Episode 547 - Franchise fail
Sep 2, 2021
There seemed to be a lull for a while after the 1990s and the massive sequel craze of the 80s, but nowadays we're back in full swing again with sequels, reboots and reinvisioning of film and TV franchises. Banes noticed a distinct pattern of behaviour that occurred around bad or failed franchises: The makers would chose to go against what existing fans liked about the property in the fist place, usually in order to appeal to new fans. When both new fans and old ones dislike what they do, they attack the fans and blame the fans for failure of their version. Then they'll search and find a new franchise to mess up. It's rare that people own up to or admit to failures anymore, it's usually always the fault of the fans for being too “toxic”.
Topics and Show Notes
The 2016 Ghostbusters reboot is a great case in point: a film reboot of a hugely popular and successful franchise staring tried and tested popular comedy actors, it turned into a failure. One popular narrative was that it was caused by “toxic” fans and their sexist online campaigns… while those people certainly did exist, a simple viewing of the movie is enough to see the real reasons it failed: They weren't sure what audience it was intended for. The story and storytelling style, the costumes, the sets, effects, lighting, toy-like props, and many of the jokes were specifically aimed at young children, while many of the situations and most of the other jokes were extremely sexual and adult in nature. So what we got was a young kids movie that wasn't for kids- this means adults watching it feel bored or patronised and groan over the childish humour and the kids that could appreciate that content either aren't allowed to watch it, or if they do they're also bombarded with very problematic and gross adult sex jokes: none of this was the fault of the fans.
Compare that to the original 2 films:
They were never intended for a very young audience. Nothing in them was aimed at young children. These were bawdy, young adult comedy fantasy “horror” films. In keeping with the context of the time they had adult humour disguised with double entendres, or hidden with tropes and metaphor. They gained a following from young audiences anyway because the adult content was subtle enough to pass, and the story and style was broad enough that it didn't need to be dumbed down to be understood by younger audiences, in this way they appealed equally to all ages.
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Phantasos: Hot, dry desert. Orange sun. warm winds blowing. Shimmering mirages…. Electric arabesque. This is a gloriously distorted riff filled trip into an exotic world of sand and dunes, with beautiful minarets rising out of the distance, sparkling in the harsh light.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Bane's franchise fail newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/18/franchise-follies/
Featured comic:
Follower - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/31/featured-comic-follower/
Featured music:
Phantasos - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Phantasos/ - by Phantasos by Jslongstreet, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 527 - Evil superheroes unneeded
Apr 19, 2021
Evil superheroes are a stupid fad, that's my contention. My opinion. They've been around for a long time but now they're so popular it's becoming a bit of a fad and might turn into its own genre. I suppose Marvel and others have saturated the superhero market so to stay relevant other companies are doing “twists” on that traditional genre, hence the evil superheroes.
Episode 498 - Your culture is MINE now!
Sep 28, 2020
This week we're talking about cultural appropriation, cultural adaption and adoption, also stereotypes and all sorts of related stuff. It was inspired by a newspost from Tantz discussing the recent live action Mulan movie by Disney. Cultural appropriation is when you take an aspect that is sacred or important to one culture and own it yourself: decontextualising it, stripping it off it's meaning, making a cartoon version of it, commodifying it, commercialising or cheapening it in some other way.
Episode 497 - It's just kid's stuff
Sep 21, 2020
Today we're talking about the idea that entertainment aimed at kids can only be enjoyed by kids and the reason that adults often don't like kids things is because adults just don't “get” them. I contend that everyone, of all ages should be able to enjoy General or kid rated media and the true reason we don't is not because it “isn't meant for us”, it's because it's simply badly written - specifically, it's not the content that's annoying, it's the structure.
Episode 491 - Getting retro right!
Aug 10, 2020
DD member Furwerk Studios posted in our forum about how annoying it was that movies try and do an 80s retro thing often get things totally wrong and end up looking dumb because of it: Not just superficial looks-wise but stylistically too in terms of the kinds of shots they do, lighting and story structure. I thought that'd make an interesting topic for a cast! Why do people often mess up retro stuff? We're not talking about historical accuracy here, that's slightly different, what we're talking about is setting something in an era and getting the “feel” of that era right. It pays off hugely when it works, but when it doesn't it comes off as superficial, disappointing and ignorant.
Episode 459 - 2019 Year in review!
Dec 30, 2019
It's been a great year! DD has continued to grow bit by bit, we've been stable and a great host for many many webcomics. DD is one of the only truly independent community focused webcomic hosting sites left. Most of the rest are commercial hubs that are not community centered. Part of our commitment to the community on DD is showcasing our best webcomics every week, which we've been doing for 17 years now, and I've personally been doing that for about 13.
Episode 438 - You just don't get it
Aug 5, 2019
Sometimes your audience just doesn't pick up on the clever symbolism, the hints, the metaphor, the underlying themes and all the artistic cleverness in writing and art that you've filled your work up with!
Episode 437 - Old Warhorse
Jul 29, 2019
Today we cover the interesting trope of the “old warrior”. This was based upon a newspost Banes came up with last week. He was thinking of Captain Picard in the latest Star Trek series and he also brought up Luke Skywalker from the latest Star Wars movie. The “Old Warrior” makes a really cool protagonist, in this Quackcast we try and discover why that is…
