Controversial Opinions (For Everything Other Than DC Comics)

[Johnathan]

It seems like in general Marvel has been shying away from the Nazis as bad guys for WWII superhero-related stuff and focusing more on HYDRA being the big bad during WWII.
I guess they're trying not to offend Germans or something?

Or trying not to bring up the obvious comparisons to the current CCP government.

I have to agree to some extent that there is a tendency to avoid unsympathetic heroes in big budget projects lately. However, I do wonder if that is a bit of the Heath Ledger Joker effect. In other words - and honestly, this also applied to the Jack Nicholson Joker - how do you get a superstar or Oscar-caliber actor to play the "bad guy" in your movie? Well, you have to really pump up that role.

I mean, the Joker was not sympathetic per se, but you definitely could see his point of view AND he was the real attraction of The Dark Knight. There are protagonists and then there are characters that light up the movie - and those are sometimes the same thing, but in the current tradition of blockbusters, it's the villain that lights up the story.

In basic story terms, we have the hero (or protagonist), supporting characters (deuteragonist, sidekicks, love interests, etc.) and the villain. In the basic plots of most adventure or heroic literature, the hero is the person who actually supports or is working toward the good of all the main supporting characters, and the villain is the one character who clearly does not support anyone else in the story - even his or her own minions. The supporting characters support the hero because they are invested in his struggle and the villain opposes the hero because his story interests oppose those of everyone else.

That's very basic and the trick is to develop the baddie so that it is justifiable why he or she opposes everyone else in the story.

However, at the same time, it is incredibly effective to have a hero that is really unsympathetic - the "heel" - as every time that villain succeeds in the story, it just builds up the tension in the audience that really wants him to receive his just comeuppance. It's the basic appeal that kept pro wrestling alive so long. The bad guy is someone the fans hate and love to hate and he keeps winning matches over people the fans love again and again until finally he faces the fans' big champion who in the last moment - probably due to some arrogant posture the heel takes - pins and defeats the villain.

So, I think I agree that having too many sympathetic villains over and over in a story eventually will degrade the emotional satisfaction and appeal in a genre or series of films.

[Jim Kelly]

I'm going to sneak this controversial opinion on here--not because I expect anything to be done about it, but just so I can get it off my chest. I despise the appreciation topics. Previously this message board was against them, but now the moderators seem to have embraced a live and let live policy. So I must accept them, too--but it would be so nice if there was an Appreciation forum where all those topics could go to live and roam free. It seems the best solution for everyone all around--but when you try to ask the moderators to do this, they chafe at the suggestion. And I'm shaking in my boots for even daring to post the idea here, as it could get me a strong warning from the mods for saying anything about it. Yet it would seem to make their work a lot easier, with all the threads being in one place. Especially on a day like this, when they have to lock all the old topics so new topics can be posted. But it's never going to happen, because reasons. So I just have to accept this is the world we live in--but I don't have to like it.

[TheRay]

The thing I don’t get about the appreciation threads is how do they go on so long? They go on for years and come out each year, but is it a respect thread or what? It doesn’t bother me at all, but the concept confuses me

[The Darknight Detective]

The thing I don’t get about the appreciation threads is how do they go on so long? They go on for years and come out each year, but is it a respect thread or what? It doesn’t bother me at all, but the concept confuses me

They're mainly there to say nice thing about any particular character and to try to find the right ingredient(s) to make that character at least as big as Batman (I exaggerate regarding the last part, but only by a degree ).

I rarely ever post anything in them myself, but they don't bother me in the slightest.

[Gray Lensman]

The thing I don’t get about the appreciation threads is how do they go on so long? They go on for years and come out each year, but is it a respect thread or what? It doesn’t bother me at all, but the concept confuses me

If you like a character who has a lot of haters, it's a place to talk about stuff without trolls trying to derail every last conversation.

[babyblob]

The thing I don’t get about the appreciation threads is how do they go on so long? They go on for years and come out each year, but is it a respect thread or what? It doesn’t bother me at all, but the concept confuses me

Ive seen a few where they talk about the current issue that was out. It seems like an appreciation thread would be a good place for that rather then have 30 threads on each issue for the month.

[godisawesome]

“Healthy” appreciation threads usually kind of devolve into “mini-forums” specifically devoted to a certain property or character so that if your main interest is that character or property, and you don’t want to keep on launching small, short, often forgotten threads. You just keep going to the appreciation thread.

It’s like a one-stop thread for fan art, news, speculation, and debates.

[The Darknight Detective]

“Healthy” appreciation threads

They're almost always that way now, since the appreciation threads are not allowed to be used as weapons against characters and/or creators deemed obstacles in the way of the poster's favorite character(s). They really used to be toxic when that was occurring.

[CaptCleghorn]

The thing I don’t get about the appreciation threads is how do they go on so long? They go on for years and come out each year, but is it a respect thread or what? It doesn’t bother me at all, but the concept confuses me

Each thread varies in their actual content. Some are places where posters talk about the current issue or the characters' appearances elsewhere. Some are just places where a few posters like to put up pictures and additional commentary besides "That's cool" is frowned upon.

[Catlady in training]

I'm going to sneak this controversial opinion on here--not because I expect anything to be done about it, but just so I can get it off my chest. I despise the appreciation topics. Previously this message board was against them, but now the moderators seem to have embraced a live and let live policy. So I must accept them, too--but it would be so nice if there was an Appreciation forum where all those topics could go to live and roam free. It seems the best solution for everyone all around--but when you try to ask the moderators to do this, they chafe at the suggestion. And I'm shaking in my boots for even daring to post the idea here, as it could get me a strong warning from the mods for saying anything about it. Yet it would seem to make their work a lot easier, with all the threads being in one place. Especially on a day like this, when they have to lock all the old topics so new topics can be posted. But it's never going to happen, because reasons. So I just have to accept this is the world we live in--but I don't have to like it.

I don't have anything against appreciation threads, but this seems like a reasonable solution to make the forums more clear. They sometimes seem to clog the top 1 or 2 pages in the DC forum.

[Jim Kelly]

The thing I don’t get about the appreciation threads is how do they go on so long? They go on for years and come out each year, but is it a respect thread or what? It doesn’t bother me at all, but the concept confuses me

Yeah, that's essentially why I stay out of them. I have two problems with them--one inside and one outside.

Inside, I don't know how to behave--there's a culture to them, but I don't know the etiquette. It's like being in a rich person's house and not knowing what to do, always bumping into the furniture and afraid of doing the wrong thing. Why does any thread have to have this special status, when all the threads are supposed to be non-toxic? And it upsets me when I've been posting to a regular thread only to have the mods amalgamate it with an "appreciation" thread--like having the rug pulled out from under me. It's chilling--like being muzzled.

Outside, they clutter up some forums and drive the regular topics down onto the back pages. So putting them in their own forum would solve that.

[Kirby101]

Godzilla 1998 was more a remake of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms than of the original Godzilla. But then again Godzilla was just a rip off of Beast.

[williamtheday]

Beast looks more like a ripoff of the Superman cartoon The Arctic Giant (mminus Superman) than the story it was based on.

[TheRay]

They're mainly there to say nice thing about any particular character and to try to find the right ingredient(s) to make that character at least as big as Batman (I exaggerate regarding the last part, but only by a degree ).

I’d think it would take something as simple as just putting the character in the spotlight to make them as big as Batman. Wouldn’t any character with multiple shows, movies, and/or comic line be that big?

[The Darknight Detective]

I’d think it would take something as simple as just putting the character in the spotlight to make them as big as Batman. Wouldn’t any character with multiple shows, movies, and/or comic line be that big?

Well, that's the theory, at any rate. If that were the case, wouldn't every TV show with brand-new characters just about have the same number of viewers (since they all have the same spotlight)? But what happens is some show shows appeal more to the general public than others, which I believe is the case with Batman.