(no subject)

[shadowkat]

1. And I'm still entertained by the youtube videos ripping apart Game of Thrones S8 as horrible and the worst ever. (It's not. There will be worse. And the internet fandom is wonky, but amusing. But there's a reason I never got that into the Game of Thrones fandom. Although I do miss some of the people on DW who were REALLY into it and had read the books and are long gone. I texted my brother, who basically stated he was never that invested and felt it was badly written and acted, and built on an absurd HBO logarithm to keep it going indefinitely, and all he really wanted to see was Ayra put on various faces and go on a killing spree. I told him he was wrong about HBO, it wasn't HBO who did that but George RR Martin, who had written this insane narrative structure where each and every character had their own point of view chapter. And how in each book he added characters. So by the time we reach book five, we have about a hundred point of view characters, a thousand characters to keep track of, and fifteen story threads...and none of them appear to be connected.
Reading it was like leap frogging from fantasy novel to fantasy novel, often as the last one ended on a cliff-hanger. Martin as I informed my brother is like a mad garderner who instead of pruning or tending his garden, just keeps planting and letting it do what it wants. So I wanted to see how the hell they'd turn that into a television series.)

What's most entertaining? The petition to remake it. LOL! Has anyone asked for that to be done before? Because that's new to me.

Apparently they got reamed for not using their powers for good, so they decided to Raise funds for Emilia Clark's Charity to aid brain damaged and stroke victims.

And they are apparently putting up a petition to get D+D fired from Star Wars Triology.

Sigh. We live in an age of absurd petitioning. Petitions don't work people. But it is hilarious. Remember the good old days when people just ranted on fan boards and sent mean letters? In 2002, in the Buffy fandom, people went crazy on the internet boards after a highly controversial episode. And the writers came forward to justify their actions and attempt to apologize. The fans declared that the writers betrayed them. It got pretty nasty for a bit there. But there were no petitions.

Honestly, you'd think there was nothing else out there for folks to watch? Or that this was the only lackluster ending. I didn't like the ending, but I didn't think it was that bad. I've seen worse. So have you. Come on.

2. Saw both Bumblebee and Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom on television this weekend. Don't recommend either. Jurassic World was slightly better, due to the acting and direction and production value. Bumblebee was disappointing -- it was written and directed by a female director/writer -- but she clearly wasn't given much money or support -- because it looked like a cheap straight to video movie, with a few scattered good bits here and there. Otherwise stiff acting, and bad dialogue. I was annoyed. The set-up was pretty cool -- an eighteen year old female mechanic and former high diver, discovers a beaten up volkswagon beetle, and tries to repair it -- only to find out it is in reality an alien robot warrior that can transform into a car.

It subverts a lot of gender film tropes -- the hero is a teenage girl, not a boy.
Her love interest is a geeky black boy, not a hunky white dude or nerdy white boy.
Her Mom has remarried an upstanding guy, and her kid brother is into karate. Her mom is played by Janeanne Garanfola. (sp?). And the girl by Hailee Steinfield. It should have been good. But the other casting was horrid. And I was annoyed.

I want good female action flicks, with woman allowed to be in the traditional male roles. Get with it Hollywood.

Jurassic World -- was slightly better in this respect, with Bryce Dallas Howard. But not great. That said, it was better written and had cool special effects. But overall the story was rather cheesy and unbelievable, with boilerplate bad guys.

Oh well. I tried Flea Bag again -- but the first episode keeps putting me to sleep for some reason.

Not a great television day. It's my own fault, I could have picked other fair.

Comments

[wendelah1]

I was never in GoT fandom but at least in the fandoms I did participate in, complaining-- about the writing, about the acting, about the lack of representation, about whatever the cause du jour happened to be--was half the fun, at least for one contingent of fans. Everyone else got to complain about the complainers. And/or block them. Tumblr is the worst for that sort of thing, and Twitter. But I hear the boards were pretty wild, too, back in the day. My husband wrote a funny meta-fic about it.

Since I don't watch many action movies, I don't have a stake in who stars in them, but I am certain of one thing: if movie makers believed they would make more money putting women in traditional male roles, they would. I'm not saying they're right and you're wrong. There have been action movies with female leads that have made a lot of money for the studios. That one with Charlize Theron (that I walked out of after five minutes), for example. But they were seen as risky outliers and in the end, it's a business. It's all about the bottom line. Plus, most of the people in charge of creative decision-making are still men. Until that changes...

[shadowkat]

Since I don't watch many action movies, I don't have a stake in who stars in them, but I am certain of one thing: if movie makers believed they would make more money putting women in traditional male roles, they would.

Oh it's far more complicated than that. A couple of things, up until recently they believed that the high wage earners and the key demographic was white male, between the ages of 18-45. This demographic doesn't tend to watch much scripted television, is into video games, action, and buys things like computers, cars, television sets, and in the theaters buys popcorn, beer, etc. It's not until recently that this marketing research was blown wide open and they discovered other demographics were buying this stuff and in some respects out-purchasing the white dudes. They were ignoring a whole group that was highly profitable.

Because you don't follow action films or action television serials -- you haven't noticed that it is changing. You don't see the commercials. You really need to check out commercials -- particularly the car, electronics, iphone, computer stuff -- to see who they are marketing these things to. They aren't being marketed to straight white dudes any longer -- because they aren't the only high wage earners.

Captain Marvel is among the top 25 biggest money makers of all time. Black Panther is in 10th place. Guess what is in third place? Titantic. That's right, Titantic beat out Fast and the Furious. It is a romance. Star Wars : The Force Awakens which stars a female hero and lead is in fourth place, above the Avenger's first film. Avenger's Endgame which has several strong female characters and heroes, and busts a lot of gender tropes here and there, is in second.

AVATAR is in first place, and it's weird. I'm not sure you can really call it a white dude action flick. Some of the strongest roles in it are women, the weakest role and least memorable is the guy.

So, yes, it's changing. Right now Shonda Rhimes has a lot of power in television, she's a black woman writer/director -- she has more power than Joss Whedon or Chris Carter ever had. She was just given a $100 million dollar deal to develop television programming for Netflix. Ava Du Vernay is also up and coming, as is Patty Jenkins -- who did Wonder Woman.

And look at the fandom? After Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Hunger Games -- the comic con and fan conventions changed. Women rule at them. Crowds of women took over. And women found a way to make fanfic legit.

It's changing.

[wendelah1]

That's good. That's fantastic. But you don't think we're in a disagreement, right? If representation is improving, and marketing is changing (I don't have to watch the commercials--I believe you), it's because the studios decided they were leaving money on the table. If they think they can keep making money marketing more and more movies to women, they will do so eagerly. Then you'll be happy--and I'll be happy because you're happy. Win-win.

[shadowkat]

No, I think I may have misread. There's a view that the studios will always do it that way...but I'm seeing changes happening. Or a shift. So, I get frustrated that others don't see it too. ;-)

The shift towards more and more movies and television series with heavily POC casts, such as the popular Crazy Rich Asians (no whites in the cast), Black Panther (two - three white people in tiny roles, or token roles), the new Terminator movie that is featuring Linda Hamilton in the lead, not Arnold.
And Captain Marvel -- who is taking the place of Captain America in the Avengers series. Not to mention the additions of the Black Panther and the Wasp.

We also are having comedic rom coms with heavy set women -- like Rebel Wilson, as opposed to just the guys getting those parts. Or Amy Schumer in romantic comedy films as opposed to only Cameron Diaz. Or The Book Club -- a romantic comedy with Diane Keaton in her 70s.