7 ms·

> If we are unlucky, someone will use the brand name to start producing (en masse) garbage, selling it to Netflix, and Netflix will be pushing garbage low-quali

> If we are unlucky, someone will use the brand name to start producing (en masse) garbage, selling it to Netflix, and Netflix will be pushing garbage low-quality, hi-speed cartoons. I would really hate to see the Ghibli version of "rings of power"

dwighttk 3y ago
Don’t have to watch it… we’ll always have the books… maybe one day I’ll forget watching the first third of The Hobbit in 3D
- hx8 3y ago
  After Game of Thrones season 3 I've began ignoring film adaptations of books I enjoy. I think the risk of tarnishing my experience with a good book is much worse than any possible film enhancement I've experienced. The screenshots from Blade Runner 2 and Dune do look cool though.
  - aftbit 3y ago
    I only read the first Dune book, but I feel like the recent-ish movie did a pretty good job following what happened in the book.
    - KineticLensman 3y ago
      The third Dune book (arguably the second) actually illustrates this general point about decline as well. Run screaming from the subsequent books
      - yongjik 3y ago
        I think the second and the third was okay, but the fourth was... hmm maybe "decline" is not the right word, it was as if I walked into my favorite coffee shop and they decided to drop a bunch of bricks and PVC pipes on my laps because that's what they do now. (Can't talk about later books - I kinda stopped there and never picked up again. Maybe I should.)
        cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        God Emperor is a slog, but sets the groundwork for Heretics and Chapterhouse, and they're in my opinion very good. I've re-read Chapterhouse more than any of the others. But I think he meant for there to be a final one to follow it, and so it closes off somewhat unsatisfactorily.
        dwighttk 3y ago
        I always tell people to read the first one and stop or grit your teeth and read all of them… (Possible spoiler:) I was a little surprised in my last read through how small a part Duncan Idaho played until I got to the second book and remembered
      - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        No, not run scremaing! God Emperor and beyond are awesome. But they're not the same thing, no. They're far more philosophical, and kind of about something else. The Brian Herbert books are very bad.
  - ska 3y ago
    Blade Runner is less of an adaptation and more of a "inspired by", I think. The book and the film(s) stand on their own just fine.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      A Scanner Darkly is probably the best PKD adaptation
  - toast0 3y ago
    IMHO, Denis Villeneuve (and the rest of the crew) did a wonderful job with the visuals in Dune; there's some aspects of it I don't care for, but it definitely looks cool. But then again, I also think David Lynch (and the rest of the crew) did a wonderful job with the visuals in Dune, although somethings were a bit over the top; OTOH, I first watched this one when I was like 10 and got sucked in, so I'm not unbiased. I think both films did a great job of practical shooting that will continue to look good well into the future unlike a lot of recent films that are a lot of short takes in front of a green screen (cough Star Wars after the first two; most of Marvel cough). I'm looking forward to Dune: Part 2 this year, even if I'm pretty sure I'll dislike the same things I dislike from Dune: Part 1, because the visuals are likely to be going to be wonderful. The SciFi channel had zero budget and it showed; but I think they stuck to the book a lot better; but I don't think I'll ever rewatch them, because the visuals are so bad. Anyway --- we can always treat adaptations as inspired by rather than based on. I, Robot is a fun action film that name drops the three laws, but is otherwise unconnected to the book. The song retains the name, as they say.
    - dwighttk 3y ago
      (Dune has been delayed to early next year)
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Blade Runner 2 was a great film. I think made slightly worse by its connections to the original. But I would recommend it. It’s nice that it is far enough in the future that it is a different world concept and there is no inclination to care about the canon.
    - the_af 3y ago
      I'm a fan of Blade Runner and really disliked Blade Runner 2. To be honest, it didn't stand a chance with me: BR2 is a movie that didn't need to get made. Someone else in this thread called it "fanfiction", and that's what it is: technically very well made, but pointless fanfiction nonetheless. But if I had a slightly open mind about it, the inclusion of old Deckard, the chew-the-scenery overacting of Jared Leto (and actor that is always hard to like), and that ridiculous "I'm the best" Luv -- which is miles behind the marvelously inspired Roy Batty -- were the final nail (nails?) in the coffin of this trainwreck of a movie. The only saving graces are set design, K and the implications about Joi and her mass-produced but convincing displays of affection. The rest of the story is pointless and most of the characters are unlikable and badly acted. Again, no movie would have satisfied me. I think the very concept of a Blade Runner sequel is wrong and a mistake; but Hollywood must march on, I guess.
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        Idk. I thought the hooker scene and the android test scene were phenomenal and interesting. If the first one asked if synthetic life could be human, this one seemed to argue that it’s arguably inevitable if the beings are living real lives; and the ultimate meaningless of the distinction. I thought that was great. I agree Ford and Leto were distractions to the detriment of the film. Would have been fine as an independent original film and not blade runner although the reflections of the original did help highlight the themes.
        the_af 3y ago
        The hooker scene did nothing for me, but the replicant alignment test was interesting. I think K was an interesting character. I do agree there were some good questions asked by the film (just not anything to do with Wallace's "vision" -- boy did this ruin the movie for me!). > Would have been fine as an independent original film and not blade runner Yes. I would have received this way better had it been an original film with echoes of Blade Runner (so I would have been spared, for example, the ridiculous execution of clone-Rachael) instead of an official sequel. I can accept "I'm a director who admires Blade Runner and want to do a film that is a homage to it", but cannot accept "I want to do Blade Runner 2". For the record, I think Villeneuve is a good director and also think this was a genuine attempt at doing something good. It just happens that it was a bad idea, doomed to fail.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Blade Runner 2 is basically .. fan fiction done by one of the best directors ever. The story is pointless. The movie aimless. The visuals and acting and directing absolutely stunning. As lovely as it was to look at, I'd just like my 3 hours back. The original movie was a somewhat campy but beautiful film-noir sci-fi detective thing that actually didn't take itself that seriously, despite being aesthetically quite serious. The new thing took itself way way way too seriously. But Dune 1 is amazing. Highly recommended, and I'm a deep Dune nerd (... but not the Brian Herbert crap, that's not Dune) for decades. It's not the "same" as the book -- it lacks a lot of what's there -- but it's enough of the book and amazing in its own right that it's absolutely worth the experience.
    - hvis 3y ago
      To be fair, the original Blade Runner was also basically fan fiction to the source material. The second one was too, and though it was quite different in tone, I liked both.
  - the_af 3y ago
    > The screenshots from Blade Runner 2 and Dune do look cool though. Good news about Dune! It's actually a good movie. It's both close to the book and makes the right calls in changing what needs to be changed for the big screen. It looks amazing, too. Give it a chance. Bad news about Blade Runner 2: it's not good. It looks good, but the movie is pointless and jarringly bad acted at times (Jared Leto, enough said). And I say this as someone who absolutely loves Blade Runner, so I'm not one of the naysayers who found it "boring". It's not boring -- it's bad and pointless. Someone here called it "fanfiction", and that's what it is: fanfiction by a very competent director who doesn't truly understand the source material.
  - skjoldr 3y ago
    Dune has the opposite problem, the movie by itself is quite confusing and even boring to newcomers, but people who had read the book can really appreciate its effort to stay true to the source material. It is a very difficult story to adapt.
tetris11 3y ago
There's a Steven Universe version of Superman right now, and as terrible as that sounds, its pretty good.
- autoexec 3y ago
  I'll be calling it that from here on, so thanks for that, but I admit I was pleasantly surprised by how good it is. Studio Mir rarely disappoints in terms of quality (although I still think The Legend of Korra was their best work), but I really wasn't expecting the rest of the show to be worth watching.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  What’s a Steven Universe of Superman mean? Animation style—eh, it changes, cartoons have been getting more stylized/less detailed since, like, the 80’s. It turns out characters don’t need a million belts and pockets to be compelling, haha. Theme-wise, Steven Universe is pretty well received.
  - tetris11 3y ago
    Oh I agree, its just that Superman has always been painted as a wholesome softie only in contrast to his more brooding teammates (JLA, anything that DC has produced). Yet, here he is in a cutesy setting where rarely anyone is brooding, and somehow it just works. It even feels more true to his character, as the lightness of his personality and others is even more contrasted to the seriousness of the situations they face (similar thematically to old school Teen Titans perhaps), and also makes the argument that Earth influenced him for the better as a child much more compelling. The stakes are high, but goodness and strength of character prevails. Best animated version I've seen so far.
ryandrake 3y ago
> I would really hate to see the Ghibli version of "rings of power" Then, don’t see it. Fans need to stop enabling these awful reboots: by withholding their wallets. These IP vampires are only motivated by money, and if we give them money as a reward for milking past franchises, then they will continue to do it.
- tetris11 3y ago
  People don't vote with their wallets with clear minds though. People vote with half-asleep notions of what's good based on an onslaught of direct and viral marketing combo that threatens to ostracize them from their various social/support groups if they don't consume said product. No one has the time and energy to fight that on every front, nor has the know-how in every conceivable field to understand what is a lie and what isn't.
- Andrex 3y ago
  Prime is subsidized by a million other things. Cancelling does not send a message, or rather, the message isn't nearly specific enough to be interpreted by Amazon as "we should make a better show and/or stop making this one." The entire feedback loop for the media industry has been perverted by tech companies and Venture Capital vampires, and it wasn't in a great place before.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    Huh? I'm sure Amazon has no trouble gathering data about exactly how many of its Prime members are watching various shows/movies on their service. They're not going to pour money into something if no one is watching it. It's not like the old days of regular TV where they needed Nielsen to try to guess how many people were watching something.
- smolder 3y ago
  I agree in principle, but it can be difficult in practice to vote with your wallet. In the case of movies, once you have a ticket or purchase it or even rent it, they've got your money and have learned the lesson that people will pay, regardless of how you felt about what you watched or whether you intend to boycott future productions. In general, though, I do try to send the signal that I'm not personally a garbage dump for low effort content, by doing a few things: - No "guilty pleasure" watching of things that I'd prefer didn't exist, i.e. junk reality TV - Actively avoiding clicking on things that have clickbait titles, especially if they're part of an algo-feed - Read reviews / get reviews from friends first - If a streaming show is bad, stop watching ASAP. Stopping at episode 2/10 is a reliable signal for Netflix et al.

dwighttk 3y ago

Don’t have to watch it… we’ll always have the books… maybe one day I’ll forget watching the first third of The Hobbit in 3D

hx8 3y ago
After Game of Thrones season 3 I've began ignoring film adaptations of books I enjoy. I think the risk of tarnishing my experience with a good book is much worse than any possible film enhancement I've experienced. The screenshots from Blade Runner 2 and Dune do look cool though.
- aftbit 3y ago
  I only read the first Dune book, but I feel like the recent-ish movie did a pretty good job following what happened in the book.
  - KineticLensman 3y ago
    The third Dune book (arguably the second) actually illustrates this general point about decline as well. Run screaming from the subsequent books
    - yongjik 3y ago
      I think the second and the third was okay, but the fourth was... hmm maybe "decline" is not the right word, it was as if I walked into my favorite coffee shop and they decided to drop a bunch of bricks and PVC pipes on my laps because that's what they do now. (Can't talk about later books - I kinda stopped there and never picked up again. Maybe I should.)
      - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        God Emperor is a slog, but sets the groundwork for Heretics and Chapterhouse, and they're in my opinion very good. I've re-read Chapterhouse more than any of the others. But I think he meant for there to be a final one to follow it, and so it closes off somewhat unsatisfactorily.
        dwighttk 3y ago
        I always tell people to read the first one and stop or grit your teeth and read all of them… (Possible spoiler:) I was a little surprised in my last read through how small a part Duncan Idaho played until I got to the second book and remembered
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      No, not run scremaing! God Emperor and beyond are awesome. But they're not the same thing, no. They're far more philosophical, and kind of about something else. The Brian Herbert books are very bad.
- ska 3y ago
  Blade Runner is less of an adaptation and more of a "inspired by", I think. The book and the film(s) stand on their own just fine.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    A Scanner Darkly is probably the best PKD adaptation
- toast0 3y ago
  IMHO, Denis Villeneuve (and the rest of the crew) did a wonderful job with the visuals in Dune; there's some aspects of it I don't care for, but it definitely looks cool. But then again, I also think David Lynch (and the rest of the crew) did a wonderful job with the visuals in Dune, although somethings were a bit over the top; OTOH, I first watched this one when I was like 10 and got sucked in, so I'm not unbiased. I think both films did a great job of practical shooting that will continue to look good well into the future unlike a lot of recent films that are a lot of short takes in front of a green screen (cough Star Wars after the first two; most of Marvel cough). I'm looking forward to Dune: Part 2 this year, even if I'm pretty sure I'll dislike the same things I dislike from Dune: Part 1, because the visuals are likely to be going to be wonderful. The SciFi channel had zero budget and it showed; but I think they stuck to the book a lot better; but I don't think I'll ever rewatch them, because the visuals are so bad. Anyway --- we can always treat adaptations as inspired by rather than based on. I, Robot is a fun action film that name drops the three laws, but is otherwise unconnected to the book. The song retains the name, as they say.
  - dwighttk 3y ago
    (Dune has been delayed to early next year)
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Blade Runner 2 was a great film. I think made slightly worse by its connections to the original. But I would recommend it. It’s nice that it is far enough in the future that it is a different world concept and there is no inclination to care about the canon.
  - the_af 3y ago
    I'm a fan of Blade Runner and really disliked Blade Runner 2. To be honest, it didn't stand a chance with me: BR2 is a movie that didn't need to get made. Someone else in this thread called it "fanfiction", and that's what it is: technically very well made, but pointless fanfiction nonetheless. But if I had a slightly open mind about it, the inclusion of old Deckard, the chew-the-scenery overacting of Jared Leto (and actor that is always hard to like), and that ridiculous "I'm the best" Luv -- which is miles behind the marvelously inspired Roy Batty -- were the final nail (nails?) in the coffin of this trainwreck of a movie. The only saving graces are set design, K and the implications about Joi and her mass-produced but convincing displays of affection. The rest of the story is pointless and most of the characters are unlikable and badly acted. Again, no movie would have satisfied me. I think the very concept of a Blade Runner sequel is wrong and a mistake; but Hollywood must march on, I guess.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      Idk. I thought the hooker scene and the android test scene were phenomenal and interesting. If the first one asked if synthetic life could be human, this one seemed to argue that it’s arguably inevitable if the beings are living real lives; and the ultimate meaningless of the distinction. I thought that was great. I agree Ford and Leto were distractions to the detriment of the film. Would have been fine as an independent original film and not blade runner although the reflections of the original did help highlight the themes.
      - the_af 3y ago
        The hooker scene did nothing for me, but the replicant alignment test was interesting. I think K was an interesting character. I do agree there were some good questions asked by the film (just not anything to do with Wallace's "vision" -- boy did this ruin the movie for me!). > Would have been fine as an independent original film and not blade runner Yes. I would have received this way better had it been an original film with echoes of Blade Runner (so I would have been spared, for example, the ridiculous execution of clone-Rachael) instead of an official sequel. I can accept "I'm a director who admires Blade Runner and want to do a film that is a homage to it", but cannot accept "I want to do Blade Runner 2". For the record, I think Villeneuve is a good director and also think this was a genuine attempt at doing something good. It just happens that it was a bad idea, doomed to fail.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Blade Runner 2 is basically .. fan fiction done by one of the best directors ever. The story is pointless. The movie aimless. The visuals and acting and directing absolutely stunning. As lovely as it was to look at, I'd just like my 3 hours back. The original movie was a somewhat campy but beautiful film-noir sci-fi detective thing that actually didn't take itself that seriously, despite being aesthetically quite serious. The new thing took itself way way way too seriously. But Dune 1 is amazing. Highly recommended, and I'm a deep Dune nerd (... but not the Brian Herbert crap, that's not Dune) for decades. It's not the "same" as the book -- it lacks a lot of what's there -- but it's enough of the book and amazing in its own right that it's absolutely worth the experience.
  - hvis 3y ago
    To be fair, the original Blade Runner was also basically fan fiction to the source material. The second one was too, and though it was quite different in tone, I liked both.
- the_af 3y ago
  > The screenshots from Blade Runner 2 and Dune do look cool though. Good news about Dune! It's actually a good movie. It's both close to the book and makes the right calls in changing what needs to be changed for the big screen. It looks amazing, too. Give it a chance. Bad news about Blade Runner 2: it's not good. It looks good, but the movie is pointless and jarringly bad acted at times (Jared Leto, enough said). And I say this as someone who absolutely loves Blade Runner, so I'm not one of the naysayers who found it "boring". It's not boring -- it's bad and pointless. Someone here called it "fanfiction", and that's what it is: fanfiction by a very competent director who doesn't truly understand the source material.
- skjoldr 3y ago
  Dune has the opposite problem, the movie by itself is quite confusing and even boring to newcomers, but people who had read the book can really appreciate its effort to stay true to the source material. It is a very difficult story to adapt.

tetris11 3y ago

There's a Steven Universe version of Superman right now, and as terrible as that sounds, its pretty good.

autoexec 3y ago
I'll be calling it that from here on, so thanks for that, but I admit I was pleasantly surprised by how good it is. Studio Mir rarely disappoints in terms of quality (although I still think The Legend of Korra was their best work), but I really wasn't expecting the rest of the show to be worth watching.
bee_rider 3y ago
What’s a Steven Universe of Superman mean? Animation style—eh, it changes, cartoons have been getting more stylized/less detailed since, like, the 80’s. It turns out characters don’t need a million belts and pockets to be compelling, haha. Theme-wise, Steven Universe is pretty well received.
- tetris11 3y ago
  Oh I agree, its just that Superman has always been painted as a wholesome softie only in contrast to his more brooding teammates (JLA, anything that DC has produced). Yet, here he is in a cutesy setting where rarely anyone is brooding, and somehow it just works. It even feels more true to his character, as the lightness of his personality and others is even more contrasted to the seriousness of the situations they face (similar thematically to old school Teen Titans perhaps), and also makes the argument that Earth influenced him for the better as a child much more compelling. The stakes are high, but goodness and strength of character prevails. Best animated version I've seen so far.

ryandrake 3y ago

> I would really hate to see the Ghibli version of "rings of power" Then, don’t see it. Fans need to stop enabling these awful reboots: by withholding their wallets. These IP vampires are only motivated by money, and if we give them money as a reward for milking past franchises, then they will continue to do it.

tetris11 3y ago
People don't vote with their wallets with clear minds though. People vote with half-asleep notions of what's good based on an onslaught of direct and viral marketing combo that threatens to ostracize them from their various social/support groups if they don't consume said product. No one has the time and energy to fight that on every front, nor has the know-how in every conceivable field to understand what is a lie and what isn't.
Andrex 3y ago
Prime is subsidized by a million other things. Cancelling does not send a message, or rather, the message isn't nearly specific enough to be interpreted by Amazon as "we should make a better show and/or stop making this one." The entire feedback loop for the media industry has been perverted by tech companies and Venture Capital vampires, and it wasn't in a great place before.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  Huh? I'm sure Amazon has no trouble gathering data about exactly how many of its Prime members are watching various shows/movies on their service. They're not going to pour money into something if no one is watching it. It's not like the old days of regular TV where they needed Nielsen to try to guess how many people were watching something.
smolder 3y ago
I agree in principle, but it can be difficult in practice to vote with your wallet. In the case of movies, once you have a ticket or purchase it or even rent it, they've got your money and have learned the lesson that people will pay, regardless of how you felt about what you watched or whether you intend to boycott future productions. In general, though, I do try to send the signal that I'm not personally a garbage dump for low effort content, by doing a few things: - No "guilty pleasure" watching of things that I'd prefer didn't exist, i.e. junk reality TV - Actively avoiding clicking on things that have clickbait titles, especially if they're part of an algo-feed - Read reviews / get reviews from friends first - If a streaming show is bad, stop watching ASAP. Stopping at episode 2/10 is a reliable signal for Netflix et al.