Disney Won't Let Me Recommend Skeleton Crew | The Backdrop
Added 2024-12-10 16:30:09 +0000 UTCThis week's episode of The Backdrop is now available!
Comments
So the question that comes to my mind is - what effect will this have upon quality of shows? That is to say a good Critic acts for me as a way to highlight the good and screen out the not so good but for a producer of a show/film constructive criticism must be helpful to guide there next efforts… Therefore if Disney is controlling the narrative around there new show by only limiting what can be reviewed (sorry I mean protecting its self from spoiler leaks 😏) Then in the long term will this not have the same impact as replacing critics with ‘yes men’ willing to say anything after viewing only a small % of something? I understand all of this needs to make financial sense at the end of the day, but for me not being able to properly critique something smells a lot like a large company trying to avoid quality control / harsh truths being discussed about there product 🤷♂️ Ultimately, that will not end well for the future product quality
Pete3.141
2024-12-19 12:45:37 +0000 UTCI would support a reboot of The Critic with Darren Mooney voicing Jay Sherman.
Christopher Eychaner
2024-12-13 02:14:41 +0000 UTCYes, certainly. I just find it interesting where the differences and similarities (at least when both are used for telling stories and not just gameplay / abstract art) lie. Even more so when you got a games critic like Yahtzee who is interested in the narrative side. I think there is a point from the gaming side that can be transferred here: if something doesn't "gets good" during the timeframe I expect to invest myself in the work, I can say with enough confidence that it, seen as a whole, isn't good. Like, a movie of four hours shouldn't take the last hour to get worth watching. But as this is usually levelled against the first seasons of a longer series, there again is the difference that usually you can jump in later and skip the uninteresting stuf... So yeah, I find the comparison interesting.
JR
2024-12-11 20:21:14 +0000 UTCVideo games and movies/streaming series are different mediums, and reviewing them is different in a couple of big ways. Movies are very defined/contained so finishing one is straightforward, it is watching the entire thing. Video games aren't so defined so there's a lot of disagreement over what finishing even means. Is finishing 100%'ing a game, is it finishing the critical path, what about games without a critical path (ex. sports), etc. Video games require a lot more time to finish. A long move is 4 hours which is the length of a very short video game. Video games can have skill barriers to complete/advance that movies don't have. This isn't praise or criticism of either medium. I'm fine with someone talking about a video game without finishing it, but do think someone talking about a movie needs to have watched the entire thing*. *There are a few exceptions where I'm ok with someone not watching the entire movie, but they're pretty limited
Bj Last
2024-12-11 19:56:28 +0000 UTCOh, I think "The Batman" is by far the best live-action Batman movie because it's 3 hours and 20 minutes long. The length itself isn't a selling point, it's why it took me so long to watch the movie, but the movie uses it to ensconce the viewer in the neonoir, darkly humorous world of Batman. It doesn't "bring Batman into the real world" because that's folly, but it takes its time establishing ITS world. I think the problem is a cultural one too: "film" is still seen as the apex of "creative expression" as TV, videogames, comics, and even pro-wrestling try to "become cinema" even as cinema is inspired by all those things, yet is still considered "above them" by a great many culture critics.
Dr. Judge, Private Eye
2024-12-11 18:26:08 +0000 UTCTo be fair, I don't mind taking your time telling a story. "Dune: Part Two" is my favourite film of the year and it's almost three hours. I'm really looking forward to "The Brutalist", a near-four-hour movie with an overture and an interval. I'm currently rewatching "Twin Peaks: The Return", which is eighteen hours long, and really loving how it stretches and compresses time. But, yeah, it is frustrating how this approach to streaming often stretches and distends narratives. There are streaming shows where it's not an issue - the length of "Ripley" this year really lets you sit in the lead character's existential loneliness - but for a lot of stuff that is pitching itself as popcorn fare, pulling and stretching the classic structure really fundamentally breaks the narrative. (To give credit where it's due, I did actually quite enough "The Acolyte" stretching a single light sabre battle over the runtime of a whole episode in "Night", which is the rare example of a show using the episode structure as something that can allow a story to be broken out so beats become their own stories - a light sabre battle that has its own three-act structure instead of being an element of a third act. But that is also the exception rather than the rule.)
Darren Mooney
2024-12-11 10:07:19 +0000 UTCHope you enjoy them. I can also recommend "Grand Theft Hamlet", which I watched after the record.
Darren Mooney
2024-12-11 10:02:29 +0000 UTCHa! I mean, I do have to have that idea first, the thread that I start to pull at, and it leads me in all sorts of interesting and unexpected directions. But it does start with me watching it and being like, "Hm. What's all this about?" Which is the best job in the world.
Darren Mooney
2024-12-11 10:01:00 +0000 UTC"You think about it and then you talk and/or write about it", the critic whose footnotes rival some academic essays summarises his work process. And I thought understatement was an English, not an Irish virtue... This aside, a very interesting look behind the curtains, yes. It's an interesting point of comparison with the discussion on the gaming side of the team about whether not or when you need to finish a video game to criticise it.
JR
2024-12-10 21:53:12 +0000 UTCI didn't really have any interest in Skeleton Crew (I'm not even sure if I'd even really heard anything about it), but I'm glad I watched this video because it wasn't really about that. Also, thanks for the recommendations @7:55 for things that are worth my time. I'll never turn down quick peaks behind the curtain of any professional, thanks Darren for providing this one.
KingDead42
2024-12-10 21:33:36 +0000 UTCEnjoyed this enormously, though it does somewhat paradoxically point out just how hard making long-form entertainment is. I'm a fan of both pro-wrestling and manga/superhero comics, I KNOW how easy it is to start something and how impossible it is to end it effectively. I feel like those two mediums, more than any other, are familiar with that because they have tight deadlines and the obligation to fill space EVERY SINGLE week or month. It used to be very different from TV, but now with streaming: the notion of taking an 'off-season' has become obsolete from a studio perspective. I don't think the video answers the questions, I don't think it's intended to, but it IS odd how it takes the tack of "a good ending means nothing after a bad start" AND "a bad ending means nothing after a good start," both of which are essentially ways of viewing films. Which have the benefit of only being 90-120 minutes. Which many creatives find a stifling amount of time to try and tell a complex story in.
Dr. Judge, Private Eye
2024-12-10 17:59:29 +0000 UTC
