If you’re on tumblr or a place that circulates screencaps of tumblr posts, you may have noticed a lot of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine images and memes. If you’re an executive with rights to Star Trek content, you might be thinking – Yisss, paydirt, time for shitty DS9 reboot to cash in! You are mistaken. This is specifically a backlash against Star Wars going to hell in a handbasket. I know this because I’ve seen a blog go from semi-ironic love for B-list Star Wars canon fodder to having zero SW and nothing but ST overnight, right around the time the mouse sharted out episode nine.
You’re begging for a backlash to the backlash if you go in like a greedlord. I suppose you don’t care, but just understand this: DS9 Retread will not make money. Not a bit. Impoverished fandom dorkwads casting about listlessly after all the franchises and stars that they love turn to shit, these are not people with money to burn. There’s hardly anybody left with money to burn. We’re all wasting time dinking around on our phones until capitalism finishes eating itself and the survivors have to waste their time dinking around with radiotrophic fungus instead.
On another subject, Naomi never got any better.
Remember when Stargirl made superpowers look fun and amazing and comic booky? Never gonna happen here. Superpowers are just whatever you can make happen with actors standing around and glowy shit painted in with after effects. It makes them feel like an abstract idea in a bad way. In action adventure done well, the power or skill a character possesses feels like their desire made manifest. I will defeat the bad guy. I want it bad enough that I can fly. The character motivations just don’t move anything and the visuals are so lackluster that’s all you have. Actors are fine, doing the best they can. The writing is mediocre. The sense of anything “super” happening is fucking abysmal.
I might be just about done with CW superhero shows. The flagship primo properties all ended their run or are showing their budget in the worst ways. The writing of the newest season of The Flash is full of budget-shaped plot holes. Even in the best of seasons that show spends too much time on maudlin tragedy. The last couple seasons the main actress Candice Patton has been sequestered from the crew by writing excuses so much it feels like she must have beef with them or something. It just has me tired as hell.
It’s just as well. I got things to do.
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My wife and I just finished rewatching all of TNG on Netflix before it went away, and now we’re going through DS9, since we missed most of it when it was coming out.
I spent a while Googling to try to find out about the retread you were talking about here, but I couldn’t find any signs of one. Was that just a hypothetical? I’m afraid I’m getting to the age where half of the pop culture references being made just go winging past my head — this post was the first time I’d heard of anyone taking an interest in DS9 these days besides us.
The only thing I could find was this
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/333517-paramount-announces-demastered-edition-of-star-trek-deep-space-nine-voyager
which I think is a joke?
Oh yeah, it was hypothetical. I was just saying that given the popularity of DS9 discourse and memes on tumblr right now, some jackass might be contemplating a reboot. And I’m advising against it. Funny link there, thanks.
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I kinda like the various comic book adaptations, although it’s been decades since I’ve read anything regularly.
I liked the animated DCU Green Arrow a lot better though, the CW version couldn’t have made him (and his companions) more unlikable if they tried: a bunch of angsty rich douches… the CW Flash at least had a more likeable cast, even if it was just ridiculous…
It’s been a few years since I’ve watched any of these, and last time I tried, I was following one of those online charts on how to binge-watch the CW DCU, where it would only change shows when they crossed over, and I gave up because they weren’t all on the same streaming service I was using. Maybe I’ll try again next time I switch streaming platforms, but at this point I’m just too far behind, and I’m not likely to want to spend the time/energy commitment to try and catch up…
I rather liked Legends of Tomorrow, I feel like it started out as just a bad excuse to have epic battles with out any sort of plot repercussions, but the cast worked really well together, and I feel like it became the best of the CW DCU.
I liked The Boys, but it’s excessive and edgelordy, and problematic, so, definitely not for everyone.
Less Superhero-ey, but comic book based, I really liked The Old Guard – I’m all for Charlize Theron becoming the middle-aged action-woman badass actor, thought she was great in Mad Max: Fury Road and Atomic Blonde as well. Also liked the comic, but I like most of Greg Rucka’s stuff, I think he does a pretty decent job of depicting warfare and the associated damage…
The weird thin line style and obviousness of cheap animation techniques puts me off animated DCU stuff past the 90s Batman, but I can see some more daring or interesting stuff happening there sometimes, from my place on the outside.
There are Green Arrow comics which got edgy in similar ways to the show, like when Speedy done the heroin in the 90s? Again, never read them, but I read about them. Personally I loved that girl from The OC who played his half sister. Willa Holland? And the nerd lady played by that canadian music video girl whatsername was fun. I didn’t even hate Steve Amell with his tiny eyes. I probably have no point to make here that’s worth anything.
I actually like a lot of things in the cancelled or ended CW superhero shows, even when they were very uneven, sometimes terribad – Supergirl – or a mess due to off screen drama – Batwoman – or … actually there was nothing wrong with Black Lightning at all. The offscreen drama was handled cleverly by the people making the show.
Legends of Tomorrow is cancelled?!! It was the best of what was left, by far! Although that actually means they went out on a pretty good note. A shame the guy they got to play Booster Gold will never get to play the character again, but eh, good enough.
My first experience with The Boys was seeing some of the comics laying around an office at Amazon campus and giving a peruse. There was a montage of bad superhero stuff where the superman had lasered the top of a guy’s head off and was having sex with the corpse, IIRC. Never interested in it after that, or any of the other edgy superhero shit.
Atomic Blonde kinda offputting to me, but MM:FR was freakin excellent. Never got around to seeing The Guard. Cancelled my nutflex before it came out. Maybe some day I’ll get a chance to check it out.
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“In action adventure done well, the power or skill a character possesses feels like their desire made manifest.”
The part in Civil War where Cap’m uses giant muscles to try to keep his lovin’ man from flying away in the helicopter. Better example.