TV/Movies Megathread

[Eddie Teach]

My issue with Foundation was that it was designed to be trendy and so despite having such unique and iconic source material felt kind of generic. I gather from what is being said here that WoT is kind of the same thing just for fantasy?

Minus the unique and iconic source material.

But, hey, it's a fantasy series not made by the CW. You take what you can get.

[garbon]

I'm guessing that if there were variations on how things over there are different then over here, they would be explained, in universe.

No, they'd only be explained if they were significant to the story.  Storytellers have a fixed amount of audience attention to tell their story, so they can't stop to explain everything (like why leaving a bow strung when you are just carrying it around doesn't completely stretch out the bowstring, or how they can gallop their horses for hours without wearing them out  ).

Didn't they explain the horses by the fact she was using the one power to give them energy? The Asian guy then told her she also needs her rest or strength when she said why she was white misting them.

[garbon]

It also feels to me a bit naive as only solution would be to have only all white casting () or to have only brown/black people cast as those leads and thus it'd be positioned as a show about race (aka "that black show").

Although I do kind of get the idea of different bits of a fantasy world having people who look differently.

Unfortunately this can tend to overlap with a weakness for possibly a little bit of stereotyping from a real example in terms of what those cultures look like in fantasy writing so is probably best avoided

Like how they have different groups have different clothing.

[grumbler]

Didn't they explain the horses by the fact she was using the one power to give them energy? The Asian guy then told her she also needs her rest or strength when she said why she was white misting them.

First, that scene came after a day of galloping.  The horses wouldn't have survived to be misted.  Second, she only misted two before stopping.

Maybe you can argue that this was enough to plant the idea (with suspension of disbelief), but I thought that it was pretty hilariously Hollywood in any case.

[garbon]

Didn't they explain the horses by the fact she was using the one power to give them energy? The Asian guy then told her she also needs her rest or strength when she said why she was white misting them.

First, that scene came after a day of galloping.  The horses wouldn't have survived to be misted.  Second, she only misted two before stopping.

Maybe you can argue that this was enough to plant the idea (with suspension of disbelief), but I thought that it was pretty hilariously Hollywood in any case.

All fair.

[Threviel]

If only some of this could have been foreseen by watching the trailer...

[viper37]

If only some of this could have been foreseen by watching the trailer...

[viper37]

Didn't they explain the horses by the fact she was using the one power to give them energy? The Asian guy then told her she also needs her rest or strength when she said why she was white misting them.

First, that scene came after a day of galloping.  The horses wouldn't have survived to be misted.  Second, she only misted two before stopping.

Maybe you can argue that this was enough to plant the idea (with suspension of disbelief), but I thought that it was pretty hilariously Hollywood in any case.

All fair.

Why do you insist on killing Languish by agreeing like that? 

[Malthus]

Many times I've mentioned this is one of my big Sci fi and fantasy pet peeves.
Small village of 1000 people completely isolated from outsiders for 1000 years?
Yet....everyone is white except for one black extra.
Sure sure. Genes can hide in the background before popping out unexpectedly.... But really it's just crap casting of extras. They didn't think about it logically.


Black Anne Boleyn or Asian Russian nobles on the other hand I'm fine with. World building isn't at the core of what these shows are doing. They're about the characters and race blind casting is a valid choice.

I don't think the idea is that any of them are actually white or black or asian. They are just characters, and their identity, personality, and story is not more relevant to their ethnicity then their hair or eye color or whether they are tall or short.

Just ignore it.

They aren't characters. They're set dressing. And just as worthy of note as Romans wearing Rolexes.

I'm curious about how you are so certain about the way genetics and phenotypic expression works in a completely fictional universe with magic etc.

Maybe some people are born with lighter skin color because Mom had vanilla ice cream just before conception.

Magic is magic exactly because it is the exception to how stuff normally works. That's what makes it "magic", and something that usually requires in-universe explanation of some sort (such as 'I am a mighty wizard").

It is perfectly fair for an author to create a universe in which things generally work differently from what the audience is used to (say, genetics doesn't apply in this universe). However, the author can bet the audience will be confused if these different rules are never demonstrated to the audience in some manner and play no part in the plot.

This impacts on the audience's suspension of disbelief. The audience may conclude one of two things:

- the fictional universe has some hitherto unexplained rules that allow for this, but these rules are not otherwise important to the plot and are never going to be mentioned; or

- the film maker chose the cast for reasons not having to do with the story, thus enhancing the artificiality of the production (that is, mildly subverting willing suspension of disbelief).

[garbon]

The audience is going to sit around confused about race?

[garbon]

It also feels to me a bit naive as only solution would be to have only all white casting ()

so, you are hung up about race!

Only insofar as it is being 'hung up' to want more than just white people to have opportunities.

[celedhring]

I honestly hadn't even realized the village's racial makeup until you guys brought it up 

Going back on recent fantasy shows, the Witcher was pretty white, although it had a couple important non-white characters.

GoT's world "made sense" as a medieval world, with the different nations being pretty racially uniform with some exceptions, but it had some pretty blah stereotyping for non-white nations.

[The Brain]

In the WoT universe, is there a Village populated by just men, generation after generation?

[HVC]

In the WoT universe, is there a Village populated by just men, generation after generation?

They all died out after a tragic tackling apocalypse.

[Josquius]

Witcher handled this quite well I thought despite the incel rage. The world was mostly white, though there were characters, mostly wizards and a bandit or two, who you would expect logically to have come from far and wide, who weren't.

Another great example was Bone and Shadow. Backwards east European land was white with the main characters who were East Asian meant to be so. They were half some neighbouring people and picked on for it.
Meanwhile the more developed and in touch with the world port city was multiethnic, nobody really cared, and it seemed right.

It also feels to me a bit naive as only solution would be to have only all white casting ()

so, you are hung up about race!

Only insofar as it is being 'hung up' to want more than just white people to have opportunities.

It goes both ways.
A big example of this that annoyed me was the Chinese Go'Auld in stargate whose chief henchman was East Asian but the bulk of his people were just white guys.
All the more stupid when you think that this show was filmed in Vancouver where there should be no shortage of people who look the part.