YES! There are adults who are interested. You know this already. March 1, 2012 5:23 AM Subscribe

Regarding the thread about the new "Avengers" trailer: for fuck's sake can people please, for the love of god, quit it with feigning surprise that adults might be interested in such a thing? See comments by Dragoness and Trochanter for specifics. If you are surprised, genuinely surprised, you haven't been paying enough attention to pop culture over the past thirty years to have an informed opinion. You sound like an old person. And if you're not surprised, if the pose is just assumed for the sake of crafting good snark, you're threadshitting.
posted by Ipsifendus to Etiquette/Policy at 5:23 AM (280 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite

So you don't like people making fun of adults who like 'kid's stuff" and you counter this by saying it makes them sound 'old.' Irony is good for the blood.
posted by jonmc at 5:28 AM on March 1, 2012 [20 favorites]

Why do we need an end to these sorts of comments? I think that, like most comments, they reveal as much about the commenter as they do about the subject.

(Although one's response to those comments also contains some information; why exactly do you care? Still nursing the wounds from when mom threw out your longboxes as "kid's stuff" or something?)

Any such discussion aside, the entire Hollywood movie industry is targeted at teenage males. Any other observation on the matter is secondary to that fact. Movies in general are, essentially, kids' stuff. Big freaking observation there, champ-o.
posted by Eideteker at 5:38 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

To those people, I just cock my semi-automatic H.A.N.D. Mark 7^TM and say "PHEW PHEW PHEW!"
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:44 AM on March 1, 2012 [11 favorites]

Yeah, I hate those patronizing "Oh you crazy kids and your X" type comments. Although the last time this happened to me IRL it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience since the person turned out to be a few years younger than me.
posted by futureisunwritten at 5:46 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Why do we need an end to these sorts of comments?

because they hurt tony stark's feelings and despite outward appearances he is very emotionally fragile
posted by elizardbits at 5:49 AM on March 1, 2012 [40 favorites]

Your gun sounds relieved, Brandon.
posted by SpiffyRob at 5:50 AM on March 1, 2012 [20 favorites]

I'm excited about the movie. I'm 25.

I take pride in not being an adult most of the time. In fact, at work yesterday I was told that based solely on maturity level I was 9.

I usually get 4 or 5. I'm proud of myself. But the rate of my aging is pretty alarming.

I'm going to get back to Pokemon now. Blue Version Forever!
posted by theichibun at 5:51 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

You should visit his expensive mansion, with it's full stocked cellar, and comfort him.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:51 AM on March 1, 2012

I think there were only like two or three comments in that entire 200+ thread that wrere like the ones you are referencing. I'm not sure if there's a real problem to be addressed.
posted by Think_Long at 5:53 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

You know what I see when I see that trailer?

It has Thor! and that's why I totally plan to go see it. I might admit to being a huge fangirl.

Ignore the people being negative about it. They have nothing better to do with their time then to drag other people down and make them feel bad. They're not worth the time they spent to make those comments.

(also if you go searching for "Dragoness"'s comments like I did, there's two n's. Just search for "dragon" instead)
posted by royalsong at 5:58 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah in the midst of the CAPS-LOCK HAPPY of that thread I don't think a couple of one- or two-line comments saying "I really really don't get why you all like this so much" or "looks like garbage to me but whatever" are something to worry about. They didn't seem like beyond-the-pale kinds of statements to me. But better to discuss it here than derail over there.
posted by gubo at 5:59 AM on March 1, 2012

i prefer the penthouse on stark tower tbh
posted by elizardbits at 6:02 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm not surprised people are interested...but a movie trailer doesn't strike me as the best of the web, so I don't care for the post.
posted by agregoli at 6:03 AM on March 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

Hey now we cant all comfort Tony Stark at once. Form a line or something.
posted by The Whelk at 6:07 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

This is just the latest instantiation of "Your Favorite X Sucks." It's not going away; this is how people mobilize into teams for the great dodgeball game of life.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:08 AM on March 1, 2012 [7 favorites]

I'm not interested in the Avengers movie because Marvel hasn't published anything good since Jack Kirby left (the first time) in 1970.

There. Now who sounds old?
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:09 AM on March 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

All together now : "I don't wanna grow up. I'm a Toys R' Us kid. A million toys to choose from, that I can play with. From bikes to trikes to video games, it's the biggest toy store there is. I don't wanna grow up cuz baby if I did, I wouldn't be a Toys R' Us kid!"
posted by crunchland at 6:12 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

Just to be clear...it's not negativity that I object to. There's plenty of complaining about the trailer in that thread, plenty of comparisons to Michael Bay films that I don't think bear much logical scrutiny, at least one implication that the movie represents a key moment in the death of Western culture. Those remarks are all fine.

But the rhetorical pose which assumes that only people who have failed in some sense to become adults are interested in this stuff is both trite and demonstrably disingenous. In what other subject areas would comments be welcome (a) suggesting that nobody ought to take an interest that were (b) framed in a manner that, if taken at face value, revealed the commenter to be completely ignorant?
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:12 AM on March 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

Is this something that I'd need a lawn to understand?
posted by arcticseal at 6:14 AM on March 1, 2012 [8 favorites]

Ipsifendus, you have been here long enough that you should realize a post like this will always attract such comments. This MeTa will accomplish nothing.
posted by adamdschneider at 6:14 AM on March 1, 2012

I could get behind automatic timeouts for anyone who comments in a thread explicitly and only to say that they don't care about the subject of the thread (and I say this knowing that you could probably find an example of it in my history). It's a blatant admission that your only purpose is to add noise to the conversation. Note that I don't include intensely negative opinions about the subject--those are just as valid and relevant as positive ones, if presented appropriately. But coming in just to say "I don't care about this" is a dick move.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:15 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

I think we need to give an automatic timeout for anyone who suggests anything deserves an automatic timeout.
posted by crunchland at 6:18 AM on March 1, 2012

I guess we won't be hearing from you for the next few days then?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:20 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

PARADOX!
posted by zombieflanders at 6:20 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

arcticseal: "Is this something that I'd need a lawn to understand"

Back in my day, lawns were just DIRT. And also what we ate for dinner!
posted by Grither at 6:21 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

I just figure those people are having a bad day, and are taking it out on the internet instead of on their friends and family.
posted by smackfu at 6:21 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

God these CHILDREN'S movies are ruining cinema. Now excuse me I have to go masturbate to Suspira again.
posted by griphus at 6:29 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

Not if they go straight into the "only kids like this crap" routine that it looks like.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:42 AM on March 1, 2012

"I don't wanna grow up. I'm a Toys R' Us kid. A million toys to choose from, that I can play with. From bikes to trikes to video games, it's the biggest toy store there is. I don't wanna grow up cuz baby if I did, I wouldn't be a Toys R' Us kid!"

Huh. I always thought it was "A million toys for girls and boys, that I can play with". Stupid memory playing tricks again.

"From bikes to trains to video games".

I can clearly hear this in my head. I believe there were actually a few different versions over the course of years, though, so we're probably all correct.
posted by owtytrof at 6:44 AM on March 1, 2012 [9 favorites]

Yeah, some people in that thread were definitely being shitty, but even if they were, the question is a valid one, imo.
posted by empath at 6:44 AM on March 1, 2012

From a Nielsen film demographic study (2008) [PDF]:

Segment 1: Tent Pole
Examples of movies in this segment: Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

This group of movies had the highest level of appeal across all four demographic segments. Over 60% of all four groups showed interest in this category of movies. Unlike other segments, Tent Poles had a similar level of interest across all demographic groups - no group was singled out as overindexing for this movie segment.

%M under 25 Interested - 64.7%
%M over 25 Interested - 64.4%
%F under 25 Interested - 67.7%
%F over 25 Interested - 65.0%

posted by shakespeherian at 6:46 AM on March 1, 2012 [5 favorites]

luckily everyone now has the breitbart thread to go be shitty in instead.
posted by elizardbits at 6:46 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Maybe they're genuinely curious as to why people enjoy it and are looking for an explanation that would also let them also appreciate it?

I enjoy reading people's explanations of why they like stuff and sometimes they won't bother unless people ask first, even if the question is disingenuous.
posted by empath at 14:38 on March 1 [+] [!]

That's a generous interpretation, but I think that in the examples we are talking about the question is for rhetorical effect only.

Having said that, I agree with those who say that these comments are best ignored. Just stick with being excited about the film and let grouchy people be grouchy if they want to be.
posted by jonnyploy at 6:47 AM on March 1, 2012

"I just figure those people are having a bad day, and are taking it out on the internet instead of on their friends and family."

'Have you stopped trolling your site?'
posted by Eideteker at 6:49 AM on March 1, 2012

That's a generous interpretation, but I think that in the examples we are talking about the question is for rhetorical effect only.

Yeah, but if you at least pretend that they aren't rhetorical, we can get some nice personal answers about what comic book movies mean to people, which is the kind of thing that metafilter does best, imo.
posted by empath at 6:49 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

It has Thor! and that's why I totally plan to go see it. I might admit to being a huge fangirl.

I would rather it had Darcy from Thor, just tazing Loki over and over again. She was great.
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:51 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

"Grown up" is a fallacy. Healthy humans never stop growing.

As for people who take pride in not enjoying something . . . They're in their own private hell. No need to pile on.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:19 AM on March 1, 2012 [13 favorites]

Sometimes when I am sad (I am usually not sad, for the record), I go to the store and I buy a little Lego set and I put it together at home. This makes me less sad. Maybe that's weird or whatever but it works pretty well for me.

So I was reading about Lego stuff on the internet, to see what future sad me might have to look forward to, and I found out that there is a thriving community of adults who are into buying Lego sets and putting them together and making their own little Lego models too.

It was here that I heard the word "swooshable," and that word is the heart of the moral lesson we shall consider today.

"Swooshable" is a term describing the quality of a Lego model, usually a space laser jet or something, that makes you want to pick it up over your head and run around the house making swooshing noises and maybe laser noises too and probably frightening the cat.

Now: Is that dorky? Yep. Would it be a little embarrassing to be caught doing that? Oh yes.

But when I imagine that person running around their house and holding up their little science fiction jet, can I honestly say that I know something about unfettered joy that they don't?

Nope.

So if I tried to pretend I did, I might look pretty dumb! Just saying.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 7:19 AM on March 1, 2012 [81 favorites]

I sort of feel the need to point out my comment early in the thread, which potentially could be mistaken as in league with the specifically called out comments... but in the case of my own comment, I felt my reaction to the trailer, noted it, and put it out there for discussion because I genuinely did not like the trailer, know that a lot of people in the thread did and will, and genuinely want to discuss it and understand a little better why it works for people and why I might be mistaken etc etc. I'm fairly open minded and one of the reasons I love metafilter is because sometimes I see something I don't understand in a FPP, I click on the comments link, and I'm presented with and can engage in a (usually) informative discussion about the subject that can help me form a better opinion.

In the case of the Avengers thread I felt like I encountered an equal and opposite pile-on as the type called out in this MeTa - no helpful discourse only "squeeee's" and "SO BADASS" comments that added nothing other than "1 VOTE" and generally made it hard to discern anything other than "okay a lot of people like this and they're just going to shout I LIKE IT SHUT UP rather than talk about it." That's totally fine! I totally get it! But to be completely fair to people on the other side of that spectrum, neither type of comment adds to the discourse... and that's a little disappointing too.

One could say "oh it's just a bullshit summer movie, just like it or don't and move on" - but it's a very, very important thing that we understand our culture. Things that get this big don't get to be "just a summer movie," they define us and teach us, and I've always thought that it's worth thinking about them and their impact as well as enjoying them and forgetting them.

There is actually a decent amount of discussion in the thread, and I feel a little bit more informed about the film and people's anticipation of it. There's just a lot of weeding, of positive and negative comments, to get there.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 7:25 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

Really want to swoosh some lego now, adulthood be damned
posted by minifigs at 7:29 AM on March 1, 2012 [5 favorites]

I don't care if adults like cartoons or comic book movies.

I do care about advertisements for mega-corporations being posted as the best of the web. And I flagged it as such.
posted by DU at 7:38 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I do care about advertisements for mega-corporations being posted as the best of the web. And I flagged it as such.

Oh, c'mon, it's obvious that a lot of people are excited about the movie and the source material. Don't make it all about joyless money-grubbers.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:40 AM on March 1, 2012

I do care about advertisements for mega-corporations being posted as the best of the web. And I flagged it as such

A) "Best of the web" was deprecated a long time ago.
B) A significant percentage of what's on metafilter is advertising and has been for a long time.
posted by empath at 7:43 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I love being an adult who can still like cartoons and comic book movies.

Sometimes an advertisement for a mega-corporation is the best of the web because of this. And I favorited it as such.
posted by Debaser626 at 7:43 AM on March 1, 2012

I imagine the haters sitting in tiny Williamsburg apartments that reek of quinoa.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:43 AM on March 1, 2012 [7 favorites]

I saw this and thought "Another Avengers movie? I hope Cathy Gale is in this one." *waves cane*

I might see Avengers Assemble. I liked the first Iron Man a lot, but never saw the second. Or Thor. Or Captain American. A lot of super hero movies leave me cold. OTOH, it's the Avengers! And it has Scarlett Johansson! 'Nuff said!

Sometimes when I am sad ... I go to the store and I buy a little Lego set and I put it together at home. This makes me less sad.

I'm happy this works for you, FAMOUS MONSTER, but, somehow, that would only make me sadder. Even thinking about it makes me a little sad. Still, Legos are bitchin' and if I had room to store them I would buy the shit out of them.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:44 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I came in here to call you all nerds, Ogre style, but then I watched the trailer and it was pretty awesome.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 7:45 AM on March 1, 2012

also you smell like butts. BUTTS, THOR.
posted by elizardbits at 7:46 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

I imagine the haters sitting in tiny Williamsburg apartments that reek of quinoa.

Of course you do.
posted by adamdschneider at 7:47 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

I'm surprised that adults can't call an obvious cartoon a cartoon. CGI just ain't that good yet.
posted by Ardiril at 7:49 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I imagine the haters sitting in tiny Williamsburg apartments that reek of quinoa.

Having spent a fair bit of time in Williamsburg apartments reeking of quinoa, I can assure you that many (if not most) contain more than their fair share of comics.
posted by griphus at 7:52 AM on March 1, 2012 [6 favorites]

I don't wanna grow up. I'm a Toys R' Us kid. A million toys to choose from, that I can play with. From bikes to trikes to video games, it's the biggest toy store there is. I don't wanna grow up cuz baby if I did, I wouldn't be a Toys R' Us kid!"

More games, more toys, oh boy! I wanna be a Toys R Us kid!
posted by nooneyouknow at 7:52 AM on March 1, 2012

I am old. And one of the pleasures of being old is sneering at younger adults who still like kids' stuff. Mind you, I enjoyed doing that when I was younger too. Also: what? You're still living with your parents at your age? Cuh! Pathetic! Etc. Deep joy.
posted by Decani at 7:54 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I thought we were being ironic. Guess the ironometer is busted again.
posted by Ad hominem at 7:56 AM on March 1, 2012

It needs more iron, bring in the pig testicles!
posted by The Whelk at 7:59 AM on March 1, 2012

When shouldn't you bring in the pig testicles.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:02 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

There's very little meat in these gym mats.
posted by griphus at 8:02 AM on March 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

owtytrof: " "From bikes to trains to video games"."

Happiness is being absolutely positive that before you get to the end of the Metafilter thread you're reading, someone will have leaped in to correct misquoted lyrics to the Toys R Us theme song.

UNhappiness is knowing you're going to be mentally singing that earworm for the rest of the day.
posted by zarq at 8:06 AM on March 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

I don't think MetaTalk should be used to complain when other people don't like something you like.
posted by rocket88 at 8:09 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

UNhappiness is knowing you're going to be mentally singing that earworm for the rest of the day.

You can get past that. You've got the eye of the tiger.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:10 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

Plenty of room at the Hotel California....
posted by zarq at 8:13 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

"posted as the best of the web" - Ppptttthhh... MeFi stopped being about the 'best of the web' many, many moons ago.
posted by Ardiril at 8:15 AM on March 1, 2012

Ardiril: ""MeFi stopped being about the 'best of the web' many, many moons ago."

Metafilter: Apathy and the dregs of the web.
posted by zarq at 8:17 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

You've got the eye of the tiger.

you are a bad person who does bad things and should feel bad for your badness
posted by elizardbits at 8:18 AM on March 1, 2012 [9 favorites]

... more like "Mediocrity and ..."
;-P
posted by Ardiril at 8:20 AM on March 1, 2012

you are a bad person who does bad things and should feel bad for your badness

He! He should die in your arms tonight!

(It must have been something he said!)
posted by griphus at 8:22 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

you are also going on The List
posted by elizardbits at 8:25 AM on March 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

Her name was Lola. She was a showgirl....
posted by zarq at 8:25 AM on March 1, 2012

Okay let's just get it over with and blow through all our earworms in one big final countdown.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:25 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

I'll just leave this here.
posted by KathrynT at 8:28 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

I do care about advertisements for mega-corporations being posted as the best of the web. And I flagged it as such

Obviously the rules against Pepsi Blue and self-linking are good and necessary. But a significant portion of the culture produced in modern western civilization takes the form of advertising, like it or not. If this website only talked about things which couldn't possibly be considered advertising, we'd have a lot less to talk about.

Having less to talk about of course might not be a problem for folks who believe that there should be at most, one or two FPPs on Metafilter per day or week, and each of those FPPs ought to be thoroughly vetted to make sure it lives up to the category of "Very Best" on Lebowski's Patented Objective Awesomeosity Scale (patent pending). Or if you're one of the folks who is concerned that we are going to run out of bytes, here on the rapidly-vanishing interwebs jungle, where unsustainable mmorpg-farming techniques cost us hundreds of acres of bytes every single day. Personally I do not fall into either category and when I see a post I don't care for I just pretend it's not there, which probably makes me some sort of bad person who doesn't care about the fall of western civilization.

Of course if I just randomly typed in a really low thread number I'd certainly see the advertisement-free Best of The Web that people talk about, that Metafilter Used To Be in the Time That Was, and the scales would fall from my eyes, I'm sure.

Okay let's just get it over with and blow through all our earworms in one big final countdown.

Don't! Don't let's start. This is the worst part...
posted by mstokes650 at 8:31 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

for some deranged, horrendous reason, the longest earworm of my entire life, and yes i am aware how utterly bizarre this sounds, is polly wolly doodle.

seriously it drives me fucking insane. and now i hope to pass it along to the rest of you. like herpes.
posted by elizardbits at 8:34 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

special bonus: it also has kind of racist connotations so when you find yourself humming it in public you feel like a giant bag of dicks.
posted by elizardbits at 8:35 AM on March 1, 2012

I certainly don't understand why people need to post big blockbuster ad campaigns. It's called "best of the web", not "best of movie trailers I'm going to see every 14 minutes on a television for the next 3 months".
posted by cyphill at 8:36 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I get more obscure 80s earworms.
posted by empath at 8:39 AM on March 1, 2012

Okay let's just get it over with and blow through all our earworms in one big final countdown.

Joke's on you. I love that song.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:41 AM on March 1, 2012

"best of movie trailers I'm going to see every 14 minutes on a television for the next 3 months"

Is this something I have to have a television to...

wait hang on
posted by griphus at 8:41 AM on March 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

I'll just leave this here.
posted by zarq at 8:42 AM on March 1, 2012

I tend to find all comments of the "god why are you people liking this thing I don't like, you are problematic in some way for doing that" genre pretty tiring, but it's the sort of thing someone can pretty easily let themself say without thinking it through. Over the broad arc of a discussion I find that ignoring it and moving on with substantial discussion (positive or critical) is the easiest way to improve the discussion.

swooshable

The best thing of all about swooshing legos is that in a pinch you don't even need the legos. Just grab a small object and get swooshing. Tearing a little wingspan out of a piece of scrap paper and slipping it under the clip on a pen? Instant jet. But you can just imagine the wings if you prefer.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:43 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

I don't think MetaTalk should be used to complain when other people don't like something you like.

How about sneering disingenuous condescension?
posted by kmz at 8:43 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

i read that as sneering disingenuous condensation and imagined all the haters breathing heavily on the outside windows of the quinjet they weren't invited to fly on
posted by elizardbits at 8:45 AM on March 1, 2012 [7 favorites]

by my imaginary boyfriend tony stark
posted by elizardbits at 8:45 AM on March 1, 2012 [6 favorites]

I don't like it when people just plop into a thread to say how much they don't care about the topic or imply that they are somehow better than those people who do care about it. I mean, how would Meat Loaf feel if he's wailing away on his piano about what he would and would not do for love while his lady friend is floating around on a chaise lounge and some dude just popped in to say that Beauty and the Beast pastiches are so juvenile and overdone?

He would feel bad, that's what he would feel.

Don't make Meat Loaf feel bad.

He's got enough problems, being chased by the cops and all for being different.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:46 AM on March 1, 2012 [6 favorites]

I don't think MetaTalk should be used to complain when other people don't like something you like.

Yup, as Metas go, this one feels about as absurd as they get. I'm assuming there must be more villains in that thread than just Dragonness and Trochanter, but for the record:

Dragonness makes one comment, gets directly responded to once.
Tronchanter makes one comment, gets thumped four or five times

Neither chooses to pursue the issue at all. If this Meta should be about anything, it should be about those who get so giddy with delight and anticipation about upcoming superhero movies, they feel compelled to crush all conceivable contrary emotions.
posted by philip-random at 8:48 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Her name was Lola. She was a showgirl....

Well, I'm not dumb but I can't understand why she walked like a woman but talked like a man
posted by nooneyouknow at 8:50 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Don't make Meat Loaf feel bad.

I won't do that.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:50 AM on March 1, 2012 [7 favorites]

I don't think MetaTalk should be used to complain when other people don't like something you like.

For the second time, and I'm pretty sure it was sufficiently clear the first time if you'd read carefully: the problem is not that people do not like the trailer, or that they do not like the post about the trailer. The problem behavior is dropping into a thread to make a remark that anybody who is interested in the trailer is developmentally stunted and nothing else of substance. SmileyChewtrain has stepped forward to defend his own comment, a comment that in my mind requires no defense whatsoever. There were, again, lots of negative remarks in that thread that weren't a problem at all. Those are not the remarks I'm griping about here.
posted by Ipsifendus at 8:53 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Y'know it's kind of like when you were a kid and got a cool toy (or comic book!) and you brought it into school and you're showing it to the other kids, and then the BIG KIDS come over and are all "wook at the wittle baby and their baby toy" and try to make you feel bad, but in reality they're just jealous that other people are genuinely excited and don't know how to react in a non-asshole fashion.

Not to be an asshole and defend schoolday bullies, because seriously, fuck that, but there's more nuance to the "baby toy" response than you're giving credit for. I've had that response before and I still have it on occasion, and it's provoked not entirely by jealousy towards excitement but also by confusion, as in, why the hell does somebody find this so exciting?

And usually it's no big deal that somebody finds something interesting, but I can understand negative emotions welling up when it's somebody in your peer group liking something which is seemingly not that interesting, or even actively repulsive. Either contempt – do you seriously find this thing that interesting? Jeez, and I thought you were smart – or frustration, when it's a lot of people liking it and you, by your dislike, feel completely excluded from a social group because you just don't like it.

It's super silly to feel that way on MetaFilter, because you can opt into threads as you see fit, but I'll be honest, I don't get Joss Whedon love and a lot of my friends dig him and when people start getting super into Firefly or Dr. Horrible or Buffy at a social gathering then I feel kind of crappy, because it means that for the next half hour I have to keep quiet and look at the floor as everybody else talks about something that not only do I dislike, but I actively think is kind of campy and stupid and shitty. It's actually made me super sensitive about not geeking out about Achewood or Lebowski or Arrested Development or Harry Potter, because I've started to realize that likes and dislikes can be a means of social exclusion, and I don't want to make people feel bad about themselves.

While it's true that people should be free to like what they like, in a social gathering likes can dominate and steer a conversation and make people who aren't in the majority feel like outsiders. Again, it's stupid on MetaFilter to threadshit about it, but I understand the reaction. And if it wasn't for the few excellent comments in that thread that illustrate why people love comics so much, I'd have the same reaction quietly to myself.
posted by Rory Marinich at 8:53 AM on March 1, 2012 [7 favorites]

Did somebody say Meatloaf?
posted by entropicamericana at 8:57 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh look! I got a Meta Talk thread!@

It'll take me a bit to catch up, and I have to go to work, but:

I wasn't saying that people who like comic book movies are immature.

I was conjecturing that to be enthused about the trailer for a movie like this must mean you are young enough to not have had Hollywood crush your expectations a thousand times already.

What did I think I saw in that trailer? A bunch of explosions, I know that. Wasn't there a rip-off of the "Right Stuff" where a group of people walk towards the camera? (Tall in the middle! Short to the outside, please!) Samuel Jackson stunt cast as Nick Fury? The man has some talent, but he's never met a paycheck he didn't like.

Some people in that thread were saying stuff like "Squeee!" and shit. That was really depressing.

I will try to honestly engage this thread tonight, but right now I have to bundle up and go out in the snow and shovel cow shit. It's what I do. I'm kind of a hero.
posted by Trochanter at 9:22 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

Trochanter: "I was conjecturing that to be enthused about the trailer for a movie like this must mean you are young enough to not have had Hollywood crush your expectations a thousand times already."

I think this is applicable:

Moviegoers: "That movie is gonna suck!" Movie lovers: "Yeah. But still, maybe not."
posted by brundlefly at 9:27 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

Some people in that thread were saying stuff like "Squeee!" and shit. That was really depressing.

Yeah, there is truly no heartbreak like the heartbreak of genuine enthusiasm. Oh god the humanity.
posted by elizardbits at 9:29 AM on March 1, 2012 [12 favorites]

Here's where I'm confused.

Metafilter tends to leap on people that suggest that video games or comic books are childish. The defense is fervent and thorough. I don't how that particular perspective could possibly need more defending around here, or anywhere. As the original post here suggests, our culture has pretty much accepted that it's okay to play video games and read comics well into your thirties and beyond. So why the anguish? It's not like it's some kind of oppressed minority view. It's already well represented and well defended.
posted by Stagger Lee at 9:31 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

Samuel Jackson stunt cast as Nick Fury?

Samuel Jackson has been used as the model for Ultimate Nick Fury since 2001. Keep in mind that's basically contemporaneous with comic book films just starting getting an iota of respect by way of X-Men and Spiderman. I doubt the artists were doing that thinking "oh, man, when they make a film out of this, it'll TOTALLY be Samuel L. Jackson and EVERYONE WILL COME SEE IT." And, considering how much enthusiasm he had for the role of Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequels, it's pretty safe to say that he genuinely wanted to do this.

I was conjecturing that to be enthused about the trailer for a movie like this must mean you are young enough to not have had Hollywood crush your expectations a thousand times already.

I conjecture that being dismissive about others' enthusiasm on the grounds that you don't like the thing they do is your problem.
posted by griphus at 9:35 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have no strong feelings about this movie. And I live in spacious Astorian apartment that reeks of beer and Chinese takeout.
posted by jonmc at 9:37 AM on March 1, 2012

Oh, and from that Wikipedia entry:

"[After] seeing the redesigned Nick Fury in the first issue of The Ultimates ... Samuel L. Jackson learned of the use of his likeness and contacted Marvel in order to secure the role of Nick Fury in any future Marvel movies."

First issue of the Ultimates? March, 2002.
posted by griphus at 9:38 AM on March 1, 2012

Yeah, there is truly no heartbreak like the heartbreak of genuine enthusiasm. Oh god the humanity.

I conjecture that being dismissive about others' enthusiasm on the grounds that you don't like the thing they do is your problem.

It's an AD! It's like going Squee! for new Tide.

Hmm... Looks like I may get too mad to engage with this after all...
posted by Trochanter at 9:40 AM on March 1, 2012

if the new tide wants to conquer the earth with a giant flying robosnake while getting my whites whiter and my colors brighter then i will cheer that too
posted by elizardbits at 9:41 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

There's always a portion of Mefites who just enjoy being greify little hater fucks

Seriously? This is us engaging?
posted by Trochanter at 9:42 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

...and if someone posted an ad for the new Tide and the contingent of Tide fans on MetaFilter went in there and talked about how excited they were about the new Tide, it would not occur to me to go in there and tell them that they are overly-enthusiastic idealists because I was unhappy with the quality of previous products released by Procter & Gamble.
posted by griphus at 9:45 AM on March 1, 2012 [6 favorites]

It's not the "comics are for kids" thing that bugs me so much as the implied genre snobbery. A spectacle-filled action film is somehow automatically synonymous with Michael Bay and not worth seeing, much less eagerly anticipating. I love big, booming event films when they're done right. When they're done right, I think they're everything that's fucking great about cinema.

It's an AD! It's like going Squee! for new Tide.

And, yeah. Case in point. It isn't an ad for Tide. It's an ad for a creative work in a genre you don't dig. Great. No reason to shit all over other people's enjoyment of it.
posted by brundlefly at 9:47 AM on March 1, 2012 [5 favorites]

Are there "Tide" fans? Like, people who really love doing laundry for its own sake and who particularly value the "Tide" line of products for its effectiveness in enhancing the experience? Are there a large enough number of such people that an announcement on Metafilter that a free sample of "Tide" was available would garner more than 200 comments? If so, your comparison is cogent. Otherwise not.

And by the way, had you made these kinds of remarks in the thread, rather than the one that you did make, I'd never have complained.
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:48 AM on March 1, 2012

Seriously? This is us engaging?

No, that's my advice to Ipsifendus. Do you WANT to engage?
posted by Artw at 9:48 AM on March 1, 2012

I will say one thing quickly. When I wrote my comment in the thread, I was actually very down. That trailer honestly brought me down. Just so you know. I wasn't just being snarky.

And the other thing is, what I was saying was that, Hey, you guys are going to have two fun hours this summer. That's good. Good for you.

It's an ad for a creative work in a genre you don't dig.

No that's not it at all. These are the kinds of movies I want to like. I grew up on comics, too. I don't follow them anymore, but whatever.

I just want this kind of movie to be (a lot) better.

Look, I've got to go.
posted by Trochanter at 9:50 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

okay have fun with your poops!
posted by elizardbits at 9:51 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

You had hope once, it was previously squashed, now you're preemptively saving others!

yay.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:52 AM on March 1, 2012

/researches detergent based mega-post.
posted by Artw at 9:52 AM on March 1, 2012 [5 favorites]

I hope your day gets better, Trochanter. /not being snarky either :)
posted by brundlefly at 9:56 AM on March 1, 2012

All I know about detergent is people generally use way too much. I think you're really only supposed to use maybe 1/3 of what they recommend on the packaging.

(But then I get confused when I use Seventh Generation detergent. It's supposed to be all eco-friendly and stuff, so are their guidelines more accurate? Should I be using closer to their guidelines? I just don't know!)
posted by kmz at 9:57 AM on March 1, 2012

I want to like Seventh Gen products but they all uniformly make me itch. The dish soap is particularly egregious. And their toilet paper seems to be made of despair.
posted by elizardbits at 10:00 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

/researches detergent based mega-post

I look forward to your vicious Woollite vs. Wisk argument with BP. "Don't bring up that tired ring around the collar bullshit again. Not everybody believes everything that spews out of the P&G spin machine."
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:01 AM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

There's always a portion of Mefites who just enjoy being greify little hater fucks, then pretending that makes them fine upstanding citizens of the interwebs who are demonstarting how smart they are with their bullshit.

Fuck 'em. Their inability to enjoy anythuing but griping should not be made a problem for the rest of us. Just ignore them and continue to post stuff you think is cool.

Agreed. I've come to the conclusion recently that anyone who does something that makes them happy (with all necessary caveats about not harming others) is far cooler than someone who doesn't, period. Double points if you're doing something a lot of people like to snicker at. Furries and shirtless, body-painted football enthusiasts are fucking Lou Reed and Miles Davis compared to bitter, culturally Puritanical Internet haters.

Find your joy, unclench and go forth.
posted by Bookhouse at 10:01 AM on March 1, 2012 [22 favorites]

No that's not it at all. These are the kinds of movies I want to like.

I think we all have those sorts of frustrations with stuff we wish were more what we'd like them to be than what they are, yeah. I could go on at length about a few things just in terms of video games released in the last year or two.

I think as a general strategy for engagement, the thing to do here is just to try and substantiate your feelings about this stuff in terms of your disappointment/frustration with the product you've seen/heard/read/played and with folks making the products and their process, rather than with the other people who are not having the same negative reaction you are.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:01 AM on March 1, 2012

Okay, gloves are off.

1. There are TIDE fans out there.

2. Just because I can't take SuperHeroes remotely seriously does not mean I'm a horrible old codger who HATES all youth, innocence, FUN. Fact is, I blame BATMAN (the original TV series). It came out when I was about seven. I LOVED IT. Until I was about eight and a half, which is when I realized how phoney it was. I HATED IT. Until I was about ten when I realized how hilarious it was. Which is how I continue to feel about guys (and gals) in tight fitting suits, swinging and bombing around saving the day from nefarious villains. It's f***ing silly. So I can't really enjoy superhero stuff unless it has the balls to admit that it's really silly. Not cool. Really f***ing silly! Buckaroo Bonzai does this wonderfully.

Trochanter, you're not alone.
posted by philip-random at 10:02 AM on March 1, 2012

Hmmm...

The Laundry ball, is it bullshit?
posted by Artw at 10:03 AM on March 1, 2012

1. There are TIDE fans out there.

“I want to be a race car passenger: just a guy who bugs the driver. Say man, can I turn on the radio? You should slow down. Why do we gotta keep going in circles? Can I put my feet out the window? Man, you really like Tide..." - Mitch Hedberg
posted by griphus at 10:03 AM on March 1, 2012 [10 favorites]

I stopped trusting big detergent when I saw an infographic on the back of a Tide bottle that said "How tide works" and under that said "tide goes deep into the fabric to lift out dirt and oil". It had drawing of a tide molecule or some shit with little arms and hands lifting what looked like a boulder out of a weave of threads. I knew those fuckers were lying. Molecules don't have thumbs.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:05 AM on March 1, 2012 [8 favorites]

Buckaroo Bonzai does this wonderfully.

I'm not taking you to task, here, but how does this misspelling happen so often? It even says "Banzai" on the video you linked.
posted by adamdschneider at 10:06 AM on March 1, 2012

What has two thumbs and goes deep into the fabric to lift out dirt and oil? Not molecules. Wait...
posted by zombieflanders at 10:06 AM on March 1, 2012

OK, so the detergent business is 99% based on selling the same product differentiated by pseudo-science gibberish explained with cutesy CGI animations... but at leats they're better than those duplicitous fuckers in the skincare industry.
posted by Artw at 10:07 AM on March 1, 2012

I'm pretty sure everything ever printed onto the side of a blow dryer package was written by a cousin of the TimeCube guy.

REVITALIZE HAIR STRANDS BY ROTATING IONS IN FOUR DIMENSIONS
posted by griphus at 10:09 AM on March 1, 2012 [8 favorites]

Fuck Tide. Purex inna house, dawg.
posted by jonmc at 10:10 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

but how does this misspelling happen so often? It even says "Banzai" on the video you linked.

I think it's pretty obvious.
posted by philip-random at 10:12 AM on March 1, 2012

For the second time, and I'm pretty sure it was sufficiently clear the first time if you'd read carefully: the problem is not that people do not like the trailer, or that they do not like the post about the trailer. The problem behavior is dropping into a thread to make a remark that anybody who is interested in the trailer is developmentally stunted and nothing else of substance. SmileyChewtrain has stepped forward to defend his own comment, a comment that in my mind requires no defense whatsoever. There were, again, lots of negative remarks in that thread that weren't a problem at all. Those are not the remarks I'm griping about here.

The two examples you alluded to (but couldn't be bothered to link to) didn't say that at all. Dragoness questioned why adults would like this kind of movie, and Trochanter said "you guys must be really young". Since when is young the same thing as developmentally stunted?
This is the weakest callout I've seen in a long time.
Drop by a sports thread (especially college sports) if you want to see some real drive-by haters.
posted by rocket88 at 10:13 AM on March 1, 2012

There is a difference between childish and childlike.
posted by workerant at 10:16 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I think it's pretty obvious.

Buckaroo Bonsai
posted by adamdschneider at 10:22 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

rocket88, I'd have liked to link directly to the comments in question, but do not know how. As for the rest of it...Trochanter's explanation for his usage makes sense, but absent that explanation his comment, and Dragoness', both read as criticisms: the implication is that being into a comic book movie is childish. And they're addressing a population of adults. A childish adult is developmentally stunted...that's what the word childish means. I stand by my interpretation of those comments being perfectly reasonable.
posted by Ipsifendus at 10:30 AM on March 1, 2012

I'd have liked to link directly to the comments in question, but do not know how

Under each comment, there is a timestamp:

12:30

It is a direct link to that comment within a thread.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:37 AM on March 1, 2012

H8rz gonna h8.

That said, I'm an adult female and I'm glad that someone posted a link to that movie. I can't wait to see it and get my comic book nerd love on at the movies!
posted by Lynsey at 10:42 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was conjecturing that to be enthused about the trailer for a movie like this must mean you are young enough to not have had Hollywood crush your expectations a thousand times already.

Fuck it, I'm 47 and Hollywood has shat on my dreams repeatedly from a great height, and I refuse to give up on being excited about things I think are cool and fun, because that's what fucking keeps me from killing myself.

Enjoy your Samuel Beckett life, I'll be over here with my lightsaber.
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:43 AM on March 1, 2012 [9 favorites]

the implication is that being into a comic book movie is childish.

From the original thread ...

IT IS BADASS,
WATCH THIS, IT IS AWESOME"
AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH!
BEST SUPERHERO EVER
HULK MAD FACE DIFFERENT AGAIN!
WHEEEEEEEEEEE!

Childish is as childish does.
posted by philip-random at 10:46 AM on March 1, 2012

Beckett! Now THAT guy could fill out a set of tights!
posted by Trochanter at 10:46 AM on March 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

Also, while we're whining about other people's buzzkilling, can I beef about a rhetorical construction I really really really hate?

It's the pseudo-naive question that denies the existence of something the questioner doesn't like or thinks is uncool or whatever.

buzzy person: "What's your favorite style of deep-dish pizza?"
buzzkiller: "There are special serving dishes for pizza?"
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:48 AM on March 1, 2012

Sidhedevil: “Also, while we're whining about other people's buzzkilling, can I beef about a rhetorical construction I really really really hate? It's the pseudo-naive question that denies the existence of something the questioner doesn't like or thinks is uncool or whatever.”

People actually do that?
posted by koeselitz at 10:49 AM on March 1, 2012 [9 favorites]

I used to have a Superfriends pillowcase when I was a kid. I kinda miss it. And phillip-random, lighten up and let people have their fun.
posted by jonmc at 10:51 AM on March 1, 2012

And phillip-random, lighten up and let people have their fun.

I have made no comment in that thread. This, on the other hand, is the absurd Meta it has spawned. Seriously, if I was Trochanter I'd be feeling like I'm back in Grade 2 and I just told all the other kids the cold hard truth about Santa Claus being an alien from the 8th Dimension (ie: not real). Not only did I get shouted down for it by all the kids, someone actually went and told on me to the Principal.
posted by philip-random at 10:54 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Koeselitz: Yes they do. This is my personal "favorite."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:00 AM on March 1, 2012

....ohgod I can't believe I didn't notice that. Sarcasm detector fail.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:00 AM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

Sloth ruiners!
posted by The Whelk at 11:03 AM on March 1, 2012

I'm glad you missed that - that example and the resulting pile-on is pretty funny.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:29 AM on March 1, 2012

I'd be feeling like I'm back in Grade 2 and I just told all the other kids the cold hard truth about Santa Claus being an alien from the 8th Dimension (ie: not real). Not only did I get shouted down for it by all the kids, someone actually went and told on me to the Principal.

You tried to destroy Christmas.

Grinch tried to destroy Christmas.

Ergo.

You must have a sad, pathetic looking, but cute little dog.

With antlers.

I do agree with the original poster, the comments that were made which spawned this meta are the type that did nothing to contribute to the conversation. It's better off just saving that vitriol for the kids on the lawn.
posted by Atreides at 11:34 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Sidhedevil: Fuck it, I'm 47 and Hollywood has shat on my dreams repeatedly from a great height, and I refuse to give up on being excited about things I think are cool and fun, because that's what fucking keeps me from killing myself.

Enjoy your Samuel Beckett life, I'll be over here with my lightsaber.

So, when my boys were little, like any conscientious mother would do, I bought them toy lightsabers. Later, I explained to them that A New Hope was better than Phantom Menace, YES REALLY, even though the effects sucked by today's standards and Alex Guinness went into a lightsaber battle while still wearing a ridiculously long robe and keeping his hood UP most of the time.

Sadly, they have friends (whose parents are obviously negligent and should be reported to social services) who had never seen the original films. So we fixed THAT when they were old enough for sleepovers. Some of them are college aged now, and they still come over for Firefly and LOTR marathons.

My sons' girlfriends, after watching Game of Thrones and borrowing our Firefly DVDs, respectively, recently went out shopping with the guys and came back upset that neither Walmart or Target had lightsabers on sale.

I told my sons I approve of their choices.
posted by misha at 11:44 AM on March 1, 2012 [12 favorites]

I didn't try to destroy Christmas, I just told the other kids what my big brother told me. I thought they might want to know. But apparently not. The Principal even called my mom about it. But she didn't give me shit, she saved it for my big brother, who later thumped me for his trouble.

Anyway. I'm out of this thread for the time being. I've got a firm screenplay deadline -- rest of Act 2 by the end of today, by which point I must reveal the truth about Rapture Initiative, wherein a late 1950s CIA-sponsored MK-ULTRA experiment involving the fusing of LSD with weapons grade plutonium triggered a catastrophic meltdown that didn't just kill everyone in the lab, it infected the immediate geography AND propelled the leading researcher at lightspeed through the reality barrier to a space beyond time and space, such that ever since he's been manipulating reality toward his own ultimately diabolical ends. And now (more than 50 years later) the only one who can stop him from devouring the souls of all humanity is some slacker guitar guy with an uncanny sense of pitch and harmony.

No tights or capes involved. And the good guys never resort to violence to solve their problems.
posted by philip-random at 11:45 AM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

The thing to keep in mind, I think, is that this isn't limited to MeFi, or to comic books, or to action movies or whatever. There will always be people who define themselves culturally mostly by defining the negative space -- the things they do not like; the people they are emphatically not. But in order to define yourself as not-something, you have to acknowledge it, and even that is more than pure negative-spacers are really fond of. So there's always a certain "Really?" quality of disbelief. It isn't an outlook that would make me happy, but I've long ago stopped fighting it.

See also: the people who ask every year, "Are there people who still watch the Oscars?"
posted by Linda_Holmes at 12:10 PM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

Back in my day, we used tennis racquets as light sabers and we were grateful to have them.

Luxury! If we were lucky, we would catch my mother before she threw out the inner tube from a roll of wrapping paper, and have the flimsiest of lightsabers to play with for a few days.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:11 PM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

Burhanistan: "> Back in my day, we used tennis racquets as light sabers and we were grateful to have them."

1" wooden dowels. My poor poor knuckles.
posted by the_artificer at 12:12 PM on March 1, 2012

Fluorescent tubes were really good in theory.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:13 PM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

Enjoy your Samuel Beckett life, I'll be over here with my lightsaber.

I like Samuel Beckett but still I'm tattooing this on my next pet.
posted by Rory Marinich at 12:14 PM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

You people had things? I spent my childhood locked in a cell in the attic. The best I could do was make "whoosh! fwwooww!" noises. I didn't even know what Star Wars was until I was 25.
posted by griphus at 12:15 PM on March 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

I can't relate to some 1-percenter who had his own cell. Talk about waste.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:17 PM on March 1, 2012

I am immensely thankful for straight's comment which linked me to the paste gun technical drawing.

Now, every time I see someone shitting in a thread, I can just think about piezo-electric oscillators and high compression pump rams and orifice shaping control motors and how ultimately it's just some supervillain squirting ~~glue~~shit all over someone else's fun.

And then I can think about jessamyn or cortex or whoever in spandex coming along and saying, "Greetings! Have no grar good citizen! The scheming Trollax has escaped his mother's basement once more. And while he is vile, he is essentially harmless! And now I must away to deal with Sir Spamalot who even now is plotting his first three non-sequitur comments! FIAMO, and away!"

And then I think about jessamyn or cortex or whoever in spandex some more. Because it's nice.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:20 PM on March 1, 2012

Me and my brother used long scrap pieces of 1.5" lathe our dad had torn out of one wall or another of the house in some bit of remodeling. Horrible, splintery stuff, and it'd snap pretty easily; we'd wrap the bottom eight inches or so with duct tape or strapping tape so we could swing the things around without destroying our hands, and maybe cut the tip at an angle. We weren't so much into the lightsaber thing as the katana thing; Star Wars was fine and all but c'mon, SHADOW WARRIORS OF ANCIENT FEUDAL JAPAN, man!

My parents gave me one of those old lathe-and-tape katanas back for Christmas or my birthday in the last year or two, it actually kind of made my day.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:29 PM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Lath, even. We didn't start fighting with actual lathes until a few years later, after we were bitten by radioactive professional wrestlers and developed the proportional strength of professional wrestlers.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:31 PM on March 1, 2012 [4 favorites]

Back in my day, we used tennis racquets as light sabers

PVC pipe, a little foam rubber, and duct tape. My friends and I spent a summer beating each other black-and-blue with those things.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:38 PM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

In our bright shiny new postmodern world where there is no more universal canon dictating what is right for everyone to like best, the thing that makes you a special snowflake deserving of acclaim and appreciation for your specialness is your excellent taste in cultural products. We each wear our own unique combination of flair badges and novelty t-shirts representing our team, and take our turns running raids where we go to the heart of the opposing tribe (for example a Lady Gaga post, if you are a Rocker), and take a symbolic shit in the middle of their discussion. If you declare your appreciation for any style of cultural expression, you must brace yourself for the immediate ritualistic taunting of competing subcultures, who establish their status and authenticity within their own group by bravely taunting and antagonizing other groups in public discussion forums. And feces, lots and lots of feces.

But seriously, I once posted a piece of music I made, and someone claimed I didn't even like the kind of music I was trying to make, because come on nobody actually authentically likes it. At least with something so widely appreciated as comic books there are going to be more than four or five people that are enthusiastic about them despite the haters.

also, regarding improvised toy weapons
posted by idiopath at 12:42 PM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Wire hanger bows - the kind with the cardboard bottoms. Take off the cardboard (instant arrow!) tie some string to the hooks, bam! Robin Hood.

(It's probably just as well that I didn't have a cat until I was a little older. Although now mine have to dodge nerf darts, and wow, those have some range.)
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 12:45 PM on March 1, 2012

I had a stick I found in the woods.
posted by Atreides at 1:04 PM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I got proficient with my father's 10 foot leather bullwhip.
posted by fuq at 1:09 PM on March 1, 2012

LUKE SKYWALKER WAS ABLE TO BUILD A LIGHTSABER IN A HUT! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!
posted by zombieflanders at 1:13 PM on March 1, 2012 [6 favorites]

Improvised weapons, hell. We used to have lawn darts, big ass darts with sharp metal tips. The 70's were a strange and wonderful time.
posted by jonmc at 1:18 PM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Hey, he needed a special crystal!

However not all lightsaber crystals were actually crystals at all. There were plenty of exceptions where a Jedi or Sith would use a different material or substance in place of a crystal, such as physical remains, shards of glass, and even special micro machinery.

Okay, well, any old bollocks would do it seems.
posted by Artw at 1:18 PM on March 1, 2012

Many of my highschool buddies were heavy into Star Wars, so it was a thing with them to craft a custom lightsaber hilt. Not too uncommon, I don't think. I was more into being a complete weirdo, so my hilt had a 1/2" switch sticking out of it as opposed to a "touch activated" button, and the pommel end had a translucent plastic kitchen tap knob.

In the short film we made over the course of senior year, my saber initially came out as black with a shadowy aura, and then began pulsing through various colors until it was pretty much just a blur. When I actually attacked, the "blade" retracted and all the energy went into the pommel, which I used more like a bludgeon than a saber.

Good times.
posted by owtytrof at 1:35 PM on March 1, 2012

This movie looks absolutely tremendous and I say that as a proud, card carrying juvenile idiot.
posted by sgt.serenity at 1:42 PM on March 1, 2012

Jarts would puncture your goddamned skull with just a casual lob.

Yeah. Sigh. Those were the best.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:42 PM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I like to play jarts in a skort and jeggings.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:54 PM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Possibly the most pathetic sentence one could hear:

"I think I just sharted my shants"
posted by idiopath at 1:56 PM on March 1, 2012

We used to have lawn darts, big ass darts with sharp metal tips. The 70's were a strange and wonderful time.

Elegant weapons, for a more civilized age?
posted by zamboni at 1:57 PM on March 1, 2012 [7 favorites]

Jarts would puncture your goddamned skull with just a casual lob.

Only Imperial stormtroopers could be so precise.
posted by Artw at 2:02 PM on March 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

> Molecules don't have thumbs.

Yeah, they do. I know we were all taught otherwise, but they've discovered this now with the Large Hadron Collider. I read it in BBC Science News.
posted by languagehat at 2:14 PM on March 1, 2012

So when my kids were little, I spent entire months out of my life constructing armor from cereal boxes, aluminum pie plates, aluminum foil, and duct tape. Not just shields and swords, but bucklers, greaves, visors (add twist ties to the list of materials to make hinges). This would last two, maybe three jousting tournaments, and I'd need to make more. And lightsabers, too, because medieval knights need to bring the lightsabers because it's not just about the jousting, it's about saving the entire planet from the Forces of Darkness. And I made green fleece tabards, with celtic knotwork brooches made from binder rings, and for some reason I stayed up until 4 in the morning making a red Pikmin costume with a little leaf on the top, and then an incredible white wizard costume and cape while my husband created a wizard's staff with a battery operated lightbulb that LIT UP so you could REALLY BE GANDALF. And I had a breast pump, that was like a bicycle pump with a funnel attached on one end, that made the best ray gun ever.

And all this from a home that billed itself as pacifist.

Dunno why this seems important now, but it does.
posted by angiep at 3:00 PM on March 1, 2012 [6 favorites]

If you don't give your kids toy weapons they'll just make guns out of sticks and chewed bread anyway.

Or out of little replicas of municipal dustbins.
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:07 PM on March 1, 2012

I wasn't much of a comic book reader when I was growing up. I'd flip through one of my brother's once in a while and that was it. Now, I'm a 45 year old woman and I love comic book movies. That's it, full stop. Why I like them is inexplicable - I just do. And there's nothing wrong with that.
posted by deborah at 6:28 PM on March 1, 2012

If you don't give your kids toy weapons they'll just make guns out of sticks and chewed bread anyway.

Forcing kids to improvise weapons is the only.responsible way to prepare them for zombie apocalypse.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:42 PM on March 1, 2012 [5 favorites]

I didn’t comment in that thread because I don’t see the need to tell people I didn’t care about it, but I was surprised at all the jumping up and down. I’m 48 and like comics, I like good cheesy movies, but I don’t usually care for big summer blockbuster action movies in general, and don’t really think they need more advertising. Not really what I come to MetaFilter for.
posted by bongo_x at 7:28 PM on March 1, 2012

Anyway, hours later, to sum up.

1. I wasn't snarking about comics, I was snarking about movies.

Actually, strike that. Item one should be that I sheepishly guess my original comment is kind of shitty in tone, and I apologize for that. What can I say? That trailer made me angry and despondent, and I find typing laborious. I do think people should be able to dislike the subject of a post. And I also think people should be able to respond to the response. It's about an honest exchange of ideas and opinions, right?

3. I was and am surprised that people would get so exited about an advertisement. A while ago there was a thread about a New Yorker profile of a fellow who did movie trailers. It was an eyeopener. Even though the entire movie making process is based on pandering, and even though movies are repeatedly paraded before focus groups, and carpet bombed by note-making executives, and test screened up the hoop to ensure that they are pandering to the maximum extent they possibly can, there's still an entire sub-industry that exists to slop a final veneer of falsity even onto that. Frankly, I was surprised there wasn't more griping in that thread.

4. I did want to respond to this from brundlefly(definitely one of my favourite metafilter handles ever):

It isn't an ad for Tide. It's an ad for a creative work in a genre you don't dig.

I think that the people who green lit this movie and the people who decided to make New Tide are the same people. I think they took the same classes in university. I think their ends are the same.

I AM a movie lover, and as a movie lover I think Hollywood sucks right now.

Starship Troopers, Robocop, The Incredibles, hell, speaking of brundlefly, how about Cronenberg's The Fly, the first Hellboy. Comic book movies don't have to be devoid of ideas.
posted by Trochanter at 7:54 PM on March 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

Starship Troopers, Robocop, The Incredibles, hell, speaking of brundlefly, how about Cronenberg's The Fly, the first Hellboy. Comic book movies don't have to be devoid of ideas.

I am not being sarcastic but you realize that four of those five were notbased on a comic, right?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:06 PM on March 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

Yeah, but they're comic book movies.
posted by Trochanter at 8:09 PM on March 1, 2012

Maybe that's part of my problem. Maybe these movies based on comic books aren't comic booky enough.

Oh, Sin City should be on my little list.
posted by Trochanter at 8:11 PM on March 1, 2012

Yeah, but they're comic book movies.

Huh. I hadn't thought about it that way before, but I agree.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:20 PM on March 1, 2012

Trochanter: "... The Incredibles, hell, speaking of brundlefly, how about Cronenberg's The Fly, the first Hellboy. Comic book movies don't have to be devoid of ideas."

I'm a 50 year-old who thinks The Incredibles is one of the greatest movies of our time and has absolutely no desire to see any of the latest batch of shitty, formulaic, predictable 'blockbusters' being touted by the 'industry'. But then, I also refuse to grow up and maybe there's some correlation there.
posted by dg at 10:02 PM on March 1, 2012

I was and am surprised that people would get so exited about an advertisement.

But that's a kind of odd characterization of a movie trailer. Not that I disagree that it's an advertisment—obviously it's been released specifically to advertise and generate interest in the film—but a movie trailer is a bit different from a Tide ad insofar as it's substantially more "show" than "tell". It's going the route of giving people a taste of the thing you're hoping they'll be excited about, a sample (albeit fractured and sometimes fairly deceptive) of the actual product, rather than just having a TV mom smile through montage of domestic dirt-removal with the guarantee that you, too, will be able to remove dirt from clothes if you go to the store and buy detergent.

It's got more in common with the releasing of a music video to promote an album, or a demo to promote a video game: it's giving folks a little bit of the thing they want. That a lot of people who are already enthusiastic, skeptically or otherwise, respond to that positively isn't surprising or weird. Not being enthused by it isn't weird either, it's fine for you to watch the trailer and feel meh about it or feel like your low expectations have been confirmed or to find the trailer treatment sketchy or smelling of false promises. But to be disappointed at other people for not disliking it, or to be galled that they aren't turning up their noses at a little sneak preview of something they're looking for, seems like expecting way too much sympathetic agreement from other people with whatever reaction you're having to it, is how it seems to me.

And I say that as someone who doesn't necessarily disagree with you on the specifics in this case. There's lots of stuff that I like, or am looking forward to, a lot less than other folks I know who are enthusiastic about that stuff. But so too vice versa, and all of that's fine: different people like different things, even folks who might have a lot in common otherwise.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:18 PM on March 1, 2012

but a movie trailer is a bit different from a Tide ad....

It seems to me they're both about manipulating and motivating. It's about showing you why you're right for this movie. Tim Palen, the subject of that New Yorker piece, "...wants his core audience to feel that a film is theirs."

And boy, based on that thread, did they ever get this one right.
posted by Trochanter at 10:42 PM on March 1, 2012

Without judgement but:

I can't even have a conversation about this batch of comic book movies because they always start from the premise "Well Iron Man was awesome" as if it's some immutable law of the universe.

"Iron Man" was awful. If I hadn't been with friends I would have walked out. And then comes the standard argument:

"but it's just a big dumb popcorn flick you're a snob!"

Problem: it fails utterly as a popcorn flick.

1) Over two hours long. Immensely boring.
2) Not much action at all. A fight against some terrorists or whatever in a cave as we bend over backwards not to make anything that might be construed as a political statement.
3) Then incredibly boring until the end wherein the man who wears a metal suit, which is tremendously uninteresting as superpowers go, fights the big scary villain...

A different guy in a different metal suit.

And the jokey little dialogue and the robot arm touches his asshole or whatever, ha ha ha ha! Just painfully shitty. And Robert Downey is a fine actor and I'm happy to see him collecting blockbuster paychecks again, but that performance should be in the dictionary under "phoning it in." He had no interest in being there, and who can blame him?

It's definitely possible to make an awesome comic book movie, just look at the Michael Keaton/Tim Burton "Batman." But most of them are awful, because most movies are awful.
posted by drjimmy11 at 10:49 PM on March 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

You could be right. I could have been blinded by Mr. Jr. That man was given a shit ton of charisma at birth. That's one of the questions/reservations I have about this Avengers movie -- how the hell is anyone going to hold their side of the screen against RDJ?
posted by Trochanter at 10:59 PM on March 1, 2012

I used to be one of those guys that did market research surveys at malls for movie trailers. It was incredibly depressing, mostly because it made me realize that the reason they make dumb movie trailers is that the american people are complete fucking morons, and that bad movie trailers are actually what they want.

I can't tell you how many times that somewhat clever movie trailers came in and after a deluge of feedback like "Tell me more of the story" and "Show me more titties and explosions", the final result was straight out of idiocracy.
posted by empath at 5:57 AM on March 2, 2012 [3 favorites]

It's definitely possible to make an awesome comic book movie, just look at the Michael Keaton/Tim Burton "Batman."

Yick!
posted by shakespeherian at 6:59 AM on March 2, 2012 [3 favorites]

It seems to me they're both about manipulating and motivating.

Yes, that is obviously, blatantly so. They are ads, we agree. My argument is not that they don't have that in common; my argument is that they are qualitatively different in other, important ways. There is a reason nobody gets excited about Tide when they see a normal Tide ad but people routinely get excited when they see movie trailers, or hear promotional singles, or play video game demos.

Giving people a hard time for getting excited by a sampling of something they were inclined to get excited about because you personally aren't getting excited in that specific case is not really playing fair, is about it. You might as well sneer at people for listening to the radio and enjoying the pop song that's playing; it's getting on people's cases for having a subjective disagreement with you about pop culture.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:01 AM on March 2, 2012 [2 favorites]

Trochanter: &lqduo;Oh, Sin City should be on my little list.”

I missed the part where you made a little list of terrible movies that suck.
posted by koeselitz at 7:21 AM on March 2, 2012 [2 favorites]

Trochanter, it just feels like your words are dripping with derision. Of course you can have an opinion and of course you should express it. I just wonder if there is a better way to do that, in the original thread and in here. I'm reading what you're saying as "You people who like this drivel are just moronic idiots who wouldn't know a good film from a piece of chewed gum on the sidewalk and I must tell you that you're stupid." Really.

And while I do agree that opinions should be expressed (see above) I don't agree that coming into a thread about a subject that you clearly despise, just to tell everyone who doesn't despise the subject that you, in fact, do, is something anyone should aspire to.
posted by cooker girl at 7:34 AM on March 2, 2012 [2 favorites]

Sin City is interesting, I think, because you can either see it as a bold aesthetic experiment, or you can see it - which applies also to 300 and to a lesser extent Watchmen - as the point at which special effects got good and cheap enough to allow for really quite artistically lazy recreations (which do not quite work) of comic-book visual effects in films.
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:53 AM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

> It seems to me they're both about manipulating and motivating.

So are pop songs. Hell, so is classical music, literature, just about everything humans do, if you insist on looking at everything that way. You do realize, don't you, that all those movies you love were also produced by people who cared mainly about the bottom line and happened to allow writers, directors, and actors to do a decent job, often out of sheer indifference or carelessness? And great paintings were made to extract money from rich assholes? I mean, I understand your point, but I think it's a pretty petty one that if extended sufficiently would basically make it impossible for you to enjoy anything at all.
posted by languagehat at 7:53 AM on March 2, 2012 [6 favorites]

Taste arguments. Still. Apparently forever.

"Your thing sucks."

"No, your thing sucks!"

"Nuh, uh!"

"Yuh, huh!"

And so on. Taste means nothing. A particular combination of stimuli releases some dopamine for you. That is the only argument to be made. There really is no such thing as a "good movie". It kind of blows me away.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:02 AM on March 2, 2012 [2 favorites]

I feel like Sin City is aesthetically interesting in a way that Watchmen is not so much, all other questions about their effectiveness as films and adaptations aside.

Watchmen is a well-rendered film take on the contents of the book, but isn't really visually remarkable at a mechanical level, whereas Sin City's aggressive stylization and unusually literal appropriation of some actual comic book layout mechanics stands out as its defining feature. It was certainly a more interesting film to watch as an exercise in putting comic book pages on film for its own sake.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:06 AM on March 2, 2012

Also sex and romance are just the biological imperative to reproduce and your pets only like you because they rely on you for food and shelter. Yes, well done, you've shattered our illusions and we are wrong to take pleasure in anything.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:07 AM on March 2, 2012 [5 favorites]

adamdschneider: “And so on. Taste means nothing. A particular combination of stimuli releases some dopamine for you. That is the only argument to be made. There really is no such thing as a ‘good movie’. It kind of blows me away.”

So apparently Triumph Of The Will is just as good a movie as The Muppet Movie.

Yes, I just went there. It's still a valid point.
posted by koeselitz at 8:08 AM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

To put it another way, Watchmen looks like a contemporary film based on a comic book. Sin City looks like some futurist's long-form proof-of-concept of what digital comics will look like on the iPad 7.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:08 AM on March 2, 2012 [3 favorites]

I think it is fair to say that the problem with Triumph of the Will is not whether it was a well-constructed piece of cinema, though. Riefenstahl was in fact a pretty damn good film-maker. The problem is the social context in which she was making films, and for whom, and to what purpose; the repellant nature of the film doesn't really come down to "taste" in the context we're discussing here.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:15 AM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Maybe koeselitz really hated the Muppets Movie.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:20 AM on March 2, 2012 [2 favorites]

I loathed Sin City the film as much as I hated the comic book (We walked out of it halfway through), so I guess it was a very well done adaptation.
posted by empath at 8:23 AM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Taste means nothing. A particular combination of stimuli releases some dopamine for you. That is the only argument to be made. There really is no such thing as a ‘good movie’. It kind of blows me away.”

Maybe it's fully your intention to just be recklessly hyperbolic, adamschneider, but assuming you're not, you've just tossed the entire recorded history of cultural criticism, analysis, review into the rubbish bin. Which isn't to say that there isn't a plague of bad critics/reviewers/analyzers out there. But even a quick check of something like RottenTomatoes reveals that The Godfather is much loved (100%) and Battlefield Earth isn't (2%).

Those are critics numbers by the way. Normal audience types suggest a marginally less extreme division (97% vs 13%). But either way, if I knew nothing of either film, I'd be guided by the taste of others to choose one over the other. That's taste meaning something, I think.
posted by philip-random at 8:23 AM on March 2, 2012

So apparently Triumph Of The Will is just as good a movie as The Muppet Movie.

Sure, why not? Do you have any better explanation why time and again, two (or more) apparently quite literate and intelligent MeFites will get into (sometimes quite extended) arguments that boil down to:

"I like this thing."

"That thing is bad."

?

Also sex and romance are just the biological imperative to reproduce and your pets only like you because they rely on you for food and shelter. Yes, well done, you've shattered our illusions and we are wrong to take pleasure in anything.

Don't act like an ass. I'm merely commenting on our apparently endless capability to have the same argument that goes absolutely nowhere, in the starkest possible terms. When intelligent people have disagreements as fundamental on the artistic merit of certain works as I've seen here, I find it interesting and enlightening.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:25 AM on March 2, 2012

Why isn't this discussion in that thread?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:28 AM on March 2, 2012

Because that thread is about how fucking awesome the avenger's movie is going to be.
posted by empath at 8:31 AM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

So apparently Triumph Of The Will is just as good a movie as The Muppet Movie.

I genuinely have no idea which one of these is supposed to be a bad movie in this framing.
posted by running order squabble fest at 8:32 AM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Well, one of them involves The Muppet Movie not being a font of pure joy, so you can probably work backwards from there.

(Not that Triumph of the Will being bad is necessarily correct, but the idea that someone would make the alternative proposition is, frankly, too chilling to consider.)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:39 AM on March 2, 2012

I'd be guided by the taste of others to choose one over the other. That's taste meaning something, I think.

Yes, people use the taste of others (and arguments in favor of that taste) as guides all the time, and I'm not arguing that you shouldn't do that, for all the weight it would carry if I did. I'm just bemused by the apparent capacity of people to continue to have the same, basically baseless, arguments. Not people in general, even; a relatively small cadre of longstanding MeFites.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:40 AM on March 2, 2012

Languagehat: In movies, and in every other large area of our economy, there has been a sea change over the last generation. I always trot out my mother's example from the oil industry. She worked for a large oil company for her entire career (those were the days) and, during her time she watched the head honchos of the company go from being geologists and oilmen to being finance people and MBA's. This has happened everywhere and Hollywood is no exception.

Cortex: Gotta say that music singles are not equivalent to movie trailers. Game demos, I don't know enough about, but I will say that the demo for Doom would not be equivalent to a movie trailer.

Total aside to Cortex: You've mentioned video games a few times, and I think you're into them. Have you played Twisted Metal? I think I've heard you say you liked Demon's Souls. The reason I ask is that I just got a system and the games I've thought were best were those two and they both get spoken of as throw-backs, or old school games. Just curious.
posted by Trochanter at 8:42 AM on March 2, 2012

I'm sad that my apparently irreplaceable shirt bearing this logo got thrown out by mistake.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:45 AM on March 2, 2012

for some deranged, horrendous reason, the longest earworm of my entire life, and yes i am aware how utterly bizarre this sounds, is polly wolly doodle.

I'm not sure that this will make it better or worse, but here you go.
posted by thivaia at 8:48 AM on March 2, 2012

Gotta say that music singles are not equivalent to movie trailers.

Not across the board, no. Singles usually aren't fractured overtures the way trailers are. That said, they're fractional content dumps of the whole finished product (which a Tide ad is manifestly not), and from one perspective a music video single as a way to promote an album with a visual hook that is independent of the content of the rest of the album is more deceptive and emotionally manipulative than a typical edited-from-the-actual-film-footage-content film trailer. An album isn't an hour of music videos.

Game demos, I don't know enough about, but I will say that the demo for Doom would not be equivalent to a movie trailer.

They vary; some demos are really transparently communicative of the game experience in terms of tone and content and playstyle, while others are more restraining or a bit of a figleaf. I've had demoes convince me rightly to buy a game (or to not buy a game), but I haven't always ended up with the total game experience I got from that demo. A demo might be the first half hour of a really great game, or it might be the entire half hour of fun you'll end up with from the full game, say. But, yes, generally I think I get a more substantial understanding of a game from a proper demo than I do of a film from a film trailer.

But you can give away a half hour or a couple hours of a game without effectively giving away the whole thing; films run a couple hours and depend on a passive viewership and narrative surprise to work, so you can't really run a half hour preview. (And yes, some trailers are pretty terrible about respecting that whole narrative surprise thing.)

As far as games go (and I did not make this explicit earlier, sloppy writing on my part), in recent years there's been a real retraction of the traditional demo experience in the case of a lot of titles with an emphasis instead on gameplay trailers and screenshot as the media delivered to excite players. The game "demo" environment in that respect has come to more closely resemble movie trailer culture a lot of the time. And again I think this often actually less honest in representation than a theatrical trailer, because the experience of playing a game is the fundamental aesthetic bit of the medium, so watching gameplay footage (when the trailer is even gameplay footage rather than some cinematic B-roll) gives only a very shallow, peep-show sense of what it's like. Film trailers are at least giving you a more direct sampling of the actual visual product you're in for; good trailers communicate the sound and emotional tone as well. Gameplay trailers struggle with that.

So, none of this stuff is totally equivalent. They're different mediums with different trailer/demo aesthetics. But I don't think film trailers are fundamentally different from music and game advertising, or necessarily worse or less transparent.

You've mentioned video games a few times, and I think you're into them. Have you played Twisted Metal? I think I've heard you say you liked Demon's Souls. The reason I ask is that I just got a system and the games I've thought were best were those two and they both get spoken of as throw-backs, or old school games. Just curious.

I played one of the old Playstation version of Twisted Metal and wasn't too into it personally so I haven't kept up with the franchise. Demons' Souls on the other hand I am pretty fond of, yeah, along with it's recent sequel Dark Souls, and they are extremely old-school games in their tendency to be unapologetically hard and to approach the player's learning process as something the player, rather than the game, is in charge of. We were chattering about that a bit recently in a thread about Zelda on the blue, and I think the comparison to the original Legend of Zelda is a good one in that sense: here's a world, go figure out what to do, try not to die.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:01 AM on March 2, 2012

I tried playing some Demon's Souls the other night while I was kind of distracted.

-_-
posted by adamdschneider at 9:02 AM on March 2, 2012

The main difference is that when Demon's Souls tells you to try not to die, you can see it trying really really hard to keep a straight face.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:04 AM on March 2, 2012

adamdschneider: “And so on. Taste means nothing. A particular combination of stimuli releases some dopamine for you. That is the only argument to be made. There really is no such thing as a ‘good movie’. It kind of blows me away.”

To give maybe a less snide reaction to this:

People argue about art because they enjoy art, because they believe it has significance and meaning. To say "there is no such thing as a 'good movie' is to say that the movies people love most are not actually "good" – for them or for anybody else – and is to deny that movies can have any effect, good or bad, on human life. I can appreciate that you may hate movies yourself; but can you understand why others might not feel the same way?
posted by koeselitz at 9:22 AM on March 2, 2012

(I might have followed you a bit if you'd said that judgments about whether art is "good" are usually subjective, and therefore people should be more careful about arguing loudly that this is crap or that that sucks. That's a fair point. And I would also agree that people are mostly just talking about personal taste in these discussions, not about anything intrinsic to the works being discussed. But to say that there is no such thing as a good movie is to go far, far beyond a simple pronouncement about taste being subjective. It's denying the possibility that the art form can have good qualities at all. And that seems... a bit extreme to me.)
posted by koeselitz at 9:25 AM on March 2, 2012

The amusing thing about Twisted Metal is that once you strip off the horror movie, grindhouse patina, it's really most like Mario Kart.
posted by Trochanter at 9:35 AM on March 2, 2012

I might have followed you a bit if you'd said that judgments about whether art is "good" are usually subjective

This is what I meant, although I would amend "usually" to "always". I mean, it's fine to say that of course people understand that taste is subjective, but I don't think people generally really operate that way when interacting with others. I certainly don't get that impression when reading threads like this. There is a definite tone of judgment that when you get right down to it I don't see any basis for. I mean, I liked Tim Burton's Batman the last time I saw it (which was years ago), but to shakespeherian it elicits only the comment "Yick". I like Starship Troopers, Robocop and Hellboy, but according to you they are "terrible movies that suck". In fact, it was your comment that prompted me to write in the first place. It's perfectly fine to discuss what we do and don't like about art, but I don't think it's perfectly fine to act like those likes and dislikes have an objective basis, as we so often do.
posted by adamdschneider at 9:47 AM on March 2, 2012

It seems to me that most criticism starts with a basic "I like this / I do not like this" response, and the rest of it is justifying that initial reaction. And there are a zillion factors that can tip the scale from "like" to "do not like" or vice versa, some relevant to the work, some less so (in a bad mood when viewing, etc.) The part of criticism that is interesting and worthwhile, to mine eyes, is the justification part -- does the critic make a solid argument, with interesting ideas? For example, I disagree with Pauline Kael on probably 80% of her basic "like/don't like" judgments, but love reading her arguments and agree with most of what she says about a movie she hates, even if I still like the movie.

So, most of the time I do not give much of any weight to simple "like/don't like" judgments. I care about what people have to say about a film, but don't care about their basic thumbs up/down judgments. That's why I don't see much value in someone coming into a thread about a movie and just saying "I hate this" or "I love this." They might think they're communicating something meaningful about themselves and/or others, but they're not.

It's easier to forgive if they like the thing, because I'm seldom brought down by a positive statement, no matter how vacuous, but people who threadshit without adding anything substantial merely introduce negativity for no real purpose, and are a drag to read. If you do this, you're either mistakenly believing that you're contributing something useful to the thread, or you're shitting in the punch bowl out of pure spite, which is obnoxious.
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 9:54 AM on March 2, 2012

adamdschneider: “I like Starship Troopers, Robocop and Hellboy, but according to you they are ‘terrible movies that suck’. In fact, it was your comment that prompted me to write in the first place.”

Well, first of all – yes, my comment was a silly little piece of bullshit, and I don't mind people saying that it is. And I'm sorry. This is metatalk, I was being snide, but it wasn't really fair to anybody who happens to like Sin City, so I apologize.

Second of all, about that – please note that I didn't say anything whatsoever about Starship Troopers, Robocop, and Hellboy. I guess I don't know how much I liked Hellboy – it was okay – but I really like Robocop and Starship Troopers. I was dissing Sin City, and I thought I was clear about that, but apparently my snide snark wasn't even coherent on that point.

Again, sorry if any were offended.

I really hope a stupid little comment of mine doesn't suddenly mean that any and all discussion about art is suddenly pointless and should be forbidden.
posted by koeselitz at 10:02 AM on March 2, 2012

Oh, no, not at all. I, for example, love the Plinkett reviews (except the whole serial killer schtick which I consider at best a distraction). I find it interesting that he has so much to criticize about the new Star Trek movie (which I initially liked, but after thinking about for a little bit decided made no sense whatsoever, a testament to my own ability to "turn off my brain," whether I will or no) but still likes it. I don't object to art criticism or discussion as such, just bald statements of like or dislike.
posted by adamdschneider at 10:06 AM on March 2, 2012

Oh, and why I personally am not looking forward to the Avengers based on this trailer, and why I left the initial comment I did in that thread: it looks completely predictable.
posted by adamdschneider at 10:08 AM on March 2, 2012

Question for koeselitz. Do you hate Robert Rodriguez in general? Like, exceptionally so?
posted by Trochanter at 10:46 AM on March 2, 2012

> This is what I meant, although I would amend "usually" to "always". I mean, it's fine to say that of course people understand that taste is subjective, but I don't think people generally really operate that way when interacting with others. .. It's perfectly fine to discuss what we do and don't like about art, but I don't think it's perfectly fine to act like those likes and dislikes have an objective basis, as we so often do.

So you're one of those people who thinks Shakespeare is no better than [insert name of random hack here], he just has better PR? That's one of the more tiresome arrows in the postmodern quiver.
posted by languagehat at 10:57 AM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

The whole point, if such a thing can be said to exist, to postmodernism is to elevate so-called 'low' art to the same level of critical worth as so-called 'high' art-- that there's things that are inadvertently explored and expressed in even the stupidest romantic comedy that can be picked apart and examined and made interesting and insightful. That isn't the same thing as saying that nothing is any better than anything else.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:13 AM on March 2, 2012

So you're one of those people who thinks Shakespeare is no better than [insert name of random hack here], he just has better PR?

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean. Do I like Shakespeare less than [random hack]? Who is the hack? Do we even agree on that person's hack status? I like Shakespeare a lot more than, say, J.K. Rowling. You will find people for whom the reverse is true. On what basis do you tell them they are wrong to think so?
posted by adamdschneider at 11:24 AM on March 2, 2012

I like Shakespeare, but only if it's in the original Klingon.
posted by Atreides at 11:28 AM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

And so on. Taste means nothing. A particular combination of stimuli releases some dopamine for you. That is the only argument to be made. There really is no such thing as a "good movie". It kind of blows me away.

There is no such thing as a "good movie" because "good" is so generic a word as to mean utterly nothing (same with "art") but that's not to say that movies don't have drastically different impacts on different sorts of people, or that by talking about why we have certain responses to certain movies we can't figure interesting things out about ourselves.

For instance, going with what languagehat said... I find Shakespeare so inaccessible that for all I acknowledge his certain geniuses, I don't get much out of reading his plays, or even watching performances of them. He writes complex characters and beautiful language and intricate plots and funny jokes, none of which have ever struck home with me. That doesn't make his plays "bad plays", it just means that his plays fail to reach certain people who experience them in ways that we can discuss. (Does the aesthetic of language matter more than the flow? Ought the rhythms and patterns of language take precedence to the rhythms and patterns of the characters who drive the plot? Does Shakespeare favor the one over the other?)

Arguments of taste are stupid only if you accept that a person's taste says nothing about them, which I don't. That's not to say that a person's taste says everything about them, or even interesting things about them.

In this case, I dunno. I think that Joss Whedon's writing and directing styles are crappy in some ways that ruin his good qualities for me, and I get bored by superhero stories unless they're written in very specific ways. I also find "badass" things pretty boring unless they take me by surprise. Those moments in Breaking Bad where Walter White does something unexpectedly vicious take my breath away, but Hulk punching helicopters? If I want gratuitous and stupid violence I'll play Saint's Row or Grand Theft Auto.

I don't want to use the word "postmodern" to describe my thoughts about art, because "postmodern" is one of the few words that manages to mean even less than "art" does, but I think that things are only good and bad inasmuch as people decide they're good or bad, that everybody's opinion is equally valid w/r/t liking things, but that doesn't mean their opinions lack value. Shakespeare is not perfect or even necessarily good; I think he's indisputably "great", but I also think that he is vastly overvalued in the Western Canon when compared to the hundreds of other writers who have produced "great" works, and I begrudge that overvaluation for the same reason I begrudge Joss Whedon's.

(Shakespeare would have loved the shit out of Harry Potter. That's all I'm going to say about Rowling.)
posted by Rory Marinich at 11:30 AM on March 2, 2012

The less tiresome arrows in the postmodern quiver are the boxing glove arrow that makes you confront racism in turn-of-the-century sportwriting, and a boomerang arrow branded "POST-COLONIAL ANGST."
posted by griphus at 11:31 AM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Tiresome Arrows in the Postmodern Quiver is one of the Decembrists' lesser albums.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:36 AM on March 2, 2012 [2 favorites]

Arguments of taste are stupid only if you accept that a person's taste says nothing about them, which I don't.

I agree with most of what you said, Rory, but I'd like to once again make clear that I am not speaking out against discussions of art in general, just the toss-off ones that take the form, essentially, of "My taste good, your taste bad" that I see spring up here again and again.
posted by adamdschneider at 11:40 AM on March 2, 2012

I think we can all get on board with that because regardless of the validity of the underlying aesthetic philosophy, it's an informationless exchange, and what's the point?
posted by shakespeherian at 11:41 AM on March 2, 2012

Tiresome Arrows in the Postmodern Quiver is one of the Decembrists' lesser albums.

...including such accordion-accompanied songs as:

"A Shanty for Simone de Beauvoir"
"O Hail the Coming Deconstruction"
"Our Mutual Theories On Ontology (Carry Us Through The Night)"
"Requiem for Art's Sake"
posted by griphus at 11:43 AM on March 2, 2012 [4 favorites]

adamdschneider: “On what basis do you tell them they are wrong to think so?”

Shakespeare is good for the human soul.
posted by koeselitz at 12:05 PM on March 2, 2012

It's definitely possible to make an awesome comic book movie, just look at the Michael Keaton/Tim Burton "Batman."

You meant to say hamburger here, right? Because that was an unbearably execrable movie and I say this as someone who likes hilarrible Michael Bay films because they are so bad.
posted by elizardbits at 12:26 PM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

please await the publication of my monograph "Art: Can We Ignore It?"
posted by The Whelk at 12:29 PM on March 2, 2012

You meant to say hamburger here, right? Because that was an unbearably execrable movie

This is what I am talking about exactly. Now we know someone doesn't like the Tim Burton Batman movie, and nothing else.
posted by adamdschneider at 12:37 PM on March 2, 2012

At no point during that movie do I ever believe that Gotham City extends more than half a block in any direction beyond what I can see on the screen in front of me. It's a woefully inadequate attempt at creating a sense of place. For starters.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:40 PM on March 2, 2012 [2 favorites]

I am happy to have inadvertently helped you prove your point, dude, but you could also notice that the OP of that comment ALSO did not specify what it was about the movie that made him like it in the first place.

(I didn't like it because I didn't find Johnny Dangerously believable as Batman, and because compared to all of Burton's other work at the time, it seemed like a sad parody of what he was truly capable of.)
posted by elizardbits at 12:42 PM on March 2, 2012

The Burton movies are a pair of bizarrely self-conflicted messes that apparently can only conceive of Batman as the Adam West version, but still want to create this "serious Batman" they've heard so much about, and do so by layering death and spectacle and serious faces over BAM POW etc.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:45 PM on March 2, 2012 [4 favorites]

Meanwhile, Batman Returns and Batman Forever are camp masterpieces and anyone who disagrees is a communist.
posted by griphus at 12:46 PM on March 2, 2012 [2 favorites]

Whenever I get to thinking I really liked the first Batman, closer inspection shows that really, I'm thinking of Batman Returns. I watched it again in December whilst looking for new movies to add to the Christmastime list, and man, it's a much better movie than the first one, through and through.

Although it's a total glass-shattering moment when you realize that Danny Devito's Frank Reynolds of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia fame is pretty much just him being Penguin.
posted by SpiffyRob at 12:46 PM on March 2, 2012

At no point during that movie do I ever believe that Gotham City extends more than half a block in any direction beyond what I can see on the screen in front of me.

Yeah, it is pretty empty, isn't it?
posted by adamdschneider at 12:50 PM on March 2, 2012

That movie made me think that Tim Burton's idea of 'serious' only involves making everything so dark-tinted that you can't really distinguish details.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:55 PM on March 2, 2012

It is still better than the Clooney nipplesuit monstrosity.
posted by elizardbits at 12:56 PM on March 2, 2012

hey remember when Burton made funny movies?

Me neither.
posted by The Whelk at 12:57 PM on March 2, 2012

Hey, remember Crispin Glover in Alice in Wonderland?

WHAT THE FUCK TIM BURTON IT'S CRISPIN GLOVER HOW DO YOU MAKE HIM ACT BAD
posted by griphus at 12:59 PM on March 2, 2012

That movie is fucking horrible.

apologies to adamschneider
posted by shakespeherian at 1:02 PM on March 2, 2012

If we're supposed to take Batman as an attempt at Tim Burton being serious, then I think we have to include Sweeney Todd in that category as well.
posted by adamdschneider at 1:03 PM on March 2, 2012

I liked how Alice, at the end of the Burton version, goes off to start the Opium Wars.
posted by The Whelk at 1:07 PM on March 2, 2012

To touch on El Sabor Asiatico's comment, people seem to be wired to make snap judgments about things and also very good at inventing rationalizations for those snap judgments after the fact.
posted by adamdschneider at 1:19 PM on March 2, 2012

Tim Burton annoys the hell out of me on the level that, way too often, he seems to think he can make a good movie without worrying about the script. Time and again, I see his stuff (and I'm talking movies from Beetlejuice to Batman Returns to Legend of Sleepy Hollow to Planet of the Apes) where everything's in place (beautifully shot, imaginatively and EXPENSIVELY designed, well cast) ... and then there's this piddling throwaway of a screenplay, which feels pretty much made up on the spot. It's like he's the point man for the ongoing Big Hollywood Conspiracy to finally remove the writer from the creative process one and for all, because they hate hate HATE writers in Hollywood.

Edward Scissorhands was good though.
posted by philip-random at 1:22 PM on March 2, 2012 [4 favorites]

I submit that Edward Scissorhands deserves a much better fairy-tale-esque narrative than the piddly jealous-boyfriend-Edward-has-to-man-up-to-take-down one that it eventually devolves to.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:35 PM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Beetlejuice is one of those movies I have to watch if it's on despite the fact that I recite it from memory.

Ed Wood was his best movie.
posted by The Whelk at 1:38 PM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

See, this is a great conversation about why people think certain things suck and certain things are good. It's simply not true that conversations about whether art is good are devoid of information or meaning.
posted by koeselitz at 1:58 PM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm convinced that Ed Wood is the only movie Tim Burton actually cared about.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:05 PM on March 2, 2012

Ed Wood probably is his best. And for the reason you state. Although I think there's a little bit of that care in Scissorhands.

WE NEED TIM BURTON TO CARE MORE.
posted by philip-random at 2:07 PM on March 2, 2012

Or for Johnny Depp to retire.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:08 PM on March 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Maybe we need to break him of his funny hat and accent addiction
posted by The Whelk at 2:11 PM on March 2, 2012

What is acting if not a funny hat
posted by shakespeherian at 2:13 PM on March 2, 2012

It's so stimulating being your hat.
posted by The Whelk at 2:14 PM on March 2, 2012 [4 favorites]

You're interpreting me too broadly, koeselitz. What I meant was that conversations where likes and dislikes are bluntly asserted with no explanation are devoid of useful information or meaning (unless I was planning on getting you Sin City for your birthday; then these sorts of conversations could be useful indeed), because likes and dislikes bluntly stated have no objective basis and amount to nothing more than noise, leaving those who agree to nod and those who disagree to shake their heads to no purpose. I think it is extremely rare for these kinds of discussions to ever change someone's mind about a given work of art; like El Sabor Asiatico I suspect that much of the time these amount to little more than ex post facto justifications for bias or snap judgments, though I freely admit that in no particular case will I ever have evidence for this one way or the other. On the other hand, talking about reasons why we like or dislike certain things can be enjoyable in its own right and thus its own reward.
posted by adamdschneider at 2:18 PM on March 2, 2012

I definitely agree with philip-random as to Burton's lousy dialog. Sometimes it seems like he's out and out disdainful of it. The Queen's first scene in Alice is illustrative of it. "Someone has stolen two of my tarts! Was it you? Was it you? Was it you?" It just comes off so clunky. This is Lewis Carroll you're adapting, Tim. Show some respect.

The only one I'll disagree a little bit on is Sleepy Hollow. Tom Stoppard breezed through and did a brush up on that one, and I think I hear a few nice bits that managed to make it to the final cut. One nice little exchange, which I might have posted before:

YOUNG MASBATH
You think it was Katrina, don't you?

Ichabod clamps his hand over Young Masbath's mouth. He looks intently
into his eyes.

ICHABOD
That can never be uttered. Never.

Ichabod takes his hand away.

YOUNG MASBATH
A strange sort of witch! -- with a
kind and loving heart! How can you
think so?

ICHABOD
I have good reason.

YOUNG MASBATH
Then you are bewitched by reason.

ICHABOD
I am beaten down by it! It's a hard
lesson for a hard world, and you had
better learn it, Young Masbath --
villainy wears many masks, none so
dangerous as the mask of virtue.
Farewell!

I just like that bewitched by reason/beaten down by it. I tell myself it's Stoppard. Maybe not Shakespeare, but not as bad as your usual Burton. I love him visuals wise, but I've all but given up on Tim Burton because he seems to just not care a bit about language.
posted by Trochanter at 8:22 PM on March 2, 2012

This is Lewis Carroll you're adapting, Tim. Show some respect.

See and when I was saying this I meant I didn't want him to make the movie in the first place.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:30 PM on March 2, 2012

Sleepy Hollow is a fine genre picture, a better than expected hammer horror pastiche, but it was also the last time he seemed to give any amount of fuck about his movies. His recent films are lazy in every sense of the word.
posted by The Whelk at 9:45 PM on March 2, 2012

I'm currently reading about the development process for Planet of the Apes. We got lucky with that one, it could have been so much worse.
posted by Artw at 10:01 PM on March 2, 2012

Lady Van Tassel was much scarier than the headless horseman.
posted by the_artificer at 10:02 PM on March 2, 2012

Haven't got to Big Fish. How's that one?
posted by Trochanter at 10:02 PM on March 2, 2012

Hallmarky and shapeless, helped by a few good performances but it just kinda sit there and does nothing and isn't interesting enough to warrant it's existence. It foreshadows every lazy tic of Burtons later carrer.
posted by The Whelk at 10:04 PM on March 2, 2012

Lady Van Tassel

Miranda Richardson is so beautiful.
posted by Trochanter at 10:05 PM on March 2, 2012

a better than expected hammer horror pastiche

I hadn't thought about that. Interesting.
posted by Trochanter at 10:12 PM on March 2, 2012

It's the iPad of detergents, says the article.
posted by Artw at 7:24 PM on March 13, 2012

I'm currently reading about the development process for Planet of the Apes. We got lucky with that one, it could have been so much worse.

Are you reading Tales from Development Hell as well? That book is equal parts "thank the maker that didn't get made!" and "why the FUCK wasn't this made?!"
posted by zombieflanders at 7:41 PM on March 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

It's like a series of views into parallel realities that are both awful and brilliant.
posted by Artw at 8:01 PM on March 13, 2012

Yep. The name "Jon Peters" now produces (ha!) a visceral reaction of hatred and disgust every time I see it. I had to do a shot just to write it out.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:13 AM on March 14, 2012

For those who have not read it, heres an excerpt about Total Recall 2.
posted by Artw at 7:06 AM on March 14, 2012

God, I can't believe I've become the bad guy on MetaFilter, what am I going to do now? Who's going to love me? Look, Trochanter and I are on the same page: I too love comics and I love a movie that tells a good story well, but this trailer simply had nothing new or substantive to offer. Adults exposed to Hollywood would have seen this sort of succession of cliches a million times before. It's like hearing the same joke over and over again. It stops being funny at some point. How does one get excited about it? I honestly don't get it.
posted by Dragonness at 1:32 PM on March 30, 2012

Artw: "It's the iPad of detergents, says the article."

Plus they are using Savoir Adore's cover of Men Without Hats' Pop Goes the World for their latest commercial.
posted by zarq at 1:44 PM on March 30, 2012

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