Unpopular Geek Media Opinions

[jian]

He worked on it until he died, always intending to get it to a state the publisher would accept. "Necromancy" or note, it absolutely did not come from the wastebin. That's nonsense, mean revisionism.

He did work on it but the book we have is not any version of the book he wrote at any one time, and isn’t a book he wrote at all, since more than half of it is not his words. No, sorry, necromancy. At best it’s necromancy in good faith, if you like.

 

[Parmandur]

Mmm, that is a highly debatable contention at best, honestly. Certainly Tolkien wanted to publish some version of the Simarillion at various times - the first as early as 1937, before even the Lord of the Rings - but it was rejected twice and he shelved it and worked on LotR instead. He then changed his views on the backstory of Middle Earth significantly through the 40s and 50s and didn’t really have a final publishable version available before he died. The 1977 version, which is mostly what we have now, is half him and half his son Chris and Guy Gabriel Kay working on his later notes. Chris Tolkien admits that he wrote much of it from scratch and would probably have written a different version at a different time. It’s necromancy.

Speaking as someone who owns and has read all of HoME...no, not really. Editorial decisions had to be made,different eras of drafts were smashed together, and ultimately IMO the drafts fragments are stronger than the final prosict a lot of the time (the original 1916 Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin? Amazing, unhinged)...but the final Simirilion is a fair representation of what Tolkien was getting at, albeit woth some shortcuts he would not have taken, or rather could not take based on his personal temperament.

 

[pukunui]

I really have to disagree about You Only Live Twice - Bond and Dahl’s approach to Japanese culture (veering somewhere between exoticism and imperialist Japanophilia without much in between), Bond somehow passing as a Japanese fisherman, general sexism etc were really quite jarring to me when I saw it first as a kid 40 years ago and remain so now. It’s one of the worst Bond films in that regard, and communicates more of Fleming’s appalling assumptions and prejudices than most films. It’s worth noting that I’m Korean-English and was at that point working out what my ethnicity meant in the UK at the time (racism, mostly). It did really help out the Japanese film industry and has some great action scenes, though.

OK. I guess it just felt more respectful to me compared to its predecessors. It was nice to see they filmed on location in Japan using Japanese actors. Yes, Bond "turning Japanese" was weird, but at least it was done intentionally as a disguise, unlike say when they cast white Canadian-American actor Joseph Wiseman to play the half-Chinese Dr No. (There were a few other non-white/European characters in Bonds 2-4 who were clearly being played by American or British actors as well - like when Sir Alec Guinness played a Bedouin chief in Lawrence of Arabia.)

I guess it was a relative thing for me.

 

[MGibster]

Event Horizon is far superior to its pseudo-intellectual, offensively sexist imitator Sunshine.

I've never heard of Sunshine, so I have to agree with you.

Had the Watchmen movie stuck to the octopus ending, it would have been really great.

Again, I have to agree with you. Having Dr. Manhattan be the threat kind of undermines the whole idea of the Soviet Union and the United States teaming up because there's a greater threat to both from outside. I also think producers of comic book movies tend to underestimate the audience's ability to accept comic book events. If it worked for the original comic it'll work for the movie.

There's also the less than subtle classism. He was afraid of fishermen and people who lived in small towns.

I like to fish and I lived in a small town. He was right to fear us.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I like to fish and I lived in a small town. He was right to fear us.

So there’s a grain of truth to the hat, then?

 

[pukunui]

Event Horizon is far superior to its pseudo-intellectual, offensively sexist imitator Sunshine.

I've never seen Sunshine, but man did Event Horizon freak me out when I saw it at the tender age of 16! One of the only movies that's ever done that to me. I think it was all the not-quite-subliminal imagery.

 

[Swanosaurus]

There's also the less than subtle classism. He was afraid of fishermen and people who lived in small towns.

What's really interesting about Lovecraft is how openly he displays how his classism and racism is rooted in anxiety and ambivalence. It's like he's lying down on the dissectioin table for the reader. Take The Shadow over Innsmouth: The whole raid, the opportunity to symbolically kill what you're afraid of and identifiy with a violent, racist act of lashing-out, is glossed over. Instead, we get the protagonists transformation, even his desire for it. Also, the people of Innsmouth are not depicted as primitives: They have a deeper insight into the nature of reality than everyone else. I think Lovecraft's readiness to highlight and heighten his own anxieties in his stories instead of "overcoming" them by symbolic violence, mingled with his racism, his classism and his fear of modernity as well as his materialistic worldview, have produced texts that, for all their blatant atrociousness, lend themselves to a deep critical analysis like few other works of fiction. I'm pretty sure it's no accident that authors like Victor LaValle, Kij Johnson or Matt Ruff keep returning to Lovecraft for inspiration and to deconstruct his vision.

 

[TiQuinn]

Ah, I found my unpopular geek opinion now:

I thought Event Horizon was only average at best, with few scares outside of a jump scare or two, an obvious plot, bad sound effects (if you use the Doom WHOOSH effect, you automatically earn naughty word movie status in my book), hokey “outrun the fireball antics”, and the whole thing was just kind of dull.

Meanwhile, if we’re talking about Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, it’s a freaking gorgeous movie for starters, with genuine tension.

 

[Ryujin]

What's really interesting about Lovecraft is how openly he displays how his classism and racism is rooted in anxiety and ambivalence. It's like he's lying down on the dissectioin table for the reader. Take The Shadow over Innsmouth: The whole raid, the opportunity to symbolically kill what you're afraid of and identifiy with a violent, racist act of lashing-out, is glossed over. Instead, we get the protagonists transformation, even his desire for it. Also, the people of Innsmouth are not depicted as primitives: They have a deeper insight into the nature of reality than everyone else. I think Lovecraft's readiness to highlight and heighten his own anxieties in his stories instead of "overcoming" them by symbolic violence, mingled with his racism, his classism and his fear of modernity as well as his materialistic worldview, have produced texts that, for all their blatant atrociousness, lend themselves to a deep critical analysis like few other works of fiction. I'm pretty sure it's no accident that authors like Victor LaValle, Kij Johnson or Matt Ruff keep returning to Lovecraft for inspiration and to deconstruct his vision.

I see it a different way. To me, it's the corruption of the "good and pure" that is brought by The Other. The siren's call of evil. He fears what the world becomes, in the presence of The Other. Classic racist fear and loathing.

 

[jian]

That's ignoring that it's almost as profoundly messed-up to ask kids to choose anything at 11. Hell I got asked which school I wanted to go to at 11 and I chose totally wrong (for the record I chose the school equivalent of Ravenclaw but to be fair the main alternative was basically Hufflepuff). Putting "Wow dat's messed up yo" in Dumbledore's mouth (who she also retcon'd being gay when the lack of gay representation was repeatedly pointed out! Bit of a retcon target on ol' DD's back) and having him do exactly nothing about it doesn't detract from it being messed-up either lol. Also are you asking me to buy the idea that the kids choose voluntarily, there's no quotas or anything, and Hufflepuff is the exact same size as the other houses, not 1/10th as large? Because I've met kids. I've been a kid. I know that like maybe 1-2 kids in a class of 20 would pick the house with an obvious dumb name and who are known for being basically "dim/weak but hardworking/decent". And also Ravenclaw would have like 2x as many people in it as the other houses put together and a wild mix of actually-smart kids and dumb kids who thought they were smart.

Speaking as someone who got very firmly sorted into Ravenclaw* at 12 and stayed there until I was at least 25*, and who therefore got You’re Clever Or You’re Nothing as a foundational Aspect for many years until I scrubbed it off my soul (still there, though), I’d say it’s an utterly terrible idea to sort kids that young into groups marked “clever”, “leadership material”, “cannon fodder” etc based on who they are and what they choose at that age. It warps them all for life in a variety of ways - they may get over it in time but why do the harm?

*spoilers for personal boasting.

Spoiler

I scored highest of my year in the Eton scholarship exam and was therefore in College - the privileged scholars’ house in one of the most privileged schools in the world - for five years before going on to get four degrees at Cambridge. It’s very much part of my personal Hamilton narrative that I’m a kid from a poor dictatorship (as South Korea was in 1981) who didn’t speak English when my family came over when I was 6 and I was top scholar at Eton 6 years later, but it’s also nonsense - it’s a lot more complicated than that and I was privileged in a number of ways before I ever went to Eton, let alone afterwards.