Well, it finally happened. Outside of the TV networks still under the Fox name as of this writing 20th/21st Century Fox and it’s subsidiaries have been fully absorbed into the house of mouse, branding and all. Now one of the longest running movie brands in cinema has gone the way of RKO Pictures and so many other forgotten studios.
I don’t understand the defenses and praises by some of these movie websites. The clip above is one of Zach Snyder’s intended scenes for Justice League, released as part of the promotion for the Snyder Cut that presumably will restore this and other scenes removed because Warner Brothers chose the wrong point to course correct on the DC Extended Universe. The actual point was before Snyder was ever chosen for Man Of Steel. The reasons that Snyder was good for Watchmen are the exact same reasons he was a terrible choice for anything with Superman. That’s not a slam of his directing, though I’m not a fan of his style of movie. Not every creator is right for every project. Again, Steven King on a romantic comedy would end poorly. It just means his vision of superheroes clashes with what DC fans expect from an interpretation of the DC Universe and while Man Of Steel was a decent superhero movie it was not a good Superman movie.
Instead WB opted to redo Justice League while Snyder was mourning his daughter’s death, already a bad move, but Joss Whedon’s attempts to work with the footage they had resulted in a movie that lost direction a number of times as Whedon and Snyder’s vision of what makes a good superhero movie clashed. As a fan of these characters I am not looking forward to Snyder’s continued influence though as a creator I respect his wanting to make his movie since all it needed was editing and a few reshoots if a scene wasn’t shot right and that’s not what they did. They also tried to trash Snyder’s fans and demands to release the Snyder cut so it’s also seen as a pushback against fan-bashing Hollywood that HBO Max saw a way to draw in more paying subscriber to their service.
Too many entertainment “news” outlets tend to favor the darker incarnations. We saw that with the woman who interviewed Snyder recently going on about how cool “evil Superman” was to her. Now comes this CinemaBlend article by Sarah El-Mahmoud, and I’m using the web archive version because the ads my host puts you through (that I get nothing out of besides a free host) are bad enough. At least you can click off that white band on the bottom so the ad doesn’t cover the reason you came here the whole time and thus far I haven’t seen the autoplaying video that follows you everywhere that thinks it’s fine because it’s muted. Still, here’s the regular link if you so choose. For some reason El-Mahmoud wanted to praise the use of the black costume and I don’t think she makes the case she thinks she does.
“No, I didn’t see a “no parking” sign! We’re in outer space!”
Star Trek: The Next Generation #77
DC Comics (November, 1995)
“Gateway”
WRITER: Michael Jan Friedman
PENCILER: Gordon Purcell
INKER: Terry Pallot
COLORIST: Rick Taylor
LETTERER: Chris Eliopoulos
EDITOR: Margaret Clark
The above video is a fan trailer for Bel-Air, a serious reboot of the plot and characters from The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air. The sitcom follows Will Smith playing an exaggerated version of himself, who is sent from Philadelphia to his aunt and uncle’s in Bel Air after getting into a fight. The show was inspired by Smith’s music videos using his stage name at the time, the Fresh Prince, along with collaborator DJ Jazzy Jeff. People still enjoy it to this day.
Now a fan film is one thing but nobody would consider making this an actual series without at least changing the character names right? Well, turns out you’re wrong, and Will Smith himself is supporting this being turned into an actual series. Because apparently we can’t have nice things anymore. Again, as an original idea it might be good but as a remake of a beloved sitcom I don’t see this working as well as they hoped.
“Wait, which way is Earth again?”
New Avengers #3
Marvel Comics (March, 2005)
“Breakout!” part 3
WRITER: Brian Michael Bendis
PENCILER: David Finch
INKERS: Danny Miki, Allen Martinez, & Victor Olazaba
COLORIST: Frank D’Armata
LETTERER: Albert Deschesne
ASSISTANT EDITORS: Nicole Wiley & Molly Lazer
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Andy Schmidt
EDITOR: Tom Brevoort
The Clutter Reports (my other site) Atop The Fourth Wall Crisis On Earth Prime Lean Into Artcast Bully Says “Comics Oughta Be Fun” Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery
Cartoon Hero’s Lair SF Debris Four Million Years Later
BW’s Suggestions For Rooster Teeth’s Upcoming Dental Work
Started in 2003 and rising in popularity thanks to the Halo parody machinima series Red Vs. Blue, which showed artificial intelligence wasn’t the only intelligence Master Chief’s fellow Spartans were lacking, the group known as Rooster Teeth has managed to grow into a major entertainment company, focusing primarily on web series, with some merchandise and games being based on their properties. RWBY, an anime-inspired fantasy series, is probably their most well know series. However, they also acquired the Screw Attack library, spinning off their popular Death Battle series into it’s own franchise under the Rooster Teeth brand as well as the new home for Transformers: Prime Wars Trilogy after Go90 and Machinima (the brand name studio) both went down. That previous sentence pretty much represents my only current interest in Rooster Teeth, so judge the rest of this article on that disclaimer. Said article comes on the heels of this recent announcement.
The full story is that after their recent support of the controversial #BlackLivesMatter movement they’ve decided some of their years-long library doesn’t quite fit with their current opinions and values, which also includes support for the LGBTetc community. So they have opted to either remove those videos or in some cases merely add a disclaimer to the page or video as a “trigger warning”. (Bet there won’t be any for any religious bias.) Some people are all in favor of it and some are against, and my opinion may become obvious during this article or not. There were posts concerned that they were being bullied into this, which has been how “cancel culture” has been operating in entertainment circles recently. If that’s the case then Rooster Teeth is making a mistake and bowing down to people who may or may not watch those shows. However, if this is an honest reassessment based on their current world view they aren’t YouTube, who claims to be a platform but lately has acted like a publisher. Rooster Teeth is a publisher and thus can do whatever they want and take whatever the consequences are, positive or negative, from those actions. I’m not going to sit here and tell them how to run their own site. However I do have a few suggestions they should at least consider when deciding the future of their library.
Note some of the videos contain swearing and two senior citizens in facial mud.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on August 11, 2020 in Internet Spotlight and tagged commentary, Rooster Teeth.
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