SHUT UP, STOP COMPLAINING, BE GRATEFUL
You’ve never had it so good, do you hear me? Stop your whinging. Does it really matter if there are a few plot inconsistencies? If Optimus Prime has flames? If the new Doctor Who is too young?
Be grateful these things are getting made in the first place. Remember a decade ago, before superheroes were cool again, before the movies were full of heroes and robots and monsters, before the TV was full of Time Lords and Cylons?
Sure, there were the dying embers of the Star Trek TV franchises, the saccharin-fuelled Joss Whedon soap operas masquerading as genre TV, but there was nowhere near as much respect for the genres of the fantastic.
Comics and collectibles were seen as the domain of sweaty, badly dressed men relentlessly trying to recapture the magic of their youth by poring over fading videos of Blake’s 7 episodes and variant edition action figures of Phoenix. The world we find ourselves in now, where Batman, Watchmen, Iron man and Wolverine are known to everyone with some form of access to the global media, was a far off pipe-dream. Stop complaining.
Things could be much worse. LOST might make as much sense as the wardrobe of your average X-factor contestant, or the public’s preoccupation with celebrities who are famous for nothing, but at least you have it to enjoy. At least these things are around. You are living slap-bang in the middle of a golden age of spectacular entertainment.
We may love to moan about costume changes or canon being ignored in favour of modern plot devices, but how often do we say thanks to the legions of people who work themselves so hard to bring you the products and the franchises that you love to pull apart?
How often to we show our gratitude to the writers, lighting crew, CG artists, Foley artists, inkers, editors and everyone else involved in making sure we still have comics to enjoy and TV shows to look forward to?
This is a media landscape in which we, the geeks who have stuck by our favourite characters and stories, have become the section of the audience that are now actually creating the shows, the films, the games and the publications that continue to keep our genres alive.
Remember, the people that are bringing these things out in the first place are people just like you, and they/we are the people trying to keep the genres of the amazing alive. A little thanks wouldn’t go amiss.
So to everyone involved in keeping these amazing things going: THANK YOU.