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seriousficSo in the latest Spider-Man video (no, not the one where the Lizard sounds like he's chewing on a sandwich), there's a sequence where the much-vaunted practical effects web-swinging goes down. Sidebar: Was that a big problem people had with the Raimi movies? Spider-Man (which, thanks to the costume, was very hard to distinguish between real and CGI) was just too agile and acrobatic? He should look more like a guy without superpowers doing the Pitfall Harry thing? Sidebar over.
Fine, whatever. It seems like something that would work better for a Daredevil movie, since he's canonically just a guy and Spider-Man is the one with super-agility, but fine. As Spider-Man's swinging around, he knocks into cars and quips "I'm swinging heah, I'm swinging heah!" As in Midnight Cowboy, a movie that's big with the kids.
A comment I saw summed it up so well. They basically compared that line with what someone in, say, The Lorax or The Smurfs would come up with. You know, a line that no one really cares about, it's almost five o'clock, we need to give Katy Perry something to say, what's the laziest pop culture reference I can make? "Houston, we have a problem"? "Hasta la vista, baby"? Austin Powers line?
That's exactly it. That isn't something a smart person would say. And the comics will vary on how smart Peter is (from "inventing web fluid all on his own" to "putting the finishing touches on his father's formula"... to "needs Gwen Stacy to come up with a cure for the Lizard, cuz feminism or something"). But he's always clever.
Clever people don't make obvious jokes like that, unless the joke is how obvious it is. Now, does this mean people shouldn't write pop culture references into their fiction? No. But there's a rub. Peter is also supposed to be young; if we're going to make youth his defining characteristic, to the point that not one adaptation will even let him graduate high school, to the point where the Ultimate incarnation dies before getting old, then he should act young.
Young people don't make references to quotes so old that most of them haven't even watched the movie it's from. (Unless I'm missing a bunch of young'uns shouting "It looks like we're not in Kansas anymore!" on Twitter.) Young people remix references. They use it to draw connections between disparate entities, pointing out the similarity or hilarious lack of similarity. This is why shows like Community, Buffy, and MST3K were/are so popular among young people. They don't just regurgitate Star Wars lines. That's the Big Bang Theory. They contextualize with how they feel, their viewpoints, what that line says to them or says about them or says about whoever seems to like it. For instance, mangling "friend of Dorothy" into "friend of Ellen" to describe a lesbian.
That's how people talk, not saying "Check please!" after something weird happens in a restaurant.
Fine, whatever. It seems like something that would work better for a Daredevil movie, since he's canonically just a guy and Spider-Man is the one with super-agility, but fine. As Spider-Man's swinging around, he knocks into cars and quips "I'm swinging heah, I'm swinging heah!" As in Midnight Cowboy, a movie that's big with the kids.
A comment I saw summed it up so well. They basically compared that line with what someone in, say, The Lorax or The Smurfs would come up with. You know, a line that no one really cares about, it's almost five o'clock, we need to give Katy Perry something to say, what's the laziest pop culture reference I can make? "Houston, we have a problem"? "Hasta la vista, baby"? Austin Powers line?
That's exactly it. That isn't something a smart person would say. And the comics will vary on how smart Peter is (from "inventing web fluid all on his own" to "putting the finishing touches on his father's formula"... to "needs Gwen Stacy to come up with a cure for the Lizard, cuz feminism or something"). But he's always clever.
Clever people don't make obvious jokes like that, unless the joke is how obvious it is. Now, does this mean people shouldn't write pop culture references into their fiction? No. But there's a rub. Peter is also supposed to be young; if we're going to make youth his defining characteristic, to the point that not one adaptation will even let him graduate high school, to the point where the Ultimate incarnation dies before getting old, then he should act young.
Young people don't make references to quotes so old that most of them haven't even watched the movie it's from. (Unless I'm missing a bunch of young'uns shouting "It looks like we're not in Kansas anymore!" on Twitter.) Young people remix references. They use it to draw connections between disparate entities, pointing out the similarity or hilarious lack of similarity. This is why shows like Community, Buffy, and MST3K were/are so popular among young people. They don't just regurgitate Star Wars lines. That's the Big Bang Theory. They contextualize with how they feel, their viewpoints, what that line says to them or says about them or says about whoever seems to like it. For instance, mangling "friend of Dorothy" into "friend of Ellen" to describe a lesbian.
That's how people talk, not saying "Check please!" after something weird happens in a restaurant.
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Date: 2012-06-08 02:37 am (UTC)Heck, I'm a smart 20-something and I am constantly thinking of references, often to things I've never seen. I've never even heard of Midnight Cowboy; I'd think he was just making a Miss Congeniality reference. It's a reference within a reference.
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Date: 2012-06-08 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-08 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 01:07 am (UTC)