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capuchin's Replies
I've already acknowledged the role of globalisation in big budget filmmaking. The international market is of increasing importance to Hollywood studios because their movies cost a great deal of money to produce. This is a truism though.
It also has nothing to do with your points about 'sophistication' though, which you concede you are guessing at ('I suspect'). Even if you are limiting your observations to <i>film</i> culture, it's still self-evident nonsense drawn from a simple lack of knowledge in the area you have chosen to pontificate on. As I said to you already: I'd humbly suggest you watch more Asian cinema. Then get back to me.
There's nothing wrong with my reading comprehension.
I don't think it's useful to make antivaxxers the 'enemy'. Many of them are victims of poor education. They don't know how to evaluate sources and they fall back on magical thinking and pseudo-religious conspiracism. They're easily manipulated by the people <b>Otter</b> mentions, who consider them to be useful idiots.
There's nothing much to be done about them. We just have to improve educational standards so that we create fewer of them in subsequent generations.
There's that word 'suspects' again.
Anyway, you'll hopefully accept that tastes being different is a rather different proposition from your initial claim that China is a less sophisticated culture.
Of course, taste changes - geographically, temporally, generationally, culturally - and of course the international box office has become increasingly important to Hollywood studios paying out hundreds of millions of dollars to make their products - but the idea that Asian nations can't handle complex storytelling or are 'less sophisticated' than Americans is (and I'm putting the nicest spin I can on it) <i>baffling</i> and ironic.
<blockquote>suspects</blockquote>
Ahhh. <i>Suspects</i>.
I'd humbly suggest you watch more Asian cinema; it sounds like it might have some surprises in store.
You think that China, one of the oldest continuous civilisations on Earth, has a less 'sophisticated' culture than the United States of America? You think the Chinese can't handle complexity in story-telling? Why?
<blockquote>Because the PLOT is SIMPLISTIC enough for other CULTURES to follow who aren't use to watching films with more COMPLEX and SOPHISTICATED stories. </blockquote>
Really? Which cultures are these?
That's true enough. The rise of the superhero movie must be linked to the advancement of the technology.
But it also seemed to be the case that pre-Marvel, producers would be willing to make superhero movies as long as they could completely change the characters, their backstories and, well, almost everything fans would recognise from the comic books. 'We have to think of a general audience.' And Marvel seems to have found a way to satisfy both sections of their audience amply.
I mean, we don't have to contrast it with the pre-CGI era. We just look at the clumsier journey DC has had in the same era.
I'd add to this that there was a lengthy period in which Hollywood simply couldn't make superhero movies that satisfied both general audiences and fans of the source material. Producers forced too many compromises and just couldn't get their acts together.
It's quite strange, in hindsight, that there was ten years between Richard Donner's Superman and Tim Burton's Batman, and that Spider-Man didn't arrive on the big screen until 2002.
This makes the achievement of sustaining a popular movie franchise that squeezes in characters such as Ant-Man and Black Widow, who would <i>never</i> have got their own movies in an era when friggin' Batman was a struggle, doubly impressive.
And, good for them: comic book fans are enjoying a feast after a long cinematic drought. I agree with Villeneuve that they're a bit samey for my tastes, but they aren't really aimed at <i>me</i>.
And besides, the true test of that will be when audiences begin to wane... as they eventually will when tastes change or the quality of the entertainment appreciably drops.
In the meantime: Let people enjoy things... as they say.
Ha! 'Eclectic mix-bag' does seem like a fair summary of my viewing habits.
You've missed a couple of steps that would probably be required in order to implement this health policy; chiefly, the foundation of a global totalitarian government...
<b>Edit</b>: Also, why only the men?
Well, I certainly don't have a Manichaean view of 'good' versus 'evil'. Such atavistic thinking does seem to be on the rise though - all these weird, simplistic binaries people get themselves wrapped up in.
And I'm never quite sure what people mean by 'evil' anyway. For some, it's just a superlative form of 'bad', while for others it is in and of itself a philosophical explanation for behaviour, as if it were some force - external or internal - driving human beings to do wrong.
'How do you explain what this person did?'
'They're just evil.'
The latter seems to me to be obvious nonsense. I prefer naturalistic explanations from psychology and neuroscience, because - y'know - I don't live in the dark ages.
So, if by 'a thin line', you mean 'it's more complicated than a good versus evil, binary narrative' then, yeah, I agree. Of course it is. People make good and bad choices based on a range of factors from environment to brain chemistry; they don't have an angel over one shoulder and a devil over the other.
He's probably right.
But have we now reached the stage where any director with a new movie to promote is going to be asked by dopey journalists for an opinion about the MCU? Is that the only story they can think of?
MCU v the rest of the world - and now Twitter can fight...!
Damn it!
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I feel almost the opposite to you. From an outsider's perspective, American mainstream pop culture - both in music and cinema - seems more small-c conservative to me than it has at any time since, probably, the 1980s. There seems to me very little that's subversive in it. I think it's mostly horribly bland. So I'm hoping for a backlash at some stage, or at least an interesting counternarrative.
... But, either way, I don't believe it's the downfall of, or degeneration of culture. I just don't see it. But each to their own.
Well, even though the winky face indicates irony, I really don't have much of a response to <i>that</i>.
Yeah. I also haven't bought an actual newspaper in two decades. I'm more likely to be found reading the Guardian than any of the other websites you mention, (and wouldn't touch a Murdoch title with someone else's bargepole), but I think the Financial Times has remained a quality newspaper/site in an era where the need for clickthrough has lowered the quality of 'print' journalism - and all but destroyed investigative journalism - across the board.
Basically, you get what you pay for. And folk have stopped paying.
<blockquote>Things have been GOING AWRY for CENTURIES now,</blockquote>
Centuries? So when and where did things start to go awry?
<blockquote>So no. I don't personally think that's the problem.</blockquote>
Well, I'm glad to hear <i>that</i>, at least.