DISCLAIMER: For better context, click here for Part 1.
So today I’ll be continuing with my analysis on present-day pop culture franchises, and where I think pop culture as a whole seems to be going.
So once again, without further ado, let’s start with…
Game of Thrones
Not to toot my own horn but… I saw the hate for this coming from a mile away. Back when this show was all anyone could talk about, my immediate first thought was “There’s no way this shit is gonna end well.” Something with expectations that high usually never has a satisfying finale, cause everyone starts imagining in their head where it should or shouldn’t go. Of course, the fact that the show itself ended up out-lapping the source material didn’t help either, but that’s because the books themselves have gotten so complex that there’s no way they’ll ever have any kind of ending at all (let alone a shitty one).
Honestly, if I were George R.R. Martin, I wouldn’t even bother writing the last book now. It sounds like what makes those books cool is that they have a “slice of life” feel. Might as well try to maintain that. I suppose the show didn’t have that luxury, though. Even if it were to have suddenly been canceled once they ran out of books to work from (as if HBO would ever piss that much money away like that), everybody on the planet would’ve pissed and moaned for more seasons. That being said though, the way everyone did react to the final season we actually got just shows how flimsy this fandom has always actually been. The best thing to compare this show and it’s fandom to is a toxic relationship. You know those couples where one of the partners obsesses over the other one and puts them on a pedestal? And the moment that other partner does something a little off (you know, because they’re human), the one doing the obsessing freaks the fuck out on them? That’s basically what this was.
What makes this all even funnier is that, in hindsight, I feel like most people didn’t really understand what this story was really all about, at it’s core. It’s not Lord of the Rings. That’s just what’s on the surface. Deep down, this show is actually a political thriller that just so happens to be set in a fantasy universe. But once the “Lord of the Rings-style” stuff ended with the death of the white walkers, and the show went back to it’s political thriller roots, everyone went from loving the show to absolutely hating it. The switch there was crazy! Literally, overnight, everyone’s opinions on this show did a total 180. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fandom that flimsy and unstable before, and that just says a lot as to where all of pop culture seems to be heading, I think.
Now, don’t get me wrong; the final season of Game of Thrones was still completely fucking stupid, regardless of how people reacted to it. I’m not saying otherwise. All I’m saying is that I think people got way too obsessed with this show, way too fast, without maybe stopping to ask themselves “Wait, what’s this shit really all about?”
And mark my words; this will happen to other shit too. I wouldn’t be surprised if people start turning on The Mandalorian, for instance, among other things. I can already see the “BringBackBabyYoda” and “BringBackGrogu” hashtags everywhere in my head. Personally, I think a lot of these franchises just drag themselves out for way too long, and yes, that applies to the Game of Thrones books as well (or A Song of Ice and Fire, I should say). The ongoing “slice of life” thing is cool, but part of me can’t help but wonder if Martin could’ve tried a little harder to wrap all this shit up way sooner, and then the show could’ve at least had something a little more concrete to work from (people would’ve still been at least a little pissed at the finale though, because people are people).
Okay, we’re just gonna speed through the rest of these. Starting with:
Star Trek
I’m only familiar with the Abrams trilogy of films (I know he didn’t direct the last one, but whatever). So I enjoy them in a “surface level” sort of way. That being said, I know a fair bit about the old shows, so I can clearly tell that the only film in the Abrams trilogy that’s really done “in the spirit” of the original series is the last film (again, the one he didn’t direct). I get that when Abrams inherited the franchise, it was on life support, so he needed to do what he could to make it “popular” again, and I’m willing to forgive most things in the first film, but Into Darkness clearly crossed the line. Shame that Beyond didn’t make any money, but it’s probably for the best, as I don’t think a sequel for it was ever needed anyways.
I’m glad that the franchise has refocused all it’s efforts towards TV for now, as I feel it works better there (same with Star Wars actually), but Picard seems like the most dower thing ever. Again, I’m not familiar with the old Next Generation show, but even I can tell that the show-runners of Picard don’t really know what they’re doing. I used to take issue with Discovery being set before the original series, since it looks nothing like it, but to be fair, it’s not like Gene Roddenberry wanted the old show to look the way it did anyways. In his head, he probably imagined something more visually in-line with Discovery. Also, if I recall correctly, the characters of Discovery are now all in the future instead of the past, so none of what I just said matters anymore anyways.
Fast & Furious
I admire this franchise for breaking away from it’s “Point Break with cars” roots and just fully embracing it’s own ridiculousness. The only one I really don’t like was the fourth one. It was way too dreary!
The Universal Monster Universe (LOL!)
Thank god this shit crashed and burned. If the recent remake of The Invisible Man is anything to go by, it looks like Universal has learned it’s lesson and will stop trying to copy Marvel now. So things could be worse, I guess…
Rick & Morty
Once again; I like this show, for the most part, but dislike most of it’s diehard fans. Like MCU and Snyderverse fans, a lot of these people seem to automatically assume that anyone who doesn’t like this show is, by their definition, effectively stupid. If I recall correctly, this fandom also once caused an incident at a McDonald’s that got so intense that police had to get involved. It doesn’t get any more toxic than that. Except for Star Wars fans, of course (as they’re in a league of their own…).
The Spy Genre (James Bond, Mission: Impossible, etc.)
Yeah, sure. These are all fine. Some of the really old Bond films are sometimes way too dated (Goldfinger) or way too ridiculous (Moonraker), but at least the franchise seems to be getting more self-aware now. It’ll be interesting to see what No Time To Die is like (assuming that cursed movie still ever comes out, at this point!). As far as Mission: Impossible goes, I still look forward to the next one. I know some people are pissed at Tom Cruise for having an outburst on set recently, but I personally want to refrain from judging him, considering that we don’t have the full context of what really happened there.
Middle-Grade and Young Adult Book Adaptations
It was annoying how after the early Harry Potter films popularized the middle-grade genre, every film studio started buying up the rights to similar book series, to try to copy it’s success, and all of them failed (A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Percy Jackson, Eragon, etc.). Then, when Twilight popularized the YA genre, everyone started copying that shit too (The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, etc.). Aside from the first couple of Hunger films, all of those pretty much failed too. These are all just recent examples, though. “Trend chasing” has been around since 1960’s Western films (if not earlier than that, even!). When will Hollywood ever learn? As I’ve said before though, the example here that annoys me the most is Harry Potter (both the books and films), since they did that whole thing of starting out as middle-grade and then “transforming” into YA, which is a bad idea longterm, in my opinion.
Legacy Sequels
These are sequels to franchises that haven’t been touched in a long time. Personally, I don’t usually have a problem with these. The original actors don’t get any younger, so if there’s an opportunity for them to revisit their classic characters one more time, then I’m all for it. That being said, I feel like a lot of fans miss the point that, once you decide to continue a story that had already ended long ago, you have to undo the happily ever after, or else there’s no new story to tell. That’s why I’m surprised that people acted so shocked and upset when they saw that the classic Star Wars trio of characters were so fucked up in the sequels. Like… What else were they supposed to do to? Going the EU route of having them still be at the top of their game would’ve been boring and uninteresting. That being said, sometimes these legacy sequels do take it too far. For instance, I thought turning Laurie Strode into a “Sarah Connor-like” character in 2018’s Halloween felt random and unearned. So it really just depends on the scenario, I suppose.
“Sequel-boots”
These are the recent sequels that (usually) ignore all other sequels that came before it and name themselves after the original, even though they’re still technically sequels to it themselves (the aforementioned 2018 Halloween movie, the 2019 Shaft movie, etc.). Most of these have proper titles when filming, but then change their names at the last minute because they think that it’ll be easier that way for the marketing. An example of this is how Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen became just Hellboy in 2019 (I know that one is actually a full reboot, but it’s still a very different story from 2007’s Hellboy and therefore should’ve still had a different title, in my opinion). Not only do all of these have shitty titles, but for the most part, they all just simply suck as movies too. Not much more to say other than that, really. Sadly, this trend is still going, as it was just announced that the upcoming sequel-boot to The Matrix will just be called… Matrix… Yay…
That’s enough for now. I know there are plenty of other franchises and genres and whatnot, but I only have so much time to write about all this stuff! So next time, we’re gonna move away from talking about specific franchises, and focus instead on the impact pop culture itself has had on other aspects of life.
Peace!
Click here for Part 3.
No comments:
Post a Comment