“In the book, Ben sneaks into the Marsten House and he sees the ghost of Hubert Marsten,” the director explains. “I shot that and it used to open the movie, but it seemed to muddy the waters for audiences; the ghost story within the vampire story. To me it’s so important because it’s why Ben believes the vampire stuff, but we’re not telling that story, so that was the hardest thing to cut because I love the sequence.”
Without that part Ben’s return to his former hometown and his fascination with the Marsten house is difficult to understand.
I couldn’t help myself from watching the first 10mins before heading off to work just to get a feel for it and the 1st scene of the movie was from about 150 pages into the book. They just get right into the vampire stuff. It feels as if we’re all going to be wanting that 3 hour cut…
No matter what they did to this film, nobody will ever be able to serve up a worse adaptation of King’s material than they did with that Dark Tower movie. Seven extremely long novels condensed down to a 90 minute film. Sheer brilliance.
I wonder: are those toxic keyboard warriors really influencing box office or streaming data? Or is it just giving them too much attention or any attention which makes studios so nervous?
I agree, that one guy who is making a YouTube video, because his mom is taking too long making pop tarts in the kitchen upstairs, is being given a massively disproportionate voice.
Frankly, these guys are given way too much attention. People whose aim is to keep their fantasy - fan-ta-sy, think about that - franchise racially clean are evidently less interested in their franchise than they are in their own agenda. I’m no fan of that Power-Ringy-thingy but whoever enjoys it: great, be my guest.
If I don’t like something I just don’t watch it. Those who cannot wait to produce hate videos on YouTube are apparently trying to start their own franchise based on the hate of a show, film, book whatever. Not the most healthy of activities if you ask me.
Forget about Hollywood. Take everything in that article - the same people and behaviors - and apply it to more important things like current events and politics and you have the current state of the world. Instead of affecting box office you’re dealing with protests in the streets and assassination attempts.
It may have seemed like a great idea a few decades ago to be super connected to the rest of the world but the reality of it turned out to be that the loudest and craziest voices overwhelmed the whole damn thing and drowned everything else out.
Not telling you anything you didn’t already know, of course. Just venting
Another aspect seems to be the ongoing unwillingness of social media platforms to reveal the real names of users who post hate and death threats.
Imagine how fast those would stop if they became liable immediately.
As for studios employing superfans in focus groups: on the one hand it’s just a good business decision to ask the target group what they want, on the other this makes art just „content“, a product to sell to the usual suspects.
I‘d prefer a film which is good going its own way instead of a product fulfilling a certain group‘s needs, even if I am a member of that group. Because so often human beings just don’t know what they need until they are surprised by it being given to them.
I believe someone on here had No Time To Die as a possible title (along with a lot of others). I would like to believe that’s where they got the idea … but maybe BB was bored and watching an old Columbo episode.
While there clearly is a nasty online element, I do think studios, producers, actors etc. (and even fans who positive review bomb things to “counter” negative reviews) are using “toxic fandom” as bit safety net of an excuse.
Some projects, series, franchises etc. are just bad to many people. It can be that simple with no more maliciousness to it.
I don’t watch or post angry YouTube or social media videos. Aside from posting a few opinions on here, I don’t post any reviews, or rate things online.
I have not enjoyed Marvel or Star Wars for a long while, and have pretty much stopped watching, and what I do check in on, I havent liked. Nothing at all about my lack of enjoyment of the recent outputs from these franchises has to do about “agendas” or casting etc. Yet, I refrain from really discussing anything about what I don’t enjoy because almost every discussion becomes about “toxic fandom”. And this is especially prevelant with large IP projects from large, powerful studios.
Now, the cynic in me often suspects that Disney and other large production companies actually welcome (perhaps even encourages) this small, fringe element of online fandom, as it becomes a go to battle cry, even before the product airs - “toxic fandom is targeting X project, the negative opinion is toxic”, and the media, actors and fans start rallying about it. Meanwhile, shoddy, uninspired, dull witing and stories are ignored, and the poor cast members become scape goats in a discussion about everything other than the tepid product.
I watched one last week and hope to watch more in the coming months. I have not watched some in a while so I am hoping I forget the gotcha moment in some of those.
Absolutely. There’s plenty to criticise the current output of the entertainment industry on a purely professional level: uninteresting stories, sloppy writing, characters who are only clichéd cardboards or change their traits out of the blue to fit the runtime of the feature film or season. While we have as much entertainment as no other generation before, quality isn’t exactly the defining trademark of this era.
I think it’s a valid criticism when a GHOSTBUSTERS film, nominally a comedy, just isn’t particularly funny. Just as it’s reasonable to note that characters like Star Wars’ Rey or Star Trek Discovery’s Michael Burnham or Game of Thrones’ Tyrion are significantly underdeveloped (Rey), sloppily written as know-it-all overachievers (Michael) or turn from witty strategist to dull one liner jokers without the slightest bit of inspiration or intellect (Tyrion).
Pointing out such shortcomings is perfectly fine. Holding the respective actors responsible and making them target of coordinated shitstorms, hate postings and threats to their lives, to their families is not. Not for Daisy Ridley, not for Amandla Stenberg, not for the cast of GHOSTBUSTERS or MARVELS or any other production.
Fandom is perhaps always difficult terrain where people start considering a franchise as somehow belonging to them. Unless you’re indeed the owner/writer there are bound to be disappointments down the road. Rings of Power may not have a lot to do with Tolkien - only as long as the rights to Tolkien’s work belong to Amazon that won’t stop them. We can either enjoy their version or leave it alone. Change it we can not - and that’s fine this way. If we could it would mean they’d have to ask permission of all and sundry with an opinion on it. No to that.
Star Trek is a notoriously difficult fandom renowned for being hostile to any new iteration. TNG: ‘No, we don’t want it - we want our KirkSpockBones!
DS9: ‘No, we don’t want a stupid, greasy old trashcan space station - we want our shiny Enterprise!’
Voyager: ‘We don’t want a woman as captain - we want our heroic space casanova!’ So on so forth.
The new shows were welcomed by the fanbase, just as the new films were. Not without criticism but the overall relief that there finally was something new prevailed. And many did enjoy Discovery and later Picard. But many fans were also left quite underwhelmed and only found what they were looking for in Strange New Worlds.
But would it have been better had Paramount listened to the fans from the start? I doubt it. One obstacle was the decision to make Discovery a prequel - looking shinier and more modern than any other Star Trek show. But that’s not the dealbreaker with Strange New Worlds and wouldn’t have been with Discovery. The uninspired writing was. I even think the characters in Discovery are more nuanced and interesting than most in Picard - with the exception of Michael Burnham.
But this could have been a great show from the start and its characters are up to a point let down by the writers. Perhaps there should have been better groundwork, a more appropriate vision by the showrunners.
Be that as it may, it’s fine if people enjoy the show in spite of that. And it’s great if those shows bring new fans to Star Trek. From a certain point onwards it’s that generation’s Trek, let them decide what they want and if they mind the writing. That’s as it should be.
And everybody can vote by buying or not buying a ticket or clicking on the remote control.
Is this or that film or tv series disappointing to one‘s taste? Then accept it. If enough people feel that way there won‘t be more of it.
But these days the feeling of entitlement of some audience members is just too big. Yes, disagree with the filmmakers, yes, propose different approaches. But don’t get aggressive about it. That won‘t help, it will just make everything worse.
As for the usual IPs which get so much hate: grow up, audiences, those sagas aren‘t interesting anymore because their stories have been told. They are through. And don’t cling to them as if they are the only stories worth telling again and again.
Open yourself up to new ideas. Just be suprised, you know, like in the 70‘s, when those sagas started with installments which were not guaranteed an IP shelf life.
Yes, I know, I‘m on a Bond message board.
And if NTTD were the end then I would be fine with it now.
Bond, of course, is always the same formula + current zeitgeist, so it‘s more like a theatre classic which gets a revival production with a new perspective on it.
So that’s already the difference between Bond and Star Wars or anything else.
We had our own share of “toxic fandom” 20 years ago. It was a perfect example how a small group of idiots (I’m still convinced that they were not more than five people who kicked this off back in the day) can give the entire franchise fandom a bad name. And the media jumped on it.
You all know what I’m talking about, I’m not giving them the grace of mentioning their name (as I always did).
The worst about it was that I can’t count the times when people approached me after CR was out, asking: “That one was really great, why did you stupid Bond fans make all that fuss about Craig being the wrong guy?”
I hope Deanna Brayton has her stomach full of ulcers ever since.
I agree with all that has been said about toxic fandoms and why it should be avoided. That said, let’s not let the professional critics off the hook. I don’t know how many professional reviews I have read, (whether it be for concerts, new music, movies, plays, restaurants) where the writer seems filled with joy to give a bad review.
I once read a review about a great restaurant in New York that I had been to that year. I thoroughly disagreed with the review, but felt that if things were as bad as the reviewer thought, they should be mourning the decline of a great restaurant instead of sounding like the character from Ratatouille. What’s worse is when the critic does not know what they are talking about (which I have seen more than few times).
It’s so easy to criticize the efforts of others. I wish more people would go looking for a reason to celebrate and compliment those efforts.
