I forgot, this doesn't have to do with multi-verses, but now that "REMEMBER THIS?" is in full swing,
Cobra Kai does an amazing job of basically subversion and a sort of anti-thesis for exploitation.
What are your thoughts on Ghostbusters Afterlife? I thought it was great but some people felt like it relied too much on nostalgia.
In defense of nostalgia though, I think people are too quick to forget how shitty movies got in the latter half of the 1990s and throughout the 2000s, starting in a big way with Independence Day, blockbuster type filmmaking just got largely really dumb and forgettable with not a whole lot of exceptions.
There was a reason people longed to see the return of 1980s properties, it definitely felt like "whatever happened to?" had a lot of potential when by the 2000s it had been years since we had seen most of these franchises.
Nostalgia is only a problem when you fuck it up imo.
I honestly didn't see Afterlife. I wasn't planning on watching it. Ghostbusters is basically the first film, maybe the second, and the cartoons. I just had no interest in Afterlife or any future continuation of the franchise. For me, Ghostbusters is a completed franchise that I'm not interested in any official extended stories beyond what was done in the cartoons in the 90s and early aughts. So I can't really comment, but I HATE the trend of studios using deceased actor's likenesses in films.
Expected this to be about the Flash movie, honestly.
Multiverses are trash and I curse the tard who first put that shit into entertainment (I'm assuming it was in a comic). Stop being cowards, studios. If you want to drop Superman and make a Latinx Superdyke movie for cheaper, just do it. Don't waste an entire Flash movie spitefully erasing beloved characters and okay-ish movies like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
I was thinking about incorporating The Flash into it, but that movie is fucked 20,000 ways from Sunday and who the fuck knows what's going to happen. Rumor is they're going to eliminate the Snyder-verse and replace Batman and Superman with Batwoman and Superwoman. Which makes sense because they fucking HATE Zack Snyder. I think ultimately its going to be a massive fucking disaster and they're going to be mocked for copying Marvel, who used the device constructively instead of destructively, like WB is planning to do.
So that's really the reason I didn't talk about it. Because its likely going to get retooled again in the wake of 'No Way Home'. But WB is at least planning a retcon of Snyder. The amount of hate that the company has for him is utterly hilarious. Like, did Snyder rape a WB executive or something? Like, they have an unreasonable amount of hatred for him and for their primary audience, its funny. "FUCK ZACK SNYDER AND FUCK YOU, YOU'LL WANT WHAT WE TELL YOU TO WANT. ALSO SUPERMAN GOT RAPED LOLOLOL." Its like old-school disgust that really doesn't work anymore. I know failing is still making money in Hollywood but WB is just burning properties like nothing and is poised to be the worst movie studio in the near future, much like Sony was, except it has delivered 3 hits in succession and possibly the highest grossing movie in several years.
So WB is doing the 'best' of both worlds: Subverting Expectations and doing stupid meta shit that is outside of the story they're trying to tell by erasing movies and directors they actively dislike.
I think it goes deeper than that in a way that is connected with your previous thread.
Matrix 4 is made Entirely to profit off Nostalgia, has no plot and serves no purpose whatsoever. However it spends a very large amount of time rubbing that fact in our faces. (As Which made Red Letter Media
COOOOM).
This will be the "Next big thing" as opposed to just simple Nostalgia jerkoff, and both problems come from the same place. I don't think Current day writers are terrible because "they haven't experienced anything." or at least I don't think that is the only cause. The biggest difference between Matrix 4 and Spiderman 3 is Sincerity. The Matrix 4 is an insincere pile of crap.
"We are bringing back Neo and Trinity" "Except Neo is a suicidal old man, and Trinity is married to THE HANDSOME CHAD LULULULUL"
"We are aware that nobody really wants a Matrix 4." "Dur hur watch this 10 Minute scene about creatively bankrupt people coming up with a Matrix 4."
"Do you remember the Red Pill?" "The badguy man wears blue glasses, and gives Neo Blue Pills to eat, you see NEO IS EATING THE BLUE PILL"
"Do you remember Morpheus? well he is an aaageennnntttt..except not."
"Do you remember the Merovingian? Well he is a HOBO now...because the guy who was manipulating women's emotions with coded cakes..wouldn't be recruited by the guy who is using Emotions?"
It is nothing except Jerking off to the Old moves...and pointing out that they are..jerking off to the old movies.
Edit : Oh I forgot..the entire character of the Analyst, he was a walking talking "Meta-Narrative" shoved in your face.
"The Sheeple don't want your rainbows (LGBTQ shit) they want what they know already."
Yeah, I mean, I could have went deeper into 'The Matrix 4' but its just so fucking awfully mediocre it doesn't deserve a dissection and is ultimately a pointless movie that shouldn't exist, but does because WB is trash farming the bottom of the barrel IPs.
God damnit I already got downvoted in the Marvel thread for hating the new Spiderman, guess might as well get a third time.
First of all the comparison is Apples and Oranges (especially since as far as I know the Matrix doesn' steal from non-Matrix media). The best comparison for the new Spiderman is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and that film is so insanely better than the new Spiderman in every regard it's not even a contest. It's better story wise, visually and emotionally and you need to be a massive Marvel faggot to say otherwise.
Second of all I don't really see how the new Spiderman is in any way "Meta". It's just the usual capeshit only it stolen away the characters from previous better films because the MCU can't write a character for shit, especially villains. It doesn't say anything about the character or the plot of a capeshit. If anything it felt to me regressive, like we can't have deep villains, only misunderstood victims. Having Spidey save the villains instead of them causing their own doom feels like the movie tries to moralize previous films despite relying on magic technology that can be invented in literally hours.
Third of all the multiverse will make everyone here to go back to the good old days of faggot directors at least attempting something. It won't be a "Ant Man meets some other version of Ant Man that nobody but comic fans know of", it will be this depressingly likely quote from Ready Player Two:
This is the future of cinema owned by few bloated corporations.
If you dislike it, that's fine, but your opinion is the minority one. I really don't want this thread to degrade into whether Spiderman was good or not as that's generally not the point of it. So I'm not going to argue it much beyond this post. That sort of thing should really be kept in the MCU thread, as this thread basically assumes you thought Spiderman was at least decent or that use of the device was good.
It is meta in the sense that it recognizes Andrew Garfield didn't get three movies and the movie plays on this joke. Same thing with Electro saying there's a black Spiderman. It is also meta in the sense that it plays with story elements in an outside way. That is, taking the standard trope of the villain dying at the end of a superhero movie (which was pretty much standard in any Superhero movie for a long time) and twisting it into a plot device. That in and of itself is meta-textual story telling, because it is using something done for convivence (having a nice neat bow on everything and saving explanations on where the other villain is, also avoiding a lot of messy contracts and scheduling) into something that's done for plot. It using things done outside of the story in the real world that are done for convivence's sake and incorporates that into the story. It is also recognizing a story-telling device (a villain dying in a superhero film, which is standard and not an aspect of morality because it was basically expected at the time) and turning that into a plot element. So there's a lot of ways Spiderman plays with the concept of meta that is integral to the story.
That the villains dying were the result of Spiderman's bitterness at being unable to save people he loved, not a very common device of convivence. It also serves to 'update' the films into a more modern context where the villain dying at the end is much less common. It is also meta in this way as well. Another way it is meta is that it restores those villains and leaves them room to come back. The thing about magic technology being to cure them is irrelevant. It isn't important to the themes or the story, only acknowledging that it is possible and is not impossible. You've also got two older Peter Parkers who are functional geniuses with Stark Tech. It is rushed, yes. But its rushed because its not important. The movie gives you all elements of plausibility and then glosses over it because its telling you 'this is not important to the narrative, we want you to know it is possible'. I also don't know how you don't get 'deep villians' from this, in that these villians were essentially made, not born. Each one of them was of an accident or something unintentional. None of them started off as inherently evil. The movie also plays with meta by updating the villians to have deeper motivations and not just be sequel bait or fodder to be forgotten about after a movie is done. Also, you're complaining about motivational villains where Jamie Foxx's entire arc in Amazing Spiderman 2 was 'Spiderman didn't come to my birthday party so he must die'.
Whether or not you feel it was used well is irrelevant, it is still a meta-textual film because of that. Meta isn't only about fourth wall breaks.
