(POTENTIAL CONTROVERSY) 007 Film Continued Discussion

Given the sheer size of some of my responses in the Random Thread of Randomness, and the likelihood of this provoking more and derailing it, I figured it is probably best if I stuck my reply and we continued continued here and the Random Thread of Randomness return to its original purpose (and we don’t subject its denizens to another tedious discussion about politics! ) . So far we seem to have managed to stay fairly civil and not get particularly angry with each other in this particular subject, so here’s hoping we can keep it as this civilised discussion rather than the argument it frequently devolves to!

Anyways:

I think you may have a point there. I think @Killer Angel probably hit the nail on the head with how the movie will turn out, but the fact remains that enough people that are averse to that kind of thing has labelled it as “woke” and are now determined to boycott it and insist it’s terrible no matter how it turns out. The performance of it probably won’t do too badly; the average cinema goer in all likelihood doesn’t give a stuff about that sort of thing; but the effect of the minority combined with the fact it looks to be a fairly middling film overall will probably mean it will at least perform badly compared to some of the others.

I think I have to disagree with you there. Assuming that by “wokeness” you are referring to things like female empowerment and LGBTQTS people being featured, there is nothing about “wokeness” that ruins a story at all. To give an example you might be interested in, possibly the single most well received piece of Transformers media of all time is the comic Transformers More Than Meets the Eye (later Transformers Lost Light). It contains many features I think you would consider “woke” - there’s gay marriage and transgender characters and such, but the concepts themselves never play a major part in the story or at least not in a “look at how woke I am” “in your face” kind of way. Instead they’re dealt with in a sensitive and well thought out way, and the series as a whole is exceptionally well written and engaging. And it shows - it’s drawn in a near universal set of praise, not just from us “young SJW types” but from the entire fandom and beyond; the whole comics industry has showered upon it countless of (well earned) awards. If you can get hold of it, I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone - if anyone has Kindle Unlimited, the first couple are free on there.

There are numerous other examples as well, and I think the idea that the inclusion of “woke” concepts automatically ruins a piece of media is a terrible one. If anything, it should broadly be encouraged as the values it promotes are pretty much all positive. I know you have an issue with feminism, but even that, when done right and not how the few vocal “man hating” nutters sometimes makes it appear is still a positive message to display. At the end of the day, while many trolls and misogynists would have you believe it’s about empowerment of women over men and a few vocal but non-representative “feminist” nutters don’t exactly help in that regard, feminism is still ultimately about achieving equality between the sexes, and while things are set up in most countries so it should theoretically already be in place, in practice it’s not hard to see how it’s not (perhaps on a more societal basis rather than law) and there is still work to be done to rectify it. In any case though, I’m getting a bit off topic.

My point is, the presence of “woke” stuff doesn’t in itself make a work bad, or indeed make the work anything other than slightly more representative of the modern day. The only time it really can be a problem, and to be fair I think this is what you were trying to get at in the line I quoted, is when the film or whatever is built around “being woke”. Even that isn’t a guarantee to be bad - it’s entirely possible to create a great film based around a “woke” concept (e.g. a sensitive and thoughtful film on what it is like to be transgender in the modern day) but if the film isn’t like that then I agree it can be detrimental. Even when it is though, it isn’t the fault of the “woke” ideas themselves; it’s instead in the way they are handled and in the writing as whole. Because if your major selling point is that a film is “woke” and not anything else, then chances are the film doesn’t have much to offer and the writing likely isn’t that good (or at least it’s not unreasonable to assume that). The same goes for if a film’s “woke” message is delivered very hamfistedly or not handled well and ending in the right morals. Neither are the fault of the message; with the former, any moral is going to feel forced and overdone if the delivery is butchered, no matter what it’s preaching and with the latter, if you don’t have a clue how to deal with “woke” concepts you should probably stay the hell away from using them, or at least don’t make them pivotal to the plot.

Overall then, whilst I agree that when handled badly “woke” aspects can be problematic, I would strongly argue that it isn’t the “wokeness” itself that makes these things bad, and complaining about it being “woke” in itself instead of criticising the poor writing or handling of it is purely problematic. If it continues, it may well result in communities such as the LGBTQTS one and others having no representation whatsoever again, which is something nobody wants. The same goes for the inverse of course - if the trend of “it’s woke, it must be good and if you don’t like it, you’re an evil commie nazi etc” carries on, the natural conclusion is a torrent of terrible films that the only thing going for them is “wokeness” and anyone disagreeing being labelled a racist, and that most certainly isn’t good either. I will freely admit there are certain idiots on the left side of the spectrum that do this, the Tweeter in your other video being a good example (although interestingly enough I did a bit of Twitter trawling and couldn’t find anyone else that really had the same view as him), and although I think it’s slightly more forgivable than the right wing nutters “raging against ‘the gays’ being shown on the telly” (which is the logical extreme of hating “wokeness” and absolutely not something I’m accusing any of the members of the forum of doing, to be clear) it still isn’t exactly ideal.

I think the right answer is somewhere in the middle - gently encourage the positive things “wokeness” promotes to be delivered in a skilful and thoughtful way, or else not making a big deal of them (because frankly, the fact someone is gay or transgender or whatever shouldn’t be something we make a big deal of anyway; we should just accept it), and not hate on things just because they promote “woke” concepts or blindly adore them for it for the same reason.

In any case though, I think this horrendous wall of text is probably enough, so I forgive you if you don’t feel like stomaching it all in one go!

 

I do agree that writing itself should be critiqued rather than the 'woke' messages/themes some movies use. That should honestly be a thing for all forms of media .

Correct me if i'm wrong - I almost never watch movies - but I think screenwriters/directors/investors or basically anyone in general involved with making decisions on the writing of a movie, aren't experienced enough. At the same time, they aspire to use well-meaning themes/messages, but don't really know how to implement them correctly within the story.

 

We’ve had several discussions on this in the past, some of which you’ve been around for, but this time around the key posts are: here, here, here alone with this one, this one, this one and this one (honestly it’s pretty much all the posts after the first). Hope that helps if you haven’t found them already

 

I believe the Austin Powers movies were based on deconstructing this very notion of a major zeitgeist change. That came out over twenty years ago.

That means James Bond movies were sort of old and tired in 1997.

There is another school of thought on "Get Woke, Go Broke." It's the idea that this relationship is correlational not causational. "This franchise is tanking. No one cares about it anymore. What if we put wokness in it? Then we have a 10% chance of saving it as opposed to a 0% chance of saving it."

I didn't not watch the latest Terminator and Charlies Angels movies because they were woke. I chose not to watch them because I didn't care. I didn't like the previous movies in the respective franchises.

That said. At the end of the day, Hollywood executive types want to make money, they don't want to save (or destroy) franchises. In a capitalist system, if some action loses money, it's best to stop doing it.

I'm curious to see what a non-capitalist system does. The CCP sunk a lot of state funds into creating a Chinese verison of Hollywood and Bollywood. They've been big on making propaganda and generic entertainment for their domestic market but their first attempt to make an international blockbuster flopped hard. So did their second attempt.

I'm sure Hollywood executives read these off-topic comments on Lustria-Online regularly. So just to give you guys a heads up. China looks like an untapped market. If you censor and distort your media so it's acceptable to the CCP, you will alienate US customers. Eventually, the CCP will steal your stuff to feed their own domestic industry, and then ban your products in China. Then you won't get any of the Chinese market and you will have eaten the goodwill of your original customers.

Also, stop givng J.J. Abrams film projects...but that is a separate issue.

 

While I think it’s fine for the 007 code name to be given to a black women for the duration of the upcoming film (let’s face it, we all know he’ll get it back by the end), I agree with @Scalenex that if they are planning to replace James Bond they might as well just make a brand new character that’s unencumbered by everything James Bond “should be”. I don’t often agree with Young Rippas videos (at least the ones I’ve seen), but @NIGHTBRINGER posted a good one a while back which makes the good point that just taking an existing character and changing their race/sexuality etc is a bit lazy when it comes to representation, as it basically shows they can’t be bothered to make a new character for underrepresented communities and give them proper development and instead foist an existing one onto them to make do. I still think it’s better than nothing, which may well be what we get if we carry on attacking the concept of “wokeness”, but if they do want to give better representation in that area, particularly with James Bond I think they should just make an entirely new character (or characters) - that way, they don’t need to get bogged down with past portrayals or what’s acceptable in the modern age, and just get to work on making a good character and a good film. If they want to piggy-back on the buzz around Bond, they could always set it in the same universe and have it as a spin off - if the new 007 character is good enough, I could quite easily see her having a spin-off film or tv-series, which would be able to take a far more modern approach than typical Bond would allow.

Oh and by the way @Scalenex, Mortal Engines is actually based on a book (series) by Phillip Reeve, so there isn’t even that these days!

PS: Speaking of him earlier, I’m surprised @NIGHTBRINGER has yet to make a proper statement in this thread given his prior track record and the fact he kickstarted the discussion in the first place - I would have thought you would have a lot to say on some of the questions and points raised so far! To be clear, my message at the beginning wasn’t meant to at all dissuade you from joining in the conversation - likewise though, if you’re a bit bored of the long political debates we’ve been having and want to leave this one, that’s completely fine as well!

 

And they have long since exhausted the supply of story titles, plotlines, and supporting characters created by Fleming.

 

People like to say this. Russians like to say this. But that does not make it true.


If it walks like a BEAR, and it growls like a BEAR, ...it’s probably a Bear.

 

Call it a mercy

Joking aside...

It's easier to let history do the work for me. The "Get Woke, Go Broke" train has been humming along quite nicely as of late (Terminator, Charlie's Angels, Galaxy's Edge, Solo, Batwoman, etc.). The last loss we took was Captain Marvel (which I speculate was due to the fact that it was coming off the second highest grossing MCU film and was leading into the highest grossing MCU film). If the next Captain Marvel movie also turns out to be a success, then I'll have to admit as much (although it has not been scheduled in phase 4).

It's the same reason why I didn't take part in your previously created thread discussing Jillette (pun intended). That war was already won. My side already throat punched the opposition and left it gasping in agony. There was no point in beating a dead horse.

In the case of Bond, I think my theory will prevail, but I'll own up to it if I am wrong. If I am right though, I already have a meme/gif in mind to celebrate (gloat). So if you see this thread resurrected in a few months, it would probably be best to avoid it.

Doesn't explain why they are doing it with the MCU, which is the single highest grossing film franchise of all time. Or Star Wars.

Also, I do not believe your theory of "Then we have a 10% chance of saving it as opposed to a 0% chance of saving it." is a sound one. That would more accurately equate to a 10% chance of making money and consequently 90% chance of losing money (ignoring the very rare event of breaking even). Those aren't very good odds as an investor. You'd be better off betting it in a Casino at that point, as those odds would be more favourable than 10%.

 

What your looking for are Egalitarians then. Not Feminists (and equally not MGTOW).