[mikgp]

I don’t entirely disagree with this criticism, but it also feels to me like - progressivism is the flavor of modern bad studio films, but not a cause of bad media.

Like going back to the early 90’s there was this incredible rash of bad films, especially action movies, and that was just the nature of Hollywood incentives.

Because I think the complaint in some sense isn’t the fact that there are progressive movies, it’s the fact that it’s a layer added to all low risk big budget studio films.

But these movies would likely be bad for other identifiable reasons if not for the sprinkling of diversity. The lord of the rings on Amazon isn’t otherwise great.

So sometimes I think this criticism is just feeding into the very thing it’s trying to fight. Industry is great, and it’s great for the reasons described, but I think the moral ambiguity problem as described isn’t caused by diversity, they’re correlated. Bad movies have less moral ambiguity and use diversity in a hamfisted way.

[TimorousBestie]

> The lord of the rings on Amazon isn’t otherwise great.

That really underscores how bad the author’s “drama requires moral ambiguity” argument is. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power did everything it could to inject moral ambiguity into a very unambiguous text—Galadriel is now an obsessive that disregards the cost of her vengeance, Halbrand presents as a possible Aragorn ancestor, Adar is just trying to redeem the Uruk, etc.—but all of it falls flat, none of the reveals land (“I am good!”), and the end result is simply narm. The casting of Arondir and Disa hardly makes a difference in the light of all these writing flaws.

[everdrive]

This is one of the most frustrating aspects of modern writing. People think that 'mature' and 'realistic' character is interchangeable with 'a character who is a bit of a piece of trash who is awful for no good reason.' You have ridiculous stances such as 'I had to savage the countryside because people treated me wrong when I was younger.'

It's as childish as the older pure-good vs. pure-evil stories, except that instead of being satisfying in a simple sort of way it's just annoying and bad storytelling.

[piva00]

Completely agree with you, it's not progressivism itself making bad films, it's bad films going through a checkbox exercise to tick things off a list.

It feels worse because it's a mindless, careless addition to check the "diversity" box. If it was made with effort it wouldn't feel this way.