The Inverse Quality Litmus Test
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Skype convo with a geeky friend with some very strong opinions who was ranting about some movie:
I have to wonder
What are your thoughts, if any, on the upcoming Power Rangers reboot movie?
There is a secret program that only movie studios have access to.
You insert DVDs of what you want to remake.
And choose a filter, like photoshop.
And then you have a framework from which to build your movie.
Like Paul Feig put in Ghostbusters and picked COMEDY and FEMINIST and it gave him the script and CG effects for the new Ghostbusters.
The original Ghostbusters was already COMEDY though
I know.
And then he worked from that, made the script and the cast and everything his own
and then we got Ghostbusters.
all right...
This movie is Saban putting in a Power Rangers DVD and picking COMING OF AGE DRAMA and MARVEL
and then just taking whatever generic bland stuff comes out and immediately putting that to film.
Also the Megazord looks boring and the toys of it suck, which is a cardinal sin for a power rangers/sentai franchise.
:P
No, I mean it.
This is a series that is made to sell toys.
Adapted from a fifty-year-old franchise made to sell toys.
The only rule is the toys have to look cool
They broke that rule.
heh
I have no hope for this movie. The best possible scenario is that it's mediocre and watchable if you're high or something.
So your first impression is that this movie is going to suck
Yes.
That means I'll probably enjoy it. Thanks! :DThis friend... it's a very odd friendship, as we have pretty much nothing in the way of common interests. This is someone who thinks Brandon Sanderson is a terrible writer, who really enjoys Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon, which I hold up as the archetypal examples of "truly awful anime", and refused to watch Ant-Man due to being absolutely convinced they were going to ruin it, whereas I said "the MCU guys haven't given us any reason to distrust them so far..."
And yet somehow we're still friends, and every once in a while I realize I can turn these complete opposites in personal tastes to my advantage.
I just hope it works. :P
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A few years ago, I found out that a friend of mine only liked Scotch I hated and vice-versa. Not that she really likes whisky very much at all, but the ones she finds drinkable are the ones everyone else dislikes.
When we go to a bar with her, we'll often buy her whiskys we don't know to check whether they're worth buying. The more disgusted she looks, the better the Scotch. It's a lot of fun…
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@masonwheeler I remember watching "Power Rangers" as a child.
Every episode was exactly the same:- a person wearing an ugly wizard hat sends some indolent faceless henchmen
- power rangers beat them up
- wizard sends some clumsy monster (which looks like a pile of rags)
- power rangers beat it up
- wizard casts a spell, monster grows
- power rangers summon their cheap plastic toy robots (as your friend pointed out)
- the robots (initially supposed to resemble animals) clump up to form a human-shaped robot (each part of different color ofc)
- sparks
- monster explodes
- power rangers participate in boring meaningless life in their school, as if they did not know the world was full of wizards, monsters and plastic robots
In conclusion, I would never want to see anything related to power rangers again :P
Also this fried-egg face:
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@Adynathos You forgot the part where the human-shaped robot would use its special attack that always destroys the monsters.
The precursor to final fantasy summons.
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@Adynathos said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
Every episode was exactly the same
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
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@Adynathos said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
In conclusion, I would never want to see anything related to power rangers again
I wouldn't mind seeing more pink ranger.
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@masonwheeler said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
thinks Brandon Sanderson is a terrible writer
they're wrong.
@masonwheeler said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
enjoys Dragon Ball Z
is fun to laugh at, but if you want the story watch the abridged version.
@masonwheeler said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
Sailor Moon,
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
@masonwheeler said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
archetypal examples of "truly awful anime",
BLASPHEMY!
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@Jaloopa said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
@masonwheeler said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
truly awful anime
but you repeat yourself...
Hey! Death Note was good.
And, um...
...well, Death Note was good.
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@Maciejasjmj the quality declined a lot towards the end
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Power Rangers debuted when I was just at the age to outgrow it. It terrifies me to believe I might have been a Power Rangers fan had I been born 5-10 years later than I had. I dodged a lot of bullets, having also been spared an early childhood of Barney and Friends and Blues Clues for the same reason.
Then again, I was subjected to some of the horrors of early Sesame Street, some of which were bona-fide acid trips and fever dreams.
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@Jaloopa said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
@Maciejasjmj the quality declined a lot towards the end
Well, the first half was good. The rest wasn't that bad either I think, DN just did the Twin Peaks mistake of resolving the plot halfway through and not really having too much to go on with.
Or so I've heard, I have yet to actually watch Twin Peaks.
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@Adynathos and there was jaspion, when he was piloting that giant robot he always take a beating, then he decides to use his killer move that kills the monster in a single blow.
I always wondered why he doesn't to his killer move first thing, why he always take a beating first?
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@fbmac I always used to wonder why the Power Rangers didn't just open with the Megazord and head off all the chaos the monsters invariably cause. They I watched the pilot and found out they actually addressed that in the very first episode: because it's forbidden to be the one who escalates a conflict.
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@masonwheeler So, why the bad guys wait for the monster to be destroyed, before calling gyodai to grow it into a giant monster?
Also, power ranger always took a beating before combining their weapons into a cannon that blow the monster in a single hit. They could do that first thing.
All this shit was so repetitive
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@accalia said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
is fun to laugh at, but if you want the story watch the abridged version.
Agreed. The DBZ story is pretty cool. But if you have to wait 24 episodes for Goku to get out of hell, and another 4 while Vegeta powers up...
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@Maciejasjmj said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
@Jaloopa said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
@masonwheeler said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
truly awful anime
but you repeat yourself...
Hey! Death Note was good.
And, um...
...well, Death Note was good.
I'll take a potato chip... and eat it!
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@Adynathos said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
I remember watching "Power Rangers" as a child.
I didn't watch Power Rangers, but I do remember watching similar shows and I found them lacking in a particular way. I saying to my mother: "I notice the good guys win in every episode. It always ends the same way." She told me: "That's because good always triumphs over evil". I didn't believe it then and nothing I've seen since has made it more believable.
@Captain said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
The DBZ story is pretty cool.
I didn't watch DBZ when I was younger, like a lot of my friends, but I was introduced to it by way of the very clever abridged series. It seems to me that it's actually the plot and the characters that are the weakest part of the show. It's just the same season-long plot over and over. Most of the characters have a fairly brief arc that just ends and they get sidelined. The main character is an immutable paragon.
And there aren't any clever plot lines - this is even parodied in the abridged Revenge of Cooler where they're fighting some robots and one of them discovers: "I figured out how to beat the robots! You just have to hit them harder!" No weak point or anything? But that's how every plot goes - hit harder or yell more or discover a new form.
The show is very creative with environments and visual character designs and has some compelling monologues and moments, but the story is just meh and only there to hang those visuals and action.
...yeah, i know this has all been said before.
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@Bort said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
@Adynathos said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
I remember watching "Power Rangers" as a child.
I didn't watch Power Rangers, but I do remember watching similar shows and I found them lacking in a particular way. I saying to my mother: "I notice the good guys win in every episode. It always ends the same way." She told me: "That's because good always triumphs over evil". I didn't believe it then and nothing I've seen since has made it more believable.
It's all part of a specific fantasy. Superhero comics and similar genres are all about good triumphing over evil. And these kinds of stories were immensely popular during less peaceful times, such as WWII and periods of the cold war. I remember several political cartoons after 9/11 showing people crying to Superman asking why he hadn't done anything. It's no coincidence that superhero movies has seen a resurgence in the years afterwards, with DC and Marvel releasing huge blockbusters on a yearly basis to this day.
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@fbmac said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
@Adynathos and there was jaspion, when he was piloting that giant robot he always take a beating, then he decides to use his killer move that kills the monster in a single blow.
I always wondered why he doesn't to his killer move first thing, why he always take a beating first?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx2mhPEr7kA&t=128s
In other words, make sure you're actually hitting the most problematic target with your killer move.
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The most interesting thing about power rangers was that the American actors only did the school and "human" scenes. All the mech action was taken from a different Japanese show and stitched together so that it sometimes sort of makes sense.
Also, I liked the two comic relief bully characters. They had their own goofy music and sound effects and everything. That was fun.
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@cartman82 I thought it was an exact copy, not stitched together...
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All this worry about the repetitiveness of Power Rangers, when you forget, this comes from an area of the world near where they played Ragnarok Online before there was even any quests in it.
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@cartman82 said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
All the mech action was taken from a different Japanese show and stitched together so that it sometimes sort of makes sense.
I think you're thinking of Voltron, which mixed multiple giant robot shows together. Power Rangers was just Super Sentai with all the non-costume bits reshot.
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@Karla You have no idea?
I always heard chicks dig giant robots. So much for that idea, I guess...
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@masonwheeler said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
@Karla You have no idea?
I always heard chicks dig giant robots. So much for that idea, I guess...
My kids watched those shows. I may have seen a few in passing.
I am less fluent in anime than I am in Spanish (and my Spanish so bad the neighbors think it is so cute when I try).
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@cartman82 said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
All the mech action was taken from a different Japanese show and stitched together so that it sometimes sort of makes sense.
Now I wonder if the original show was better. Probably not much, I remember changemen and flashmen being the same repetitive thing.
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@The_Quiet_One said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
It's all part of a specific fantasy.
Yeah, that was my problem with it. And my problem with the modern superhero trend.
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@Yamikuronue said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
I think you're thinking of Voltron, which mixed multiple giant robot shows together. Power Rangers was just Super Sentai with all the non-costume bits reshot.
Hmm so even the storyline was the same?
Interesting
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@Bort said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
@The_Quiet_One said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
It's all part of a specific fantasy.
Yeah, that was my problem with it. And my problem with the modern superhero trend.
I don't consider it a problem, though. Just as any other fictional genre, it's all about getting out of reality and imagining an alternate world. Whether that's a world where there are benevolent people with superpowers saving the world, talking toys, or wizards in prep school, it's just a fantasy to escape into.
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@Yamikuronue said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
I think you're thinking of Voltron, which mixed multiple giant robot shows together.
Good Voltron and Cars (AKA Bad) Voltron.
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@boomzilla said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
Good Voltron and Cars (AKA Bad) Voltron.
Otherwise known as the Robotech method of anime production...
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@Maciejasjmj
Cowboy fucking Bebop
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@Luhmann what the heck i'm seeing?
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@Jarry
http://i.imgur.com/5qTIz21.jpg
Belgians are weird
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@Jarry
That's the weirdest you could find? I had a hard time finding a sample where everybody is wearing pants!
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@Luhmann nah, that was the "weird enough". i'm too lazy to do the details tag
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@Jarry said in The Inverse Quality Litmus Test:
"weird enough"
Hey he still has his pants on in this one!
Cowboy Henk pushes through!
Uh ... maybe not so SFW at second glance.
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