“"Ugh, a Ghostbusters reboot with all women!" And then the movie came out and they were like, "Told ya!" Well, the movie wasn't great, but it totally wasn't for the reasons those angry folks said it would be--because they're totallysexist.”
You've unintentionally —or not, given how immaturely you finished that sentence— missed the point here entirely. The film was coming from a bad place. The vibe was all wrong, right out of the gate. That's why everyone knew it was going to suck.
And that's not to say that everyone articulated that properly, or that there weren't/aren't a very tiny minority of people who just generally hate women.
But what everyone was saying (or trying to say) is: “The only reason you're doing this is because you think this toxic modern feminist trend of replacing men with women at every opportunity just for the sake of it, can put a quick buck in your pocket, not because you've got anything interesting to say about GhostBusters, which you obviously don't care about, and your selfish little propaganda experiment will stain our childhood franchise forever.”
And I agree with them. (Sans the part about caring much for GhostBusters.) And there's nothing sexist about that. As much as some people like to insist there is. There's a reason every other aspect of the film was completely phoned-in, like you said. The GhostBusters franchise was turned into a Hollywood guinea pig to test the waters for quantities of woke suckers ready to exchange money for crap. And because the woke left is far, far smaller than both the right and left want you to think it is these days, the experiement largely failed, and then failed again with Charlie's Angels. And now Disney is learning the hard way that even when characters have always been female, a majority-female cast will still fail without compelling plot and character development.
Society is in a far, far better state than some people would have you believe.
@rusty753: Not really, I just think it's silly that our culture cares so much about what is essentially a machine that takes what you say and says it back to you.
The Oscars exist to tell as many people as possible what they want to hear.
And because the type of people who watch shows like this are so entitled, if they don't tell those people exactly what they want to hear, then those people will get mad, have a little tantrum protest, and ultimately stop watching for a while. Then, the Oscars will lose money, panic, and backpedal.
If you're one of the Oscars “judges”, you're not thinking your own choices are so special or sacred. You're just saying whatever you feel like. To you, it's equivalent to choosing what to eat for dinner. You're more aware than anyone that whatever choice you make, requires no justification, and has no consequences.
So why not choose the dinner that puts tens of thousands of dollars in your pocket? Populism (of the woke variety or otherwise) sucks all the life and meaning out of everything.
The Last of Us is first and foremost a game, and the biggest problem with some of Sony's biggest releases in recent years, is that Sony has forgotten that. I love the bold story and characters, the dramatic shifts in pacing, and the attention to detail (and really no one does it as well as Sony), but no gamer should be forced into literally hours of just walking around listening to the same conversations over and over just because they're looking for the gameplay in their game, especially the second+ time through. When developers/publishers push that on you, it just means their head is a little lost up their own ass, and they're inappropriately trying to show off some aspect of their work, or they think they know what's best for every gamer. A mode like this is exactly what a game like this needed. Pure gameplay. That is completely separate and can be ignored entirely if you think it undercuts the themes. I think it's very selfish to say it shouldn't be there just because it's so offensive to your sensibilities that even never having to look at it ever, is a potential microagression to you or some niche demographic. If you're not going to implement into the story mode, a “press-this-button-to-skip-everything-until-the-next-interesting-gameplay” feature (and honestly I think that'd be more egregious) then I think this is a fantastic alternative.
But beyond that, I just find it hard to take anything you say seriously since you declared that Peter Parker needs to disappear from Spider-Man because he worked with the police. I think it's time for someone to accept that in the real world, there's always going to be crime, and it's always going to be handled by the police and basically no one else. And that no matter what will happen or has happened in the past, the people fighting crime in New York, will always be the NYPD.
These days the writers with the most ridiculous opinions get the most work. Same with almost all published media these days actually. Attention economy. No such thing as bad press. The end of infamy.
I don't buy Assassin's Creed or Far Cry or Watch_Dogs games any more.
Syndicate was the last AC game I bought (with a massive discount) and it's not terrible, but god damn does it test my patience sometimes. I never finished it. I was not interested (read: grossed out) by the direction I guessed the series was going, and Origins proved me right, Odyssey proved it again, and Valhalla was... ...well we all know what Valhalla was. If I had to sum it up in two words I'd use “Jesus” and “Christ”. I honestly think it's the most boring AAA game of all time.
Far Cry 3 was a heck of a lot of fun. I love that game. Far Cry 4 was just like FC3 but far worse in several key areas. Mainly just boring, joyless, whiny characters, across the board. (Can you name one character from Far Cry 4 apart from Pagan Min? Cuz I can't.) Far Cry 5 was a nice change of pace. I admit I liked the lack of mini-map and more leisurely pace. I thought the Montana setting was beautiful and relaxing. Definitely an improvement... but it felt like a fluke. Like Ubisoft had no idea why it was better. Just happenstance. And then Far Cry 6 was just the death of the series in my eyes. Absolutely brain dead easy. Poor performance. Shallow, schizophrenic characters. “But look! We have this guy! See!? See his face!? He in the game! You buy now yes?” They had absolutely no clue what they were doing. Total disaster.
Watch_Dogs had some rough spots, starting with Ubi's E3 lies. Aiden is a joyless bas****d. And I was getting pretty sick of him. But years later the game still holds up quite well. Not on PC of course since the mouse aiming absolute s***, but on console. You can still get a kick out of its gameplay loop. Watch_Dogs 2 fixed most of the complaints with the first game. It was lighter, more fun, slightly faster paced, more energetic, and the more colourful setting helped a lot (as did actual mouse support.) It really felt like they were listening. Like they knew what fun was. Watch_Dogs Legion was just embarrassing. I have a hard time believing this could come from the same team as 2. Why would you think I'd want to be flying a drone the whole time? Why would you think I'd want to play as a random hacker granny? That just doesn't make any sense(?) Who wants that? Were you high? Were you trying to capture the wacky Saints Row crowd? Or did you really have no clue why WD2 worked and so just took the trend from WD1 to WD2 way, way too far?
Ultimately Ubi has shown me they don't have a clue what they're doing. The last 5 years is like their dev choices are literally made by an algorithm, which in fairness, they probably were. Completely, totally out of touch as a company, not to mention morally bankrupt. It's no wonder they're trading at 20 compared to 80 just 3 years ago.
@just_visiting: Sure, here's one: How about not only not speaking out about the Muslim genocide in Xinjiang, China, but then actually filming the Mulan live-action reboot there, barely a hundred miles from one of the camps, while your CEO at the time is literally a Jew then thanking the Chinese govenrment for their “kindness” in the film's credits?
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