Breakdown of Midnight's Edge Roundtable About Alex Kurtzman

[Campe]

Would Midnight's Edge be good if they gushed love for Discovery?

For me, the issue is definitely the unsubstantiated rumors. I don't care if you hate a TV show or not. After all, its just a TV show. There are plenty I don't like. I just have better things to do with my life than watch 2 hour videos about how much you think something sucks. But the issue I have with a lot of these YouTube channels these days is that they push negative, sensationalized, false content just to get clicks. Because as a society, we are drawn to sensationalism like moths to a flame. Its tabloid "journalism" and its not helpful.

For months, we had to listen to the talk that Disco was going to be canceled before it aired, that Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy was going to be fired. Some people (including some posters here) were SO sure that these things were going to happen. Well, Disco is in its second season and going strong. Kennedy just got a big contract renewal. So where is all of this "news" coming from?

I just find it careless.

ETA: I will give Midnight's Edge a bit of credit and suggest that the videos I have watched (its been awhile) are slickly produced (if not very repetitive in the stills they run with their commentary).

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

I don't care enough to go check, but apparently Lucas hinted that the midi-chlorians dated back to 1977 on the DVD commentary of The Phantom Menace, and then insisted on including that reference in 2007's Making of Star Wars you mention above. Of course, Lucas does play fast and loose with Star Wars production history sometimes, so maybe he was trying to be a revisionist historian.

It wouldn't surprise me if the idea of midichlorians was in Lucas's mind in 1977, and even that the idea got written down somewhere as part of his original background ideas for the SW universe. But maybe the production team had enough sense to intentionally not include those ideas in the original trilogy in order to keep The Force as a mysterious and mystical thing -- which is the right thing to do for the fantasy film franchise like Star Wars.

By the time the Prequel Trilogies came around, maybe the production team's sensibilities changed and they might have felt the right thing to do this time was to include in the prequels that original idea Lucas had, giving us that pseudo-scientific explanation for how some people can interact more effectively with The Force.

But it wasn't the right thing to do IMO, not for a fantasy franchise.

I'm sure there were a lot of wild things that went through Roddenberry's head as he was creating the Star Trek universe back in the mid-1960s, things that maybe even made it on paper in pre-production notes. However, just because an idea existed in Roddenberry's head from the beginning, or was included among a bunch of other stiff in pre-production notes, that doesn't mean that every one of those ideas are actually part of the Star Trek universe -- or more to the point, should be part of the Star Trek universe just because those ideas existed when Star Trek was originally being created.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Would Midnight's Edge be good if they gushed love for Discovery?

In general, I'm not a fan of video reviewers who are so fond of the sound of their own voice that they make reviews or analysis videos nearly as long or longer than the thing they are reviewing, so no.

But apart from that, Midnight's Edge has been shown to make demonstrably false claims on numerous occasions, so they don't have much credibility, regardless of their stance.

 

[Ovation]

Would Midnight's Edge be good if they gushed love for Discovery?

No, not particularly.

 

[mos6507]

I don't even know if they believe the shit they spew out

Fans tend to have rose-colored glasses and live in a bubble. How many here were swearing up and down there would be a 4th Kelvin movie up to the last gasp? Disaffected fandom can be a useful counterweight for that.

 

[Campe]

Disaffected fandom can be a useful counterweight for that.

There's a difference between disaffected and downright lying in order to make money.

 

[fireproof78]

Would Midnight's Edge be good if they gushed love for Discovery?

No.

 

[drt]

It wouldn't surprise me if the idea of midichlorians was in Lucas's mind in 1977, and even that the idea got written down somewhere as part of his original background ideas for the SW universe. But maybe the production team had enough sense to intentionally not include those ideas in the original trilogy in order to keep The Force as a mysterious and mystical thing -- which is the right thing to do for the fantasy film franchise like Star Wars.

By the time the Prequel Trilogies came around, maybe the production team's sensibilities changed and they might have felt the right thing to do this time was to include in the prequels that original idea Lucas had, giving us that pseudo-scientific explanation for how some people can interact more effectively with The Force.

Totally possible. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I recall the Rinzler “making of” book for Star Wars has tons of ideas that Lucas’ buddies (like Coppola and Spielberg, who where helping him doctor the script along the way) vetoed for being terrible that ended up being in the prequels once Lucas had surrounded himself with “yes” men.

 

[Lord Garth]

Would Midnight's Edge be good if they gushed love for Discovery?

No. They'd still be heavily pushing a slant and trying to maneuver their subjects into that slant. It's bad enough that it happens in the news. I've had a problem with this since the early-2000s, which predates both Midnight's Edge and YouTube itself, for that matter.

 

[KennyB]

Fans tend to have rose-colored glasses and live in a bubble. How many here were swearing up and down there would be a 4th Kelvin movie up to the last gasp? Disaffected fandom can be a useful counterweight for that.

To be fair, there still MAY be......it just ain't happening till at least 2021. I do not have rose-colored glasses, but I did work with one of the Chris's a few weeks ago and negotiations are still going on.......Hey maybe I need to start a vlog.......

 

[Campe]

Hey maybe I need to start a vlog.......

You're not negative enough.

 

[F. King Daniel]

This thread is more clicks than ME deserves.

 

[Awesome Possum]

This thread is more clicks than ME deserves.

Hopefully not everyone is watching it, so they don’t get paid a cent for it. Thankfully YouTube is no longer recommending those hack frauds to me anymore.

 

[Lord Garth]

Hopefully not everyone is watching it, so they don’t get paid a cent for it. Thankfully YouTube is no longer recommending those hack frauds to me anymore.

I didn't click on it, but they're still showing up as recommendations to me on YouTube. I need to find some good laundry detergent to bleach out the recommendations with.

Which brings me to something else. Whenever I see someone say "Every video I see is mixed-to-negative!", I have to wonder if that's only because those videos are the ones that are being recommended to them. "If you like this video, try that video!" Social Media and YouTube feeds directly into giving people more of what they want to see. So then they have this distorted view of, "See? Most people agree with me!" And because they agree, they're more apt to believe it. It's like confirmation bias but taken to a whole other level because all someone will ever see recommended to them is confirmation bias that reinforces whatever it is they think.

 

[Disco!Disco!]

Would Midnight's Edge be good if they gushed love for Discovery?

ME makes up fake facts that people repeat. It's nuts how far the "Netflix pulled its funding of Discovery" lie went around the internet.

 

[fireproof78]

I didn't click on it, but they're still showing up as recommendations to me on YouTube. I need to find some good laundry detergent to bleach out the recommendations with.

Which brings me to something else. Whenever I see someone say "Every video I see is mixed-to-negative!", I have to wonder if that's only because those videos are the ones that are being recommended to them. "If you like this video, try that video!" Social Media and YouTube feeds directly into giving people more of what they want to see. So then they have this is distorted view of, "See? Most people agree with me!" And because they agree, they're more apt to believe it. It's like confirmation bias but taken to a whole other level because all someone will ever see recommended to them is confirmation bias that reinforces whatever it is they think.

It's an echo chamber support by algorithms.

 

[donners22]

ME makes up fake facts that people repeat. It's nuts how far the "Netflix pulled its funding of Discovery" lie went around the internet.

That’s what bugs me. People adopt these rumours and spread them so that they become unavoidable.

Just some of the ones I’ve seen lately:

- Disco is a secret Bad Robot production
- Netflix has pulled funding for subsequent seasons
- S2E1 had to be reshot because test audiences reacted badly to Pike praying before decisions and wearing a crucifix
- There have been secret crisis meetings at CBS regarding cancelling Disco

All relayed by people as fact, and in some cases vehemently defended.

It’s remarkable how credulous people are when the rumour they read supports their view (ie it makes Discovery look bad, so it must be true!).

 

[BillJ]

This thread alone is taking up more bandwidth than Midnight's Edge deserves.

 

[Midquest]

I'm reminded of the line from Terry Pratchett's The Truth: "A lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on."

The lie starts out big, but becomes small, commonplace. Just today on the subreddit I saw someone saying, "The rumor around Reddit is that Pike will be portrayed as Catholic." The rumor around Reddit? What? But several people respond, affirming that this is the case.

And so a baseless claim becomes common knowledge. It's so easy to say something untrue; it's so much harder to counter it once it's been said.

 

[SolarisOne]

Would Midnight's Edge be good if they gushed love for Discovery?

Without any credible sources to back up their claims, as they are now with their hate campaign? Hell, no.