I know everyone thinks I'm a brittle American, but I'm kind of sick of everyone blaming Americans for choices that are made by people who think poorly of Americans.
My point is your original comment said you were sick of people blaming Americans for something that is literally being done by Americans.
The bland media algorithm designed to maximize profits, the “MCU formula”, comes straight from the top. People who see media simply in terms of investment vehicles for thier quarterly shareholders reports are the ones who lay down this law, and those “people” are overwhelmingly American business interests.
I know what you meant. There is such a thing as self-hatred, or thinking you're the only exceptional member of a group. And there's also such a thing as don't trash the majority with the actions of a small minority, particularly a small minority that thinks they are better than the majority.
My point is that the reason this was dumbed down is that movie execs THINK Americans need that, not that Americans need that. Movie execs just think the average American is dumber than a movie exec.
@masterspace All right, so I was interested in the statistic so I looked it up and 20% of Americans are at Level 1 literacy or below according to Wikipedia... which means that actually a lower number than that is functionally illiterate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
Being creepy by stalking my past conversations instead of arguing the point at hand, and ironically furthering my point by mistakenly using a study on Canada from 1989.
Stalking your past convos? No. I saw you were from lemmy.ca and therefore Canadian. Then I did a search for the 20 percent statistic and of course Wikipedia came up.
I don't feel bad. I know our school system sucks because of a lot of systemic problems. I do think your education is not as great as you think it is if you simplify the 20% statistic to full illiteracy and if you think a random person on kbin needs to set up a new public school system before she can have an opinion.
That's before we unpack the idea that literacy=intelligence, which is not always the case.
I do feel a bit bad about the stalking accusation. I didn't realize the ability to see your server in the automatic kbin reply setup combined with the esoteric knowledge of how to use Duck Duck Go would frighten you, Mr Better Educated Than Me. We can stop if this is too much for your heart. This weather can be tough on the body and I know you guys aren't well-versed in heat safety.
if you think a random person on kbin needs to set up a new public school system before she can have an opinion.
You’re allowed to have an opinion, if your opinion is that you feel like America is picked on for being too dumb in this context then I would suggest that you need some strong evidence to persuade people that literacy is not a proxy for education, or more specifically, the ability to hold more complicated medieval fantasy plots together.
And I am well aware of our flaws, our literacy rate is 1.25x the OECD average which is shameful. I’m just not false equivalencing that with America’s 6.33x. In fact if you remove America as the outlier dragging the OECD stats down we look even worse.
@masterspace And there we get to why I'm such a brittle American. See, the immense privilege of the powerful in our country, our military prowess, and the export of the my of American exceptionalism have CONVINCED a lot of people across the world that if they bash Americans it is punching up.
It's not. See, we do HAVE a bad public school system and the richest in our country have spent 40 years sabotaging it in some scheme to fund private schooling. Not only that, school funding is partly by federal and state funding--which is sabotaged by those bastards--but MOSTLY by local taxes so the people in the rich areas get the good schooling with arts, extracurricular activities, foreign language studies and a pool while the people in the poor areas get a whiteboard, an untrained Army veteran as a teacher, and the requirement to buy their own school supplies.
As Americans we have to fight constantly against this sabotage, WHILE working full-time jobs with greater hours and fewer benefits than any other Western country just so we can afford to go to a doctor--as we are called by not just the privileged in our country but the entire WORLD lazy, stupid, complacent and undeserving.
So when you make fun of the average American and call them stupid because their public school system which they need to fix before they complain about people making fun of them? You're punching down.
Meanwhile, you accuse me of punching down but I have spent this thread mocking you for living in a country with a vast abundance of natural resources and wildlife, and living in a country where it's common to ACTUALLY learn a second language rather than learn some grammar rules and tick off boxes, which as I say above, is a privilege in the US afforded to the better schooling that you get by virtue of living in a rich area.
Now, if you'd say Americans are stupid because we invaded the wrong country... Well, then you'd be punching up. But instead you're making fun of something that we are actually at a disadvantage in.
Except that I didn’t make fun of anything, I merely pointed out that it’s plausible that Netflix felt like they had to dumb the Witcher down for American audiences.
As Americans we have to fight constantly against this sabotage, WHILE working full-time jobs with greater hours and fewer benefits than any other Western country just so we can afford to go to a doctor–as we are called by not just the privileged in our country but the entire WORLD lazy, stupid, complacent and undeserving.
And yeah, I recognize that sucks, but you don’t have to do that because of external forces, you have to do that because many people in the group called “Americans” repeatedly vote for politicians who put those systems in place. So when people call Americans stupid, there’s a reason for it. Many are stupid and vote for stupid shit that goes directly against their interest. I’m sorry if you don’t like to hear that or be associated with your fellow countrypeople who do, but it’s the reality of the situation when we’re talking about “Americans” as a whole.
You weren’t just making fun, you were saying you’re sick of us being bothered when people made fun of us.
Except that the context in which I was replying was not one where someone felt picked on because they got made fun of, it was one where someone felt picked on because someone said that it’s plausible they dumbed down the Witcher for Americans.
@masterspace Yeah, but YOU are the one who brought public school into it and you did it in a clever little jokey way.
If you had said "Well, that's what you get for attacking the wrong country", it would be one thing. But you went and made fun of the public school system. You punched down. And now, for your sins, you are stuck in this conversation.
Yeah, but YOU are the one who brought public school into it and you did it in a clever little jokey way.
Because the quality of education affects intelligence, or more specifically, the ability to hold more/less complex witcher plotlines together in your head, so it is a rationale thing to bring up when discussing whether or not Americans are actually capable of holding more/less complex witcher plotlines together in their heads.
You punched down
No, I merely held up a mirror and caused you to have a temper tantrum
I'd hate to see how you'd react to an actual temper tantrum.
No, man. You're mocking people who don't have access to a high standard of learning. You're trying to rationalize that away so that you don't have to feel bad about it.
While I've enjoyed seasons past, including the animated bit they put out that one year, after watching an episode and a half of the first half of this last season 3 a couple things became clear, there are too many subplots/characters to the point that I simply tune out all the names and don't care, focusing instead on the main three, and lastly that I'm bored. It's become something tiresome, and I shut it off after a couple episodes, maybe I'll revisit, probably not.
Yeah same, I was really hoping the witcher show would turn out great but then when they first showed the nilfgaard armours before S1 I lost hope and my fear turned out to be justified.
The tale of producers dumbing down plot and dialogue for greater main stream appeal is as old as show business. And from my experience said producers are almost always wrong. Sorry pal, but you can’t blame social media for something your peers have always been doing.
This is just damage control, there doesn’t have to be meaning to these words other than a try of appeasing the fans. That said though, it’s ironic how the Witcher games at least (haven’t read the books yet) have quite mature and well-written content compared to most other games, so they’re like the opposite of what he’s trying to say here and people LOVE the games for that. So it’s literally the opposite that’s true. If you put out over-simplified garbage, you will not create anything good with that kind of ingredients.
Season 2 (“Book 1” in the US), I agree made some TERRIBLE changes, especially around Yennifer’s relationship with Ciri.
Having just finished Season 3, however, I feel like they mostly pulled back into following the book’s major plotlines. Sure, a TV show makes some concessions on content, but overall I felt it followed the books “okay”. Everything that happened in Thanedd was close, and everything after that too, in the final 3 episodes. Rience was the strangest change to me, since that doesn’t happen for several books and it’s Ciri’s doing.
Does the general public agree? Or are we still so mad about Season 2 that we refuse to see Season 3 positively?
This. I see no point in investing any more of time in this show. Netflix needs to fire everybody, pull every episode from existence, and just start over with people who actually care about the source material and are willing to invest the time, effort, and respect to do it right.
Yeah, fair, but I didn’t like the first season, either. Cavill was perfect, Joey Batey as Dandelion was… fine… and that is where the positives stopped. The show was a mess from the start and you can’t just erase those seasons if they did happen to do a little better on 3… and knowing that Cavill is out for season 4… there is just no point. I’d rather replay Witcher 3 again than ever watch another minute of that show.
oof, you just reminded me - Dandelion in season 3 was… not as good as Season 1/2. Even down to the detail that every time he came on screen, my wife demanded to know what they did with his hair. That, and the strangely unnecessary sex scenes with another male.
ok ok, season 3 wasnt perfect either. but I was “surprised” that the big events at Aretuza and the major events afterward all followed the book rather closely…
Huh, the games did phenomenally well in America. Weird. /s
We're in an age of knee-jerk finger pointing, with the problem getting worse the higher you get in society. It's just one giant game of blame hot-potato.
Here's the thing: The producers don't owe the fans shit. They don't owe the fans an explanation even. They owe the investors an explanation. The fans are just there, that's the reality of being a fan of something. We don't get a say, we just can choose to watch or not, and then decide to trash it or praise it online if we want to.
So while there's a problem going up the ladder of the blame game, there's another one coming back down the ladder, and it's entitlement. For some odd reason there's an air of "we deserve this content, exactly to our specifications" and it permeates games, movies, music, all of the entertainment content we have been inundated with as a society. And I think the culture generally leans towards encouraging it because it keeps the culture thriving. But it also keeps us in the exact status quo we're in as a society, beholden to these billionaire publishers we all rail on daily.
Because let's face it: We as a society spend an enormous amount of energy and as such, destroy a lot of the planet, on all this entertainment. If we can't accept that as a fact then we're fucking doomed.
Fans are very important. I think you may be on to something that we as a society are starting to feel entitled when it comes to media, but downplaying the importance of the fans and saying they don’t matter is a bit too much.
In recent memory I can think of a few examples where fans had a major effect on the entertainment content we received.
The response to the first Sonic trailer was abysmal and much of the internet called them out for Sonic’s design. The studio listened… the artist who designed Sonic’s look even went to Twitter to thank people for all of the feedback. Then they went back, redesigned his look throughout the film and we got a pretty solid film out of that.
The entirety of #ReleaseTheSnyderCut managed to convince WB to bring Snyder back and let him finish his vision.
I mean even in comics, the fans mattered. How many times have comics held contests or write-ins to vote on decisions for certain characters or directions to take the story. The big one that comes to mind is the death of Jason Todd. People hated his Robin and voted to kill him off. Eventually he was brought back as Red Hood, but none of this would have occurred without the fans.
Oh and who could possibly forget Morbius getting rereleased because Sony mistakenly thought people loved it since there was so much online discussion and memes regarding the movie. For better or worse, fans (consumers) did that.
There's a difference between choosing and listening to fans (critics) to improve and being made to feel obligated to do so. This society literally harasses people over being upset at fictional portrayals of cartoons. Sometimes harassed right out of their chosen career. Game devs know this very well.
Content creators have no obligations to the consumers of the content, period. No more than Picasso had an obligation to paint landscapes. He didn't care to so he didn't.
Content creators, publishers, etc: they're free to make schlock we don't like, and we're free to express our disdain for it, and I'm free to point out that the folks wasting their energy complaining are indeed, wasting their energy. And cringey to boot. There's a line crossed when you start insisting and making personal commentary at all. A publisher's interests and the fan's interests are not always aligned. That's fine. You can deal with it, I promise. You bring up the snyder cut: Know who probably drove that whole push? The studio. Yeah, every one of those "fans" got played. This kind of shit is unacceptable. Period.
we're free to express our disdain for it, and I'm free to point out that the folks wasting their energy complaining are indeed, wasting their energy complaining are indeed, wasting their energy. And cringey to boot.
Oh, so you're free to complain, but when others do it it's cringey? Got it.
Declaring "I shall not be purchasing [thing] because [reason]" in public is yes, very cringey. You just, don't buy the thing. That's all. No look-at-me-i'm-important declaration necessary.
My complaint isn't the same as that bullshit. Try again.
So... the supply side matters but the demand side does not? Pfft.
If you make a thing that has an established fan base, and the fans are not happy, you screwed up. This isn't a problem with fans, it's a you problem. So how do you NOT screw up? You listen to the fans. Ideally, you hire people who are fans themselves.
Let's analogize: say carrots are in high demand - people can't get enough of them. And you tell everyone you have a big shipment of carrots coming in. And you set up a store called "Jim-Bob's Carrot Emporium", and people are lined up around the block... but it turns out the only thing you sell are potatoes... yeah, people are going to be pissed, and they will be justified, because you sold them a lie.
Game of Thrones was the most popular show in the world not too long ago and is more complicated. House of the Dragon is also complicated and did well just last year. There have been tons of complicated dramas that have been popular. This is just a dumb excuse
Sounds like sour grapes and rationalization. The producer states that his complicated projects failed. If all of your complicated projects failed, then it may be that you struggle with making complicated projects, not that Americans don’t like complicated projects.
Plus, it sounds like he disproves his own point without realizing it. He simplified the Witcher and it still isn’t doing well. Isn’t that an indicator that maybe plot complexity isn’t as strong of a predictor of audience engagement as he thinks?
When asked what he believed to be significant for younger people, Baginski replied: “Just emotions. Just pure emotions. A bare emotional mix. Those people grew up on TikTok and YouTube, they jump from video to video.”
So basically It’s Gen Z that he couldn’t create an interesting plot from the source material
He's really blaming the execs and showrunner between the lines I think. Saying she had to "make tough decisions" means "she fucked up". It's Netflix and the showrunner who think they need to go to the lowest common denominator with scripts to appeal to Americans, especially hard fantasy/sci-fi. So he's kinda pissed at both groups really not just audiences.
It's a shame because other works like GOT 1-5 show the opposite. Go for complex, go for the source material, and audiences will be patient for it.
Then blame execs and showrunners, not the audience. American audiences are savvier than he thinks, just because he had one pitch that didn't fare well with American audiences doesn't mean that they won't embrace more complicated elements of The Witcher.
Plus it just sounds sad; blame audiences for something you, as a producer, can't effectively produce.
How? Aren't they the ones in charge? American audiences have as much influence on the product they chose to deliver as Americans did for Dark. Great show by the way.
Yup cause Amaricans wrote the script and decided against the millions of of fans (including the lead actor) who specifically said the new direction sucked directly to the entire production team… yup amaricans.
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