I’ve been seeing folks here and there try to claim victim status over... being a Starfox remake enjoyer, and if that’s not something I take seriously, well, you’re adults, but also, it’s because this is just what fans do with absolutely everything. I’ve played these games before, it’s just another day on the internet.
Steven Universe, for comparison, were Exhibit A when it comes to this sort of thing because that show was released in chunks spanning over long hiatuses, so whenever a new bomb dropped, it was like the most annoying, most hyperactive dumb-fucks on earth all just got 100mg of raw sugar injected straight into their blood.
Fandom always had this problem where everyone is different and has different opinions on everything, but they’re also so deeply insecure, vindictive, and anti-social assholes. A lot of them are very insular and also feel increasingly entitled to be agreed with. And this kind of thing only gets exasperated thanks to the dopamine rush that comes off corporate live-streamed announcements.
Bro, this could have been an e-mail.
The problem is, when you exist within the banal reality of discourse and critical thinking, fans who wrap themselves up in a duvet to avoid any real personal growth, will increasingly feel attacked and get increasingly aggressive.
We’ve all seen Zelda fans throw a fucking shit-fit over 7/10 reviews. You’re not gonna see a whole lot of criticism of the things people like, but you are gonna see a whole hell of a lot of people having tantrums about criticism of it.
Part 1: Contrarianism is normal
Alright, it’s gonna be difficult to try and explain... the concept of thinking, but I’ll do my best.
You see, there's this YouTuber “hirumaredx” whom has several videos taking a position that a lot of people would ether disagree with or find contentious, most commonly "the villain did nothing wrong".
The reason these are all so well done is because none of the things he cites or says is technically incorrect. It's just an unpopular, contrarian read of the information, and is so obviously against the intention of the writers (unfortunately) that most people would argue that it's completely wrong.
However, that’s basically just how critical perspective works, you can go into any piece of media with a certain perspective or a particular lens and read it that way.
Contrarianism is necessary because it’s a large part of what makes critical analysis so much fun to begin with, and is why the sort of person who won’t stop repeating “media illiteracy” whenever they find something too complicated to wrap their head around, needs their phones confiscated.
That’s just a lot more interesting than having to deal with a bunch of irrational, overstimulated social media gibbons who all start freaking out over the reputation of a long dead 30+ year old franchise as if it needs its honour defended.
The “let people enjoy things” crowd doesn’t really do this sort of thing, they don’t make good arguments, and I don’t think it’s a secret why, it’s simply just that they don’t know how to do it. It’s a large part of why they always get so fucking angry about this sort of thing.
You say something they disagree with and they’re confronted with the fact that they don’t know how to respond to it. And repeating something like media illiteracy, media illiteracy, media illiteracy, it’s a buzzword that’s easy. If they actually had to sit the fuck down and try to explain why they think you’re wrong, they can’t fucking do it, they’re blithering fucking morons, and their brains have fucking melted.
And because they’re so fucking stupid and are admittedly very angry and aggrieved, all the fucking time, they’ll also want to make you angry so they can feel like the victim, so they can paint you as the unreasonable one. It just gets to the point where they’ll want to waste your time.
Part 2: Tasteless Realism of the 90s and 00s
Whew, did you survive all that?
Anyways, I know I’m talking to a brick wall here because the Lion King remake made over 1.6 billion dollars, so I get it, I’m the weird one. But I’ve personally never liked or even respected hyper-realistic computer graphics. That’s not something I find to be very creative or visually impressive.
We’re gonna go all the way back to Toy Story. While obviously very beloved and technologically revolutionary as the very first CGI feature film, but the problem is, and there’s no nice way to put this, but there is a sizable amount of the public who all have shit taste and like things that suck.
A reason why one might not find Toy Story all that visually ambitious is just due to the lack of what we’ll call “nature things”. We can take Donkey Kong Country as the perfect example of this, showing off the capabilities of next generation computer graphics with realistic looking trees and realistic looking coral reefs and such.
You can directly compare this to Sega’s Vectorman, and the difference here is... that it didn’t take place in nature. Or rather, it's not "realistic".
And this, to a lot of people, made it a lot less visually impressive. I’m not saying they’re wrong of course, I quite like Donkey Kong Country, but there are reasons why certain folks find it to be kind of ugly today. Because although Vectorman wasn’t “ambitious”, it at least wasn’t an eyesore.
And you can see, eventually, Donkey Kong got a redesign that was more stylized and less real looking, or real adjacent.
Circling back to my Pixar example, although mostly forgotten today, at the time, “A Bug’s Life” was actually considered even more revolutionary and groundbreaking than Toy Story. Do you see the pattern yet? And I think, it’s because there were a lot of people who were more enamoured with “realistic” looking computer graphics than anything else. Realistic looking water, realistic grains of sand, etc.
It’s sad to say, but in general, I think a lot of the people who direct the visual media that defines our surroundings are more inspired by a desire to be “innovative” more than anything else, and less so “creative”.
That would mean a lot of the dominant aesthetics of any given era could've just been attributed to the allure of whatever technology was on the rise in that particular moment. And this could be lithographs, silk screening, Lisa Frank and colour printers, and now that would be digital graphics software...
Part 3: And then the 2010s happened
Alright, so, I think what eventually kicked my disinterest and hatred of computer graphics into overdrive would be Zack Snyder. And it’s not just Zack Snyder, it’s NVIDIA box art designs, it’s 2011 iPhone backgrounds, and it’s massively overproduced video games, especially starting with the PS3 and PS4.
After a certain point, there’s just something about realistic looking computer graphics that all exuded “40 year old meathead who’s losing their hair” in a very specific and unappealing way.
Today, I think it is this who is the type of person who primarily finds themselves enamoured with James Cameron’s Avatar, it’s old people. This is the type of person who primarily found themselves enamoured with the Lion King remake, and Disney live-action remakes, it’s old people.
These are a demographic who’s too embarrassed to watch cartoons because "that’s for babies", but they will keep up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that was the primary audience for "Fantastic Four: First Steps", etc.
You can compare this directly to something like Terminator 2, which in a lot of ways, is the perfect kids movie. But these days, so much of our culture right now, be that Stranger Things, you name it, feels like it should be for kids and kids at heart, but it all seems to be made for 40-50 year old virgins instead.