Everyone's a critic.
It's not often I write an article like this, is it? One where I sit down and actually comment on the world around me, which I think is fine. I want to provide some escapism from the terrors of reality we have to deal with every second of our waking time on this Earth, but sometimes I get frustrated and I want to write about a situation that's been personally pissing me off lately! MCU haters, and others of their kind, making it difficult for the rest of us to whine about the problems we have!
So what am I on about? Well, I'm here to tell you all about how I'm fed up with every time I go on social media or enter a conversation at work, I have to deal with someone being so ridiculous and irrational that we all seem insane by any slight association. I'm using the MCU as the example of this article, but let's face it. You can apply this to politics, Star Wars or even the My Little Pony show.
Every now and again, the world gets taken in by something big. Pokémon Go, Big Brother, Game of Thrones, the list goes on. Everyone talks about it, the merchandise sells like cakes covered in cocaine (cocakes?), and they talk and talk about it gleefully. They share their experiences, they praise it to Heaven and Back, and it's quite an exhilarating few days if you're part of this group. There's a small high you get when you're part of something like this, where you see people sharing experiences and stories about how they beat a bastard boss in Elden Ring and you can go "oh you lucky bastard, I'm still stuck at them!" or something along those lines. It's harmless fun, usually.
But popularity always brings out the contrarians. The doubters, the disapprovers. The ones that scream out "overrated", one of my least favourite words of all time right next to "sloppy" and "David Cage". I actually timed myself to see how long that would take for Elden Ring to be called that, three days if you're curious, because it's always coming. Always. It doesn't matter if the big thing is a game, a movie, the second coming of Jesus H Christmas or whatever else, these people will show up.
And don't misunderstand. This isn't me going "oh just let people have fun and enjoy things" or me saying everything is perfect and should never be criticised. If it was, I'd be a hypocritical shithead because I love to fart on stuff from time to time. We've all done it at some point, I'm sure. If you get a high from doing it to a popular thing only because it's popular however, you're making it difficult for the rest of us to actually be critical.
The MCU is the best current example of this, because of how big the MCU is and has been for quite some time. I don't think it's a secret at this stage that I love the franchise and most of it's heroes, and I could probably talk about it for hours in a podcast that is totally not secretly being planned, but I would never say any of the films are perfect. In fact, there's tons of flaws and I'd gladly go over as many of them as possible... if it didn't mean I was seemingly connected to those people by association.
You see, I want to criticise the overuse of CGI in the movies. I love practical effects, I love being able to feel the creature is standing right there, talking to the actors, and I want the actors to work with flexible make-up to create a stunning performance. But I can't, because now I am sounding like those idiots who scream bloody murder every time CGI shows up in any movie, and they use the MCU as their prime example purely because it's the popular one.
I want to talk about how bloody ridiculous it is that it took 18 films for a non-white lead and 21 films for a non-male lead, but I can't because the MCU haters bitching about one single joke for hours on end and tweets for days make me groan, and the idea of being part of that group freaking out as if the MCU is the worst thing in cinema is why I avoid getting too far into the criticism itself.
Do you remember Ghostbusters' 2016 reboot, starring Melissa McCarthy and others? Or more specifically, do you remember how one side screamed an insane amount of sexist comments and misogyny, so it made every disapproving commenter look like a sexist twat by association? That film is pretty bad but it's not because they're women. And I wish I could say that without needing to worry I'll be associated with the idiots who can't have a reasonable discussion because they seem so... extreme!
That's why I'm frustrated. I want to talk about the MCU, the good and the bad, but I can't because it's an invitation to the MCU blind-haters to come over and say "one of us, one of us", and the MCU blind-lovers to think I'm part of the blind-haters and get overly angry because they're as fed up as I am they have to deal with that first crowd over and over and over again so any hint of criticism is taken as another bullet in a rainstorm of them.
You know what the worst part about this is though? About the crowd that picks the popular thing purely because it's popular and makes it difficult to talk about the valid criticisms?
It's that they're so boring!
You're boring! You are! You're so mind-numbingly boring, it's actually incredible. No scratch that, it's not incredible because that word makes me think of Mrs Incredible and her perfect arse. Incredible is too exciting a word for you. No, you people stick to the same words we've all heard a million times, the same catchphrases and complaints we're all used to. I wanted to talk about how The Last Jedi's use of Poe Dameron was extremely flawed, if not downright awful, but I couldn't because you were all busy screaming about Rose and harassing the actress!
Again, this interferes with what we want to do, the real criticisms, because the conversation is overshadowed by you!
This article wasn't written to dissuade criticism of projects, far from it. I think criticism, constructive criticism, is a valid and necessary part to growing creatively and personally. We should be allowed to criticise, we should be allowed to be criticised from time to time. But not irrationally. Not through trigger words and catchphrases, but through legitimate thought and reasoning. Don't paint an entire series with the same brush because then you'll end up acting like an idiot, screaming about every little thing big and small until you're no longer taken seriously.
Nobody takes you seriously if you're the guy saying "all CGI is bad". Or if you go "you shouldn't enjoy this thing! You should be enjoying this thing that only five other people have heard about it and if you don't then you're an idiot!"
So in conclusion, at the end of all this, I have to sum up by saying... The Last Jedi was awesome and Trans people deserve equal rights! See you later!
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