Ancient quote by the writer of Shoot 'Em Up on the old Slashfilm podcast: "Whatever weird quirk you wanna give to the secondary character, give it to the main instead. Because main characters are always boring." (paraphrased)
@@glctcthnkr8059 That isn't saying much. The movie doesn't understand that troll would've most likely driven backwards for shits n giggles day one, or the puzzles rendered obsolete when someone datamines the cashe.
Reader Player One's just a bunch of pop culture references slapped together, but at least in the book they were better pop culture references since it wasn't tailored so a mass audience would get every single reference.
In order to understand Ready Player One, one must be the ultimate pendantic nerd along with a vast knowledge of pop culture, no matter how trivial, and being a gatekeeping moderator or a quite active user on Reddit is usually a good sign you qualify. Your taste in books might be suspect to others, but you know Wil Wheaton narrating the novel is plantinum gold to a true gentleman nerd.
@Stella Hohenheim you might be confusing Mr. Fantastic with Hank Pym, the first Ant-Man, who did hit his wife Janet in one comic. Then again, there’s so many different versions of the characters that an alternate universe Reed could’ve done that. Either way, I was referring to the FF as a whole and even if one writer once had Mr. Fantastic beat up the Invisible Woman, that doesn’t automatically color the entire history of the team for me.
Sounds like these type of characters are supposed to be an insert characters, where the audience are supposed to insert themselves onto the main character. In my opinion, insert characters are one of the worst forms of writing.
Insert characters aren’t in of themselves a problem, as Luke Skywalker and John McClaine are insert characters. Like everything else, it all comes down to writing. Either you have a character that grows before you (from whiny kid, to risk taker, to hero) which makes _you_ feel like you’ve gone through that same journey, or you have an empty shell who’s simply along for the ride.
The real problem with avatar is that the ending treats their victory as the conclusion to the whole conflict between blue people and humans. In reality, they just defeated one single ship that was only there to explore the possibility of taking the resources without resorting to an armed conflict. What probably happened right after the movies ended is the humans brought their actual military and mercilessly genocided all the blue people along with the traitor and then extracted the resources anyway, leaving a barren wasteland of a planet.
Would they though? It’s a corporation using outsourced military hardware to get shiny rocks. If it were for some fuel or power source or whatever sure, no doubt Earth’s military would get officially involved. But it’s just rocks. It’d be like the U.S. starting a conflict for the sake of diamonds instead of oil.
Avatar steals a lot from dune. In dune the heroes are able to cripple an empire by using gorilla tactics to shut down production of a substance that allows people to bend space with their minds. Dune succeeds because it explains the complex political situation that would preclude simply nuking the planet; the substance is produced by giant worms, and the padisha emporer is an elected position akin to the old holy roman emporer. Avatar does not offer sufficient explanation as to why they wouldnt just take off and nuke the site from orbit, all they need is the unibtainium. They show in the movie they have no problem blowing things up or killing the natives.
To be honest, and I have nothing against the guy, he's a good actor... but outside of MAYBE his role in Terminator: Salvation, I have not seen a single Sam Worthington role, big movie or small movie, that I found to be particularly memorable or exceedingly well written. I hate to admit it, but every time I see him in a movie my mind immediately goes "oh no... generic, boring, white guy with little depth yet plenty of subpar action sequences... yaaaay.." Its either that or "dramatic" roles in smaller productions that always seem like they're just... trying a little TOO hard to be "dramatic" or "artistic" Fun guy I'm sure, and a surprisingly good actor, but the poor man just doesn't seem to have a good track record with well written films.
@@leetorry He sure was. And he was the least memorable part of that movie. Most memorable part: Hugo Weavng talking in slow motion: "I'm'onna've to beat you neeoow." - Which won them Best Editing at the Oscars.
I fell asleep 2 times on 2 different attempts at watching avatar and never finished it. It was like watching a video game cutscene I didn’t get invested in.
also FUCK video game cutscenes, video games are an INTERACTIVE MEDIUM. if i want story expressed in boring-ass unskippable cutscenes i'll hit up real life.
Ready Player One is one of the few times the movie is significantly better than the book. The most obvious reason is that each reference doesn't have to be written out and instead is just shown on screen. On a deeper level, the protagonist in the movie is a nothing burger of a character, but there was nothing offensive about him. The book version is a total narcissistic that thinks the universe revolves around him. A great example is that when his friend explains that she pretended to be a man because she felt unsafe being a woman online and faced discrimination for being female, he decided to forgive her for lying to him and quickly moved on.
oh woah hot take there buddy you sure that's the kinda stuff you wanna say in public? pretty sure nobody's been this brave before, you might be on a list now
Matt Damon was actually offered to play the role of the lead in Avatar for 1% of the movie profits. For whatever reason, Damon tried to haggle about the price (I'm guessing he did not understand the magnitude this movie was going to be). And James Cameron literally said, take it or leave it, if you dont take the role, im going to give it to whoever. So James Cameron too understood that the main character would not be the biggest draw or most important for the movie.
@@samuelperezgarcia He did. He's had the idea of Avatar since the early 90s and tried to get it made then but was limited by the tech of the time. Plus this is not the first multimillion blockbuster he's produced and directed. Before Avatar, Titanic was the largest grossing movie of all time. The man understands what makes a large blockbuster movie.
Imagine if Rich Evans was the protagonist of Ready Player One. I would be so engaged all the way through and he's actually a knowledgeable about games.
isn't there a literary term for a protagonist that just has the story happen to them and is not the driving force ? like they are basically just an observer of the events? i feel like there is a term or a concept that has a name to it, and i can't quite remember at the moment....
I know it's more of a plot driven thing in stories like that. There is a show called RWBY that I used to watch. It's exactly that. I also know that Stranger Things can be like that at times.
I can't boil it down to a brief term, but there are cases in which the narrator or point-of-view character and the protagonist are different people (e.g. in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes is the protagonist but Watson is the narrator). I think this is still a bit different to what Rich is talking about, though, since it's an intentional literary technique used to, e.g. disguise the protagonist's thought processes for a late big reveal, or to create a general sense of mystique or awe around the main character. In Avatar, on the other hand, the protagonist and point-of-view character clearly WERE intended to coincide by the writer, but arguably the execution fell flat compared to the rest of the cast (I don't fully agree with the criticism Rich makes here but I can see where he is coming from).
Are you thinking of an "impersonal witness"? A character who narrates the story but basically just sits back and describes the events that occur in front of him?
I thought Jon Snow was decent character in his own right. As good as Tyrion or Jaime? No, but still a solid character with his own strengths and weaknesses.
@@gruntpocalypsenow Unfortunately, the latter seasons of GoT took well-developed characters and forced them into whatever role was needed for the ending the writers came up with. Given the accelerated timeframe and lack of episodes to work with, none of the characters really earned the development needed for some of their changes to make sense (*cough* Dany *cough*).
@Holy Emperor Souther I’d say they’re the most archetypal, definitely, and primarily good/heroic, which is why most of them end up dead. Sansa’s probably the best character of the surviving Starks; the way she learns to play the game after being a pawn of one person after another was very satisfying, especially for a female character. (I just really wish they hadn’t written in the goddamn rape scene. I mean wtf were they thinking?)
@@gruntpocalypsenow I don't recall Jon being a good or interesting character at any point in the series. Neither was Rob, or Bran, or Rickon. The Stark boys all sucked. 😂
I think we all know that Bill and Ted got high after their report presentation and forgot to do all the things they said they would do before. Time travel is a real bi*ch.
A subtrope of the Avatar Problem is Trinity Syndrome: there’s a female character who is more talented/qualified to accomplish The Thing the movie is about, but instead she takes a backseat and does a bunch of the heavy lifting while some generic white guy comes out of nowhere and does The Thing instead. It’s named for Trinity from The Matrix, who has trained for years and is much more capable than Neo, yet ends up in the role of the sidekick/love interest instead of the heroine. It’s a pretty common trope once you think about it: Hermione in the HP movies, Wyldstyle in The LEGO Movie, Hope in Ant-Man, etc.
Even though i'm not a big fan of super hero movies, i gotta give some credit to Ant-Man, because if i remember correctly, he wasn't "The Chosen One". Every other character in the other movies mentioned gets something like that but with a different name "The boy who lived", "The man told by the prophecy", etc. Ant-Man atleast did destroy a very big metal door before being chosen, showing some "talent" to the character lol
@@Schimnesthai it’s interesting you associate your the chosen one trope with superhero movies, bc what I like a lot about Marvel is how so many of their heroes are normal people who got their powers by accident and sometimes didn’t want them (see the entire history of X-Men for reference). But to your comment, I totally agree about Scott having the potential to be the hero from the beginning (the safe cracking scene is really well written in that way). The bigger problem in the movie is how Hank chooses to lure in a thief to train as Ant-Man instead of just being honest with his daughter about her mom’s death and letting her make her own choices instead of treating her like a child forever.
The Trinity Syndrome would be a problem in the Matrix if it hadn't been established that the prophesied savior of humanity had to be the Chosen One, i.e. destined by birth to be great, not through hard work (not that Neo didn't put in any work). You can take issue with the Chosen One trope if you want, but what you describe isn't really a problem in the Matrix. Also I don't understand your focus on gender, did you have a problem with the civilian, never been in combat before Ripley being the one who saved Newt and defeated the xeno queen instead of Corporal Hicks who is a trained soldier? I sure don't, so why would you with Neo/Trinity? Not every trope is rooted in sexism.
Self insert characters are written to be an average guy that the average viewer can see themselves as. Like Neo at the beginning of Matrix, which was done fairly well. It depends more on the side characters and how they interact with said average guy. If they treat him like the average guy he acts like then its ok. The character should grow past it otherwise why make the boring character the main character. Anime is a perfect example of how Not to do self insert characters; from the beginning the average self insert character gets a harem and they rarely grow as a character, they just get power-ups, it's clearly just pandering/fanservice.
Only if you know the most surface level, basic anime type stuff. There's a fuckton of stuff out there that follows a classical heroes journey structure for protagonist development.
But Wade actually did some heavy lifting himself in the film because he knew Halliday well from all his research. He was able to see past the subtext of why winning the race straight wouldn’t work and figuring out the actual secret. The only annoying thing is they gloss past a scene of them trying to decipher the final clue by showing the end results of their notes only for IOI to have figured it out for them so we don’t get more insight to his own skills at deciphering the puzzle. But for _Avatar_ and this, with such a lush spectacle of a world, the character for which most of the focus and perspective lays, they can’t distract audiences’ attention away from all of it though that can actually be a bad philosophy since an interesting character can operate in such a fascinating world using it to their advantage showing it off to the viewer in the process.
This is exactly why Avatar was a shit film (but all the characters sucked in that film, not just the main character). Watch the film's review by Critical Drinker to see what I'm talking about.
Nah. Avatar was fine. I watched it recently and it still holds up as a fine movie. The characters are fine, the plot is fine, and the setting is awesome. People just started parroting the edgelords and got hung up on comparing the aliens to native americans. If you forget all of the edgy trashtalk it's a perfectly good movie.
@@trequor Whatever man. Bad is bad, and I've been saying it since it came out and the lack interest in the sequels suggests that. Believe what you want and enjoy it. I don't.
Here's totally right. But regarding to Ready Player One it's only true for the movie (what they're talking about obviously). In the book is only partially true. There are still the sidekicks who are capable as well but the main character is no Mary Sue/Gary Stue or even a chosen one. He's a normal dude, overweight who did his research and training (gaming xD) and overcoming his old life, overweight and being (becoming) a brave genius. That's my biggest complaint about the difference between the movie and the book.
I love both RP1 and Avatar and I find my first time experience watching both of these to be exactly the same. They had these huge sprawling worlds and I just got to explore them and see everything and I think having such a black sheet of a protagonist in both of these is probably by design. Both characters are more of a vessel that anybody could picture themselves as. It's like a pack a ramen but they threw out the little seasoning packet which yeah, is kind of lazy, but it allows anybody with any seasoning packet to enjoy it.
You didn't put funny in quotes or this statement would have been 100% accurate. I don't think I've ever even cracked a smile at a Seinfeld scene. Do kinda like the "NO SOUP FOR YOU" guy though.
Jerry is the "straight man" in the context of the show, the relatively normal guy all the other characters look wacky in comparison too. This is appropriate for a comedy series. Other sitcoms have central characters like that, such as Bob Belcher and Hank Hill (Admittedly, though, you could argue both main characters are still better than Jerry).
Ancient quote by the writer of Shoot 'Em Up on the old Slashfilm podcast: "Whatever weird quirk you wanna give to the secondary character, give it to the main instead. Because main characters are always boring." (paraphrased)
Smart man.
And that's why Mr. Smith eats carrots, and why the carrots give him Batman's Detective Vision.
That's why his main character was the shit. That is good ass advice actually.
Schrodinger's Citation: A direct quote that is a paraphrase
uh...that's Jay, you can tell because he's sitting in Jays seat, and wearing a tan shirt
Jay is much smaller. He's often confused for a tiny skeleton.
Jay.. let himself go...
Jay looks a bit bloated, it must be all that beer
Oh the good old days….
I cannot emphasize enough how awful of a book Ready Player One is
The movie is probably the only time that an adaptation of a book was better than the book itself which is hilarious
@BillowsPillow Not OP but... Trucking Through Time. That is all.
@BillowsPillow I expected this reply. But I still laughed my ass off.
I was bored by it but I don't consider the book awful.
@@glctcthnkr8059 That isn't saying much. The movie doesn't understand that troll would've most likely driven backwards for shits n giggles day one, or the puzzles rendered obsolete when someone datamines the cashe.
Some should over dub all of Rich Evans' laughs and see what we get.
It would probably reveal the secret to our entire existence
thats the brown note.
Some
Somone should program an AI to imitate Rich Evan's voice so we can deepfake him reviewing hentai.
The auditory equivalent of Cosmic Latte.
Thank you Rich Evans. 😂
That was my problem with Pacific Rim.
The real problem with Avatar is it’s fuckin boring. I have the internet for cool visuals.
Yeah, folks make screensavers that are doper than anything in Avatar every day.
Was this their review of Ready Player One?
Yes. They show footage of the movie. :)
I think it's Ready Player 2
@@jonathenlester4044 you mean 2 Ready 2 Player
Reader Player One's just a bunch of pop culture references slapped together, but at least in the book they were better pop culture references since it wasn't tailored so a mass audience would get every single reference.
This is blowing up 😆 yo the guy just said what we were all thinking
Didn't bass boost and add reverb to Rich's laugh, disliked.
The real problem with Avatar is that you can't build a story's soul on white guilt.
Go watch Dancing with Wolves, and if you don't feel anything, then the problem is YOU.
Lol!
To be honest you have to have an high IQ to understand Ready Player One
To be honest you must have a high IQ to understand Rich Evans.
In order to understand Ready Player One, one must be the ultimate pendantic nerd along with a vast knowledge of pop culture, no matter how trivial, and being a gatekeeping moderator or a quite active user on Reddit is usually a good sign you qualify. Your taste in books might be suspect to others, but you know Wil Wheaton narrating the novel is plantinum gold to a true gentleman nerd.
he bypassed the compressor.
Just commenting to appreciate your username/avatar. FF love is so rare you have to treasure it when you find it in the wild.
@@FantasticBlueGirl yeah marvel really screwed the pooch with those characters wish they were more popular
@Stella Hohenheim you might be confusing Mr. Fantastic with Hank Pym, the first Ant-Man, who did hit his wife Janet in one comic. Then again, there’s so many different versions of the characters that an alternate universe Reed could’ve done that. Either way, I was referring to the FF as a whole and even if one writer once had Mr. Fantastic beat up the Invisible Woman, that doesn’t automatically color the entire history of the team for me.
Sounds like these type of characters are supposed to be an insert characters, where the audience are supposed to insert themselves onto the main character. In my opinion, insert characters are one of the worst forms of writing.
Should only be done with video games and certain books.
That sounds gay.
Might be out of left field but, how about Subaru from Re Zero?
Insert characters should stay the fuck in RPGs and tabletop games
Insert characters aren’t in of themselves a problem, as Luke Skywalker and John McClaine are insert characters.
Like everything else, it all comes down to writing. Either you have a character that grows before you (from whiny kid, to risk taker, to hero) which makes _you_ feel like you’ve gone through that same journey, or you have an empty shell who’s simply along for the ride.
The real problem with avatar is that the ending treats their victory as the conclusion to the whole conflict between blue people and humans.
In reality, they just defeated one single ship that was only there to explore the possibility of taking the resources without resorting to an armed conflict.
What probably happened right after the movies ended is the humans brought their actual military and mercilessly genocided all the blue people along with the traitor and then extracted the resources anyway, leaving a barren wasteland of a planet.
Would they though? It’s a corporation using outsourced military hardware to get shiny rocks. If it were for some fuel or power source or whatever sure, no doubt Earth’s military would get officially involved. But it’s just rocks.
It’d be like the U.S. starting a conflict for the sake of diamonds instead of oil.
Avatar steals a lot from dune. In dune the heroes are able to cripple an empire by using gorilla tactics to shut down production of a substance that allows people to bend space with their minds. Dune succeeds because it explains the complex political situation that would preclude simply nuking the planet; the substance is produced by giant worms, and the padisha emporer is an elected position akin to the old holy roman emporer. Avatar does not offer sufficient explanation as to why they wouldnt just take off and nuke the site from orbit, all they need is the unibtainium. They show in the movie they have no problem blowing things up or killing the natives.
Nope, that was the entire human race
its almost like it needs a squeal... To bad we will never get it.
@@APinchofBazel Never expect morality from humans when shiny rocks are involved.
To be honest, and I have nothing against the guy, he's a good actor... but outside of MAYBE his role in Terminator: Salvation, I have not seen a single Sam Worthington role, big movie or small movie, that I found to be particularly memorable or exceedingly well written.
I hate to admit it, but every time I see him in a movie my mind immediately goes "oh no... generic, boring, white guy with little depth yet plenty of subpar action sequences... yaaaay.."
Its either that or "dramatic" roles in smaller productions that always seem like they're just... trying a little TOO hard to be "dramatic" or "artistic"
Fun guy I'm sure, and a surprisingly good actor, but the poor man just doesn't seem to have a good track record with well written films.
I think Sam was in Hacksaw Ridge.
@@leetorry He sure was. And he was the least memorable part of that movie.
Most memorable part: Hugo Weavng talking in slow motion: "I'm'onna've to beat you neeoow." - Which won them Best Editing at the Oscars.
I liked him in Manhunt: Unabomber.
Phantomsavage he played Alex mason in cod black ops 1&2
@@hermannabt8361 He was great in Unabomber
The real problem is that they used Papyrus for the title font. Papyrus!!
In the original production notes, James Cameron was torn between Copperplate and Comic Sans
@@RicardoAGuitar ... no love for Roman New Times... 😠
had he chosen comic sans, cameron would be having a bad time.
I can remember the visual composition and overall aesthetic of several scenes in Avatar. I can't remember a single line of dialog. Not one.
I just saw it for the first time. The dialog is bad and it's understandable you don't remember it.
I remember Sigourney Weaver was in it, and that tall, skinny goofy-looking big nose guy was in it too.
I have zero memory of any dialog but quite colorful and vivid…. fornication with a tree.
I fell asleep 2 times on 2 different attempts at watching avatar and never finished it. It was like watching a video game cutscene I didn’t get invested in.
I mean the only way to watch it would be in 3D at an IMAX theater. Otherwise I don't really get the point. It's like a theme park ride.
The blue smurf chick doesn't even take her clothes off at any point either.
@@RandolphTheWhite1 If you can't spank it in the middle of a movie theater what's even the point of going?
@@szeddezs That's what I've been asking since the movie came out!
also FUCK video game cutscenes, video games are an INTERACTIVE MEDIUM. if i want story expressed in boring-ass unskippable cutscenes i'll hit up real life.
Terminator Genysis had the same problem.
No one has thought of this movie since it left the theaters. The book sucked.
Ready Player One is one of the few times the movie is significantly better than the book. The most obvious reason is that each reference doesn't have to be written out and instead is just shown on screen. On a deeper level, the protagonist in the movie is a nothing burger of a character, but there was nothing offensive about him. The book version is a total narcissistic that thinks the universe revolves around him. A great example is that when his friend explains that she pretended to be a man because she felt unsafe being a woman online and faced discrimination for being female, he decided to forgive her for lying to him and quickly moved on.
And people WONDER why I hate Ready Player One?
Is Mike wearing Vulcan ears
his ears just look like that from that angle. otherwise his ears are normal (yes I've wondered the same thing for years!)
Dances With Wolves but blue furrys that’s Avatar
#release the dances with smurfs cut
oh woah hot take there buddy you sure that's the kinda stuff you wanna say in public? pretty sure nobody's been this brave before, you might be on a list now
Why are you locked in the bathroom?
Dances With Wolves but worse is more accurate
what a very original take that you didn't get from somebody else this is such a hot take
Also known as the isekai problem.
Except Kazuma
@@zenmastakilla Fair enough.
He is correct
Matt Damon was actually offered to play the role of the lead in Avatar for 1% of the movie profits. For whatever reason, Damon tried to haggle about the price (I'm guessing he did not understand the magnitude this movie was going to be). And James Cameron literally said, take it or leave it, if you dont take the role, im going to give it to whoever.
So James Cameron too understood that the main character would not be the biggest draw or most important for the movie.
Anyone else would have been a better choice.
@@emhu2594 sure but it wouldn't have mattered. Avatar didn't do well or do less because of Jake Sully lol
I don't think anyone, even James Cameron, knew the blockbuster it would become.
@@samuelperezgarcia He did. He's had the idea of Avatar since the early 90s and tried to get it made then but was limited by the tech of the time. Plus this is not the first multimillion blockbuster he's produced and directed. Before Avatar, Titanic was the largest grossing movie of all time. The man understands what makes a large blockbuster movie.
Matt Damon is our generation's Paul Newman..
He makes Gene Hackman look like Brendan Fraser..
Truly an incomparable talent.
Imagine if Rich Evans was the protagonist of Ready Player One. I would be so engaged all the way through and he's actually a knowledgeable about games.
The point of the boring pasty-ass protagonist trope is that he's supposed to be the AUDIENCE'S avatar.
Perfect way to breed a docile sit-back-and-let-others-do-things mentality in the controlled masses.
isn't there a literary term for a protagonist that just has the story happen to them and is not the driving force ? like they are basically just an observer of the events? i feel like there is a term or a concept that has a name to it, and i can't quite remember at the moment....
I know it's more of a plot driven thing in stories like that. There is a show called RWBY that I used to watch. It's exactly that. I also know that Stranger Things can be like that at times.
Probably works better in literature because of first person perspective and the reader's own imagination.
I can't boil it down to a brief term, but there are cases in which the narrator or point-of-view character and the protagonist are different people (e.g. in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes is the protagonist but Watson is the narrator).
I think this is still a bit different to what Rich is talking about, though, since it's an intentional literary technique used to, e.g. disguise the protagonist's thought processes for a late big reveal, or to create a general sense of mystique or awe around the main character. In Avatar, on the other hand, the protagonist and point-of-view character clearly WERE intended to coincide by the writer, but arguably the execution fell flat compared to the rest of the cast (I don't fully agree with the criticism Rich makes here but I can see where he is coming from).
Are you thinking of an "impersonal witness"? A character who narrates the story but basically just sits back and describes the events that occur in front of him?
@@FanboyFilms maybe, sounds reasonable, the best I could think of in my head was a passive protagonist, which I never could convince myself was right
Rich is right - Pacific Rim had the same problem, too.
Nah, it was alright.
Pacific Rim's main character might as well be a beach bod cardboard cutout
Last Sameri is better.
paul verhoeven avatar movie... make it happen 😂
He's basically describing Jon Snow.
I thought Jon Snow was decent character in his own right. As good as Tyrion or Jaime? No, but still a solid character with his own strengths and weaknesses.
@@gruntpocalypsenow Unfortunately, the latter seasons of GoT took well-developed characters and forced them into whatever role was needed for the ending the writers came up with. Given the accelerated timeframe and lack of episodes to work with, none of the characters really earned the development needed for some of their changes to make sense (*cough* Dany *cough*).
@@FantasticBlueGirl oh yes of course when I’m talking about the good things of GoT it’s season 1-4. 7 and 8 are fucking baffling.
@Holy Emperor Souther I’d say they’re the most archetypal, definitely, and primarily good/heroic, which is why most of them end up dead. Sansa’s probably the best character of the surviving Starks; the way she learns to play the game after being a pawn of one person after another was very satisfying, especially for a female character. (I just really wish they hadn’t written in the goddamn rape scene. I mean wtf were they thinking?)
@@gruntpocalypsenow I don't recall Jon being a good or interesting character at any point in the series. Neither was Rob, or Bran, or Rickon. The Stark boys all sucked. 😂
That and the safe, typical "Pocahontas meets the Smurfs" writing.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
I think we all know that Bill and Ted got high after their report presentation and forgot to do all the things they said they would do before. Time travel is a real bi*ch.
A subtrope of the Avatar Problem is Trinity Syndrome: there’s a female character who is more talented/qualified to accomplish The Thing the movie is about, but instead she takes a backseat and does a bunch of the heavy lifting while some generic white guy comes out of nowhere and does The Thing instead. It’s named for Trinity from The Matrix, who has trained for years and is much more capable than Neo, yet ends up in the role of the sidekick/love interest instead of the heroine. It’s a pretty common trope once you think about it: Hermione in the HP movies, Wyldstyle in The LEGO Movie, Hope in Ant-Man, etc.
Ridiculously common sin in anime as well.
Even though i'm not a big fan of super hero movies, i gotta give some credit to Ant-Man, because if i remember correctly, he wasn't "The Chosen One". Every other character in the other movies mentioned gets something like that but with a different name "The boy who lived", "The man told by the prophecy", etc. Ant-Man atleast did destroy a very big metal door before being chosen, showing some "talent" to the character lol
@@Schimnesthai it’s interesting you associate your the chosen one trope with superhero movies, bc what I like a lot about Marvel is how so many of their heroes are normal people who got their powers by accident and sometimes didn’t want them (see the entire history of X-Men for reference).
But to your comment, I totally agree about Scott having the potential to be the hero from the beginning (the safe cracking scene is really well written in that way). The bigger problem in the movie is how Hank chooses to lure in a thief to train as Ant-Man instead of just being honest with his daughter about her mom’s death and letting her make her own choices instead of treating her like a child forever.
Kung Foo Panda
The Trinity Syndrome would be a problem in the Matrix if it hadn't been established that the prophesied savior of humanity had to be the Chosen One, i.e. destined by birth to be great, not through hard work (not that Neo didn't put in any work). You can take issue with the Chosen One trope if you want, but what you describe isn't really a problem in the Matrix.
Also I don't understand your focus on gender, did you have a problem with the civilian, never been in combat before Ripley being the one who saved Newt and defeated the xeno queen instead of Corporal Hicks who is a trained soldier? I sure don't, so why would you with Neo/Trinity? Not every trope is rooted in sexism.
king
Ah yes the Neil Gaiman approach
Self insert characters are written to be an average guy that the average viewer can see themselves as. Like Neo at the beginning of Matrix, which was done fairly well. It depends more on the side characters and how they interact with said average guy. If they treat him like the average guy he acts like then its ok. The character should grow past it otherwise why make the boring character the main character. Anime is a perfect example of how Not to do self insert characters; from the beginning the average self insert character gets a harem and they rarely grow as a character, they just get power-ups, it's clearly just pandering/fanservice.
Bleach in a nutshell lol
Only if you know the most surface level, basic anime type stuff. There's a fuckton of stuff out there that follows a classical heroes journey structure for protagonist development.
there are piles of anime that do not use self inserts, it's just that japan like america loves their self insert protags to escape from everyday llife
I don't remember Ready Player One that much, except to notice how much people who had their childhoods in the 80s are still stuck back there.
But Wade actually did some heavy lifting himself in the film because he knew Halliday well from all his research. He was able to see past the subtext of why winning the race straight wouldn’t work and figuring out the actual secret. The only annoying thing is they gloss past a scene of them trying to decipher the final clue by showing the end results of their notes only for IOI to have figured it out for them so we don’t get more insight to his own skills at deciphering the puzzle.
But for _Avatar_ and this, with such a lush spectacle of a world, the character for which most of the focus and perspective lays, they can’t distract audiences’ attention away from all of it though that can actually be a bad philosophy since an interesting character can operate in such a fascinating world using it to their advantage showing it off to the viewer in the process.
As someone who actually likes this movie I actually think Wade is good main character.
This is exactly why Avatar was a shit film (but all the characters sucked in that film, not just the main character). Watch the film's review by Critical Drinker to see what I'm talking about.
Nah. Avatar was fine. I watched it recently and it still holds up as a fine movie. The characters are fine, the plot is fine, and the setting is awesome. People just started parroting the edgelords and got hung up on comparing the aliens to native americans. If you forget all of the edgy trashtalk it's a perfectly good movie.
@@trequor Whatever man. Bad is bad, and I've been saying it since it came out and the lack interest in the sequels suggests that. Believe what you want and enjoy it. I don't.
Just like Harry Potter.
First view and first comment . Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Honestly I still don’t recall the book as being as stupid as mike describes it. I think he just has prejudice against the man child fantasy :(
the book is exactly that stupid
He's right except for Avatar being a fine movie.
Avatar is a bad movie
I love Jake Sully. Hes got more of an arc than Luke Skywalker
What's with Rich Evans and hating on white people?
Here's totally right. But regarding to Ready Player One it's only true for the movie (what they're talking about obviously). In the book is only partially true. There are still the sidekicks who are capable as well but the main character is no Mary Sue/Gary Stue or even a chosen one. He's a normal dude, overweight who did his research and training (gaming xD) and overcoming his old life, overweight and being (becoming) a brave genius.
That's my biggest complaint about the difference between the movie and the book.
I love both RP1 and Avatar and I find my first time experience watching both of these to be exactly the same. They had these huge sprawling worlds and I just got to explore them and see everything and I think having such a black sheet of a protagonist in both of these is probably by design. Both characters are more of a vessel that anybody could picture themselves as. It's like a pack a ramen but they threw out the little seasoning packet which yeah, is kind of lazy, but it allows anybody with any seasoning packet to enjoy it.
That would be a great pull quote for the blu-ray. "It's like a pack of ramen but they threw out the little seasoning packet"
Man, who knew Rich was so racist?
Against blue people?
@@ThreadBomb I think he was referring to the "White Rice" comment.
white rice walk like this: 🤓
brown rice walk like this: 😎
@@BIacklce It's true. We're so lame.
not sure if sarcasm, but pointing out racism isn't racist.
You're describing Seinfeld (the show). Jerry is a neurotic OCD man-child and all the characters in his life are funny.
You didn't put funny in quotes or this statement would have been 100% accurate. I don't think I've ever even cracked a smile at a Seinfeld scene. Do kinda like the "NO SOUP FOR YOU" guy though.
@@NealX_Gaming oh yeah, everybody loves no soup for you guy. The writers must have been taking their gummy vitamins that day.
As someone who enjoys Seinfeld (the show) I can't not disagree with you.
@@Shermpressive double negatives accepted....
Jerry is the "straight man" in the context of the show, the relatively normal guy all the other characters look wacky in comparison too. This is appropriate for a comedy series. Other sitcoms have central characters like that, such as Bob Belcher and Hank Hill (Admittedly, though, you could argue both main characters are still better than Jerry).