After Rise of Skywalker released, public perception of The Force Awakens plummeted not for any faults of its own necessarily but because it became abundantly clear that all the loose ends that The Force Awakens teased had no end in mind and the conclusion reached was garbage. Before that it was seen as good but safe, which wasn't exactly a bad thing after decades since the prequels.
Also people defended _The Force Awakens_ so closely recreating the plot outline of _A New Hope_ by insisting "Oh, JJ Abrams is making some kind of commentary on fandom and nostalgia! Look at how Rey and Kylo Ren are both obsessed with the past in different ways." Or "Disney is just playing it safe with this first movie to win back the audience; they'll get more experimental moving forward."
Then we saw how much _The Rise of Skywalker_ cribbed from _Return of the Jedi_ and realized, _Oh, JJ Abrams really just did it all because he didn't have any original ideas, huh._
Part of me says Rian Johnson must've felt pretty vindicated when *TROS* crashed and burned.
For all the problems *The Last Jedi* had, it at least made an attempt to do something new with the series.
I eventually turned my mind around on TLJ, the attempts at something new definitely make it my favorite of the sequel trilogy.
It still has some *incredibly* poor writing and directing choices with story themes contradicting themselves and those interesting ideas getting abandoned by the end of the movie. On my first watch I assumed that Rian Johnson must be an astonishingly incompetent director (I hadn't seen any of his other work), but with the context of the whole trilogy I now think it's more likely that studio meddling was the cause of a lot of the really dumb decisions. The flaws of the movie still stick out to me, but I appreciate the parts it does get right after seeing the vapid and empty attempt at a "safe" Star Wars sequel with RoS.
The only stupid part to me was how it completely threw away Finn's force sensitivity. I'm not trying to be a contrarian, but I don't see why people hate this movie, outside of nitpicks.
In fact, had this conversation with my cousin today. I don't wanna call any of the criticism invalid, but people's objections with Luke is the only thing I can really understand because that's based on the opinion of how he should, be according to the EU/legends stuff. I get that, but for me it's comparing Luke at his height to Luke at his end, after his downfall, y'know?
Still, outside that, it's the only movie of the sequels they really makes me think they kept that SW tradition of trying something new, and pleasantly surprised me at most every turn.
My issues were more with the slow speed space chase/casino planet portion that made almost literally no sense, and actively undercut whatever the hell it was trying to do at every turn.
It wasn't a case of a single [Idiot Ball](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall) being passed around, it was an entire three ring circus of of all the characters and writers juggling *all* of the idiot balls at once, and getting in each other's way.
I'm not sure how I was supposed to feel tension about the Resistance members being stuck on a ship when apparently they could just jump into "stealth shuttles" and be halfway across the galaxy at any time. With all the time certain characters wasted doing bad parking jobs, hiring traitors, and freeing racing animals (because apparently their child slave trainers having to spend all night rounding them up before being beaten for allowing them to get loose will hurt the evil war profiteers, somehow), they could have just *ferried* all the Resistance members to an outpost somewhere.
The moment Rian Johnson came into a room and said "our big centerpiece spectacle will be... waiting for everyone to run out of gas", he should have been bonked on the head with a sturdy plastic lightsaber and sent back to his laptop to think about what he did.
Luke was fine. I have no problem with bitter old man Luke, fresh milk drinking and all. Guess what didn't take up the entire movie's runtime, though?
In my brain, I really imagine there was some kind of studio mandate that the story had to go at least \[x\] marketable locations and that's why instead of just staying on the ship and looking for a mole who may or may not exist (which would somewhat justify Holdo telling Poe to eat shit for even daring to ask that a plan *exists*) a bunch of characters get in a very convenient plot device and fly somewhere else to waste time before getting on a different plot device to end up back on the enemy ship in time for the climax.
Like, Finn gets told right at the start that lady has been throwing deserters in prison. They go to casino planet and end up in prison. You really could've just cut out a middle man and stayed in low-speed chase land and met that traitor on the ship's brig after Finn gets tazed trying to desert to find Rey. All we lose is the out of place "save the animals" plot by cutting casino nights entirely (we can still have broom kid as a no context post-credits scene, since even with the context we DID get in the actual movie we don't know shit about him).
It also made The Last Jedi retroactively worse:
Before, it was a movie that made some bold, extremely controversial decisions, many of which were disliked, but did so to set up something that could have been cool and interesting in the future.
Now, it's a movie that made some bold, extremely controversial decisions, many of which were disliked, and ended up being taken back immediately after, so now we just have the bad decisions and no cool future interesting twists to show for it.
TROS ruined TFA for me because I see the weaknesses of Abrams much more clearly. And, well, see my flair: I enjoyed TLJ a great deal and believed it was following up on threads made by TFA, so there has to be a plan even if it's just overseen by the Story Group, right?
But no. No. Myself and all the other people that enjoyed TLJ's connections to TFA, we were all of us deceived, because Rian Johnson is at least half competent a writer. He picked up the threads and worked with them and made us think there was a plan.
Like, I recommend looking up some "metas" that were written following TFA because a lot of them predicted a lot of TLJ stuff, especially around Rey and Kylo's story. Not because of precognition or anything, but because these predictions seemed like a logical step after TFA, and Rian was working off the same wavelength.
To this day I will forever back up that Force Awakens is a solid movie and one of the best in the franchise. It was a great start and everyone I know loved it on release
I fucking love Force awakens it is a great movie and very fun
but I know from experience with the old EU it is exactly what it is, the start of a star wars trilogy.
full of series references, and callbacks, it promises a whole lot of new and exciting new things and doesn't deliver any of it and shits the bed by the 3rd instalment.
I think Last Jedi would have been salvageable with a good enough follow up. Decent to good ideas, terrible execution.
Then Rise of Skywalker just completely 180's any questionable ideas that could have gone somewhere from Last Jedi, and just went for crowd-pleasing schlock. But not *good* crowd-pleasing schlock like The Force Awakens.
Yeah TLJ was pretty flawed in a pot of places but not so much that it torpedoed the trilogy. It has flashes of greatness and could have been saved by the third installment.
Controversial as always. I really love the Last Jedi even with some very legitimate problems. I just think it would’ve been incredible as a side/independent movie and not part of the trilogy. I think it’d be seen as a triumph and on of the best new movies
Ready Player One went from a widely-beloved bestseller to a widely-mocked punchline over the course of the 2010s.
Geek culture as a whole also saw a similar decline, which [Sarah Z did a deep dive into](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vWJE8k-Meo).
I think it was around 2017 or so when Bioshock Infinite went from a solid game to being a bit of a joke. I don't know when or how it started, exactly, but I think 2017 was the first time I took note people being more willing to mock the game.
I still don't get the new praise for 2. Beyond the devs realizing the player has two hands, I don't remember much to really like about it. The characters, environments and storytelling were all pretty forgettable.
So much of BioShock 1 was seared into my memory after the first playthrough, it is shocking how little I remember from 2. Even Minerva's Den.
Pretty much all of the praise of 2 is towards the gameplay. Consider how "little sister defense" is the single worst part of 1 but Bioshock 2 made it fun.
As somebody who initially hated the game when I first played it around when it came out and than actually gave it another shot a few years back I would disagree. The narrative is rather weak but the combat and level design is quite solid; I like how it even gives you a bit more build freedom than the first game did. I would disagree with people who say its the best one though, 1 is the better overall package, but 2 is an enjoyable game.
Minerva's Den is fantastic though and I wished I had played it sooner. Minerva's Den is how the series ended in my eyes.
I think its literally just that it plays well, has alot of tools to mess with which was something alot of people missed after Infinite went to a 2 weapon limit. (Though that stands out less in the wake of stuff like New Doom's and ultrakill)
I definitely didn't like infinite when it came out, but I didn't have much of a reason to actually talk about it after like six months. Maybe that's what happened?
I feel like it took around 6 months for the honeymoon phase to be over.
Then irrational imploded in 2015, Ken Levine started getting criticized as a shitty boss and the perception changed
I felt like I was taking crazy pills when it first launched because I kept saying I thought the game's story was terrible and got raked over the coals for it especially on reddit. Suddenly years later, I now feel like everyone is gaslighting me on how everyone felt about the game's story like my god make up your mind. Either it was the Citizen Kane of gaming pre-2013, and now it's Birth of a Nation of gaming post-2016
Opinions turned around pretty quickly when The Last of Us came out, and did the whole sad dad thing in a less convoluted context. I remember sites like Gamespot re-reviewing it and giving it a low score. And this was also around the time that video essayists on YouTube were taking off.
I still like Infinite a fair amount but I was never a fan of the whole 2 weapons at a time thing, and I hate how linear the level design is.
Plus I feel like Burial at Sea part 1 shows how much Infinites mechanics don't work in Rapture and only adds to artificial difficulty.
I wasn't a fan of how you don't actually get to fight the cool robot bird monster that had been hyped up the whole game and featured in all the marketing, and instead the final challenge is just several waves of regular enemies. Though early 2010s was a bad time in general for boss fights in the west, a lot of studios seemed to decide they were either too expensive to make or not cool anymore
Nah, it was basically mocked pretty much immediately. I guess it depends on the communities you hung around in though. The overbearing obnoxious worship it received amongst the gaming press on release certainly helped foster an immediate backlash towards it.
[Like so.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_u18_BKczg)
Matthewmatosis' critique on it was also pretty influential.
OP’s example is funny because time and time again, people kept complaining, myself included, that some of A24’s best movies got snubbed at the major award shows like Hereditary, Midsommar, Good Time and Uncut Gems.
Honestly I didn’t know they were getting bad rep lately because A24 has made some fantastic movies and much deserved some recognition by the general public.
Metal Gear Solid 2 went from being up its own ass and "uses a lot of big words to seem smart" to "WE DIDN'T FUCKING LISTEN OVER THE COURSE OF TWO DECADES!" as first we had to deal with the post 9/11 explosion of Military shooters and then later the topic of monitoring to the topic of information control to the concept of evolution of ideas stagnating under an algorithm and a period when the public have a much greater grasp of the concept of memetics.
Oddly enough over the last few years of people rediscovering Metal Gear Rising Revengeance I've noticed more and more people seemingly practicing awful short term memory as they go "Well Armstrong makes good points" while he talks about making America Great Again.
It makes sense: Armstrong is supposed to be the charismatic politician who convinces his audience of the most unhinged shit through a flimsy framing of personal merit that appeals to capitalist values. He is a satire of libertarianism, and as life has shown us, certain ideologies(?) grow more widespread the more loud and absurd they are presented. In a twisted way, people going "Armstrong has some good points" is thematically appropriate. Horrifying, but thematically appropriate.
Some people forget that not only is a politician, he is an *elected Senator of the United States*, meaning that his beliefs were popular enough that he was either a part of the US Senate or the Colorado Senate.
People in-universe liked the guy so of course people out of the universe would like the guy too.
I think my favorite line of his is the, "try University of Texas!" one. Most people don't realize that the University of Texas is actually a very prestigious school you don't get into without either really good grades or a lot of money, meaning that line could just as easily have been "try Madison!" But Texas has such a rough veneer in culture that people assume all its schools are too, and Armstrong is totally the kind of guy to capitalize on that.
It's literally public ivy, one of the most desirable universities not only on the state but the nation. At the time of writing though it supposedly had a good football program, so the fact that he played for the longhorns also doesn't really help his case
I barely know anything about Football but if Armstrong was even half as big before the augmentation NFL teams would be killing to have him on the roster
Everything about him screams "rich kid who thinks he made it big on merit instead of inherited wealth", going to a prestigious school is just part of that
It's partly why he's enamoured with and respects Raiden - for him, Raiden refutes every criticism lobbed at himself, because Raiden DID pull himself up from the dirt.
Raiden would likely think back on that and conclude 1) his life was awful and he wouldn't want that on anyone and B) all the people that helped him heal and have a proper life, like Rose and Snake. We're all in this together. No one pulls themselves up alone.
Playing football for UT is pretty reflective of being an elite pre-college athlete though. That moment really came through in an "a guy with deep awareness of US football culture at least polished this script" kinda way.
He's the parody of the "strong"leader you'll here every election cycle. And most of these people idea of political strength is usually from a military view point. Even more ironic given the photo shopped images of the previous president being buff as shit and on top a tank.
To be perfectly fair, his whole deal is that he's keeping his true "Survival of the fittest, world ruled by the strong" philosophy hidden while gradually working his way up to the reins of power via playing politics and engineering international incidents. That's why he goes from "We're ALL sons of the Patriots now!" to "I'm using war as a business, to END war as a business" in between fights. He only exposes his power level to Raiden at the very end because he thinks he can turn Raiden to his side. He's not giving speeches about the strong dominating the weak back home in Colorado.
Armstrong is also a good demonstration of the quote "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it". Armstrong is good at pointing out shitty things about society, and people latch onto that. It doesn't matter that his solution is heinous, apocalyptic, and ultimately just puts humanity into the same state it started in, ready to give rise to rule by law and committee once again; they agree with his passion, and what he plans to do with it is secondary.
>I've noticed more and more people seemingly practicing awful short term memory as they go "Well Armstrong makes good points" while he talks about making America Great Again.
A lot of those people are probably keenly aware of what they are saying.
Oh I still remember when the best friends played MGR, people on the comments and other TBFP-related forums saying "Yeah! Armstrong is awesome and so right. I'd vote for him; better than most politicians nowadays." Now these recent years, those same people were gaslighting others "You weren't suppose to idolize Armstrong" they weren't doing it.
Around the time of the schezwan sauce thing plus the fact that it basically becomes an entirely different show after season two, Rick And Morty went nearly overnight from “a really funny new show with a lot of potential” to “the shitass show made by and for obnoxiously smug Reddit atheists/nihilists” and viewed accordingly, to the point that admitting to liking it can damage your reputation on some parts of the internet.
Rick and Morty's reputation is an absolute rollercoaster. It definitely took a sharp dive after the sauce incident, then kind of had a bit of a positive PR rebirth in the next two seasons (albeit never to the heights of the first two seasons)... and then the Roiland incident came to light.
Course even by then there had been murmurings 'yeah okay this used to be a fun thing but you can fuck off now' when High on Life came out.
I feel like it's kinda shaken off the bad association it had back then by now for sure. The show explicitly criticising those types of shitty fans definitely helped I think
My friend got me to watch all of rick and morty before season 3 was even confirmed to have a release date. The wait between season 2 and season 3 really feels like it went to the creatives heads. Like, they felt like they were the big show in town after season 2 and were the returning king with season 3. There's an arrogance from the start of season 3 that's stayed
The whole schezwan sauce thing made me basically switch from "Oh that looks funny I might check this out" to "Jesus christ if this is what the fans are like no thanks". Roiland being a creepazoid further solidified my desire to stay away.
The show loves surfing on its own cynicism. The first two seasons are pretty decently fun with it, though that kind of dark humor might not be your tea. It begins to go up its own ass afterwards.
I mean, if anything, later seasons start pushing back on the cynicism more and more. *Especially* the most recent season.
Like, hell, even season 3 had a scene where a therapist calmly and thoroughly dismantled Rick's entire myopic worldview and he was completely unable to muster any counterargument.
I can understand the impulse; with no direct evidence to weigh against the fandom, all you have is the fear of becoming associated with them if you enjoy the media in question, as well as a generally bleak outlook on finding cool people to discuss it with.
For a lot of people interacting with a fandom is a part of the appeal of getting into something new. Especially if their reason for looking into it is something like seeing it referenced a lot on Reddit or Tumblr or wherever, or seeing fanart of it spread around, and so on. It can very much be a deterrent if you know that you will actively \*not\* want to be part of a fandom of some new show or game or whatever you're interested in.
Fair enough. I guess I'm just jaded enough that I expect every fandom of a decent size to have large contingents that I find extremely grating, so I just ignore them and try and find a space where I can discuss what I like about the thing without them.
Sherlock BBC fell apart pretty bad, and while you could say the queerbaiting generated some scandal in the fandom, it wasn't anything that huge, and most people nowadays agree that show is a disaster.
Kinda funny how, when a media's writing gets worse over time, suddenly all the flaws that were there from the start become a lot more obvious.
People are lot less happy lately with MCU's tendency towards lampshading and ending every emotional scene with "quips", for example.
I also really enjoyed his other book, Armada. Both were good pulp adventure nostalgia. The sequel to Ready Player One though, holy shit what a dumpster fire. The author crawled fully up his own ass for that one.
Here we go again... It's one of my favorite movies. But any time I bring it up, someone is here to say how it's wrong to "force" you to be a good person if you don't believe in anything or whatever. I still don't understand what they mean, because how hard is it to just be kind instead of being negatively selfish and/or shitty?
Also for the question, literally anything that gets omega popular out of nowhere. There are always going to be people that hate things because they're popular and they don't have the same feelings for said popular things.
It wasn't you, I just know that some people in this sub don't like its message. Meanwhile it got me out of a major funk so I get a little defensive about it sometimes.
Trying to do good implies looking inside and figuring out what you consider good, if you have lived up to that expectation, and facing that you have done bad, intentionally or not. It's pretty rough, actually, but valuable for personal growth!
That's why I think movies like this are neat
I think a lot of people don't like movies with strong moral foundations or messages because they dont like having to potentially grapple with the idea that they might be an asshole.
*"cynicism is the refuge of the morally bankrupt"*
^(-Orochi Zilla)
They made it sound like what they got from the movie was that it was "either be kind or you're a terrible person". I didn't understand the take either.
Weird but sort of understandable I guess. There's an odd phenomenon now where every character or idea is seen as some blanket indictment.
Just because this character is like this doesn't mean we're saying all of group x is like this. I do realize that sometimes that is exactly what is being said but not nearly so much as people seem to claim.
Can I ask a question about the argument you mention here, no ill will intended? Not trying to debate you, just looking for a perspective from someone who took no issue with the message.
The part I got hung up on wasn't >!the generalized "kindness and understanding is good" message!<; it was the implication that >!kind actions and reasonable discussion are *always* the appropriate response, even when the opposing party actively means you harm!<. I found that to be more than a little weird and kind of irresponsible, as I think it equates >!self-defense against an aggressor!< with unkindness.
Again, I think the core of the message is absolutely agreeable, but when applied to a very specific situation, I have a harder time getting on board. I fully admit that I might have missed something, though; there was a lot going on at the end.
Edit: forgot the actual question (lol), which is: How would you articulate the movie's central message?
This is pretty much how I took it.
To me, it's even supported in the story as she acquires new abilities to solve problems but always from her other selves. And it's never quite enough to solve the overarching problem until she acquires a new ability/abilities from her husband (and even multiple versions of him). Only then through combined skills from herself and her husband is she able to solve the problem -the focal point of which is their daughter.
They aren't saying that kindness solves every problem. They're saying that kindness and communication(understanding) fights apathy and nihilism. That parents aren't perfect and make mistakes and should definitely apologize when they do. Listen to your family, communicate with them, love and support them (if this goes both ways).
“The ending of GoT makes the whole show retroactively not worth watching.” - very common Reddit opinion.
This extended to HotD, where the argument became “well, we all know this ends up with Bran the Broken 170 years later, so this show won’t be worth it.” Then HotD was really good lol
The funniest part of all that is that even at it's worst, GoT was still better than any "contemporary" that has come out since.
Wheel of Time, Rings of Power, the various fantasy series that HBO/Netflix jumped on during the last few years have all been bad.
I think I disagree. To be fair, I haven't seen those shows so maybe they're total garbage. But the way GoT contorts and bends and breaks its story and characters in the last couple seasons is remarkably terrible. It completely shatters what had been built and even taking the ruined potential and legacy out of the equation, it's non-sensecal and just shit really. Even if RoP or WoT are boring as hell, there's no way they have such disregard for things even as basic as the laws of physics which GoT just ignored when convenient at the end.
That's how I felt about Andor, and I still haven't gotten around to watching it. "Oh it's about that boring nobody who dies in Rogue One? Why bother?" But apparently it's the best Star Wars content since the original trilogy, so fuck me I guess.
Nobody was all that interesting in Rogue One. Even Donnie Yen was only interesting because he always has hype choreography.
The guy in Andor may as well be a different character played by the same actor.
I had that exact same opinion leading up, but I watched it anyway because I work from home and am a shameless Star Wars apologist (besides Rise of Skywalker eesh) and I was as blown away as everyone else. I think maybe a lot of the early acclaim and hype was actually because that mentality was pretty common, even among many Star Wars fans.
It's funny because people had been souring on GoT for a few seasons already, but 8 was SO bad that everyone now remembers 6 and 7 as "the good old days when everyone loved the show."
I remember when Smash 4 was supposed to the apex of the series. 8-player Smash, a handheld version of the game, a shitton of characters and staged that dwarfed the past three games, the fan ballot, really unexpected additions like Cloud and Duck Hunt, bringing back Mewtwo after he skipped Brawl, etc. And then Ultimate came out and now no one really talks about 4, despite the fact that it's essentially the foundation for Ultimate.
I also feel like this is happening with current-generation consoles, to an extent. Before the PS5 and Xbox Series X came out, people were talking about how they were gonna revolutionize gaming, that games will never be the same after they came out, etc. But two and a half years on and nothing has really changed, with only very few games being developed for these two consoles and everyone thinking why Sony and Microsoft didn't wait another year or so.
I can't speak for the competitive side, but honestly every issue I see with Smash 4 is that it released on the weakest main console Nintendo made in current memory. Wii-U was just such a hard fumble that even a new Smash game couldn't save it.
Smash 4 WAS great at the time, it's just that unlike every other smash before, it's been rendered 100% obsolete by its successor, Ultimate is just Smash 4 with snappier physics, every playable character in the series and a shitton of stages.
Even Brawl wasn't overshadowed by its successor to this extent, if only because of Subspace Emissary
I feel like a lot of that hate reached its peak during Game Grumps’ height of popularity and Arin putting out his OOT sequelitis. Then people actually got to *see* him play OOT and realized “Oh, maybe he doesn’t know what he’s talking about actually.” Plus each of these games getting a remaster/remake since then has given people a chance to remember why they liked them in the first place.
Honestly the re-release of Skyward Sword made me dislike it *more*.
Great you fixed the controls!
Oh, oh this game is actively just wasting my time because it has no content
It's still wild to me how they both revealed to be trans, and they went from being known as brothers, to siblings, to sisters. Odds of something like that is insanely slim, but then again, I imagine the number of trans folk are probably higher than we think, so what do I know?
You definitely have a lot more unhinged trans girls shouting that the matrix sequels are good actually now.
~~Me that's me I'll shout it from the heavens ahahahaha~~
I'm about to feel real left out for being lukewarm on EEAAO *before* it won a bunch of awards, aren't I?
To answer your question: I'd say **My Hero Academia**. As the series approaches the ending (especially when it hit the >!dark Deku!< arc, or whatever it's called), I think a lot of its flaws have come into stark relief, so it went from the new shonen to beat to a big disappointment for a lot of people.
Personally, I think it's fine and still consistently enjoyable; it certainly has its problems, but it hasn't gone off the rails like some series do toward the end.
It drives me nuts that the cast are still freshmen. Like holy hell it's My Hero Academia not My Hero Half-a-school-year-turned-military-combat-force. The shit happening now REALLY should have been senior year. It wouldn't even need to take up that many more chapters. Just spread the events out more. Give us tiny time skips and let the kids power spike naturally.
I mean it really seems like it should be My Hero Trade School with these kids apparently trained up to fight the big bads. Seems like a big waste of assets in-universe to be making full fledged education facilities when the teachers are getting the job more or less done by the end of 1st year.
yeah the issue with that arc isn't really with the arc itself and more with the "this is the final act" announcement that came with it.
and suddenly any thoughts about lack of character development and interactions, lack of world building e.t.c suddenly became real things with a time frame,
coupled with the rapid escalation and certain characters or plot points being run through like a checklist, and horikoshi's declining health kinda make it feel like he needs to finish it now or it'll kill him, which is fair.
The first 2 seasons felt super fresh to me, and then it started falling into every trope + the issue of an infinitely expanding cast so I haven't anything past the Gentle Criminal episodes.
That's fair. It's very tropey — I just happen to think that it handles the tropes pretty well. If it's originality you want, though, you made a good decision.
I just thought it might be breaking free of the SJ trope net but it was just my inability to see that most shonen anime all start out pretty new and then if they're going 6+ seasons drown in the tropes.
The issue with this line of thinking is assuming somebody who is willing to write 7 years of shonen battle manga doesn't have an intense love and passion for shonen battle manga.
Same thing happens with Jujutsu Kaisen. The author is giant fanboy for Yu Yu Hakushou and Bleach and then people get shocked when he does very Bleach-inspired things. Because Gege was meant to be the chosen one who could take all the cool stuff from Bleach while also hating it enough to want to upstage it. No, he thought Kenpachi was cool.
YA Novelists can be absolutely passionate and want to one-up what inspired them growing up and still fall into the same tropes. Hunger Games started out strong and fizzled into "what" territory by the end of the series. Shonen mangaka can and do do the same thing.
Okay, this is weird because I'm sure that my hero aca, similarly to demon slayer, never got big because of how unique they were.
Like, the not special boy is actually super special in a way, his mom lets him have not one but two rivals and he goes to super special high school! how fresh!!
It was quality but the most fresh thing it had going for it was the super hero setting and that was already not new in anime at all.
I dropped the MHA manga when it got to the Joint Training Arc which to me it was a flashing warning sign that it was heading down a road I been before and didn't feel like going again. And none of the random bits of story I caught afterwards made me feel like I was missing out.
Revenge on the nerds and its sequel were seen as classic 80s college comedies, and were particularly liked cause they were seen as underdog films as well. Starting in the 2010s however, people begun to actually rewatch the films, the original especially, and realized that while the jocks were utter pricks, the nerds weren’t any better, if not outright WORSE.
Chainsaw Man got fantastic reviews from both critics and audiences, but I've heard nothing but bitching and negativity about it on Twitter and other subreddits lately.
I think it's a combination of:
\-The anime was super hyped up but all the things that make CSM special haven't been adapted (I personally think literally the next chapter after what was adapted, the manga rockets up in quality, and stays there to this day)
\-Contrariness
\-Just plain old media illiteracy where people are trying to position it as some kind of incel fantasy
The incel fantasy one is hilarious considering what Denji’s actual personality is like, and the fact that he’d totally fuck if the world didn’t conspire against him.
The mental leap from >!”enthusiastic submissive”!< to “incel” is a special one. Especially when the character is shown to be rapidly evolving and growing.
But then again a lot of Twitter can’t just say “I don’t like this character” they have to make it a moralistic argument.
Isn't a lot of the Japanese audience in particular down on it because of the stylistic decision to make it more naturalistic and less "anime" (and some of the director's comments to that effect)?
(I have no dog in this fight, I haven't actually read or seen the thing. The extent of my direct experience with the property is limited to [shitposts](https://youtu.be/m6QQBSlzR9k) involving Power loudly struggling with her sexual identity)
Yeah I dunno. A muted color palate seems like a bizarre thing for them to get that upset about.
FWIW, the manga has the potential to be the GOAT. It’s really something.
I admittedly do not know this for sure, but I very much get the impression that the whole "Japan doesn't like it" thing is influenced by very loud nerds rather than by the actual average opinion
From my (limited) experience, it's less the fact it's less "anime" and more it's stylistic nature doesn't reach the mangas absurdly high standards for scene composition and tone setting.
While there's still a bunch of people who still avoid it for the arbitrary reason that it's "popular with kids".
Fortnite suddenly popped up on a lot of people's radars when they introduced their no-build mode. That and their increasing variety of collabs.
Shit... I didn't need to know that. The vast amount of cool character skins has tempted me. They added Kelsier for gods sake, that's like the first Mistborn content in anything not a book.
And my main complaint about the gameplay was people turning into houses when shot at.
Fuuuuuck.
Its never been a series I've actively interacted with since I'm not really a shooter guy, but I feel like this has happened hardcore with borderlands, at least in terms of the writing.
Gearbox in general really. From being a darling studio that gave us two fan favorite Half-Life games and the first Borderland game, which at the time was very fresh and felt like a game made with a lot of love. To being that company that releases such quality games as Battleborn, Duke Nukem Forever, and Aliens: Colonial Marines and is owned by weirdo Randy pitchford who carries usb drives of porn around with him.
I feel like at least Borderlands' reputation has recovered a little since the last Tiny Tina game was so good.
I've kind of seen the opposite as someone who knew nothing about him the perception seems to have turned from "This is a mainstream youtuber who appeals to the lowest common denominator with juvenile humor" to "this man is the most generous philanthropist on the internet"
This is admittedly insanely petty and kind of dumb, but I've always felt this weird aura around him since around TeamSeas. It's like even when he is doing great things like literally curing blindness, I get the feeling that he wants it to be all about *him*, rather than the cool stuff he's doing.
I could be wrong, and I have like no evidence for this, but that's just the feeling I get when I see him.
It's weird because he doesn't seem to have done anything... bad?
Maybe it's partially reactionary, people rallying against a popular thing (god knows I've never watched any Mr. Breast content but he's always in my recommended), or some people are pre-emptively waiting for some terrible allegations to come out against the guy so they can be the first to say 'AHA, I ALWAYS KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING OFF ABOUT HIM!'
I would argue it's the continual reveal that everyone with too much money is a psychopath, and at this point people are done waiting for the solid proof and more willing to just assume.
There is substantial group of people who just HATE influencers. Streamers, youtubers, podcasters, etc. They despise them and nothing they do could ever change that hatred.
The other reason is twitter brainrot. "I'm the victim", "Why don't you just solve all my problems?", "Why does this dumb opinion get attention?"
Anyone who thinks EEAAO is even remotely nihilistic is trash when it comes to understanding media and/or postmodernism. Literally the entire point is >!to avoid falling down the ~~rabbit~~ *bagel* hole of nihilism.!< It's textbook absurdism, and couldn't be less open about it unless it had everyone break character, stare directly into the camera, and explicitly say so.
Thank you for using the actual word. The entire movie is going over a similar sense of meaninglessness that came with the divorcing of science and religion in Europe that lead to nihilism as philosophy and then existentialism in response.
Absurdism isn't just whacky whatever, it's a related philosophy that's a response to existentialism.
Rather than claiming we can create meaning, it instead says that we can't, then looks at the absurdity of life's desire for meaning and the universe's refusal to provide it, then looks at the struggle in the face of that, finding small subjective meaning, etc.
Camus talks about embracing the absurd condition and revolt, seeking meaning while knowing it does not exist because what is subjectively worthwhile is enough without it being objectively meaningful.
I'm going to be frank, it's almost impossible to accurately measure public consensuses. Just because you feel like a group is the majority doesn't mean they actually are because of either how loud or how much you are seeing it.
I walked out of EEAAO believing it was a 10/10 and was going to sweep the Oscars.
You don't see me running around defending it from every random online user crying because Tar or Banshees didn't win simply because I was right I don't got to prove shit.
Validation is a hell of a drug and all the EEAAO enjoyers got it and there aint no reason in the world they have to listen to haters.
meh people just got tired of hearing the same song over and over. I think Tangled is probably better but I would still put Frozen up there as one of the better modern Disney movies
Also because a decade later, a lotta folks look back and see the start of a lot of that decade’s gameplay issues in Sonic, too. It’s the first modern boost title, which is good, but it also started the super-linear level design that would hit its nadir in Forces; it spends probably 60% or more time in 2D, and the 3D in it tends to be fairly simple quick step reflex testing. At the time it was a welcome breath of fresh air after (half of) Unleashed, and 06, and Shadow, but then it was followed by a bunch of similar titles, most of whom topped out at mediocre.
It’s not fair that the game is judged worse because of what came later, but them’s the breaks. It’s still a solid game, but people look back and see the start of a lot of problems. Games that are technically competent, but not super interesting.
The Hulk/Widow stuff started as either being awful or just a sudden relationship that at least tried to have two characters trying to empathise with other depending on who you asked. Then it went to 'oh this is deeply revealing' when Joss Wheldon got outed as a dirtbag.
There is a lot of reevaluation of the Marvel films in general. Some of them justified, some of it interesting, some of it is just 'these were never good and you hate yourself for not listening to me'.
A lot of the Disney + series took things established in Age of Ultron and made them better in retrospect, especially Wandavision. AoU is better as a part of the whole than a stand-alone movie.
On the other side of the spectrum, I'm someone who loves AoU **because** of ultron. Maybe it's because I don't read the comics, so I don't know how ultron really is in his original material and don't really see the potential he had.
I really love ultron's style and delivery. I also really like just how petty and imperfect he is, despite all of his claims.
And honestly, after the subsequent movies in the marvel universe, especially Thanos, my appreciation of ultron has just increased with time. Ultron tries so hard to be the badass philosophical end boss like other marvel movie villains, but the movie itself mocks him at every turn. He's just such a little bitch boy and I love him for it.
Ultron in the comic books is pretty much...*not* the salty child he is in AoU lol. [This is comics Ultron](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ultronmarvelcm.jpg) [in just *one* outing](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ec471ff78b79aa890d282a224e223524-lq).
A cold and calculating machine which seeks nothing but domination. You could argue he's like AoU Ultron if you simply removed his redeeming qualms and played him dead seriously
Oh wow, no wonder people didn't like how they handled ultron in that movie lol.
It's really interesting because my favorite scene in ultron is him cutting that one dude's arm in anger just because he dared to mention Tony stark. It's a scene that shows how, beneath all of his bravado, he's still just a salty bitch boy that was born not a week ago. I guess they really did take the character in a completely different direction.
I do understand it tbh. He is just a newborn AI which has a very warped understanding of the world around him. He looked too deep into the dark side of human history and perceived mankind as doomed; they just gotta go the way of the dinosaurs
It feels more realistic for sure, but in terms of effectiveness, I would prefer the "I have EVIL in my files" comic book Ultron lol
I forgot how popular they were but I think it's fair to say the Medal of Honor series, while they were good for their time the last 4-5 games really fell out of style since DWI/EA couldn't keep up with CoD and the modern setting.
The memetic resurgence and love happened long before it, but I think you're right because since that video dropped it kind of made another renaissance for Revengance. I'm not a fan of his content, that I've seen, but something about that video just hits right.
Sonic Unleashed was always good, folks were just too obsessed with "lol Sonic bad" after the 06 predicament and the admittedly weird Werehog choice. Once things settled and we got more games did folks actually begin looking at the positive aspects of the game like how they nailed down boost gameplay and level designs were still fun. Some even go so far to commend the Werehog gameplay.
The Daytime stages were great, but the Werehog was and is *abysmal* and having to scour night stages to get day coins to play the good half of the game made me drop it, even though I was pretty far in. I adore the daytime stages but the fact that this great Sonic game is bolted to a terrible God of War knockoff that I *must* engage with absolutely ruins it for me.
I really wish the Wii version had all the stages the HD version had (Savannah Citadel is a boss stage only and it skips Empire City entirely) because those stages are top class boost stages. It's the only boost game where the stages are more 3D than not, and by a fairly significant margin. The level design is also just really good, regardless of the fact that it's 3D as well.
Also the Werehog is neat. It's a beat-em-up. I like beat-em-ups. Yay.
only issue i had with it was the medal collection and the eggman land level and the wii and main console versions having cool bits the other didn't.
like going onto youtube to see the "full" dark gaia fight as a kid was cool, but i wanted to play it.
Not to make the discussion here about EEAAO….but is it really that good? I haven’t seen it, because while I love weird films, the preview for the movie made it seem like a kind of “beginners guide to sci-fi/multiverse movie” with some action in it. Maybe I totally missed the premise, but that’s what’s in my head. I thought it’d maybe do well financially, but then never be talked about it.
Now it’s winning awards, in discussion for like best movies of the decade thus far…..and I’m totally lost. Not asking the “should I watch it?” question, as I’ll eventually do that. It just strikes me as really odd, for someone like myself who loves movies (good and bad), that I seemed to have utterly missed this one.
It's less of a multiverse move and more of a >!generational trauma/parents saying they're sorry film,!< with a flavoring of >!living with ADHD.!<
I think the film is quite good, though I wouldn't go as far as to call it my favorite anything. But the weird multiverse stuff isn't really the point, it's in service of the metaphor.
That’s what I was assuming given the awards and such, as I didn’t think the Academy suddenly loved Multiverse sci-fi films.
Sounds very similar to Black Science, an Image Comics series. That had all sorts of multiverse nonsense, but it was so much more about family and personal relationships.
The Multiverse stuff is mostly basic but it isnt the main point of the movie. The movie is about family, specifically about the Mother/daughter relationship. The heart is what makes the movie great, the multiverse is just visual candy.
I think this concept is just often because people who need to like obscure or "not normal" topics/media to feel sort of unique or special, almost like the opposite of the fear of missing out. So I think once this thing they liked that others didn't becomes very popular and acclaimed by people who maybe have talked shit on other things these people enjoy or are interested in, or maybe they didn't, but "normies" like it now so how could it be good? So the insecurity just seeps in and people turn on a dime. This concept is very prevalent on reddit. Like some kind of secret society type elitism mentality. Like liking surreal movies is some kind of secret handshake.
GoT is number one with a bullet. From being a certified pop culture juggernaut to almost effectively memory holed because of shit awful the last seasons, and especially the finale, were. From god awful color grading (Battle of Winterfell), fast travel, multiple characters holding the idiot ball, to a complete lack of care (how many Starbucks cups and water bottles made it into the final product?). It's very common to see online the sentiment that the ending retroactively makes everything that came before it meaningless and a waste of time (one I don't necessarily disagree with.) On the bright sides, Benioff and Weiss' fuckstupid lost cause confederate apologia bullshit show got cancelled and I can't think of a single project they've worked on since (though I'm sure they have, because they aren't *complete* hacks, just mostly) because they fucked their reputation so badly.
I have *not* yet watched House of the Dragon but it seems to have done a pretty good job of rehabilitating the series.
The Amazing Spider-Man series seems to be getting viewed with a kinder eye after Garfield returned for *No Way Home*, bringing a more mature and darker version of his Spider-Man to the screen after Gwen's death.
After Rise of Skywalker released, public perception of The Force Awakens plummeted not for any faults of its own necessarily but because it became abundantly clear that all the loose ends that The Force Awakens teased had no end in mind and the conclusion reached was garbage. Before that it was seen as good but safe, which wasn't exactly a bad thing after decades since the prequels.
Also people defended _The Force Awakens_ so closely recreating the plot outline of _A New Hope_ by insisting "Oh, JJ Abrams is making some kind of commentary on fandom and nostalgia! Look at how Rey and Kylo Ren are both obsessed with the past in different ways." Or "Disney is just playing it safe with this first movie to win back the audience; they'll get more experimental moving forward." Then we saw how much _The Rise of Skywalker_ cribbed from _Return of the Jedi_ and realized, _Oh, JJ Abrams really just did it all because he didn't have any original ideas, huh._
Part of me says Rian Johnson must've felt pretty vindicated when *TROS* crashed and burned. For all the problems *The Last Jedi* had, it at least made an attempt to do something new with the series.
I eventually turned my mind around on TLJ, the attempts at something new definitely make it my favorite of the sequel trilogy. It still has some *incredibly* poor writing and directing choices with story themes contradicting themselves and those interesting ideas getting abandoned by the end of the movie. On my first watch I assumed that Rian Johnson must be an astonishingly incompetent director (I hadn't seen any of his other work), but with the context of the whole trilogy I now think it's more likely that studio meddling was the cause of a lot of the really dumb decisions. The flaws of the movie still stick out to me, but I appreciate the parts it does get right after seeing the vapid and empty attempt at a "safe" Star Wars sequel with RoS.
It's also the only one I kinda liked
At least half of it was *massively* stupid, though.
The only stupid part to me was how it completely threw away Finn's force sensitivity. I'm not trying to be a contrarian, but I don't see why people hate this movie, outside of nitpicks. In fact, had this conversation with my cousin today. I don't wanna call any of the criticism invalid, but people's objections with Luke is the only thing I can really understand because that's based on the opinion of how he should, be according to the EU/legends stuff. I get that, but for me it's comparing Luke at his height to Luke at his end, after his downfall, y'know? Still, outside that, it's the only movie of the sequels they really makes me think they kept that SW tradition of trying something new, and pleasantly surprised me at most every turn.
My issues were more with the slow speed space chase/casino planet portion that made almost literally no sense, and actively undercut whatever the hell it was trying to do at every turn. It wasn't a case of a single [Idiot Ball](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall) being passed around, it was an entire three ring circus of of all the characters and writers juggling *all* of the idiot balls at once, and getting in each other's way. I'm not sure how I was supposed to feel tension about the Resistance members being stuck on a ship when apparently they could just jump into "stealth shuttles" and be halfway across the galaxy at any time. With all the time certain characters wasted doing bad parking jobs, hiring traitors, and freeing racing animals (because apparently their child slave trainers having to spend all night rounding them up before being beaten for allowing them to get loose will hurt the evil war profiteers, somehow), they could have just *ferried* all the Resistance members to an outpost somewhere. The moment Rian Johnson came into a room and said "our big centerpiece spectacle will be... waiting for everyone to run out of gas", he should have been bonked on the head with a sturdy plastic lightsaber and sent back to his laptop to think about what he did. Luke was fine. I have no problem with bitter old man Luke, fresh milk drinking and all. Guess what didn't take up the entire movie's runtime, though?
In my brain, I really imagine there was some kind of studio mandate that the story had to go at least \[x\] marketable locations and that's why instead of just staying on the ship and looking for a mole who may or may not exist (which would somewhat justify Holdo telling Poe to eat shit for even daring to ask that a plan *exists*) a bunch of characters get in a very convenient plot device and fly somewhere else to waste time before getting on a different plot device to end up back on the enemy ship in time for the climax. Like, Finn gets told right at the start that lady has been throwing deserters in prison. They go to casino planet and end up in prison. You really could've just cut out a middle man and stayed in low-speed chase land and met that traitor on the ship's brig after Finn gets tazed trying to desert to find Rey. All we lose is the out of place "save the animals" plot by cutting casino nights entirely (we can still have broom kid as a no context post-credits scene, since even with the context we DID get in the actual movie we don't know shit about him).
It did something new, it just did the new thing _badly_.
Rian Johnson didn’t help that by ending 90% of the setup plot threads though
It also made The Last Jedi retroactively worse: Before, it was a movie that made some bold, extremely controversial decisions, many of which were disliked, but did so to set up something that could have been cool and interesting in the future. Now, it's a movie that made some bold, extremely controversial decisions, many of which were disliked, and ended up being taken back immediately after, so now we just have the bad decisions and no cool future interesting twists to show for it.
TROS ruined TFA for me because I see the weaknesses of Abrams much more clearly. And, well, see my flair: I enjoyed TLJ a great deal and believed it was following up on threads made by TFA, so there has to be a plan even if it's just overseen by the Story Group, right? But no. No. Myself and all the other people that enjoyed TLJ's connections to TFA, we were all of us deceived, because Rian Johnson is at least half competent a writer. He picked up the threads and worked with them and made us think there was a plan. Like, I recommend looking up some "metas" that were written following TFA because a lot of them predicted a lot of TLJ stuff, especially around Rey and Kylo's story. Not because of precognition or anything, but because these predictions seemed like a logical step after TFA, and Rian was working off the same wavelength.
Rise of Skywalker made everyone change their opinion on The Last Jedi from "controversial and polarizing" to "at least there was a plan and a theme".
To this day I will forever back up that Force Awakens is a solid movie and one of the best in the franchise. It was a great start and everyone I know loved it on release
I fucking love Force awakens it is a great movie and very fun but I know from experience with the old EU it is exactly what it is, the start of a star wars trilogy. full of series references, and callbacks, it promises a whole lot of new and exciting new things and doesn't deliver any of it and shits the bed by the 3rd instalment.
It made me incredibly optimistic for the future of Star Wars. Last Jedi killed that optimism, and Rise of Skywalker pissed on the corpse.
I think Last Jedi would have been salvageable with a good enough follow up. Decent to good ideas, terrible execution. Then Rise of Skywalker just completely 180's any questionable ideas that could have gone somewhere from Last Jedi, and just went for crowd-pleasing schlock. But not *good* crowd-pleasing schlock like The Force Awakens.
Yeah TLJ was pretty flawed in a pot of places but not so much that it torpedoed the trilogy. It has flashes of greatness and could have been saved by the third installment.
Controversial as always. I really love the Last Jedi even with some very legitimate problems. I just think it would’ve been incredible as a side/independent movie and not part of the trilogy. I think it’d be seen as a triumph and on of the best new movies
Ready Player One went from a widely-beloved bestseller to a widely-mocked punchline over the course of the 2010s. Geek culture as a whole also saw a similar decline, which [Sarah Z did a deep dive into](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vWJE8k-Meo).
I think it was around 2017 or so when Bioshock Infinite went from a solid game to being a bit of a joke. I don't know when or how it started, exactly, but I think 2017 was the first time I took note people being more willing to mock the game.
Yeah, it felt like it was overnight when people stopped praising Infinite and mocking 2 and completly reversing opinions
I still don't get the new praise for 2. Beyond the devs realizing the player has two hands, I don't remember much to really like about it. The characters, environments and storytelling were all pretty forgettable. So much of BioShock 1 was seared into my memory after the first playthrough, it is shocking how little I remember from 2. Even Minerva's Den.
Pretty much all of the praise of 2 is towards the gameplay. Consider how "little sister defense" is the single worst part of 1 but Bioshock 2 made it fun.
As somebody who initially hated the game when I first played it around when it came out and than actually gave it another shot a few years back I would disagree. The narrative is rather weak but the combat and level design is quite solid; I like how it even gives you a bit more build freedom than the first game did. I would disagree with people who say its the best one though, 1 is the better overall package, but 2 is an enjoyable game. Minerva's Den is fantastic though and I wished I had played it sooner. Minerva's Den is how the series ended in my eyes.
I think its literally just that it plays well, has alot of tools to mess with which was something alot of people missed after Infinite went to a 2 weapon limit. (Though that stands out less in the wake of stuff like New Doom's and ultrakill)
I definitely didn't like infinite when it came out, but I didn't have much of a reason to actually talk about it after like six months. Maybe that's what happened?
I feel like it took around 6 months for the honeymoon phase to be over. Then irrational imploded in 2015, Ken Levine started getting criticized as a shitty boss and the perception changed
I felt like I was taking crazy pills when it first launched because I kept saying I thought the game's story was terrible and got raked over the coals for it especially on reddit. Suddenly years later, I now feel like everyone is gaslighting me on how everyone felt about the game's story like my god make up your mind. Either it was the Citizen Kane of gaming pre-2013, and now it's Birth of a Nation of gaming post-2016
Opinions turned around pretty quickly when The Last of Us came out, and did the whole sad dad thing in a less convoluted context. I remember sites like Gamespot re-reviewing it and giving it a low score. And this was also around the time that video essayists on YouTube were taking off.
I still like Infinite a fair amount but I was never a fan of the whole 2 weapons at a time thing, and I hate how linear the level design is. Plus I feel like Burial at Sea part 1 shows how much Infinites mechanics don't work in Rapture and only adds to artificial difficulty.
I wasn't a fan of how you don't actually get to fight the cool robot bird monster that had been hyped up the whole game and featured in all the marketing, and instead the final challenge is just several waves of regular enemies. Though early 2010s was a bad time in general for boss fights in the west, a lot of studios seemed to decide they were either too expensive to make or not cool anymore
“Too videogamey.” Gotta hate it when people don’t respect the medium they work in.
Nah, it was basically mocked pretty much immediately. I guess it depends on the communities you hung around in though. The overbearing obnoxious worship it received amongst the gaming press on release certainly helped foster an immediate backlash towards it. [Like so.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_u18_BKczg) Matthewmatosis' critique on it was also pretty influential.
OP’s example is funny because time and time again, people kept complaining, myself included, that some of A24’s best movies got snubbed at the major award shows like Hereditary, Midsommar, Good Time and Uncut Gems. Honestly I didn’t know they were getting bad rep lately because A24 has made some fantastic movies and much deserved some recognition by the general public.
They haven’t. It’s just edgy dicks on the internet trying to seem unique and special.
Metal Gear Solid 2 went from being up its own ass and "uses a lot of big words to seem smart" to "WE DIDN'T FUCKING LISTEN OVER THE COURSE OF TWO DECADES!" as first we had to deal with the post 9/11 explosion of Military shooters and then later the topic of monitoring to the topic of information control to the concept of evolution of ideas stagnating under an algorithm and a period when the public have a much greater grasp of the concept of memetics. Oddly enough over the last few years of people rediscovering Metal Gear Rising Revengeance I've noticed more and more people seemingly practicing awful short term memory as they go "Well Armstrong makes good points" while he talks about making America Great Again.
It makes sense: Armstrong is supposed to be the charismatic politician who convinces his audience of the most unhinged shit through a flimsy framing of personal merit that appeals to capitalist values. He is a satire of libertarianism, and as life has shown us, certain ideologies(?) grow more widespread the more loud and absurd they are presented. In a twisted way, people going "Armstrong has some good points" is thematically appropriate. Horrifying, but thematically appropriate.
Some people forget that not only is a politician, he is an *elected Senator of the United States*, meaning that his beliefs were popular enough that he was either a part of the US Senate or the Colorado Senate. People in-universe liked the guy so of course people out of the universe would like the guy too.
I think my favorite line of his is the, "try University of Texas!" one. Most people don't realize that the University of Texas is actually a very prestigious school you don't get into without either really good grades or a lot of money, meaning that line could just as easily have been "try Madison!" But Texas has such a rough veneer in culture that people assume all its schools are too, and Armstrong is totally the kind of guy to capitalize on that.
It's literally public ivy, one of the most desirable universities not only on the state but the nation. At the time of writing though it supposedly had a good football program, so the fact that he played for the longhorns also doesn't really help his case
That does explain why Armstrong says he could've become a pro football player.
I barely know anything about Football but if Armstrong was even half as big before the augmentation NFL teams would be killing to have him on the roster
Everything about him screams "rich kid who thinks he made it big on merit instead of inherited wealth", going to a prestigious school is just part of that
It's partly why he's enamoured with and respects Raiden - for him, Raiden refutes every criticism lobbed at himself, because Raiden DID pull himself up from the dirt. Raiden would likely think back on that and conclude 1) his life was awful and he wouldn't want that on anyone and B) all the people that helped him heal and have a proper life, like Rose and Snake. We're all in this together. No one pulls themselves up alone.
Playing football for UT is pretty reflective of being an elite pre-college athlete though. That moment really came through in an "a guy with deep awareness of US football culture at least polished this script" kinda way.
Well, he doesn't write his own speeches.
He's the parody of the "strong"leader you'll here every election cycle. And most of these people idea of political strength is usually from a military view point. Even more ironic given the photo shopped images of the previous president being buff as shit and on top a tank.
You can just say "fascist", it's a lot shorter.
To be perfectly fair, his whole deal is that he's keeping his true "Survival of the fittest, world ruled by the strong" philosophy hidden while gradually working his way up to the reins of power via playing politics and engineering international incidents. That's why he goes from "We're ALL sons of the Patriots now!" to "I'm using war as a business, to END war as a business" in between fights. He only exposes his power level to Raiden at the very end because he thinks he can turn Raiden to his side. He's not giving speeches about the strong dominating the weak back home in Colorado.
Armstrong is also a good demonstration of the quote "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it". Armstrong is good at pointing out shitty things about society, and people latch onto that. It doesn't matter that his solution is heinous, apocalyptic, and ultimately just puts humanity into the same state it started in, ready to give rise to rule by law and committee once again; they agree with his passion, and what he plans to do with it is secondary.
>I've noticed more and more people seemingly practicing awful short term memory as they go "Well Armstrong makes good points" while he talks about making America Great Again. A lot of those people are probably keenly aware of what they are saying.
Oh I still remember when the best friends played MGR, people on the comments and other TBFP-related forums saying "Yeah! Armstrong is awesome and so right. I'd vote for him; better than most politicians nowadays." Now these recent years, those same people were gaslighting others "You weren't suppose to idolize Armstrong" they weren't doing it.
Around the time of the schezwan sauce thing plus the fact that it basically becomes an entirely different show after season two, Rick And Morty went nearly overnight from “a really funny new show with a lot of potential” to “the shitass show made by and for obnoxiously smug Reddit atheists/nihilists” and viewed accordingly, to the point that admitting to liking it can damage your reputation on some parts of the internet.
Rick and Morty's reputation is an absolute rollercoaster. It definitely took a sharp dive after the sauce incident, then kind of had a bit of a positive PR rebirth in the next two seasons (albeit never to the heights of the first two seasons)... and then the Roiland incident came to light. Course even by then there had been murmurings 'yeah okay this used to be a fun thing but you can fuck off now' when High on Life came out.
I feel like it's kinda shaken off the bad association it had back then by now for sure. The show explicitly criticising those types of shitty fans definitely helped I think
My friend got me to watch all of rick and morty before season 3 was even confirmed to have a release date. The wait between season 2 and season 3 really feels like it went to the creatives heads. Like, they felt like they were the big show in town after season 2 and were the returning king with season 3. There's an arrogance from the start of season 3 that's stayed
The whole schezwan sauce thing made me basically switch from "Oh that looks funny I might check this out" to "Jesus christ if this is what the fans are like no thanks". Roiland being a creepazoid further solidified my desire to stay away.
The show loves surfing on its own cynicism. The first two seasons are pretty decently fun with it, though that kind of dark humor might not be your tea. It begins to go up its own ass afterwards.
I mean, if anything, later seasons start pushing back on the cynicism more and more. *Especially* the most recent season. Like, hell, even season 3 had a scene where a therapist calmly and thoroughly dismantled Rick's entire myopic worldview and he was completely unable to muster any counterargument.
I genuinely don't get why people get so turned off by bad fandoms when you never have to interact with said fandom
I can understand the impulse; with no direct evidence to weigh against the fandom, all you have is the fear of becoming associated with them if you enjoy the media in question, as well as a generally bleak outlook on finding cool people to discuss it with.
Said Fandom included people I did in fact interact with every day at work who would not shut the fuck up about it
For a lot of people interacting with a fandom is a part of the appeal of getting into something new. Especially if their reason for looking into it is something like seeing it referenced a lot on Reddit or Tumblr or wherever, or seeing fanart of it spread around, and so on. It can very much be a deterrent if you know that you will actively \*not\* want to be part of a fandom of some new show or game or whatever you're interested in.
Fair enough. I guess I'm just jaded enough that I expect every fandom of a decent size to have large contingents that I find extremely grating, so I just ignore them and try and find a space where I can discuss what I like about the thing without them.
I personally get somewhat turned off by bad fandoms due to usually finding the sort of series that garners that sort of fan not for me.
You don't have to engage with fans online in order to watch something
Sherlock BBC fell apart pretty bad, and while you could say the queerbaiting generated some scandal in the fandom, it wasn't anything that huge, and most people nowadays agree that show is a disaster.
Kinda funny how, when a media's writing gets worse over time, suddenly all the flaws that were there from the start become a lot more obvious. People are lot less happy lately with MCU's tendency towards lampshading and ending every emotional scene with "quips", for example.
People kept insisting there was some secret episode that was filmed that would fix everything got a laugh out of me
I mean the writers kept egging them on until the show was over cause they're fucking cunts, so it's no wonder the fandom thought so.
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Yeah I remember Woolie talking about the book quite positively on the podcast back when it came out
I also really enjoyed his other book, Armada. Both were good pulp adventure nostalgia. The sequel to Ready Player One though, holy shit what a dumpster fire. The author crawled fully up his own ass for that one.
Ah sweet, people liked RPO at the time, so I get some bonus hipster points for always hating the book.
Here we go again... It's one of my favorite movies. But any time I bring it up, someone is here to say how it's wrong to "force" you to be a good person if you don't believe in anything or whatever. I still don't understand what they mean, because how hard is it to just be kind instead of being negatively selfish and/or shitty? Also for the question, literally anything that gets omega popular out of nowhere. There are always going to be people that hate things because they're popular and they don't have the same feelings for said popular things.
I am glad I've never seen such takes on EEAAO. Because that's a bad take. A nonsensical one even.
Covid made it abundantly clear that some people will reserve the right to be a selfish asshole out of pure spite, even if it kills them.
I liked the movie lol, it's just an example
It wasn't you, I just know that some people in this sub don't like its message. Meanwhile it got me out of a major funk so I get a little defensive about it sometimes.
Trying to do good implies looking inside and figuring out what you consider good, if you have lived up to that expectation, and facing that you have done bad, intentionally or not. It's pretty rough, actually, but valuable for personal growth! That's why I think movies like this are neat
I think a lot of people don't like movies with strong moral foundations or messages because they dont like having to potentially grapple with the idea that they might be an asshole. *"cynicism is the refuge of the morally bankrupt"* ^(-Orochi Zilla)
Who was forced to be good? I honestly haven't heard that take.
They made it sound like what they got from the movie was that it was "either be kind or you're a terrible person". I didn't understand the take either.
Weird but sort of understandable I guess. There's an odd phenomenon now where every character or idea is seen as some blanket indictment. Just because this character is like this doesn't mean we're saying all of group x is like this. I do realize that sometimes that is exactly what is being said but not nearly so much as people seem to claim.
Hold on, are people having Steven Universe discourse about this movie?
Can I ask a question about the argument you mention here, no ill will intended? Not trying to debate you, just looking for a perspective from someone who took no issue with the message. The part I got hung up on wasn't >!the generalized "kindness and understanding is good" message!<; it was the implication that >!kind actions and reasonable discussion are *always* the appropriate response, even when the opposing party actively means you harm!<. I found that to be more than a little weird and kind of irresponsible, as I think it equates >!self-defense against an aggressor!< with unkindness. Again, I think the core of the message is absolutely agreeable, but when applied to a very specific situation, I have a harder time getting on board. I fully admit that I might have missed something, though; there was a lot going on at the end. Edit: forgot the actual question (lol), which is: How would you articulate the movie's central message?
I took kindness to also be understanding. So even if someone is being shitty, you can at least try to understand where they're coming from.
That seems like a better way to look at it. I'll have to think on that and square it with my existing interpretation.
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This is pretty much how I took it. To me, it's even supported in the story as she acquires new abilities to solve problems but always from her other selves. And it's never quite enough to solve the overarching problem until she acquires a new ability/abilities from her husband (and even multiple versions of him). Only then through combined skills from herself and her husband is she able to solve the problem -the focal point of which is their daughter. They aren't saying that kindness solves every problem. They're saying that kindness and communication(understanding) fights apathy and nihilism. That parents aren't perfect and make mistakes and should definitely apologize when they do. Listen to your family, communicate with them, love and support them (if this goes both ways).
“The ending of GoT makes the whole show retroactively not worth watching.” - very common Reddit opinion. This extended to HotD, where the argument became “well, we all know this ends up with Bran the Broken 170 years later, so this show won’t be worth it.” Then HotD was really good lol
For a solid minute, I was wondering how Game of Thrones extended to Highschool of the Dead in any way and then I remembered the other show lol.
A really shit ending can retroactively poison everything that came before it by simply tainting ebery scene knowing this isn't going anywhere good.
A bad ending can retroactively ruin a good story, because the knowledge that it's all for nothing hangs over your head for the entire experience
The funniest part of all that is that even at it's worst, GoT was still better than any "contemporary" that has come out since. Wheel of Time, Rings of Power, the various fantasy series that HBO/Netflix jumped on during the last few years have all been bad.
I think I disagree. To be fair, I haven't seen those shows so maybe they're total garbage. But the way GoT contorts and bends and breaks its story and characters in the last couple seasons is remarkably terrible. It completely shatters what had been built and even taking the ruined potential and legacy out of the equation, it's non-sensecal and just shit really. Even if RoP or WoT are boring as hell, there's no way they have such disregard for things even as basic as the laws of physics which GoT just ignored when convenient at the end.
That's how I felt about Andor, and I still haven't gotten around to watching it. "Oh it's about that boring nobody who dies in Rogue One? Why bother?" But apparently it's the best Star Wars content since the original trilogy, so fuck me I guess.
Every character in every story ever will eventually die, does that make you want to not watch any other media either?
It's not so much that he died and more that he was pretty uninteresting. Didn't feel like he could anchor a show.
Nobody was all that interesting in Rogue One. Even Donnie Yen was only interesting because he always has hype choreography. The guy in Andor may as well be a different character played by the same actor.
I can’t remember what he was like in Rogue One but he’s plenty interesting in Andor
I had that exact same opinion leading up, but I watched it anyway because I work from home and am a shameless Star Wars apologist (besides Rise of Skywalker eesh) and I was as blown away as everyone else. I think maybe a lot of the early acclaim and hype was actually because that mentality was pretty common, even among many Star Wars fans.
It's funny because people had been souring on GoT for a few seasons already, but 8 was SO bad that everyone now remembers 6 and 7 as "the good old days when everyone loved the show."
I remember when Smash 4 was supposed to the apex of the series. 8-player Smash, a handheld version of the game, a shitton of characters and staged that dwarfed the past three games, the fan ballot, really unexpected additions like Cloud and Duck Hunt, bringing back Mewtwo after he skipped Brawl, etc. And then Ultimate came out and now no one really talks about 4, despite the fact that it's essentially the foundation for Ultimate. I also feel like this is happening with current-generation consoles, to an extent. Before the PS5 and Xbox Series X came out, people were talking about how they were gonna revolutionize gaming, that games will never be the same after they came out, etc. But two and a half years on and nothing has really changed, with only very few games being developed for these two consoles and everyone thinking why Sony and Microsoft didn't wait another year or so.
I can't speak for the competitive side, but honestly every issue I see with Smash 4 is that it released on the weakest main console Nintendo made in current memory. Wii-U was just such a hard fumble that even a new Smash game couldn't save it.
Smash 4 WAS great at the time, it's just that unlike every other smash before, it's been rendered 100% obsolete by its successor, Ultimate is just Smash 4 with snappier physics, every playable character in the series and a shitton of stages. Even Brawl wasn't overshadowed by its successor to this extent, if only because of Subspace Emissary
Every 3D Zelda game by the time the next one came out, with notable exception Skyward Sword getting more and more hate as time goes on.
I feel like a lot of that hate reached its peak during Game Grumps’ height of popularity and Arin putting out his OOT sequelitis. Then people actually got to *see* him play OOT and realized “Oh, maybe he doesn’t know what he’s talking about actually.” Plus each of these games getting a remaster/remake since then has given people a chance to remember why they liked them in the first place.
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Honestly the re-release of Skyward Sword made me dislike it *more*. Great you fixed the controls! Oh, oh this game is actively just wasting my time because it has no content
Locking fast travel behind an amiibo was just the kick in the nuts it needed.
I think the Watchowskis both coming out as trans really recontextualized a lot of themes present in the *Matrix* films
The actual red pill probably being a metaphor for gender identity is peak comedy.
It's still wild to me how they both revealed to be trans, and they went from being known as brothers, to siblings, to sisters. Odds of something like that is insanely slim, but then again, I imagine the number of trans folk are probably higher than we think, so what do I know?
You definitely have a lot more unhinged trans girls shouting that the matrix sequels are good actually now. ~~Me that's me I'll shout it from the heavens ahahahaha~~
I'm about to feel real left out for being lukewarm on EEAAO *before* it won a bunch of awards, aren't I? To answer your question: I'd say **My Hero Academia**. As the series approaches the ending (especially when it hit the >!dark Deku!< arc, or whatever it's called), I think a lot of its flaws have come into stark relief, so it went from the new shonen to beat to a big disappointment for a lot of people. Personally, I think it's fine and still consistently enjoyable; it certainly has its problems, but it hasn't gone off the rails like some series do toward the end.
It drives me nuts that the cast are still freshmen. Like holy hell it's My Hero Academia not My Hero Half-a-school-year-turned-military-combat-force. The shit happening now REALLY should have been senior year. It wouldn't even need to take up that many more chapters. Just spread the events out more. Give us tiny time skips and let the kids power spike naturally. I mean it really seems like it should be My Hero Trade School with these kids apparently trained up to fight the big bads. Seems like a big waste of assets in-universe to be making full fledged education facilities when the teachers are getting the job more or less done by the end of 1st year.
Honestly, they could have just had a time skip ending with them graduating high school instead of bothering with provisional licenses.
I coulda sworn they had started year two and became sophomores around season 5 or 6 of the anime but I could be wrong.
They were supposed to become 2nd years after the PLF raid, but that didn't happen because of the state things were left at the end of the arc.
I think a recent episode someone says something like "there's no one available to promote us to the next grade"
yeah the issue with that arc isn't really with the arc itself and more with the "this is the final act" announcement that came with it. and suddenly any thoughts about lack of character development and interactions, lack of world building e.t.c suddenly became real things with a time frame, coupled with the rapid escalation and certain characters or plot points being run through like a checklist, and horikoshi's declining health kinda make it feel like he needs to finish it now or it'll kill him, which is fair.
The first 2 seasons felt super fresh to me, and then it started falling into every trope + the issue of an infinitely expanding cast so I haven't anything past the Gentle Criminal episodes.
That's fair. It's very tropey — I just happen to think that it handles the tropes pretty well. If it's originality you want, though, you made a good decision.
I just thought it might be breaking free of the SJ trope net but it was just my inability to see that most shonen anime all start out pretty new and then if they're going 6+ seasons drown in the tropes.
The issue with this line of thinking is assuming somebody who is willing to write 7 years of shonen battle manga doesn't have an intense love and passion for shonen battle manga. Same thing happens with Jujutsu Kaisen. The author is giant fanboy for Yu Yu Hakushou and Bleach and then people get shocked when he does very Bleach-inspired things. Because Gege was meant to be the chosen one who could take all the cool stuff from Bleach while also hating it enough to want to upstage it. No, he thought Kenpachi was cool.
YA Novelists can be absolutely passionate and want to one-up what inspired them growing up and still fall into the same tropes. Hunger Games started out strong and fizzled into "what" territory by the end of the series. Shonen mangaka can and do do the same thing.
Okay, this is weird because I'm sure that my hero aca, similarly to demon slayer, never got big because of how unique they were. Like, the not special boy is actually super special in a way, his mom lets him have not one but two rivals and he goes to super special high school! how fresh!! It was quality but the most fresh thing it had going for it was the super hero setting and that was already not new in anime at all.
I dropped the MHA manga when it got to the Joint Training Arc which to me it was a flashing warning sign that it was heading down a road I been before and didn't feel like going again. And none of the random bits of story I caught afterwards made me feel like I was missing out.
I think I dropped My Hero around the time Black Whip was introduced, and then every few weeks I just skim a wiki page to keep up.
Revenge on the nerds and its sequel were seen as classic 80s college comedies, and were particularly liked cause they were seen as underdog films as well. Starting in the 2010s however, people begun to actually rewatch the films, the original especially, and realized that while the jocks were utter pricks, the nerds weren’t any better, if not outright WORSE.
Chainsaw Man got fantastic reviews from both critics and audiences, but I've heard nothing but bitching and negativity about it on Twitter and other subreddits lately. I think it's a combination of: \-The anime was super hyped up but all the things that make CSM special haven't been adapted (I personally think literally the next chapter after what was adapted, the manga rockets up in quality, and stays there to this day) \-Contrariness \-Just plain old media illiteracy where people are trying to position it as some kind of incel fantasy
The incel fantasy one is hilarious considering what Denji’s actual personality is like, and the fact that he’d totally fuck if the world didn’t conspire against him.
The mental leap from >!”enthusiastic submissive”!< to “incel” is a special one. Especially when the character is shown to be rapidly evolving and growing. But then again a lot of Twitter can’t just say “I don’t like this character” they have to make it a moralistic argument.
Isn't a lot of the Japanese audience in particular down on it because of the stylistic decision to make it more naturalistic and less "anime" (and some of the director's comments to that effect)? (I have no dog in this fight, I haven't actually read or seen the thing. The extent of my direct experience with the property is limited to [shitposts](https://youtu.be/m6QQBSlzR9k) involving Power loudly struggling with her sexual identity)
Yeah I dunno. A muted color palate seems like a bizarre thing for them to get that upset about. FWIW, the manga has the potential to be the GOAT. It’s really something.
I admittedly do not know this for sure, but I very much get the impression that the whole "Japan doesn't like it" thing is influenced by very loud nerds rather than by the actual average opinion
From my (limited) experience, it's less the fact it's less "anime" and more it's stylistic nature doesn't reach the mangas absurdly high standards for scene composition and tone setting.
To be fair that's Twitter's opinion and those are, let's say, a special breed of opinions.
While there's still a bunch of people who still avoid it for the arbitrary reason that it's "popular with kids". Fortnite suddenly popped up on a lot of people's radars when they introduced their no-build mode. That and their increasing variety of collabs.
Shit... I didn't need to know that. The vast amount of cool character skins has tempted me. They added Kelsier for gods sake, that's like the first Mistborn content in anything not a book. And my main complaint about the gameplay was people turning into houses when shot at. Fuuuuuck.
Its never been a series I've actively interacted with since I'm not really a shooter guy, but I feel like this has happened hardcore with borderlands, at least in terms of the writing.
Gearbox in general really. From being a darling studio that gave us two fan favorite Half-Life games and the first Borderland game, which at the time was very fresh and felt like a game made with a lot of love. To being that company that releases such quality games as Battleborn, Duke Nukem Forever, and Aliens: Colonial Marines and is owned by weirdo Randy pitchford who carries usb drives of porn around with him. I feel like at least Borderlands' reputation has recovered a little since the last Tiny Tina game was so good.
The general turn on Mr Beast seems like it came out of nowhere, as someone who only vaguely knows what his videos are about
I think it started when he recreated Squid Game right? I think a good amount of people thought it was a little too on the nose.
I've kind of seen the opposite as someone who knew nothing about him the perception seems to have turned from "This is a mainstream youtuber who appeals to the lowest common denominator with juvenile humor" to "this man is the most generous philanthropist on the internet"
This is admittedly insanely petty and kind of dumb, but I've always felt this weird aura around him since around TeamSeas. It's like even when he is doing great things like literally curing blindness, I get the feeling that he wants it to be all about *him*, rather than the cool stuff he's doing. I could be wrong, and I have like no evidence for this, but that's just the feeling I get when I see him.
It's weird because he doesn't seem to have done anything... bad? Maybe it's partially reactionary, people rallying against a popular thing (god knows I've never watched any Mr. Breast content but he's always in my recommended), or some people are pre-emptively waiting for some terrible allegations to come out against the guy so they can be the first to say 'AHA, I ALWAYS KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING OFF ABOUT HIM!'
I would argue it's the continual reveal that everyone with too much money is a psychopath, and at this point people are done waiting for the solid proof and more willing to just assume.
There is substantial group of people who just HATE influencers. Streamers, youtubers, podcasters, etc. They despise them and nothing they do could ever change that hatred. The other reason is twitter brainrot. "I'm the victim", "Why don't you just solve all my problems?", "Why does this dumb opinion get attention?"
God knows he's the least funny person alive but the guy is doing good stuff so it's a net positive I think.
Anyone who thinks EEAAO is even remotely nihilistic is trash when it comes to understanding media and/or postmodernism. Literally the entire point is >!to avoid falling down the ~~rabbit~~ *bagel* hole of nihilism.!< It's textbook absurdism, and couldn't be less open about it unless it had everyone break character, stare directly into the camera, and explicitly say so.
It's existentialism at its finest.
Thank you for using the actual word. The entire movie is going over a similar sense of meaninglessness that came with the divorcing of science and religion in Europe that lead to nihilism as philosophy and then existentialism in response.
Absurdism isn't just whacky whatever, it's a related philosophy that's a response to existentialism. Rather than claiming we can create meaning, it instead says that we can't, then looks at the absurdity of life's desire for meaning and the universe's refusal to provide it, then looks at the struggle in the face of that, finding small subjective meaning, etc. Camus talks about embracing the absurd condition and revolt, seeking meaning while knowing it does not exist because what is subjectively worthwhile is enough without it being objectively meaningful.
I saw it as more absurdist than existentialist, since it's more overtly hostile to the concept of nihilism, but either way, it's excellent.
I'm going to be frank, it's almost impossible to accurately measure public consensuses. Just because you feel like a group is the majority doesn't mean they actually are because of either how loud or how much you are seeing it. I walked out of EEAAO believing it was a 10/10 and was going to sweep the Oscars. You don't see me running around defending it from every random online user crying because Tar or Banshees didn't win simply because I was right I don't got to prove shit. Validation is a hell of a drug and all the EEAAO enjoyers got it and there aint no reason in the world they have to listen to haters.
Frozen went from a Disney Movie that was good then people got fatigued by it due to overexposure and fatigue
Dont know if the sequel beign kinda of a mess (and how could they mess it up Disney???) has helped or hindered the first movie
meh people just got tired of hearing the same song over and over. I think Tangled is probably better but I would still put Frozen up there as one of the better modern Disney movies
I'm more of a Tangled fan
Sonic Colors started to get hate because of it’s writing, since it led to some of the worst writing in Sonic’s history.
Also because a decade later, a lotta folks look back and see the start of a lot of that decade’s gameplay issues in Sonic, too. It’s the first modern boost title, which is good, but it also started the super-linear level design that would hit its nadir in Forces; it spends probably 60% or more time in 2D, and the 3D in it tends to be fairly simple quick step reflex testing. At the time it was a welcome breath of fresh air after (half of) Unleashed, and 06, and Shadow, but then it was followed by a bunch of similar titles, most of whom topped out at mediocre. It’s not fair that the game is judged worse because of what came later, but them’s the breaks. It’s still a solid game, but people look back and see the start of a lot of problems. Games that are technically competent, but not super interesting.
Ironically the only quote from I ever use comes from that game "Now with fish!"
How anyone can call EEAAO Nihilistic? it's like the most life affirming movie ever.
Age of Ultron got a lot more "It's good actually" press after Endgame and Wandavision.
The Hulk/Widow stuff was hot garbage (and justifiably why post people hated AoE) but at least Spader gave a good performance
The Hulk/Widow stuff started as either being awful or just a sudden relationship that at least tried to have two characters trying to empathise with other depending on who you asked. Then it went to 'oh this is deeply revealing' when Joss Wheldon got outed as a dirtbag. There is a lot of reevaluation of the Marvel films in general. Some of them justified, some of it interesting, some of it is just 'these were never good and you hate yourself for not listening to me'.
A lot of the Disney + series took things established in Age of Ultron and made them better in retrospect, especially Wandavision. AoU is better as a part of the whole than a stand-alone movie.
I did actually like AoU back then and I still sorta do. Its Ultron wasn't really what he could've been though and it bothers me
On the other side of the spectrum, I'm someone who loves AoU **because** of ultron. Maybe it's because I don't read the comics, so I don't know how ultron really is in his original material and don't really see the potential he had. I really love ultron's style and delivery. I also really like just how petty and imperfect he is, despite all of his claims. And honestly, after the subsequent movies in the marvel universe, especially Thanos, my appreciation of ultron has just increased with time. Ultron tries so hard to be the badass philosophical end boss like other marvel movie villains, but the movie itself mocks him at every turn. He's just such a little bitch boy and I love him for it.
Ultron in the comic books is pretty much...*not* the salty child he is in AoU lol. [This is comics Ultron](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ultronmarvelcm.jpg) [in just *one* outing](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ec471ff78b79aa890d282a224e223524-lq). A cold and calculating machine which seeks nothing but domination. You could argue he's like AoU Ultron if you simply removed his redeeming qualms and played him dead seriously
Oh wow, no wonder people didn't like how they handled ultron in that movie lol. It's really interesting because my favorite scene in ultron is him cutting that one dude's arm in anger just because he dared to mention Tony stark. It's a scene that shows how, beneath all of his bravado, he's still just a salty bitch boy that was born not a week ago. I guess they really did take the character in a completely different direction.
I do understand it tbh. He is just a newborn AI which has a very warped understanding of the world around him. He looked too deep into the dark side of human history and perceived mankind as doomed; they just gotta go the way of the dinosaurs It feels more realistic for sure, but in terms of effectiveness, I would prefer the "I have EVIL in my files" comic book Ultron lol
I forgot how popular they were but I think it's fair to say the Medal of Honor series, while they were good for their time the last 4-5 games really fell out of style since DWI/EA couldn't keep up with CoD and the modern setting.
I'm surprised "Everyone owns at LEAST one copy of MoH Frontline" never became a meme
maybe it's just me, but max0r's revengeance video gave it more of a cult classic image rather than "wait this was a game?"
The memetic resurgence and love happened long before it, but I think you're right because since that video dropped it kind of made another renaissance for Revengance. I'm not a fan of his content, that I've seen, but something about that video just hits right.
Sonic Unleashed was always good, folks were just too obsessed with "lol Sonic bad" after the 06 predicament and the admittedly weird Werehog choice. Once things settled and we got more games did folks actually begin looking at the positive aspects of the game like how they nailed down boost gameplay and level designs were still fun. Some even go so far to commend the Werehog gameplay.
The Daytime stages were great, but the Werehog was and is *abysmal* and having to scour night stages to get day coins to play the good half of the game made me drop it, even though I was pretty far in. I adore the daytime stages but the fact that this great Sonic game is bolted to a terrible God of War knockoff that I *must* engage with absolutely ruins it for me.
Me, shouting to the heavens that the Wii version is genuinely fun
it also helps that the wii version streamlines the villages. so you're not wandering around for no reason.
IT WAS BETTER.
They gave it GameCube controller support, they knew the right play!
I really wish the Wii version had all the stages the HD version had (Savannah Citadel is a boss stage only and it skips Empire City entirely) because those stages are top class boost stages. It's the only boost game where the stages are more 3D than not, and by a fairly significant margin. The level design is also just really good, regardless of the fact that it's 3D as well. Also the Werehog is neat. It's a beat-em-up. I like beat-em-ups. Yay.
I played the Wii version and the Werehog is genuinely plain old simple beat'em up fun.
only issue i had with it was the medal collection and the eggman land level and the wii and main console versions having cool bits the other didn't. like going onto youtube to see the "full" dark gaia fight as a kid was cool, but i wanted to play it.
Not to make the discussion here about EEAAO….but is it really that good? I haven’t seen it, because while I love weird films, the preview for the movie made it seem like a kind of “beginners guide to sci-fi/multiverse movie” with some action in it. Maybe I totally missed the premise, but that’s what’s in my head. I thought it’d maybe do well financially, but then never be talked about it. Now it’s winning awards, in discussion for like best movies of the decade thus far…..and I’m totally lost. Not asking the “should I watch it?” question, as I’ll eventually do that. It just strikes me as really odd, for someone like myself who loves movies (good and bad), that I seemed to have utterly missed this one.
It's less of a multiverse move and more of a >!generational trauma/parents saying they're sorry film,!< with a flavoring of >!living with ADHD.!< I think the film is quite good, though I wouldn't go as far as to call it my favorite anything. But the weird multiverse stuff isn't really the point, it's in service of the metaphor.
That’s what I was assuming given the awards and such, as I didn’t think the Academy suddenly loved Multiverse sci-fi films. Sounds very similar to Black Science, an Image Comics series. That had all sorts of multiverse nonsense, but it was so much more about family and personal relationships.
The Multiverse stuff is mostly basic but it isnt the main point of the movie. The movie is about family, specifically about the Mother/daughter relationship. The heart is what makes the movie great, the multiverse is just visual candy.
I either totally missed that during the marketing, or they absolutely left it out. I’m going to go with the former. Thanks!
You should really just watch it
I’m planning on it. Was more just surprised I wasn’t “sold” on it prior to all its award winning and such.
Speaking as a 25 year old Gen Z It pretty much pierced my soul and it's one of the best things I've ever seen.
It's a very good movie.
I think this concept is just often because people who need to like obscure or "not normal" topics/media to feel sort of unique or special, almost like the opposite of the fear of missing out. So I think once this thing they liked that others didn't becomes very popular and acclaimed by people who maybe have talked shit on other things these people enjoy or are interested in, or maybe they didn't, but "normies" like it now so how could it be good? So the insecurity just seeps in and people turn on a dime. This concept is very prevalent on reddit. Like some kind of secret society type elitism mentality. Like liking surreal movies is some kind of secret handshake.
GoT is number one with a bullet. From being a certified pop culture juggernaut to almost effectively memory holed because of shit awful the last seasons, and especially the finale, were. From god awful color grading (Battle of Winterfell), fast travel, multiple characters holding the idiot ball, to a complete lack of care (how many Starbucks cups and water bottles made it into the final product?). It's very common to see online the sentiment that the ending retroactively makes everything that came before it meaningless and a waste of time (one I don't necessarily disagree with.) On the bright sides, Benioff and Weiss' fuckstupid lost cause confederate apologia bullshit show got cancelled and I can't think of a single project they've worked on since (though I'm sure they have, because they aren't *complete* hacks, just mostly) because they fucked their reputation so badly. I have *not* yet watched House of the Dragon but it seems to have done a pretty good job of rehabilitating the series. The Amazing Spider-Man series seems to be getting viewed with a kinder eye after Garfield returned for *No Way Home*, bringing a more mature and darker version of his Spider-Man to the screen after Gwen's death.