I don’t hate, but I honestly despise everyone of “The Walking Dead” team, regardless of whether they were actors or production team, who were complicit in the emotional violence against their viewers when Neegan brutally murdered protagonists that the audience had grown attached to for seasons.
And I do not object to the killing of the protagonists, if that’s what the writers wanted. I object to the way in which it was portrayed, breaking the rules of the genre and the unspoken agreement with an audience that there are different ways in which violence is portrayed depending on context:
The rule that was broken here is that the actual gore happens off-camera and is only implied, maybe the after-effects are shown. Gore on-camera in the zombie genre is only allowed between humans and zombies. Zombies are by definition subject to their instincts, whereas a human killing another human is cold-blooded murder in this scenario, and it is not needed for the story / suspense to show the actual gore - only the lead-up and an aftermath, or maybe an “artists depiction” - like “screen goes blurry” similar to the first murder (OTOH, I knew that one was coming and skipped a few seconds, so maybe I missed something similarly despicable).
The second murder in said scene caught me off-guard and made me (and a lot of other people) quit watching forever. Fuck AMC, fuck the producers, and fuck the cast for exposing me to that snuff shit.
I disagree. I despise everyone involved for not distancing themselves in public from that torture porn. If they didn’t know it before, they did afterwards & chose to roll with it.
Get over yourself dude. You can argue over whether it not a piece of media is bad or unwarranted or not, but to feel such hatred for an entire crew of people for just doing their job is a really out of touch response. I personally think Goblin Slayer is a fucked up piece of media that should never have been released as a normal piece of anime, but I’m not going to hold a vendetta against the animators for earning a paycheque
My biggest issue was the fake-out death just before the actual death. The show had been going downhill for a while, and it just felt like they were going for shock instead of storytelling at that point. Fake a characters death, then suddenly they’re alive, and then they’re murdered. It just feels like they ran out of good ways to make the show interesting.
There was no way in hell Glen should have survived his fakeout death, and then it didnt even matter because they fucking brutally killed him off at the end of the season anyways… and then waited until the very next season to confirm it… ALL WHILE THE SHOWRUNNER WAS SAYING THE SHOW WAS GOING TO TAKE A HARD LEFT FROM THE COMICS AS OF THIS SEASON, WHEN THE KILL WAS AS LITERAL SHOT FOR SHOT AS YOU CAN GET FROM TRANSITIONING FROM COMIC TO TV SHOW
yeah, as I argued, it wasn’t the gore per se, but about the emotional violence and disrespect towards the viewers that made me despise the team of that series. Gore is shown in splatter movies (Halloween, Scream, …), but in those you don’t have an emotional build-up to like a character. Protagonists are killed in thrillers / movies / series that build them up first, but then there’s no direct gore. The crossover is what makes the director and everyone complicit a piece of shit.
an example of a extremely well done surprise/twist.
By committing a non-punishable act of abuse against the audience? I don’t think so. What this was to the regular viewers was what it would be to expose kids to whatever PG-18 content in the middle of their favorite animated cartoon.
I think the connection to the cast that the viewers had at that point was exactly what made the scene so impactful. Many other deaths that seemed just as brutal didn’t hit as hard, and aren’t even mentioned whenever the topic comes up. The implied death before then with the “Never mind, he’s still alive!” was really where I felt insulted, and might’ve been another reason for his death to feel more real when it actually happened so vulgarly.
Taking it out on the whole team seems a bit much, though.
I think the connection to the cast that the viewers had at that point was exactly what made the scene so impactful.
It would have had the exact same type of storytelling impact (obviously not that of disgust) to show the bat swing, show the shocked looks, but cut away for the gore.
Taking it out on the whole team seems a bit much, though.
It’s not like I can do anything about it. They’re not likely to care that I consider them despicable human beings.
Not necessarily, since we’d already thought he died once before, so it might’ve even been confusing and some people would’ve been saying he might still be alive and might come back again. The gore of it drives it home in the most unmistakeable way, which is what really makes all the risks realistic from then on.
Remember, the whole point is the real monsters are the people, not the zombies.
I had trouble with Nick Mohammed’s redemption arc on Ted Lasso, because he had sold me too well on his heel-turn. He’s super charming on Taskmaster, though!
Hands down Claes Bang as ‘the prick’ from the show Bad Sisters. I’m pretty sure I’ll have a visceral dislike of any character I see him play in the future.
Skylar being in this group is low-key insane. She cheated on her narcissistic drug dealing murderous husband. The rest of these folks are murderers or magical torturers.
I didn’t even dislike Skyler because of her personality or the things she did, she was a great character, well written and acted. I didn’t like the time spent on her b-plot when there were so many much more interesting things going on (in my opinion).
I didn’t dislike her at all at first, because I didn’t start watching the show until season 4 was airing. While I was binging the first few seasons if a Skyler heavy episode came on when I was super keen to know what was going on with Gus, or whatever, I’d just continue watching the next episode.
But once I got to the point where I was waiting all week for an episode, looking forward to seeing what happens with the cartels, cops, etc., that was when I found myself thinking “fuck, it’s a God damned Skyler episode.”
Homelander is the main antagonist of The Boys on Amazon Prime, adapted from a pretty mediocre comic book that was just “90’s edge for the sake of 90’s edge”, but unlike the comic, the show is actually great.
Homelander’s basically “What if Donald Trump had super powers and the media was covering up every bad and dumb thing he ever did… Also he knew how to fucking talk and wasn’t senile.”, and turns out what you get is the scariest motherfucker in all of fiction
Ah Stormfront, I gotta admit, they had me fooled with that one. I thought she was going to turn out to be one of the good guys… Then we see her not merely being negligent, but actively destructive with the justification being that the culprit wasn’t white and he was in an area with people who weren’t white.
Then the internet gets reminded that Stormfront is Nazi Slang and the name of a White Supremacist Forum that’s existed forever, meaning it was telegraphed from the start.
Especially since in the original comic, Stormfront is a guy (and does not have a love affair with Homelander) and was made a woman as a commentary on modern media gender bending or race-lifting characters solely for inclusion purposes without really caring about how it effects the work or if it’s even appropriate for the circumstances.
I realize that’s a divided take and could get me downvotes, so I’ll specify that that’s acccording to the guy running the show, this is not my personal take, he came out and said “This is why Stormfront is a woman”
Also the imagery of a guy dressed like the American Flag boning a Nazi Chick really says everything about White Nationalism being the courting of Fascism and Conservative ideology.
Actually that whole season had a lot of “Inclusiveness for the sake of inclusiveness” is bad, and done in a surprisingly progressive way. About how a lot of it is shallow, forced, and is more harmful to the groups in questions because such characters serve only to be mascots instead of actually authentic… with how Maeve is bisexual for example, but Vought forces her to pretend to be a lesbian because “Bisexuals are too confusing!” and was forced to only be with girly girls because “Two women both in a masculine role sends the wrong message, there needs to be a clear indicator of which one’s the woman in the relationship!11”, that DEFINITELY hit and I’m not even in show business or against inclusiveness in media… especially as a pansexual trans woman who’s been told she’s not allowed to “Pan” because “That’s just bi with a colorful descriptor”, not allowed to be bi either because “That’s not a real thing”, and worst of all… earlier in my transition I ran into a lot of the “Can’t you just be gay? Does it really have to THIS far?” that I’m sure TONS of trans babes have ran into.
God I started this just wanting to talk about Stormfront, but… FUCK, I just really love how the political commentary in The Boys is handled and how shockingly relevant and real it all is. It’s such a great pile of evidence to the fact that counter-culture is officially not dead and it makes the show such a compellingly scary thriller…
I get chills anytime Homelander is alone with a character, I geniunely never know if the other person is gonna walk out of their alive, even if they’re in the main cast. Just… God I gotta finally watch Season 3, that’s been on my to do list forever, and with Homelander coming to Mortal Kombat I finally have an excuse
Edit: One last thing, I just wanted to say that what I REALLY love about The Boys that doesn’t get enough credit it, is that although it’s based on a comic book series that long concluded… It’s based on a TERRIBLE comic book that never had a wide audience. I like that, instead of ruining something good with a shitty remake or reimagining like Big Media always did, they improved something terrible with a wonderful remake or reimagining (Homelander isn’t even really evil in the comic, he’s just sorta ignorant to how fragile humans are, and isn’t a major threat until Black Noir gaslights him into thinking he’s going insane and having psychotic blackouts by using fake videos of Homelander doing evil shit, that… in the show Homelander actually does for realsies)
Anyways, you had some good points there about The Boys show, agreed totally. And I hope whatever external annoyances you’ve had in your PERSONAL life are long gone <3
I’ve never heard of any of these people although the one on the top left looks vaguely familiar from game of thrones(?) like he was a pedantic pansy pathetic king or something? I don’t know. I never really watched it.
Oh gosh yeah if I was the wife of someone who became involved in criminal activity, I’d probably become a wretched unlikeable woman too. I never saw that show either but I can imagine from context here what her personality may have been like as Walter White’s wife.
A lot of her behavior was understandable in the show, given what Walt was becoming, but she cheated on her husband who was dying of cancer with her boss, and then kept working with him. That’s pretty inexcusable to me. Later in the show after Walt comes clean about what he’s been doing, he shows Skyler the money and tells her he did it for his family. She takes his money that he earned to leave for his wife and kids, and gives it to the boss that she had an affair with. They both become pretty awful people at different points of the show. Their poor kids have their entire lives torn apart by their psychopathic parents.
Walter was always awful, he just finally allowed himself to act on it.
Jessie was a generally good person acting like a bad person, Walt was a bad person acting like a good person. Their facades slowly fall away with each season.
Skyler was not perfect, but she gave her boss the money to avoid an investigation which could lead to Walt getting caught.
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