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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
To clarify, based on the reviews and the ratings we are at something of a 6 to 6,5 out of 10 average. That is...well, average. Reading the last two sites of post here you could get the impression that the six episodes were critically panned on a Fant4stic level.
Culture must by necessity take all those things into account, but saying you can never adopt another culture as your own even if you were raised in it almost exclusively runs up against unfortunate implications of its own. It's complicated— you have to take these things case by case.
edited 8th Mar '17 4:20:05 PM by Unsung
It is possible to write a believable story of "a white person proficient in a culture different than his own race", but it's been used so many times for the purpose of "we were too lazy to cast a non-white lead". Each one demands to be taken case by case, but when there are so many cases it becomes hard to not see any sort of correlation.
If the Mighty Whitey is the exception of the culture and not the rule, then for every film of a white guy who masters a foreign discipline, there should be a dozen films of a native resident mastering said discipline. But instead we keep getting story after story of only the exceptions, and so they become the new rule.
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Oh, I'm not defending the casting choice here. It's just that in the current climate I think it's important to be able to say that it's still possible for, say, immigrants to join in the culture of a country. Cultures are fluid, they're large and they're small, and they're interconnected, feeding off of each other in all kinds of ways. Most people can be and probably are part of more than one culture, at least in the modern world.
The problem with Iron Fist is how unironically anachronistic it seems to be. Like, it really does seem like they're going for a '90s era kung fu boom action movie throwback, which could work, but all the preview material I've seen shows a certain lack of self-awareness, or at least an inability to land the joke. Like if they're winking at their audience with this, I'm not really seeing it. and If they're being reverent to their influences, I'm not really getting that, either. The trailers are...competent, but in a generic way.
I am in fact looking forward to Thor, which I couldn't say about Thor before (bethore).
Chris Hemsworth's head looks really skinny without his golden Thor mane.
edited 8th Mar '17 4:55:29 PM by Unsung
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Essentially, stories don't exist outside of a wider cultural context and media landscape, so it's important to evaluate them as such. Watching something for pure escapism is fine sometimes, but it's TVTropes so of course we're going to overanalyze the hell out of everything.
edited 8th Mar '17 4:51:44 PM by Pseudopartition
Not sure if I'm feeling short-haired Thor, to be honest, but otherwise I'm fairly hyped. Could probably use a trailer, though.
Oh God! Natural light!You know, don't get me wrong, getting more diversity of characters, especially a black woman, in the MCU is great and all, but, why did they need to give Thor a love interest again? This would have been the first MCU movie to not need to force in a poorly handled romantic subplot, and instead they felt the need to have Chris Hemsworth make out with someone again. Just make Valkyrie a capable female fighter on the level of Thor and a friend of his who doesn't feel the need to get into his pants. Natalie Portman and Gwenyth Parltrow hating these movies and wanting to leave gave them an opportunity to reevaluate if aspects of the movies are needed, and instead they're sticking hard to the formula.
@Pincer Move: Black characters, but especially characters that are black women are still rarely given the chance to be portrayed as love interests. It's become more and more common to see on tv in recent years, but it's not as common in blockbuster movies yet, so if Valkyrie does in fact turn out to be a love interest of Thor's in addition to being the capable warrior she is, then I think it's a very good thing.
Of course, the execution of it could very well be awful, so who knows?
edited 8th Mar '17 7:31:16 PM by higherbrainpattern

I guess even I don't really see the Unfortunate Implications, I can see why other people might see them.
edited 8th Mar '17 4:14:16 PM by FoxBoxKid
Make mine Marvel.