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| In my NEEEEIGHTBORHOOOD! |
I made a list last year, urging you to cease and desist certain dumbass actions and if it stopped you from making a new Mario game, then good. If it didn't, well then...is there still time?
As long as we're still here, I've got some more things I'll tell you not to do, but I'll secretly consider doing myself.
Disney Princess...stuff
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| FUCK YOUUUUUUU! |
You know what makes most Disney Princesses great? Nothing. Most of them where fairly unremarkable protagonists to fairly dull and predictable stories...that aren't even that unique. I dare you to write a paragraph describing every Disney Princess without using the terms "young", "pretty" and "talking armadillo".
But Disney made all these princesses into a brand, and now they all live in a single unified Princess-verse, as a way to continue selling merch for movies older than all of us to little girls younger than us. And we've allowed these vapid airheads to continue their reign by constantly doing takes on them.
The Disney Princess as (something else) syndrome has covered The Walking Dead, Alternate ethnicities, As superheroes, as fat, as villains. as...
It just isn't fun anymore, you know? Stop telling me every time some two-bit artist re-imagines Belle.
Calling scandals (whatever) Gate
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| So Scandalous! |
You know, before I was born a guy running for president had his team spy on his opponent in a hotel called Watergate. He had to quit being president or be the first president fuckin' getting kicked out.
It was known as the Watergate scandal. But to hear it now, you'd swear he got caught robbing water, because every single little scandal gets the (subject+gate) title. It's a nice way to put a a name on an event and to say it's big.
But if it's not as big as the time THE PRESIDENT OF AMERICA WENT AWAY, maybe keep the gate shit at home. Videogames? Not big enough. Nude leakes? Not big enough. Skull Girls? Bitch please.
Being unnecessarily amazed/appalled when Black people get the roles.
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| He's also British, and as far as we know, there weren't British people in Tatooine. |
Ever since Ive been blogging, there's been been black people being cast in roles traditionally white. And it's been kind of the same thing. Some people want the character to be exactly as white as the original, others embrace the race changing, and then there's some politicals and racist.
In a way, I get it. Even the racists. But we've done this dance, and my feet hurt. John Boyega playing some guy in Star Wars isn't something groundbreaking or super pc. There's been prominent roles for Black people in all but the first movie, without even going into the voice of the best and worst of the series.
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| I mean, look at those guys behind Lando. Totally Black, some of them are. |
This isn't Star Trek. You don't have to make mental gymnastics to explain that a man can be black and also a Stormtrooper( or say,be disguised as one). It's no big deal either way. We're not gonna go into fits for every new black character in an old franchise, are we?
Trying to do a cinematic universe.
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| Ok, it's sad that he died, but he wasn't a good actor. Settled? |
Sometimes I get a feeling if a movie with a guy who wears a top hat on his ass, movie studios would greenlight hundreds of movies with guys wearing all kinds of headwear on their lower regions because "that's what people want" or "that's what sells today."
So now that Avengers made Disney a bunch of money, Sony and Universal want some, but making filmic universes for Robin Hood and The Universal Monsters, which are gonna suck all the nuts. Wb is already knee deep into movie plans up to 2020, even though the last Superhero movie they did that didn't star Superman or Batman was Green Lantern.
And despite it being their one job, these execs can't tell why Marvel could make a movie about characters that, before Ironman, where B listers at best, and somehow made them make more money than proven sellers like Spider-Man and Superman.
While the Cinematic universe stuff did help, the inherent quality of the works is what made it all work. You can't just knock a half assed movie and expect everyone to show up for the spin off, just because you say your gonna make more. Buuuuuuuut I guess quality's a little too intangible to emulate, huh? Let's do the ass-hat things.
Unbooting things
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| Girth vs Lenght! |
Look, we all get a little iffy when stuff gets rebooted while all it's participants are still around. "Sean Connery's still around! No need for this Roger Moore fella to substitute him.
But once you reboot something, you don't get to go back. You don't get to make Arnie Conan again. You already made Momoa Conan. If it didn't work, that's the breaks. I think that's in the Bible and stuff.
And Sony, which is rebooting things like it's Windows Vista up here, is actually pre-emptively rebooting it's all female Ghostbusters by announcing, before it even begins filming, that it's gonna do some kind of "The Original Ghostbusters thing", except with Egon is now gonna be Channing Tatum.
Just stop! STOP! You had years to get the old crew back, and now they're all old and dead and shit. You didn't! DON'T FUCKING GO BACK!
Saying someone was gay on your show (just offscreen)
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| Smells like contempt and chamomile. |
I don't want to get into the gay subject. There's nothing in there for a moderate, middle of the road, multiple angle looking guy like me.
But one thing I do want to say is, if you want to make a character in a book gay, go ahead and do that. Don't go ahead and make the character gay after the book exists like some coward, though.
I mean, what you imagine the fictional wizard or princess did doesn't get to be important unless it's jotted down or filmed. You don't get diversity brownies for making a character gay way after the series is over, when it's perfectly safe and everyone who otherwise wouldn't have done so has already bought it.
It's like if in Metroid, they never did get into how Samus is a woman except in interviews. "Shit, she's a hamster too. Did I just blow your mind with how PROGRESSIVE(TM) I'm being?"
You did not. It feels like a cheap cop-out to have it both ways. If it's not important enough to the character that he's gay, then why even bring it up? Maybe the character was a Catholic. Maybe the character was a space pirate. Or maybe you're pulling things out of your ass to get people to talk about it. I guess we'll never know!
