adam_y

To be fair, you're not wrong.

It's an international treaty that says if things are going to shit we should comment on the french.

Lol, Americans throwing shade at France in 2025.

Good effort pal.

I met Talbot at a comic festival in Lancaster some time back. Spent an awfully long time chatting to him. Fascinating and kind human.

Arrested? For saying something? This must be all the free speech you were promised.

I remember seeing this, back then, for the first time. I don't think I've felt internet joy since.

It's just like here but there's an awful, hollow, gnawing feeling like you've already seen this post before just last week.

Going to guess you aren't European and you aren't aware of what Putin did to our gas prices at the start of the Ukrain invasion.

You're out by a million miles (sarcasm, not exact figure).

We just about tolerated that shit with Elvis.

Yes, I totally agree and I think you've hit on something subtle but really important...

The difference between starting to make a work (of art, if we are lucky) with an intent for it to be about something and telling people a work is about something.

I think the intent is important. Marvel's latest round of press includes them telling us how the new Captain America is about modern politics but the plot really doesn't hold that up beyond some fairly blunt motifs. Ultimately, it feels as if it about a struggling studio, if that is a theme.

I guess the context is really important... And it highlights the slippery thing between thematics and meaning. Take a film like Stalker where the plot is arguably slight, but the characterisation and the context give rise to meaning through the themes... It would be a different film if Tarkovsky had tried to market it as being about politics and Chernobyl.

Hang on, are we arguing for the same thing? That story, and more importantly, compelling story, is what is needed?

I was just using king as an example of someone who crafts stories... Whether they are page-turners or not, that compel audiences.

My problem with Marvel films is that they are stale, narratively, and as such the only thing that can fix them is decent writing that isn't in the service of "franchise".

Yeah, if we weren't talking about Marvel films you'd have a point.

Which is to say that absolutely, you are right that theme is important because ultimately theme is context.

I do wonder how much of this belongs, not to the creator, but to the viewer/reader.

There's that great example with Ray Bradbury telling people that Fahrenheit 451 was not about fascism until someone pointed out to him how it absolutely was.