Forum - View topicNEWS: Live-Action Sword Art Online Producer: Series Sold to Netflix, Will Have Asian Lead Actors
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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The problem comes when the fans and the general audiences want two mutually exclusive things, which happens pretty often, with not just anime and TV shows, but any entertainment medium. The biggest thing is that wider audiences care very much about accessibility, whereas the fans, by and large, have little to no concern over it (and are often annoyed when the story explains itself). The old Sierra point-and-click games, for instance, failed to appeal to the wider audiences because it was prone to putting the player character in unwinnable situations, usually through events happening much earlier in the games (between which you'll have likely saved, thus preventing you from completing the game). However, this was what the fans wanted, and when Sierra stopped doing that, the fans got very angry that Sierra was "dumbing down" these games so everyone could finish it. From Sierra's perspective, it's a lose-lose situation: Either you please the fans and displease everyone else, or you please everyone else and displease your fans. There was no way Sierra could please both. Rarely do you ever actually see something go on for a while where it manages to keep the fans AND bring in more people, and that's usually because the franchise never stopped aiming at the general audiences in the first place while allowing anyone to jump in at any time and remain up to speed (which is the case with Pokémon, The Simpsons, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Doraemon). The moment you turn inward towards your fans is when your fans' tastes will start diverging from those of other people, and the harder it will become to appeal to both sides. Right now, what I am seeing is that this live-action Sword Art Online TV show is aiming to try to do both. I personally think that's a bad idea--they should either pick one or the other, though we're at the point where the fans would likely be displeased no matter what they do.
They are still flawed characters: A character like Batman remains popular because, as prepared and cunning as he is, he can still be blindsided, and he is still no less vulnerable than any other human being. He has always been like this, and it's why his rogue's gallery is the most famous of any superhero: It's full of unpredictable characters who can give even someone as thorough and collected as Batman a lot of trouble. I suppose that's the thing though: How overpowered a protagonist is perceived to be will come down to how he or she stacks up against the antagonist. People love showdowns between Batman and the Joker because the Joker is just as smart, prepared, combat-trained, mysterious, and well-armed as Batman but occupies an opposite spot on the morality scale. Meanwhile, characters like Two-Face and Calendar Man attack Batman on the emotional end, where none of Batman's strengths can help him. That is, the protagonist does not exist in a bubble, but issues come in with how much of a challenge the protagonist receives. If the protagonist (or otherwise, the hero) overcomes problems too easily, the story starts feeling predictable and it becomes boring. Conflict is the source of all drama, and an overpowered hero kind of removes conflict from a story. If the protagonist is at a disadvantage, it engages the audience and makes them want to see how they'll prevail (or, in the case of a video game, the satisfaction comes from reading enemies bigger and badder than the player character and defeating them). The problem with Kirito, I believe (I can't speak for anyone but myself), is that he has an advantage over most of the other players in that he was a beta tester and was able to play it more than anyone else, and the antagonist (forgot his name), after trapping everyone within the game and reverting their appearances to their real-world selves, retreated to the upper floors and thus the one person who looked like he could challenge Kirito was gone from the narrative for a long while, before he could even directly interact with Kirito. If you ask me, Kirito improved as a protagonist afterward once he started running into problems he couldn't solve with his gaming skills alone. I've only watched the anime so I don't know what happens after Gun Gale Online (not including the Asuna-centered story), but I did like how they put Kirito at an information disadvantage--he had to play detective to figure out how the antagonist was able to kill players by killing them in-game AND play PR to minimize the panic that would happen from that. But Kirito was just that dominant force in the game for long enough that, I would guess, many people tuned out before he started to get more interesting as a character.
I think part of the appeal of watching an Indiana Jones movie is seeing how he will pull out of increasingly bad situations and remain unscathed. He also has his own group of colleagues and friends, so he doesn't live alone at the top and can be relatable in that way. Most of all, though, Indy lives an exciting life, full of exciting set pieces and stunts. The same can be said for James Bond. 007 is a larger-than-life figure, seemingly able to get everything his way and is admired by everyone around him who isn't an enemy (and isn't Q or M). Though I think the appeal of 007 is a bit different: He goes to exotic locations, strange things happen to him, and the villains are always so over-the-top in their plans and how they'll execute them that only someone of 007's level could stop them. 007 is almost perfectly crafty, but his villains are almost perfectly prepared. |
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