White Male Lead cancels the rest out, sorry.
Why is toxic fandom destroying everything?
- Thread starter Sgt. Sacrament
- Start date
If The Expanse has more than one lead, then Avasarala is certainly one of them.
If a show has more than one lead, then having one of them be white and male when the others are not only adds to the diversity.
If an airline guts it's frequent flyer program, makes the legroom even tighter, removes the seat recline, and charges even more for baggage, are the flying customers that complain toxic and entitled? The phrase "toxic fandom" obscures far more than clarifies.
Maybe you have an example of a movie with a white male lead that inspired fanboys to rage the way they do for movies with a more diverse cast? I can think of maybe Crystal Skull, but I'm not sure even that counts.
Star Wars special editions. The prequel trilogy... All the bad comic book films prior to the 2010s.
Throw in TV... Original BSG fan initial reaction to the reboot. The backlash to ENT. The Brannon Braga obsession...
But there wasn't more than 1 lead, so the Expanse is simply playing lip service.
Yup. A thing can be popular and not good. A thing can profit and not be popular.
It's not a simple equation to solve.
Do we really want an equation? Do we want Hollywood to have a simple formula that automatically has everyone praising them and throwing money at them? Seems like that would completely stifle creativity, and no one sets out to make a reviled product.
Seems Hollywood works the way we need it to.
Do I? No. But that's sometimes how Hollywood tries to work, trying to find the things that will stick. I agree that it will stifle creativity, but it's also them chasing the wind of popular opinion.
As a business I would agree. But it's also considered the great evil too.
I’ve never considered it evil, because I have the ultimate control: if I don’t like something, I can turn it off and find something else to do.
Same. People spend a lot of time and mental effort trying to control things they have absolutely no control over.
One of the best streaming SF TV series I've seen in the last five years is Tales From the Loop. Based on a popular book, great acting, great stories, great location filming, whatever else you want. If you find Rotten Tomatoes useful, it's got a tomatometer of 86% and audience rating of 74%. How many of you watched it? How many of you never even heard of it? Same questions for Station Eleven, another great streaming series based on a popular book. (Tomatometer 98%, audience rating 75%.) These are well made shows based on critically acclaimed novels but many more people have seen certain Star Wars TV series that have nothing going for them but nostalgia. I don't think "good things are popular" is a rule with a few exceptions, I think it's a statement of wishful thinking.
On the broader subject of toxic fandom: passionate righteous indignation is a thing. Passionate righteous contentment, not so much. Combine that with the kinds of platforms no one had twenty years ago, like podcasts and Youtube series, and the indignant ranters find and reinforce each other, while normal people say, okay, that was pretty good, should we watch something else or turn off the TV and the devices and do something in the real world?
Agreed.
And it goes back to a simple idea: if I'm satisfied with a product (and that is what entertainment is) then I'll just go about my day. I might talk about it, might not. I'm not going to broadcast it out very loudly, because it's just average.
So, yeah, quality doesn't mean popularity. Unless Transformers is considered quality entertainment?
Well put. Extremely well put. Passionate contentment doesn't inspire the same output of content.
If it does, I hope you're the person doing the surveys for all the companies.
They lost my bags once connecting in Toronto. Their hold music is still burned into my brain. But, at least they don't have the Turkish Airlines theme song. We are Turkish Airlines! We are globally your's!Welcome to Air Canada!
I see. I don't really see those as toxic in the same sense as is being discussed. Much of the criticism for SW, BSG, and BB were about specific creative choices. People discussed those choices in depth and provided legitimate reasons. The only possible exception I can think of being the criticism of Moore gender swapping Starbuck and Boomer.
I think fan outrage can happen without it being "toxic" which I see as being outrage specifically against things like gender and ethnicity. For sure a lot of people will bend over backwards to conceal the true nature of their opinions through coded language, but I am all for serious discussions of movies when that isn't the obvious intent.
A subgroup of fans were pretty hard on Rey after The Force Awakens because she got good with the Force quickly, they forget that Luke also got good quickly.
Its not the fans fault that the IP owners are telling shitty stories with shitty characters with shitty writing. Its not the fandoms that are destroying everything. There is a big difference between the content coming out now and the content 10-15 years ago. These choices are firmly at the feet of management, who rather then admit bad decisions, double down and blame fans, and it becomes a viscious cycle. If you don't give the customer what they want to purchase, they will stop purchasing. Its that simple.
over multiple movies, tons of offscreen training, and months if not years going by.
as always people just gloss over the reasons for the generalizations. it was never that simple.
Luke was communicating with the dead via the Force at the end of A New Hope. He is every bit the "Mary Sue" that Rey is. Or, for that matter, pretty much any main character in fiction.
Nostalgia is one Hell of a drug.
Similar threads
