Not that he needs me to say it, but @SiddhantAdlakha is a gentleman and a scholar, and one of the finest critics to write about the Marvel Cinematic Universe from a place of knowledge and insight.
Also, it is frankly terrifying that @ign would consider replacing him as a reviewer on #Loki because he gave an opinion on the show that rabid Marvel fans didn’t like.
It’s a potentially chilling critical precedent. “Validate fans’ opinions, or else…!”
It’s weird how insecure fans get about these things.
There are plenty of my peers and people I respect who hold different opinions than I do.
However, I am secure enough in my opinion to know in my heart that “Demolition Man” is a true masterpiece of American cinema.
Even ignoring its potentially chilling implications for the industry and the profession, what does this whole panic say about fandom?
Fans claim they want the things they love to be taken seriously, and then start issuing death threats the moment someone takes them seriously.
Anyway, this is a travesty.
And it doesn’t bode well.
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Rewatching “Twin Peaks: The Return”, and it feels like a show about the collapse of any sense of connection or continuity in contemporary American life.
This is true even in the show’s structure: “Twin Peaks” is no longer an ensemble, but a series of disconnected vignettes.
This is baked into the nature of the show. “Twin Peaks” aired on ABC. It dominated the cultural conversation. It was a phenomenon, a shared experience.
“The Return” aired on Showtime, on cable. It was arguably most successful on streaming. It felt like a show watched alone.
“The Return” is a story about these disconnected and dying spaces, the eroding heart of America.
The vast, empty, abandoned suburban housing estates. The eerie prison complexes. The eponymous town, which feels less like a community than a geographical happenstance.
Thinking about how Michael Mann’s transition to digital reflected his evolving thematic interests.
Here, two similar types of shot. In “Heat”, on film, the city blurs into a sea of lights in the background. In “Miami Vice”, on digital, objects miles away remain clearly defined.
“Heat” is a pivot point for Mann.
It feels like the last time characters like Hanna or McCauley could truly see one another, when background and foreground could be delineated.
It was the last moment that signal and noise could be distinguished from one another.
Mann returns to the template of “Heat” several times, in “Public Enemies” or “Miami Vice.”
But both of those movies are about the acceleration of what was already a major concern in “Heat”, the way systems and structures and information overwhelm any meaningful human connection.
There were obviously some (very) dumb narrative choices in the final stretch of “Game of Thrones.”
But the truth is that the reality of television production meant that the production team were given the impossible task of ending a story the author himself couldn’t end.
Martin has none of the constraints of a television show.
He has no budget cap. No exhausted production team. No aging child actors. No older actors looking to capitalise on their “moment.” No limited access to sets and location. No deadline.
The “Downey as Doom” casting choice reminds me of Marvel’s “Secret Empire”, the event that revealed Captain America was fascist strongman who led a bunch of not-quite-Nazis.
It was a great idea, particularly for the Trump era. “Here’s your nostalgic fantasy, turned rotten.”
The reveal that this blonde-haired, blue-eyed icon of forties American can-do attitude was secretly an authoritarian strongman had really great potential as a moment of introspection for the comics and the country.
Downey as Doom has the same potential. Nostalgia as villain.
So much of modern pop culture has turned backwards and grown inwards, chasing nostalgic fantasies of some idealised imagined past.
Maybe the MCU needs to kill “Iron Man” to move forward. Maybe the post-9/11 superhero movie needs to be demolished so something new can be built.
Very simply, it is impossible to just casually get into comics.
You have to seek them out. You have to research them. You have to find a specific kind of store that stocks them. And they are very rarely designed to be accessible to new readers.
And for decades, these fundamental issues were treated as features of the medium.
You got ascended fans writing stories for fans, riffing on stories mired in decades of continuity. You aimed the bulk of book as one very specific (and ageing) demographic *already* hooked.
If you want to understand why so much modern franchise media sucks, it’s because this sort of attitude is absurdly common among fans, arguing that putting a character under pressure - you know, “creating drama” - is somehow “abusive” to the actor and “disrespectful” to the fans.
It is so condescending to performers - assuming actors have the same difficulty distinguishing reality and fantasy that seemingly large sections of fandom do.
Also just not understanding how storytelling/production works. Those episodes gave Gatwa time to finish “Sex Education.”
The subtext of this rhetoric is this fan felt challenged and uncomfortable and a little sad at the way “Dot and Bubble” and “Rogue” played out, but it’s better optics to claim they’re angry at how the lead actor was treated.
It becomes a moral criticism, not a personal issue.