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I feel confident that the showrunners and writers hate the IPs. Genuinely hate them and these recent works are proof that they took the jobs as acts of vandalism, for which they are over paid. The studios just want butts in seats while these people that have been hired are the lamest of performative activists. Literally doing the least amount of anything that can even be squinted at and pretended to be work as they hate work and people who work.
Nope. It's not. The full saying is "The customer is always right." (Including the full stop at the end). People have started trotting this out recently, but it's a myth.
@@pyropulseIXXI Do a little research. This is literally the example of a retcoin given in the *dictionary definition*. The articles I posted here earlier seem to have disappeared, but go ahead and find a source for "in matters of taste" that isn't Twitter and predates 1905.
@@haljordan777 There are hundreds of articles from dictionaries to Forbes magazine saying I'm right. You can believe I'm wrong, but that makes you an idiot. I don't mind if idiots think I'm wrong. I tried posting links three times, but apparently you can't post links on TH-cam without getting marked as spam. But feel free to do your own research.
Yeah he totally respected the star wars fans when he expected us to love jar jar who he said was "the key to everything, if we don't get him right the whole thing falls apart"
No, but the fans disrespected him, which is why i believe, is the reason he sold Lucasfilm. So we fans brought this upon ourselves. I could be wrong, though.
@@shawnamiller191 At least he respected the reception Jar-Jar got, which is why Jar-Jar doesn't show up a whole lot after Episode 1. Modern Hollywood would more likely double-down on Jar-Jar if he was their creation.
I just want to say: Please, remember that these poorly written female characters are not a reflection of the average woman, but of ideological, power-tripping hollywood elites. Female characters would be just fine if they were written well.
I think many men are happy to watch a female character as long as it’s a well written character. Not the entitled narcissistic brats, snarky girl dogs and obnoxious Mary Sues they have been trying to force on us for the past decade. It’s more about the writing than the gender of the character; this is assuming the character has not been swapped. And yes, Rings of Poop was an abomination.
If we're being honest, I think there really is a decided preference for people to see themselves up on screen. While Wonder Woman was a great movie with a great female lead, it still trailed behind the male lead movies of the same genre for a reason. Sure, men liked both but I think it's still accurate to say male audiences prefer male leads.
@@gunkulator1 I'm a woman and I mostly prefer male leads, although I suppose that might be because so many of the female leads are annoying. But when I'm watching fantasy or science fiction or any movie, I don't need to see myself there. I watch movies to escape from the world, not so I can bring the world with me.
Look how popular Game of Thrones is, and how tough many of the female characters are. And those characters are LOVED. The problem is Wokesters are completely incompetent writers.
@@velocitor3792 Define woke. Also, you might want to check out the politics of George R R Martin if you're so convinced "wokesters" - whatever that is - are completely incompetent writers.
@@gunkulator1 There may certainly be an expectation driven by biology to favour male leads where action is involved. Wonder Woman wasn't trailing male leads, at least when we consider DC films. Look at 2013 to 2019 Man of Steel - $668 million box office on a budget of ~$240 million. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - $873 million on a budget of ~$280 million. Suicide Squad (2016 film) - $748 million on a budget of $174 million. Wonder Woman - $823 million on a budget of $149 million. Justice League - $658 million on a budget of $300 million. Aquaman - $1.152 billion on a budget of $180 million. I left out Joker as it wasn't a Snyderverse film, but it was the single most profitable film of the period. Of the six Synderverse films, two were female led and were in second and third places in terms of profitability. Aquaman was the surprise hit, as were Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad due to these being lower value characters. Batman and Superman had mixed performances. Certainly the Suicide Squad sequel, Woman Woman 1984, and Birds of Prey flopped, some impact from the virus of unknown origin and/or being sub-par.
I think the real crux of the issue is in truth not necesarily gender-swapping (as again just having male leads in a action or super hero movie doesn't equate auto-success) or story changes parse, by that I mean those are symptoms of the underlining issue. Its that they want to create new material but are too scared to let ride on its own merits. They want to create more female characters but don't want to risk using new or not as well known IP. So just shove them into existing IP and make them the new main character. They are too scared to create original universes for their story concepts so take existing IP and just do whatever they want with it (Halo, LOTR, etc). At its base its people wanting to create their own material but also bean-counters and execs wanting to hedge-their-bets by only doing through existing IP's. Which we have now seen is pleasing nobody. As to female leads that is much more nuanced stance, while there is some truth to men liking male leads I think there is definately more too it. As again many recent female led movies pulled in both audiences (Black Panther, Arcane, Even Barbie), plus male led action movies have also bombed recently as well (MI may it rest in peace, Fast X too I like it sue me.............). I think this subject may warrant a follow-up video I feel.
You've absolutely hit the nail on the head here. George Takei said it recently when the new Star Trek movies made Sulu gay. He said that his character in the original show was heterosexual, and that if you want to diversify the cast then don't bend the existing characters to fit the mold otherwise it looks shallow and I'll conceived. Write new and intriguing characters that stand on their own merits if you want to diversify. Stop being so scared of original content and characters! You know what's an incredible movie? Everything Everywhere All At Once! An original concept and plot with a diverse cast of characters that didn't rely on existing IP to tell an incredible story.
@@Spam1192What your describing is Film art bumping up against Film business. Inherently Film is about experimentation and creating new things, but than thats constantly having to fight against the money-men who by and large only care about next-quarter earnings. Why risk a loss when you can just make it another super-hero insert, people will go to those regardless right if it has something to do with Captain America right? I can honestly picture the pitch meetings now.
@@gwell2118 There is another layer to this in the codependent relationship between the corporate heads and the artists, through their unions. Where the party holding the capital always wants to play it safe, yet the "creative" side is just as risk averse in not wanting to spend their own capital to bring their vision to life. The creativity is stagnated by everyone involved trying to ensure a big payday, rather than make compelling art.
@@SpiralKingScorchPerhaps to an extent but the truth most artists don't have the capital in a lot of cases to finance a film, set up distribution and market it to a wider audience. Its why a lot of self-financed films tend to have smaller "indie" screenings but are often unknown to wider audiences. Greed honestly has very little to do in most cases from the creative side since in most cases the suits hold the real power. In addition to that most film production is heavily leverage by existing organizations that often try to squeeze out newbies. Honestly I would have preferred if Greed was the main issue from creative side, as that can be more easily addressed. Not systemic issues within the industry itself.
Ironically, I‘m a lot better at relating to female characters; especially when I roleplay in an RPG or tabletop. But you know what Fury from Darksiders, Ciri from The Witcher, and basically the female half of Brandon Sanderson‘s characters have in common? They are tragically human. Just like the male half of Sanderson‘s characters, and pretty much everyone in Arcane. And being human (rather than bland psychopaths), and going through tragedy, is what makes them so touching. Did I mention Brandon Sanderson‘s books already? You should check them out, they‘re fantastic.
This is why I’m excited for the Five Nights At Freddy’s movie. I think they originally were gonna pull the Hollywood Knows Best routine, but the creator said nope many times before they changed the script. From the clips I’ve seen online, it looks like it’s blending the lore with a story the average horror fan could understand and enjoy. It’s not 100% lore accurate, but it has the heart of what fnaf fans love about the games and books.
I feel like our gender and culture and all that doesnt even matter, neither men nor women can be inspired by characters who are more of a statement than a person, diversity is actually obtainable and its not hard, just look how universally loved are the diverse cast of avatar the last airbender
Arcane, too. The protagonists are rivalling sisters, & that didn't stop us from loving it. I disagree with this dude implying gender's more important than good writing. Even in the past, we had films like Alien and Kill Bill. Gender isn't a problem, but _part_ of the problem is men and Hollywood writers alike thinking superficially of girls: vapid feminism, girl-bossery, and disliking men. What we're seeing isn't stuff that appeals to girls, it's BAD WRITING. I'll give you more iconic "girl-centered" media we loved: Mean Girls, The Powerpuff Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bones, Totally Spies, Kim Possible... and these are just what I liked. Both sexes are human at the end of the day. How hard is it to comprehend that?
@@spaghetto9836 its not only hollywood males writing women being problematic, sometimes the writer is a woman and still manages to somehow write the most unlikeable character ever, almost feeling like they wanted to make some reverse roles revenge powerfantasy rather than making something good But yeah i can agree that there are many actually good shows and movies that usually fall under the "girlpower" genre, those older movies back in the day where girls win a sport event not because "girls can do it too" but because the story needs a good ending
The human connection you mentioned in Antman is really important. The original Star Wars trilogy, for all the high space opera settings, is at its core a father-son story which resonated with young men in the 70s and continued to do so for decades afterwards. Luke wants to follow in his father's footsteps, his father wants Luke to become something he isn't, his father sees the error of his ways and saves Luke after Luke redeems him through love. The climax of the trilogy wasn't a big circle exploding on the screen, it was Vader picking up the Emperor and saving Luke. I feel above everything the recent sequels got wrong, it was a lack of a personal connection and human story. Kylo-Rey felt like an after thought and didn't really define the characters, the Kylo-Han-Leia thing was also sloppily done (though might be why people think Kylo is one of the few good characters in the sequels). Applies to other works. Although high fantasy genre does work on a fantasy fulfillment premise, seeing your own gender doesn't mean the story will resonate. Aliens 2 climax isn't just clobbering a giant alien in a mech suit. It's when Ripley's mother bear instinct emerges as she tells the Queen "get away from her you bitch". Terminator 2 is compelling because of the father like role of the T100 and single mother / mother bear instincts of Sarah Connor. Could go on I expect, but the TLDR of it is that we want to see stories about ourselves, not just ourselves in stories if that makes sense.
I think I get it. And I agree with the TL;DR. ^_^ For how I view it and to expand on the TLDR idea, I think the relatability doesn’t really stop at the characters attributes. And I don’t really think that having a character be a blank slate for anyone to insert themselves into is the right way to approach relatability. I think what really makes or breaks a good character for someone is them going through something that can really be universally understandable. That Luke and Vader example was one of my favorites you mentioned! I think it’s empathy that might be the correct term that should be mentioned along with relatability for what makes or breaks a memorable character to someone. Mainly because I know not every single person has the exact same experiences in life. And I know an audience’s mileage may vary on those two words and which character they apply to depending on who you ask. But I think aside from characteristics, it’s also the emotional journey that a story has to get right for a character in order to have them be memorable to someone.
The Star Wars sequel trilogy clearly suffers from not being planned out. Lucas knew where he was eventually going with the story in 1977. Eps 7, 8 and 9 are a disjointed mess. Ideas are introduced, then abandoned, then reintroduced (Rey's parentage). It's just very sloppy and obviously off the cuff writing.
Speaking on the topics of heroes, as a guy who's favorite disney movie is about Mulan (the original), a non-traditional woman learning to grow into her strength, it's not the gender that's the problem. It's the character direction. None of these new female heroes manage to act heroic, or to learn and grow past their flaws. Captain Marvel in her solo movie was a villain, wrapped in the sin of hubris. And then the story conclusion is that "stop letting others hold you back"... yeah... that's not superhero material. Lets contrast that with another warrior with extraordinary powers, Thor. He was wrapped in the same sin. He was stripped of his powers, and made to earn them back by learning compassion.
Undeniably true. When I was younger (and I'm only 27), Hollywood still carried a real sense of prestige that it simply no longer does, and as MS pointed out, one of the main reasons for this is they started making films for some theoretical audience they *wanted*, rather than for the audience they actually had. There are plenty of other reasons, of course, but it's evident to me that people don't look at Hollywood as fondly as they used to.
Studio: All we care about is making the most money Fans: Give me what I want and I will give you money and tell my friends/family to give you money Writers/producers: Lets piss everyone off and make shit. Studio: Yes! Lets make shit! Also one thing i have to disagree with on you is that the audience wants less women heroes. That's not true. They just want well written characters. They can be male or female, doesn't matter. Compare Eowyn in LOTR and She-Hulk. Eowyn wanted to be a warrior, she showed heart and courage and has a story arc. When she killed the witch-king, men didn't go "wow that's stupid" They felt goose bumps and smiled. Because IT WAS EARNED! She was well written. Now.. She Hulk comes across as a bitch, has no arc. We are told she is perfect and has no flaws because she is a woman. This is horrible writing.
Eowyn is a poor example. She is a lone heroine in a veritable sea of male heroes. LOTR is a heavily heavily male story. Eowyn is the proverbial exception that proves the rule.
Not to mention ~twrking- 🤢 makes me extremely uncomfortable as someone under the ace umbrella. I don't need to see someone's rear shoved in my face. I did not consent to that. So glad I didn't see the movie/show. Whatever it is
Female leads are awesome. What bothers me is how painfully predictable and lazy the writing has become. More Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor. Less Captain Marvel and Rey Palpawalker.
From a creator who discusses virtue in characters with such clarity and beauty, this is beyond disappointing. A previous video is literally titled "Audiences Hate Bad Writing, Not Strong Women." Now you argue 'men want to watch men'? No. Men want to watch characters of value who overcome adversity. They want to watch hard-won virtue save the day. Are Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman (and the smouldering garbage that was ROP's Galadriel) less successful because the protagonist is female in a male-dominated genre? No. They flopped because their protagonists do not strive in the face of opposition to 1. develop, 2. maintain, and ultimately 3. triumph through virtuous personalities and strengths. Men gravitate towards male-led media because they've been given so few examples of worthy female protagonists. The answer is not to reject female leads. The answer is to call on Hollywood to write better women in better stories.
I kinda hate it when people say "the audience is male so make better stories for men" and while I agree in some places, even women like strong male characters with true masculinity! its what EVERYONE sane wants!
When I heard about rings of power being produced I was hoping for something happening in Eregion with Anatar and Celebrimbor as major charicters where Anatar is portrayed as an entirely good and heroic character, though never a viewpoint character until the final couple of episodes of the last season. All they had to do was find a place in the lore with room to fill in the blanks about what was going on around the major events keep faithful to those big events and tell a decent story. Sure everyone who knows anything would know from episode one that he is Sauron, but no one else would and "being in on the secret" would have been a large part of the fun. One of the things that the post Disney Clone wars animated series did well was just that fill in the blanks, sure we all knew that Anikin would end up becoming Darth Vader, but seeing how we got between points a to b was enjoyable.
Have you seen the podcast with the Rings of Powers creators? I don't remember if it was there or in one of the other interviews where they said no one would believe someone claiming to be an envoy of the Valar, nevermind that it took Annatar decades to manipulate the elves. But this is emblematic of their atitude about adapting LOTR, they have such little care for the source material and for pleasing the fanbase, they were picking and choosing which parts to keep and which to change with such arbitrary criteria, it's not like they were selecting it based on what would be easier to adapt to the screen like Jackson did, they changed the source material to best serve *their* story. They also said Rings of Power was going to be "the story Tolkien never wrote", you're damn right Tolkien would never write something like that. It's like they believe the source material and the fans exist to serve them when the opposite is true. Other people already talked about this here in this comment section but the problem is that they had their own story to tell and zero confidence that it would be sucessful unless it was attached to an IP with a pre-existing fanbase. If I could describe Rings of Power in one word I think it would be "lazy", they have no confidence in their own original story but full confidence that with the Tolkien name they'll be sucessful, and they want our praise and money for having a work ethic like this. I thought the Netflix adaptations proved it best, don't adopt the name of an existing franchise unless you're committed to honoring everything that franchise stood for.
When *I* heard about Rings of Power being produced, I was immediately filled with a sense of dread and disgust, because I knew that Hollywood had been chomping at the bit for YEARS to finally blackwash and desecrate Tolkien's Legendarium. Ever since Jackson's trilogy became so successful with ZERO non-White actors in the principal roles, certain Hollywood types have been seething and biding their time until the day they could finally "diversify" Tolkien and re-make his world for "modern audiences". Master Samwise (OP) said he's not quite comfortable with saying that these writers hate their audience, but I am. They utterly despise the people who loved Tolkien's works as they are, especially if those people happen to be White, straight men. Sooooo many ruinous decisions these contemporary writers, producers, directors, etc. make are specifically made with the intention to spite that particular demographic, which also just so happens to be the single largest fan demographic in the West - their primary/target market. Lo and behold, I was correct, and it was somehow even worse than I anticipated. It does feel rather satisfying to say "I told you so" to all the sycophants who insulted people like me for correctly predicting the trajectory of the show, but I really wish I'd simply been wrong. The sad reality is that Jackson's trilogy could not be made in today's Hollywood. Full stop. The entire industry is deeply sick.
@@alexcallender No one cares about the skin color of the actors in fantasy or Sci-fi when the writing is actually good. But that's the problem, writers now think that as long as they put minorities in prominent positions we are going to excuse all flaws in the project, this leads to minorities being put in horribly produced media which leads to people associating Minorities with bad quality, and when people start complaining about the low quality everyone defaults them as - ists or - phobes and that gives writers more confidence that as long as they put minorities in their work they don't need to worry about anything else and the vicious cycle continues. Weirdoes who blister whenever PoC or women appear in roles previously held by white males DO exist, but they alone are not enough to make anything bomb, because obviously poc and women exist as well and they also want good media. Minorities shouldn't have to choose between appearing in bad media or not appearing anywhere, writers need to put actual work in their projects and stop blaming the audience when they're called out for their laziness.
@@Prototype-357 It's worth noting that all these ist-ophobe accusations are limited exclusively to Western productions. No one ever complains that all the actors in a Bollywood movie are Indian, for example.
@@Calvinosaur I don't know if India specifically is a good comparison, it IS the most diverse country in the world with thousands of cultures and ethnicities existing side by side, with all the good and bad that brings. I don't know how indian media treats their minorities. There is prejudice everywhere in the world and they all have particular challenges to deal with, I know that because I live in south america and we have these problems too because of completely different factors than the US. As I see it the problem in the US is that the people in charge of studios only like to *pretend* that they care about representation as long as it's convenient and they go about it without considering what would be best in the long-term. Is it really wise to call attention to the fact your movie or tv show has a strong female in it? Like she's special because she can beat up guys and not because of anything else? I feel like the time where that was innovative in media passed and it should be normalized at this point, isn't representation in media supposed to serve real life by normalizing minorities in good social positions? How are you gonna normalize something in the minds of people when you act like it's such an unique thing everytime it happens? On the internet I see POC living in the US complaining about the type of representation that makes white people pity them all the time, the whole point of feminism and representation is equality isn't it? So just treat them with all the virtues and flaws of white people, start acting like black people in positions of power is normal and just natural to the world, cause we've already had a black President of the States. The things they do are usually only one step away from virtue signaling and come across as so insincere to me, a really famous example is Finn's character in the Star Wars sequels, after Force Awakens lots of people got the vibe he and Rey were gonna be a romance subplot and people were genuinely excited to see what they would do with an ex-storm trooper who joined the the resistance and the Jedi, and what happened in The Last Jedi? Instead of having the black male character getting with the white girl protagonist they sidelined him and gave him a love interest that was also a minority and pushed the white girl into the arms of the white guy villain who has been trying to kill her. Anyone who's seen the chinese posters for the sequel trilogy knows what the execs thought of Finn. And they expect our praise and call us -ists when we complain, they are projecting imo.
They used to know the lesson of "the customer comes first" years ago. They just don't care now that they've got so much money and a virtual monopoly on entertainment.
THANK YOU for that opening comment about what "The Customer is Always Right" actually means, it drives me nuts that people take it to mean "if I'm the customer I can never be wrong".
What Disney and Warner Bros animated shows like Amphibia, The Owl House, Infinity Train, OK KO Let's Be Heroes, and Craig of the Creek? They didnt insult the audience like that.
This video made me think of Hollywood as Mother Gothel lmao tho I thing the rant about superhero movies beeing "for guys" and so not many womans watch it it's not the problem. The real problem is that they simply don't know how to write a good character, and since they want to have more female representation so we just gets a bunch of shity movies, "'cuz womans don't have flaws" I supose XD. Especially considering that womans can, with no problems, enjoys stories based on male leads and still resonate with them, so, I don't belive the other way around is false man can enjoy a story based on females leads as long as it is a good story with well writen characters.
Hey that comparison is insulting to Mother Gothel since in my opinion she is a well written character and a great example of gaslighting to teach kids of unhealthy relationships with people.
I disagree with a few points. Mainly in the first half of the video, that focuses on gender. Now, before I say anything i must clarify, i am not "most men", but a single teen boy, so we can both be right without having the same taste. Still, I've been watching the MCU up until Far From Home and would have agreed with you, because I did relate more and look up more to the men than the women. However, since then I have been consuming other types of media (manga), and my perception changed a lot. Characters like Clare from Claymore and Asa from Chainsaw Man are not only super cool to see in action, but also very interesting and relatable characters. Besides that i don't believe that the objective is to "shape its audience", but rather to make existing characters and stories more "modern" and "relevant" by doing the bare minimum, add in some free marketing from the inevitable discourse and the best option seems clear for the execs. Not only that, but most movies are bad all around, being rushed out of a production line to fill space in a streaming service or movie catalogues. The gender aspect is a symptom of a much larger disease that you actually did adress, which is how confortable these big studios have gotten for making profit with VERY little effort. These includes the people they hire, it's much easier, cheaper and less time consuming to hire someone who will make a bad movie that might still make bank for being (sorry for using such an annoying buzzword) wOkE than it is to hire a competent one that will make thinga with care, regardless of how progressive they are. People are tired of laziness and repetitiveness. If someone makes a good show, with a good plot, a good character and an interesting world to inhabit just for good measure with a likeable female lead, sign me up (yeah i get its pretty much describing arcane) Edit: (sorry, forgot to put this in the original comment) this video is not bad at all and still brings up many good critiques about modern entertainment.👍
Bro u said what I was searching the comments for really well. Hollywood has an annoying tendency to think that all audiences want is to see a woman-ish figure to vaguely fit where a man once stood and to call that a win and “progess in equality”(!!??!), when in actuality surprise surprise people want well developed and emotionally relatable characters to fill original and creative roles, where they tackle obstacles that are new and exciting to follow along with. but instead audiences get genderswaps and “girl power” moments, with the thought that “thats enough no need to develop anymore we’ve hit that checkbox”. It’s not necessarily a matter of men not being interested in female characters, because gender doesn’t tend to make a persons whole identity, contrary to what hollywood seems to believe. It’s a matter of men not being able to identify with a personality-devoid female character taking the place of where a man “could and normally would be”, and the writers thinking that “hey because a man would generally be in this role and weve put a woman instead this is enough to be her entire character!” Women audiences then by proxy are not interested because of the same reason, another shallow femme fatale character. These female characters are then gonna compete against a man who actually doesn’t even exist in this world but idea that he could be taking her place exists in ours, so she’s gonna defy that and that’s what makes her a /good strong female character/” This was so long and rambly but I hope that makes any sense, anyways class comment u said some points really really well 👌👌🫡🫡😄
I disagree somewhat on your analysis of superhero movies. There are enough women who watch scifi, fantasy, action, and superhero flicks that having prominent female characters makes sense. The issue is more just not writing good stories. Captain Marvel had the issue that some people didn't like Brie Larson, but I think she was actually fine. It was the script that was not good. See the whole script is written for a character who is over-emotional/gets distracted by emotions or so we're told. And then this never actually happens on screen. So when the resolution is her supposedly finding strength in her emotions, it really makes no sense. And I don't think that it was Larson's acting that was the issue. She behaved like a highly trained soldier, which is also a thing she was written as. There's no time on screen when her emotiona actually get the better of her. So it's puzzling. As for the audience for She-Hulk, most of the people I talked to were settling in for a superhero legal show. That was what that specific audience wanted. It was a cross over of people who like superheros with people who like Law and Order. And we got no Law and Order. The writers apparently didn't even know how to write that kind of show. Because let's face it, to write legal drama you have to have some clue how actual courtrooms work. And none of the writing staff understood that. But we thought that that was who the show was supposed to be for. Toss in the just bad writing on women's issues to go with everything else, so that even if you were turning in for a woman's perspective, you'd be pissed. It was basically reductive, and focused on a narcissistic main character so that no one else in the story ended up mattering. I agree with you that Hollywood doesn't understand what audiences want. But the most perplexing thing to me about that fact is that, since they are doing that much franchise work and presumably have degrees in things like Literature, Film, Humanities, etc. that they seem incapable of doing the homework of sitting down, watching/reading the existing property and figuring it out. When the crew for Wrath of Khan was hired after the first Star Trek film flopped, they were NOT actually Star Trek fans. What they were were professional directors, writers, and creators. They got film copies of allll the TOS episodes, and sat down for several weeks straight to binge watch the show. And from that binge watching, they developed the script for Wrath of Khan, which has complex themes of aging, revenge, being forgotten, fatherhood, and friendship. You can see the skill, training, and creativity in that script. But you also see the TOS characters well -written as themselves, the characters fans love, and on an appropriately TOS adventure. I do NOT understand why writers, directors, and creators today are less skilled, trained, and professional than those of the past.
Some time around the early naughties, I noticed that style-over-substance movies were increasingly praised for their style and given a free pass for their lack of substance. Fast forward twenty years, and it seems that trend wasn't stopped before it wrecked the ability of Hollywood writers to maintain narrative continuity.
So, if I had to rewrite this video, I would phrase things a bit differently. Hollywood seems to have gotten it into their heads that simply HAVING a female lead is enough, so they don't bother to make her an actual character. Case in point, like you said, Captain Marvel. Yes, male audiences do just mostly want GOOD characters, but the deluge of new female leads in a male-dominated genre indicates that Hollywood wants something the audience doesn't. No one (well, mostly no one), is clamoring for MORE female characters, but rather for BETTER characters. I stated things far too simplistically in the video and for that I apologize.
@@master_samwise You don't owe any apologies for the beginning of a thesis of what went wrong.. Trust me, I've heard worse ways of stating things. Someone has to play the opening card so the game can commence, even if they lose the trick. And someone has to throw out an idea for discussion to commence or we're never going to talk about stuff. :) I'm not 100 percent sure you're correct in your assessment specifically of Marvel movies (DC doesn't seem to be doing the same thing. Marvel is putting out all the female leads). While it's possible that your theory is correct, to me it seems more like Mavel painted itself into a corner. They could attempt to reboot their entire cinematic universe. But from where they were sitting at the end of End Game, that probably looked like flushing money down the toilet. They wanted to keep going. So what did they have to keep going with? The previous success really rested on the backs of the Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man movies. They were sort of the pillars the Avengers rested on (I love Guardians of the Galaxy, but they're kind of off to the side doing their own team thing.). Now Iron Man is dead and Cap is retired (and Black Widow is dead, and Hawkey is retired). Hulk's story is pretty much over and resolved if anyone cared. Going forward, they have Ant Man, Dr. Strange, and Black Panther to be the new Pillars of another 3 stages of Avenger movies. And not really much of a team around them. The logical thing to do is have sidekicks assume the mantels. And they have characters already designed to plug those holes. Falcon becomes cap (and Cap is now race-swapped), Kate Bishiop becomes Hawkeye (and Hawkeye is gender swapped). RiRi becomes Ironman and so he's gender swapped and race swapped. She hulk takes over for Hulk and he's gender swapped. And then to make things worse for marvel, Chadwick Boseman tragically dies, and so he has to be replaced earlier than anticipated, and Black panther gets gender swapped. That is how it is in the comics. So they did a lot of race and gender representation swapping all at once. But they were kind of forced into it because of the previous 22? movies. Maybe they have an agenda. I'm not going to tell you they don't after what's happened with The Little Mermaid and Snow White at Disney. But Marvel likely would have done the same thing in the MCU no matter what just because that was the way the sidekicks were set up. Or at least that's my limited undersanding of what was going on in Marvel comics. My further understanding of what was going on with the sidekicks specifically at Marvel is a combination of bad writing and over-saturation. There were simply too many TV shows, and while most of the first year was pretty good, the following years were awful and there was just too much of it. They also came up with this idea of the "mantal" where people are just there to watch a specific set of superpowers, and not actual characters. So, like, I was disappointed to have Sam, a counselor who works with other vets, to suddenly not being doing his counseling job. I would have been interested in that. That's who he was. And it makes him different than Steve, who was a career soldier who really wanted to be a perfect soldier. They have different personalities outside of the racial differences and that makes them interesting. But that's not really what we got. Also, let's add in some formulaic movie writing that was beginning to be visible. Look at the Black Widow movie. There's a scene where Yelena and Natasha meet again for the first time in forever, and they fight. Tell, me, why are they fighting? I've seen spies and assassins who are old friends fight before. It happens in movies. Sometimes, it's because they don't trust each other, but that's not it. Sometimes it's because they want to one up each other as part of their relationship, but that's not it. Sometimes they're just so good at their jobs they get extremely playful about the weapons and tools of the trade, but that's not it. And they're not actually angry to the point of fighting with each other. They just fight because the script says they need a fight scene here. It doesn't actually make sense for these two characters to fight. People are also getting immune to green screen effects. In Quntumania, I can see the sound stage under the effects. It's this big echoing space with walls. But that's a differnt but related issue in terms of quality. Anyway, all of that is very specific to Marvel. But Marvel is pretty much half of all superhero films. The problem always was that the only other option was to reboot, and maybe that leaves them with no MCU when they're done. Unless there's some other direction you think they could have gone in? Because the Halo stuff: I agree and they don't understand the universe, clearly. And the stuff on the Rings of Power?" Also pretty clear they don't understand the universe and didn't even try. But the overall problem seems to be buying franchises, which essentially means buying a specific canon, and not actually liking the canon that they bought. And they seem to look at it more as buying an audience, without realizing that the audience only exists because of the canon. And I'm going to stop writing an essay now. Some people don't like that, I know. I don't really think you're wrong about there being agendas. But I think people are focusing in on agendas so much because the writing isn't good enough to distract you from them. Some writing never could be good enough. But sometimes you get Morgan Freeman playing a red haired Irishman in Shawshank Redemption and pretty much no one cares because everything else is on point, and Mrogan Freeman is good in the part.
@@jenniferhanses I really like this take. I also think you make a good point at the start that a video creator can be wrong, but that’s not something bad or something that requires apology. It’s good to think things through and start a discussion. We all benefit from hearing multiple opinions. Maybe it was just bad luck/timing with all of the replacements, but the bigger issue is replacing at all and not caring much about the quality of your stories. Thanks for your thoughts!!
I agree with a lot of your points, but I don't understand what gender has to do with it? Like I'm a guy and pretty firmly in the target demographic for all these movies and shows you talked about and I really couldn't care less about the gender of the protagonist. The real problem is bad writing, it just so happens that most of the stories with female protagonists have bad writing. You act like WW was a box office failure by comparing it to a bunch of marvel movies. WW is DCs 3rd highest grossing movie ever. So despite being a female lead it was in fact successful. Every time (other than WW) you go "the MC is a woman and it has bad writing" when only one of those is a problem. People watched Arcane for Jinx and Vi, and at the end, everyone I talked to liked those girls better than Jayce and Viktor. Does gender of the MC have an effect? Yes. Gender roles are way to ingrained in our society for it not to. But i think you're way overstating the impact of it.
The more I think about it, the less I'm sure. See, I too enjoyed Arcane and Wonder Woman. I didn't mean to insinuate it was a failure, just not as successful as it maybe could have been. And yet, those were new characters, not replacements for existing ones. And they were well written. And yet, if the MCU (or whatever nerdy franchise) were to be dominated by well-written female characters, I have a hard time believing it would perform anywhere near as well as pre-phase 4 MCU. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe male audiences really don't care, I don't know. Is the main problem bad writing? Yes, absolutely. I should have been clearer about that. But do guys not want to mostly see other guys as action/fantasy/sci-fi heroes? I mean, you might not care, I might not care, but does the general population of men care? I would think so.
The people running Hollywood and the music industry are cowards. Without a doubt we've been robbed of amazing movies because they're too afraid to spend money on them. So what we get instead is the same garbage recycled over and over again. And if it's not cowardice it's laziness. There are plenty of good story ideas out there. A friend recently showed me a Bollywood film that approached feminism in a completely different angle that was so refreshing. Not only was the message intelligent, but its approach towards the topic was non-toxic and didn't focus on bashing or one-upping either side. At one point I turned to my friend and said it was complete BS that Hollywood was out of ideas. They're just too lazy to find new ideas.
15:46 maybe the Halo show should have followed Gunnery Staff Sergeant instead of Chief. He’s got a whole lot of lore behind him, he’s a loved character, & he doesn’t wear a full face helmet
What do you think of the idea that men want (mostly) male heroes? Would famous film franchises like Star Wars, Lord of Rings, and Phases 1-3 of the MCU had fared as well if they featured leading ladies (assuming the writing was on par in terms of quality)? Obviously guys do enjoy well-written female heroes (Wonder Woman, Arcane, Aliens, etc...), but I can't help but think that guys generally prefer to more closely relate to their heroes. It's a touchy subject, and I could have handled in better in the video, but let me know your thoughts.
However, star wars in particular might not have become as much of an icon. Even though it was the masterful storytelling, revolutionary effects and much more that elevated it to a classic. Having a female Luke would probably have done nothing to change that. However, a female Han Solo (that keeps the exact personality as the male one)... might have caused the movies to be seen a bit differently by the public in the seventies and eighties. It might have made it even more revolutionary tho. But this is just especulation with not much examination, feel free to correct me, this is a very interestin discussion
well it's mostly subjective to the viewer, i can agree with this sentiment. but even then, not all male leads are ment to appeal to men alone just as some female leads aren't.
I’m a woman so I don’t know the answer to the question exactly. But for those of you men who prefer to have a male hero a majority of the time, why go you think that is? Why do you really want to be able to relate to that character as a member of your own sex? Im not asking this out of judgement. I’m really genuinely curious. The guys I know do tend to be a bit pickier about female characters even if there are some they like. And they do prefer majority male heroes. That’s fine. It’s a preference not a moral thing one way or the other. As a woman who absolutely loves LoTR, Star Wars, superheroes etc, I don’t find I need to relate to a main character to enjoy the story. I enjoy a great well written female hero but I’m honestly just as fond of many male heroes. I think there are movies out there (like Barbie) that more women enjoy than men (as it is heavily about the female experience) but I think I that again is part of men being pickier. I enjoy very masculine heavy stories about uniquely masculine experiences (ex: Band of brothers). Interested to hear the male outlook on this.
Not being a man, it's hard for me to say who men relate to better on average, but I will say my husband really liked the lead(s) in Arcane, and he has many of the same critiques you do where Wonder Woman is concerned. He told me when he saw it with his older sister, who grew up on the Linda Carter series, it was so clearly incredibly meaningful to her, and he understood/appreciated that, but he also felt at the same time like Gadot's Wonder Woman was sort of a Mary Sue. And I can see that. (It doesn't help that Gadot is... not the world's greatest actor.)
Even if not an adaptation of the game's stories, the Halo TV show could have been any other story that fit the lore. Like Forward Unto Dawn, Halo Legends, or the motion comics that used to come out on Halo Waypoint.
Hell even something seasons 6-13 of Red Vs. Blue, a comedy fan made webseries, felt more in line with Halo. They had a really interesting story going on that ran parallel to the main one and how different sub factions of humanity and even some elites were vying for power post war.
Hey Samwise, I like this video and your take on this subject (it's very similar to a lot of other channels but you definitely seem more objective and neutral than most). I am surprised though that you didn't include any footage from the show The Witcher in this video as it's also pretty well known for creating it's own story over the source material much to the frustration of fans (and apparently Henry Cavill as well). Anyway, thanks for being one of the more moderate voices on TH-cam.
Tbf the Witcher hadn’t really gotten that egregious at the time this video was released iirc… most of the information about the material being changed is stuff that was still upcoming at the time
When you have a virtual monopoly on something, you lose sight of what makes the customer happy and only focus on what you think will make you the most money.
I've heard it said that the classics were so good because the people who wrote them actually had interesting lives. They experienced severe hardship and learned to overcome it. And because of that, they were able to tell stories about strong, relatable characters overcoming adversity. But this generation of writers is filled with trust-fund babies, nepotism hires, diversity hires, and pretentious college graduates with no experience in the real world. There is the occasional gem, of course, but Hollywood writers are largely shallow people with nothing of interest to say. So their stories wind up bland as a result.
While I agree with the idea of the video and its title, I disagree with most of the arguments you put forward. That's a wild position to be in haha. Men don't want to see men on screen, men, and people in general, just want good characters on screen. You can replace a good male character with a good female character, and most men won't bat an eye if it's done with care and respect. For example, imagine Ciri becoming the new protagonist of the Witcher game franchise, I don't think people would riot and call out CDPR on that. It's just a logical step and Ciri is a fantastic character. Men think they want to see men on screen, because for a long time Hollywood exces THOUGHT men only wanted men on screen despite multiple examples to the contrary. So they kept feeding us men characters. In both cases we are looking at a fallacious view of audience needs. However, one was done in good faith (men want men on screen), the other in bad faith (women want women on screen and weak men). But both are equally fallacious in principle. People just want good characters. That's it.
Men want good characters, of course. But would Lord of the Rings be the classic it is if all the heroes were heroines? We can certainly appreciate characters of both genders (and whatever alien species), but ultimately we are going to relate most to characters who are more similar to us, and thus enjoy their stories more. Example: The Barbie Movie.
@@master_samwiseLord of the rings would have to be a different type of legend if the characters were all heroines. But as a woman, I don't want lord of the rings but all women. There's already women in lord of the rings. I'd want a different story with similar themes or values, with a similar amount of epic honor and valor, and I'd want the women to be distinct and well-crafted characters. Also, I'd want the story to actually deliver on the premise, whatever it is. This kind of vibe was actually what attracted me to stories like Seirei no Moribito and Yona of the dawn. What I want, most of all, is a good story. Sometimes I want a story where the protagonist is a woman, sure. But if all the women protagonists are terrible I'd rather take the good story. What I think is that people need to learn that writing woman protagonists is honestly not rocket science and doesn't need to have special fanfare, and I want people to start making creative new stories again. Because right now, fanfiction is cornering the market and anime and manga is looking better than comics and movies. And I think that's kinda lame. Maybe women are less picky than men about this kind of thing and just care less about the gender of the protagonist. But I don't really think that's the case. I think women and men are equally able and willing to see a protagonist of the opposite gender, it's just that male protagonists tend to get written better and we're all more accustomed to them. Basically it's a skill issue. I honestly think writers and directors can do better.
@@master_samwiseLord of the rings would have to be a different type of legend if the characters were all heroines. But as a woman, I don't want lord of the rings but all women. There's already women in lord of the rings. I'd want a different story with similar themes or values, with a similar amount of epic honor and valor, and I'd want the women to be distinct and well-crafted characters. Also, I'd want the story to actually deliver on the premise, whatever it is. This kind of vibe was actually what attracted me to stories like Seirei no Moribito and Yona of the dawn. What I want, most of all, is a good story. Sometimes I want a story where the protagonist is a woman, sure. But if all the women protagonists are terrible I'd rather take the good story. What I think is that people need to learn that writing woman protagonists is honestly not rocket science and doesn't need to have special fanfare, and I want people to start making creative new stories again. Because right now, fanfiction is cornering the market and anime and manga is looking better than comics and movies. And I think that's kinda lame. Maybe women are less picky than men about this kind of thing and just care less about the gender of the protagonist. But I don't really think that's the case. I think women and men are equally able and willing to see a protagonist of the opposite gender, it's just that male protagonists tend to get written better and we're all more accustomed to them. Basically it's a skill issue. I honestly think writers and directors can do better.
@@master_samwiseThat's not a good example I think because women were often underestimated at that time and all through the end of the 20th century. So that they were all men helped worked better than if they were all female, but that's because women-led stories had less spotlight and less attention overall. The symptom of living in a male-dominated society. This idea today has been twisted by some nutjobs, but it's still a real symptom of the type of sexism that used to exist. But even without that, having a preference for the gender you see on screen is also a taught behaviour, not something "natural" (that's a loaded word in itself). Kids don't discriminate between genders until they are taught to do so (either through media or other forms of exposure, or either by being directly taught concepts like "boys and girls don't play together"). So I would argue that there is immense value in exposing kids to media with a wide variety of people as heroes. Not because that's what they want to see, but because that's how you build this kind of wants. That's why I always dislike statements of fact like "men want to see men on screen because that's who they are", because is completely misses the real problem behind that: why is that ? It's technically true. But it doesn't even begin to unpack the topic. So taking it as an absolute truth of nature feels very wrong to me. It feels like a complete misunderstanding of the difference between instinctual behaviour and taught behaviour.
@@master_samwiseSailor Moon was a team of 5 superhero girls and is still getting remakes decades later. The first Wonder Woman movie did great. I loved Batman Returns just because of Catwoman. And there’s the Miraculous fan base, and Owl House.. the market for female heroes is out there. But the big studios rarely get it right.
The wonderwoman 1984 was a movie with no script, no understanding of these characters and the worst cgi! The costumes and actorz did great, but damn. Glad you skipped that one.
If the people in charge of Rings of Power wanted to create their own fleshed out world wjth its own story and characters then they should have created an original IP instead of doing it by appropriating an existing one. Then again, they dont care what we think.
Amazon never would have risked a billion dollars on unknown IP. Note that the full name of the show is "The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power". The first part is there to draw people in. The biggest studio risk in recent times was HBO risking 50-60 million on GRRM's relatively unknown Game of Thrones, a very small fraction of ROP's budget.
We've been telling them this isn't what we want for years and, every time, their response can best be summed up as this: I DON'T GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU WANT!!!!!!!!!
Studio execs think that including specific elements will make specific demographics like the product (“Women like seeing women on screen, so we need one (1) of those. Everyone loved the first movie, so put in as many callbacks as you can. In fact, let’s just make first movie again but with new characters!”), not caring or realizing that those elements don’t make a good product on their own. People like to see themselves on screen, especially if they haven’t had much representation before, but they’re not looking for a flat, empty vessel that looks like them. They want characters they can relate to, whose struggles resonate with their own on some level, not a generic placeholder (personality implant pending).
If the people in charge of rings of power wanted to stretch out and create something new, they should have created an original IP instead of ruining and existing one.
Good summary of a number of recent films / franchises. I think the best recent TV series is Andor. It has a flawed male lead that you already know is destined to die, and a whole host of believable male and female characters with real strengths, flaws and motivations, I only hope we'll see more Sci-Fi like this in future. But I'm already unsure about how Disney let it get made, with its "plot" and "characters", and "believable action scenes".
I think Hollywood just has too big of an ego to handle characters that keep their helmets on for most of their time on screen. Master Chief and Sabine turned from badass characters into actors who can’t be bothered to be in character for more than 5 minutes without everyone seeing their ok looking faces. Mandolorian is the only exception because Pedro Pascal wasn’t on set, so instead we had Bo Katan.
Hmm.. Y’know. I want to see you do a video essay on how much chief has changed from the stoic machine that the original bungie games have shown off (gameplay and cutscene wise) to the stoic, ancient and wizened warrior that Infinite portrays.
"Get that out of my face please" was exactly my reaction to the Ring of Power xD Another video that speaks my mind! The last part got me chuckled. You're the best Master Samwise!
You bring a good point. Gaining new audience members is good, but you have to remember the core audience. The core audience has the diehard fans that will buy almost everything related to their favorite product. The real money is made in merchandise related to the movie.
Good video! I think that the phrasing could be a bit better (saying men want male characters may be true, but without nuance can be a bit of a charged statement), but all the general points are correct; HollyWood executives fundamentally do not know what their audiences want. Due to this, media is produced that seems to target audience X, but is written for audience more like Z. This causes false expectations between audience and writer; audience thought they would get X, so they dislike it when they get Z instead. This is then further compounded by the fundamentally bad writing. Good job!
I'd argue that most writers *DO* in fact know what their audiences want; they simply look down on us and think they know better. That's a huge component of the "writing for the audience they wish they had rather than the audience that actually exists" phenomenon. It's not that they don't know what we like, it's that they consider themselves enlightened higher beings who are morally superior to us, and we're just racist, sexist, misogynistic, transphobic, x-ist, x-phobic bigots, and of course many of us have "white privilege", so we need to be taken down a peg or two. The last thing these writers want to do is create something that the evil "deplorables" might actually enjoy and resonate with, because by the Leftist laws of guilt-by-association, that might implicate the writers as x-ist, x-phobic bigots. It's all a vicious cycle of spite, genuine contempt, and conspicuous virtue signaling, and unfortunately, despite overwhelmingly poor reviews and regular financial underperformance, they're often rewarded for it regardless through cancerous ESG initiatives and approval from the vocal minority of like-minded sycophants. So yeah, all that is to say: though there is certainly incompetence abound, they do in fact know what we want, and they're legitimately driven more by contempt/malice than incompetence or simple ignorance.
10:42 explained so well and this is the main problem. Show runners/creatives no doubt want to creat their own stories with grand budgets however studios don’t want to run the risk, so instead of new with creative freedom.. strong IPs to draw an established audience. Now we’re in this endless loop and like not see anything truly great for decades.
I don’t think Hollywood is saying “fans don’t know what they want” but rather “what fans want is wrong, and we will give them what they should want” You SHOULD want that Segway, darn you!
Thing about Hollywood is that it's too afraid to take risks. They're always banking on nostalgia, on what's familiar. If a genuinely creative and original project (like, say, The Owl House) does make it to the screen, it has to walk on eggshells or risk being cancelled, especially if it's a TV show (like, say, The Owl House). Hollywood, which is really just slang for the corporate execs that run the studios, doesn't care about creativity, it cares about money. I'm absolutely certain that there were incredibly creative people involved in every single bad project in recent years, especially in the writer's room. But Hollywood stifles their creativity and as a result, the end product is shit. And then you look to the indie animation scene, and you see unbridled creativity and talent. Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, Murder Drones, Lackadaisy, The Amazing Digital Circus, just to name a few. And say what you will about each of these projects, but you can't deny that Hollywood would _never_ take a chance on any of them. Anyways, sorry for the rant, but this video really got me thinking.
See, I wouldn't even mind the writers writing what _they_ want... if they actually wanted it. That's art, those are artists, and that can be so much more interesting than having what _I_ want written. The issue is... they want money, they write for a hypothetical audience and not for their own interests or artistic visions, and _that_ makes it feel hollow and empty. There's no passion in it because it's not what _they_ want to create either.
A great video. You earned a subscribe from me. One thing I appreciated how you mentioned how they treated Master Chief. I didn't hate the show but I did feel it was strange they decided to put a face to him so soon. It does seem to me like they are afraid of having a stoic and masculine lead or at least they were afraid of letting him be elusively that for any longer than they did. The feminizing of heroes is an issue that has been talked about quite a bit lately and it is no less true than it was yesterday or the day before. I agree. I will say that I do think there is a fear of giving in to what the most vocal fans say that they want. You gave the example of "The Customer Is Always Right" at the beginning and pointed out how there is some interpretation that is involved and in reality there is some selling that is involved. You do have to intuit what someone wants and not exclusively listen to what they are asking for.
Honestly, I don't think its a gender swap or woman lead issue. It's a writing, not caring, and lack of wanting to explore new avenues issue. Arcane for example, women leads; very well written. Based off a video game which I will argue a large amount of gamers are men. Arcanes plot is solely about two sisters. You could've had a brother and sister duo instead, but the male character wouldn't be able to bring out the emotion as well as Vi and Powder. Just wouldn't work. A well written character in a plot that makes sense makes a world of difference. Doesn't matter what gender the lead is; the plot and character development are what need to matter to make a successful story. (And yes I know bad movies can make success, that's not the point of this comment. Those shows have their place.) ATLA has very solid well rounded female leads that are fan favorites. The Owl House also has female leads that are also well done. Both shows attract all sexes. Why? Not because they are women leads, though it does add flavor to the story. People love these shows because they are well written, make sense, unique in their own right, and had good character development. Thats what makes them so good. Anyway my two cents
I would half agree. Women leads are ok to male audience as long as there are also male leads to be found too. Gender swaps, otoh, are annoying and patronizing to your audience. Samwise has the right take on these. The audience gets attached to their heroes and doesn't want to see them discarded in a callous fashion. It's particularly insulting when the new version is shown to be better at everything than our beloved hero.
@@gunkulator1 point taken, but why is it specifically a male audience when just as many woman part take in social media consumption? Why is it only about men and not women? Why must women be subjicated to a growing list of indulging male leads over woman leads? Why is there not as much woman lead shows for women? Why is it geared towards men (always)? Why must both parties be forced to part take in shows with good male leads but crappy female ones? It seems very sexist and one sided and I think its the way Hollywood sets everything up to cater towards men only while pretending to care about the female audience it purposely insults over and over with these bad female leads. Because at this point its less of good quality writing and more of a "male leads" are better than female ones.
@@daisyphinney1038The male lead thing is highly genre dependent. As Samwise tells us, the audience for comic book and superhero movies is mostly men, therefore Hollywood would be smart to cater to that audience. It's not sexist that men and women have different tastes and viewing habits. Turn on daytime television and you'll see dozens of programs geared largely towards women because that's who the audience is. You can decry these differences all you want but they still exist and the smart money is on recognizing how best to appeal to the audience you have.
@@daisyphinney1038 This is anecdotal, but in my family, there are four of us who enjoy scifi and fantasy: three of my brothers and myself. My mother and my three sisters love romance novels. My dad prefers westerns and thrillers. There is some overlap in preferred genres, but when it comes to scifi and fantasy, I'm the outlier in enjoying it along with my brothers. The plain fact is that more men than women enjoy those genres and so it makes sense to cater to an audience that will be predominantly male. Women may be part of social media, even a majority part, but when you're talking about entertainment, as gunkulator said, it's about the genre and you can't treat every genre as if it has the same audience. Rom-coms are almost exclusively the domain of a female audience. Mysteries and thrillers will probably have the most overlap, and scifi/fantasy is predominantly male, even if there are women who enjoy it, like myself. Women don't have to be ignored to be successful, but catering to them at the expense of the male audience is setting yourself up for failure.
I honestly think "Quantumania' is the revised version of Marvel's version of "Guardians of the Galaxy 3' from when they had fired James Gunn. When they brought him (and his better story idea) back, they had a crappy Guardians plot that set up Kang that they had to rework. They just pretended that The Quantum Realm and Some Planet Where Kang Is works the same way and copy-pasted Ant-Man's characters into the Guardians roles. Just a theory.
Another franchise that hates its audience is Star Trek. Angered that people would rather watch the smartly-written Animated Series from the 60's, Paramount has been releasing "comedy shorts" that further alienate the fanbase, and following the trend of biting the hand that feeds them, continue the character annihilation of Spock.
I honestly don't think guys care if the mc is female or male, its just Hollywood is usually absolute trash at writing women, and marketing women, especially at making them likeable. Wonderwoman's first movie is a success because shes likeable and valiant and strong. Domino in Deadpool is cool as fuck. There are plenty of video games with main female characters that men adore the difference is stark. Its not a gender or sex problem is a writing problem.
In the case of lord of the rings, I do think you can create exciting new stories in middle-earth, but you need to work together with lore experts to do it right. Earning your right to your own original project by proving you can do it should be standard in professional creativity, and it is. Sad to see a generation of undoubtedly talented people failing so badly at it.
It seems the writers in Hollywood today look at a female character who acts either motherly or alluring as weak.they seem to think in these diverse groups they cater to that they are an untapped vein of gold who will spend money on merchandise or books like a fan of a longtime IP does.but these groups are more of a casual watcher of a franchise and aren't devoted to it like fans of the franchise are.
This video is fantastic, and I couldn't agree with you more. Your ability to articulate these thoughts and effectively put them to screen is incredible. Please continue making videos like this
I'd also add the WoT series to this list. I haven't been able to get past a couple of episodes on pretty much every one of these series and have basically had it with the superhero 'universe' movies. God, I miss the movies of the 80s and 90s so much!!!
As a male that grow around girls, i never saw one of them interested in super heroes cartoons, they only like princess animations like barbie and others
If I had a nickel every time I Hurd somebody made a popular horror game into a teen drama I’d have two nickels which isn’t a lot but weird that it happened twice right?
Welcome to the death of creativity, these big franchises are owned by people who don't care at all about creative integrity, yet for some reason everyone has convinced themselves these are the people that creativity should be intrusted to. These big corperate people cannot be trusted with anything, because they're idiots, I know some of them are great at sciance and other miscilanious things, but these are people who are willing to ruin the lives of others just to see their net worth go up, even though they had more than enough money to live luxuriously for the rest of their lives years ago, they are still willing to lie, cheat, and in some cases kill for the sake of seeing that number go up in the hopes of winning a d*ck measuring contest with the other rich people. Creativity should be intrusted to those who actually care, not the shallow morons at the top with the most backward priorities possible.
Thank goodness we live in a world where if what Hollywood is making sucks, we can go and watch stuff from other places in the world. Korean media is really taking off in the US, and I long ago abandoned Hollywood for Tokyo.
I see your point, and I absolutely love Anime (& hope toxic Western elements never manage to meaningfully penetrate the Japanese entertainment industry), but you can't really replace Hollywood, IMO. It makes me sad that we'll never be able to get movies like Jackson's LOTR trilogy ever again.
@@alexcallender You can replace Hollywood, if you want to. Thinking that you can't is their power. We live in the Golden Age of JRPGs, so many elite titles coming out every year. If you're a gamer, and a JRPG fan, like I am, there's no reason to turn to Hollywood ever again. I bought the Legend of Nayuta just the other day, it was a JRPG from 2010 that was finally released in the west. I had intended to buy it just to support the western release and I had no intention to play it until later. I started playing it, I was completely hooked, and I can't put it down. A week, and 20+ hours of gameplay later, I'm still hooked. Can't remember the last time a Hollywood product hooked me like that. Turning to Hollywood because you have no other option is a choice. Vote with your wallet and leave. You'll be happier.
I am a queer person that is currently researching the opposite of this issue and how representation doesn't have to be blatant or in your face. Looking at Arcane, Dragon Prince, and many many other shows I have to say that sometimes the best way to represent a group is by not saying you are doing it. Some of my favorite characters are of both male and female characters. Some of my favorite representation was sometimes never said. For example, Raine Whispers of the Owl House is never stated as a non-binary character, or never says their pronouns. But every character refers to them as such, and never questions it. It is so subtle that I missed it my first watching, and even my mom was like, "Oh, they are non-binary right?" Sometimes that is the best representation, to not even say it. Arcane does it too, Vi doesn't ask if Caitlyn is a lesbian, but asks if she prefers "man or woman" (that is also a freaking awesome scene). I can go on and on but sometimes to represent a group you don't have to explicitly say "Hey my character is x and y," instead treating them as any other character. Characters have flaws, weaknesses, triumphs and failures. Not having those leads to characters feeling bland. Tbh I think that is the main problem with some movies/shows is that characters are written for a status quo, rather than characters.
If you want a show that does a masterful job at doing representation properly, "The Chosen" is the one to look at. Dallas Jenkins and his team researched who would have been living in First Century AD Israel---which meant researching the various ethnic group who were living in--or at least passing through---that part of the Roman Empire.
They wanted his helmet off because the actor wanted his helmet off. Same reason we see mandalorians helmet less. Actors who don't show their faces are paid as voice actors. Which is significantly less than if they show their faces. It's really that simple.
The turn entertainment has taken deserves its failure. Write or draw a fanfic, come up with something original you might enjoy, make your own fun, and remember the good times with the IPs you were so fond of. Disengage from what you are being offered so the powers that be know how their attempt at force-feeding you the opinion they want you to have will work out for them.
The Netflix Witcher series is one of the most blatant examples along with Tolkien about disregarding the source material. It’s been said time and again that the writers actively hated the source material, especially the video games (although Sapkowski doesn’t consider the games canon). But they had no problem using enough of the source material, and straight up ripping some of it off, to make their own show. And it’s tanked
When something is adapted to another medium, the assumption by the adapters is that the existing audience comes along, more or less, for free. That means that now the adapters are free to change what they need to in order to try to lure more people into wanting it, thereby expanding the audience. This usually results in changes that alienate the original audience.
I want cool female characters too! If I could rewrite my script, I would probably assert that it's not so much the desire for female leads in the MCU or wherever, but rather the impatience, the need to jam new female characters into the story without taking the time to make sure that A) they are good characters and B) they will resonate with the existing audience.
@@master_samwise In that regard that actually could be a good subject for a follow-up video. Take the stuff you would have preferred to say in this video and expand it and better elaborate into a new video. Such as what is Hollywood doing wrong right now and explain why female leads aren't inherently the issue (lack of set-up, being too aggressive with them replacing existing leads, not taking chances with original female characters etc).
I think you have the fundamental point correct, anyone who grew up with Pixar movies has at least one of them as a childhood favourite cause Pixar does the legwork to make you care about the characters inside the span of their movies, I think that's still true despite the recent unpopularity of their films because I still really enjoy every Pixar movie that's come out. Pixar never catered to a specific audience or change in politics, they tell their own unique stories that the creators are passionate about and that's largely what draws me in to them. Studios do not understand what their audiences want, they water down niche and nuance to make it more widely appealing which inevitably makes it appealing to no one. Everyone isn't always going to like your film, pick an audience, not this imaginary wider one, but the one you already have in most cases and make films for them. More people can resonate with a well written character
In the screwtape letters the demon quotes a man who said “I did neither what I wanted nor what I ought.” I feel similarly about modern entertainment. It is neither enriching, educational or entertaining, it is neither healthy but bitter (like a textbook) nor sweet but empty (like an old action movie or comedy).
As someone who's not a Tolkien fanatic, I enjoyed Rings of Power for what it was. As someone who's played through Halo sans 5 and Infinite, the moment that really put me off from the rest of the series was the UNSC commanding Master Chief to commit a war crime in the first episode.
I know not everyone will agree but rant videos like this are just complete filler and I don't think I've learned anything watching this - I'm not Disney, after all (could you believe it?) Master Samwise has provided much more meaningful insight in other videos.
I'll be honest: when my brother told me was watching Halo (this was when it first came out) it took him ten whole minutes for him to finally convince me that they showed his face in the first episode. I couldn't believe that they would be so stupid, never mind how it just sounded... wrong. It's amazing how such a small act cuts so deep into me as a casual Halo fan (I've played through the games, going to be playing through 3 on legendary with my brother in a couple of months after doing the same with 1 and 2).
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You should do a vid on Major Winter's leadership!
VPNs are trash
We tell them what we want and they say "fuck you, you'll take what we give you" and then release what is essentially crap.
I feel confident that the showrunners and writers hate the IPs. Genuinely hate them and these recent works are proof that they took the jobs as acts of vandalism, for which they are over paid. The studios just want butts in seats while these people that have been hired are the lamest of performative activists. Literally doing the least amount of anything that can even be squinted at and pretended to be work as they hate work and people who work.
AUDIENCES AND THE FANBASE ARE SERIOUSLY RIGHT,
"The customer is always right, in matters of taste." That's the whole saying.
Nope. It's not. The full saying is "The customer is always right." (Including the full stop at the end). People have started trotting this out recently, but it's a myth.
@@gray_mara No it isn't
@@pyropulseIXXI Do a little research. This is literally the example of a retcoin given in the *dictionary definition*. The articles I posted here earlier seem to have disappeared, but go ahead and find a source for "in matters of taste" that isn't Twitter and predates 1905.
@@gray_mara You're wrong. Full stop.
@@haljordan777 There are hundreds of articles from dictionaries to Forbes magazine saying I'm right. You can believe I'm wrong, but that makes you an idiot. I don't mind if idiots think I'm wrong.
I tried posting links three times, but apparently you can't post links on TH-cam without getting marked as spam. But feel free to do your own research.
Say what you will about George Lucas, but that man never disrespected his fans, even as some of them were absolutely horrible to him.
He got lazy which is a kind of disrespect when you are making a product. He wasn't creatively bankrupt though.
Yeah he totally respected the star wars fans when he expected us to love jar jar who he said was "the key to everything, if we don't get him right the whole thing falls apart"
No, but the fans disrespected him, which is why i believe, is the reason he sold Lucasfilm. So we fans brought this upon ourselves.
I could be wrong, though.
@@shawnamiller191 At least he respected the reception Jar-Jar got, which is why Jar-Jar doesn't show up a whole lot after Episode 1. Modern Hollywood would more likely double-down on Jar-Jar if he was their creation.
I don't know, I keep imagining an aternate universe where George canonized the best parts of the EU instead of selling himself to Disney.
I just want to say: Please, remember that these poorly written female characters are not a reflection of the average woman, but of ideological, power-tripping hollywood elites.
Female characters would be just fine if they were written well.
Agreed
Wowsers, you are hella correct
At least in The Mandolorian, him taking his helmet off made sense but he later had consequences for it.
I think many men are happy to watch a female character as long as it’s a well written character. Not the entitled narcissistic brats, snarky girl dogs and obnoxious Mary Sues they have been trying to force on us for the past decade. It’s more about the writing than the gender of the character; this is assuming the character has not been swapped. And yes, Rings of Poop was an abomination.
If we're being honest, I think there really is a decided preference for people to see themselves up on screen. While Wonder Woman was a great movie with a great female lead, it still trailed behind the male lead movies of the same genre for a reason. Sure, men liked both but I think it's still accurate to say male audiences prefer male leads.
@@gunkulator1 I'm a woman and I mostly prefer male leads, although I suppose that might be because so many of the female leads are annoying. But when I'm watching fantasy or science fiction or any movie, I don't need to see myself there. I watch movies to escape from the world, not so I can bring the world with me.
Look how popular Game of Thrones is, and how tough many of the female characters are. And those characters are LOVED.
The problem is Wokesters are completely incompetent writers.
@@velocitor3792 Define woke. Also, you might want to check out the politics of George R R Martin if you're so convinced "wokesters" - whatever that is - are completely incompetent writers.
@@gunkulator1 There may certainly be an expectation driven by biology to favour male leads where action is involved. Wonder Woman wasn't trailing male leads, at least when we consider DC films. Look at 2013 to 2019
Man of Steel - $668 million box office on a budget of ~$240 million.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - $873 million on a budget of ~$280 million.
Suicide Squad (2016 film) - $748 million on a budget of $174 million.
Wonder Woman - $823 million on a budget of $149 million.
Justice League - $658 million on a budget of $300 million.
Aquaman - $1.152 billion on a budget of $180 million.
I left out Joker as it wasn't a Snyderverse film, but it was the single most profitable film of the period. Of the six Synderverse films, two were female led and were in second and third places in terms of profitability. Aquaman was the surprise hit, as were Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad due to these being lower value characters. Batman and Superman had mixed performances. Certainly the Suicide Squad sequel, Woman Woman 1984, and Birds of Prey flopped, some impact from the virus of unknown origin and/or being sub-par.
I think the real crux of the issue is in truth not necesarily gender-swapping (as again just having male leads in a action or super hero movie doesn't equate auto-success) or story changes parse, by that I mean those are symptoms of the underlining issue. Its that they want to create new material but are too scared to let ride on its own merits. They want to create more female characters but don't want to risk using new or not as well known IP. So just shove them into existing IP and make them the new main character. They are too scared to create original universes for their story concepts so take existing IP and just do whatever they want with it (Halo, LOTR, etc). At its base its people wanting to create their own material but also bean-counters and execs wanting to hedge-their-bets by only doing through existing IP's. Which we have now seen is pleasing nobody.
As to female leads that is much more nuanced stance, while there is some truth to men liking male leads I think there is definately more too it. As again many recent female led movies pulled in both audiences (Black Panther, Arcane, Even Barbie), plus male led action movies have also bombed recently as well (MI may it rest in peace, Fast X too I like it sue me.............). I think this subject may warrant a follow-up video I feel.
Definitely planning a follow up video! I definitely want to address the issue with a bit more care and nuance.
You've absolutely hit the nail on the head here. George Takei said it recently when the new Star Trek movies made Sulu gay. He said that his character in the original show was heterosexual, and that if you want to diversify the cast then don't bend the existing characters to fit the mold otherwise it looks shallow and I'll conceived. Write new and intriguing characters that stand on their own merits if you want to diversify. Stop being so scared of original content and characters!
You know what's an incredible movie? Everything Everywhere All At Once! An original concept and plot with a diverse cast of characters that didn't rely on existing IP to tell an incredible story.
@@Spam1192What your describing is Film art bumping up against Film business. Inherently Film is about experimentation and creating new things, but than thats constantly having to fight against the money-men who by and large only care about next-quarter earnings. Why risk a loss when you can just make it another super-hero insert, people will go to those regardless right if it has something to do with Captain America right? I can honestly picture the pitch meetings now.
@@gwell2118 There is another layer to this in the codependent relationship between the corporate heads and the artists, through their unions. Where the party holding the capital always wants to play it safe, yet the "creative" side is just as risk averse in not wanting to spend their own capital to bring their vision to life.
The creativity is stagnated by everyone involved trying to ensure a big payday, rather than make compelling art.
@@SpiralKingScorchPerhaps to an extent but the truth most artists don't have the capital in a lot of cases to finance a film, set up distribution and market it to a wider audience. Its why a lot of self-financed films tend to have smaller "indie" screenings but are often unknown to wider audiences. Greed honestly has very little to do in most cases from the creative side since in most cases the suits hold the real power. In addition to that most film production is heavily leverage by existing organizations that often try to squeeze out newbies. Honestly I would have preferred if Greed was the main issue from creative side, as that can be more easily addressed. Not systemic issues within the industry itself.
Ironically, I‘m a lot better at relating to female characters; especially when I roleplay in an RPG or tabletop.
But you know what Fury from Darksiders, Ciri from The Witcher, and basically the female half of Brandon Sanderson‘s characters have in common?
They are tragically human.
Just like the male half of Sanderson‘s characters, and pretty much everyone in Arcane.
And being human (rather than bland psychopaths), and going through tragedy, is what makes them so touching.
Did I mention Brandon Sanderson‘s books already? You should check them out, they‘re fantastic.
A fantastic summary of what is wrong with modern video game adaptations.
This is why I’m excited for the Five Nights At Freddy’s movie. I think they originally were gonna pull the Hollywood Knows Best routine, but the creator said nope many times before they changed the script. From the clips I’ve seen online, it looks like it’s blending the lore with a story the average horror fan could understand and enjoy. It’s not 100% lore accurate, but it has the heart of what fnaf fans love about the games and books.
Now that the movie is out, what do you think about it?
It's a shame the wheel landed on Ant Man instead of Captain Falcon. I would have loved an F-Zero movie!
I feel like our gender and culture and all that doesnt even matter, neither men nor women can be inspired by characters who are more of a statement than a person, diversity is actually obtainable and its not hard, just look how universally loved are the diverse cast of avatar the last airbender
Arcane, too. The protagonists are rivalling sisters, & that didn't stop us from loving it. I disagree with this dude implying gender's more important than good writing. Even in the past, we had films like Alien and Kill Bill.
Gender isn't a problem, but _part_ of the problem is men and Hollywood writers alike thinking superficially of girls: vapid feminism, girl-bossery, and disliking men. What we're seeing isn't stuff that appeals to girls, it's BAD WRITING. I'll give you more iconic "girl-centered" media we loved: Mean Girls, The Powerpuff Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bones, Totally Spies, Kim Possible... and these are just what I liked. Both sexes are human at the end of the day. How hard is it to comprehend that?
@@spaghetto9836 its not only hollywood males writing women being problematic, sometimes the writer is a woman and still manages to somehow write the most unlikeable character ever, almost feeling like they wanted to make some reverse roles revenge powerfantasy rather than making something good
But yeah i can agree that there are many actually good shows and movies that usually fall under the "girlpower" genre, those older movies back in the day where girls win a sport event not because "girls can do it too" but because the story needs a good ending
The human connection you mentioned in Antman is really important. The original Star Wars trilogy, for all the high space opera settings, is at its core a father-son story which resonated with young men in the 70s and continued to do so for decades afterwards. Luke wants to follow in his father's footsteps, his father wants Luke to become something he isn't, his father sees the error of his ways and saves Luke after Luke redeems him through love. The climax of the trilogy wasn't a big circle exploding on the screen, it was Vader picking up the Emperor and saving Luke. I feel above everything the recent sequels got wrong, it was a lack of a personal connection and human story. Kylo-Rey felt like an after thought and didn't really define the characters, the Kylo-Han-Leia thing was also sloppily done (though might be why people think Kylo is one of the few good characters in the sequels).
Applies to other works. Although high fantasy genre does work on a fantasy fulfillment premise, seeing your own gender doesn't mean the story will resonate. Aliens 2 climax isn't just clobbering a giant alien in a mech suit. It's when Ripley's mother bear instinct emerges as she tells the Queen "get away from her you bitch". Terminator 2 is compelling because of the father like role of the T100 and single mother / mother bear instincts of Sarah Connor.
Could go on I expect, but the
TLDR of it is that we want to see stories about ourselves, not just ourselves in stories if that makes sense.
I think I get it. And I agree with the TL;DR. ^_^
For how I view it and to expand on the TLDR idea, I think the relatability doesn’t really stop at the characters attributes. And I don’t really think that having a character be a blank slate for anyone to insert themselves into is the right way to approach relatability. I think what really makes or breaks a good character for someone is them going through something that can really be universally understandable. That Luke and Vader example was one of my favorites you mentioned!
I think it’s empathy that might be the correct term that should be mentioned along with relatability for what makes or breaks a memorable character to someone. Mainly because I know not every single person has the exact same experiences in life.
And I know an audience’s mileage may vary on those two words and which character they apply to depending on who you ask. But I think aside from characteristics, it’s also the emotional journey that a story has to get right for a character in order to have them be memorable to someone.
The Star Wars sequel trilogy clearly suffers from not being planned out. Lucas knew where he was eventually going with the story in 1977. Eps 7, 8 and 9 are a disjointed mess. Ideas are introduced, then abandoned, then reintroduced (Rey's parentage). It's just very sloppy and obviously off the cuff writing.
Speaking on the topics of heroes, as a guy who's favorite disney movie is about Mulan (the original), a non-traditional woman learning to grow into her strength, it's not the gender that's the problem. It's the character direction. None of these new female heroes manage to act heroic, or to learn and grow past their flaws. Captain Marvel in her solo movie was a villain, wrapped in the sin of hubris. And then the story conclusion is that "stop letting others hold you back"... yeah... that's not superhero material. Lets contrast that with another warrior with extraordinary powers, Thor. He was wrapped in the same sin. He was stripped of his powers, and made to earn them back by learning compassion.
The people in Hollywood destroyed in just a few years what took people with real talent and creativity decades to create.
Undeniably true. When I was younger (and I'm only 27), Hollywood still carried a real sense of prestige that it simply no longer does, and as MS pointed out, one of the main reasons for this is they started making films for some theoretical audience they *wanted*, rather than for the audience they actually had. There are plenty of other reasons, of course, but it's evident to me that people don't look at Hollywood as fondly as they used to.
I sometimes question what caused the first domino to fall. Like if there were talented people in Hollywood before, where did they go??
Studio: All we care about is making the most money
Fans: Give me what I want and I will give you money and tell my friends/family to give you money
Writers/producers: Lets piss everyone off and make shit.
Studio: Yes! Lets make shit!
Also one thing i have to disagree with on you is that the audience wants less women heroes. That's not true. They just want well written characters. They can be male or female, doesn't matter.
Compare Eowyn in LOTR and She-Hulk. Eowyn wanted to be a warrior, she showed heart and courage and has a story arc. When she killed the witch-king, men didn't go "wow that's stupid" They felt goose bumps and smiled. Because IT WAS EARNED! She was well written. Now.. She Hulk comes across as a bitch, has no arc. We are told she is perfect and has no flaws because she is a woman. This is horrible writing.
Eowyn is a poor example. She is a lone heroine in a veritable sea of male heroes. LOTR is a heavily heavily male story. Eowyn is the proverbial exception that proves the rule.
@@gunkulator1 then it's a good example
Not to mention ~twrking- 🤢 makes me extremely uncomfortable as someone under the ace umbrella. I don't need to see someone's rear shoved in my face. I did not consent to that. So glad I didn't see the movie/show. Whatever it is
Female leads are awesome. What bothers me is how painfully predictable and lazy the writing has become.
More Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor. Less Captain Marvel and Rey Palpawalker.
Female leads are neither here nor there.
A well written character is a good character
From a creator who discusses virtue in characters with such clarity and beauty, this is beyond disappointing. A previous video is literally titled "Audiences Hate Bad Writing, Not Strong Women." Now you argue 'men want to watch men'? No. Men want to watch characters of value who overcome adversity. They want to watch hard-won virtue save the day. Are Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman (and the smouldering garbage that was ROP's Galadriel) less successful because the protagonist is female in a male-dominated genre? No. They flopped because their protagonists do not strive in the face of opposition to 1. develop, 2. maintain, and ultimately 3. triumph through virtuous personalities and strengths. Men gravitate towards male-led media because they've been given so few examples of worthy female protagonists. The answer is not to reject female leads. The answer is to call on Hollywood to write better women in better stories.
Oh god no! Why did you have to remind me of Mister Cheeks?! The nightmares had only just stopped!
LOL sorry
I kinda hate it when people say "the audience is male so make better stories for men" and while I agree in some places, even women like strong male characters with true masculinity! its what EVERYONE sane wants!
When I heard about rings of power being produced I was hoping for something happening in Eregion with Anatar and Celebrimbor as major charicters where Anatar is portrayed as an entirely good and heroic character, though never a viewpoint character until the final couple of episodes of the last season.
All they had to do was find a place in the lore with room to fill in the blanks about what was going on around the major events keep faithful to those big events and tell a decent story. Sure everyone who knows anything would know from episode one that he is Sauron, but no one else would and "being in on the secret" would have been a large part of the fun.
One of the things that the post Disney Clone wars animated series did well was just that fill in the blanks, sure we all knew that Anikin would end up becoming Darth Vader, but seeing how we got between points a to b was enjoyable.
Have you seen the podcast with the Rings of Powers creators? I don't remember if it was there or in one of the other interviews where they said no one would believe someone claiming to be an envoy of the Valar, nevermind that it took Annatar decades to manipulate the elves. But this is emblematic of their atitude about adapting LOTR, they have such little care for the source material and for pleasing the fanbase, they were picking and choosing which parts to keep and which to change with such arbitrary criteria, it's not like they were selecting it based on what would be easier to adapt to the screen like Jackson did, they changed the source material to best serve *their* story. They also said Rings of Power was going to be "the story Tolkien never wrote", you're damn right Tolkien would never write something like that.
It's like they believe the source material and the fans exist to serve them when the opposite is true. Other people already talked about this here in this comment section but the problem is that they had their own story to tell and zero confidence that it would be sucessful unless it was attached to an IP with a pre-existing fanbase. If I could describe Rings of Power in one word I think it would be "lazy", they have no confidence in their own original story but full confidence that with the Tolkien name they'll be sucessful, and they want our praise and money for having a work ethic like this. I thought the Netflix adaptations proved it best, don't adopt the name of an existing franchise unless you're committed to honoring everything that franchise stood for.
When *I* heard about Rings of Power being produced, I was immediately filled with a sense of dread and disgust, because I knew that Hollywood had been chomping at the bit for YEARS to finally blackwash and desecrate Tolkien's Legendarium. Ever since Jackson's trilogy became so successful with ZERO non-White actors in the principal roles, certain Hollywood types have been seething and biding their time until the day they could finally "diversify" Tolkien and re-make his world for "modern audiences". Master Samwise (OP) said he's not quite comfortable with saying that these writers hate their audience, but I am. They utterly despise the people who loved Tolkien's works as they are, especially if those people happen to be White, straight men. Sooooo many ruinous decisions these contemporary writers, producers, directors, etc. make are specifically made with the intention to spite that particular demographic, which also just so happens to be the single largest fan demographic in the West - their primary/target market.
Lo and behold, I was correct, and it was somehow even worse than I anticipated. It does feel rather satisfying to say "I told you so" to all the sycophants who insulted people like me for correctly predicting the trajectory of the show, but I really wish I'd simply been wrong. The sad reality is that Jackson's trilogy could not be made in today's Hollywood. Full stop. The entire industry is deeply sick.
@@alexcallender No one cares about the skin color of the actors in fantasy or Sci-fi when the writing is actually good.
But that's the problem, writers now think that as long as they put minorities in prominent positions we are going to excuse all flaws in the project, this leads to minorities being put in horribly produced media which leads to people associating Minorities with bad quality, and when people start complaining about the low quality everyone defaults them as - ists or - phobes and that gives writers more confidence that as long as they put minorities in their work they don't need to worry about anything else and the vicious cycle continues.
Weirdoes who blister whenever PoC or women appear in roles previously held by white males DO exist, but they alone are not enough to make anything bomb, because obviously poc and women exist as well and they also want good media.
Minorities shouldn't have to choose between appearing in bad media or not appearing anywhere, writers need to put actual work in their projects and stop blaming the audience when they're called out for their laziness.
@@Prototype-357 It's worth noting that all these ist-ophobe accusations are limited exclusively to Western productions. No one ever complains that all the actors in a Bollywood movie are Indian, for example.
@@Calvinosaur I don't know if India specifically is a good comparison, it IS the most diverse country in the world with thousands of cultures and ethnicities existing side by side, with all the good and bad that brings. I don't know how indian media treats their minorities. There is prejudice everywhere in the world and they all have particular challenges to deal with, I know that because I live in south america and we have these problems too because of completely different factors than the US.
As I see it the problem in the US is that the people in charge of studios only like to *pretend* that they care about representation as long as it's convenient and they go about it without considering what would be best in the long-term. Is it really wise to call attention to the fact your movie or tv show has a strong female in it? Like she's special because she can beat up guys and not because of anything else? I feel like the time where that was innovative in media passed and it should be normalized at this point, isn't representation in media supposed to serve real life by normalizing minorities in good social positions? How are you gonna normalize something in the minds of people when you act like it's such an unique thing everytime it happens? On the internet I see POC living in the US complaining about the type of representation that makes white people pity them all the time, the whole point of feminism and representation is equality isn't it? So just treat them with all the virtues and flaws of white people, start acting like black people in positions of power is normal and just natural to the world, cause we've already had a black President of the States.
The things they do are usually only one step away from virtue signaling and come across as so insincere to me, a really famous example is Finn's character in the Star Wars sequels, after Force Awakens lots of people got the vibe he and Rey were gonna be a romance subplot and people were genuinely excited to see what they would do with an ex-storm trooper who joined the the resistance and the Jedi, and what happened in The Last Jedi? Instead of having the black male character getting with the white girl protagonist they sidelined him and gave him a love interest that was also a minority and pushed the white girl into the arms of the white guy villain who has been trying to kill her. Anyone who's seen the chinese posters for the sequel trilogy knows what the execs thought of Finn. And they expect our praise and call us -ists when we complain, they are projecting imo.
4:35, Wonder Woman (2017) was a popular superhero movie with a female protagonist
They used to know the lesson of "the customer comes first" years ago. They just don't care now that they've got so much money and a virtual monopoly on entertainment.
THANK YOU for that opening comment about what "The Customer is Always Right" actually means, it drives me nuts that people take it to mean "if I'm the customer I can never be wrong".
“The majority of your audience is male and you should listen to what they want.” 😂 100% agree and I’m a woman!
What Disney and Warner Bros animated shows like Amphibia, The Owl House, Infinity Train, OK KO Let's Be Heroes, and Craig of the Creek?
They didnt insult the audience like that.
When I was in sales and marketing, the mantra was “the customer is always right about what he wants”.
What man hasn’t imagine themselves as a noble warrior on a beautiful steed, leading an army of mighty soldiers against overwhelming odds?
This video made me think of Hollywood as Mother Gothel lmao
tho I thing the rant about superhero movies beeing "for guys" and so not many womans watch it it's not the problem. The real problem is that they simply don't know how to write a good character, and since they want to have more female representation so we just gets a bunch of shity movies, "'cuz womans don't have flaws" I supose XD.
Especially considering that womans can, with no problems, enjoys stories based on male leads and still resonate with them, so, I don't belive the other way around is false man can enjoy a story based on females leads as long as it is a good story with well writen characters.
Hey that comparison is insulting to Mother Gothel since in my opinion she is a well written character and a great example of gaslighting to teach kids of unhealthy relationships with people.
I disagree with a few points. Mainly in the first half of the video, that focuses on gender. Now, before I say anything i must clarify, i am not "most men", but a single teen boy, so we can both be right without having the same taste. Still, I've been watching the MCU up until Far From Home and would have agreed with you, because I did relate more and look up more to the men than the women. However, since then I have been consuming other types of media (manga), and my perception changed a lot. Characters like Clare from Claymore and Asa from Chainsaw Man are not only super cool to see in action, but also very interesting and relatable characters.
Besides that i don't believe that the objective is to "shape its audience", but rather to make existing characters and stories more "modern" and "relevant" by doing the bare minimum, add in some free marketing from the inevitable discourse and the best option seems clear for the execs. Not only that, but most movies are bad all around, being rushed out of a production line to fill space in a streaming service or movie catalogues.
The gender aspect is a symptom of a much larger disease that you actually did adress, which is how confortable these big studios have gotten for making profit with VERY little effort. These includes the people they hire, it's much easier, cheaper and less time consuming to hire someone who will make a bad movie that might still make bank for being (sorry for using such an annoying buzzword) wOkE than it is to hire a competent one that will make thinga with care, regardless of how progressive they are. People are tired of laziness and repetitiveness. If someone makes a good show, with a good plot, a good character and an interesting world to inhabit just for good measure with a likeable female lead, sign me up (yeah i get its pretty much describing arcane)
Edit: (sorry, forgot to put this in the original comment) this video is not bad at all and still brings up many good critiques about modern entertainment.👍
I think he is pointing out the majority new female heroes as a symptom of the larger problem. I totally agree with you though.
Bro u said what I was searching the comments for really well. Hollywood has an annoying tendency to think that all audiences want is to see a woman-ish figure to vaguely fit where a man once stood and to call that a win and “progess in equality”(!!??!), when in actuality surprise surprise people want well developed and emotionally relatable characters to fill original and creative roles, where they tackle obstacles that are new and exciting to follow along with. but instead audiences get genderswaps and “girl power” moments, with the thought that “thats enough no need to develop anymore we’ve hit that checkbox”. It’s not necessarily a matter of men not being interested in female characters, because gender doesn’t tend to make a persons whole identity, contrary to what hollywood seems to believe. It’s a matter of men not being able to identify with a personality-devoid female character taking the place of where a man “could and normally would be”, and the writers thinking that “hey because a man would generally be in this role and weve put a woman instead this is enough to be her entire character!” Women audiences then by proxy are not interested because of the same reason, another shallow femme fatale character. These female characters are then gonna compete against a man who actually doesn’t even exist in this world but idea that he could be taking her place exists in ours, so she’s gonna defy that and that’s what makes her a /good strong female character/”
This was so long and rambly but I hope that makes any sense, anyways class comment u said some points really really well 👌👌🫡🫡😄
This is so true! Very well made argument i think. We are all so fed up with these low quality movies
I disagree somewhat on your analysis of superhero movies. There are enough women who watch scifi, fantasy, action, and superhero flicks that having prominent female characters makes sense. The issue is more just not writing good stories.
Captain Marvel had the issue that some people didn't like Brie Larson, but I think she was actually fine. It was the script that was not good. See the whole script is written for a character who is over-emotional/gets distracted by emotions or so we're told. And then this never actually happens on screen. So when the resolution is her supposedly finding strength in her emotions, it really makes no sense. And I don't think that it was Larson's acting that was the issue. She behaved like a highly trained soldier, which is also a thing she was written as. There's no time on screen when her emotiona actually get the better of her. So it's puzzling.
As for the audience for She-Hulk, most of the people I talked to were settling in for a superhero legal show. That was what that specific audience wanted. It was a cross over of people who like superheros with people who like Law and Order. And we got no Law and Order. The writers apparently didn't even know how to write that kind of show. Because let's face it, to write legal drama you have to have some clue how actual courtrooms work. And none of the writing staff understood that. But we thought that that was who the show was supposed to be for. Toss in the just bad writing on women's issues to go with everything else, so that even if you were turning in for a woman's perspective, you'd be pissed. It was basically reductive, and focused on a narcissistic main character so that no one else in the story ended up mattering.
I agree with you that Hollywood doesn't understand what audiences want. But the most perplexing thing to me about that fact is that, since they are doing that much franchise work and presumably have degrees in things like Literature, Film, Humanities, etc. that they seem incapable of doing the homework of sitting down, watching/reading the existing property and figuring it out.
When the crew for Wrath of Khan was hired after the first Star Trek film flopped, they were NOT actually Star Trek fans. What they were were professional directors, writers, and creators. They got film copies of allll the TOS episodes, and sat down for several weeks straight to binge watch the show. And from that binge watching, they developed the script for Wrath of Khan, which has complex themes of aging, revenge, being forgotten, fatherhood, and friendship. You can see the skill, training, and creativity in that script. But you also see the TOS characters well -written as themselves, the characters fans love, and on an appropriately TOS adventure.
I do NOT understand why writers, directors, and creators today are less skilled, trained, and professional than those of the past.
The reason is quite simple. Now hollywood hires based on skin color, gender and sexual preferences, not based on actual skill.
Some time around the early naughties, I noticed that style-over-substance movies were increasingly praised for their style and given a free pass for their lack of substance. Fast forward twenty years, and it seems that trend wasn't stopped before it wrecked the ability of Hollywood writers to maintain narrative continuity.
So, if I had to rewrite this video, I would phrase things a bit differently.
Hollywood seems to have gotten it into their heads that simply HAVING a female lead is enough, so they don't bother to make her an actual character. Case in point, like you said, Captain Marvel.
Yes, male audiences do just mostly want GOOD characters, but the deluge of new female leads in a male-dominated genre indicates that Hollywood wants something the audience doesn't. No one (well, mostly no one), is clamoring for MORE female characters, but rather for BETTER characters.
I stated things far too simplistically in the video and for that I apologize.
@@master_samwise You don't owe any apologies for the beginning of a thesis of what went wrong.. Trust me, I've heard worse ways of stating things.
Someone has to play the opening card so the game can commence, even if they lose the trick. And someone has to throw out an idea for discussion to commence or we're never going to talk about stuff. :)
I'm not 100 percent sure you're correct in your assessment specifically of Marvel movies (DC doesn't seem to be doing the same thing. Marvel is putting out all the female leads). While it's possible that your theory is correct, to me it seems more like Mavel painted itself into a corner.
They could attempt to reboot their entire cinematic universe. But from where they were sitting at the end of End Game, that probably looked like flushing money down the toilet. They wanted to keep going. So what did they have to keep going with?
The previous success really rested on the backs of the Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man movies. They were sort of the pillars the Avengers rested on (I love Guardians of the Galaxy, but they're kind of off to the side doing their own team thing.).
Now Iron Man is dead and Cap is retired (and Black Widow is dead, and Hawkey is retired). Hulk's story is pretty much over and resolved if anyone cared. Going forward, they have Ant Man, Dr. Strange, and Black Panther to be the new Pillars of another 3 stages of Avenger movies. And not really much of a team around them. The logical thing to do is have sidekicks assume the mantels. And they have characters already designed to plug those holes. Falcon becomes cap (and Cap is now race-swapped), Kate Bishiop becomes Hawkeye (and Hawkeye is gender swapped). RiRi becomes Ironman and so he's gender swapped and race swapped. She hulk takes over for Hulk and he's gender swapped. And then to make things worse for marvel, Chadwick Boseman tragically dies, and so he has to be replaced earlier than anticipated, and Black panther gets gender swapped. That is how it is in the comics.
So they did a lot of race and gender representation swapping all at once. But they were kind of forced into it because of the previous 22? movies. Maybe they have an agenda. I'm not going to tell you they don't after what's happened with The Little Mermaid and Snow White at Disney. But Marvel likely would have done the same thing in the MCU no matter what just because that was the way the sidekicks were set up. Or at least that's my limited undersanding of what was going on in Marvel comics.
My further understanding of what was going on with the sidekicks specifically at Marvel is a combination of bad writing and over-saturation. There were simply too many TV shows, and while most of the first year was pretty good, the following years were awful and there was just too much of it. They also came up with this idea of the "mantal" where people are just there to watch a specific set of superpowers, and not actual characters.
So, like, I was disappointed to have Sam, a counselor who works with other vets, to suddenly not being doing his counseling job. I would have been interested in that. That's who he was. And it makes him different than Steve, who was a career soldier who really wanted to be a perfect soldier. They have different personalities outside of the racial differences and that makes them interesting. But that's not really what we got.
Also, let's add in some formulaic movie writing that was beginning to be visible. Look at the Black Widow movie. There's a scene where Yelena and Natasha meet again for the first time in forever, and they fight. Tell, me, why are they fighting?
I've seen spies and assassins who are old friends fight before. It happens in movies. Sometimes, it's because they don't trust each other, but that's not it. Sometimes it's because they want to one up each other as part of their relationship, but that's not it. Sometimes they're just so good at their jobs they get extremely playful about the weapons and tools of the trade, but that's not it. And they're not actually angry to the point of fighting with each other. They just fight because the script says they need a fight scene here. It doesn't actually make sense for these two characters to fight.
People are also getting immune to green screen effects. In Quntumania, I can see the sound stage under the effects. It's this big echoing space with walls. But that's a differnt but related issue in terms of quality.
Anyway, all of that is very specific to Marvel. But Marvel is pretty much half of all superhero films. The problem always was that the only other option was to reboot, and maybe that leaves them with no MCU when they're done. Unless there's some other direction you think they could have gone in?
Because the Halo stuff: I agree and they don't understand the universe, clearly. And the stuff on the Rings of Power?" Also pretty clear they don't understand the universe and didn't even try.
But the overall problem seems to be buying franchises, which essentially means buying a specific canon, and not actually liking the canon that they bought. And they seem to look at it more as buying an audience, without realizing that the audience only exists because of the canon.
And I'm going to stop writing an essay now. Some people don't like that, I know.
I don't really think you're wrong about there being agendas. But I think people are focusing in on agendas so much because the writing isn't good enough to distract you from them. Some writing never could be good enough. But sometimes you get Morgan Freeman playing a red haired Irishman in Shawshank Redemption and pretty much no one cares because everything else is on point, and Mrogan Freeman is good in the part.
@@jenniferhanses
I really like this take.
I also think you make a good point at the start that a video creator can be wrong, but that’s not something bad or something that requires apology. It’s good to think things through and start a discussion. We all benefit from hearing multiple opinions.
Maybe it was just bad luck/timing with all of the replacements, but the bigger issue is replacing at all and not caring much about the quality of your stories. Thanks for your thoughts!!
"We shall never deny a guest, even the most ridiculous request."
Always make sure that, who you serve, is happy. Cause without them, you are nothing.
I agree with a lot of your points, but I don't understand what gender has to do with it? Like I'm a guy and pretty firmly in the target demographic for all these movies and shows you talked about and I really couldn't care less about the gender of the protagonist.
The real problem is bad writing, it just so happens that most of the stories with female protagonists have bad writing. You act like WW was a box office failure by comparing it to a bunch of marvel movies. WW is DCs 3rd highest grossing movie ever. So despite being a female lead it was in fact successful.
Every time (other than WW) you go "the MC is a woman and it has bad writing" when only one of those is a problem. People watched Arcane for Jinx and Vi, and at the end, everyone I talked to liked those girls better than Jayce and Viktor.
Does gender of the MC have an effect? Yes. Gender roles are way to ingrained in our society for it not to. But i think you're way overstating the impact of it.
The more I think about it, the less I'm sure.
See, I too enjoyed Arcane and Wonder Woman. I didn't mean to insinuate it was a failure, just not as successful as it maybe could have been. And yet, those were new characters, not replacements for existing ones. And they were well written.
And yet, if the MCU (or whatever nerdy franchise) were to be dominated by well-written female characters, I have a hard time believing it would perform anywhere near as well as pre-phase 4 MCU. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe male audiences really don't care, I don't know.
Is the main problem bad writing? Yes, absolutely. I should have been clearer about that.
But do guys not want to mostly see other guys as action/fantasy/sci-fi heroes? I mean, you might not care, I might not care, but does the general population of men care? I would think so.
The people running Hollywood and the music industry are cowards. Without a doubt we've been robbed of amazing movies because they're too afraid to spend money on them. So what we get instead is the same garbage recycled over and over again. And if it's not cowardice it's laziness. There are plenty of good story ideas out there. A friend recently showed me a Bollywood film that approached feminism in a completely different angle that was so refreshing. Not only was the message intelligent, but its approach towards the topic was non-toxic and didn't focus on bashing or one-upping either side. At one point I turned to my friend and said it was complete BS that Hollywood was out of ideas. They're just too lazy to find new ideas.
15:46 maybe the Halo show should have followed Gunnery Staff Sergeant instead of Chief. He’s got a whole lot of lore behind him, he’s a loved character, & he doesn’t wear a full face helmet
Regarding coupons - almost all of them say “cannot be combined with any other offers” to add to your gripes
Dude you have a gift for gently scathing sarcasm. Geez, I got chills.
What do you think of the idea that men want (mostly) male heroes? Would famous film franchises like Star Wars, Lord of Rings, and Phases 1-3 of the MCU had fared as well if they featured leading ladies (assuming the writing was on par in terms of quality)?
Obviously guys do enjoy well-written female heroes (Wonder Woman, Arcane, Aliens, etc...), but I can't help but think that guys generally prefer to more closely relate to their heroes.
It's a touchy subject, and I could have handled in better in the video, but let me know your thoughts.
Well, in regards to quality, yes.
However, star wars in particular might not have become as much of an icon. Even though it was the masterful storytelling, revolutionary effects and much more that elevated it to a classic. Having a female Luke would probably have done nothing to change that. However, a female Han Solo (that keeps the exact personality as the male one)... might have caused the movies to be seen a bit differently by the public in the seventies and eighties. It might have made it even more revolutionary tho. But this is just especulation with not much examination, feel free to correct me, this is a very interestin discussion
well it's mostly subjective to the viewer, i can agree with this sentiment. but even then, not all male leads are ment to appeal to men alone just as some female leads aren't.
I’m a woman so I don’t know the answer to the question exactly.
But for those of you men who prefer to have a male hero a majority of the time, why go you think that is? Why do you really want to be able to relate to that character as a member of your own sex? Im not asking this out of judgement. I’m really genuinely curious.
The guys I know do tend to be a bit pickier about female characters even if there are some they like. And they do prefer majority male heroes. That’s fine. It’s a preference not a moral thing one way or the other.
As a woman who absolutely loves LoTR, Star Wars, superheroes etc, I don’t find I need to relate to a main character to enjoy the story. I enjoy a great well written female hero but I’m honestly just as fond of many male heroes.
I think there are movies out there (like Barbie) that more women enjoy than men (as it is heavily about the female experience) but I think I that again is part of men being pickier. I enjoy very masculine heavy stories about uniquely masculine experiences (ex: Band of brothers).
Interested to hear the male outlook on this.
Not being a man, it's hard for me to say who men relate to better on average, but I will say my husband really liked the lead(s) in Arcane, and he has many of the same critiques you do where Wonder Woman is concerned. He told me when he saw it with his older sister, who grew up on the Linda Carter series, it was so clearly incredibly meaningful to her, and he understood/appreciated that, but he also felt at the same time like Gadot's Wonder Woman was sort of a Mary Sue. And I can see that. (It doesn't help that Gadot is... not the world's greatest actor.)
Even if not an adaptation of the game's stories, the Halo TV show could have been any other story that fit the lore. Like Forward Unto Dawn, Halo Legends, or the motion comics that used to come out on Halo Waypoint.
Hell even something seasons 6-13 of Red Vs. Blue, a comedy fan made webseries, felt more in line with Halo. They had a really interesting story going on that ran parallel to the main one and how different sub factions of humanity and even some elites were vying for power post war.
Hey Samwise, I like this video and your take on this subject (it's very similar to a lot of other channels but you definitely seem more objective and neutral than most). I am surprised though that you didn't include any footage from the show The Witcher in this video as it's also pretty well known for creating it's own story over the source material much to the frustration of fans (and apparently Henry Cavill as well). Anyway, thanks for being one of the more moderate voices on TH-cam.
Tbf the Witcher hadn’t really gotten that egregious at the time this video was released iirc… most of the information about the material being changed is stuff that was still upcoming at the time
When you have a virtual monopoly on something, you lose sight of what makes the customer happy and only focus on what you think will make you the most money.
I've heard it said that the classics were so good because the people who wrote them actually had interesting lives. They experienced severe hardship and learned to overcome it. And because of that, they were able to tell stories about strong, relatable characters overcoming adversity.
But this generation of writers is filled with trust-fund babies, nepotism hires, diversity hires, and pretentious college graduates with no experience in the real world. There is the occasional gem, of course, but Hollywood writers are largely shallow people with nothing of interest to say. So their stories wind up bland as a result.
While I agree with the idea of the video and its title, I disagree with most of the arguments you put forward. That's a wild position to be in haha.
Men don't want to see men on screen, men, and people in general, just want good characters on screen.
You can replace a good male character with a good female character, and most men won't bat an eye if it's done with care and respect.
For example, imagine Ciri becoming the new protagonist of the Witcher game franchise, I don't think people would riot and call out CDPR on that. It's just a logical step and Ciri is a fantastic character.
Men think they want to see men on screen, because for a long time Hollywood exces THOUGHT men only wanted men on screen despite multiple examples to the contrary. So they kept feeding us men characters.
In both cases we are looking at a fallacious view of audience needs. However, one was done in good faith (men want men on screen), the other in bad faith (women want women on screen and weak men). But both are equally fallacious in principle.
People just want good characters. That's it.
Men want good characters, of course. But would Lord of the Rings be the classic it is if all the heroes were heroines?
We can certainly appreciate characters of both genders (and whatever alien species), but ultimately we are going to relate most to characters who are more similar to us, and thus enjoy their stories more. Example: The Barbie Movie.
@@master_samwiseLord of the rings would have to be a different type of legend if the characters were all heroines. But as a woman, I don't want lord of the rings but all women. There's already women in lord of the rings.
I'd want a different story with similar themes or values, with a similar amount of epic honor and valor, and I'd want the women to be distinct and well-crafted characters. Also, I'd want the story to actually deliver on the premise, whatever it is.
This kind of vibe was actually what attracted me to stories like Seirei no Moribito and Yona of the dawn. What I want, most of all, is a good story. Sometimes I want a story where the protagonist is a woman, sure. But if all the women protagonists are terrible I'd rather take the good story. What I think is that people need to learn that writing woman protagonists is honestly not rocket science and doesn't need to have special fanfare, and I want people to start making creative new stories again. Because right now, fanfiction is cornering the market and anime and manga is looking better than comics and movies. And I think that's kinda lame.
Maybe women are less picky than men about this kind of thing and just care less about the gender of the protagonist. But I don't really think that's the case. I think women and men are equally able and willing to see a protagonist of the opposite gender, it's just that male protagonists tend to get written better and we're all more accustomed to them. Basically it's a skill issue. I honestly think writers and directors can do better.
@@master_samwiseLord of the rings would have to be a different type of legend if the characters were all heroines. But as a woman, I don't want lord of the rings but all women. There's already women in lord of the rings.
I'd want a different story with similar themes or values, with a similar amount of epic honor and valor, and I'd want the women to be distinct and well-crafted characters. Also, I'd want the story to actually deliver on the premise, whatever it is.
This kind of vibe was actually what attracted me to stories like Seirei no Moribito and Yona of the dawn. What I want, most of all, is a good story. Sometimes I want a story where the protagonist is a woman, sure. But if all the women protagonists are terrible I'd rather take the good story. What I think is that people need to learn that writing woman protagonists is honestly not rocket science and doesn't need to have special fanfare, and I want people to start making creative new stories again. Because right now, fanfiction is cornering the market and anime and manga is looking better than comics and movies. And I think that's kinda lame.
Maybe women are less picky than men about this kind of thing and just care less about the gender of the protagonist. But I don't really think that's the case. I think women and men are equally able and willing to see a protagonist of the opposite gender, it's just that male protagonists tend to get written better and we're all more accustomed to them. Basically it's a skill issue. I honestly think writers and directors can do better.
@@master_samwiseThat's not a good example I think because women were often underestimated at that time and all through the end of the 20th century.
So that they were all men helped worked better than if they were all female, but that's because women-led stories had less spotlight and less attention overall.
The symptom of living in a male-dominated society. This idea today has been twisted by some nutjobs, but it's still a real symptom of the type of sexism that used to exist.
But even without that, having a preference for the gender you see on screen is also a taught behaviour, not something "natural" (that's a loaded word in itself).
Kids don't discriminate between genders until they are taught to do so (either through media or other forms of exposure, or either by being directly taught concepts like "boys and girls don't play together").
So I would argue that there is immense value in exposing kids to media with a wide variety of people as heroes.
Not because that's what they want to see, but because that's how you build this kind of wants.
That's why I always dislike statements of fact like "men want to see men on screen because that's who they are", because is completely misses the real problem behind that: why is that ?
It's technically true. But it doesn't even begin to unpack the topic.
So taking it as an absolute truth of nature feels very wrong to me.
It feels like a complete misunderstanding of the difference between instinctual behaviour and taught behaviour.
@@master_samwiseSailor Moon was a team of 5 superhero girls and is still getting remakes decades later. The first Wonder Woman movie did great. I loved Batman Returns just because of Catwoman. And there’s the Miraculous fan base, and Owl House.. the market for female heroes is out there. But the big studios rarely get it right.
Movies shifted from entertainment to propaganda and most people have noticed by now.
The wonderwoman 1984 was a movie with no script, no understanding of these characters and the worst cgi! The costumes and actorz did great, but damn. Glad you skipped that one.
If the people in charge of Rings of Power wanted to create their own fleshed out world wjth its own story and characters then they should have created an original IP instead of doing it by appropriating an existing one. Then again, they dont care what we think.
Amazon never would have risked a billion dollars on unknown IP. Note that the full name of the show is "The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power". The first part is there to draw people in. The biggest studio risk in recent times was HBO risking 50-60 million on GRRM's relatively unknown Game of Thrones, a very small fraction of ROP's budget.
We've been telling them this isn't what we want for years and, every time, their response can best be summed up as this: I DON'T GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU WANT!!!!!!!!!
Studio execs think that including specific elements will make specific demographics like the product (“Women like seeing women on screen, so we need one (1) of those. Everyone loved the first movie, so put in as many callbacks as you can. In fact, let’s just make first movie again but with new characters!”), not caring or realizing that those elements don’t make a good product on their own.
People like to see themselves on screen, especially if they haven’t had much representation before, but they’re not looking for a flat, empty vessel that looks like them. They want characters they can relate to, whose struggles resonate with their own on some level, not a generic placeholder (personality implant pending).
If the people in charge of rings of power wanted to stretch out and create something new, they should have created an original IP instead of ruining and existing one.
Good summary of a number of recent films / franchises. I think the best recent TV series is Andor. It has a flawed male lead that you already know is destined to die, and a whole host of believable male and female characters with real strengths, flaws and motivations, I only hope we'll see more Sci-Fi like this in future. But I'm already unsure about how Disney let it get made, with its "plot" and "characters", and "believable action scenes".
I think Hollywood just has too big of an ego to handle characters that keep their helmets on for most of their time on screen. Master Chief and Sabine turned from badass characters into actors who can’t be bothered to be in character for more than 5 minutes without everyone seeing their ok looking faces. Mandolorian is the only exception because Pedro Pascal wasn’t on set, so instead we had Bo Katan.
And was clearly still traumatized by his GoT death
Hmm.. Y’know. I want to see you do a video essay on how much chief has changed from the stoic machine that the original bungie games have shown off (gameplay and cutscene wise) to the stoic, ancient and wizened warrior that Infinite portrays.
Good stories have no agenda, just the truth, a honest lesson, or something to inspire.
"Get that out of my face please" was exactly my reaction to the Ring of Power xD
Another video that speaks my mind! The last part got me chuckled. You're the best Master Samwise!
You bring a good point. Gaining new audience members is good, but you have to remember the core audience. The core audience has the diehard fans that will buy almost everything related to their favorite product. The real money is made in merchandise related to the movie.
Good video! I think that the phrasing could be a bit better (saying men want male characters may be true, but without nuance can be a bit of a charged statement), but all the general points are correct; HollyWood executives fundamentally do not know what their audiences want.
Due to this, media is produced that seems to target audience X, but is written for audience more like Z. This causes false expectations between audience and writer; audience thought they would get X, so they dislike it when they get Z instead. This is then further compounded by the fundamentally bad writing.
Good job!
I'd argue that most writers *DO* in fact know what their audiences want; they simply look down on us and think they know better. That's a huge component of the "writing for the audience they wish they had rather than the audience that actually exists" phenomenon. It's not that they don't know what we like, it's that they consider themselves enlightened higher beings who are morally superior to us, and we're just racist, sexist, misogynistic, transphobic, x-ist, x-phobic bigots, and of course many of us have "white privilege", so we need to be taken down a peg or two. The last thing these writers want to do is create something that the evil "deplorables" might actually enjoy and resonate with, because by the Leftist laws of guilt-by-association, that might implicate the writers as x-ist, x-phobic bigots. It's all a vicious cycle of spite, genuine contempt, and conspicuous virtue signaling, and unfortunately, despite overwhelmingly poor reviews and regular financial underperformance, they're often rewarded for it regardless through cancerous ESG initiatives and approval from the vocal minority of like-minded sycophants.
So yeah, all that is to say: though there is certainly incompetence abound, they do in fact know what we want, and they're legitimately driven more by contempt/malice than incompetence or simple ignorance.
10:42 explained so well and this is the main problem. Show runners/creatives no doubt want to creat their own stories with grand budgets however studios don’t want to run the risk, so instead of new with creative freedom.. strong IPs to draw an established audience. Now we’re in this endless loop and like not see anything truly great for decades.
I don’t think Hollywood is saying “fans don’t know what they want” but rather “what fans want is wrong, and we will give them what they should want”
You SHOULD want that Segway, darn you!
Thing about Hollywood is that it's too afraid to take risks. They're always banking on nostalgia, on what's familiar. If a genuinely creative and original project (like, say, The Owl House) does make it to the screen, it has to walk on eggshells or risk being cancelled, especially if it's a TV show (like, say, The Owl House).
Hollywood, which is really just slang for the corporate execs that run the studios, doesn't care about creativity, it cares about money. I'm absolutely certain that there were incredibly creative people involved in every single bad project in recent years, especially in the writer's room. But Hollywood stifles their creativity and as a result, the end product is shit.
And then you look to the indie animation scene, and you see unbridled creativity and talent. Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, Murder Drones, Lackadaisy, The Amazing Digital Circus, just to name a few. And say what you will about each of these projects, but you can't deny that Hollywood would _never_ take a chance on any of them.
Anyways, sorry for the rant, but this video really got me thinking.
Not thinking is easy sometimes
Especially when movies and TV shows try to do it for you (and, ironically, usually get their takes objectively wrong)
Ive loved Halo since before I was even 1 year old, soon as I heard Cheif removes his helmet I refused to even give the show a chance
See, I wouldn't even mind the writers writing what _they_ want... if they actually wanted it. That's art, those are artists, and that can be so much more interesting than having what _I_ want written. The issue is... they want money, they write for a hypothetical audience and not for their own interests or artistic visions, and _that_ makes it feel hollow and empty. There's no passion in it because it's not what _they_ want to create either.
A great video. You earned a subscribe from me.
One thing I appreciated how you mentioned how they treated Master Chief. I didn't hate the show but I did feel it was strange they decided to put a face to him so soon. It does seem to me like they are afraid of having a stoic and masculine lead or at least they were afraid of letting him be elusively that for any longer than they did. The feminizing of heroes is an issue that has been talked about quite a bit lately and it is no less true than it was yesterday or the day before. I agree. I will say that I do think there is a fear of giving in to what the most vocal fans say that they want. You gave the example of "The Customer Is Always Right" at the beginning and pointed out how there is some interpretation that is involved and in reality there is some selling that is involved. You do have to intuit what someone wants and not exclusively listen to what they are asking for.
Honestly, I don't think its a gender swap or woman lead issue. It's a writing, not caring, and lack of wanting to explore new avenues issue. Arcane for example, women leads; very well written. Based off a video game which I will argue a large amount of gamers are men. Arcanes plot is solely about two sisters. You could've had a brother and sister duo instead, but the male character wouldn't be able to bring out the emotion as well as Vi and Powder. Just wouldn't work. A well written character in a plot that makes sense makes a world of difference. Doesn't matter what gender the lead is; the plot and character development are what need to matter to make a successful story. (And yes I know bad movies can make success, that's not the point of this comment. Those shows have their place.) ATLA has very solid well rounded female leads that are fan favorites. The Owl House also has female leads that are also well done. Both shows attract all sexes. Why? Not because they are women leads, though it does add flavor to the story. People love these shows because they are well written, make sense, unique in their own right, and had good character development. Thats what makes them so good. Anyway my two cents
I would half agree. Women leads are ok to male audience as long as there are also male leads to be found too. Gender swaps, otoh, are annoying and patronizing to your audience. Samwise has the right take on these. The audience gets attached to their heroes and doesn't want to see them discarded in a callous fashion. It's particularly insulting when the new version is shown to be better at everything than our beloved hero.
@@gunkulator1 point taken, but why is it specifically a male audience when just as many woman part take in social media consumption? Why is it only about men and not women? Why must women be subjicated to a growing list of indulging male leads over woman leads? Why is there not as much woman lead shows for women? Why is it geared towards men (always)? Why must both parties be forced to part take in shows with good male leads but crappy female ones? It seems very sexist and one sided and I think its the way Hollywood sets everything up to cater towards men only while pretending to care about the female audience it purposely insults over and over with these bad female leads. Because at this point its less of good quality writing and more of a "male leads" are better than female ones.
@@daisyphinney1038The male lead thing is highly genre dependent. As Samwise tells us, the audience for comic book and superhero movies is mostly men, therefore Hollywood would be smart to cater to that audience. It's not sexist that men and women have different tastes and viewing habits. Turn on daytime television and you'll see dozens of programs geared largely towards women because that's who the audience is. You can decry these differences all you want but they still exist and the smart money is on recognizing how best to appeal to the audience you have.
@@daisyphinney1038 This is anecdotal, but in my family, there are four of us who enjoy scifi and fantasy: three of my brothers and myself. My mother and my three sisters love romance novels. My dad prefers westerns and thrillers. There is some overlap in preferred genres, but when it comes to scifi and fantasy, I'm the outlier in enjoying it along with my brothers. The plain fact is that more men than women enjoy those genres and so it makes sense to cater to an audience that will be predominantly male.
Women may be part of social media, even a majority part, but when you're talking about entertainment, as gunkulator said, it's about the genre and you can't treat every genre as if it has the same audience. Rom-coms are almost exclusively the domain of a female audience. Mysteries and thrillers will probably have the most overlap, and scifi/fantasy is predominantly male, even if there are women who enjoy it, like myself. Women don't have to be ignored to be successful, but catering to them at the expense of the male audience is setting yourself up for failure.
Hollywood is trapped in a time bubble
I honestly think "Quantumania' is the revised version of Marvel's version of "Guardians of the Galaxy 3' from when they had fired James Gunn. When they brought him (and his better story idea) back, they had a crappy Guardians plot that set up Kang that they had to rework. They just pretended that The Quantum Realm and Some Planet Where Kang Is works the same way and copy-pasted Ant-Man's characters into the Guardians roles. Just a theory.
Another franchise that hates its audience is Star Trek. Angered that people would rather watch the smartly-written Animated Series from the 60's, Paramount has been releasing "comedy shorts" that further alienate the fanbase, and following the trend of biting the hand that feeds them, continue the character annihilation of Spock.
How condescending Hollywood has become when a bunch of studio elites think they know, better than us, what we actually want.
I honestly don't think guys care if the mc is female or male, its just Hollywood is usually absolute trash at writing women, and marketing women, especially at making them likeable. Wonderwoman's first movie is a success because shes likeable and valiant and strong. Domino in Deadpool is cool as fuck. There are plenty of video games with main female characters that men adore the difference is stark. Its not a gender or sex problem is a writing problem.
In the case of lord of the rings, I do think you can create exciting new stories in middle-earth, but you need to work together with lore experts to do it right. Earning your right to your own original project by proving you can do it should be standard in professional creativity, and it is. Sad to see a generation of undoubtedly talented people failing so badly at it.
It seems the writers in Hollywood today look at a female character who acts either motherly or alluring as weak.they seem to think in these diverse groups they cater to that they are an untapped vein of gold who will spend money on merchandise or books like a fan of a longtime IP does.but these groups are more of a casual watcher of a franchise and aren't devoted to it like fans of the franchise are.
This video is fantastic, and I couldn't agree with you more. Your ability to articulate these thoughts and effectively put them to screen is incredible.
Please continue making videos like this
excellent video
I'd also add the WoT series to this list. I haven't been able to get past a couple of episodes on pretty much every one of these series and have basically had it with the superhero 'universe' movies. God, I miss the movies of the 80s and 90s so much!!!
As a male that grow around girls, i never saw one of them interested in super heroes cartoons, they only like princess animations like barbie and others
If I had a nickel every time I Hurd somebody made a popular horror game into a teen drama I’d have two nickels which isn’t a lot but weird that it happened twice right?
Well said.
Welcome to the death of creativity, these big franchises are owned by people who don't care at all about creative integrity, yet for some reason everyone has convinced themselves these are the people that creativity should be intrusted to. These big corperate people cannot be trusted with anything, because they're idiots, I know some of them are great at sciance and other miscilanious things, but these are people who are willing to ruin the lives of others just to see their net worth go up, even though they had more than enough money to live luxuriously for the rest of their lives years ago, they are still willing to lie, cheat, and in some cases kill for the sake of seeing that number go up in the hopes of winning a d*ck measuring contest with the other rich people. Creativity should be intrusted to those who actually care, not the shallow morons at the top with the most backward priorities possible.
I actually liked "Hawkeye" because he wasn't really replaced. He went and taught a new character all he knows.
Thank goodness we live in a world where if what Hollywood is making sucks, we can go and watch stuff from other places in the world. Korean media is really taking off in the US, and I long ago abandoned Hollywood for Tokyo.
I see your point, and I absolutely love Anime (& hope toxic Western elements never manage to meaningfully penetrate the Japanese entertainment industry), but you can't really replace Hollywood, IMO. It makes me sad that we'll never be able to get movies like Jackson's LOTR trilogy ever again.
@@alexcallender You can replace Hollywood, if you want to. Thinking that you can't is their power. We live in the Golden Age of JRPGs, so many elite titles coming out every year. If you're a gamer, and a JRPG fan, like I am, there's no reason to turn to Hollywood ever again. I bought the Legend of Nayuta just the other day, it was a JRPG from 2010 that was finally released in the west. I had intended to buy it just to support the western release and I had no intention to play it until later. I started playing it, I was completely hooked, and I can't put it down. A week, and 20+ hours of gameplay later, I'm still hooked. Can't remember the last time a Hollywood product hooked me like that.
Turning to Hollywood because you have no other option is a choice. Vote with your wallet and leave. You'll be happier.
But, Tokyo is the capital of Japan…
Seoul is the capital of South Korea.
I am a queer person that is currently researching the opposite of this issue and how representation doesn't have to be blatant or in your face. Looking at Arcane, Dragon Prince, and many many other shows I have to say that sometimes the best way to represent a group is by not saying you are doing it. Some of my favorite characters are of both male and female characters. Some of my favorite representation was sometimes never said. For example, Raine Whispers of the Owl House is never stated as a non-binary character, or never says their pronouns. But every character refers to them as such, and never questions it. It is so subtle that I missed it my first watching, and even my mom was like, "Oh, they are non-binary right?" Sometimes that is the best representation, to not even say it. Arcane does it too, Vi doesn't ask if Caitlyn is a lesbian, but asks if she prefers "man or woman" (that is also a freaking awesome scene). I can go on and on but sometimes to represent a group you don't have to explicitly say "Hey my character is x and y," instead treating them as any other character. Characters have flaws, weaknesses, triumphs and failures. Not having those leads to characters feeling bland. Tbh I think that is the main problem with some movies/shows is that characters are written for a status quo, rather than characters.
Excellent point! It is not about the specific identities of a character; it is about the delivery and writing of that character.
Did you ever read anything from the Arcane Ascension series?
If you want a show that does a masterful job at doing representation properly, "The Chosen" is the one to look at. Dallas Jenkins and his team researched who would have been living in First Century AD Israel---which meant researching the various ethnic group who were living in--or at least passing through---that part of the Roman Empire.
@@TheMichaellathrop No I didn't. I wouldn't be the first to admit I have no idea about League of Legends lore or stories 😭
@@FaeFactor Arcan Assension has nothing to do with League of Legends, the first book is called Sufficiently advanced magic
13:02 The sound effect was Absolute Genius!!!🤣
They wanted his helmet off because the actor wanted his helmet off. Same reason we see mandalorians helmet less. Actors who don't show their faces are paid as voice actors. Which is significantly less than if they show their faces. It's really that simple.
The turn entertainment has taken deserves its failure. Write or draw a fanfic, come up with something original you might enjoy, make your own fun, and remember the good times with the IPs you were so fond of. Disengage from what you are being offered so the powers that be know how their attempt at force-feeding you the opinion they want you to have will work out for them.
The Netflix Witcher series is one of the most blatant examples along with Tolkien about disregarding the source material. It’s been said time and again that the writers actively hated the source material, especially the video games (although Sapkowski doesn’t consider the games canon). But they had no problem using enough of the source material, and straight up ripping some of it off, to make their own show. And it’s tanked
By this point I'm starting to wonder if Disney wants to collapse
I really enjoyed this, hopefully hollywood can get this through their thick skulls
dang, my dude came out swinging with this one xD
When something is adapted to another medium, the assumption by the adapters is that the existing audience comes along, more or less, for free. That means that now the adapters are free to change what they need to in order to try to lure more people into wanting it, thereby expanding the audience. This usually results in changes that alienate the original audience.
sex-swapping of characters was called out, but I'm a little surprised race swapping wasn't.
They used to care. Now they don't.
I'm a female and I like all those stories about superheroes and stuff. I want cool female characters as well :сссссс. Even if I am minority
I want cool female characters too! If I could rewrite my script, I would probably assert that it's not so much the desire for female leads in the MCU or wherever, but rather the impatience, the need to jam new female characters into the story without taking the time to make sure that A) they are good characters and B) they will resonate with the existing audience.
@@master_samwise In that regard that actually could be a good subject for a follow-up video. Take the stuff you would have preferred to say in this video and expand it and better elaborate into a new video. Such as what is Hollywood doing wrong right now and explain why female leads aren't inherently the issue (lack of set-up, being too aggressive with them replacing existing leads, not taking chances with original female characters etc).
Hey this was a pretty good video! I like how you selected the clips, they're interesting but not overwhelming like In some video essays
I think you have the fundamental point correct, anyone who grew up with Pixar movies has at least one of them as a childhood favourite cause Pixar does the legwork to make you care about the characters inside the span of their movies, I think that's still true despite the recent unpopularity of their films because I still really enjoy every Pixar movie that's come out. Pixar never catered to a specific audience or change in politics, they tell their own unique stories that the creators are passionate about and that's largely what draws me in to them. Studios do not understand what their audiences want, they water down niche and nuance to make it more widely appealing which inevitably makes it appealing to no one. Everyone isn't always going to like your film, pick an audience, not this imaginary wider one, but the one you already have in most cases and make films for them. More people can resonate with a well written character
The first Wonder Woman movie not doing well also probably had something to do with how it completely invalidates itself with its kumbaya ending.
I love you master samwise you should be in charge of movies because this video is genius
In the screwtape letters the demon quotes a man who said “I did neither what I wanted nor what I ought.” I feel similarly about modern entertainment. It is neither enriching, educational or entertaining, it is neither healthy but bitter (like a textbook) nor sweet but empty (like an old action movie or comedy).
As someone who's not a Tolkien fanatic, I enjoyed Rings of Power for what it was.
As someone who's played through Halo sans 5 and Infinite, the moment that really put me off from the rest of the series was the UNSC commanding Master Chief to commit a war crime in the first episode.
I know not everyone will agree but rant videos like this are just complete filler and I don't think I've learned anything watching this - I'm not Disney, after all (could you believe it?) Master Samwise has provided much more meaningful insight in other videos.
You're not wrong. There's a reason I don't make these types of videos often. This was more about emotional release than anything else.
I'll be honest: when my brother told me was watching Halo (this was when it first came out) it took him ten whole minutes for him to finally convince me that they showed his face in the first episode. I couldn't believe that they would be so stupid, never mind how it just sounded... wrong. It's amazing how such a small act cuts so deep into me as a casual Halo fan (I've played through the games, going to be playing through 3 on legendary with my brother in a couple of months after doing the same with 1 and 2).