This is just a thing I was thinking concerning the popular use of
premature judgment towards new movies, specifically the ones with tons of
franchise history on their back.
Judgment can work both ways. Something in
this section can look great or terrible all based on what came before it. The new Godzilla, for one, looks great in comparison to the US' ‘98 attempt. So
far, that's all that can be said from the cautiously optimistic, but as a movie
to come out in this era, will it do well? Some may already have written it off
because of more outrageous claims ("the original creators aren't
involved," "the monsters looked better as costumes,"), and to
those extreme purists, there's usually no convincing them any better.
Now with this new Ninja Turtles movie teaser out, to many it already looks horrible. No more than two minutes of the
movie was shown, and it’s already tied over hot coals. But how much of this
hatred can be said and felt with confidence, as in without the negative press
and questionable acting ability of Megan Fox attached to the movie? Or that its
producer Michael Bay has seemingly toyed with the feelings of loyalists to both
this, and the recent Transformers movies long enough? The look of the turtles
is even balancing a love/hate fence, ranging from the liking of individual
clothing tags, versus “why are they so damn huge and ugly/uglier?”
I’m not saying that the
outcry didn’t need to be done when they were first announced to be “aliens,” but
now that there’s official vision of the oncoming film, what does it take to for
the purists to put their pre-meditated critiques aside, and at least attempt to
judge it outside of themselves, and instead as an adaptation for today’s
general audience, and more open-minded fans? Even if they stayed aliens, the
top injustice would be to still give it ties to the franchise, which granted
had its multiple takes on their origins, but even then, the closest they’ve
come to being aliens is that in some versions of their story, the ooze that mutated
them was from another world. At least that would’ve been passable to (SOME of)
the core fans if that made it to the big screen.
I’m no saint in this debate, either. I went through this with the
live action Resident Evil movies, which while the first one I can still enjoy,
the others that followed were watchable to a point, until the fourth, which
started to fall in, if nothing else, directorial quality. Change the story all
you want (which they dramatically have and arguably should have), but at least
have some decent continuity flow, and limit the dramatic slowdown effects
during action scenes.
Also, just because the movies are made more for the general
audience, doesn’t mean that it should be watered down to a point where suspending
disbelief is replaced with approaching it with the same mind a child might
with the Sprout Channel.
This, like any film/TV/cartoon/game adaptation is not meant to say
that your interpretation of your beloved franchise is “wrong” in their eyes,
anymore than you feel their take of it is wrong because “no one understands
your vision of it.” Everyone has their idea of the “perfect” translation of
their ideal series, much like people had their idea of a perfect government,
religion, hell even cheese steak.
But unless you’re part of the machine that
built these objects of mass consumption into existence, or in this case, re-existence, then pray any of your
complaints towards its revision(s) match that of the angry mobs that could inspire the change you want.
Otherwise, your multi-page script rewrite/hate mail may not get past the fan
fiction realm of the internet.
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