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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Oct 24, 2016 23:16:36 GMT
My reaction to Walking Dead was just... this is horror porn. This is to horror what the Food Porn thread is to food -- something over the top that forces an emotional reaction. It's not about narrative skills or art, it's just somebody shoving a thumb in your eye. I've been hearing this a lot today, and I have to say I'm confused by it. TWD is based off of a graphic novel, with major emphasis on the "graphic". The entire comic series is gruesome and shocking and over the top, as action comics inherently tend to be, and this one is made even more by so by zombies and depravity and gore. Although the show is keeping loosely to the plot, it's staying true to some of the most gross parts - last night's #2 death was portrayed exactly how in went down in the series. Even the actor himself - who had read the comic - told the showrunners specifically, "I want that. Don't gloss over it." In truth, the showrunners have actually toned down some of the violence in the series in order to put it on AMC. Had they done a true adapatation, we'd be watching this on HBO or Starz. The characters we're seeing on screen now are actually in pretty damn good shape compared to their GN counterparts. It's bad; it's meant to be bad. It's the zombie apocalypse and the possible end of humanity as we know it. It's not all about Daryl running around with his shirt off, so I'm not really sure why people are all "ZOMG torture porn!! Gratuitous and unnecessary!! They didn't have to be that broooooo-tuullll!" Well yeah, yeah they did. First, it's the book, and second, it was needed to convey exactly how awful and terrible it really was so that you can follow the surviving characters down the rabbit hole of "after".
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Post by Melifeather on Oct 25, 2016 0:04:51 GMT
I am quite addicted to this show and the anticipation and fear that a much loved character may die is the addictive part! I'm fascinated and repulsed at the same time, and I can hardly tear my eyes away from the screen. I made sure to watch this show in real time and dvr'd Westworld. That's how much I love this show. Ee-gods I hope that doesn't mean I'm a sick mothertrucker too!
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Post by jnr on Oct 25, 2016 15:08:25 GMT
I've been hearing this a lot today, and I have to say I'm confused by it. TWD is based off of a graphic novel, with major emphasis on the "graphic". The entire comic series is gruesome and shocking and over the top, as action comics inherently tend to be, and this one is made even more by so by zombies and depravity and gore. Well, graphic novels are only called that because unlike traditional novels they are drawn; they have graphics. The term stems from the sixties, which is to say the point in US culture when Bewitched was a hit and Marvel was experiencing its Silver Age. If you already know and care about what happens in the comics, and you are convinced that Book World must equal Show World... then of course you might simply assume that the show would do the same in all respects as the comics. You could also assume that the comics have no point or value other than shock value, and then on that basis, you might consider this episode to have been a high point in the series as judged by that yardstick. Good recreation of comics, shocking, brutal = success. OK, that's fine, but it's a pretty juvenile yardstick, IMO. It puts both the show and comics in the same ballpark as, say, the Friday the 13th movies, as opposed to something with substantially more complex and difficult-to-achieve strengths and ambitions like ASOIAF. Well yeah, yeah they did. First, it's the book, and second, it was needed to convey exactly how awful and terrible it really was so that you can follow the surviving characters down the rabbit hole of "after". Well, I wonder how far you could take this principle, justifying it in the same way. Would it be an admirable depiction of the awful terrible world if Negan, in the show, "violated" Michonne with a katana because in that episode she had the nerve to speak to him first, without being spoken to? How about if Maggie was forced to kneel and lick up Glenn's brains? If not, why not? Doesn't that sound just like the sort of thing Negan would do? I'm not sure where you draw the line and say "No, that's going too far," instead of "This is a brutal world and the creators must be courageous in depicting it for artistic purposes, and we should admire it more when it does depict that." Or, if you want to stick with the events we saw, how about if the actual shots of the bat slamming into the skulls of the living characters... went on for twenty or thirty minutes? Just replay those parts from different angles, zooming in, switch to slow-mo, showing the eye slowly emerging from Glenn's skull, Maggie shrieking in despair, brains flying off the bat and hitting people in the face, etc. Dedicate fully half the episode to that. Make the horror porn even more porny. The kneejerk reaction to that idea from fans, I am sure, would be to say "Oh, well, that would be boring, watching that for half an hour straight." Well, these things aren't objective at all. While some would consider this sort of thing boring, others would be dancing around their living rooms at such a brave and thorough exploration of the world, with so little filter. If you would put them on the far side of the line from yourself, you're admitting that there is a line and that you don't think crossing it is a good idea or makes the show better.
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Post by Weasel Pie on Oct 25, 2016 15:21:30 GMT
keep the rules in mind folks, thanks
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Oct 25, 2016 16:00:00 GMT
I'm not going to belabor the point. Everyone has opinions about the show; I suppose my line in the sand about "acceptable violence" is set further away than most, as I felt that it was in line with what was necessary for the story development and future plot arc. The extended head-caving, neck-stretching, squishy goodness was done to make reader/viewer understand why RickCo broke the way they did. The extreme violence served a purpose, and the acting further demonstrated what that purpose was, as opposed to something in the vein of Human Centipede (1 and 2) or Hostel which is gross simply for the sake of being gross. Did people complain this much over Schindler's List when the Jews got their Zyklon-B showers, or in Hotel Rwanda when some Hutu soldier chops a Tutsi into stew pieces? So I suppose we should chalk this premiere up to bad writing and desperation for ratings and wait for GOT's return, where seeing some dude get his head crushed into Jello, a child suffocating at the end of a noose, or a teenager having his face obliterated by a close-range bolt is far more artistic and acceptable because it's, you know, in line with those "substantially more complex and difficult-to-achieve aspirations and ambitions" of plot. I think that with subsequent eps of TWD, viewers who now believe this premiere to be nothing but gratuitous torture porn will change their tune after it becomes more clear how these horrible deaths advanced both characters and plot. We needed to be where those characters were so we can understand where they're going now and WHY. IMO. And of course there's a line that shouldn't be crossed on public television - in this case Greg Nicotero went right up to that line and even leaned out over it a bit. Perhaps that was a bit naughty and the show shouldn't go there anymore, but then I'm still boggled by the fact that this show with this content is on a public cable channel to begin with, so... Personally, I think the biggest issue is that viewers (and readers) were continually lulled into this false sense of security over the years despite deaths of some iconic characters, because even with those losses, things still turned out somewhat OK. Stuck alone in Atlanta surrounded by walkers? "Hey asshole in the tank." About to become a tasty plate of short ribs at Terminus? Nope, it's Carol ex Machina! Negan's guys giving your crew grief on the road? Lemme just grab this rocket launcher outta the back of the car. We've been trained to think there will always be a dumpster. Well, this time, there was no dumpster. Luck ran out, Morgan didn't show up with an army, Daryl didn't pull a couple of grenades out of his vest to level their captors and allow escape, there was no "hero", two favorites died horribly. The lack of that hero and last-second avoidance of disaster seems like it was more shocking and harder to handle than the gruesome death scenes. Nicotero and Grimble have been taking pages from the GOT playbook and apparently a lot of people weren't quite prepared for that. Anyway, I guess I won't comment on it anymore, as I thought the episode was quite well done and just right in terms of what they chose to portray. If that makes me juvenile and base, so be it. *shrug*
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Post by Melifeather on Oct 25, 2016 17:02:06 GMT
I quite agree with Some Pig's excellent rebuttal above. GOT has some equally gruesome scenes including an actual amputation...Jaime's hand, and Some Pig already pointed out the Mountain's brutal killing of Oberyn Martell which included gouging out his eyeballs as well as smashing his head into a bloody pulp, and not to mention the bloody Red Wedding which I don't think the show reached the same horror as the book did. How about burning Shireen alive?
I hadn't realized it until Some Pig pointed it out, there was no hero to save anyone on Walking Dead this week and I think that's why the reaction from some of the fans is so stunned, but we all are expecting Rick to get a chance to kill Negan some day...if they follow GRRM's lead, maybe that won't happen.
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Oct 25, 2016 17:42:51 GMT
we all are expecting Rick to get a chance to kill Negan some day...if they follow GRRM's lead, maybe that won't happen. Since like ASOIAF, TWD the comic series isn't actually finished yet, we get the added unknown of what the showrunners are going to do: will they stay faithful to the current comic plot that has potential to, ah, extremely displease members of the show fandom (going by reaction to this premiere), or will they take it in a more viewer-friendly redemptive direction that aligns a bit better with fandom expectations? We're talking basically the RLJ of TWD here. Robert Kirkman is one of the EPs for the show, so it could really go either way - he could insist that the show stay mostly true to his GN arcs, or he could agree to a wild deviation from GN content in order to satisfy the viewer fanbase. Plus, since the comic series isn't finished, will Kirkman stick to his original concepts to conclude the work, or will those concepts be molded to fit the biases and expectations of the fanbase? I have no clue which way it will go, but either way is going to make a portion of the base very unhappy.
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Post by Melifeather on Oct 25, 2016 18:43:00 GMT
we all are expecting Rick to get a chance to kill Negan some day...if they follow GRRM's lead, maybe that won't happen. Since like ASOIAF, TWD the comic series isn't actually finished yet, we get the added unknown of what the showrunners are going to do: will they stay faithful to the current comic plot that has potential to, ah, extremely displease members of the show fandom (going by reaction to this premiere), or will they take it in a more viewer-friendly redemptive direction that aligns a bit better with fandom expectations? We're talking basically the RLJ of TWD here. Robert Kirkman is one of the EPs for the show, so it could really go either way - he could insist that the show stay mostly true to his GN arcs, or he could agree to a wild deviation from GN content in order to satisfy the viewer fanbase. Plus, since the comic series isn't finished, will Kirkman stick to his original concepts to conclude the work, or will those concepts be molded to fit the biases and expectations of the fanbase? I have no clue which way it will go, but either way is going to make a portion of the base very unhappy. I don't think they have anything to worry about. This is a very popular show and I don't think they will lose many viewers over this. Sure people were shocked, but I think this will actually build the anticipation for the show each week.
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Post by jnr on Oct 25, 2016 20:23:39 GMT
I think the biggest issue is that viewers (and readers) were continually lulled into this false sense of security over the years despite deaths of some iconic characters, because even with those losses, things still turned out somewhat OK. Stuck alone in Atlanta surrounded by walkers? "Hey asshole in the tank." About to become a tasty plate of short ribs at Terminus? Nope, it's Carol ex Machina! Negan's guys giving your crew grief on the road? Well, really, have you forgotten the list of the characters who have died, and all the horrible ways those deaths happened? Think back to season one, then take a look at the current season. The kill ratio's been mighty high, and the concept that this show has been coddling the viewers all along doesn't seem to have much foundation. I know a woman who loved this show -- in fact, it was her favorite show -- until they did what they did to Beth. Quite a ridiculous way for her to go, but, I have to say, dramatically less horrible and painful and degrading than being forced to her knees and then having her head smashed repeatedly with a bat until it was literal pulp on the ground. (I'd be surprised if TWD ever does anything like that to any major female character; I don't think the showrunners have the nerve.) I guess I won't comment on it anymore Well, it seems you will. WD the comic series isn't actually finished yet, we get the added unknown of what the showrunners are going to do That's true; the specific methods of the horrible deaths in store for the characters, in order to justify the remark that they all have expiration dates, have yet to be shown. If that makes me juvenile and base, so be it. It doesn't define you at all; it defines the show, conclusively placing it on a level with your basic horror movie aimed at the teen market, albeit dragged out over multiple years. Seems a shame; it could have been better, despite the impossible premise. In this sense, it's akin to Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare's bloodiest play) or Spartacus on Starz, which similarly killed all the major characters in a variety of gory and appalling ways and didn't shrink from, for instance, showing a man with his face literally cut off from the bottom of his chin to the top of his scalp, purely for the innovation of being the first TV show to do it. There's always a market for that sort of thing, no doubt, but I'm glad Shakespeare went on to do his better-known work.
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Post by wolfmaid7 on Oct 28, 2016 3:11:46 GMT
My reaction to Walking Dead was just... this is horror porn. This is to horror what the Food Porn thread is to food -- something over the top that forces an emotional reaction. It's not about narrative skills or art, it's just somebody shoving a thumb in your eye. I've been hearing this a lot today, and I have to say I'm confused by it. TWD is based off of a graphic novel, with major emphasis on the "graphic". The entire comic series is gruesome and shocking and over the top, as action comics inherently tend to be, and this one is made even more by so by zombies and depravity and gore. Although the show is keeping loosely to the plot, it's staying true to some of the most gross parts - last night's #2 death was portrayed exactly how in went down in the series. Even the actor himself - who had read the comic - told the showrunners specifically, "I want that. Don't gloss over it." In truth, the showrunners have actually toned down some of the violence in the series in order to put it on AMC. Had they done a true adapatation, we'd be watching this on HBO or Starz. The characters we're seeing on screen now are actually in pretty damn good shape compared to their GN counterparts. It's bad; it's meant to be bad. It's the zombie apocalypse and the possible end of humanity as we know it. It's not all about Daryl running around with his shirt off, so I'm not really sure why people are all "ZOMG torture porn!! Gratuitous and unnecessary!! They didn't have to be that broooooo-tuullll!" Well yeah, yeah they did. First, it's the book, and second, it was needed to convey exactly how awful and terrible it really was so that you can follow the surviving characters down the rabbit hole of "after". I have to agree with this.I've been a fan of the graphic novel and Kirkman did not skimp on the violence especially where Neegan is concerned. Dude has major issues and he likes to f**k with people in the most horrible way.The comic is gory and its not for everyone that's for sure.What i find suprising and annoying is how they censored Neegan.That man was a poet when it came to profanity and toning him down like this is irritating. But back to the violence.Its a violent graphic novel and it isn't going get any better. I actually feel more creeped out by Alpha and her philosophy than Neegan.
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Post by jnr on Oct 28, 2016 15:14:04 GMT
Interesting piece contrasting the way TWD and GOT handle the controversial elements of their plotting. www.vulture.com/2016/10/walking-dead-empty-violence.htmlGoes on to point out that TWD had no problem deviating from canon in the way Abraham died -- totally different method and villain and place and time and circumstances: If GOT had burned Shireen in such a way as to show her hair catching fire as she screamed, her skin melting, and the blood boiling and running off her charred skull, that would be a rough equivalent, and then I would call GOT horror porn too. I think GOT did much better to show us Selyse cracking and losing emotional control. It was just a much more powerful scene for me... although it was also stupid in that it made no sense (Stannis would not ever have done such a thing -- Show Mel has demonstrated no power to make winter disappear) and grossly noncanonical (despite what Ran and Linda claim, Stannis will never do such a thing in TWOW).
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Post by wolfmaid7 on Oct 29, 2016 6:33:38 GMT
If GOT had burned Shireen in such a way as to show her hair catching fire as she screamed, her skin melting, and the blood boiling and running off her charred skull, that would be a rough equivalent, and then I would call GOT horror porn too. I think GOT did much better to show us Selyse cracking and losing emotional control. It was just a much more powerful scene for me... although it was also stupid in that it made no sense (Stannis would not ever have done such a thing -- Show Mel has demonstrated no power to make winter disappear) and grossly noncanonical (despite what Ran and Linda claim, Stannis will never do such a thing in TWOW). Well in essence TWD and GOT are different. I don't think depiction of the gore and the intimate violence for an extended shot would work in GoT.The whole feel of the show is different.If TWD showed a character being burned and their skin melting off i would absoluetly think that was appropriate for that show.There's still some fantasy with regard to GoT i guess.
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Post by Melifeather on Nov 1, 2016 15:56:44 GMT
So what's the significance of the mailbox flag that Morgan was seen first putting up, and then putting down when Carol went to go stay in that house? Is it a signal to Rick or something?
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Post by eiraseren on Nov 3, 2016 1:23:11 GMT
My next two predictions:
1. the Tiger is going to get it, as a plot device to get King E into the fight against Negan.
2. I will stop fastforwarding thru Negan's kills and simply turn it off, and not look back. I'm too down in the dumps lately for this show I guess.
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Post by Melifeather on Nov 3, 2016 15:08:16 GMT
My next two predictions: 1. the Tiger is going to get it, as a plot device to get King E into the fight against Negan. 2. I will stop fastforwarding thru Negan's kills and simply turn it off, and not look back. I'm too down in the dumps lately for this show I guess. I hope things get turned around for you real soon. Go watch something funny and get your mood up!
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