3 Common Criticisms People on the Internet Make, and Why They're Wrong (by a Person on the Inter
Happy Wednesday! Or as fans of this blog have come to know it, Shade-day. We continue our trend of telling people they're wrong in the middle of the week by attacking our very small base of fans. How could this be a bad idea, right? Well I like to think fans of the Film Dunce Files are open-minded people who are fine reading opinions they don't necessarily agree with, as long as everything is presented in a respectful way. So here's why you're stupid.
1. CGI is Bad
CGI stands for Computer Generated Images, and is shorthand for digital effects. However, on the Internet, CGI might as well mean Nazi paraphernalia, because in the comments section of any trailer, it's treated as such. That's actually not fair, comment sections are full of Nazi sympathizers, so CGI is probably worse. I'm in no way endorsing Facism, and aggressively disapprove of genocide, but the Internet seems to have come to the consensus that the greatest monstrosity in human history was actually the Green Lantern costume.
Let's look at the alternative. Allegedly, practical effects (special effects done without computers) look more realistic and hold up better over time. This is certainly true in a lot of cases. The practical dinosaurs in the original Jurassic Park look much better today than their CGI counterparts. Virtually every digital effect from the early 2000s now looks like a video game (and not a particularly good looking one). So why don't movies keep things practical?
It's not a budget issue, it's a budget issue. That sentence doesn't make sense at first, but let me explain. Low-budget movies are forced to use practical effects, because they don't have the money for digital effects artists. Thusly, it follows that digital effects must be more expensive, right? Kind of. The glory of digital effects is that they save incredible amounts of time in the production phase of a movie. If time is money in the regular world, time is a lot of money on a large-budget production. Big-budget movies have more expensive actors/directors, and a substantially larger crew than a low-budget movie. Everyone is getting paid for the amount of time they're on set, so studios save money by making things go faster. So while the "effects" of practical effects aren't expensive, how the effects affect the rest of the production is.
Here's the thing though, I was lying about the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park before. Rewatching that movie, it's very difficult to tell what is and isn't a puppet, and it came out in 1993. In fact, some of the CGI in Jurassic Park looks better than the CGI in Jurassic World. What's up with that?
Let's get metaphorical.
Say you're at a buffet, and practical effects are chicken and CGI are mashed potatoes. If your friend came back with a plate of nothing but mashed potatoes, you'd say "Hey friend, that's not a great meal you've got there". But if your plate is nothing but chicken, you're really no better. Let's look at amazing special-effect Slimer. In the original Ghostbusters, Slimer was a puppet that got enhanced with post-production effects. Here we are 30 years later, and he still looks great. The original Ghostbusters was a masterpiece of well balanced effects work that used special effects to enhance a movie, not create it. Speaking of Ghostbusters...
2. Reboots are Bad
Everyone hates the Ghostbusters reboot. It's not the first reboot people have hated, it probably won't be the last. People hated Spider-man being rebooted, The Fantastic Four, Total Recall, Robocop, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland... sorry. I got into a Billy Joel thing. But if history is any indicator, those people are right. I'll accept that some people like Andrew Garfield's Spider-man better (I'm one of the few), but reboots are generally bad.
Except when they're not. The 21 Jump Street franchise is of such high quality that Sony is using it to reboot Men in Black. That's a real story, that is really happening and people don't quite know how to react to it. It's such an insane concept that nobody is hating it or celebrating it. They're just sort of like... what?
There are a few things that separate Jump Street from other reboots. One: 21 Jump Street was by no means as beloved as Ghostbusters or Spider-man; so nobody really cared if they botched it. Two: Sony stumbled on Phil Lord and Chris Miller; who happen to be geniuses. Most importantly though, they kept the basic premise of the source material in tact and changed almost everything else.
Reboots that succeed are never carbon copies of the original. The Dark Knight trilogy was a reboot, but instead of Tim Burton's gothic fantasy, Christopher Nolan made Batman a thriller about society's reaction to terrorism. Speaking of Tim Burton, remember when he tried to reboot Planet of the Apes by just making Planet of the Apes? It wasn't very good, or memorable. But reboot it as a political drama and it suddenly it works.
Finally, there's Spider-man, who has been rebooted so many times it's almost as confusing as the Spider-verse. Yet when he showed up at the end of the Civil War trailer, everyone lost their minds with excitement. Because we don't actually hate reboots, we just hate bad reboots; and Marvel Studios has a nearly perfect record when it comes to making movies. Speaking of Marvel...
3. I Like _____ so I Hate _______
Why does everyone who likes DC hate Marvel? And why are Marvel fans so skeptical of everything DC? As a Marvel fanboy myself, I desperately want to answer the second question, but I've got to stay impartial. But also as a Marvel fanboy, I can say the most recent trailer for Batman v. Superman has me excited to see it. Suicide Squad looks like it'll be a really fun Guardians of the Galaxy rip-off... sorry. As I am a person on the Internet, many of these problems affect me as well.
But there's a strange dichotomy to Internet fandom. People who like Star Trek, hate Star Wars. People who like A Bugs Life, hate Antz. People who like Fight Club, hate the Cable Guy (seriously, I'll write that article someday). Things that seem very similar often are completely polarizing to those who like the other. It's like if you loved apples and thought you had to hate oranges.
TANGENT: What's the deal with "apples and oranges". When people want to say things are very different, they say they're "apples and oranges". Both are fruit, both are round ish, both have skin, both are sweet, both grow on trees, and both can be made into juice. Apples and oranges are very similar things. People should say "apples and Jane Eyre". One's a fruit that can be eaten, and the other is a piece of Romantic era proto-feminist literature. Those things are very hard to compare.
I have a theory that all this squabble between fans is the result of studios using political tactics to promote movies. It's why Zack Snyder comes out and talks trash about Marvel movies saying they're "flavor of the month." Then Sebastian Stan (a.k.a. The Winter Soldier) will say Zack Snyder "is just trying to rip-off superior Nolan movies". Both lead to news stories, which in turn promote their movies, and everyone wins. There are even dedicated outlets with biases as strong as Fox News or MSNBC. DC has IGN and Cinemablend, and Marvel has Box Office Mojo and Rotten Tomatoes... and apparently Film Dunce Files... sorry it's Shade-day.
But really, this division is actually good for movies. Batman v. Superman is on track to be the most expensive movie ever made. Warner Bros. is throwing everything they can at that movie to make sure it's as good as it can be, precisely so the DCEU isn't thought of as second fiddle to the MCU. And Civil War is almost surely a reaction to Batman v. Superman, with Marvel knowing that Captain America by himself wasn't going to compete with DC's biggest and best. This is capitalism 101, and fans of both sides benefit from competition. So keep yelling at your computers! Keep hating things you haven't seen! Keep boycotting movies because they look bad! Because as much as we fans on the Internet worry about Hollywood, Hollywood worries about us so much more.
