Hello, my Favourite French!
Do you mind if I get stuck into this conversation you and
@matthiacallus are having?
Well, you don't have much choice... Because...
You must be registered to see attachments
I wnat to critique your comment from a little while ago, which my brain forgot, but this reply where you've lovingly included me now reminds me of.
Ahem.
So... I disagree with this. Absolutely.
And I think it's a little disingenuous.
Not on purpose! But, hear me out.
Unless we're not looking beyond Disney films or Popcorn flicks, there are plenty of films wher the 21st Century Storytelling Villain isn't a clown.
Speaking of an actual clown - Joker. In Dark Knight Rises. Just came to me. But good example.
The problem
isn't 21st Century Sensibilities, its 21st Century Capitalism with a relience on lowest common denominator, created by committee, nepotist hires. It's films that are badly made and badly written. Good films, good villains, are still being written.
You list Marvel fucking up Doom. Did they fuck up Thanos? Thanos WON. He was not a clown in the slightest.
And that's firmly 21st Century, even firmly Disney. And that's a good villain right there.
This is why I said Disigenuous, by the way. Since the same company that ruined Thawn, gave us a good Thanos. In the same Century.
And, even so, the original Star Wars was pretty clownish with it's villains anyway. Thawn was only ever good in the EU - comics and books etc - where characters tend to be more nuanced anyway as pages give more space to breathe.
The problem isn't "lets water down the villains" the problem is "lets hire shit writers who don't know how to write a villain".
And then, there's the other debate... People often don't understand the difference between Hero/Villain Protagonist/Antagonist.
What about Wolf of Wallstreet? Protagonist WAS the Villain. This is a film that also came out in 21st Century.
So, my point, in a very tired and rambling and overly verbose manner. Is that I think blaming a cultural shift towards "clownlike" villains is incorrect. I think it only fuels culture war rhetoric, because it's the kind of stuff people latch onto - "we can't have villains anymore, people are too soft" - etc. We can. We do. It's just that many of the biggest films right now are not exactly written for complex nuances. It's not hard C Culture, it's hard C Capitalism.
Haha. Again, this was in a fictional future where we have complete and total Equity amongst all on earth!
