Larry Wilmore on Nightly Show: "Nerds Hate Change"

[JirinPanthosa]

If you think the nerd backlash against all-female Ghostbusters was bad, imagine if they remade a John Wayne franchise with a female lead.

I imagine there'd be death threats.

They should make an original character black superhero.

Let's look at the date of the first appearance of the heroes appearing in movies now.

Superman: 1938
Batman: 1939
Spiderman: 1962
X Men: 1963
Iron Man: 1963
Captain America: 1941
Thor: 1962
Guardians of the Galaxy: 1969
The Incredible Hulk: 1962
Fantastic Four: 1961
The Flash: 1940

Stop being lazy Hollywood! All your current cash cows were created decades before the majority of your audience was even born! Write some original superhero teams, and use them to represent every ethnic group in the world!

 

[Mudd]

If you think the nerd backlash against all-female Ghostbusters was bad, imagine if they remade a John Wayne franchise with a female lead.

I can't imagine a "John Wayne franchise," period. He made the occasional sequel.

It's the mac-and-cheese syndrome: a lot of fans who are deeply involved in their favorite properties don't want the recipe to ever be tampered with in any way. It should always taste the way Mama made it; to them, popular culture is just comfort food.

Sometimes angry nerds will resort to the food analogy themselves; unimaginatively, they have a single example to fixate upon and repeat ad nauseam: "New Coke." Most don't actually remember New Coke, and they ignore three big flaws in that example:

1. They've been drinking a reformulated Coke that tastes different from the original for three decades now, slipped in on them without announcement or real resistance;
2. They're perfectly willing to drink swill and call it Coca-Cola as long as the word "diet" is appended to the name, which undercuts any claims to having either "standards" or real discriminating taste;
3. There are many much better beverages than Coca-Cola to begin with. If they don't like Coke any more, they can try something different.

 

[DWF]

If you think the nerd backlash against all-female Ghostbusters was bad, imagine if they remade a John Wayne franchise with a female lead.

I imagine there'd be death threats.

They should make an original character black superhero.

Let's look at the date of the first appearance of the heroes appearing in movies now.

Superman: 1938
Batman: 1939
Spiderman: 1962
X Men: 1963
Iron Man: 1963
Captain America: 1941
Thor: 1962
Guardians of the Galaxy: 1969
The Incredible Hulk: 1962
Fantastic Four: 1961
The Flash: 1940

Stop being lazy Hollywood! All your current cash cows were created decades before the majority of your audience was even born! Write some original superhero teams, and use them to represent every ethnic group in the world!

Hancock was an original black super hero. Ad as far as new teams you had The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Watchmen, The Specials. None of the newer more original made much of a dent in the box office.

 

[MacLeod]

Part of it might also play on our childhood memories, so some amount of nostalgia might be at play. We sometimes look back through rose coloured spectacles, fast forward ten/twenty etc.. years from know and people will be complaining amount the latest iteration of X that came out when they where growing up..

Now to me the actor who is Superman is Christopher Reeve, does that mean I can't enjoy other portrayal's? Of course not.

Will the re-boot of the new Ghostbusters film be any good, I don't know non of us know how something is going to turn out until we see it

 

[theenglish]

I think the lack of diversity in comic book heroes is more to do with the fact that nobody wants to write any material for a character who hasn't already been popular for over 50 years.

I can see not wanting to change the ethnicity or gender of a character who has existed for decades just for diversity's sake. I think there's legitimate criticism if you change long-existing characters' races and genders that it comes off as a cynical grab at a political correctness badge rather than a genuine act of inclusiveness.

Another way to look at it though is correcting injustices of the past that existed because ethnic and gender stereotypes of the time in which they were written. DC had a chance to really diversify their big characters with the new 52 and failed to take advantage of that. I will give them credit for their original attempt to diversify the line up back in September 2011 though.

Nerds are definitley complainers when it comes to change and for a group that watches material that preaches open-mindedness, a lot of nerds are racist and sexist. It's very disheartening.

You can't generalize all nerds in this category though. I will say that I agree with you that the sheer amount and kind of online rage complaining about heroes, characters, and stories that literally are against that is horrific. If super-heroes actually existed then people sending death and rape threats to actors would definitely be the villains.

Hell, I'm still a little pissed about getting a point for losing in the NHL. I don't mind the shootouts but a loss should just be a loss, zero points. Damn it NHL, if you want teams to be more aggressive in overtime, make it three points for a win and one point for a tie like soccer! Teams will go all out to avoid a tie.

I still think regular season NHL games should be allowed to end in ties. But, going back to my earlier point--sports teams, leagues, and now even players are not considered by anyone to be role-models. Super-heroes still are.

I know this doesn't address gritter Sci-Fi and Fantasy or speculative fiction and that these arguments would not hold for fans of those types of stories...but I do think that much of the genre is thematically about accepting the wonder of the unknown or the human spirit and is ultimately positive and optimistic. I may be naive but it still surprises me when fans of the genre are not like that themselves.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Part of it might also play on our childhood memories, so some amount of nostalgia might be at play. We sometimes look back through rose coloured spectacles, fast forward ten/twenty etc.. years from know and people will be complaining amount the latest iteration of X that came out when they where growing up..

Now to me the actor who is Superman is Christopher Reeve, does that mean I can't enjoy other portrayal's? Of course not.

Will the re-boot of the new Ghostbusters film be any good, I don't know non of us know how something is going to turn out until we see it

That's not right!!!!! I can tell from a ten word description how good something can be!

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I don't think there is anything odd about it. If you remake or continue an existing and known property there's going to be certain expectations about it. If I were to take Scooby-Doo and make him a cat without explanation I'd expect people to be skeptical.

EDIT: Looking at the last couple of posts that came in before mine I don't want anyone thinking I'm equating Scooby-Doo as a cat to the discussion about recasting with more minorities. Meant to be more about nerds and change in general.

 

[Doctorwhovian]

With the Bond thing, there has been some resistance here and there to Bond recasting, most recently with Daniel Craig, although this has mostly calmed down as his films have come out. Lazenby of course has often been criticized, although OHMSS and Lazenby's performance have sometimes been re-evaluated in the years since. Also, there's still a lot of people who see Connery as the definitive Bond...

Doctor Who is kind of the opposite-people seem to like the change of the Doctor, the producers, companions etc. although there was some resistance to David Tennant leaving (similarly with Tom Baker).

 

[theenglish]

Doctor Who is kind of the opposite-people seem to like the change of the Doctor, the producers, companions etc. although there was some resistance to David Tennant leaving (similarly with Tom Baker).

It would have been nice to see Lazenby's Bond rather than Roger Moore's. As for the new Doctors, my biggest problem (and it is a rather minor one) is that the doctors just don't stick with the role long enough. We have 8 seasons of 14 episodes and four Doctors.

 

[Doctorwhovian]

^5 technically Plus we've had 3 classic actors return briefly (outside of stock footage that is).

I remember that at the time he was cast, Colin Baker planned to play the Doctor possibly longer than Tom Baker.

I think part of the problem with Lazenby was that-with the exception of Connery's distinctive Scottish burr-Lazenby at times seems to be trying to do a Connery impersonation.

 

[sidious618]

Nerds are definitley complainers when it comes to change and for a group that watches material that preaches open-mindedness, a lot of nerds are racist and sexist. It's very disheartening.

Oh, that's complete bullshit. Nerds are no worse or better than the general population.

No, it's not complete bullshit because I never said they were worse than everyone else; that was your projection. I said it's disheartening because many of the things they're invested in call for some form of tolerance or another yet that seems to be lost on many.

 

[Kelthaz]

No, it's not complete bullshit because I never said they were worse than everyone else; that was your projection. I said it's disheartening because many of the things they're invested in call for some form of tolerance or another yet that seems to be lost on many.

When someone says "a lot of group X" that usually doesn't mean "a lot of group X, but still average numbers among all groups". I understand what you're saying now (you expect more out of genre nerds given the types of media that they consume), but it really didn't read that way.

Anyway, I do agree with you there. It is sad when someone loves Star Trek for its depiction of a more enlightened and peaceful future for mankind, but then turns right around and spews GamerGate shit or hates the new Ghostbusters for going all female.

 

[sidious618]

Exactly, yeah.

 

[DarthTom]

I think he's right and tapped into something that didn't occur to me before. Some of just hate change.

Congratulations on finally waking up from your decade's long coma. Seriously, you just noticed that a lot of nerds have a problem with changes being made to their favorite fandom properties? This board would look like a ghost town if that weren't the case. Complaining about changes to the sacred texts and historical documents are like half the threads here.

Ah, the ad hominem aside, I thought Wilmore's take was funny. And I was also laughing at myself because I as a sci-fy / fantasy fan can get just as nitpicky about shit.

e.g. gasoline that will works on TWD and the super big star ship without a crew in the STID.

 

[theenglish]

I think he's right and tapped into something that didn't occur to me before. Some of just hate change.

Congratulations on finally waking up from your decade's long coma. Seriously, you just noticed that a lot of nerds have a problem with changes being made to their favorite fandom properties? This board would look like a ghost town if that weren't the case. Complaining about changes to the sacred texts and historical documents are like half the threads here.

But this board is much more civilized than other places on the web; one of the reasons why it is fun to hang out here.

Science Fiction and Fantasy is a hobby and a passion for many of us. We are "enthusiasts" of the genre. As with enthusiasts of other things (bird watching, model trains, gourmet food, wine, cigars, etc) it is fun for us to discuss the details and the minutiae of our hobby and to intensely debate the merits of details that other people would not notice nor care about.

I think that that is a far cry from people who "freak out", cry, send death threats, and worse because some director changes a detail in an origin story.

 

[MacLeod]

Doctor Who is kind of the opposite-people seem to like the change of the Doctor, the producers, companions etc. although there was some resistance to David Tennant leaving (similarly with Tom Baker).

It would have been nice to see Lazenby's Bond rather than Roger Moore's. As for the new Doctors, my biggest problem (and it is a rather minor one) is that the doctors just don't stick with the role long enough. We have 8 seasons of 14 episodes and four Doctors.

It's not as bad as it looks however.

1963-1966 - William Hartnell (3 years)
1966-1969 - Patrick Troughton (3 years)
1970-1974 - Jon Pertwee (4 years)
1974-1981 - Tom Baker (7 years)
1981-1984 - Peter Davison (3 years)
1984-1986 - Colin Baker (2 years)
1987-1989 - Sylvester McCoy (2 years)

1996-1996 - Paul McGann (1 year)


2005-2005 - Christopher Eccleston (1 year)
2005-2010 - David Tennant ( 5 years)
2010-2013 - Matt Smith (3 years)
2013-Pres - Peter Capaldi

 

[theenglish]

I would argue Tennant 3 seasons not five years.

The original doctors also had a lot more screen time even though they may have been around the same number of years.

 

[MacLeod]

^What you say is largely accurate but the classic era was dominated by 25min length episode so a modern episode is close to double that so you could say that a modern episode equates to two episodes of the classic era or 28 episodes worth in classic terms. When you get to the Third Doctor era it's about 25 or so episode per season. But I suspect that 1st-4th Doctors had most screen time with the 5th, 10th and 11th being similar with Doctors 6-9 having the least screen time.

But in terms of the length of time an actor Doctor doesn't it go from their first apperance to their regeneration?

 

[theenglish]

^What you say is largely accurate but the classic era was dominated by 25min length episode so a modern episode is close to double that so you could say that a modern episode equates to two episodes of the classic era or 28 episodes worth in classic terms. When you get to the Third Doctor era it's about 25 or so episode per season. But I suspect that 1st-4th Doctors had most screen time with the 5th, 10th and 11th being similar with Doctors 6-9 having the least screen time.

But in terms of the length of time an actor Doctor doesn't it go from their first apperance to their regeneration?

This probably belongs in the Doctor Who forum, but I can see where you're going with your argument. I still wish we'd had more time with several of the doctors though.

 

[DWF]

^What you say is largely accurate but the classic era was dominated by 25min length episode so a modern episode is close to double that so you could say that a modern episode equates to two episodes of the classic era or 28 episodes worth in classic terms. When you get to the Third Doctor era it's about 25 or so episode per season. But I suspect that 1st-4th Doctors had most screen time with the 5th, 10th and 11th being similar with Doctors 6-9 having the least screen time.

But in terms of the length of time an actor Doctor doesn't it go from their first apperance to their regeneration?

If you're going to by frist appearance to regeneration, McCoy ran from 1987 to 1996 and McGann from 1996 to 2013. In truth Pertwee had five seasons and Tennant and Smith had only three.