up with some 45 million. "The Shape of Water" had a lady FUCKING A FISH MAN, and cost 20mil to make and came ended up making decent money and got best picture.
Fantastic Beasts/Grindewold cost 200mil to make and came back with some 645mil worldwide. When it comes to those movies, Star Wars, Marvel the execs often bet on Russian/Chinese money because US viewers dont bring in the guaranteed cash they used to.
Anyway, the fucking money game in movies is huge and filled with stupid stuff like casting Chris Pratt in everything because he "tracks well with the 14-35 age range".
Delete the Hog Pit. It'll be fun.
I really don't understand He-Man -
@Ghost said in Fandom and entitlement:
and filled with stupid stuff like casting Chris Pratt in everything because he "tracks well with the 14-35 age range".
Who doesn't like Chris Pratt?
I'm just a surge protector doing my job, sir.
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Anna Faris?
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@Ganymede oooooodamn. Burn.
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@Ganymede said in Fandom and entitlement:
Anna Faris?
Heh, touche. And I think Jack Pratt will too maybe someday - imagine growing up with that name and all the nursery rhyme hijinx (Jack Spratt).
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@Ganymede said in Fandom and entitlement:
Anna Faris?
Funnily enough, she likes him just fine.
https://people.com/movies/anna-faris-says-chris-pratt-texted-her-after-proposal/
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@Sparks I totally agree. 100%. I'm not saying any of it is right. But how do you expect to encourage change if you don't correctly identify the problem? I mean, I get that people rail just to rail. But you could call it for what it actually is.
At the end of the day, it is obvious that the story that wanted to be told is not the story that was allowed to be told.
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Not with that mustache.
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@Lotherio said in Fandom and entitlement:
@Ghost said in Fandom and entitlement:
and filled with stupid stuff like casting Chris Pratt in everything because he "tracks well with the 14-35 age range".
Who doesn't like Chris Pratt?
me, he's a douchebag
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@Warma-Sheen said in Fandom and entitlement:
@insomniac7809 said in Fandom and entitlement:
"We wrote a gay couple but didn't acknowledge it" doesn't stop being chickenshit because it might annoy China or Russia.
You make it sound like producers are hiding in a corner scared, instead of making decisions that make money. These decisions aren't driven by fear. They're driven by greed.
Someone is making that decision. You have screenwriters, you have a director, you have producers. All these people have input into the final product. You think they're all scared of something? That seems downright silly. You must have a very, very different world view than me. If so, that's cool. To each their own.
But I doubt it.
It is often self-defeating though. Look at how often very mechanically trope driven, completely derivative works are blasted and unpopular because they are checking boxes and play it completely 'safe'. Check out the interview with Chadwick Boseman where he mentioned that they wanted to have Black Panther's Wakandan characters talk with a British accent rather than an African accent because they didn't think it was marketable. Those kind of very safe, low grade decisions would have made a much worse, and almost certainly less profitable film.
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@Apos That's a great example. African dialects definitely aren't one of those things people line up to experience. But that's why it is called a risk. Sometimes it pays big. Sometimes it sucks. You never really know what is gonna pay out. If you did, it wouldn't be a risk... So playing it safe is often the call. Especially in big franchises.
But Marvel has taken a lot of big risk that have payed out. Then again, as was pointed out, there were some risks they did not take which we'll never know how that could have turned out (admittedly, I don't know anything about the Captain Marvel stuff so I can't say to much there).
And at the end of the day, it isn't our millions of dollars that are at risk so it is a lot easier to make those calls form the cheap seats.
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Ehh.
One of the problems with that is that all it winds up meaning is that when a "risky" movie flops it's because of the risk, and when a "safe" movie flops it's obviously some other reason.
Like, Catwoman was considered a risk, because it was a superhero movie about a POC woman (even if Halle Barry probably works for a gender flip of the "any white male, or Will Smith" criteria that movies were using in ~1998). It flopped, but that might have had more to do with the movie being steaming garbage on toast.
The Mummy remake, meanwhile, shifted to 'safe' by (according to what I've read) emphasizing the role of its bankable white dude lead, in a use of an IP that had paid off big not too long back. It was also (according to what I've heard) steaming garbage on toast, and it also flopped.
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@insomniac7809 said in Fandom and entitlement:
It flopped, but that might have had more to do with the movie being steaming garbage on toast.
I'd say both because it was garbage and because Halle Berry spent a lot of the marketing time badmouthing comic fans.
Because man, following up Eartha Kitt as a WOC Catwoman shoulda been awesome. Eartha Kitt was a freakin goddess.Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
