Seth Rogan's defense of the Marvel movies is very problematic
Total Film spoke with actor Seth Rogen, who gave a defense of the Marvel movie franchise for the sake of The Boys, but the way he conveys his argument sure is peculiar. Here is one of the points of contention:
What's actually troubling about Rogen's argument is that he seems to believe more gruesome violence and other mature content is what instantly makes comics adaptations worth his time from an adult perspective, and the following certainly seems to confirm this:
When he speaks of having read Marvel books for 15 years, that would imply he'd begun in the early 1990s (Ennis' The Boys first debuted in the late 2000s), at which time, their story quality was beginning to unravel, as the Clone Saga, the Onslaught/Heroes Reborn events and Age of Apocalypse demonstrated, so one has to wonder just what kind of Marvel books they were reading, and if they even read the best the 90s had to offer. A serious problem with some of these "trendy" types is they're predisposed to liking specific products, and even leap to supporting them if the ideologies they emphasize meet their ultra-leftist positions. Whether or not they actually read the comics in question, anybody who goes by a predetermined viewpoint to uphold a product based on the politics injected into it is taking a very laughable path.
And did Rogen and company ever read DC books of the past? Presumably, they did (with the sad part being they could've been stories just as bad as what Marvel had at the time), but for some reason, many of these trendies repeatedly emphasize Marvel at the expense of everything else, as though Marvel literally set the tone for everything, and as though everybody managed to successfully emulate Lee's approach, which unfortunately isn't so. Particularly irritating is when some ideologues act as though Lee's approach was "realistic" in every sense imaginable, which isn't true either. His writing - and that of his more respectable colleagues - contained tons of surreal moments, not the least being how Peter Parker instantly lost all fear of heights in his Amazing Fantasy #15 debut when he climbed the wall of an apartment building shortly after being bitten by the radioactive spider at the science convention, and a passing car caused him to leap away from the street. This is why it's practically offensive when PC advocates exploit Lee's visions and memory as a shield for directions that don't add up to good storytelling. Yet they're unwilling to defend his creations long after they were victimized by the very PC crowd they're part of, which proves they're not fans of Lee and his contributors at all.
Rogen doesn't impress me in the slightest with his tedious viewpoints, and only makes me feel fortunate I decided in past years to avoid the Marvel movie franchise altogether.
"I think that Kevin Feige is a brilliant guy, and I think a lot of the filmmakers he's hired to make these movies are great filmmakers. But as someone who doesn't have children… It is [all] kind of geared towards kids, you know? There are times where I will forget. I'll watch one of these things, as an adult with no kids, and be like, 'Oh, this is just not for me,'" Rogen laughed, noting that he and Evan never stopped reading comic books, though, and one day realized that there weren't many adaptations of more grown-up graphic novels onscreen.So because he doesn't have children - a sadly common case among many modern liberal showbiz contributors - he believes the Marvel movies should be geared more towards adults than they actually are based on his not being a parent?!? What a groaner. This is so mind-boggling. Besides, depending on the view you take of this whole subject, when Stan Lee laid out his vision for Marvel in 1961, he made an effort to emphasize elements that could be considered more sophisticated and thus impress upon older teens as much as children, and by the Bronze Age they were making even more efforts to develop stories with elements that could impress upon adults too. So where does Rogan get off claiming the live action adaptations aren't aimed at adults? If anything, until more recently, you could say they were family-friendly, but with more woke ingredients now clogging the screenplays, it's hard to say they're kid-stuff in a positive sense anymore.
What's actually troubling about Rogen's argument is that he seems to believe more gruesome violence and other mature content is what instantly makes comics adaptations worth his time from an adult perspective, and the following certainly seems to confirm this:
"I remember when the first issue of The Boys came out. We were big fans of [writer/creator] Garth Ennis, because we'd read Preacher already, and we bought it. We had the same experience that I think, now, audiences are having, which is: 'Oh, we've been reading Marvel for the last 15 years and now there's starting to be stuff like this, which is a great addition to this landscape. It's [the same genre] but not considering younger audiences in the slightest. If anything, it's much more geared towards adult audiences."This sums up more of what's wrong with his whole argument. He must believe the most grisly forms of storytelling are the most superior, which is the whole problem with The Boys. And let's be clear. Of course it shouldn't have to be just Marvel serving as everybody's source of entertainment, which they haven't been in a long, long time. But what if the entertainment landscape, adult or otherwise, were to just consist of violent, sexually explicit content? Wouldn't that be bad too? Rogan doesn't seem to have considered that.
"I think just as naturally to us as The Boys fell into the comic-book-store landscape as a comic, we thought it would fall well into the media landscape as a TV show. But truthfully, without Marvel, The Boys wouldn't exist or be interesting. I'm aware of that. I think if it was only Marvel, it would be bad. But I think it isn't – clearly. An example I'm always quoting is, there's a point in history where a bunch of filmmakers would have been sitting around, being like, 'Do you think we'll ever make a movie that's not a western again? Everything's a western! Westerns dominate the fucking movies. If it doesn't have a hat and a gun and a carriage, people aren't going to go see it any more.'"
When he speaks of having read Marvel books for 15 years, that would imply he'd begun in the early 1990s (Ennis' The Boys first debuted in the late 2000s), at which time, their story quality was beginning to unravel, as the Clone Saga, the Onslaught/Heroes Reborn events and Age of Apocalypse demonstrated, so one has to wonder just what kind of Marvel books they were reading, and if they even read the best the 90s had to offer. A serious problem with some of these "trendy" types is they're predisposed to liking specific products, and even leap to supporting them if the ideologies they emphasize meet their ultra-leftist positions. Whether or not they actually read the comics in question, anybody who goes by a predetermined viewpoint to uphold a product based on the politics injected into it is taking a very laughable path.
And did Rogen and company ever read DC books of the past? Presumably, they did (with the sad part being they could've been stories just as bad as what Marvel had at the time), but for some reason, many of these trendies repeatedly emphasize Marvel at the expense of everything else, as though Marvel literally set the tone for everything, and as though everybody managed to successfully emulate Lee's approach, which unfortunately isn't so. Particularly irritating is when some ideologues act as though Lee's approach was "realistic" in every sense imaginable, which isn't true either. His writing - and that of his more respectable colleagues - contained tons of surreal moments, not the least being how Peter Parker instantly lost all fear of heights in his Amazing Fantasy #15 debut when he climbed the wall of an apartment building shortly after being bitten by the radioactive spider at the science convention, and a passing car caused him to leap away from the street. This is why it's practically offensive when PC advocates exploit Lee's visions and memory as a shield for directions that don't add up to good storytelling. Yet they're unwilling to defend his creations long after they were victimized by the very PC crowd they're part of, which proves they're not fans of Lee and his contributors at all.
Rogen doesn't impress me in the slightest with his tedious viewpoints, and only makes me feel fortunate I decided in past years to avoid the Marvel movie franchise altogether.
Labels: indie publishers, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, violence
I always suspected Seth Rogen was a midwit putz. And now it's confirmed. He and his fellow travelers ruined the Green Hornet for a generation or two. His opinions about comics belong in the same garbage can as LeBron James' opinions about representative government.
Posted by
Hank Brown |
4:10 PM