It is. And in the Independent newspaper which has editors that should have spotted a clanger like that.

Now, that would be more interesting and accurate.

Yeah, it is a financial success, but so was the emoji movie… Not sure that qualifies it as “culturally renowned”.

Conflating those ideas that money equals cultural impact is what leads us to an endless cycle of sequels and reboots that most people watch once and then forget.

Classic independent reporting “the movie whose cultural impact is renowned”.

Is it? There’s no proof that the movie is having a renowned cultural impact above any others and the link on their own site for that quote is talking, not about the movie, but Minecraft as a whole.

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That’s a superb trajectory.

I went on to the +2A and then an Amiga 500. Loved that machine, but always the fondest memories for me were typing in code out of magazines on my ZX.

“People make fun…”

Do they? They were massively popular in the UK and are generally remembered quite fondly by people who used them as kids.

Learning basic, playing games.

Sure, we griped about stuff, but folk gripe about everything.

This sort of retro-focussed content that makes weird assertions about how people felt and feel gets recycled way too often.

sometimes follow social media to a second location.

Thanks, that guy.

That’s really not one conflict. Conflating them was what the US regime at the time tried to do to whitewash their decisions.

Also, at least you do know people who were completely cool when everyone just pulled out of Afghanistan leaving the folk that worked with them to suffer the reprisals of the Taliban, so ask them if it was worth it.

Nice listicle, but would have been better to write something inciteful as to why all these sequels failed so hard.

It wasn’t just the cash grab, but a fundamental misunderstanding of what made the previous film great.

Kids loved watching the original RoboCop because it was R rated. It was a comic book film with gore and guns. It was illicit.

Then they turned him into a cartoon character for kids.

Police academy became a paradox of itself. You could argue that the public perception of the police had changed significantly between the original and Mission to Moscow too. It was no longer funny to be entertained by the thought of inept police.

Anyway, that’s just off the top of my head.

Nah, let him come here and make sure his motorcade gets stopped on the streets.

Behave.

(Hehe)

You’re hired.

Arrested? For saying something? This must be all the free speech you were promised.

Yes, I totally agree and I think you’ve hit on something subtle but really important…

The difference between starting to make a work (of art, if we are lucky) with an intent for it to be about something and telling people a work is about something.

I think the intent is important. Marvel’s latest round of press includes them telling us how the new Captain America is about modern politics but the plot really doesn’t hold that up beyond some fairly blunt motifs. Ultimately, it feels as if it about a struggling studio, if that is a theme.

I guess the context is really important… And it highlights the slippery thing between thematics and meaning. Take a film like Stalker where the plot is arguably slight, but the characterisation and the context give rise to meaning through the themes… It would be a different film if Tarkovsky had tried to market it as being about politics and Chernobyl.

Hang on, are we arguing for the same thing? That story, and more importantly, compelling story, is what is needed?

I was just using king as an example of someone who crafts stories… Whether they are page-turners or not, that compel audiences.

My problem with Marvel films is that they are stale, narratively, and as such the only thing that can fix them is decent writing that isn’t in the service of “franchise”.

Yeah, if we weren’t talking about Marvel films you’d have a point.

Which is to say that absolutely, you are right that theme is important because ultimately theme is context.

I do wonder how much of this belongs, not to the creator, but to the viewer/reader.

There’s that great example with Ray Bradbury telling people that Fahrenheit 451 was not about fascism until someone pointed out to him how it absolutely was.

I think the slightly casual, almost throwaway comment that I started this with was more about the fact that, specifically Marvel, films have become all theme and no story.

The standard superhero narrative of “Bad guy gets weapon, or does something bad and Superhero A must stop them” doesn’t sustaing multiple franchises.

Couple that with the classic trauma genesis story which forms the obligatory introduction arc.

Marvel films have become about themes almost entirely to the point where characters and story are interchangable. Take the latest captain America… Almost any other Marvel character could have played the same role in that film… The narrative is so weak that it doesn’t matter. The themes are grand and perhaps even important (a bright red tyrannical monster rampaging in the whitehouse) but the story is what let’s it down.

These stories are weak and we’ve seen them multiple times now. It doesn’t matter how often we change the themes, whether the film is about fascism in America, finding friendship and family, or the perils of unchecked science… These themes ultimately fall flat when the underlying structure, the story, used to convey them is weak.

Sure, all art is usually about something, and those themes can be important, but I stand by what I said… If you want Superhero films to see any good they need to shrug off the notion of being entirely about symbology and theme and maybe have some gripping story.