Bad writing for film and television really irks me because of how avoidable it is. I’m not talking about mediocre or lackluster writing, but the actual bad writing.
TV shows and movies are tremendously expensive to make. Every part of it costs a fortune except for one: the writing. Even if a studio or production company was paying for a whole team of writers to work full time it’s still only a fraction of the cost of paying film crews, actors, editors, and VFX artists.
Given the relatively lower expense, relative lack of time constraints, and enormous importance of the script to the overall quality of the product it absolutely boggles my mind that production companies consistently fuck up the writing process.
It’s like reading a news article and seeing horribly constructed sentences and typos. Like, this is your main job! I know there are a lot of English majors out there who would love to find work.
Dropped subplots is like reading a news article with sentences that are
Great, now I have to find page B12.
TV show with really interesting premise that is well written, well acted, with great sets:
Streaming service cancels it after the first season and doesn’t renew it.
RIP ‘Night Sky’ with JK Simmons. What could have been.
I was just thinking about that show last night and wondering if/when season 2 was coming out, as it had good reviews, great cast, a good plot, and the dialogue was pretty good too.
Went to the Wikipedia page and found out Amazon cancelled it two months after it’s debut. Two months! They didn’t even give it a chance.
I was enjoying the heck out of The Peripheral. RIP.
RIP Carnival Row. I thought it was a pretty damn good show, with excellent actors and good character building.
It hasn’t been “officially” cancelled, but it may as well be at this point.
Me when they say the name of the movie in the movie:
Superman: The only way for me to solve this crisis is to be Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
Peter: Oh, that’s why they called it that.
“Ah boy, I’m just so tired of all these star wars.”
“And the world will always remember the Backdoor Sluts 7: Anal Apocalypse.”
Lumberjack Larry: “Darlin’, I’ve carved the grandest totem, but it’s too tall for the town square!”
Lucy, the Lumberjill: “And here I am, trying to fit this massive log through our cabin door. It’s a tight squeeze!”
Lumberjack Larry: “Looks like we’re both in a pickle with ‘My Big Stick Doesn’t Fit: The Log Jam Love Story.’”
Lucy, the Lumberjill: “Time to put our heads together and chop this problem down to size, honey!”
I like shows like Andor which have a mildly interesting premise but rely on phenomenal writing and execution to really shine.
Yeah I hesitantly tried out Andor as somebody who isnt the biggest Star Wars junkie, and it quickly flew to being my favourite Star Wars content by a mile. Really excellent writing imo
Why do Star Wars fans always forget the / in And/or?
Funnily enough, I have a playlist with the Andor score and some nice medley / covers which I have called “And/or”
You get my upvote, but it’s an angry Andor unwillingly one.
“Somehow, Palpatine return.” -Poe-
The look on Oscar Isaac’s face as he delivers that line is something else.
It’s the face of a man who has been back and forth with the scriptwriter and director all day, and is resigned to the fact that this is the best they can come up with.
it makes sense for poe to say, how would he know how palpy came back?
the problem was the movie didnt really expand on that in any capacity
Even the writers didn’t seem to know. It was like they’d been handed some weird madlibs type shit and had to work Palpatine back in, even though the previous two movies hadn’t alluded to that in the slightest.
Even the groans from the rebels sound like “Jesus, three movies for this shit?”
If you look at Alan Rickman saying “By Grabthar’s Hammer, what a savings” and Oscar saying this, it’s the same pained expression, but only Rickman was acting.
Palpatine coming back wasn’t even an interesting premise though.
and that fucker got his lightening reversed on him AGAIN!
Stop using that spell you stupid fuck it always gets turned on you.
If I had a nickel for every time Palps got his lightning reversed…
I could afford to hire better writers than what we got.
3 10-cent commemorative coins would have gotten 3 fanboys who know Star Wars front to back to write a lore-loyal exciting adventure involving potentially new force powers, cool new characters, and a coherent plot.
And yet, we got the drool dribbling out of the mouths of Disney executives at the thought of all the money they made.
Poe doesn’t know or care why fascism returned, he just knows he’s going to fight against it.
The hot take internet culture rejected the movie simply because people don’t have the capability of understanding the layers and interpreting anything. It’s a shame really it’s the most interesting of all the Star Wars movies (though not the best, the editing was janky as hell). But people are more interested in consuming nitpicky memes about Star Wars than watching an actual Star Wars movie.
But it’s a movie that provided petty nitpicky assholes on the internet many hours of entertainment repeating the same false memes that only indicate that they didn’t actually watch the movie. You got what you wanted, so you should appreciate JJ Abrams for satisfying your cynical and petty nature with all the negative memes you’re still repeating over four years later.
I’ll just be over here enjoying a Star Wars movie that has layers about the relationship between our connection to our ancestors and fascist movements, the grieving process, and still isn’t so overly serious to not have a layer with the Emperor blasting lightning bolts at X-Wings.
Enjoy your memes!
The Dark Tower movie adaptation, I am a huge fan of the books and I was so looking forward to a 3 movie arc. Turned out 🤮
Somehow Palpatine returned
Alternate ending:
A small, innocuous looking bat takes the form of DRACULA behind CHARACTER 1 and CHARACTER 2
DRACULA: Why the fuck would I need a jetpack? How did you morons forget about the bat thing? It’s been part of my image for like, a hundred years.
You know I’ve seen every other mainline Star Wars and several of the one-offs and TV shows but I never got around to this one and I haven’t really felt like I missed out.
You’re right.
Same. I read about it in memes mostly and at some point I was like ‘alright that’s enough of that’.
This thing again. Palpatine is in a room full of cloning tanks talking about having unnatural powers. Next scene characters mention cloning and dark powers. It’s just Poe doesn’t know how it happened (he’s not omniscient) and doesn’t much care. Fascism returned and he’s going to fight against it, that’s all he needs to know.
It’s explained but the hot take internet reactions missed it. And then memes were created to brag about being to stupid to understand something that happened in a Star Wars movie that a child could understand.
Somehow you don’t understand what things mean in a Star Wars movie. Congratulations!
Preacher, the series adaption. Could have used the comic, but no, Seth Rogen had to butcher it.
Darling in the franxx, I was really interested in the world building and was on the minority of people that liked the episodes that had no mecha fights and they were just exploring the current city and how weird it was.
But trigger couldn’t contain themselves and had to do their asspulls and sudden massive power escalation that worked on Gurren Lagann because it wasn’t a grounded take on post-apocalyptic future with a few mechas that defend humanity!
Foundation. Such awesome design, great acting… but such awful writing.
I’m still salty about League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Literary Avengers is such an awesome concept, but what we got was so fucking bad Connery walked away from acting forever.
But it did give us one of the most beautiful movie cars ever which, you know, is nice.
This first Suicide Squad was hot garbage, the second was awesome.
The second one should have just been called something else.
Every DC fan I knew had such a bad taste in their mouth for that Will Smith Suicide Squad.
Will Smith’s compulsive need to never be the bad guy didn’t help.
He did make an exception at the Oscars.
I’m willing to bet that his battered husband brain thought it was being gallant by defending the honor of his abuser.
What are your opinions on The Magicians?
I did not like the constant tonal shifts between silly magic frat boys and depressing magical apocalypse.
Witcher :(
And I’m not talking about the casting or other stuff. Just the general writing and conversion from books to screen sucked ass
From what I’ve heard it would have been multitudes worse if Cavill wasn’t so passionate about the source, too.
That leaves for an interesting question: why is most writing these days so god awful? There are great writers out there. Hollywood isn’t stupid (is it?) and wants money. Why do they put shit writers on so many projects that then flop like the shit that it is?
Hollywood is stupid and they didn’t want to pay writers after the first draft is written. It may not be so much the writer is shit (they came up with some good ideas after all) it’s that they don’t have time to make additional drafts to fix plotholes, improve the dialog, etc.
Writing isn’t just banging out something on a typewriter and it’s pure genius the moment is written. It’s a process that usually involves multiple drafts.
You gotta admit a lot of things feel like a first draft, and it’s probably because it is. Hopefully these issues were sorted out with the writer’s strike.
