Disney is safeguarding its future by buying childhood, piece by piece
economist.com
economist.com
I just ruined A LOT of movies from here forward.
The "spoilers" for the new Star Wars film aren't a big deal. I knew them and the "spoiled" scenes still had a big impact on me, because that's what good film making is all about.
Again, I'll except trailers for thrillers and the like, those story structures necessarily depend on twists or slow reveals for their ride to be fun or interesting, and a spoiler can absolutely ruin them. But action movies?
> I'm not going to go around telling the plot of a movie to people (that's a dick move)
I have let other people decide what they care about. I'm just voicing my opinion about it. I'm not "spoiling" anything here. And, fine, my opinion is that anyone that cares about "spoilers" has first world problems. I have been yelled at (literally yelled at, like I'd just punted a puppy across the room) because I said something as obvious as "The Titanic sinks in the end", and often from movies of similar vintage.
Seriously, don't read reviews, don't watch trailers, and don't ask people their opinions of movies if you don't want "spoilers". Most of us aren't dicks, we won't go around telling you what happens in a movie unprompted (at least, not a recent movie, maybe as a way of explaining our references to older movies).
If someone wants to go to great lengths to avoid everything then that's fine. If people want to warn their fellow "blackout" fans that's fine too. If someone wants to say something isn't spoilers and it's just an action movie then, uh, ok then, I guess.
Spoiler alert: Everybody will die eventually. That doesn't mean the journey from birth to death is pointless now that you know the outcome. Everything that happens in between is the part that matters. The same is true for good stories.
The term "spoiler" should be reserved for a reveal that actually spoils the movie; where some crucial element of the movies emotional impact can be taken away by knowing some fact in advance that is held secret through the movie.
The discussion in the first paragraph here pretty much just covers the exposition in the credits, and the material you learn very early on about one of the main characters.
I feel like treating this kind of information as a spoiler will just lead you to endless anxiety until you have seen every possible movie that could be "spoiled" for you this way. Why not just relax, accept that people are going to do some light discussion of movies, and reserve your outrage for actual spoilers of surprising plot points, mysteries solved, puzzles spoiled, and the like?
Otherwise, either you have to cut yourself off from all media and conversation that might possibly reference the movie, or try and convince everyone you might interact with, and everyone who might write anything online, not to discuss the movie. Neither option seems particularly pleasant nor realistic to achieve. I suppose you could also just see every movie you intend to see on the first showing of the opening day.
What you are doing by asking for absolutely no information at all, even the basic exposition and setup of characters at the beginning of the movie, is imposing a large burden on everyone else around you to prevent a very minor inconvenience to yourself. I understand not wanting major spoilers, and that there should be a reasonable time before discussing those points openly without a spoiler warning. But it just seems that the trade-off is fairly poor for not even allowing the most basic discussion.
I actually managed this pretty much with the new Star Wars movie - but then on the way in to find the screen was greeted with a massive poster showing lots of info about the movie. I averted my eyes. Then at the entrance there were sales staff touting character drink cups which successfully spoiled a couple of the characters who would feature heavily.
After the movie I watched a BBC program which supposedly reviewed the Star Wars franchise and promised no spoilers. Pretty much the entire plot and many of the scenes could be determined from the content they gave.
The problem I have nowadays is that trailers seem to include the entire plot, all major characters, all the best effects, all the most emotive scenes; ostensibly the entire movie in digest. These to me are very poor trailers.
Generally I agree with your points however, lambda.
But that does not mean there is not still a lot of stuff that really should be considered spoilers, and the complaints about these should not be brushed off just because you think I expect you to not mention anything about a movie. I think it's a very valid criticism when the article in question reveals something that even the trailers kept unknown by never showing that person, without any need for it in the context of the article. It's like saying "The Sixth Sense, where he was dead all along, was quite good, I loved the cinematography." a week after that movie was released. While I personally would not have wanted to know about the cinematographical quality either, I realize I can't complain about hearing something like that when reading a review or when I'm not fleeing a discussion of the movie quickly enough. I never would complain about that. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be pretty annoyed to read said plot detail in an article about e.g. "The decline of quality in M. Night Shyamalan movies" a week after that movies release.
To sum it up: I agree with your basic point, but I think too often people that are fine with spoilers don't care about the fact that other people have a different level of acceptance and when confronted with that simply resort to saying "Well, it's silly to have this level of acceptance."
My 5 year old has never seen a Disney movie, yet she told me today that for her 6th birthday she wants a Cinderella shirt and an Elsa costume - both characters she has never actually seen on screen. Her friends at school all talk about it though and recount fantastic stories.
I hear from people saying that we will raise a kid who is out of the loop, so she won't be able to relate and will be an outcast if we don't keep her up to date with all the trends like her peers.
At a certain point as a parent, it's kind of like, it doesn't really matter what we do.
Gasification works and exploits a human weakness. Incorporating it into a game like many mobile games (FarmVille) just wastes people's time and encourages them to spend money on meaningless tokens and trinkets that will literally disappear at some point (as opposed to the still silly and useless trinkets you might get from an arcade prize shop, but at least those you can keep). Incorporating it into something more useful (or at least with a more valuable output) is a good start.
I have come to the conclusion that you really can't "shore up" human weaknesses without chemical changes or maybe some kind of tDCS type system. Even then, there seem to be some major tradeoffs.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct-current_st...
Congratulations. You've discovered the true essence of parenting ;-)
Regardless, this is a highly contrarian position. In fact a recent article [1] comes to the same conclusion, as well as how controversial said conclusion is.
[1]http://quillette.com/2015/12/01/why-parenting-may-not-matter...
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
The post near the top about spoilers is a good example. We're all supposed go out of our way go protect the sanctified experience of the movie for true believers. How messed up is that?
Neither of us like the movie that much, because it's monarchist.
Why wouldn't you want your daughter to be like Elsa? Of all the role models throughout history for little girls, Elsa is without doubt one of the best. It is only recently that women weren't portrayed a submissive needing to marry the right man to be successful. Or, Belle? Beauty and the Beast is story about the inventor's daughter, a bibliophile, who is isolated because she can't relate to her bland vanilla society that rejects intellectuals like Belle and her father. I wouldn't write off Disney so quickly. It's worth reading the Power of Myth, the transcript of the interview between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, because you might appreciate the thinking behind Disney movies. You will find that there are people in control at Disney who share your values.
I can't pass judgement on parenting. However, there is a big difference allowing children to watch a Disney movie once a month or even once a week and letting children watch television 4 hours a day after school.
If not, what are you doing as a parent to not make them consumers? Lots would like to know!
The Peanuts Christmas album (vince guaraldi trio) is wonderful this time of year.
And especially such one as Disney...
I also find hope in recent developments overseas, and anticipate the impact of works such as Puella Magi Madoka Magica on the future of children's television here in the US as well.
Marvel, Star Wars, etc got recycled as well. Marvel got an all brand new universe after destroying Earth-616 and the Ultimate universe to make Secret Wars, and then after Secret Wars they changed things up in the comic books. Star Wars they basically rewrote Episode 4 A New Hope as Episode 7 The Force Awakens by changing the character names and roles. All of this is focused on the young that didn't watch or read the original materials. Disney is youth focused, so us older people in our childhood we had things different in Marvel and Star Wars, and under Disney they have been recycled and changed for a global market now instead of just the USA, etc.
There was a time when the Disney Channel was stealing ideas from Nickelodeon for shows with teens/tweens. But now owning Marvel and Star Wars they can make shows based on those characters on their own channel without having to steal ideas from others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTeM68aOpMM&t=30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CTHwEZK2JA
Or the Madoka-inspired Yuki Yuna Is a Hero, which doubles down on the happy fun times (investing a full five episodes instead of Madoka's two-and-a-half): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35ljIjdf0Vg
More importantly, even if American audiences shouldn't expect such overtly dark shows in front of small children any time soon, creators are definitely paying attention, and Madoka is exactly the sort of phenomenon which gets creators of all sorts thinking about how to up their game and make something that's meaningful (dark or otherwise). Everybody wins.
Space Balls even made fun of it!
Anyone who thinks Star Wars wasn't super-monetized on Day One isn't old enough to remember it.
With my kid, most characters and shows they like, are owned by Disney. We were going through the list recently and there was a handful only that were not Disney owned. Disney owns the childhood, that not a joke.
(Check out "Hello Barbie", in stores now.[1] Now your kids can talk to Barbie and she'll talk back. Barbie has a WiFi connection to servers back at Mattel HQ running AI software. "ToyTalk, the tech company that partnered with Mattel to bring Hello Barbie to life, stores by default everything the doll records for at least two years to help it better analyze children’s speech." Coming up next, Cognitoys, plush animals powered by IBM's Watson system and able to answer hard questions.)
[1] http://shop.mattel.com/product/index.jsp?productId=65561726 [2] https://cognitoys.com
Disney is certainly a corporate behemoth out to make a buck, but I really believe that it's accompany that understands these properties, and wants people to love them.
Disney knows fans will not continue to flock to prequel-quality Star Wars films. Even the die-hard fans have a limit. These movies need to be excellent if they're going to continue to draw audiences. George Lucas himself doesn't understand what makes the original trilogy so special to fans, which is why Disney is putting fans like JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson at the helm of these new movies. It seems like they're off to a great start. I have faith they'll continue to be great.
Edit: First sentence: I, not u. Yikes, what a typo.
I pretty much discount anytime someone says "It was better when I was a kid."
Compare that to, say, Spiderman for FOX Kids in the 90s. Every scene was carefully animated and the plot was deep.
And to prove it's not just nostalgia, there were cheap shows back then too, like all the Power Rangers knockoffs. Anyone remember "Samurai Pizzacats"? Kind of funny, but mostly repetitive power rangers formula.
Even Japanese anime knockoffs were better before -- like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
There is still good stuff today but it's few and far between. I'm inclined to think the business objectives have changed more than the kids' tastes. It's like people used to play immersive 3d games, real time strategy games, and now so many play addictive pay-to-accelerate casual nonsense like Farmville or Boom Beach or whatever. Did people simply change their tastes to get ripped off? No, it was directed by business. Actual quality is secondary now.
As for comercialised, TMNT was hardly pure on this front, in fact they helped pioneer it in western cartoons. Nothing blatantly commercial in the the 94 strong cast of the original 1988-1997 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures line. http://turtlepedia.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Teenage_Mutant_Nin...
Farmer Don and his Modern Mutant Tractor are totally not trying to fleece your parents hard earned money.
But seriously, at least they started out making awesome toys like the Turtle Blimp -http://turtlepedia.wikia.com/wiki/Turtle_Blimp_(1988_toy)
There are plenty of well-animated and well-written shows these days. Legend of Korra looks amazing. My Little Pony became a cultural moment but its popularity is founded in genuinely good writing and characterization.
Quality has always been secondary to business, you just remember the good stuff and forget the cash-ins.
It may be possible that there is almost too much focus on "quality" now but it's the wrong kind of quality -- lack of errors, linear predictability, control of financial risk in the business of storytelling. Today's cartoons do not take risks, economic, artistic, or political.
I've been watching He-man b/c s1 is free on Prime, and noticed that wow the cartoons are way more interesting than the crap that's on TV today (Thomas-the-Preachy-Tank-Engine; Bob-the-Incompetent-Builder; etc.). There basically is no such thing as Saturday morning cartoons anymore! WTF?! But my son doesn't care. He isn't into He-man, and he does not seem offended by the preachy morality of today's kids' shows, or their slick ultracheap CGI...
Not saying that similar movie magic is impossible now or in the future, but in the current world of profit-driven decisions on creative direction it seems unlikely for the foreseeable future.
Again, your biases are only fuzzy nostalgia and it seemed bigger to you then cause your brain couldn't contextualize it as well.
That doesn't justify current copyright laws (trademarks alone might be sufficient to keep someone from making Star Wars VIII even if copyright was allowed to lapse on ordinary time rather than being constantly extended to keep Steamboat Willy out of the public domain), but collaborative works of fiction require big financial commitments sometimes to get made.
As a kid part of the magic of Star Wars was that you could sort of imagine there was an entire universe of interesting stories and characters beyond what was pictured in the movies. But J.J. Abrams has made it abundantly clear that no, actually, there was never anything else there.
OTOH, it can be argued that ep. 4 is basically a ripoff of kurosawa + WW2 fighter movies... in SPACE! So it's some people are maybe taking all these movies too seriously if they expect great artistic cinema out of them.
I guess maybe it's because I'm a child of immigrants. I don't see what the big deal is. Everyone commercializes and ties stuff in. Many if you are probably users of the whole Apple ecosystem.
Rare being bought by Microsoft was very unfortunate, however.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/12/rares-management-to-bl...
But the ugly truth is that we will never fix copyright. Not within our lifetimes, not even within the life of our grandchildren.
Iron Man was popular enough to have a 90s cartoon made for him. I'm not sure how he is second-tier...
Every person had an anger too.
Not sure how you got the notion that the film makers thought anger is bad.
None of that means that they are immune to their cultural and corporate biases and zeitgeist, but you seem to be implying something much more intentional and predatory. Why?
Fundamentally, these people are artists.
What's the state of the world that you want? Does being this angry help you get it there?
Do you also hate the Muppets? Or are you just trolling now?
That said, I look at these sorts of films like the old fables and many newer children's stories: they personify various aspects of life (in this case, emotions) in order to simplify them at first glance for easy recognition and then as a vehicle to show where those seemingly simple things can also be complex and unpredictable.
It's not even just kids' stories that do this. Plenty of movies and other stories use archetypes and "avatars" as characters. It's shorthand that makes it easier to jump into the narrative. Often they're combinations of different stock characters but the kids' stuff is often simpler.
Either way, I grew up with plenty of kids' stories where you knew who the good guy was, who the bad guy was, who the rogue/trickster was, etc. It hasn't stopped me from appreciating more subtle or complex characters and stories as an adult. It's almost as if you learn the basic "language" of characterization and storytelling first, and then can appreciate more varied combinations that as possible with experience. At some point, the fact that certain traits and behaviors are unexpected becomes a big part of a more "grown up" story's appeal.
Inside Out's is a dissatisfying explantion for emotion, because each emotion-character themselves exhibited a variety of emotion (e.g. Joy was sad), implying by the conceit of the movie that they each had a set of emotions within their own head... ad infinitum. That's the problem with the homunculi theory of mind: it doesn't explain anything.
Did anger ever make a useful contribution in the movie? IIRC only a source of humour, or a problem to be worked around.
BTW The outtake-like scenes at the end included a bus driver who was all anger.
And yet the first thing to come to many children's minds when shown a clown fish or French cuisine is Nemo and Ratatouille.
> I don't think that children watching the movie will really grow up believing they have all these little people in their heads.
I've met people who think the movie helped them "understand themselves better" whether or not that is actually true.
>But if we couldn't reduce that complexity into modular, independent pieces then how would we ever communicate?
Not everyone wants to speak the same language, (or even be forced to hear you).
Is that a bad thing?
What makes you better qualified than them to understand what's happening in their heads?
You're mistaken about "anger" being purely a cultural/linguistic construction, and about the authenticity of Inside Out's psychological model in general: the film was inspired by (and admittedly somewhat simplifies) solid psychological research, particularly the work of Paul Ekman and Dacher Keltner, whom Pixar brought on as consultants.
I get that you didn't like the movie, and that's okay, and it's certainly reasonable to not like Disney in general; but I don't think you have any grounds to extrapolate that to the movie's message being actively and specifically harmful.
That's kinda nostalgic, actually. I remember seeing it a lot on Usenet. It's dwindled since people stopped calling flamewars "flamewars." Dunno why.
Most of the professionals in the field who saw Inside Out have praised it for getting the basics of emotion and memory right, even if it isn't super accurate. It is after all a cartoon.
No link?
DO NOT let your kids watch Disney!
Since when is youtube about reading titles?? This title is misleading; it's all about Disney as empire.
Furthermore, there are comments (never read the comments) like " This truly shows we live in a sick ass perverted world even looking at the scene from a reality show at the 28:00 mark that the fat bitch is telling little girls they should make the audenice think they are naked to that i say sick ass world there would be no way in hell that this type of shit would've been on tv 30 years ago & if it ever did make it on tv back then every tv watchdog group across the country would have called for the networks to take shows like this off the air....."
Even furthermore, the suggested video page has videos like "Dead babied in Your Food", "Martin Lawrence EXPOSES Illuminati", "Lil Wayne says the Illuminati is changing the world for the Mark of the Beast".
EDIT: One of the suggested videos is of clear importance to the Hacker News community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbldNqL6LOI