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Eugene Wei

@eugenewei

Aug 10, 2018 • 7 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X

Saw #CrazyRichAsians this week. Folks who know me know how underrated I think film/tv is in its impact in a culturally deterministic world. Representation matters in so many ways conscious and not. Please go see it next weekend!

I’m not crazy rich, nor a romantic comedy guy, but the main story arc is actually about that strange cultural limbo of being Asian-American: not living up to the standards of your ethnic heritage, nor being fully valued by the society you grow up in.

And how there is peace in realizing just how damn good you are.

The soundtrack is smart, reinforcing the themes of the film by fusing Eastern and Western styles. Made me nostalgic for a cultural home that only exists in my mind. The costumes are cray. The crazy rich people are, as they tend to be, cray.

It’s absurd that each of just a handful of Asian-American films in my lifetime is treated as a referendum on whether our stories are worth telling, but I’m not naive to how Hollywood works.

Thankfully, things are changing. With China as the world largest film market, at some point pure market demand will overwhelm the inefficiency in Hollywood’s tiny cabal of gatekeepers.

Also, as Star Wars continues to underperform in China, we keep approaching the logical next addition to the franchise: Asian martial arts Jedi. Let’s be honest, with the exception of Darth Maul, the Jedi/Sith to date have been amateurs with a light saber.

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More from @eugenewei

Eugene Wei

@eugenewei

Nov 15, 2023

Just as there is technical debt, there is such a thing as narrative debt. Marvel fans are no longer willing to incur it.

Disney needs to do with the MCU what almost all long-running infinite narratives have to do at some point to clear the ledger: reboot.

Phase 5 is a debacle. Even if they recast Kang, I can't even find hardcore Marvel comic book readers who would say "Kang the Conqueror" was one of their favorite story arcs. Just treat it as a sunk cost.

Recast the main superheroes. Disney bought Fox, so they should build around the Fantastic Four and more importantly The X-Men who are at the center of some of Marvel's most epic and beloved crossover stories.

Give new viewers a chance to get in on the ground floor again.

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Eugene Wei

@eugenewei

Oct 21, 2021

Go see Dune this weekend. I would be shocked if the sequel didn't get greenlit, but why leave it to chance? I would be disappointed if we only got this film that only covers the first 60% of the book. screenrant.com/dune-2-movie-c…

I've seen Dune twice now, and while many Dune stans will likely wish that it had been a miniseries like Game of Thrones (there's just so much worldbuilding to do), I think it makes a lot of sensible choices to fit it into what is still a long movie.

This movie does what movies excel at which is to make you feel. Both viscerally, in the sound design, but also in the shadowed cinematography. See it on the biggest, loudest screen possible.

Read 7 tweets

Eugene Wei

@eugenewei

Sep 22, 2020

Published the 2nd of my pieces on TikTok, "Seeing Like an Algorithm."

My last piece was about how the algorithm makes TikTok work, but this piece is almost the reverse, about how TikTok's design makes the algorithm work.
eugenewei.com/blog/2020/9/18…

The framing is inspired by Scott's "Seeing Like a State."

In TikTok's case, what's interesting is how its design, operations, and processes help its FYP algorithm "see" its videos, users, and the sentiments of the users towards specific videos.

While many think TikTok's FYP algorithm is black magic, it's likely built off very standard machine learning approaches to the problem. But trained on enough of the right datasets, ML algorithms like GPT-3 are making big leaps.

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Eugene Wei

@eugenewei

Aug 4, 2020

New blog post, this the first of maybe a 3 part series on the company du jour, TikTok.

This first piece isn't about the possible ban or divestment or the security or geopolitical issues but about what makes it so unique and fascinating to me.

eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/…

TikTok is remarkable as the first Chinese app I can think of to make real inroads in the U.S. market.

I had long thought the cultural barrier too significant to overcome, but it turns out that machine learning algorithms can now pierce the veil of cultural ignorance.

For a self-described cultural determinist like me, it's a miracle that an app launched by two Chinese guys out of Shanghai, Musical.ly, could evolve into a leading short video app in not just the West but other foreign cultures like India and the Middle East.

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Eugene Wei

@eugenewei

Jun 28, 2020

This idea of finding some higher velocity for narrative is really interesting. How to minimize friction in your prose. theguardian.com/books/2014/apr…

The easiest way always seems to be to just highly compress your thought and thus your prose. But that comes with a downside of simplifying your thinking. At some level of compression it's all a lie (case in point, many tweets)

Some things do slow me down when reading narratives. Physical descriptions of people, a long passage describing a complex physical space. For some reason it never works for me.

Read 4 tweets