You should do a vid on Major Winter's leadership!

VPNs are trash

We tell them what we want and they say "fuck you, you'll take what we give you" and then release what is essentially crap.

I feel confident that the showrunners and writers hate the IPs. Genuinely hate them and these recent works are proof that they took the jobs as acts of vandalism, for which they are over paid. The studios just want butts in seats while these people that have been hired are the lamest of performative activists. Literally doing the least amount of anything that can even be squinted at and pretended to be work as they hate work and people who work.

AUDIENCES AND THE FANBASE ARE SERIOUSLY RIGHT,

He got lazy which is a kind of disrespect when you are making a product. He wasn't creatively bankrupt though.

Yeah he totally respected the star wars fans when he expected us to love jar jar who he said was "the key to everything, if we don't get him right the whole thing falls apart"

No, but the fans disrespected him, which is why i believe, is the reason he sold Lucasfilm. So we fans brought this upon ourselves. I could be wrong, though.

@@shawnamiller191 At least he respected the reception Jar-Jar got, which is why Jar-Jar doesn't show up a whole lot after Episode 1. Modern Hollywood would more likely double-down on Jar-Jar if he was their creation.

I don't know, I keep imagining an aternate universe where George canonized the best parts of the EU instead of selling himself to Disney.

Agreed

Nope. It's not. The full saying is "The customer is always right." (Including the full stop at the end). People have started trotting this out recently, but it's a myth.

@pyropulseIXXI Do a little research. This is literally the example of a retcoin given in the *dictionary definition*. The articles I posted here earlier seem to have disappeared, but go ahead and find a source for "in matters of taste" that isn't Twitter and predates 1905.

@@gray_mara You're wrong. Full stop.

@@haljordan777 There are hundreds of articles from dictionaries to Forbes magazine saying I'm right. You can believe I'm wrong, but that makes you an idiot. I don't mind if idiots think I'm wrong. I tried posting links three times, but apparently you can't post links on KZfaq without getting marked as spam. But feel free to do your own research.

​@@haljordan777 He's right. It's always the customer is always write. The new version is just revisionism.

If we're being honest, I think there really is a decided preference for people to see themselves up on screen. While Wonder Woman was a great movie with a great female lead, it still trailed behind the male lead movies of the same genre for a reason. Sure, men liked both but I think it's still accurate to say male audiences prefer male leads.

@@gunkulator1 I'm a woman and I mostly prefer male leads, although I suppose that might be because so many of the female leads are annoying. But when I'm watching fantasy or science fiction or any movie, I don't need to see myself there. I watch movies to escape from the world, not so I can bring the world with me.

Look how popular Game of Thrones is, and how tough many of the female characters are. And those characters are LOVED. The problem is Wokesters are completely incompetent writers.

@@velocitor3792 Define woke. Also, you might want to check out the politics of George R R Martin if you're so convinced "wokesters" - whatever that is - are completely incompetent writers.

​@@gunkulator1 There may certainly be an expectation driven by biology to favour male leads where action is involved. Wonder Woman wasn't trailing male leads, at least when we consider DC films. Look at 2013 to 2019 Man of Steel - $668 million box office on a budget of ~$240 million. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - $873 million on a budget of ~$280 million. Suicide Squad (2016 film) - $748 million on a budget of $174 million. Wonder Woman - $823 million on a budget of $149 million. Justice League - $658 million on a budget of $300 million. Aquaman - $1.152 billion on a budget of $180 million. I left out Joker as it wasn't a Snyderverse film, but it was the single most profitable film of the period. Of the six Synderverse films, two were female led and were in second and third places in terms of profitability. Aquaman was the surprise hit, as were Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad due to these being lower value characters. Batman and Superman had mixed performances. Certainly the Suicide Squad sequel, Woman Woman 1984, and Birds of Prey flopped, some impact from the virus of unknown origin and/or being sub-par.

Definitely planning a follow up video! I definitely want to address the issue with a bit more care and nuance.

You've absolutely hit the nail on the head here. George Takei said it recently when the new Star Trek movies made Sulu gay. He said that his character in the original show was heterosexual, and that if you want to diversify the cast then don't bend the existing characters to fit the mold otherwise it looks shallow and I'll conceived. Write new and intriguing characters that stand on their own merits if you want to diversify. Stop being so scared of original content and characters! You know what's an incredible movie? Everything Everywhere All At Once! An original concept and plot with a diverse cast of characters that didn't rely on existing IP to tell an incredible story.

@@Spam1192What your describing is Film art bumping up against Film business. Inherently Film is about experimentation and creating new things, but than thats constantly having to fight against the money-men who by and large only care about next-quarter earnings. Why risk a loss when you can just make it another super-hero insert, people will go to those regardless right if it has something to do with Captain America right? I can honestly picture the pitch meetings now.

@@gwell2118 There is another layer to this in the codependent relationship between the corporate heads and the artists, through their unions. Where the party holding the capital always wants to play it safe, yet the "creative" side is just as risk averse in not wanting to spend their own capital to bring their vision to life. The creativity is stagnated by everyone involved trying to ensure a big payday, rather than make compelling art.

​@@SpiralKingScorchPerhaps to an extent but the truth most artists don't have the capital in a lot of cases to finance a film, set up distribution and market it to a wider audience. Its why a lot of self-financed films tend to have smaller "indie" screenings but are often unknown to wider audiences. Greed honestly has very little to do in most cases from the creative side since in most cases the suits hold the real power. In addition to that most film production is heavily leverage by existing organizations that often try to squeeze out newbies. Honestly I would have preferred if Greed was the main issue from creative side, as that can be more easily addressed. Not systemic issues within the industry itself.

Eowyn is a poor example. She is a lone heroine in a veritable sea of male heroes. LOTR is a heavily heavily male story. Eowyn is the proverbial exception that proves the rule.

@@gunkulator1 then it's a good example

Not to mention ~twrking- 🤢 makes me extremely uncomfortable as someone under the ace umbrella. I don't need to see someone's rear shoved in my face. I did not consent to that. So glad I didn't see the movie/show. Whatever it is

Arcane, too. The protagonists are rivalling sisters, & that didn't stop us from loving it. I disagree with this dude implying gender's more important than good writing. Even in the past, we had films like Alien and Kill Bill. Gender isn't a problem, but _part_ of the problem is men and Hollywood writers alike thinking superficially of girls: vapid feminism, girl-bossery, and disliking men. What we're seeing isn't stuff that appeals to girls, it's BAD WRITING. I'll give you more iconic "girl-centered" media we loved: Mean Girls, The Powerpuff Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bones, Totally Spies, Kim Possible... and these are just what I liked. Both sexes are human at the end of the day. How hard is it to comprehend that?

@@spaghetto9836 its not only hollywood males writing women being problematic, sometimes the writer is a woman and still manages to somehow write the most unlikeable character ever, almost feeling like they wanted to make some reverse roles revenge powerfantasy rather than making something good But yeah i can agree that there are many actually good shows and movies that usually fall under the "girlpower" genre, those older movies back in the day where girls win a sport event not because "girls can do it too" but because the story needs a good ending

Now that the movie is out, what do you think about it?

Undeniably true. When I was younger (and I'm only 27), Hollywood still carried a real sense of prestige that it simply no longer does, and as MS pointed out, one of the main reasons for this is they started making films for some theoretical audience they *wanted*, rather than for the audience they actually had. There are plenty of other reasons, of course, but it's evident to me that people don't look at Hollywood as fondly as they used to.

I sometimes question what caused the first domino to fall. Like if there were talented people in Hollywood before, where did they go??

I think I get it. And I agree with the TL;DR. ^_^ For how I view it and to expand on the TLDR idea, I think the relatability doesn’t really stop at the characters attributes. And I don’t really think that having a character be a blank slate for anyone to insert themselves into is the right way to approach relatability. I think what really makes or breaks a good character for someone is them going through something that can really be universally understandable. That Luke and Vader example was one of my favorites you mentioned! I think it’s empathy that might be the correct term that should be mentioned along with relatability for what makes or breaks a memorable character to someone. Mainly because I know not every single person has the exact same experiences in life. And I know an audience’s mileage may vary on those two words and which character they apply to depending on who you ask. But I think aside from characteristics, it’s also the emotional journey that a story has to get right for a character in order to have them be memorable to someone.

The Star Wars sequel trilogy clearly suffers from not being planned out. Lucas knew where he was eventually going with the story in 1977. Eps 7, 8 and 9 are a disjointed mess. Ideas are introduced, then abandoned, then reintroduced (Rey's parentage). It's just very sloppy and obviously off the cuff writing.

The reason is quite simple. Now hollywood hires based on skin color, gender and sexual preferences, not based on actual skill.

Some time around the early naughties, I noticed that style-over-substance movies were increasingly praised for their style and given a free pass for their lack of substance. Fast forward twenty years, and it seems that trend wasn't stopped before it wrecked the ability of Hollywood writers to maintain narrative continuity.

So, if I had to rewrite this video, I would phrase things a bit differently. Hollywood seems to have gotten it into their heads that simply HAVING a female lead is enough, so they don't bother to make her an actual character. Case in point, like you said, Captain Marvel. Yes, male audiences do just mostly want GOOD characters, but the deluge of new female leads in a male-dominated genre indicates that Hollywood wants something the audience doesn't. No one (well, mostly no one), is clamoring for MORE female characters, but rather for BETTER characters. I stated things far too simplistically in the video and for that I apologize.

@@master_samwise You don't owe any apologies for the beginning of a thesis of what went wrong.. Trust me, I've heard worse ways of stating things. Someone has to play the opening card so the game can commence, even if they lose the trick. And someone has to throw out an idea for discussion to commence or we're never going to talk about stuff. :) I'm not 100 percent sure you're correct in your assessment specifically of Marvel movies (DC doesn't seem to be doing the same thing. Marvel is putting out all the female leads). While it's possible that your theory is correct, to me it seems more like Mavel painted itself into a corner. They could attempt to reboot their entire cinematic universe. But from where they were sitting at the end of End Game, that probably looked like flushing money down the toilet. They wanted to keep going. So what did they have to keep going with? The previous success really rested on the backs of the Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man movies. They were sort of the pillars the Avengers rested on (I love Guardians of the Galaxy, but they're kind of off to the side doing their own team thing.). Now Iron Man is dead and Cap is retired (and Black Widow is dead, and Hawkey is retired). Hulk's story is pretty much over and resolved if anyone cared. Going forward, they have Ant Man, Dr. Strange, and Black Panther to be the new Pillars of another 3 stages of Avenger movies. And not really much of a team around them. The logical thing to do is have sidekicks assume the mantels. And they have characters already designed to plug those holes. Falcon becomes cap (and Cap is now race-swapped), Kate Bishiop becomes Hawkeye (and Hawkeye is gender swapped). RiRi becomes Ironman and so he's gender swapped and race swapped. She hulk takes over for Hulk and he's gender swapped. And then to make things worse for marvel, Chadwick Boseman tragically dies, and so he has to be replaced earlier than anticipated, and Black panther gets gender swapped. That is how it is in the comics. So they did a lot of race and gender representation swapping all at once. But they were kind of forced into it because of the previous 22? movies. Maybe they have an agenda. I'm not going to tell you they don't after what's happened with The Little Mermaid and Snow White at Disney. But Marvel likely would have done the same thing in the MCU no matter what just because that was the way the sidekicks were set up. Or at least that's my limited undersanding of what was going on in Marvel comics. My further understanding of what was going on with the sidekicks specifically at Marvel is a combination of bad writing and over-saturation. There were simply too many TV shows, and while most of the first year was pretty good, the following years were awful and there was just too much of it. They also came up with this idea of the "mantal" where people are just there to watch a specific set of superpowers, and not actual characters. So, like, I was disappointed to have Sam, a counselor who works with other vets, to suddenly not being doing his counseling job. I would have been interested in that. That's who he was. And it makes him different than Steve, who was a career soldier who really wanted to be a perfect soldier. They have different personalities outside of the racial differences and that makes them interesting. But that's not really what we got. Also, let's add in some formulaic movie writing that was beginning to be visible. Look at the Black Widow movie. There's a scene where Yelena and Natasha meet again for the first time in forever, and they fight. Tell, me, why are they fighting? I've seen spies and assassins who are old friends fight before. It happens in movies. Sometimes, it's because they don't trust each other, but that's not it. Sometimes it's because they want to one up each other as part of their relationship, but that's not it. Sometimes they're just so good at their jobs they get extremely playful about the weapons and tools of the trade, but that's not it. And they're not actually angry to the point of fighting with each other. They just fight because the script says they need a fight scene here. It doesn't actually make sense for these two characters to fight. People are also getting immune to green screen effects. In Quntumania, I can see the sound stage under the effects. It's this big echoing space with walls. But that's a differnt but related issue in terms of quality. Anyway, all of that is very specific to Marvel. But Marvel is pretty much half of all superhero films. The problem always was that the only other option was to reboot, and maybe that leaves them with no MCU when they're done. Unless there's some other direction you think they could have gone in? Because the Halo stuff: I agree and they don't understand the universe, clearly. And the stuff on the Rings of Power?" Also pretty clear they don't understand the universe and didn't even try. But the overall problem seems to be buying franchises, which essentially means buying a specific canon, and not actually liking the canon that they bought. And they seem to look at it more as buying an audience, without realizing that the audience only exists because of the canon. And I'm going to stop writing an essay now. Some people don't like that, I know. I don't really think you're wrong about there being agendas. But I think people are focusing in on agendas so much because the writing isn't good enough to distract you from them. Some writing never could be good enough. But sometimes you get Morgan Freeman playing a red haired Irishman in Shawshank Redemption and pretty much no one cares because everything else is on point, and Mrogan Freeman is good in the part.

@@jenniferhanses I really like this take. I also think you make a good point at the start that a video creator can be wrong, but that’s not something bad or something that requires apology. It’s good to think things through and start a discussion. We all benefit from hearing multiple opinions. Maybe it was just bad luck/timing with all of the replacements, but the bigger issue is replacing at all and not caring much about the quality of your stories. Thanks for your thoughts!!

The more I think about it, the less I'm sure. See, I too enjoyed Arcane and Wonder Woman. I didn't mean to insinuate it was a failure, just not as successful as it maybe could have been. And yet, those were new characters, not replacements for existing ones. And they were well written. And yet, if the MCU (or whatever nerdy franchise) were to be dominated by well-written female characters, I have a hard time believing it would perform anywhere near as well as pre-phase 4 MCU. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe male audiences really don't care, I don't know. Is the main problem bad writing? Yes, absolutely. I should have been clearer about that. But do guys not want to mostly see other guys as action/fantasy/sci-fi heroes? I mean, you might not care, I might not care, but does the general population of men care? I would think so.

I would half agree. Women leads are ok to male audience as long as there are also male leads to be found too. Gender swaps, otoh, are annoying and patronizing to your audience. Samwise has the right take on these. The audience gets attached to their heroes and doesn't want to see them discarded in a callous fashion. It's particularly insulting when the new version is shown to be better at everything than our beloved hero.

@@gunkulator1 point taken, but why is it specifically a male audience when just as many woman part take in social media consumption? Why is it only about men and not women? Why must women be subjicated to a growing list of indulging male leads over woman leads? Why is there not as much woman lead shows for women? Why is it geared towards men (always)? Why must both parties be forced to part take in shows with good male leads but crappy female ones? It seems very sexist and one sided and I think its the way Hollywood sets everything up to cater towards men only while pretending to care about the female audience it purposely insults over and over with these bad female leads. Because at this point its less of good quality writing and more of a "male leads" are better than female ones.

@@daisyphinney1038The male lead thing is highly genre dependent. As Samwise tells us, the audience for comic book and superhero movies is mostly men, therefore Hollywood would be smart to cater to that audience. It's not sexist that men and women have different tastes and viewing habits. Turn on daytime television and you'll see dozens of programs geared largely towards women because that's who the audience is. You can decry these differences all you want but they still exist and the smart money is on recognizing how best to appeal to the audience you have.

@@daisyphinney1038 This is anecdotal, but in my family, there are four of us who enjoy scifi and fantasy: three of my brothers and myself. My mother and my three sisters love romance novels. My dad prefers westerns and thrillers. There is some overlap in preferred genres, but when it comes to scifi and fantasy, I'm the outlier in enjoying it along with my brothers. The plain fact is that more men than women enjoy those genres and so it makes sense to cater to an audience that will be predominantly male. Women may be part of social media, even a majority part, but when you're talking about entertainment, as gunkulator said, it's about the genre and you can't treat every genre as if it has the same audience. Rom-coms are almost exclusively the domain of a female audience. Mysteries and thrillers will probably have the most overlap, and scifi/fantasy is predominantly male, even if there are women who enjoy it, like myself. Women don't have to be ignored to be successful, but catering to them at the expense of the male audience is setting yourself up for failure.

Men want good characters, of course. But would Lord of the Rings be the classic it is if all the heroes were heroines? We can certainly appreciate characters of both genders (and whatever alien species), but ultimately we are going to relate most to characters who are more similar to us, and thus enjoy their stories more. Example: The Barbie Movie.

​@@master_samwiseLord of the rings would have to be a different type of legend if the characters were all heroines. But as a woman, I don't want lord of the rings but all women. There's already women in lord of the rings. I'd want a different story with similar themes or values, with a similar amount of epic honor and valor, and I'd want the women to be distinct and well-crafted characters. Also, I'd want the story to actually deliver on the premise, whatever it is. This kind of vibe was actually what attracted me to stories like Seirei no Moribito and Yona of the dawn. What I want, most of all, is a good story. Sometimes I want a story where the protagonist is a woman, sure. But if all the women protagonists are terrible I'd rather take the good story. What I think is that people need to learn that writing woman protagonists is honestly not rocket science and doesn't need to have special fanfare, and I want people to start making creative new stories again. Because right now, fanfiction is cornering the market and anime and manga is looking better than comics and movies. And I think that's kinda lame. Maybe women are less picky than men about this kind of thing and just care less about the gender of the protagonist. But I don't really think that's the case. I think women and men are equally able and willing to see a protagonist of the opposite gender, it's just that male protagonists tend to get written better and we're all more accustomed to them. Basically it's a skill issue. I honestly think writers and directors can do better.

​@@master_samwiseLord of the rings would have to be a different type of legend if the characters were all heroines. But as a woman, I don't want lord of the rings but all women. There's already women in lord of the rings. I'd want a different story with similar themes or values, with a similar amount of epic honor and valor, and I'd want the women to be distinct and well-crafted characters. Also, I'd want the story to actually deliver on the premise, whatever it is. This kind of vibe was actually what attracted me to stories like Seirei no Moribito and Yona of the dawn. What I want, most of all, is a good story. Sometimes I want a story where the protagonist is a woman, sure. But if all the women protagonists are terrible I'd rather take the good story. What I think is that people need to learn that writing woman protagonists is honestly not rocket science and doesn't need to have special fanfare, and I want people to start making creative new stories again. Because right now, fanfiction is cornering the market and anime and manga is looking better than comics and movies. And I think that's kinda lame. Maybe women are less picky than men about this kind of thing and just care less about the gender of the protagonist. But I don't really think that's the case. I think women and men are equally able and willing to see a protagonist of the opposite gender, it's just that male protagonists tend to get written better and we're all more accustomed to them. Basically it's a skill issue. I honestly think writers and directors can do better.

​@@master_samwiseThat's not a good example I think because women were often underestimated at that time and all through the end of the 20th century. So that they were all men helped worked better than if they were all female, but that's because women-led stories had less spotlight and less attention overall. The symptom of living in a male-dominated society. This idea today has been twisted by some nutjobs, but it's still a real symptom of the type of sexism that used to exist. But even without that, having a preference for the gender you see on screen is also a taught behaviour, not something "natural" (that's a loaded word in itself). Kids don't discriminate between genders until they are taught to do so (either through media or other forms of exposure, or either by being directly taught concepts like "boys and girls don't play together"). So I would argue that there is immense value in exposing kids to media with a wide variety of people as heroes. Not because that's what they want to see, but because that's how you build this kind of wants. That's why I always dislike statements of fact like "men want to see men on screen because that's who they are", because is completely misses the real problem behind that: why is that ? It's technically true. But it doesn't even begin to unpack the topic. So taking it as an absolute truth of nature feels very wrong to me. It feels like a complete misunderstanding of the difference between instinctual behaviour and taught behaviour.

@@master_samwiseSailor Moon was a team of 5 superhero girls and is still getting remakes decades later. The first Wonder Woman movie did great. I loved Batman Returns just because of Catwoman. And there’s the Miraculous fan base, and Owl House.. the market for female heroes is out there. But the big studios rarely get it right.

Have you seen the podcast with the Rings of Powers creators? I don't remember if it was there or in one of the other interviews where they said no one would believe someone claiming to be an envoy of the Valar, nevermind that it took Annatar decades to manipulate the elves. But this is emblematic of their atitude about adapting LOTR, they have such little care for the source material and for pleasing the fanbase, they were picking and choosing which parts to keep and which to change with such arbitrary criteria, it's not like they were selecting it based on what would be easier to adapt to the screen like Jackson did, they changed the source material to best serve *their* story. They also said Rings of Power was going to be "the story Tolkien never wrote", you're damn right Tolkien would never write something like that. It's like they believe the source material and the fans exist to serve them when the opposite is true. Other people already talked about this here in this comment section but the problem is that they had their own story to tell and zero confidence that it would be sucessful unless it was attached to an IP with a pre-existing fanbase. If I could describe Rings of Power in one word I think it would be "lazy", they have no confidence in their own original story but full confidence that with the Tolkien name they'll be sucessful, and they want our praise and money for having a work ethic like this. I thought the Netflix adaptations proved it best, don't adopt the name of an existing franchise unless you're committed to honoring everything that franchise stood for.

When *I* heard about Rings of Power being produced, I was immediately filled with a sense of dread and disgust, because I knew that Hollywood had been chomping at the bit for YEARS to finally blackwash and desecrate Tolkien's Legendarium. Ever since Jackson's trilogy became so successful with ZERO non-White actors in the principal roles, certain Hollywood types have been seething and biding their time until the day they could finally "diversify" Tolkien and re-make his world for "modern audiences". Master Samwise (OP) said he's not quite comfortable with saying that these writers hate their audience, but I am. They utterly despise the people who loved Tolkien's works as they are, especially if those people happen to be White, straight men. Sooooo many ruinous decisions these contemporary writers, producers, directors, etc. make are specifically made with the intention to spite that particular demographic, which also just so happens to be the single largest fan demographic in the West - their primary/target market. Lo and behold, I was correct, and it was somehow even worse than I anticipated. It does feel rather satisfying to say "I told you so" to all the sycophants who insulted people like me for correctly predicting the trajectory of the show, but I really wish I'd simply been wrong. The sad reality is that Jackson's trilogy could not be made in today's Hollywood. Full stop. The entire industry is deeply sick.

@@alexcallender No one cares about the skin color of the actors in fantasy or Sci-fi when the writing is actually good. But that's the problem, writers now think that as long as they put minorities in prominent positions we are going to excuse all flaws in the project, this leads to minorities being put in horribly produced media which leads to people associating Minorities with bad quality, and when people start complaining about the low quality everyone defaults them as - ists or - phobes and that gives writers more confidence that as long as they put minorities in their work they don't need to worry about anything else and the vicious cycle continues. Weirdoes who blister whenever PoC or women appear in roles previously held by white males DO exist, but they alone are not enough to make anything bomb, because obviously poc and women exist as well and they also want good media. Minorities shouldn't have to choose between appearing in bad media or not appearing anywhere, writers need to put actual work in their projects and stop blaming the audience when they're called out for their laziness.

@@Prototype-357 It's worth noting that all these ist-ophobe accusations are limited exclusively to Western productions. No one ever complains that all the actors in a Bollywood movie are Indian, for example.

@@Calvinosaur I don't know if India specifically is a good comparison, it IS the most diverse country in the world with thousands of cultures and ethnicities existing side by side, with all the good and bad that brings. I don't know how indian media treats their minorities. There is prejudice everywhere in the world and they all have particular challenges to deal with, I know that because I live in south america and we have these problems too because of completely different factors than the US. As I see it the problem in the US is that the people in charge of studios only like to *pretend* that they care about representation as long as it's convenient and they go about it without considering what would be best in the long-term. Is it really wise to call attention to the fact your movie or tv show has a strong female in it? Like she's special because she can beat up guys and not because of anything else? I feel like the time where that was innovative in media passed and it should be normalized at this point, isn't representation in media supposed to serve real life by normalizing minorities in good social positions? How are you gonna normalize something in the minds of people when you act like it's such an unique thing everytime it happens? On the internet I see POC living in the US complaining about the type of representation that makes white people pity them all the time, the whole point of feminism and representation is equality isn't it? So just treat them with all the virtues and flaws of white people, start acting like black people in positions of power is normal and just natural to the world, cause we've already had a black President of the States. The things they do are usually only one step away from virtue signaling and come across as so insincere to me, a really famous example is Finn's character in the Star Wars sequels, after Force Awakens lots of people got the vibe he and Rey were gonna be a romance subplot and people were genuinely excited to see what they would do with an ex-storm trooper who joined the the resistance and the Jedi, and what happened in The Last Jedi? Instead of having the black male character getting with the white girl protagonist they sidelined him and gave him a love interest that was also a minority and pushed the white girl into the arms of the white guy villain who has been trying to kill her. Anyone who's seen the chinese posters for the sequel trilogy knows what the execs thought of Finn. And they expect our praise and call us -ists when we complain, they are projecting imo.

Well, in regards to quality, yes.

However, star wars in particular might not have become as much of an icon. Even though it was the masterful storytelling, revolutionary effects and much more that elevated it to a classic. Having a female Luke would probably have done nothing to change that. However, a female Han Solo (that keeps the exact personality as the male one)... might have caused the movies to be seen a bit differently by the public in the seventies and eighties. It might have made it even more revolutionary tho. But this is just especulation with not much examination, feel free to correct me, this is a very interestin discussion

well it's mostly subjective to the viewer, i can agree with this sentiment. but even then, not all male leads are ment to appeal to men alone just as some female leads aren't.

I’m a woman so I don’t know the answer to the question exactly. But for those of you men who prefer to have a male hero a majority of the time, why go you think that is? Why do you really want to be able to relate to that character as a member of your own sex? Im not asking this out of judgement. I’m really genuinely curious. The guys I know do tend to be a bit pickier about female characters even if there are some they like. And they do prefer majority male heroes. That’s fine. It’s a preference not a moral thing one way or the other. As a woman who absolutely loves LoTR, Star Wars, superheroes etc, I don’t find I need to relate to a main character to enjoy the story. I enjoy a great well written female hero but I’m honestly just as fond of many male heroes. I think there are movies out there (like Barbie) that more women enjoy than men (as it is heavily about the female experience) but I think I that again is part of men being pickier. I enjoy very masculine heavy stories about uniquely masculine experiences (ex: Band of brothers). Interested to hear the male outlook on this.

Not being a man, it's hard for me to say who men relate to better on average, but I will say my husband really liked the lead(s) in Arcane, and he has many of the same critiques you do where Wonder Woman is concerned. He told me when he saw it with his older sister, who grew up on the Linda Carter series, it was so clearly incredibly meaningful to her, and he understood/appreciated that, but he also felt at the same time like Gadot's Wonder Woman was sort of a Mary Sue. And I can see that. (It doesn't help that Gadot is... not the world's greatest actor.)

Hey that comparison is insulting to Mother Gothel since in my opinion she is a well written character and a great example of gaslighting to teach kids of unhealthy relationships with people.

LOL sorry

I think he is pointing out the majority new female heroes as a symptom of the larger problem. I totally agree with you though.

Bro u said what I was searching the comments for really well. Hollywood has an annoying tendency to think that all audiences want is to see a woman-ish figure to vaguely fit where a man once stood and to call that a win and “progess in equality”(!!??!), when in actuality surprise surprise people want well developed and emotionally relatable characters to fill original and creative roles, where they tackle obstacles that are new and exciting to follow along with. but instead audiences get genderswaps and “girl power” moments, with the thought that “thats enough no need to develop anymore we’ve hit that checkbox”. It’s not necessarily a matter of men not being interested in female characters, because gender doesn’t tend to make a persons whole identity, contrary to what hollywood seems to believe. It’s a matter of men not being able to identify with a personality-devoid female character taking the place of where a man “could and normally would be”, and the writers thinking that “hey because a man would generally be in this role and weve put a woman instead this is enough to be her entire character!” Women audiences then by proxy are not interested because of the same reason, another shallow femme fatale character. These female characters are then gonna compete against a man who actually doesn’t even exist in this world but idea that he could be taking her place exists in ours, so she’s gonna defy that and that’s what makes her a /good strong female character/” This was so long and rambly but I hope that makes any sense, anyways class comment u said some points really really well 👌👌🫡🫡😄

Excellent point! It is not about the specific identities of a character; it is about the delivery and writing of that character.

Did you ever read anything from the Arcane Ascension series?

If you want a show that does a masterful job at doing representation properly, "The Chosen" is the one to look at. Dallas Jenkins and his team researched who would have been living in First Century AD Israel---which meant researching the various ethnic group who were living in--or at least passing through---that part of the Roman Empire.

@@TheMichaellathrop No I didn't. I wouldn't be the first to admit I have no idea about League of Legends lore or stories 😭

@@FaeFactor Arcan Assension has nothing to do with League of Legends, the first book is called Sufficiently advanced magic

I want cool female characters too! If I could rewrite my script, I would probably assert that it's not so much the desire for female leads in the MCU or wherever, but rather the impatience, the need to jam new female characters into the story without taking the time to make sure that A) they are good characters and B) they will resonate with the existing audience.

@@master_samwise In that regard that actually could be a good subject for a follow-up video. Take the stuff you would have preferred to say in this video and expand it and better elaborate into a new video. Such as what is Hollywood doing wrong right now and explain why female leads aren't inherently the issue (lack of set-up, being too aggressive with them replacing existing leads, not taking chances with original female characters etc).

Tbf the Witcher hadn’t really gotten that egregious at the time this video was released iirc… most of the information about the material being changed is stuff that was still upcoming at the time

Hell even something seasons 6-13 of Red Vs. Blue, a comedy fan made webseries, felt more in line with Halo. They had a really interesting story going on that ran parallel to the main one and how different sub factions of humanity and even some elites were vying for power post war.

Amazon never would have risked a billion dollars on unknown IP. Note that the full name of the show is "The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power". The first part is there to draw people in. The biggest studio risk in recent times was HBO risking 50-60 million on GRRM's relatively unknown Game of Thrones, a very small fraction of ROP's budget.

I see your point, and I absolutely love Anime (& hope toxic Western elements never manage to meaningfully penetrate the Japanese entertainment industry), but you can't really replace Hollywood, IMO. It makes me sad that we'll never be able to get movies like Jackson's LOTR trilogy ever again.

@@alexcallender You can replace Hollywood, if you want to. Thinking that you can't is their power. We live in the Golden Age of JRPGs, so many elite titles coming out every year. If you're a gamer, and a JRPG fan, like I am, there's no reason to turn to Hollywood ever again. I bought the Legend of Nayuta just the other day, it was a JRPG from 2010 that was finally released in the west. I had intended to buy it just to support the western release and I had no intention to play it until later. I started playing it, I was completely hooked, and I can't put it down. A week, and 20+ hours of gameplay later, I'm still hooked. Can't remember the last time a Hollywood product hooked me like that. Turning to Hollywood because you have no other option is a choice. Vote with your wallet and leave. You'll be happier.

But, Tokyo is the capital of Japan… Seoul is the capital of South Korea.

To be fair ignoring the source material has worked great before once in western media in terms of the How To Train Your Dragon series. (But this is just a singular exception and what you said obviously still applies)

Same for live-action historical dramas in Japan. The writing is mostly good, the costumes / sets look period accurate and not, ya know, black leather everywhere and people wearing corsets without a chemise like western "period dramas".

@@BananaWasTaken I'm in the small minority of people who feel betrayed by the How to Train Your Dragon movies and now I boycott them 😆 I watched the first one long ago and saw that the only details kept from the books were names and the fact that there are dragons. As a die-hard HtTYD book series fan, I just can't bring myself to watch or enjoy the movies [even though they are probably good]

You bring up a Good point on adaptations however out of all the anime and manga you decided to bring up in a medium filled with stories like Berserk, Chainsaw Man, One Piece and Fullmetal Alchemist you bring up Demon Slayer which despite having some great animation and a nice art style has the same writing quality at worse as a modern Star Wars film.

@@edgyhipster996 Because out of those series, I only liked one piece, I read the chainsaw man manga and its decent, but the story behind demon slayer is actually quite good, one of the best in my opinion

And was clearly still traumatized by his GoT death

I'd argue that most writers *DO* in fact know what their audiences want; they simply look down on us and think they know better. That's a huge component of the "writing for the audience they wish they had rather than the audience that actually exists" phenomenon. It's not that they don't know what we like, it's that they consider themselves enlightened higher beings who are morally superior to us, and we're just racist, sexist, misogynistic, transphobic, x-ist, x-phobic bigots, and of course many of us have "white privilege", so we need to be taken down a peg or two. The last thing these writers want to do is create something that the evil "deplorables" might actually enjoy and resonate with, because by the Leftist laws of guilt-by-association, that might implicate the writers as x-ist, x-phobic bigots. It's all a vicious cycle of spite, genuine contempt, and conspicuous virtue signaling, and unfortunately, despite overwhelmingly poor reviews and regular financial underperformance, they're often rewarded for it regardless through cancerous ESG initiatives and approval from the vocal minority of like-minded sycophants. So yeah, all that is to say: though there is certainly incompetence abound, they do in fact know what we want, and they're legitimately driven more by contempt/malice than incompetence or simple ignorance.

I appreciate the honest feedback. Maybe I shouldn't have led with that, as it wasn't intended to be the "central premise" of the video but rather an example of how Hollywood is out of touch. It also likely would have been wise to note more clearly that those movies/shows have been failing mostly because the leads, male or female, are just written poorly. I do genuinely believe that the gender-swapping is a symptom of Hollywood's dissonance, but I certainly could have spent more time explaining how the real issue lies with them assuming that fans will love any leading man or lady they shove into spandex and don't bother caring about the actual writing. Again, thank you for being straight up with me.

I don’t think that is his main point. I believe he is pointing out the push of female protagonists as a symptom of a larger writing problem. It’s not the female protagonists that are the problem (as he points out in a different video) it’s the intention behind them.

You're not wrong. There's a reason I don't make these types of videos often. This was more about emotional release than anything else.

I would argue that forced gender swapping leads to badly written characters. If you're obsessed with a certain gender, you're probably not expending the same level of energy actually thinking out their arcs. But yeah, I could have formatted this one better and spent more time with the script. Sometimes you have to make mistakes to get better, ya know? Appreciate the honest feedback.

Especially when movies and TV shows try to do it for you (and, ironically, usually get their takes objectively wrong)

I don't pretend to know all the machinations of Hollywood, but if you ask me, you're responsible for the product you create, even if you did it at the behest of someone else. I haven't heard anything in the writers' strikes about them wanting more creative control, so assumedly that's not an issue and they're perfectly happy creating this stuff. Rings of Power for example. The writers were the showrunners. They had (as far as I know) total creative control and they still dropped the ball hard.

I think there's still plenty of creativity in Hollywood, studios just aren't willing to take a risk on them. Three projects come to mind: Amphibia, The Owl House, and Inside Job. Three insanely inventive and unique shows. Of course, two of them were cancelled before their time because fucking Hollywood, but you get my point. There's still creativity in Hollywood, it's just super stifled.

sex-swapping of characters was called out, but I'm a little surprised race swapping wasn't.