Topic: Review Bombing

Yeah, when people say that some thing or another is too "political" all it says to me is that the person speaking has a VERY narrow and immature interactions with politics. People interact with politics like it's a sport of a small handful of teams rather than, you know, a complicated matrix of levers with various groups wishing to lean on one set of levers or another. And with public understandings of those levers being influenced by various rent seekers

If you think politics is about what's some fictional character sees when they look in the mirror then you should probably stop and think about what decisions politicians are actually making before you next vote. Because, clearly, you're ignoring the bulk of how politicians interface with things that actually impact you

Now Lucas era Star Wars movies, THOSE were political movies. Literally movies about Space Hitler but this time Space Hitler has the nukes. The prequels go as far as having Space Hitler manufacturing a military emergency and suspending the parliament. The Disney era sequels? .... not so much on the politics. Lady Jedi does not make it political

@skywake the Star Wars sequels were not political they were just awful

Yeah that's my take, especially as it's always seems to be the immature things that attract immature opinions. You don't see the same people complaining about how The Godfather or Parasite are too political, it's almost always aimed at Disney branded movies and other popcorm entertainment.

@FawfulsFury
Yes, they were super average. My point was more that people use "political" to mean this character had a different gender/race/sexualty/whatever. Rather than, you know, this piece of work explored fascism and the fragility of democracy. Or the interactions between capitalism and war. Or the ethics of weapons of mass destruction

I'm not calling the MCU political until they make a whole movie where Ant Man gets into an argument with the Spiderman about the merits of public investment in infrastructure for improving productivity vs leaving it to the private sector.

Really, if anything, the "politics" of the MCU are all over the shop. They go out of their way to not be particularly political. It's all very, popcorn entertainment, not a lot of meat. Which, frankly, is sometimes all you want out of a movie

@skywake That's the thing. To call out a character for being a different gender, race, or sexuality is just plain bigotry, but calling the entire game out for its 'politics' offers a convenient figleaf to hide behind. I don't think they're fooling anyone though, not me at least.

Anyway... getting back to review bombing, it looks like Redfall is the latest to cop it, and its mostly about the game being a buggy and underperforming piece of crap, so fair play to that. There does seem to be smattering of revenge bombing from Nintendo and Sony fanboys though, determined to perpetuate the spiral of their own exclusives getting bombed by the Microsoft fanboys.

This is exactly view is why negative critiques get classed as review bombing.

It's hardly bigotry to be offended by lazy writing, there's no reason to swap out a character apart from meeting a "diversity quota". The Indies are pumping out so many diverse characters that are being well liked and followed, whereas Marvel just gender or race swap existing characters. Putting a skirt on Thor does not do either character justice and flopped in both print and film.
This approach almost bankrupted Marvel comics and its a shame to see the trend getting copied into the movies.

@Chaotic_Neutral Why people are pointing out the diversity as the supposed "root" of those issues instead of just.. you know... being badly written?

Also, indies got sh** for diverse characters too sometimes. It depends if certain people see it and the algorithm boosts it enough to be a trend.

@Matt_Barber Another stupid reason for review bombing: console/platform exclusives. It happens with Nintendo and Sony ones too. I still remember a lot of negative user reviews for BoTW pointing how it came out for a "doomed console" and Nintendo should've gone third party and put BoTW on PS4. This type of review bombs go way back.

@Chaotic_Neutral
Then call out the lazy writing rather than just dismiss it as "too political". As I said, if anything the Marvel Movies could do with being a bit MORE political. The most interesting parts of Marvel are the political parts. Disney tries to water that stuff down in an effort to appeal to a wider audience. Especially the later movies

I mean take the Iron Man arc. You start with a character who's the CEO of the largest weapons manufacturer in the world. An Elon-Musk-like figure. He then has the realisation that, oh noes, his weapons are being sold to terrorists. Which is a pretty pointed thing to be saying given it was 2008. So as a good little American Libertarian he decides to, effectively, take the second Amendment to its logical conclusion and single headedly take on the "terrorists". By the end of his arc? He basically turns around and ends up arguing the case for government regulation of superheroes. He gives his technology to the state. It's only really after Civil War that his arc stops being particularly political

In any case, do people argue that the Iron Man arc is "too political"? No. Was it a good arc? Sure. Why was it good? It was good BECAUSE it was political. The MCU could do with more political arcs

I mean, the XMen are arguably one of the best Marvel franchises. The reason XMen is good is because, by it's very nature, it can't NOT be political. It's forced to be political because of what it is. The entire premise is that a certain portion of the population is genetically different and is discriminated against out of fear. Hard to not be political when that's the central part of your story. Although I'm sure when Disney does XMen they'll find a way to make it more lasers and explosions and less Nazi concentration camp

@skywake the just forum just makes me realize more that there’s two types of politics in movies politics the develop plot and politics to push agenda the latter causing more review bombing then the former

@FawfulsFury that's the most eloquent way I've heard it described online and is spot on

@FawfulsFury
One's politics, the other is some confected outrage generated by the political machine in order to distract you from politics. If you think identity politics is politics you've had the wool pulled over your eyes and you should really stop and think about why that is. What agenda are they trying to distract you from

Nobody makes money from identity politics, there is no reason for it to be a main driver of the political discourse. The only reason it exists is to try and leverage a voting group to gain and maintain power. Power which is used to achieve the actual desired political outcomes of that group

@Chaotic_Neutral no offense but this thread feels a bit out of place on this site.

That's not lazy writing, it's lazy imagination by the viewer to even care. There is no reason not to swap out character race or gender in most cases. In plays for example, it's traditional for the actor to be different than the character--men can play as women or women as men. Plays have had that type of behavior for thousands of years; it's the character who matters, not the actor.

Peter Pan (the start of this thread I think? It's been so long) is an excellent example because in the original (which was a play) Tinker Bell was literally just a ray of light. Making her black now is no different than Disney making her white (or even human-looking) in the past. And even though the phrase is 'the lost boys', I'm sure many girls read the book for years thinking 'I want to be a lost boy too'; if you can imagine girls being part of the group in the book, why not the movie? Unless a movie is very very specifically about gender or race (in which case it might indeed be political!), typically most characters do things which any race or gender could do; it doesn't change the character, simply their appearance. If the character's appearance makes someone think or feel uncomfortable, that perhaps says something about the viewer, but that doesn't mean that is the goal of the movie.

That being said, I suspect in terms of race/gender swaps, Disney does sometimes do it purposely to reach out to different groups and therefore try to sell more movies. Even though it shouldn't matter ideally, fundamentally people like to see characters who are more representative of themselves. But again, reaching out to different types of people is not fundamentally political, especially if the goal is profits. Judging by the statistics of the review bombers of Peter Pan, it seems like most of the people who review-bomb are the people who are not being reached out to (for example most of them were older men).

We periodically try to bring back games into the discussion (since review bombing is certainly a weird but real things with some games), but this thread certainly has veered towards off topic. Although we have 'mostly' been relatively polite, I'm still shocked the thread hasn't been shut down yet. It's kind of an interesting discussion and it's interesting to hear different people's perspectives, but definitely only marginally game-related.

@FishyS I agree it's actually been really interesting seeing other people's views on this without it becoming an echo chamber or a slanging match.

These are also the things that tends to lean to the review bombing. I aslo think its done when they know a show/movie/game is going to be bad and they can then blame the negative reviews on people just being ".....phobic/.....ist"

@skywake I will have to slightly disagree with you on “agenda politics” not being profitable for example the Velma tv show was almost universally hated by everyone who bothered to watch it the tv show changed the race of all the characters (except Fred) and removed the main character (scooby doo) this caused controversy causing the left the watch it to say there is nothing wrong with race swapping and it caused some people on the internet to “hate watch” it. Along with that the controversy made the show much more popular on the internet I for one would have never heard of it if it wasn’t for the controversy. All this combined with the fact that scooby doo is vary popular caused this to do better then the last of us tv show (according to hbo). As for the politician side of things “agenda politics” is not profitable in a money cense it just gains votes so they can focus on “real politics”. (This is too long and probably typo filled I’m sorry)(I also couldn’t think of a better way of saying “agenda politics” that was not offensive)

I don't see the issue with this thread TBH. There have always been some groups who use their dislike of one thing or another in media to try and push a barrow. There's always some scape-goat some groups will try and leverage to further their cause. And like with pretty much all large cultural movements, it's always ultimately about one group trying to take power. In autocracies they use the military, in democracies they use media. So this topic was always going to be political
Is it gaming related? Well sure. Gaming is just another type of media and gaming has certainly been the target of these sorts of campaigns. But it's certainly not just gaming and, obviously, historically you can probably find better examples of this in music and movies. Movies seem to be the main one ATM, especially given one particular US politician's crusade against the mouse. But it's certainly not the only one, the first one or the last one

I will say that there are examples of this where I would question the decision a bit. Specifically Netflix's Cleopatra series and the live action Little Mermaid. Mostly the former. If you're making something about Cleopatra you probably should be getting the race right given that she's a historical figure with a very clearly defined ethnicity. And with the Little Mermaid, her father is quite literally Poseidon. She's Greek

With that said, I haven't watched either. It's entirely possible they made it work. Like Hamilton, Hamilton works despite the diverse cast playing what are pretty much entirely historically old white characters. And it works because of the tone it hits as a Hip-Hop musical.

In any case, I wouldn't describe any of these things as "political" choices. They're artistic choices that, sometimes, don't quite land. Whether it works or not depends very much on the execution. But, again, people in power use media as a way to leverage the population. If you're going to the ballot box and voting based on "Disney being political" you aren't voting on, you know, important stuff. Like which party has the best policies on tax/services/infrastructure/etc. And you have to wonder why you're being told to vote based on what Disney is doing.....

@FawfulsFury
Left/Right is a BS construction. Politics is about power and in a capitalist democracy money is power and the people are how you gain it. The money that's up for grabs? It's for either those who would benefit from political changes or are benefiting from things not changing. And in terms of the real money that's up for grabs? The money in media is pennies compared to corporate taxation, the finance industry, energy, the military, education, health, real estate etc, etc

But media does have one kind of power. Media is how people hear about stories, it's how people see the world. Media for a lot of people is a large part of their personal identity. So as a political movement if you want to gain and maintain power? Attacking media is a solid tactic..... to gain power and divert money to the rent-seekers who are the ultimate beneficiaries

The fact that you think a Scooby Doo spin-off is "political" just says to me that you've been told by some political movement that that's the real problem. It's a distraction. In this case a distraction while they pull money out of the public service and redirect it to Chevron or BP. Or whatever it is they're doing. You're fine with the banks making super profits and emergency services grinding to a halt. As long as there are no Gay Jedi

@DreamlandGem