My coworker was telling me how well Jerry Maguire stands up today and I forced myself to remember the major beats of that piece of shit:
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Big company bad and evil; small start up good and pure.
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Being principled always pays off in the end.
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Everyone can make it if they try hard, believe in themselves, and believe in each other.
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We can have perfect interpersonal relations if we just learn to balance work and life appropriately, and it's up to us to accept that challenge.
Fuck this movie. More importantly fuck people who like this movie. Jerry would have turned out just like his old firm buddies (even if the major plot points largely stay the same). Everyone in this movie is actively trying to exploit each other in the beginning. And even though it's totally inconsequential to how bad these people are in their shitty lives, if you ask me the most unbelievable part is when Jerry and Bridget Jones get back together at the end.
Not buying it.
Tell me about the shitty liberal movies that are renting space in your head.
Not a movie, but I'm watching through Babylon 5 for the first time. I was a die-hard Trekkie when it first aired and avoided it on principle, but decided to give it a chance after all these years because I'm a fan of many people on its creative team, and because its popularity has endured for years. I'm about 2/3rd's of the way through the first season.
B5 feels like it was made in response to criticisms of ST (story arcs, conflicts between main characters), although ST itself had already learned from these criticisms with DS9. And Star Trek itself is pretty lib in many respects, but B5 feels like it analyzed Trek's writing and story structure to death, with no attention paid to its politics.
Three of the main cast are actual ambassadors, so it's hard to take any political stories about them seriously, when they are essentially state concerns and actions embodied as individuals (the definition of liberalism).
There are occasional mentions of poverty among the low-class civilians on the station, but no analysis of the causes, and it never appears to affect the main cast.
Except for the head of security, who is just a straight-up cop, and who has been driven out of every other posting he's had.
The station commander is basically a "good guy" for the sake of it. A strike among the actual labourers on the station is resolved when he just steps in and hands them a big chunk of the station's military budget. I'm also getting vibes of a chosen one theme from him, but it looks like the actor left the series after the first season so who knows how that arc would have turned out.
Maybe it changes as the seasons go by. And in spite of these issues, I'm still enjoying it. But there's no real analysis of political power dynamics, from a program that presents itself as explicitly political.
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Already watched "TKO," and yes, it was crap. Can't have a "Balance of Terror" without a "Spock's Brain."
I'm watching a download of the entire series, so it would be a hassle to skip the opening. And NGL, the opening is one of my favourite parts. The music slaps, and the narration makes it feel almost mythological.
Thank you for the head's-up. I do sense threads of competent writing here and there, and I've seen enough shows take their time to pick up steam that I'm still willing to give it a chance. Nice to know that it picks up.
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I also just started watching Babylon 5, but based on the comments elsewhere on this site, I'm told it gets a lot better and more nuanced after the first season.