NEWS: Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: One Big Focus Group

Mini-series? Fuck that. Full on series, man.

Simply brilliant.

Evilgasm said:

Gerry_D said:
seeing Lucas wearing the "Han Shot First" really made me mad...great piece, Wil

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Someone should send him one of these t-shirts.

(I got quite a few laughs wearing mine at Celebration Europe... and one or two dirty looks)

How can this discussion go by without a discussion of the absolutely disconnected crap that Hasbro has rubber stamped as D&D movie-dom.

JUNK! Condescending, detached, emotionally unsatisfied, soul-less crap.

Out of touch with the RPG experience and the genre.

Of course, we keep going to this stuff, though. We will go and see the crap, because we hope it will not suck. The it does and we bitch, and the viral frenzy occurs as everyone goes to see it. Geekery likes to observe hollywood crap like people on a freeway like to observe car wrecks. We slow down and stare.

And then we spend $$$. And the Harvard school of business guy gets to say, "Look, the movie made money. Who cares what a few geeks say in a chat room."

Real power would come from boycott of the next three movies a studio makes if it mishandles our material.

Avengers Assemble!

I know return you to Wil's regularly scheduled rant.

It's not just you.

Well, to be honest, I saw the film before I read the comics, and I do think that the story presented in the comics is superior to the film (I'm not going to get into the discarding of what could be called "postmodern" themes for Marxist ones).

And none of this is about "rationalization." When I see a film based on a comic I grew up reading, say, almost any of the Marvel adaptations, I pick the fucker apart. Why? Probably because after having read those things for many years, I'm subject to a rather irrational obsession.

Make no mistake about it, Watchmen will get fucked-up and will be a disaster. What pisses me off about the continual raping of solid source material is the people who aren't geeks and who don't read comics and are generally unfamiliar with geekdom in general see these failed movies and say to themselves "What is so special about that? That Sucked!"

So many possible comments at the tip of my fngers now that sparks are starting to dance across my fingerprints! Thats the sign of a great article...

To be truthful, its not just knobs from Harvard that aim to piss us off as they try to entertain the masses; some do come from other snooty tie-wearing education institutions too! Gene Simmons once said, "You just have to be crazy to be in the institution."

As background info, I am a older (47) pre-geek who watched first run TOS Trek with wide open eyes and a shit ass grin in his preteens, who used a slide rule in school, who owned a Atari 400! Since the release of the IBM PCs, and Macintosh in the early 80's has been selling Computers for over 20 years.

It is good to see that the newest generation of over intelligent, fun loving, SF and Fantasy loving, "never going to grow up" counter culturalists who embrace geekdom are still... Hrm keeping it real...

I'm just pissed that all the big Cons are in the US!

I'm guessing many geeks wouldn't have a problem with this...

Ahhh. I see what you did there. Well played.

But you know Watchmen is going to suck. It can't not suck. This is a book where one of the simpler themes is about the interplay of predestination and free will. You're not going to make that appeal to a mass audience without gutting it. And, you have an ending that plays with both the liberal leaning anti-nationalism, can't-we-all-just-get-along attitude with a paternalistic, lie-to-them-for-their-own-good attitude. In today's climate, you can't really explore either of those sides without pissing someone off, let alone try to combine them. Make it loyal to the source, and at some point audiences are going to expect some action or revelation that redeems everyone and when that doesn't happen, test audiences are going to shit themselves.

Lastly, what's up, Wil, why don't you ever make it out to Dragon-Con? It's called Southern hospitality, we'd treat you right.

...mmright.

I think this probably tells me exactly what I needed to hear. I'm sorry you're obsessed with fiction SO MUCH that a different version of said fiction threatens you.

Or they'll rave about how great it was, not realizing why it sucked.

I might be insulted, if I knew what the fuck you were talking about.

Not to mention that if I was "threatened," I wouldn't see those films in the first place. Spare me your psychologizing.

Will, you my friend are the voice geeks everywhere wish we had. You say everything we think, everything we want to say and you come correct. Great article.