This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost. For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:
In this case, the old blog post is here: https://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-avengers.html
Related Playlists:
Scripted Reviews Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x5BKcEIufNKlS58JHU_glyL&si=Pje0KQqIqOgWGGUI
Marvel Cinematic Universe playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x5wTdrBQte2L3AUPIJWAiuD&si=VQDQDsAgNLD6So0h
The Avengers Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x6c26HSTygIDNPySWGOGvyj&si=sHD_RHLc0zJ1j_sg
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2 comments:
I still don't know what a 3D movie is supposed to be like, and I remember the fad. By the time I could get to the theaters (physically), I just don't want to watch movies anymore.
This is the first Marvel movie I have managed to watch properly. First first may have been Iron Man 2 which I can't barely remember.
Having better internet access is to find watching Marvels uncool, or people making it like it's low-brow or something like that.
Oh wait I didn't just watch it. I watched it repeatedly on a DVD (for the same reasons I watched Harry Potter repeatedly). The BGM can still run in my mind now, which makes me feel a little bit corny since I was really excited then, and may have rewinded repeatedly some certain scenes with that very BGM.
Quite a trip down the nostalgia lane, when the cultural zeitgeist wasn't about how wanting to save the world makes you a hypocrite. Now come to think of which I just remembered that it's not American culture that is cynical about heroism, but Japanese culture whose fictional works have always loved to be all about "trying to save people is futile" or "how lonely the heroes are" - one such prime example (a video game/anime) was already in 2004. To be with the so called "weebs" is to find them cynical all the time. There's more that can be talked about the fanbases' mindset and behavior in general, but let me digress at that (the constant negativity). Come to think of which it's kind of a funny contrast between American culture and Japanese culture with the former mostly optimistic and latter mostly gloomy. A certain kind of countrymen of mine once talked online with a smug tone that a lot of Japanese issues could just very well be resolved if they banned all the negative media - banishment of expression, to beat a dead horse, is a favorite Vietnamese method of dealing with mental issues. Anyway I just find it interesting because gloomy and negative media in Japan exist in vast abundance (alongside p0rn, but that's another story). It's not hard to find manga about people wanting to end their life or in nightmarish situations or actual games about some boy who lives through a society that utterly hates him that makes him loath his very own existence. To be fair, plenty of this stuff is translated into English so it may also say something about the West, not just Japan. But I just feel like there's not that many similar things of this sort in the West. Well, of course there are numerous examples of people channeling their own issues into some objectified form of rage. But like you don't see anybody tell a whole sobbing life story about being trapped into their video games. Not sure if any of this says something about reality or only says something about fictions. In any case, I do believe both places still deal with their problems much better than mine, who treats problems like they don't exist.
One thing people in the West (or the U.S specifically) always say is how their soft culture is all over the world, while China doesn't seem to know how to do soft culture. Although there could be some arguable things as to how self-inflated the self-assessment is or some other specifics, it's true to a high degree.
...which is to lead to what I want to say mainly that: the average people just prefer to consume optimistic media than those that keep going on and on about how miserable life is. If this movie doesn't remind me, I may have just forgotten how back then I didn't even like the gloomy stuff. Like what's the point of musing negativity (which was completely incomprehensible to me), why don't you just defeat the enemies and save the world or solve the problems like a cool main character - that was my mindset back then. The sight of the main character being defeated and go home used to displease me a lot and I couldn't really consume media that were not about the main character managed to solve the issue of the day.
It would go way too far off the tangent, but I think another reason (among the usual about their governance) for Chinese culture's relative lack of appeal also lays on their constant pessimism. Although speaking of their media, the number of cheerful optimistic stuff is perhaps more diverse than what Japan has to offer. But still, stuff about life dramas are just way too entrenched.
...well, I guess there's not much to speculate about China as I expected. Their global popularity is rising for (I believe) good reasons.
I miss being excited for trendy Hollywood movies. Even though I haven't managed to watch many of them (not counting old movies). Western popular culture is something really magical to outsiders like I was.
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