Why are the names of the places they're going to "useless information"?
Note that the part that you quoted here was part of a conditional statement, and one that I consider counterfactual. I.e., I said if it doesn't matter — which you seemed to be arguing ("I didn't care," "you don't need to know") — then the information is useless. But for the very reasons that you point out, it's actually very useful to have this information — and for it to actually be clear, rather than treated like "little extra throwaway details." Here's an analogy. You mentioned "Elfy Caracas"; imagine that you knew nothing of real-world geography, and you were watching a movie scene that, a caption told you, was set in Caracas. In this scene, the president of Venezuela is meeting with the prime minister of Canada, and asks the prime minister how Alberta is this time of year; the prime minister replies that he just flew in from Hawaii and that it was a lot warmer than Calgary. Wouldn't it be nice to know that Caracas is in Venezuela, that it's the capital of that country, that Canada is a different country, that Alberta is a province within Canada, that Calgary is a city within Alberta, and that Hawaii is a state in yet a third country? Or would you really rather have these names flying around with no explanation, while scoffing at those who get a little lost as people who "need everything in a movie hand-fed to them and are incapable of making inferences on their own"?
The difference is that, in real life, I'd hope that people in the audience would be familiar enough with real-world geography that these names wouldn't be new to them. And it felt to me as though these movies expected a similar comfort level with the geography of Middle Earth.
you seem to want it to be all about you (and viewers like you) instead [...] you appear to be someone who only wants it his way ever
Whereas you appear to be someone who enjoys making shrill personal judgments about people you don't know.
The article is mainly about why these movies did not seem to me to be designed for newcomers. I don't think that's necessarily bad; if you knew more about me than what you gathered from one article, you'd know that on my interactive fiction page (http://adamcadre.ac/if.html), I make a note of which of my IF stories are good for newcomers to the medium and which ones aren't. I am not thereby saying that the ones that I didn't write for newcomers suck.
I did also think that the Rings movies were bad, for reasons I noted at the end: reactionary ideology, very thin characters, ham-handed style. You can argue back that those things aren't "bad" but rather "not to my taste," but at that point what would qualify as "bad"? A movie that's out of focus? Some people like that! Mike D'Angelo loved Afterschool and Primer! I don't work for a newspaper, and my job isn't to try to convey to readers how much they might like a film; I'm just saying what I thought, and I thought these movies were not so hot. Forgive me if I don't feel compelled to slap an "IMHO" in every sentence in what is quite obviously an opinion essay.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-19 08:06 am (UTC)Note that the part that you quoted here was part of a conditional statement, and one that I consider counterfactual. I.e., I said if it doesn't matter — which you seemed to be arguing ("I didn't care," "you don't need to know") — then the information is useless. But for the very reasons that you point out, it's actually very useful to have this information — and for it to actually be clear, rather than treated like "little extra throwaway details." Here's an analogy. You mentioned "Elfy Caracas"; imagine that you knew nothing of real-world geography, and you were watching a movie scene that, a caption told you, was set in Caracas. In this scene, the president of Venezuela is meeting with the prime minister of Canada, and asks the prime minister how Alberta is this time of year; the prime minister replies that he just flew in from Hawaii and that it was a lot warmer than Calgary. Wouldn't it be nice to know that Caracas is in Venezuela, that it's the capital of that country, that Canada is a different country, that Alberta is a province within Canada, that Calgary is a city within Alberta, and that Hawaii is a state in yet a third country? Or would you really rather have these names flying around with no explanation, while scoffing at those who get a little lost as people who "need everything in a movie hand-fed to them and are incapable of making inferences on their own"?
The difference is that, in real life, I'd hope that people in the audience would be familiar enough with real-world geography that these names wouldn't be new to them. And it felt to me as though these movies expected a similar comfort level with the geography of Middle Earth.
you seem to want it to be all about you (and viewers like you) instead [...] you appear to be someone who only wants it his way ever
Whereas you appear to be someone who enjoys making shrill personal judgments about people you don't know.
The article is mainly about why these movies did not seem to me to be designed for newcomers. I don't think that's necessarily bad; if you knew more about me than what you gathered from one article, you'd know that on my interactive fiction page (http://adamcadre.ac/if.html), I make a note of which of my IF stories are good for newcomers to the medium and which ones aren't. I am not thereby saying that the ones that I didn't write for newcomers suck.
I did also think that the Rings movies were bad, for reasons I noted at the end: reactionary ideology, very thin characters, ham-handed style. You can argue back that those things aren't "bad" but rather "not to my taste," but at that point what would qualify as "bad"? A movie that's out of focus? Some people like that! Mike D'Angelo loved Afterschool and Primer! I don't work for a newspaper, and my job isn't to try to convey to readers how much they might like a film; I'm just saying what I thought, and I thought these movies were not so hot. Forgive me if I don't feel compelled to slap an "IMHO" in every sentence in what is quite obviously an opinion essay.