5 ms·

This type of development is unfortunately par for the course with modern Hollywood remakes of older media and probably will only get worse over time. I am not f

This type of development is unfortunately par for the course with modern Hollywood remakes of older media and probably will only get worse over time. I am not familiar at all with the LoTR stuff that's going on, but it seems somewhat similar to what they've done with Star Trek. Discovery and (especially) Picard make a mockery of Old Trek in terms of vision and values. I saw a recent parody video that described the TNG Federation as "Vegetarian Space Socialists" that everyone finds annoying but it seems like the writers of Picard have taken it literally. I won't argue that Old Trek is the epitome of subtlety, but the basic premise was that the Federation represents a utopian society that has mostly put aside material concerns in order to promote peace and prosperity in the galaxy. Star Trek was a series of stories about what would happen when you take people from this utopian society and put them in uncomfortable and challenging situations. This worked amazingly well. Picard and Discovery throws this out the window. It seems like the rough outline of the show was to shoehorn as much heavy handed modern political controversy in between the big budget space battles. The characters seem to be raring to fight at every juncture which is pretty much the opposite of the Federation's MO. This has also happened with Star Wars but I feel less bad. I think Star Wars was always a bit less "high brow" than some of the other media being discussed here, but Disney seems to have scoured the entire script of the original trilogy for any lines they could stretch out into scenes for a spinoff film ("Kessel Run" for Solo, "Many Bothans Died" for Rogue One). To me this stuff is straight up cringe - at the same level as bad fan fiction. Ultimately I have started to regard most of these films as products in the same sense as breakfast cereal at the grocery store. When they put out a new neon green version of lucky charms I don't get mad - I don't pay attention at all. Luckily, it seems like there are some filmmakers who are making interesting films even post-COVID (Robert Eggers, David Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) so I have some hope for the future. But these mega-budget reboots? I do my best to ignore their existence at this point.

cloutchaser 4y ago
The people who write these believe that the old hero myths stories are based on the wrong values, and they are on a mission to correct it. Responsibility, sacrifice, being torn between good and bad, these are not what modern stories should be made of. But for some masochistic reason these same people can’t write their own stories, they actually want to destroy existing stories, kill off the previous characters and storylines, and insert their own philosophy into the old worlds. It’s ridiculous, and narcissistic, and I sincerely hope something that makes these companies go bust. I sincerely hope in the long run there isn’t a market for this behaviour. Star Wars certainly seems to have collapsed.
- raspberry1337 4y ago
  Star Wars hasn't collapsed, but it isn't cool among the kids anymore. There is much better stuff out there for kids and young teenagers. Take the Star wars Battlefield games as an example - those games were contentless, badly designed crap and quickly went to available-for-free. Even for free I could barely play it for an hour. Another example, when the new movies came H&M had star wars t-shirts in their stores, I never saw a single person with that new storm trooper helmet on their chest in my city. Star Wars huge size and market came from all the toys it sold, now that is pretty much over.
  - cloutchaser 4y ago
    Why is star wars not cool among the kids any more, when being a geek is very cool, sci fi is cool, much more than in the 80s and 90s. Why is it that almost every generation had star wars fans yet kids don't find it cool any more NOW? Perhaps it's because this new type of storytelling has no market appeal. It appeals to narcissistic preachy writers in hollywood, but not to anyone else.
qsort 4y ago
I'm a massive Star Trek fan, I've watched everything with "trek" in the title, but the quality has always been very uneven. Even TOS isn't without its preachy nonsense, like: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Let_That_Be_Your_Last_Battlefield_(episode) https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Let_That_Be_Your_Last_B..., a "subtle metaphor" of racism and ethnic conflict.
- plugger 4y ago
  Yea, I find the people who complain about Star Trek and its 'wokeness' who also state they are diehard fans confusing. TOS was very heavy handed in its progressiveness at the time. Uhara and Sulu were considered groundbreaking characters from a diversity perspective. I also agree about the uneven quality.
  - causality0 4y ago
    I'd say the bigger difference is old Trek showed and talked about how they are better, while new Trek talks about how not being like them makes you horrible.

cloutchaser 4y ago

The people who write these believe that the old hero myths stories are based on the wrong values, and they are on a mission to correct it. Responsibility, sacrifice, being torn between good and bad, these are not what modern stories should be made of. But for some masochistic reason these same people can’t write their own stories, they actually want to destroy existing stories, kill off the previous characters and storylines, and insert their own philosophy into the old worlds. It’s ridiculous, and narcissistic, and I sincerely hope something that makes these companies go bust. I sincerely hope in the long run there isn’t a market for this behaviour. Star Wars certainly seems to have collapsed.

raspberry1337 4y ago
Star Wars hasn't collapsed, but it isn't cool among the kids anymore. There is much better stuff out there for kids and young teenagers. Take the Star wars Battlefield games as an example - those games were contentless, badly designed crap and quickly went to available-for-free. Even for free I could barely play it for an hour. Another example, when the new movies came H&M had star wars t-shirts in their stores, I never saw a single person with that new storm trooper helmet on their chest in my city. Star Wars huge size and market came from all the toys it sold, now that is pretty much over.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  Why is star wars not cool among the kids any more, when being a geek is very cool, sci fi is cool, much more than in the 80s and 90s. Why is it that almost every generation had star wars fans yet kids don't find it cool any more NOW? Perhaps it's because this new type of storytelling has no market appeal. It appeals to narcissistic preachy writers in hollywood, but not to anyone else.

qsort 4y ago

I'm a massive Star Trek fan, I've watched everything with "trek" in the title, but the quality has always been very uneven. Even TOS isn't without its preachy nonsense, like: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Let_That_Be_Your_Last_Battlefield_(episode) https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Let_That_Be_Your_Last_B..., a "subtle metaphor" of racism and ethnic conflict.

plugger 4y ago
Yea, I find the people who complain about Star Trek and its 'wokeness' who also state they are diehard fans confusing. TOS was very heavy handed in its progressiveness at the time. Uhara and Sulu were considered groundbreaking characters from a diversity perspective. I also agree about the uneven quality.
- causality0 4y ago
  I'd say the bigger difference is old Trek showed and talked about how they are better, while new Trek talks about how not being like them makes you horrible.