Stealing From the Next Generation

[sszebra]

I disagree, kind of. My childhood memories of fiction were always better when they weren't dumbed down for me. I loved cartoons like Batman the animated series because they usually were darker and more interesting. Instead of the typical cartoons of the generation that were riddled with unnecessary censorship and propaganda.

 

[Superior Mind]

Fair point. Some things remain unchanged though. I for one am looking forward to Toy Story 3. My seven year-old self is cackling with glee.

 

[Shadeovblack]

The next time you find yourself looking on some less-than-R-rated vestige of nerdity-past and wishing it could be more mature

I can honestly say I've never done this.

 

[HappyDD]

Wicked article MB.

O ya, and what is all this about the Watchmen character name change business? They had other names before, that were more gritty? Someone fill me in so I don't look like a total loser next time I try to talk to comic people.

 

[TheRocketeer]

MovieBob, I notice you mention The Venture Brothers. Are you a fan?

I think it's one of the most brilliantly-written shows on television, and it's tended only to get better as it has developed. It's one of two shows on TV I'd honestly claim to be a fan of.

 

[For.I.Am.Mad]

I...agree with MovieBob? Hey, I got a perfect example of what you're talking about. Brightest Day. Jesus H Christ, dude gruesomely beats his/her family to death. Black Manta kills 3 people because the TV 'mentions' Aquaman, the hell? OK, I get it, these guys are bad guys. In fact DC writing is getting creepier and weirder by the day.

 

[solidstatemind]

I think a lot of you are missing the point with your 'Bob bashing the hardcore again...' accusations. I saw nothing in the article where he said that Hardcore was stupid or whatnot, what I got out of it was, in essence: "it sucks that so many established franchises are being redone to be made dark and gritty and more mature, just because the producers are trying to target a specific demographic."

Bob has mentioned before that 'the Godfather' is in his pantheon of 'best movies', I believe. I'm sure he likes the classics such as 'Clockwork Orange' just fine, but what he appears to be ranting about is what I mentioned above.

I happen to agree with him. I have certain childhood memories that I do not wish to see 'updated' or 'rebooted' or 'evolved' or however the execs who want to jam their hands back in my wallet would like to label it. I like to be able to return to those things and have them the same, so that, for just a moment, I can hopefully experience a world where Saturdays mean eating super-sugary cereal and then entering into an almost trance-like state while watching cartoons, instead of meaning chores, yardwork, paying bills, and all the other responsibilities of adulthood.

Now, this is not to say that all reimaginings are evil: for example, it made a lot of sense to explore the dark side of Batman, since the character, if you stop to think about it, is as crazy as a shithouse rat. But the success of the more mature-themed Batman seems to have spawned a trend-- a cynical money-grab, really-- of making other franchises 'grittier' and 'mature', just for the sake of appealing to a now-older audience, whether or not it makes sense for that franchise... and this is not a good thing, at least to me and Bob.

but to leave on a lighter note: wallet chains always make me think of this [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/1/28/]

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

And the new Battlestar (which is what I assume you're referencing) is only about 10,000 times better than the original. Not joking.

To me, the new Battlestar is a perfect example of what Movie Bob was talking about. I'm about 20 years too young to have watched the original show when it was new, but I remember hearing about how it was basically an entire series made up of the space battles from Star Wars. This is what I was expecting when I watched the pilot. What I got instead was a bland, overly dark mess completely devoid of fun. When Sci-Fi later did a marathon of the original show, it proved to be everything I was hoping the new one would be, and more.

I think Japan does a better job of getting the mix of dark and light right. As dark as, say, Zeta Gundam is, with its themes of war and death, there's always an occasional respite from the horrors of war, a brief moment of wonder where we, the audience, can see that the characters actually have something worth fighting for. I didn't get that out of the new Battlestar, and sadly, I've been getting that less and less out of all nerdy media since the early 2000's.

Growing up in the 90's, we had all kinds of shows that, while they could be dark when they needed to, were just plain fun most of the time. Hercules and Xena are great examples of this. Sadly Legend of the Seeker, their spiritual successor, is a perfect example of the overly dark nature of today's shows.

One thing though -- if the IP needs to be dark, by all means let it be dark. The example of Blade Runner in the below quoted post is perfect:

And as for Blade Runner, do you think the scenes in which the androids were executed would have been NEARLY as effective if they hadn't been bloody and disturbing.

That film really needed the violence, and as a matter of fact, the international cut, which had scenes cut from the American release to avoid an X rating, was even better at making you think about what Decker was doing.

However, not every film has to be Blade Runner, and we should have very few series like Lost. For me, as I believe it is for most people on this site, television and film are forms of escapism. I don't want to escape from the real world to some place worse.

 

[tautologico]

While we're talking about robots: Wall-E deals with loneliness, extinction, free will, totalitarianism, death, mental instability and illness, racism, greed, regret, nuclear war, and what it means to be alive. It just doesn't shove its themes in your face to be edgy. And don't try to tell me A Clockwork Orange wasn't trying to be edgy for edgy's sake. That was part of its point.

Exactly. And Up has a lot of important, adult themes in it too, that children won't understand when they watch the movie the first time, but will get when they grow older. That's the genius of the Pixar movies. On the other hand, a children probably can't appreciate A Clockwork Orange in any level.

Whoever says a movie made for children will never reach the artistic level of more grown-up stuff is really falling into the same trap that makes things Darker and Edgier. A similar trap to the one that says that comedies will never have as much artistic merit as dramas. "Artistic" must mean "serious", "brooding", "angsty" and possibly "bloody". It is this line of thinking that is really limited.

Also, the article doesn't say "there shouldn't be mature, grittier things". It's funny seeing people misunderstand the point of the article and then trying to argue with a point the author never made.

 

[BlindMessiah94]

I did agree with Moviebob, until about 1/2 way through the article (probably the longest I've ever lasted as I disagree with almost everything he says).

His fundamental argument is solid. But the examples he used where all examples of stories where making them more mature actually improved the stories - Batman? Seriously? Do we remember the ridiculous 90's Batman movies?

I thought he might get into all the kefuffle about movies like Transformers, Ninja Turtles, you know, actual childhood cartoons being revamped to be more hardcore. Instead he picks good movies like The Dark Knight and tries to use the argument that making them mature was bad.

I disagree again. At least your articles are well written though Bob

 

[MovieBob]

Frank Miller took a character written off by everyone, and showed people that the person they joked about and let their kids watch on the telly is actually a vicious psychopath devoted to vengeance, and who ultimately dresses up as a bat and beats up thugs because he's addicted to violence. Oh, and Superman? He's not Christopher Reeve. He's an all-powerful ageless alien who has given the US government his unwavering allegience. Stuff like that doesn't end up as Saturday morning cartoons. It ends up in international political crisis and war. In the end, Frank Miller didn't add grit and darkness to the DC characters, he simply looked at them from a more realistic perspective. And made one of the all time great comics in doing so.

I understand your premise, but I'd disagree with the basic logic in as much as these are fictional characters, so they can be "shown to be" whatever the person holding the pen wants. From where I sit, the Batman of "Dark Knight Returns" isn't a vengeful psychopath because of some long-supressed "original design;" he's a vengeful psychopath because that's the pretty-much the only way Frank Miller writes heroes (see also: His villains are almost always vaugely "gay" in some way, and his female characters are always slutty and/or outright prostitutes.) Batman isn't real, so he isn't "really" a psychopath any more than he's "really" a totally well-adjusted father figure who keeps his own brand of shark-repellant in his ostentatiously art-designed personal helicopter.

DKR makes an interesting case study, I think. Has anyone gone back and read it again recently? Because whenever I do, increasingly, it doesn't really "hold up" all that well for me now that "OMG! Batman is violent!" isn't a shock to the system anymore. It's a "romp," but it has all the depth of a WWE arc and what characterization it DOES attempt - the child of hippie stoners craving discipline, Superman as tool of "the system," etc - is dime store "edgy" pablum. Back in the day, I think it "worked" for me because you could take it as a satire or a "Watchmen"-style tragic cautionary-tale (one of the overriding themes of Watchmen was that "the problem" began with the idea of superheroes "leaving" comics for the real world) ...but looking at it now in the broader context of what's left of Miller's career, it looks more and more like that sort of quasi-fascistic hypermasculine B.S. is actually the way he sees the world, which kinda kills out a lot of the fun in and of itself.

Wicked article MB.

O ya, and what is all this about the Watchmen character name change business? They had other names before, that were more gritty? Someone fill me in so I don't look like a total loser next time I try to talk to comic people.

No need to feel like a loser For whatever reason, this isn't really an "everybody knows" kind of reference.

Basically, "Watchmen" happened like this: DC Comics in the 80s liked to flesh-out their universe by buying up characters from publishers who'd gone out of business. A particularly big aquisition was Charlton Comics, who had a bunch of fairly-unique heroes created mostly by Steve Ditko (co-creator of "Spider-Man") in the mid to late 1960s. The DC editors put Alan Moore, who was the "rising star" of comics at the time, on the job of creating a big "event" miniseries that would re-introduce the Charlton stable.

The story he came back with was pretty much a rough draft of what would eventually become "Watchmen," using the Charlton heroes to imagine what might happen if costumed heroes had existed in reality (answer: nothing good.) DC was wild about the story, but figured that if this story was used for the actual Charlton heroes they'd never be able to "fit" them into the larger DC Universe. DC and Moore ultimately agreed it would be better if he told the same story, but changed the Charlton heroes into original characters of his own (loosely based on the originals) and publish it as it's own thing. Thus, "Watchmen."

Ironically, DC didn't end up getting much use out of the majority of the Charlton guys anyway, though fans of some recent stories and especially the "Justice League" cartoons are probably familiar with The Question (the inspiration for "Rorscharch"), Captain Atom ("Dr. Manhattan") and Blue Beetle ("Nite Owl.")

 

[mstieler]

That opening Pokemon bit was the funniest thing I've read in a good while.

 

[incal11]

Stealing From the Next Generation

Geeks grow up, but that doesn't mean the things they love should.

Read Full Article

The oposite is also true, new geeks are born everyday, it doesn't mean that the things we love have to keep being mindlessly dumbed down for them.

This even though it ends in failure after failure ; like with Deus ex 2 which was horrible, and now rumors of Deus ex 3 having regenerating health and heavy focus on FPS action.
I'd like to think this is not just a fan's whining, I liked complicated and challenging games, with sometime a deep story, as they were.
"Appealing to a larger audience" is always a doomed effort, I despair at the single mindedness of the developers who keep doing that.

 

[MovieBob]

This is where I disagree with you. Some of the best works of fiction have come about because the writer took a concept beloved of childhood, and looked at it through an adult lense.

I can more-or-less get behind that, though in answer to your question re: DKR, I read through it again a few months back, and it still works for me less and less, and I pretty much lose the ability to take it seriously once the "Superman is a douche because I say so" business kicks in. If you haven't seen it, check out this link to an circa-1980s Alan Moore short making fun of Miller's writing style in "Daredevil": http://xrayspex.blogspot.com/2008/03/alan-moore-spoofs-frank-miller.html What's amusing is, most of these jokes could apply to stuff Miller is writing TODAY.

In any case, I don't so much have a problem with the "dark" stuff until it starts "replacing" the original model. I know it's nerd-blasphemy to say, but for the most part superheroes (just for one example) are a children's-fiction concept down to their core, in as much as they make no sense in an "adult" context. Batman makes PERFECT sense if your a ten year old: Why wear an elaborate, instantly-recognizable costume when your ultimately a stealth guy? "Because it's more awesome." Why keep all your gear in a giant cave UNDER your huge, roomy house where you live almost entirely alone? "Because you keep ALL your best stuff in your clubhouse, duh!" Even his psychology is juvenile: "Someone wronged me and got away with it, so I'm gonna go beat up everyone who's like him until I feel better."

From where I sit, that's why "adult" superheroes really only "work" as parody re: "Watchmen." (By the same token, you probably couldn't make a non-parody "children's version" of, say, "Se7en.") And I've enjoyed a lot of material in that regard, both for humor and for analysis. What I worry about is when those "alternate" dark versions end up supplanting the "original" version. Going back to Alan Moore for a moment, did you know he's flat-out "disowned" his in-continuity "Killing Joke" Batman story for some of the same reasons? He seems to blame himself for a lot of what "went wrong" in 90s comics.

 

[hexFrank202]

I think a lot of you are missing the point with your 'Bob bashing the hardcore again...' accusations. I saw nothing in the article where he said that Hardcore was stupid or whatnot,

Oh, well you might be right. But...

what I got out of it was, in essence: "it sucks that so many established franchises are being redone to be made dark and gritty and more mature, just because the producers are trying to target a specific demographic."

Yes this is closer to what he was really saying, and trust me, he's talked about THAT way too much too.

Look guys, you don't have to waste your time telling Bob how his argument here doesn't apply all of the time, or criticize the examples he used (although I agree that the story in main Mario Games have been generic for so long that it's not funny anymore), the fact-of-the-matter is (the way I see it anyway) that this week, he was so desperate for something to talk about that he threw together his regular "don't be too dark and realistic" presentation and changed-up the words here and there. Unfortunately, this time he didn't put it together as well as he usually did.

You want your disagreeing views to be 100%, completely, utterly destroyed? Watch the holy triforce of Game Overthinker episodes...

Why dickish hardcore gamers are the way they are (and what damage they're doing to themselves)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD2c4aEQ3OU
What dickish hardcore gaming is doing to the industry (and the worst thing that could possibly happen to it)
http://www.youtube.com/user/moviebob#p/u/29/9joAb4XMaUs
And finally, the Overthinker ends the console wars in ten minutes flat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByPcQBveWOA

PS: Bob, have you seen any of the Alice in Wonderland game on the DS? It's like, totally different than the movie, with a gorgeous minimalist cartoon art style that makes it possibly the best looking DS game ever. It has some wonky controls, but after playing it for an hour or two so far, I think you'd really like it.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Well this was a good column and I generally agree with most of it (as I usually do with Bob, sometimes to the point of fanboyism I must admit) but I do have 2 points to raise:

I'm awaiting my copy of Super Mario Galaxy 2 right now. In the broad strokes, Mario hasn't changed much since I first met him in 1986. What if he had? What if his face was just a bit more grim, Bowser just a bit more threatening, Princess Peach a bit more affectionate? I dunno. Might make a nice comic. Or a spinoff, even. Maybe. But as the Mario? No. It would be a betrayal of what he'd meant to me in the first place; and it'd be selfish of me to try and keep him for myself and deprive the next kid who hasn't found him yet. Especially for a stupid reason like "I don't want people looking at me weird when I ask for it at the store."

While I agree with the general sentiment here, I think Mario actually MIGHT benefit just a bit, maybe for just one game, by being just a BIT more like Bob suggests here. OK, there's no real need to make Mario scowl more, but years of constant failure when he only ever has a single simple objective have turned Bowser into a laughable parody of an evil mastermind- he was arguably more threatening back in Super Mario Bros 3. I'm not saying he has to bloodily murder innocent toads to show how "HARDCORE" he is, but what if he was simply rendered with a design slightly closer to the uber-powerful 'Giga-Bowser' from Smash Bros? And likewise, Peach in the main Mario games has become a parody of the "Distressed Damsel" archetype who EVERY game gets kidnapped by Bowser and sits around waiting for Mario to come rescue him so she can bake him a cake or give him a chaste kiss on the cheek at most. Again, I'm not suggesting she needs to get her tits out and start humping Mario's leg in gratitude, but maybe something that actually suggests a bit more of an actual RELATIONSHIP between the 2 would be nice- at least some more dialogue or something. Or possibly she could actually MARRY the poor sclub (making him Royal Consort rather than King, just for the sake of consistancy).

If that sounds like it still might be a bit of a dangerous move, consider that Disney is making Epic Mickey [http://gameinformer.com/mag/mickey.aspx] for the Wii and that's being met with considerable anticipation.

The next time you find yourself looking on some less-than-R-rated vestige of nerdity-past and wishing it could be more mature, ask yourself: In asking something to grow up, are you not also asking it to grow old? And if so, are you not also asking it, implicitly, to eventually die?
And what sort of person, in the end, wishes for their heroes to be dead?

While I get what you're saying here Bob, and I KNOW you didn't mean it this way and almost certainly would have rephrased this if you realized, but doesn't that line of argument sound disturbingly like what Joe Quesada used to justify 'One More Day' [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneMoreDay] and his total rape of the entire Spider-Man canon? His desire to return Peter Parker "to his roots", make him "young and hip" again? He even accused fans who supported the Spider-marriage of "(wanting) him to grow old and die". The parallels were just so unnerving that I HAD to mention them.

 

[V8 Ninja]

I agree. I'm currently re-watching a TV show that I (sorta) grew up with, which is Digimon Tamers. The whole appeal to me is that it's childish and I can just enjoy its simple and straightforwardness.

 

[Saarai-fan]

I agree with you a lot on this article, Moviebob. I will make one exception though. TMNT, the latest Teenage Mutant Ninga Turtles and obviously more darker than the earlier 80's version, is a lot better than the 80's turtles. Much better storylines, characters, character development, and action. I even recently watched a special "Turtles Forever" TMNT movie where they met their 80's counterparts, and it did a great job of showing how ricidculous the 80's show was.

So yeah, having loveable franchises go darker is usually a bad idea. But I'd perfer the current Turtles show over the 80's one any day.

 

[RTR]

I hear you, man.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I can generally agree with Bob assuming of course that we are using the modern gaming definition of "mature". Violence for the sake of spectacle, cursing playing stand-in for lesser terms like "zounds" and the basic concept that the hero is always right and will almost certainly always triumph are not hallmarks of the mature game. Games that sink to such base diversions seek to do nothing more than present the premise that perhaps, somewhere, there might be a message worth considering in the blood soaked frames. This is not to say that such things cannot be entertaining, simply that the phrase "mature" is less applicable than juvenile (at best) or depraved (at the very worst).

But, given the way I respond to the various stories and worlds I've been presented I would like to see any number of properties be handled in a fashion legitimately considered to be mature. Any thematic value found in Rainbow Six: Vegas regarding terrorism are lost when the terrorists have no agenda save murder, where the plot is the work of a man passed over for a promotion and the game presents nothing more than an endless shooting gallery to blast through. Why would these men routinely be willing to clog the strip with their corpses if they were fighting for nothing more than gold?

When I play games, I tend to approach it from an analytical point of view. What makes the bad guys tick? Why precisely are they the villians? In your average game or indeed comic book, it would seem that the reasoning was little more than they drew the short straw in the asshole lottery. Dr. Doom has no greater reason to be the villian than the Thing afterall. In some cases, I'm forced to consider the absurdity of a particular plot point. Why precisely WOULD a PMC try to invade the United States? Why would Mercanries, people who fight for no cause save financial gain, be so fanitical in their pursuit of the mad scheme? How precisely did terrorists manage to hijack an aircraft carrier, when such a feat would require penetrating the air cover, disabling the entire support fleet and overpowering some 5,000 sailors and marines without the ship being scuttled in the process? In other cases, I find myself idly considering things the game doesn't even tangentially address. How does the ecology actually work in the Pokemon universe? Are Pokemon leveraged for military purposes or simply for sport?

In fact, were there to be a mature look at the Pokemon universe, there would indeed be tough questions to answer, not the least of which is the moral implications of binding an unwilling creature into servitude and placing it in brutal cage matches with other creatures. Truth be told, a society that believes it is utterly acceptable to send children unescourted into the wild in an attempt to capture creatures that can literally think you to death or spit fire or spray enough electrical energy to run a subway so they may capture these monsters and then seek out like minded individuals so they may partake in a sport that is certainly no better than dog-fighting is probably ripe with problems. What sort of social condition would allow for such activity to be so common, so acceptable?