Entertainment Forum General Chat Thread • Page 1299

because i think you are overemphasizing it in relation to television and de emphasizing it in other mediums because you like tv less than those mediums

 

The constraints of the network on television basically crippled it until the late 90s when cable allowed more freedom, and even still those constraints exist. I don't think you can overemphasize the importance of it.

 

Did you ever watch Star Trek: The Next Generation?

 

no. i have never watched anything star trek except the movie that came out when i was a teenager.

 

And yeah, film is moving into a pretty fucking dark territory with the direct to streaming shit/studios cancelling films after they are finished. But those are recent developments, not integral to the entire medium.

 

fine
1. literature/music
2. cinema/"art" (broadly encompassing paintings/photography/sculpture, etc, what you'd find in an art museum)
3. theater
4. television
5. musical theater
6. comics/manga/anime
7. Video games/pro wrestling
8. sketch comedy
9. stand-up comedy
10. increasingly anything with a superhero at all in it
11. podcasts/YouTube content
12. special reserved slot for reaction content specifically

musical theater may deserve to slip down to 6 or 7.

 

That's still a coward's "/"! I want definitive 1s and 2s

 

and where does TikTok content fit into that list? To me, it's probably worse than YouTube content.

 

Those pre-Sopranos shows really show the strings that don't exist in film. There might be a widely agreed-upon range for a film to be between 90 and 150 minutes, but an episode of Star Trek had to be really close to 44 minutes. This means that conflict had to resolve neatly in that time, which means sometimes there was five minutes left and the characters could talk about what happened, but sometimes there was two minutes left and it would feel like whiplash. Friday Night Lights, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men all had similar issues with pacing.

Some of that has been relaxed with streaming, but certain expectations still do exist.

 

what about 1a 1b

 

What's 1b if not 2?

 

The closest thing I could think of to compare to television would be something like a magazine or some sort of academic journal. You have an expected release schedule, a rotation of creative leads, and no clear endgame.

 

Exactly, an inherent flaw for the majority of the medium is forcing the creators to adhere to a strict length per episode/number per season. Even forcing plot points to break/heighten right before a commercial break.

 

The closest thing to compare TV to is film, lol. It's just a worse version.

 

Also, in the same way I would classify Twin Peaks: The Return as being more like a film than a show, I would call the Marvel movies episodes of a show more than a movie.

 

1a. music, since it doesn’t need words
1b. literature, since it still deserves a mark of extra privilege over 2

 

There we go

 

so the great things of tv can’t be tv and the worst things in movies are actually tv

man. you don’t like the medium. that’s fine. this is a stretch at best lol.

 

Shows that had their episode orders changed almost always feel it. Friday Night Lights went from a 22 episode first season, where the show really tried to explore what they can, but by the last two seasons it was a 13 episode show that would barely show some of the games to get to the story they really wanted to tell. The last season of the Sopranos being split up into two seasons means they essentially end up telling the story of Tony vs. Phil twice.

 

I have talked at length about a lot of great shows. I don't know why you keep insisting on saying I don't like television.

I am talking about structure. The Marvel movies don't exist as singular artistic statements; they are continuing a former story and setting up a later one. They are serialized in a way that never really existed before in movies. Yes you had sequels and silly ending scenes to set it up, but it depended on the money being made. You didn't start filming the next one until you had the financial data.

Twin Peaks: The Return is a singular statement, like a film. Yes it comes after two seasons and a movie, but it feels much more like a late movie sequel, especially one where the filmmaker is trying to comment on their past work.

 

i meant in relation to film and these other mediums. regarding the return, if it is a film, why does each episode still end in an episodic near cliffhanger fashion that is then followed by a musical break? you can say lynch is a film director. that’s fine, he is. he has also made a lot of television. people can do both things. the return has the structure clearly set up to be episodic television. the closest thing to a film in the season is the “bottle episode” portion of episode 8.

the blank check episodes on the return articulated this better than i am

 

also the extent that with which the mcu is serialized is unique but that doesn’t mean film hasn’t seemed serialized prior to the mcu. star wars, the x-men movies, james bond. all of these things came decades before and were replicated by the mcu at a higher scale

 

the biggest argument for the mcu being closer to television is the people making those movies largely coming from community now

 

It comes down to the limitations imposed by the medium, whether it is money to make, number of people involved, and the commercial expectation.

Art at its most pure would be stuff like books, paintings, and songs. These things have pretty modest financial costs to get in, so it comes down to the talent of the individual and their eye for making good art.

Movies would be a step below that. Film budgets can range from DIY stuff like Clerks all the way to Avatar. We all know the big auteurs but there is always some compromise, whether it is money or with collaborators like the actors, writers, cinematographers, and so on. The more expensive the film is, usually the less artistic control the director has.

Television and video games are below that. Television requires consistent viewership and video games requires a large buy-in (up to 70 dollars now). Other than a handful of indie games, games have large teams, and while multiple people might be on the film set working together, game developers can be working on very different things. The director of episode 3 of a season is carrying someone else's story and hopes to set it up well for the next person.