Hacker Cinema
Black Panther
2018 · Film · 135 min
Part of Black Panther Collection
Directed by Ryan Coogler
ActionAdventureScience Fiction
King T'Challa returns home to the reclusive, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda to serve as his country's new leader. However, T'Challa soon finds that he is challenged for the throne by factions within his own country as well as without. Using powers reserved to Wakandan kings, T'Challa assumes the Black Panther mantle to join with ex-girlfriend Nakia, the queen-mother, his princess-kid sister, members of the Dora Milaje (the Wakandan 'special forces') and an American secret agent, to prevent Wakanda from being dragged into a world war.
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119 comments on Hacker News
Why can’t we have original stories(I.e Sinners, Black Panther, White Lotus) and instead try to make White Snow black or whatever and paint people racist? I get that people want to make these stories more inclusive but the characters are just too powerful to change them and not expect a backlash.
People prefer new characters or “staying true to the original story/character” instead of lazy remixes.
Or you can create your own remix with AI now. Feed the movie and make the characters as you want. The result may seem a bit weird(i.e like a Snow White being a fat black gay male) for a fan of the movie/character but for you as an activist it will check the marks you are looking for. Just don’t invoke racism if people won’t like your AI slop.
Tent-pole black movies? Basically anything Ryan Coogler or Jordan Peele are involved in. They're a case where the unfortunate stereotype might work out in your favor, if you're looking for a group experience that heightens with shared energy and a visual-and-sonic spectacle. (Well, assuming it's true.)
Or maybe it's just a horror/Marvel thing. Weapons and Endgame had a similar audience feel to Sinners and Black Panther.
Definitely not during Chris Nolan films. It's hard enough to hear his dialogue when it's dead silent.
More important, in the nearly hundred and fifty years it has taken for the church to assume its final form, Gaudí’s once revolutionary aesthetic no longer looks futuristic. Early critics of the Sagrada Família accused Gaudí of being too over the top, but his commitment to visual abundance has become a universal aspect of pop culture—think of the ornate C.G.I. cityscapes in “Black Panther” or the “Star Wars” films.
I was never into architecture and am not a religious person but visiting the Sagrada Familia was profound. I came out a slightly different man than one who walked into it just half an hour before. No CGI hack comes close.
The one and only time I used the site, I discovered "Black Panther" was the number one movie of all time. Thats all the analysis I needed to reach a verdict.
It reminds me of the classic tweet:
'Black Panther was a fine movie but its politics were a bit iffy. wouldve been way better if at the end the Black Panther turned to the camera & said "i am communist now" & then specified hes the exact kind of communist i am'
Some writers are certainly taking cues from the criticisms that tweet was mocking. Or were the same people making those criticisms.
That's all really insightful! I agree. I'm also much better now - not willfully disregarding things because just they're popular. I was a punk and indie rocker in the early 00's, so I was able to get that out of my system. (and boy did we) Now, my tastes are just generally extremely non-mainstream. So I avoid it by default.
It's pretty straightforward really - for example I saw Fruitvale Station as a movie fan. I thought it was great and so Coogler was on my radar. I thought the Rocky franchise was ripe for a reboot, so when I heard he was doing it I was in. And the movie was fine. As was Black Panther (considering Marvel flicks for what they are, no judgment either way). So OF COURSE I was downright excited for Sinners. With no assumption that it had to be the best thing ever - and I had a blast.
Another good example is that I'm currently watching the John Wick series for the first time. I didn't know anything about them, but had heard them positively referenced on Kill James Bond. Well, if you meet it where it is and realize it's just "what if you made a comic book into a movie?" and don't expect more of it, you can appreciate it for whether it does that well or not.
I dunno, 2015, I'm a little weak on this year: It Follows, Creed, Ex Machina, Max Max: Fury Road, Sicario, The Hateful 8. I'd watch those again with someone any time, and recommend all of them often. Several on my to-watch list most of which I expect to be good, like Queen of the Desert, While We're Young, Slow West, and The Overnight, just haven't made it to them yet. Not an exhaustive list, just gleaned from some titles I have at hand.
2016: Green Room, The Nice Guys, Hail Caesar!, The Neon Demon, Swiss Army Man, Hunt for the Wilder People, The VVitch, Train to Busan, Shin Godzilla, Moana (hey, I like this one), Arrival. Moonlight's on my to-watch and is supposed to be really good.
2017 (I've done OK on catching up with these!): The Lost City of Z, Dunkirk, Low Life, Good Time, Logan Lucky (absolutely slept on, kills it as a feel-good lightweight small-stakes heist movie), Blade Runner 2049, The Death of Stalin (I liked this less than a lot of folks, but given how widely-loved it was, I'm probably the idiot here), One Cut of the Dead, You Were Never Really Here. The Planet of the Apes movie from that year, plus Phantom Thread, and The Little Hours are to-watch for me and come highly recommended.
2018: Annihilation, Isle of Dogs, Upgrade, Sorry to Bother You, High Life, Eighth Grade, the Suspiria remake. To-watch that I expect to be good include Champion (Korean arm wrestling movie—there's another movie by the same name that year), First Reformed, BlacKkKLansman, The Favourite, The Wolf House, Climax, and some others.
2019: HUGE year for the particular (small) set I'm seeing on my list, including a ton to-watch but a bunch I've seen. Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Knives Out, Little Women, JoJo Rabbit, Ready or Not, Parasite, Midsommar, The Art of Self Defense, maybe Marriage Story (but if you've seen one Baumbach movie, you've kinda seen them all, and I'm not sure I'd put it above The Squid and the Whale). Midway's a well-above-average war movie and pairs great with Tora, Tora, Tora! as a crazy-long double feature in a really fun way. To-watch list is nuts and I really need to dedicate a month or so to filling out my watched-list for this year: First Cow, The Irishman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Bacurau, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Farewell, The Souvenir, Blow the Man Down, The Vast of Night, Her Smell, Funan.
It basically just keeps going like that, year after year, and I've barely even tried to dredge up good movies for most of those years, the bulk of it's just stuff that's risen to my attention one way or another, and I'm terrible at keeping up with foreign film especially. I also left off some that a lot of folks would probably include, like at least one Mission Impossible (aside from MI2, I think these are all pretty good action movies, though quality varies a bit) and Avengers: Endgame which, opinion on the rest of Marvel aside (I think it's mostly kinda lazy crap? But was basically entertained for most of them regardless, so I guess I can't complain too much) was a hell of an event. Also Black Panther, which everyone loved but I was pretty meh on (I hate the entire end fight, and it's looooong)
I actually think the intention of the tariff here is to bring jobs back to the American filming industry - not that I agree with this approach. Just an assessment of mine. But speaking of cultural influence, I think something interesting has been happening.
> that doesn’t change the fact that Hollywood projects American culture around the world in a way that the government could never do itself
I'll all for the "soft power" of the US, including cultural influence. Just wanted to point out that things have been changing slowly. More and more people started to be more credulous about Hollywood's values. Case in point, Blank Panther won Oscar, yet it was widely criticized in China and its box office in China was miserable. Below is the translation of a popular criticism of Black Panther:
Imagine you made a movie about China, kind of like Black Panther. In it, China is this isolated country with crazy-advanced technology, way ahead of the rest of the world. But instead of a modern government, it's run by tribal warlords—each one basically a dictator. To choose their top leader, they fight each other with knives and spears on top of the Forbidden City.
In your story, Chinese people still do foot binding like it’s totally normal. The elite chieftains live in ridiculous luxury inside the imperial palace. Their medicine is so advanced it’s basically magic—people come back from the dead—and they’ve got levitating trains that look like they’re from another planet.
But regular folks? They live in grass huts, spend their days feeding rhinos (or maybe pandas), and there are barely any roads in the whole country.
Then you take this movie to China and tell everyone it’s a tribute to Chinese culture? People would be so insulted, they might actually beat you up.
> Can't a boy look up to the character and actions of a woman, and vice versa?
I believe, in life, girls can look up to men but boys do not look up to women. I suspect, but am not sure, that is built into the biology of each.
> I have so called mixed-race children and it would be silly to limit them to aspire to be like historical figures that look like them, because I can't even think of one example.
I agree. However, I think that we can make observations that show it does happen. E.G. the non-historical release of the Black Panther movie.
Black Panther has a rating of 96% at Rotten Tomatoes. So whatever the scale is, nothing is really meaningful. I've been in the cinema with about 60 other people and a friend. statistically one of us should have enjoyed it but we both found the movie shit. So no, 10 stars is not more meaningful as 5 stars. 2-4 should be enough to still be wrong about taste once in a while.
Those fans would probably be as vocal if a white actor was casted for the main role in a Black Panther movie.
I tend to think that the 90s actually did see its analogue to psychedelics in the internet. No need to be a psychonaut and fry your brain anymore; just surf the web. It's the same sort of ideal of connecting with universal knowledge.
There's even a heuristic to track these kinds of awakenings, roughly, and I'm absolutely certain you're not going to guess it. Got it in your head? Okay, wrong, it was "landmark black cinema." The Wiz came out in 1978 after 4 years of the musical. In 1995, we had The Lion King, followed by the Broadway play in 1997. If you look for something repeating the pattern, you find Black Panther in 2018 (alongside a glamour around a specific component of the web, social media and the mature smartphone).
I don't mean to make any sort of causative connection, but perhaps there is something about a widespread desire to "move forward" and "embrace openness" that also benefits the funding of these sorts of productions (and then the subsequent public enthusiasm for them upon release). And there's always a collapse back to conservatism shortly thereafter (Disco Demolition Day and Reagan; Bush and 9/11; COVID and its backlash, and the subsequent failure of Bernie Sanders to beat Joe Biden, and then Joe Biden/Kamala Harris to beat Donald Trump).
The referenced tweet: https://x.com/Tormny_Pickeals/status/965640850578575362
> Black Panther was a fine movie but its politics were a bit iffy. wouldve been way better if at the end the Black Panther turned to the camera & said "i am communist now" & then specified hes the exact kind of communist i am
This is something I wish people who blame Disney for the perceived lack of variety in theaters would get. That funky little arthouse flick is not in competition with the latest MCU entry.
I'm not sitting there trying to decide between Avengers: Endgame and some Sundance premiere. And the denigration of people who like MCU/action movies in general that tends to come with these critiques is really not helpful. I like a good indie film and a good blockbuster. My life has room for Tangerine and Black Panther.
These comments about the Covid supply chain issues only further prove my point:
1. Most importantly, the pandemic was global. Pretty much every country was affected, so it's not like if you wanted to switch supply chains from one place to another that the other place didn't also have significant pandemic issues.
2. I never said their wouldn't be an adjustment, I'm just arguing that you always see this type of hyperbole like "The world economy hinges on one tiny town in North Carolina!!", as if this is the sole source of vibranium like in the Black Panther movie. Even at the height of the pandemic, with major supply disruptions, I'd hardly call a 12% decline in vehicle output or a Christmas without a PlayStation some sort of "catastrophe". If this factory disappeared tomorrow, yes, a ton of people in the semiconductor industry would scramble, and you might see some prices rise short term, but the average person would probably not even notice.
I think Black Panther came closest to being good, as a non-colonial/post-colonial vision of Africa. But the last hour is just the same as every other MCU movie, eminently skippable.
Neil Gaiman does decently well in the adaptations that involve him, I must say.
>It's just that I don't want to escape into the world of the villagers in Wakanda
Then why do you go watching Black Panther movies, when you already know the plot holes? It's not for you or me, but according to their finances, a lot of people seen to enjoy them .
Conversely, I find that often very "woke"/political films are rated overly highly on RT compared to how much I enjoy them. I'm not right wing, it just isn't going to make me enjoy an otherwise mediocre film.
Black Panther, for example, was a perfectly fine film... but who isn't bored of Marvel stuff now, and is it really worth 96%? Higher than The Dark Knight? And even that was probably somewhat overrated due to Health Ledger's passing...
Georgia has ranked #2 in US film production by some metrics, and it continues to steal hundreds of productions from California every year [1].
Last year Georgia was host to nearly 500 movies and TV shows [2], and has been extensively used for some of the biggest hits and blockbusters: Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Black Panther, Stranger Things, The Waking Dead, Ozark, Halt and Catch Fire, etc.
Disney, Marvel, and Netflix have major productions here. Winona Ryder was even my downstairs neighbor for a bit during the Stranger Things shoot.
Last year they built a fake White Castle a few blocks from me and then tore it down about a month later [3]. It was so disappointing as everyone was hoping for a real White Castle.
[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/canada-georgia-benefit-most-from-california-runaway-productions-1235115921/
[2] https://www.gpb.org/news/2022/08/01/georgia-film-industry-sets-another-economic-impact-record
[3] https://atlanta.urbanize.city/post/white-castle-edgewood-avenue-downtown-disney-filming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrofuturism
The 2018 Marvel movie “Black Panther” is probably the most mainstream work under this umbrella.
>A black Cleopatra is “rewriting history” in the same way an English speaking Cleopatra is.
So you'd be fine with Rami Malek playing Mansa Musa in a documentary or the next black panther?
... and then they pull back as soon as they might be about to say anything interesting, or take anything but a very-boring stance on any position.
Looking at you, Falcon & Winter Soldier. And Wandavision, for that matter. And several of the movies—friggin' Spiderman: Far From Home, ugh. Even Black Panther ends up feeling like a missed opportunity that almost went somewhere interesting, had all the pieces in place to, then... just didn't, I suspect in part because it would likely have required a less-well-proven-in-superhero-movies story structure, so would have been riskier. The second one revisits that a little and tries to recover some of the potential the first one just left lying on the floor, but damn, that first one could have been great, period, not just "decent for a Marvel movie".
It's almost better when they don't even hint that they might be trying to convey a message or have interesting themes, because then it's frustrating when they inevitably fail to follow through. It's so bad that when one of the films manages to have even fairly-safe themes and actually treats them half-decently and takes well-worn, safe positions on them (the Guardians films) it puts them at the very top of the Marvel pile, so far as that aspect is concerned, at least.
They tease messages and interesting themes more often than they really commit to them, unfortunately.
I don't get how Marvel's movies are getting worse too. Take Black Panther, for instance, why would people even not consider it premise insulting? Maybe Americans thought it was perfectly normal to depict Wankanda like that, but let's imagine a similar story about China: China is a closed society with a highly advanced civilization and a technology level that surpasses the rest of the world. The country is ruled by tribal chieftains who use swords, spears, and what not to fight for succession of chieftain. Many Chinese people are passionate about foot-binding. The chieftains live in the palace that are extravagantly rich and the level of medical technology is almost miraculous. The magnetic levitation trains are like magic. IN the same time, ordinary Chinese people live in huts and spend their days feeding rhinoceroses (or, to fit the local customs, pandas), as there are barely any road in the country.
If you were to show this movie in China and tell us that it praised the Chinese people and culture, I'd say you're being insulting
Can I say Black Panther is ridiculous? Maybe Americans thought it was perfectly normal to depict Wankada like that, but let's imagine a similar story about China:
China is a closed society with a highly advanced civilization and a technology level that surpasses the rest of the world. The country is ruled by tribal chieftains who use swords, spears, and what not to fight for the title of supreme leader. All Chinese people are passionate about foot-binding. The chieftains living in the palace are extravagantly rich and the level of medical technology is almost miraculous. The magnetic levitation trains are like magic. IN the same time, ordinary Chinese people live in huts and spend their days feeding rhinoceroses (or, to fit the local customs, pandas) since there are barely any roads in the country.
If you were to show this movie in China and say that it praises the Chinese people and culture, I'd say you're insulting.
> but that does not excuse Black actors being blasted with n-bombs and other slurs on Twitter and other social media,
I'm not denying, much less excusing that. What I am saying is that such trolls are an irrelevant minority who's voices are amplified by those to whom nutjobs are a convenient excuse for their own failures.
Black Panther sold many millions of tickets in America, and had maybe a few thousand 4chan-style trolls complaining about it. Am I really expected to believe those few thousand trolls were the reason the movie got less than flawless glowing reviews from critics, rather than flaws in the movie itself being to blame? And if the Star Wars trilogy failed to perform as Disney expected, it certainly wasn't the fault of trolls. Star Wars fans outnumber trolls a million to one. If the Star Wars trilogy under-performed, it was because the Star Wars trilogy was flawed. Trolls are just a convenient excuse for the people involved in the production who don't want to face the facts about the quality of their product.
> [1] Black Panther and the 3rd Star Wars trilogy were surrounded by some of the most vile harassment campaigns I've seen, for example
Or, movie studios have exaggerated the impact of (real, but not very numerous) internet trolls to protect their own egos from valid criticisms. The third Star Wars trilogy was an incoherent mess. And for reasons I still don't understand, the end of Black Panther was released in a rough half-rendered state. But the people making these films don't want to hear criticism of their baby, so online critics get dehumanized as "trolls". Rare instances of real trolling from the likes of 4chan get highlighted and blown out of proportion as a defense mechanism.
>Did you miss the part where the Joker was wrong in the movie? He expected the boats to blow up, but they didn't. Humans didn't descend to their basest instincts.
Worst part of the movie IMO. The acting during this part seemed so fake. The fact that everyone including the prisoners just went with it didn't seem realistic at all. The ultimate choice should have been left ambiguous and darker here. Perhaps both sides ended up trying to blow each other up but batman stopped it somehow. They had to insert some hollywood idealism here I guess otherwise it woulda been too dark.
>You want a movie to "question classic tropes of good and evil", Black Panther was right there. Killmonger was right. What Wakanda was doing all those years was wrong.
Joker did it better imo. Much more darker and it questioned the classic mythology of batman. Killmonger didn't dig as deep and wakanda/black panther isn't as established so their's no controversial questioning of a classic mythology.
>Not to mention, Thanos's response after everyone is snapped back is to remake the entire universe in his image. Like that was possible from the start and he just didn't do it.
Yeah I wouldn't call it bad writing outright. But they needed the classic good and evil face off at the end to pull off that final climatic battle. They sacrificed consistency and perfect writing with a short cut here to lead into the climax. It's deliberate imo.
> You complain of others twisting logic, then justify Thanos with "the writers said so".
The writers exploited the human capacity to twist logic in their writing. A good movie isn't built upon logical consistency. It's built upon emotional impact. Emotions dull when exposed the the same thing over and over so writers need to constantly come up with creating new patterns for plot twists. But you can see in their writing they exploit human biases. That was the point here.
>We can also argue that Thanos is operating from a place of emotion, not reason. He's responding to the trauma of his own planet. And since his planet fucked it up so hard, he doesn't believe anyone could do any different. Not to mention, we don't even know if his plan would work in the long run. They didn't try it on Titan and it was only 5 years out in Endgame. There's an adjustment period when half of your population disappears.
The writers made him out to be doing (from his perspective) mostly logical choices and deliberately ignoring his emotions. His own death at the beginning of end game and the murder of his daughter are evidence of this.
But of course there is that change in heart at the ending; The shortcut the writers took for the final battle where he just became evil. Avengers isn't a literary masterpiece with internal and external consistency. It first and foremost must hit emotional high points that need to come at the expense of consistency.
You complain of others twisting logic, then justify Thanos with "the writers said so".
Also, the only counter argument Iron Man needs is "Why does Thanos get to decide?"
Not to mention, Thanos's response after everyone is snapped back is to remake the entire universe in his image. Like that was possible from the start and he just didn't do it.
We can also argue that Thanos is operating from a place of emotion, not reason. He's responding to the trauma of his own planet. And since his planet fucked it up so hard, he doesn't believe anyone could do any different. Not to mention, we don't even know if his plan would work in the long run. They didn't try it on Titan and it was only 5 years out in Endgame. There's an adjustment period when half of your population disappears.
Did you miss the part where the Joker was wrong in the movie? He expected the boats to blow up, but they didn't. Humans didn't descend to their basest instincts.
A "sophisticated audience" would see Thanos's plan for the bad writing it is. It requires the audience to question no further than the writers' assurances that it would work. With stuff like the ARC reactor, sure, it's magic, handwave away. But population growth is something we do kind of know about. At best, Thanos's plan only delays the catastrophe he claims is coming.
You want a movie to "question classic tropes of good and evil", Black Panther was right there. Killmonger was right. What Wakanda was doing all those years was wrong.
I mean, it wasn't a top-5 Marvel film, but it was fine. In the absence of the high points this series has given us, we wouldn't be complaining at all.
Well, I mean, SOME people would, because SOME people get upset whenever a woman gets out of what they see as her lane, but the rest of us wouldn't.
(My top 5, today: Black Panther; Ragnarok; Winter Soldier; Iron Man; Endgame. But the only ones I'd rate below a B are Thor 2, Iron Man 2 & 3, and Eternals.)
There are players under 6ft, but not 5ft 3in players.
It is not a hard cutoff, but the probability of success with a certain height can decrease exponentially as height decreases.
Kevin Hart is not a leading actor either, he is the comic relief. In the movies I have seen, Dwayne Johnson is the lead actor. For example, Kevin Hart would not be Captain America, or even Black Panther. In fact, I think one of the Captain America movies showed the guy being short before he was enhanced and turned into Captain America.
You would not be able to sell a 5ft 3in actor as the fantasy escape for who people who want to fantasize about who they could be or the leader they would have.
It's hard not to be cynical or entertain thoughts of Hollywood planning these things in case the show sucks. Because they can clearly do entertainment with diverse casting, non-white people, female leads and succeed:
- Tom Holland Spider-Man does not have a red-head MJ, Flash is Indian and the made up best friend is Filipino. - Domino in the Dead Pool movies is black. NTW doesn't seem to have the same powers and is gay. But I'm not sure what the current character status is. - Everything Everywhere All at Once - Black Panther - Shang Chi - Jordan Peele does good work: Nope, Us, Candy Man, Get Out - The Expanse - Life of Pi - Sandman swaps a bunch of stuff
Appetite for completely foreign media is much slower in English speaking countries but once in a while you get a major break through: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Parasite.
For iconic female leads: Terminator has Sarah Connor, Ripley from Aliens, The Bride from Kill Bill, Charlize Therons character in the last Mad Max movie. Buffy. I apologize for how narrow the genres are here.
I don't think the popular media for anything I just mentioned was too negative (maybe Black Panther?). Is it really just the fans? I bet the overlap of Rings of Power watchers and watchers of the stuff I listed is pretty big ...
edit: formatting
“Woke” or accused of being so?
There are plenty of movies out there that have been criticised for being too ”liberal leaning”. “Woke” is a rather recent term.
Django unchained and Black Panther are two relatively recent movies accused of being “woke”. Both were resounding successes.
> Contrast Galadriel who acts like a self righteous dickhead with Aragorn who was reluctant to accept his calling spent and three movies proving himself to be worthy of honor and love
You mean three books, right?
The difference here is that Aragorn was written by Tolkien, this show wasn't and has completely betrayed the original material.
Race or gender swaps are not a big issue, but they become one if the purpose is the swap for the swap just for marketing purpose.
Elves are almost eugenetically born all the same, want to add some diversity? Go for humans.
Wanna piss off the audience so that the debate will create more engagement? do exactly what shouldn't be done, because it's out of character.
Another example is the new Disney's Pinocchio, were the Blue Fairy is portrait by a black woman. The problem is not that she is black of course. but that the original story is set in Italy, Tuscany, mid 1800, were no black woman was ever seen and she is also described as "il viso bianco come un'immagine di cera" that translates to "her face as white as a wax image".
It becomes clear that the black blue fairy was put there to check a box and not because she serves some need to modernize the story, which is exactly the same that Collodi wrote 140 years ago.
EDIT
it's the same reason why people cricized film directors that casted Scarlett Johansson for every role or the god awful Ghost in the shell live action where, not only the story was orribly mutilated, but the setup was very very far from the original Japanese one, completely ruining the experience.
It's not about the colour of the skin or the gender of the actors, of course, it's about expectations. I expect Black Panther to be black, Thor to be white and blonde, Ghost in the shell to be set in futuristic Japan etc.
One frustrating thing about Marvel properties is they frequently almost have a point or address their own messes or even something important in the real world—but then pull back before actually saying anything. A couple of the Spider Man movies have done this, Falcon and Winter Soldier had a bad case of this, a few of the other films (Black Panther comes to mind—a riskier version of that film with a somewhat shifted perspective and a bit more bite could have been amazing). Most just don't even try to take a stance on anything whatsoever, but sometimes they start to and it's like "oh man is this going to be actually good instead of just good-for-a-Marvel-movie good?" but... no, never.
> Alternative voices would be nurtured and flourish. Music would get cooler and more surprising. Books would become more diverse and interesting. Indie films would reach larger audiences. Etc. etc. etc.
Long tail in movies/tv shows certainly does not apply to me. I find my taste is amazing aligned with IMDB's cores, especially in actions and thrillers. If a show has a score higher than 8.0, 99% of time I'll love it. Bourne series is my favorite spy movies. I can't stop watching Better Call Saul. The list can go on. On the other hand, if a show's IMDB's slow is lower than 6.0, I can be almost certain that I won't like it. There are a few exceptions, such as Black Panther (its setup is just ridiculous, even among all the supe movies), but in general long tail in entertainment never worked on me or anyone I know.
I dig it because it's like a summary of half of the Marvel movies, where the protagonists spend the entire adventure solving a problem they caused themselves.
Like, without the Thanos thingy, iron man is not a bloody hero, he is a villain. He is responsible for so much death and destruction it's not even funny. Black Mamba, killer. Black panther ? Maintains in place a political system that clearly allows any psychopath to access absolute power. Hulk, a time bomb. Thor ? He let his genocidal brother of the hook as soon as he is nice for 2 minutes. Spiderman ? Give an deadly bot swarm to the first father figure that smiles at him. Dr Strange ? Accept the request to GHB the planet and almost destroys it because a kid ask for it for 30 seconds.
It's a well known trope in sups stories, but for some reasons a lot of viewers really believes they are heroes. Even as a kid I though Batman was stupid for spending times fighting one criminal at a time with all his money.
Now, we are seeing a lot of this in today's IRL world.
Progress is saving you by giving you drugs for all the diseases it increases: diabetes, cancer, obesity, hormonal dysfunctions, etc. It's giving you a car so that you can you can go work in a remote place you would never have to work to without progress. It gives you software to organize your day to fit all the thing you would not have to do without progress.
Ok, it's tongue in cheek. I love progress.
But still.
We can pretty much pinpoint the movie where critics lost it: Black Panther. They loved it because it was catering to the woke crowd and it was hyped as the best movie ever when in reality it was a mediocre meandering mess with CGI below the first sony spiderman movies and a storyline so filled with borderline racist cliches that i was genuinely suprised to find it was written by a black director and not the KKK.
I mean for gods sake they decide their government by a ritual fight? And one of the tribes is literally introduced by making ape noises? [1] And the villain? Suspiciously looks and talks A LOT like Malcolm X [2][3].
Somehow that racist caricature of a movie became the woke version of Iron Man and Critics ate it up.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frHiTbjW4AE [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyY_tjhFNBg [3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X#/media/Datei:Malcolm-x.jpg
I think the '90s had a bit more variety than the '10s and (for now) '20s. E.g. we seem to have lost good legal procedurals, thrillers, weird fiction, and "small scale" sci-fi.
Fo example, what are the'10s equivalents of "A Few Good Men", "Seven", "Dark City" and "The 13th Floor"?
There is _some_ stuff, but less than before, replaced by a massive amount of super hero movies or long-running franchises.
As a support clue, I invite you to consider the winners of the MTV Movie Awards, which are more "popular" than other Awards:
92 Terminator 2: Judgment Day 93 A Few Good Men 94 Menace II Society 95 Pulp Fiction 96 Seven 97 Scream 98 Titanic 99 There's Something About Mary 00 The Matrix (bonus: not 90s)
compare with the 10s
10 The Twilight Saga: New Moon 11 The Twilight Saga: Eclipse 12 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 13 Marvel's The Avengers 14 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire 15 The Fault In Our Stars 16 Star Wars: The Force Awakens 17 Beauty and the Beast 18 Black Panther 19 Avengers: Endgame
I have the feeling most "risky" movies, for lack of a better word, have moved to streaming services.
> Black panther is the #3 highest-rated superhero movie on rotten tomatoes. Sounds like it’s even higher in its genre than The Thing (#138 in horror) and Alien (#5).
Not surprising, given that there aren't many triple-A movies with Black lead actors around in the first place, much less movies that are predominantly Black starred - it was labelled as "revolutionary" [1] for a reason and so generated a lot of (well-deserved) hype. That it turned out to be a damn good movie too only helped the matter along.
[1]: https://time.com/black-panther/
> He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion
Other than Black Panther, I can't think of any Marvel movie that destroyed my sense of immersion. Maybe I have become used to it so I don't even see it anymore unless it's really really bad (like Blank Panther)?
Black panther is the #3 highest-rated superhero movie on rotten tomatoes. Sounds like it’s even higher in its genre than The Thing (#138 in horror) and Alien (#5). Black Panther is not a bad movie in other aspects - but the parts that use (and overuse) CGI look as fake as any other Marvel Production. So how good the movie is isn’t necessarily a free pass for CGI abuse.
I think marvel has actually gotten fairly good at fights and making them interesting to watch as a function of why the hero is unique tbh.
Throwing huge punches is bad. Firing arbitrary laser blasts is even worse. Especially when the consequences of being hit seem so trivial. But it can be done well. I think Thor Ragnarok is a good example of this.
This is the first movie in which both Thor and Hulk were actually shown as extremely strong with little more than just physical blows. What’s noteworthy is that most of the fights they’re in are very easy for them, and frankly it’s much more fun to watch them stylishly stomp 100 goons and look strong rather than incomprehensibly struggle to fend off 10 nobodies. Filmmakers tend to be afraid of having a fight scene without tension.
Avengers infinity war fight v. Thanos also comes to mind as a quick little highlight reel of each of a dozen characters special contributions. It comes across as competent and unique.
Off the top of my head, black panther, iron man 1,2,3, guardians of the galaxy 1,2, Shang chi, wandavision, earlier avengers, all felt particularly bad at this.
> Why don’t any other characters have to explain what makes them unique from the rest
They do. Geralt has a huge back story that explains why he's ripped and has a bunch of scars and why every peasant is afraid of him. Yennefer has a huge back story that explains why she's beautiful. If they casted someone ugly as Yennefer then that backstory wouldn't exactly apply anymore would it?
> I would say Black Panther is a story about blackness
Let's use another example then. Narcos - if some Asian guy was the one who auditioned best as Pablo Escobar, would you think that's good casting? Narcos is clearly not about Colombian culture, it's about the War on Drugs. If all the random cartel members are casted as Latino but the leader is Asian you think that's good casting? Or if we look at House of Cards - what if you replaced Garret Walker with a Korean dude. You think that's good casting?
> why does race need to be explained
Because one character is different from all the other people in their supposed race (Nilfgaardian). If there was a character that was taller than everyone in their kingdom I'd expect that to be explained too. Or if the character was white and everyone else was not.
> Growing up my class was all white, except one black kid
That's great, but completely irrelevant in this case. You are trying to impose your own social justice values on a high fantasy TV show. Ironically I find it's always white dudes in their 20s and 30s that have this view of the world. I bet you're white, male, a millennial or Gen Z, you live in a big city, and you work in tech.
"Dog whistling" implies subtlety.
Black Panther...was a good movie? And people liked it? I'm a little confused about your "in the media" comment--wouldn't the box office receipts represent, you know, what the market actually liked?
I'm not sure what any of this has to do with revisiting _actual_ history, which (as https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/06/27/medieval-africa-lost-kingdoms/ points point) had been often significantly misrepresented.
There's a painting of the Congolese ambassador to the Dutch Republic in the Danish National Gallery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Don_Miguel_de_Castro,_Emissary_of_Congo). The history of this painting reflects the significant political power held by West African kingdoms--I for one (having had a standard American historical education) was struck by how little I knew about the complex cultural and political institutions in sub-Saharan Africa before and during the early slave trade.
In a way, it's not surprising; as David Graeber wrote in "Debt", it was culturally convenient for Europeans--who at the time in many ways appeared quite culturally backwards!--to misrepresent the power and cultural dynamics and justify their own barbarism. In that light, while we certainly should hold research everywhere to the same evidentiary standards, we shouldn't be surprised to learn about more sophisticated cultural histories in Zimbabwe as well, or other places skipped over by the standard history.
(Another odd aspect of my American education: I was given the distinct impression that civilization went from Greece to Rome to Enlightenment Europe to America. Strange how nobody questioned who preserved the thinking of all those Greek philosophers after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.)
But just because you don't know something--just because the history you were taught must be revised--doesn't make it revisionist history.
Couple of thoughts:
1. I'm not really sure what making this so interactive accomplishes. The result seems akin to a listicle: "X Great Movies to Watch When You're Feeling Y", except with a lot more clicks required and, importantly, no curation. I think I would prefer to see a static list of recommendations with a "random" button and a cool blog post linked about how the recommendations were generated. Furthermore, it seems fairly safe to say (?) that the site isn't dynamically generating recommendations because the list exhausts rather quickly, after 10 or so. Just make a list!
2. The lack of curation leads to a lot of strangeness in the recommendations. For example, my first choice was feeling "weird". I got a bunch of blockbuster action films: Justice League, Avengers: Endgame, Thor: Ragnarok, Interstellar, Black Panther, Captain Marvel.
What rotten tomatoes considers the "best films of all time" is laughable across the spectrum.
Some gems from the top 10:
4. Black Panther
6. Parasite
7. Avengers: Endgame
9. Knives Out
10. Us
Its surely just coincidence that the half of the best films ever made in human history were produced in the last 5 years.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/
I would comment as follows.
Iron Man - sort novel for setting marvel tone but mostly banal action movie
Iron Man 2 - banal action movie
Thor - banal action movie
Captain America: The First Avenger - particularly banal action movie
Marvel's The Avengers - banal action movie
Iron Man 3 - banal action movie, sort of interesting to see protagonist suffering PTSD anxiety from being a superhero
Thor: The Dark World - banal action movie
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - first interesting take. Patriotism is not the same as government obedience. Real fight choreography approaching a soft john wick.
Guardians of the Galaxy - Early rock and roll aesthetic pretty interesting
Avengers: Age of Ultron - banal action movie, perhaps mcu lowpoint
Ant-Man - superhero heist movie, literally deconstructs larger than life superhero tropes. I think thumbs up
Captain America: Civil War - by this point doing the mcu's own thing, which is novel, but probably not interesting outside
Doctor Strange - banal action movie
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - aesthetic still feels mostly fresh.
Spider-Man: Homecoming - super down to earth high school drama, frustrated working class villains suffering the fallout of superheroes, seems interesting to me
Thor: Ragnarok - great film, very genre savvy. Rare achievement to make godly strength brutes feel really engaging to watch. Taika Waititi is a genius.
Black Panther - pretty good. interesting aesthetic. directly addressing racial tensions.
Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame - Mostly fan service and not too surprising but honestly still novel.
Ant-Man and the Wasp - Ehhh I really don't remember
Captain Marvel - Beginning had some great hard sci fi imo. Thought the ending message of newly apotheosizied female not needing to prove herself to her evil male mentor was a solid take, whereas a classic "mano a mano" kind of showdown would be so typical of the genre
Spider-Man: Far From Home - Villain emphasizing themes of the power of deceptive media? heck yeah.
Wandavision - Really bizarre and interesting start. Unfortunately non-self-aware conclusion
Falcon and Winter Soldier - Active discussions of race and the problematic nature of superheroes being supremacists? Very good.
Loki - kind of a super cliche topic (time cops) that is also somehow really rare? eh.
honorable mentions for Logan and Deadpool for being just great; and the Amazing Spiderman for its excellent aesthetics despite terrible writing.
Sure, and I agree that sex scenes aren't inherently more complex / difficult to film than fight scenes (caveats around CGI, green screen, etc complexities that are more likely required in the latter).
As intimated though, the challenge is keeping China happy - there's been a constant series of articles about this phenomenon.
Beyond the acceptance of ultra-violence along with a distaste for sexuality, consider all the political hand-wringing that led Disney to the Iron Man 3 fracas. [0] Or informed their decisions around promoting any films with a non-white protagonist. [1] But really, any web search on 'how are the chinese market cuts of marvel films different' will get you a slew of results.
Aside - about 15 years ago, while in Hong Kong, I picked up a bootleg DVD of Love Actually (a highly popular, but arguably shite, film). Turned out that the local cut of that film excised every appearance of Martin Freeman & Joanna Page.
[0] https://screenrant.com/iron-man-3-china-version-different-scenes/
[1] https://qz.com/quartzy/1231764/the-story-behind-the-racist-responses-to-black-panther-in-china/
Of course role models don't have to be the same gender or race or culture. Plenty of white people find Bruce Lee's life story inspirational, and likewise there are plenty of black kids that are Batman fans. This is normal and healthy.
It's still reasonable to wonder why the vast majority of role models are white men, and think about redressing that a bit. The problem is we sometimes get dreck like the Batwoman TV show or Captain Marvel where diversity became a creative shackle; but then we also can get the Wonder Woman* and Black Panther movies where diversity was realised as a creative opportunity. The important thing is to maintain artistic integrity.
* And yes I'm aware of the irony given the origins of the character.
It is weird, but i think you should remind your leftists friends of the Black Panther movement. Open carry pretty much created the movement, and it could have been the dream of any leftist if the rainbow coalition was not stopped by Fred Hampton's assassination by the police.
Netflix should really make a documentary on the BPP, the historian now practically agree on much of the main points (still miss classified files about CIA involvment, and a lot of FBI's). I really hoped the BLM movement could evolve into something like BPP, but i guess now it's harder to find time to read.
Newton's law of universal gravitation is quite useful even if not fully accurate. Psychologically and sociologically people especially children need to be informed and inherit a tradition which is done through story telling. Campbell points out that humans haven't changed physiologically in the last 10,000 years, what has changed are the traditions passed down by story telling. Contained in myths is more than how to tell a captivating and compelling story but also how to use symbolism, perhaps a more direct language than words. He says the myths, which people carry in their memory and thoughts as they go about their lives, serve four main functions. The first is dealing with the mystery of the universe and the human condition. Then it has a cosmological function to describe the universe and phenomena such as thunder and lightning which we now do with science. It has a sociological function informing people how to behave and act in their society and culture. And, lastly, a pedagogical function. Perhaps one day we can explain the mind and consciousness with neurology but like Newton's law, spirituality, symbolism, and mythology is very useful today.
In the context of Disney's use of mythological symbolism in their story telling, it has everything to do with tech/science. When children repeatedly watch movies like Marvel's Black Panther and pretend to be the character by dressing up, the characters become that child's identity. When they are faced with new situations like going to a new school or having to deal with bullying, they are informed how to deal with the situation by the memory of the story. In the Black Panther there is a fictional highly technologically advanced nation called Wakanda. This isn't just about telling a compelling story, it is deliberate informing girls especially girls of African decent of what their relation to the society they are born into is. The character Shuri is Head of the Science and Information Exchange. Someone at Disney decided to put a black woman in charge and this is the sociological function of the myth watched by hundreds of millions of children all around the Earth. That is a crazy new idea.
One thing these girls who grew up to become scientists will have to face is after investing 4 years in college and another 4 in graduate school they likely will be discriminated against because of the color of their skin or being female. The hero's journey is one of several mythological plots and it is the one these girls will need to be informed with at that point in order to prevent complete psychological breakdown when they face that challenge. Anyone with a crazy new idea whether it is in engineering, science, making movies based on comic books, music, or literature will have a similar journey.
I really hoped that Black Panther (the Marvel movie) was going to be the start of a new era of mainstream Afro-futurist fiction. Such an amazing genre/setting/aesthetic (depending on how it's used) that is so tragically underexplored. I've yet to see that really manifest, although I know there are sort of rumblings at the fringes -- the newest Magic: The Gathering set is explicitly paying homage to African cultures and peoples, for example.
"The Boys" is entertaining, but problematic in a number of respects. Somehow CIA are portrayed as opposed to capricious unaccountable extralegal domination of society by powerful cronyist authoritarians? Come again? In scores of nations, including USA, they have taken the opposite side. "The Boys" is more explicit than e.g. "Black Panther" in its CIA whitewashing, although that movie was probably more insulting to the memories of numerous dead Africans.
One salient difference between the characters of Butcher and "King Henry" (this is not specific) is that Henry is a king and Butcher is a somewhat violent homeless dude. One deeply suspects suggestions to see them as somehow the same.
> I do think there is a kernel of truth to what you're saying, but I don't think it's right to dismiss entirely the fact that representation IS important.
This idea is insidious.
Firstly people have to remember fiction is fiction. The reason why the first few seasons of Game of Thrones was compelling was because the world they lived in didn't have any modern sensibilities in it. The more they threw in modern sensibilities the worse the show got (thought the action scenes for the most part got better).
There was some show recently where Black slaves in the USA had taken power over the whites and a white KKK member from another dimension somehow got transported there. Some decried the show and wanted it banned. I thought it sounded excellent, because it was soooo divorced from reality. Same with the "Man from the High Castle". The setting in which the enemy won WWII was compelling.
Secondly just randomly pushing people into roles for the sake of representation ends up cheapening any genuine effort. The Wire was brilliant because the huge number of black people being in the show made sense. At the time I didn't actually notice that most of the cast was black.
You know what the end result is. It made me notice skin colour when I didn't used to and made me start to resent any effort (no matter how genuine) because I know there is probably some quota involved somewhere to pander to a demographic.
> Historically, "rich white people" have been in control of the media, so it's great to see this group becoming more self aware.
It isn't self awareness though. They are projecting their prejudices onto the rest of us. This includes places where it just isn't relevant and makes almost no sense.
How dare they project their prejudices onto me in an effort to absolve themselves of guilt, then have the gall to tell me that I am the one with the problem when I object to it. Fuck them!
I clearly remember when I decided I wouldn't watch anymore broadcast television (this was about 8 years ago now).
There was a show hosted by Scottish Comedian Frankie Boyle that was infamous for his offensive comedy. On that show there was a rich Canadian woman on the TV telling people in the audience that all men had done through the centuries was raping and beating women.
Then there was a black musician called "Akala" telling me the British Empire institutions were guilty of perpetuating racism. He seemed to be obilvious to the fact that he was on a British Institution being broadcasted to every home in the country.
Other the gross oversimplification of history. I had nothing to do with it (nor did my family as they were all very poor). It would be like blaming today's Germans for what Hitler did. It is absolutely disgusting.
You know what the end result of this is? It made me hugely suspicious of any claim of sexual misconduct or racism. It is the classic story of the boy that cried wolf.
> We should let people with compelling stories tell their stories! Now that streaming is the norm, there's room for everyone, now that we're not limited to only the stories which are marketable for primetime.
Maybe I am getting old but I remember a lot of this already happening. I am not saying it was perfect and I don't disagree with it in principle.
Recently "Black Panther" was released. "The first black super hero" they said. People seemed to forget Wesley Snipes played Blade for 3 movies (starting in 1997) and they were the first Marvel Movies and made the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe viable as it showed that a comic book property could be successful.
Before that we had the "There are no female action heroes" they said. Forgetting all thrillers in the past with heroines, a whole movie franchise called Aliens, Cherry 2000, Nikita, Tank Girl, Buffy and a bunch of other movies I have probably forgotten about where the woman had taken charge of the situation and won the day.
People increasingly think that the world before they were born didn't exist.
Theaters require a license to show a movie.
Disney does not generally grant licenses to theaters to show its films second-run (meaning after their initial box-office run) except as part of re-release initiated by Disney. They make extremely limited exceptions to this policy; the Rocky Horror Picture Show is basically the only film in the Disney/Fox vault that they allow to show second-run.
In this case, the theater announced they were going to show Black Panther without actually bothering to get the license ahead of time, and Disney did not make an exception to their policy.
Disney didn't "stop" theaters from screening Black Panther this past/upcoming weekend. Like most Disney films, it's not available for second-run showings.
It's long-standing Disney policy, and has effected films from the Fox film archives as well. (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2019-08-09/will-disney-let-theaters-screen-old-fox-movies)
Black Panther was the movie that made me realize how important minority representation can be in movies. I live near Baltimore, and the movie theatre near me was packed every weekend with kids and teens as part of youth programs. I think the movie was playing in that theatre for over two months after it had left most other theatres.
What a gut punch.
It's hard to overstate the cultural impact a movie like Black Panther had. It maybe seems silly, seeing that it's a comic book movie, but it truly showed what can happen when you give a bunch of excellent folks a real summer blockbuster budget, who historically don't get carte blanche.
And to think of Boseman's artistic output while battling this awful disease. Truly a gift to the world.
Being both male and white, I have little or no standing to talk about this area, but I will say this. I thought the Black Panther movie was awesome in many ways, but one really stood out to me. And that was how there was one character (Shuri) who was a young black female, who was one of the heroes of the story, and was a hero based on her intellect. I can't help but imagine that there were many young women, and young black women in particular, in the audiences, who were really inspired by Shuri. Especially when you consider how many movies and TV shows you see where any young black female character is either an abused victim, a prostitute, or just the girlfriend of the gang leader, or some other stereotype with mostly negative connotations.
There was this movie called Black Panther, you may or may not have heard of it....
> The goal is typically less about art (e.g. The Irishman) or even editorial vision (e.g. Black Panther as part of the MCU), and more about creating an environment that audiences never want to leave ... everything is about the player, not the storyteller. > One can debate how this orientation limits the artistic potential of the category.
The video game interaction model, which emphasizes freedom for the user within an environment, is at odds with storytelling, in which the framing, tone, pacing, and narrative have to be tightly controlled. But more practically, the artistic and narrative potential is limited because art and good storytelling aren't really what the gaming audience demands.
Before gaming "takes over" attention from storytelling media, it will need to somehow gain the narrative power of movies, TV, podcasts, and similar media, because human beings love storytelling - as we have for millenia.
Even "reality" TV, whatever one may think of its artistic merit, has a relatable narrative substructure that exceeds that of video games by a long shot.
"It all started with a realization: Most the things I search for are easy to find. Did I really need the all-seeing, all-knowing algorithms of Google to assist me? Probably not."
"As a result, I’ve had a fairly tedious but important revelation: I search for really obvious stuff. Google’s own data backs this up. Its annual round-up of the most searched-for terms is basically a list of names and events: World Cup, Avicii, Mac Miller, Stan Lee, Black Panther, Megan Markle. The list goes on. And I don’t need to buy into Google’s leviathan network of privacy-invading trackers to find out what Black Panther is and when I can go and see it at my local cinema."
"I had, based on zero evidence, convinced myself that finding things on the internet was hard and, inevitably, involved a fair amount of tracking. After two years of not being tracked and targeted, I have slowly come to realize that this is nonsense."
Every user is different. What is appealing to the author may not be appealing to the reader. The author was searching for obvious things. HN readers and commenters may have more difficult searches.
Outside of HN, it appears there is a very large quantity of users who search for the same "obvious stuff".
Eh, not so sure. Black Panther is the most critically acclaimed of the bunch and I haven't seen many people describing the movie using this angle. Sure, it's something that's there, but it's not the meat and the purpose of the movie. Certainly not how Black Panther is describe on its marketing material.
Just check say its IMDB or iTunes or Google Play or the back of the DVD is all about "a powerful enemy reappears putting the world at risk". Even the foe himself states its reason as a revenge for how blacks are/were treated around the world and he needs Wakanda's tech and weapon.
Hey, don't get me wrong. Black Panther is a good movie, and an actual good story. But check some of Scorcese's movies description or blurbs or reviews, or trailers. I think Black Panther's story is secondary to the spectacle. And that's fine! It doesn't go as far as Transformers into the abyss :)
I don't think this is a sustainable criticism.
Iron Man 3 is all about PTSD. Black Panther has a atrong theme about the damage done to children when they are abandoned. Captain Marvel is about the way women are taught to keep their strengths in check. Endgame has Thor's whole plot being about dealing with dismal failure and depression, and how this doesn't have to define you as a person.
I mean, sure, they aren't incredibly deep approaches to these topics. But there is definitely a thread of emotional, psychological experiences running through the Marvel movies.
> Everyday guy or gal gets bestowed with or discovers powers of some sort and cut to blowing a bunch of stuff up.
That comes across the same way as if I said "all romance movies end up with a couple, who don't get along, and there's some obstacle in their romance, and then they discover love, and end with smooching- end credits with some sappy music."
Yes, the elements you pointed out are a predictable part of (many, but not all) super hero movies- but there's plenty of variation if you dig just a little bit deeper. Iron Man 2 has themes of substance abuse and trust, Black Panther questioned the roles of loyalty and honor in running a country... the recent Spiderman had themes of responsibility and whether it's okay to abdicate it...
> To my mind, there's little true creativity to movies anymore
And this sounds a lot like the patent office commissioner who said, about a century ago, "we should shut down the patent office, everything that can be invented already has been."
Yes, there's a lot of unoriginality in cinema, and also a lot of originality, and both of those statements have been true for about a century. Maybe you just need to take a break from cinema for a while, you're sounding burned out.
This misses the point of Marvel movies, though. There is an entire universe of characters and stories. Iron Man's success paved the way for putting those stories on the big screen. Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, Dr. Strange, the Infinity Saga, and so on. That's what Keven Feige, and many of the Marvel people have been trying to do. Setup a universe to tell these stories instead of just having one-off superhero movies.
So instead of Spider-Man or Iron Man just being in their own movies, they can fight alongside (or even against) Captain America, Thanos, etc.
> Is there are second example?
Captain Marvel ends with a fight, but the entire point of the movie is that the people we are taught to fear as an insidious infiltration into our society are, in fact, only trying to make a home for themselves, and lash out only when terrorized by an imperial power. The hero of that story is a soldier who realizes she has been used as a weapon against innocents, and who then sets out to make amends.
Thor is about someone with the powers of a god and the simplistic morality of a child, and his entire first movie is about learning restraint and the importance of peace.
Iron Man is about an arms dealer who realizes, quote, that he has more to offer the world than things that blow up. This isn't the best example, because he's still better known for making things blow up, but he also becomes the world leader in clean energy. Iron Man also creates a rampant AI and learns that even though he's a genius, he can't build a suit of armor around the world, especially without the world's permission.
Black Panther has some reasonably complicated things to say about imperialism and the White Man's Burden. And, I guess, the stupidity of placing the world's most advanced technology and weaponry into the hands of a man who can win a fistfight about it.
The MCU movies are not considered campy by most standards since they take themselves and their internal universe completely seriously.
Batman of the 1960s was campy. The Flash TV show is campy. The MCU may have some humorous moments but the tone, overall, is serious and thought-provoking. Civil War, Black Panther, Winter Soldier, and Iron have all been mentioned here already but you can go on and on with those films.
My own resentment with superhero movies started with "The Avengers" (2012). Joss Whedon made the excellent space adventure Firefly and the even better "Dollhouse". Both series were intriguing, leaving you something to think about.
"Joker" was good however, and "Black Panther" was fun (there may be a few others I haven't seen).
Ken Loach said this of superhero films: "They're made as commodities like hamburgers, and it's not about communicating, and it's not about sharing our imagination."
Superhero films are just a genre, like any other. It's a constraint that lets you better express other themes or ideas.
Think about the best superhero films vs the worst ones. The good ones were all about something, not just people running around in costumes. And all the bad ones were just people running around in costumes.
Nolan Batman: does power make right? (all) who has the right the enforce justice? (bb and dkr) does peace by force breed a worse evil? (dk) how far can you push people before they embrace their darker haves? (dk and dkr)
Captain America: what is patriotism? (all) can you trust authority? (WS) the risks of concentrating power (WS) is rehabilitation viable (WS and CW) is safety more important than liberty? (CW)
Wonder Woman: is it better to be a part of society or apart from it? is the world worth saving? do woman have the power to shape the world?
Captain Marvel: can a woman succeed in a hero role without a male romantic/sexual interest to feminize her? also, the power of propaganda to literally shape how we view others (and especially, "The Other")
Black Panther: can black culture be identified with modernity and success? what is the role of tradition and culture in modern society? does our true power come from external sources or from within?
Spiderman (HC, FFH, IS): how much would the events of the Avengers films actually affect daily life? (HC, FFH) what are the consequences of casual implementation of government policy? (HC) what does it mean to be a superhero? (IS) what is identity (IS) how much of life is driven by deception (FFH)?
X-Men: what does it mean to be an outsider/The Other? (1, 2) can The Other become part of society (2, FC, DOFP)? Contrast with the universally derided 3, Apocalypse, and DP, which don't appear to have any driving themes.
Aquaman: can man and nature exist together in a non-destructive state? can mankind save itself?
Joker: what is sanity? how thin is the line between thought and action? does inequality justify class-based warfare? does abuse justify retribution?
Contrast with the DC Justice League ensemble films, which don't have any themes. They just have people in costumes stand around a fight CGI villains. Snyder's Superman films have a concept (what if Superman killed?) but no themes (since they backed away from actually exploring any of the religious themes likening Superman to Jesus).
For those of you who haven't had to suffer through Ken Loach's works: they're all pretentious, insufferable dramas that claim to be about something. But they're trying so hard that they have to hit you over the head over and over and over again so that you know that they're supposed to be about something. Because if his works didn't explicitly tell you they were about something you wouldn't know from the play/show/movie that it was anything deeper than the poorly directed, poorly acted crap in front of you.
I wish the first half or so of Black Panther had stuck to the villain as the perspective character. It could have been outstanding, and not just by the standards of Marvel films. That's me Monday morning quarterbacking, of course, and I'm sure it's pretty hard to know what'll work before the film's made, and harder still to make the call to break from a proven formula.
I'd probably go with Black Panther or Doctor Strange.
Captain America: The First Avenger wouldn't be a bad recommendation either (and follow it up with the Agent Carter TV series, which is one of the finest examples of dieselpunk I've seen).
If you aren't interested in super hero movies, just not watching them is a great option.
Black Panther is probably the first one to watch as a standalone.
I never go to the movie theater except for when I'm in a town that has an Alamo Drafthouse(https://drafthouse.com/).
The experience of good food, drinks and great curated movies is awesome. It's not just going to the movies, it's an evening out. I hope they continue to do well, and when they do decide to come to my town, I'll be there very often.
Last movie I saw there was Black Panther. Instead of ads before the movie, they had a retrospective/documentary on the history of Black Panther in the comics.
They know movies, and do them right.
I'm of the same mind here. But I also want to express that diversity is heavily important in movies, and movies that merely put diversity as a demographic ignore that the demographic comes with experiences. Many of the most successful movies today involve the diversity of experiences, but too much budget continues to go into rehashes.
I don't really watch movies myself, but I could tell you that Black Panther was a massive cultural success. As was Get Out. And The Shape Of Water (which I did see and enjoyed thoroughly, especially for its seamless integration with the battling of traditional and nontraditional masculinity). But I couldn't tell you anything about, I don't know, Antman or Daredevil other than that they existed at some point. And I think this reflects in commecial successes, also.
What has been forgotten is that masses do want some novelty, even if it isn't by very much. Incremental novelies, perhaps.
Netflix made over $4.5 billion in revenue last quarter and has been consistently growing it every year at insane rates. Disney? Not so much.
Disney’s revenue was three times that and they just added Fox.
Revenue means nothing without profit. Netflix’s total profit last quarter was less than that of either one of Disney’s last three Marvel movies.
Netflix is quickly reaching the scale to compete there though and they have demonstrated the ability to hire away talent from all the major studios and quickly put out content that viewers demonstrably spend time watching.
It’s not about the talent. Both Black Panther and Captain Marvel were made by unknown producers. Disney has multiple franchises that have been popular for decades.
It seems like half the bull case for Disney + is Endgame. How many people are going to pull out their wallets to sign up for a subscription to stream a six-month old movie that they've probably already seen if they're that excited about it? Seems like a stretch to me.
People are still buying Disney movies from decades ago. Kids will watch the same movie repeatedly. A lot of Disney movies are considered classics.
Well, we tend to review what's new, not something from decades ago. Different process. It's unsurprising that there are more software-countable reviews of contemporary movies.
Black Panther, to use the example some are protesting here, is a perfect storm of recent (max accessible reviews), critically acclaimed, and wildly successful commercially.
I think it's more telling that recent Star Wars movies like The Last Jedi are on the list, but A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back (which are more important imho) are not.
This is one reason I like the standard set by the Cocaine and Rhinestones country music podcast. He won't talk about 21st century music because we don't have enough distance to tell what's truly great from what's merely popular at this point. A couple of decades of reflection really separates the great from the trendy.
Popularity and marketing is a factor to the extent that lesser known movies will not get enough reviews to count. Note that some movies gets ranked lower despite having a higher percentage. E.g Citizen Kane has 100% but is ranked several steps below Black Panther which has 97%. This is due to Panther having more reviews so the confidence is higher.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/
"Top 100 Movies of All Time"
1. Black Panther
Note that this list is based on the tomato score which doesn't directly refers to the movie quality, it simply says if the movie is worth seeing.
There is also a rating which is usually hidden by default (click the more info link on a film's page). If you check that then you see, for example, that the number 1 Black Panther's rating is 8.26, while number 2 Lady Bird has a rating of 8.74, so it's a better rated movie.
There should be a top list based on ratings too. Maybe there is somewhere.
>> I have seen absolutely no evidence that “Captain Marvel” is a feminist film or that there are any more or less moral lessons in this Marvel movie than others.
Well I was referring to the article "Before the film’s release, Ms. Larson told “Entertainment Tonight” that she had spoken with Marvel about making the film “a big feminist movie.” "
>> The controversy has nothing to do with the actual content of the film.
That's a reasonable point. I agree that it's presumptuous to review a movie before you see it.
That said, I think that's distinct from the larger point. I imagine most of those people complaining would still have the same complaint after they saw it (just like they may have about Ghost Busters 2 or Black Panther).
And if they did see it, and then hate it afterwards, I think that's an entirely valid personal experience. Or if they refuse to see it (and indicate they aren't excited to see it), because they felt burned by past movie experiences, that's a valid choice too.
Lots of people in the FighterZ community now say they're "birdboxing" their opponents with blind mixups which I think is more culturally significant than anything the movies up for best picture put up, save Black Panther.
> "there are absolutely choices you can make for marketing rather than artistic reasons"
That is fair. I believe it's also the case that when evaluating art, it's easy to conflate those reasons with one's own POV and demographic biases.
In other words: Forrest Gump is cynical pandering to Baby Boomers... but [this-year's-Marvel-superhero-movie] is an artistic gem, and The Dark Knight or Black Panther got robbed at the Oscars, etc.
RT has Black Panther as their #1 movie of all time. The fact is, people have learned to inherently train themselves to use certain review websites. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/
My current rules - Anything over an 8 on imbd is a must watch if over a year old. If a comedy/action movie over a 7 is fine. For less than a year old I read reviews, and decide how invested I am in watching it. Fantastic Beasts 2 tanked, but I watched it anyway and enjoyed it.
It wasn't an isolated incident. Disney, or whatever PR firm they're using for promotions in China, did it for Black Panther too. Either of these could perhaps be written off as coincidental, and I'm sure Disney PR in the West is eager to downplay it, but when it happens a few times a pattern starts to emerge. At the very least it's something to keep an eye on whenever Disney releases a movie with a prominent black character.
https://0x0.st/zzxf.jpg
Right, but as of a few months ago Black Panther was the highest grossing (and most tickets sold) out of all Marvel movies. Probably Infinity War has passed it since then, but still. Its likely the second-most successful Marvel movie ever - thats significant, no?
https://ew.com/movies/2018/04/30/marvel-movies-box-office/
Black Panther was one of the highest grossing movies of the year, so I think it is kinda significant that it got made at all, and that it was as successful as it was.
Also, although its ostensibly a 'super hero' movie, there isn't actually any super hero stuff in it (e.g. innocent people being saved from falling lifts, burning buildings etc). Its a sci-fi story about who rules a super-advanced african nation, and what their foreign policy should be.
I remember watching the great documentary "Good Copy Bad Copy." The most memorable fact from that movie is that Nigeria is the third largest film industry in the world. And, the film added that they are making films much more relevant to people from the African disaspora than Hollywood ever will, as Black Panther proves (it's the exception to the rule and took this long because Hollywood couldn't move any faster). I'm not doubtful that Hollywood isn't aware of this shift and will use the technologies, but the author's point that there is a lot of overhead which will need to be jettisoned to compete in the future is not something to ignore.
Not the OP, but I can share what I got from Black Panther:
1. When they're in the market, people are still walking around in sandals and even barefoot.
This is counter to either ultra-sleek hygienic futures or the film noir/cyberpunk look where everything is dirty and wet. In this area, it's a bit more like Star Wars.
2. One of the elder advisors is wearing a giant lip ring (sorry, don't know what its called): https://media.comicbook.com/2017/06/black-panther-green-suit-1002072-1280x0.png
Basically, it means you can be "modern" but on your own terms (that is, have your ethnic identity still represented).
3. I like the idea that an African country being the most technologically advanced nation on earth, not Japan, China, or the US...but an African country!
I think #4 is very subversive (for unfortunate reasons). It really made me think what would it take for an African country - be it Nigerian, Botswana, South Africa etc - to compete with the likes of Singapore or California.
4. Lastly, I like the idea of the weapon that look organic rather than looks "hi-tech": https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/3e274163-f36d-4b79-bff7-25ad30f6df8e/scale-to-width-down/800
I am okay with the kingdom part. Part of future studies is also the idea that the past can be revisited. In our academically training, one of the things we talk about is that the future is not exponentially changing in a linear direction (like Singularity folks), it can be circular, stagnant, and go "backwards", etc.
For me, the bigger issue is that despite being technologically advanced they're basically a vibranium-based economy, which makes me assume that they would have the same problems as petro-states. Perhaps that explains why they're a monarchy?
"it doesn’t quite have the same punch to me"
I think one reason for that could be that the Wakanda city in Black Panther looks and feels like a city dressed in cultural heritage or a theme park, with regular "western looking" high tech insides. Look at the lab for instance. Your generic villain/Star Trek/Super Hero/Industrial lab. The whole city looks very Star Trek, very bland. I don't dislike it, but it's been done in countless STTNG episodes.
I think a depiction of an African sci-fi where the tech and the soft is reversed, would be very interesting.
In Wakanda you have cultural theme park on the outside, hard tech on the inside.
I'd rather see the opposite - hard generic tech on the outside, commandeered by a creamy, cultural inside.
Background:
Maybe the African continent was mostly spared in some kind of cataclysmic event, now some African countries are super rich from trading food and skilled labor (management and security detail mostly?) to the rest of the world for tech and tech know how in return. Refugees line its border and only people with strong know how and good teaching skills are let in.
The opening scene could get some inspiration from Chappy and District 9, but with an even stronger emphasis on tech as super advanced but casual - make the connection as well to advanced tech and magic. Skip the step where people stop believing in magic.
janelle monae is awesome, but could you elaborate on what you mean by mentioning black panther? i felt it was the same action packed drivel and cgi fest as all the other marvel movies. the fashion in the movie is great, but it also has some rather antiquated elements, like the primal way of choosing who is king, that are the opposite of futurism. the social and cultural commentary performed by the marvel movies is about as superficial as you can get.
I didn't say there are no good German movies. I said I don't like most German movies. Logically speaking "30% German movies" means that for every German movie there can be only 2-3 movies from _any other country_ (including UK, France, Spain, or other countries that aren't the US).
I'd be fine with a restriction like "30%+ EU movies" or even "50%+ EU movies" (or even "50%+ EU movies, including at least 10% German"). But _German_ movies specifically? That's pointlessly nationalistic.
There isn't 1 good German movie for every 2-3 good international movies. Even personal preference aside the numbers simply don't add up if you assume that there at least two other countries producing as many good movies as Germany does.
So this won't mean more "Goodbye Lenin", it will mean more "Hui Buh, das Schlossgespenst". If we're lucky.
If we're not lucky, it won't mean less Hollywood blockbusters, it will mean less international non-Hollywood movies. Because the Hollywood blockbusters are reliable money printing machines.
So instead of having a lot of Hollywood movies and also a lot of international movies (including several movies from Asia and South America) and a select few German movies, we'll end up with a lot of Hollywood movies and a lot of German movies, basically the same thing you see on regular TV.
Just look at it from Netflix's perspective: you want to add Black Panther because people will want to watch it. To keep the quote you'll have to add another German movie but you can also fit in another international one. Which international movie will you pick? Another Hollywood superhero movie or a lesser known French movie?
Yeah, the Atlanta area is home to a lot of movies and TV shows at this point. There's even a huge movie studio built south of Atlanta (Pinewood, opened in 2014).
Most of the recent Marvell movies were shot here.
Recent films shot in Georgia include: Godzilla: King of Monsters, the Ant Man movies, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Pitch Perfect 3, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Some television shows shot here: Stranger Things, Ozark, The Walking Dead, MacGuyver and Atlanta.
There's definitely a booming production industry in the Atlanta area.
What you see as sequelitis, others see as brand new stories, using the guise of existing characters and settings to bring in an audience. Or in other words, what artists have been doing for centuries. Shakespeare was notorious for it...and yet is regarded as the best playwright in history.
What matters is what's underneath the surface. Winter Solder, examined the role of covert operations, the military-industrial complex, and nationalism. Civil War was about the motivations for regulation, patriotism, and even terrorism. Black Panther examined the role of fathers and environment on the black community. Antman satirized the situation of released convicts and the drives of divorced fathers. Spiderman Homecoming took a dive into the lives and drives of teenagers, showing how teenage conflicts were just as meaningful (to teenagers) as the Avengers and Captain America stuff was to adults. Infinity War examined the extremes of authoritarianism and conservationism and the costs of all-out conflict. Wreck-It Ralph was about chasing the American Dream. Each Toy Story movie has examined a different phase of its characters lives over the course of decades, and has explored the topics of inclusion, purpose, death, family, and commercialism.
You say rut? I say that we are in a glorious age of movies...as long as you can look beneath the surface to what the movies are really about.
I would like to see a comparison between Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther and Avenger: Infinity War that supports your hypothesis (the three most recent films besides the very recently released Ant Man and the Wasp).
I'm not arguing the Marvel movies are the perfect movies or that they should displace and divert funding from other movies like say Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Dunkirk, or The Big Sick, and maybe 3 of them per year is a bit too much, but c'mon, "sterile as still packaged surgeon gloves"? Marvel's Overhyperbolic Universe?
> I wish they‘d use real, dying or dead languages instead of inventing advanced gibberish for movies.
John Kani, a veteran South African actor playing King T'Chaka in the Marvel movies "Captain America: Civil War" and "Black Panther", decided to speak the Wankandan language parts in Xhosa, a South African language that he is a native speaker of. He taught the rest of the cast their lines. I think it sounded realistic.
https://www.thesouthafrican.com/john-kani-influenced-the-black-panther-isixhosa-wakanda/
https://qz.com/1192662/black-panther-wakandas-language-is-isixhosa-of-south-africa/
I didn't say it was both, but here goes. One caveat is that this is a very US/UK-centric response, and it might not resonate with worldviews of people from other places with different cultures and histories.
1) It's stupid because he's making an extremely opinionated comment without understanding the thing he's commenting on.
The push for diversity is not a push to remove white, "Oxbridge" (upper-crust) men from media. It's to recognize that media isn't anywhere close to being a meritocracy, and there are barriers for poor, minority, and/or female talent that didn't exist for people like Terry Gilliam.
The industry is growing, and there's space for Terry Gilliam, lots of other white men, and also people from other backgrounds. As we've seen with The Hurt Locker, Black Panther, Broad City, and other movies/TV, women/minorities can make very profitable and prestigious work. A true media meritocracy would be more diverse than what we're seeing right now.
2) Whether it's offensive depends on the person. Some people are offended by it because it implies that black lesbians are given things in society only because of their minority status.
People on that side of the issue would say that either A) that isn't happening, or B) it is (and should be) happening because black lesbians also have fewer opportunities than non-minorities and face discrimination.
The idea was to use them as fantasy fulfillment: take any A level film or music artist, and many consumers will pay for a video clip of them as Black Panther or you-name-it high grossing entertainment of the moment. You put yourself in, willingly, and for cost reduction allow product placements.
Especially within the discourse of black folks, there is a lively debate on the extent to which Killmonger is a villain in Black Panther. My biggest criticism of the movie is that they could have written it to make it even more ambiguous, by making Killmonger less openly ruthless.
Same goes for the much maligned Marvel's Inhumans, where it's not clear exactly why the Royal Family is deserving of any sympathy.
There are a handful of movies that are not surprises, but just fun to watch.
Avengers, TLJ, Black Panther, Greatest Showman are all movies that someone can enjoy watching more than once.
I saw Black Panther three times in theaters with my MoviePass because, well, why not? The only theater near me only has 5 screens (I live in a small town), so my wife and I end up with some repeat viewings.
That said, I love MoviePass but know it's not sustainable. I wish they had rolled out these changes earlier. Something like no repeat viewings, 8 movies per month, different price depending on where you live (tickets at my theater are only $9 normally), etc, could have made this thing much more sustainable, and still probably had most of the growth.
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In my experience people who have access to a theater during their daily work/chores/gym-run/etc. will buy tons of tickets using their account to help get groups in to a movie.
I saw black panther for free thanks to my friend getting like 8 tickets for 6 of us. He had so many tickets he didn't even know where all of them were or how many he had so we found another couple in his car a few days later.
Movie pass just puts on the money on the card, but they're unaware of what you're actually buying with that. You can buy the same movie for a date in the future over multiple days. I'm sure many will try to do the same using up movies they don't care about.
The Last Jedi or Black Panther obviously wouldn't win the Palme d'Or and even if they did the audience for such films would not care a whit. So I've always thought that they simply didn't bother because there's no benefit.
Cannes is mostly about having a venue for film makers to find distributors, Netflix films already have a distributor (it's Netflix).
It's equivalent to asking why The Last Jedi or Black Panther aren't allowed to enter the competition.
> Where is my equal representation, as, say, a first generation Austrian Jewish immigrant with an anxiety disorder?
I think that's Peter Parker a.k.a Spiderman, the nebbish boy living in a multi-generational Brooklyn walk-up, with old-world grandparents.
If we're going to keep making super hero movies (which I couldn't care less about) it seems like we have to keep playing and defying the genres expectations: Spiderman, one of the first, transforms the intellectual into a man of action. Two years ago, Ryan Reynolds transformed the mask crime fighter (Deadpool) from an all-too-serious stoic into a sloppy knucklehead. And now Black Panther transforms the soulful and dirt poor African American into a royal aristocrat and scientist.
I largely agree with your final paragraph. But I think this cultural issue is going to play out like a pendulum where Hollywood is going to make ten more Black Panthers until everyone is completely sick of it, the eleventh movie tanks, and then nobody can make produce even a great Black Panther-esque movie for several years following it.
Black Panther earned its success, as did Wonder Woman. Alt-righters who complain about them are truly lone voices. But there were two major movies in recent memory -- Ghostbusters (2016) and Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi -- that had unusually high RT scores that they may not have gotten if they hadn't been so on message. Doubtless the critics involved were trying to reassure everyone that they weren't one of those people. Had they spoken the truth and said, for example, that Ghostbusters (2016) was ill-paced, obnoxious, and mostly unfunny, the likes of Jezebel would have raked them over the coals and you know it. That's what they did to James Rolfe, for simply saying he would not see the movie.
Ray, Ali, Color Purple, Glory, Django, Cotton Club, Boyz in the Hood, Friday, Malcolm X, Bad Boys, Barbershop, and of course, New Jack City.
Each of these movies did great and reached a wide demographic. As did Black Panther. The only difference is that Black Panther's marketing propogated this ridiculous myth that it was the first black superhero movie. (Sorry, Wesley Snipes, Will Smith, and Halle Berre... you're down the memory hole.) Or, even more absurd, that it is the first all-black cast that has done well at the box office.
Just shows how powerful marketing is.
More power to them... I've lived through several iterations of "'brand-new' microfiber technology that make cleaning up spills a snap!" I suppose I can live through endless repetitions of "the very first movie with a real-live black person in it!" Whatever....
> people clamoured over Black Panther as the first positive representation of blacks on screen
There were lots of things that people praised Black Panther for, but the one you point to wasn't what any significant subset were praising it for, in fact...
> while conveniently ignoring decades of black cinema.
Breaking out of the black cinema stereotype that films featuring predominantly black casts are a niche good for black audiences while films featuring predominantly white casts are mainstream products for everyone is, for instance, one of the major things Black Panther has been celebrated for.
I think you're missing the reason why people are excited about Black Panther. It actually has more to do with the motivation of profit than representation. Obviously there have been several decades of positive black cinema but the audience for those movies was always intended to be strictly "urban". And their small budgets reflected the assumption that studios thought only a small subsection of America would be interested in a black movie.
Black panther proved for the first time that you could put $200m behind a movie with a predominantly black cast, market it to mainstream America and still make $1b in revenue. Marvel/Disney's primary motivation was still profit. There's no way they would've green-lighted(greenlit?) that movie if they thought they would lose money on it.
So it's not about representation just for representation's sake. But rather celebrating the fact that representation is no longer held back due to a lack of profit.
> Where do authors like OP get the idea that I want to go to the movies to have politics shoved down my throat?
You seem to be doing that thing where you read someone's firm recommendations and assume that the author wants their recommendation to apply to everyone. I highly doubt the author expects people who don't care to see a movie about poverty to go and see a movie about poverty.
There's a similar discussion in the video game community where lots of people are upset at attempts to bring "politics" into games. The reality though is that most critics are just firmly critiquing games and not writing mandates about how all games must be. Art has always struck a balance between being a political and philosophical medium and a capitalist one, and often when people criticize a medium they're criticizing the political and philosophical part. It's totally fine for them to do so, because they feel that their criticism can help "improve" the medium even if you disagree. And likewise you disagreeing with the author is fine as well.
The problem comes about when people like yourself take personal offense to the efforts of others to improve a medium. You read this article and you read 'outrage', but film criticism such as this is a common part of critiquing any medium. Someone could write a similar article about a technique in film, but because its context isn't political people wouldn't read 'outrage' into it.
Similarly in games people view calls to dial back the sexualization of women as a "political" stance and attribute it to "outrage culture". They feel that they just play games for fun, and since the audience is mostly male the developers should focus on their audience instead of pandering to politics. But just like any artistic medium it's totally fair to criticize games for an intellectual failing that cheapens a lot of the medium's artistic merits.
People really just need to learn to read the criticisms of others without falling into the mindset "This is a capitalist medium, this isn't a capitalist critique therefor it's a political one and I'm upset by that." NO, art is political and capitalist at the same time, it's totally fine to criticize it from either perspective.
> The fact that they are not en vogue now does not speak of some kind of crisis-just like people clamoured over Black Panther as the first positive representation of blacks on screen, while conveniently ignoring decades of black cinema.
I felt compelled to point out here that the major reason people are excited about Black Panther is because the representation of black people in the world of super heroes has been poor. Kids are super into super heroes, and this gives a lot of young kids a character they can see themselves in. I don't think kids are ignoring black cinema, but kids are just more into super hero movies than other movies.
When did people lose sight of the fact that the primary purpose of film on the silver screen is entertainment?
Where do authors like OP get the idea that I want to go to the movies to have politics shoved down my throat? And that there is some kind of obligation for those in charge to forgo their primary motivations of artistic expression and/or profit in the interest of some totally arbitrary target of "representation" of every combination of color, gender, and socioeconomic status?
Not to mention, this kind of thinly veiled political grandstanding in the context of film review is almost always cherry picking. There have been plenty of films examining poverty from numerous perspectives. The fact that they are not en vogue now does not speak of some kind of crisis-just like people clamoured over Black Panther as the first positive representation of blacks on screen, while conveniently ignoring decades of black cinema.
Outrage is the kind of thing, in my opinion, that is trivial to find, if you look hard enough.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you have mostly lived in all white areas and or watched movies that appeal primarily to white audiences.
Go watch a Tyler Perry movie or the recent black panther if you want to hear lots of clapping or cheering during a movie.
I was in the cinema watching Black Panther, had to have a word with the kids behind for banging their feet which they claimed they didn't do. Turns out they were probably right!
Hm, so this is saying that the activity around Black Panther is in line with other similar films, but external factors may push its performance past those? Is there some other data you should maybe be tracking to take this into account?
Tool+site are cool, seems like a neat project.
I understand your concern, but I disagree. This kind of story isn't intended to convey what the real world of being a scientist is like, rather it is intended to show the dream of what being a scientist is like. You have to have the dream first, or you never get to the point of painful progress and impostor syndrome. If this movie makes it easier for some kids to imagine themselves finding the secret formula for super-strong battle armor, that's great! That's what stories like this are for. Later, they can read or watch other stories that tell them that the reality of science doesn't usually involve beautiful secret agents and explosions.
But then, my perspective is that I was a white kid who read the Black Panther comics and dreamed of being like him. He's like Batman or the Phantom, who are also crime fighting comic book scientists... but cooler. So, now I'm an adult scientist and my particle accelerator is in a suburb instead of a jungle cave, and I drive a Honda which does not actually have a hang-glider escape mechanism, and the beautiful Egyptian engineer in the next cubicle is (probably) not a secret agent. And, yeah, reviewing more data is boring. But still I have the dream, and the dream led me here.
Rotten Tomatoes claims not to have found any evidence of tampering with the audience score for The Last Jedi[0]. Certainly, an assessment of fan reactions in comment sections and on youtube shows a quite genuinely divided reaction to the movie.
Let's wait for Black Panther to be released publicly before getting hysterical about what some random facebook group might try to do.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2017/12/20/rotten-tomatoes-confirms-its-55-last-jedi-audience-score-is-100-authentic/
http://archive.is/FMAA5
Ah, that makes more sense. I don't think that's an issue unless there are no "jumping on points", and if there's one thing Marvel is good at, it's creating artificial new starting points...
And there's lots of jumping on points coming up, with Dr Strange, Spider-Man Homecoming, Black Panther and Captain Marvel having mostly characters new to MCU and seemingly being relatively disconnected. Thor: Ragnarok might qualify as well depending on how they do it. Ant-Man and The Wasp might too - there's not much of the back story you need to catch up on.
Marvel has a large enough stable of characters to keep on churning out new standalone movies for a very long time. Though they'll need to start dipping into less well known characters, their ensemble movies and TV series will presumably let them test characters.. Then give the top performers sequels...
If they manage to get back control over e.g. X-Men and Fantastic Four too, they'll have characters to draw on for the next couple of decades at current rates...
At which point they can start all over.
I am glad that this article brought up the elephant in the room. Eventually we have to get a re-boot of these characters, and I think that moment is fast approaching. These actors are getting older, and we already see someone of them stepping down, such as Hugh Jackman, and possibly RDJ. Furthermore we have two movies coming out which hint at major character deaths/reboots (Thor 3:Ragnakor and Cap 3:Civil War). I know Marvel has plans to add more characters with Black Panther, Inhumans, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange via movies and Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones via TV. However, that is what they are new characters. They are not going replace Cap, Wolverine, Iron-Man, or Thor. With the start of the DC Cinematic Universe coming out next year and continuing for the next 5+ years,I think we are going to see a saturation of new heroes and people are simply going to lose interest or get bored. You can only drag someone to see an origin story so many times.