When you consider gamer gate, Hollywood, and the media in general, you simply cannot trust the professional "critics" when it comes to movies, shows, and media. The reason is simple, they view all media through a political lens, not whether the shows are actually entertaining or not.
Akin to the words "racist," "sexist," "brave," and "offended," professional critics' opinions no longer have any meaning and therefore no longer have any value. Extrapolating (not terribly far) from this, any awards can also be considered completely pointless and completely political such as the Oscars, the Nobel Peace Prize, and whatever else the baby boomer elite are awarding themselves for political reasons.
I cannot emphasize this enough to younger people who are currently being raised to pursue "excellence" when that excellence is in the form of a "prize" or social recognization from institutions that are corrupted. If you want to be a GOOD journalist, you DO NOT want a Pulitzer. If you want to make a good movie, you do NOT want an Oscar. Much as I dislike social media, at least there are reviews, ratings, and yelp which are the opinions and views of "the people" and I suggest if you want a better life, be it your career, or simple enjoyment of entertainment and media, you completely dismiss what the "professional critics" say and instead listen to the voice of the people.
Some critics can't leave the virtue-signalling at the door. Case in point:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bohemian-rhapsody-2018
I wouldn't have watched the show anyway, but I was really happy with Dreamworks Voltron revamp, which was a great redux of the original without actually being the original. I saw one short gif of the main character on my FB feed and the first thing I thought was: She looks like a teenage boy in drag. Boy eyes, boy arms, boy face and zero chest for a girl, unless she's supposed to be some pre-pubescent child, in which case how is she fighting bad guys and stuff? Lame. Ruining the opportunity for adults to relive some of their childhood with their own kids by rehashing fun old tv shows into propaganda.
ReplyDeleteAn exception being Cowboy Bebop, which has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes; as it should. Sometimes even a blind squirrel will find a nut.
ReplyDeleteOoooh, it's the one-eye look ...
ReplyDeleteILLUMINATI!
Voice of the people my ass. I don't usually disagree with you, but Yelp is known to be corrupt and I suspect TripAdvisor is too - at the very least they are controlled by the pc police. I made a detailed review for a Sweeney Todd musical I took my wife to and it got deleted because as an aside in my TLDR review I pointed out that the black guy playing Sweeney Todd was horribly miscast for the time period and couldn't sing or act and was clearly only given the role by the lefties making the play for political reasons. I sent TA a message to ask about this and instead of replying they deleted my profile picture and renamed me "default" and a bunch of numbers. Still haven't heard back and it has been months now. That is despite being on their sitr for over 3 years and having thw highest level "badges" in nearly everything and having mever mentioned race before and only mentiomed politics a handful of times if a place was clearly pushing an agenda. Also new movies always have great reviews - like the new mediocre Halloween movie - and then after they have been out for awhile their ratings tank, as such I officially trust no reviews unless they are from individual people I trust.
ReplyDeleteIn all honesty, most online movie critics are bought and paid for fanboys like Harry Knowles and Devin Faraci. Rotten Tomatoes is more of a symptom of what's wrong with film criticism. There's also the sites of film critics and bloggers like Collider, Screenrant, even Cracked too.. that have also contributed to why films suck today. When all they write about is "why this film is bad/this film is better, etc..." There is some kind of agenda going on.
ReplyDeleteMost of these people hate diversity in ways of film-making,
For example, most of the people who write and talk on those sites are huge Marvel Cinematic Universe/Star Wars (read: Disney) fans. They have relentlessly crusaded against any other film franchise that dares to do the shared universe film concept differently. The DC Extended Universe is still their biggest target for doing things differently and they have ripped their films apart so much while leaving MCU films alone.
They've also gone after franchises like the Dark Universe and the Amazing Spider Man Universe. Hell, their politics is the same as SJW's. I saw a Twitter post from a former Collider employee, John Campea who agreed that the Last Jedi pissed off people because of Russian bots.
But now it seems the audience has more power than critics now. I'm surprised these bloggers/critics didn't make some crazed fan go nuts on them, but they'll blame the fans for that.
Caveat: I agree with you about critics. They're overwhelmingly either political hacks or they're fanboys. I never thought I'd long for the days when the critics were just overeducated in the field of film analysis and happened to lean left...
ReplyDeleteThat said, I just watched the first three episodes with my daughters. Here's my impressions of things that are good and bad:
1) SUPER GOOD: Adora is a pretty good fighter because she's been trained how to do it. But to beat down professional soldiers or any adults, she has to be She Ra. There's no way that this show is about rah-rah girls-can-do-anything-boys-can about this. SHE CANNOT BEAT ADULTS WITHOUT MAGICAL ENHANCEMENT. And even with magical enhancement, she's not invulnerable. In that aspect, this show is the OPPOSITE of feminazi wish fulfillment.
2) GOOD: She Ra is probably in the range of 8-12, but it actually appears to me to be an attempt to make her just a little older than her target audience so that she's in the range of an older sister to young girls, if not an outright attempt to de-sexualize her. While it makes no sense in the context of having a young girl engaged in actual combat at that age, it makes complete sense as a marketing gimmick. They even put shorts on her under the skirt, which as a father, i actually prefer, because my kids are watching this.
3) GOOD: The writers are focusing on back story and making well-developed, three dimensional characters. Adora's reasons for being in the Horde to begin with aren't really well explained by the end of episode three, nor is there any mention of Eternia or Adora's twin brother. However, Adora's relationships are explored and fleshed out very well, such as those with Catra and Shadow Weaver. Also, Adora's reasons for defecting from the Horde are pretty well explored, and the effects this has on her relationships both with members of the rebellion and with her old friends in the Horde. This is far better done than in the original series (from what I remember about the original series).
4) GOOD: The writers are not shy about She Ra engaging in violence at all, but there's some well-written exploration (considering the age of the target audience) about when and why violence should be used. Like any cartoon for young kids, the bad guys are bad simply because they're bad, and that's all you need to know. And within the first three episodes, She Ra puts a massive beatdown on them because they're actively engaged in doing bad things.
5) NOT SO GOOD: Males are virtually nonexistent in this show so far. The only two prominent male characters I remember are Hordak himself and Bow. I think it's Grizzlor making an appearance as the leader of nameless, faceless soldiers, but other than that, virtually all the leadership of the Horde is female, and pretty much everyone running everything in the rebellion are female.
6) REALLY GOOD: I only remember the Horde soldiers as male. Again, this is the opposite of feminazi wish fulfillment in that women are not shown to be the physical equals of men. And given that Bow is male and actually is useful in combat, I can't fairly say that all males are portrayed as evil either.
7) GOOD: Women are either "traditionally attractive," or they have their faces covered. Just like the world should be. ;) Girls are just girls, no sexualization. Although in at least one transformation sequence, when Adora becomes She Ra, her hair grows RIDICULOUSLY long right before her tiara magically appears, so maybe one or two of the artists have a fetish? If it was on an adult woman, it would be hot. This is the only thing that I think could be construed as sexualizing She Ra, but even that didn't make me uncomfortable with my daughters watching it.
CONTINUED:
ReplyDelete8) EXTREMELY GOOD: The animators got rid of putting ridiculous damned hearts and rainbows all over everything in sight. And no ridiculously impractical battle vehicles.
9) EXTREMELY GOOD: No sign of Kowl.
10) GOOD: Madame Razz appears to recognize that she's a crazy old loon. But no sign of the approximately 8,000 cats that a woman like that would have on our planet, so... OK.
11) GOOD: Genuine chuckles here and there throughout the show about some of the sillier plot points.
Verdict: No ham-fisted Kathleen Kennedy-type political messaging. Realistic recognition that She Ra has to be turned into a magical superbeing to effectively fight adults and men. Recognition that violence sometimes IS the damned answer. Exploration of what makes fighting good or bad. No ridiculous flowers and rainbows. No irritating sidekicks. Good character development. Some humor.
It's a tv show I can watch with my daughters without wanting to put a gun in my mouth. Congratulations to the team, job well done so far.