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Deadpool and Wolverine Director Shawn Levy Gets Free Rain on Star Wars Movie.
By:Dominic La-Viola Director Shawn Levy sat down with “the business podcast” for an interview to promote his new film “Star Wars Starfighter”. “There is no mandate or interference other than the constant encouragement to make this new,” Levy told The Business podcast. “And that’s the truth… Starfighter is all new characters, based on new ideas that Jonathan [Tropper] and I cooked up alone…
Soooooooooooooo fair warning, there be spoilers and swears ahead!
Now that I’ve seen GO2 I thought I’d revisit this post and respond to my earlier expectations:
In light of the recent spoiler I thought I would post an update on my original thoughts on managing expectations (no, I’m not going to post
Mea culpa
Mea culpa
Mea maxima motherfucking culpa!
After four years of “IsN’t You go too fast for me, Crowley rOmAnTiC eNouGh fOr YoU?” from Neil Fucking Gaiman I never expected he’d take the step of actually bringing Aziraphale and Crowley together as a couple. (Well, if Crowley had his way they would be an “us.” And if Aziraphale were in his right mind I think he would go for it, too, but it’s early days on that theory.) I honestly wish I knew why NG changed his mind because we all saw the tweets and blog posts and he was pretty adamant about not “going there” with these characters. I have my own thoughts about who all may have influenced him but won’t say cuz I can’t prove anything.
But OF COURSE GO2 had to end on a fucking cliff-hanger with them broken up and broken-hearted and all of us waiting probably another three fucking years for a resolution (and that’s ONLY if they get renewed for a third season, which apparently is ALL OUR FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY TOO.)
But I get it, Neil’s a writer and thinks like a writer in terms of narrative structure and character development. Once he started thinking about writing beyond GO1, he decided to turn it into a three-act play so the end of GO2 is the big climax at the end of the second act. He also said something about Pride and Prejudice references so Aziraphale’s proposal to Crowley does rather parallel Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth. There are probably other P&P references as well but I haven’t had time to dig into that yet. If some research bears fruit I’ll share that here.
At least there was no queerbaiting! That accusation can now die.
As for the EVERY spoiler, I can see why NG was so upset it was spilt because it raised expectations for a happy ending for Our Boys instead of it actually being a Kiss of Desperation on Crowley’s part. But hey, at least the couple who wanted Our Boys DEAD (remember that?) and had a 30 second redemption arc got their happy ending, right? (I’m actually glad for the Gabe/Beelz shippers - at least someone’s ship got to be canon.)
We still didn’t see Aziraphale and Crowley hold hands, which we were told is something they apparently like to do. I’m not sure if their dancing counts.
So now we get to “wait and fucking see” some more until our poor, heartbroken, besotted Demon can be put out of his misery and rescue his Angel from whatever spell the Metatron has put him under. (Or pick a theory - there are already a lot of them.
Until then, we have fanfic to console us.
Managing Fan Expectations or Please Don’t Tease Us Neil
Not too long after a second season of Good Omens was announced they released this teaser:
And the fandom started analyzing it and also went a bit nuts because although it echoed one of the posters from GO1, with the way they were standing here it seemed more romantic, a bit domestic and really prompted a lot of questions. “What’s it going to be about?” “Are they a couple now?” “Are they living together?” etc.
Then we got this:
Well, what does their wings forming a heart suggest to you? To a lot of the fandom it sure suggests in GO2 Aziraphale and Crowley are going to be an actual romantic couple and openly affectionate with each other. As someone who ships them I’m certainty on board with that…
HOWEVER
Gaiman got some accusations of queerbaiting in GO1 and his response to that was although he wrote it as a love story and included romantic moments and tropes, they are absolutely not gay because they are not men, just male-presenting (most of the time) non-binary supernatural beings, therefore the show was not queerbaiting. That satisfied most of the objections. I think.
But we’ve been teased with stuff like this:
Fun and amusing, ok, but not canon.
But then this week we got this latest from Gaiman:
And the response from the fandom has been to collectively lose their minds:
And twitter, especially, has been awash in comments, speculation, hand-holding fanart, etc. in response.
Between three years of Ineffable Husbands fanfic, blatantly romantic posters, and now this latest statement, fan expectations of Aziraphale and Crowley having an openly affectionate relationship in GO2 is at a fever pitch and that concerns me.
As much as I would love to see that, because of the objections Gaiman has made all along I don’t think that’s going to happen, and when it doesn’t it’s going to get ugly. Yes, he has the right to make the story however he likes but all of this buildup makes me wonder if we’re in for a big let-down. And if that happens it’s going to get ugly and might even break the fandom.
I’ve been around long enough to have been burned before by showrunners so I now take what they say with a mountain of salt. But I HATE being teased, especially when there’s no payoff. I very much hope that is not happening here and really wish he’d go back to “wait and see” for the duration.
Just my $.02 worth.
Head writer Michael Waldron answered Insider's most burning questions about season one of the hit Disney+ show.
With the popularity of the first season of the Disney+ series "Loki," the series' showrunner and head writer Michael Waldron has become the latest star in the Marvel Studios' creative pool of talent.
Along with successfully delivering a layered arc to the God of Mischief over a six-episode season (with another on the horizon), he's also the screenwriter behind the upcoming MCU release "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" (and will write the pending "Star Wars" movie being produced by Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige).
Waldron took a break from his busy schedule to look back on the first season of "Loki" with Insider and answer some of our most burning questions — like his thoughts on "selfcest," the challenges of fulfilling fan expectations, and how close we were to getting Loki sex.
Waldron says "many" season-one endings were considered.
The plan to do a second season of "Loki" didn't exist until far into the production of the first season. That led to some changes in the season one finale, Waldron said.
But he added that showing the evolution of the Loki character was always their guiding light.
"The show was always constructed to be a story on its own," he said. "The story of Loki starting out as a villain and going through this adventure that turns him into a hero in his own way, doing the right thing, but losing anyway — that was always the complete story we wanted to tell."
But the details within that story — the characters around Loki in his journey and who he would encounter at the end of it — were always changing, Waldron said.
To set up a tease for what would take place in season two (and let's face it, for a lot of the MCU properties going forward), Waldron and his team turned to introducing Marvel villain Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) in the finale.
Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie's (Sophia Di Martino) encounter with Kang (aka, He Who Remains) results in Sylvie killing him and the "sacred timeline" going into shambles. It also presumably birthed more evil Kang variants.
Now Loki is back in the TVA but in a different timeline as Mobius (Owen Wilson) doesn't know who Loki is anymore.
It's a cliffhanger ending that has had fans of the show buzzing. But Waldron admitted it was one of many.
"There's many permutations of endings that exists over the course of the whole thing," he said. "But I'm not going to tell anybody about those." The "Loki" love-story arch has led to the term "selfcest" becoming popular; Waldron said he was just tying to tell an interesting story.
The internet went nuts when it became evident that Loki was falling for his variant, Sylvie. And with that, the term, "selfcest," aka having a relationship with an alternate version of yourself, entered the popular lexicon.
Waldron had a good laugh about the whole thing when Insider brought it up.
"Were we sitting in the writers' room saying we hope people are talking about selfcest? No. We weren't," Waldron said with a chuckle. "We told a story about a character falling for a variant of themselves. It's an interesting atypical type of story, and we knew that."
Waldron said he knew that, because of the passion people have for the Loki character, he was not going to satisfy everyone with what happens in the show.
That included inadvertently touching on the selfcest debate."As creators we have to pick a path and tell a story," he said. Waldron explained how close we were to seeing Loki have sex.
"I guess I'll set the record straight on that," Waldron said when asked about the reveal in Disney+'s behind-the-scenes special, "Assembled: The Making of Loki," that showed a writers' room whiteboard outline revealing they wanted to show Loki have sex, including with aliens.
"That was actually a breakdown, kind of a story circle breakdown for episode one," Waldron said.
One of the ideas they had was Loki would take the Infinity Stones from the TVA in the first episode and go out into the world and "make all his dreams come true," as Waldron put it.
"We were exploring if Loki escaped from the TVA in episode one with a handful of Infinity Stones would it have been compelling to watch him get out into the world and wield an Infinity gauntlet?" Waldron said.
"But we ultimately realized that it's kind of empty because he knows that the TVA exists and that's the greatest power in the universe."
So, although Loki sex was "briefly an idea," Waldron said, it was scrapped.
Instead, they went with the scene of Loki finding the stones at the TVA thrown to the side, and learning they are as worthless as a paperweight.
"We were able to execute that in a single shot just with Tom Hiddleston being an incredible actor," he said. Waldron is not scared of season two falling into the trap of fan service.
Though Waldron would not confirm to Insider that he will be involved with the show's second season, he did say that, despite the popularity of the show and the passion by its fans, it will not go out of its way to fulfill the wants of loyal viewers.
"Part of any creative team's job is trusting their own instincts, especially working in big IP projects like this," Waldron said. "That's what you have to do. You have to understand the parts of the expectations that are delicious and worth biting into and the parts where you're better off creating something totally new."
He continued: "Our philosophy on this was it's a time travel show about Loki, so people expected Loki influencing historical events — he's going to ride with Paul Revere. How can we turn that on its head as much as possible?"
“[Stella] Kim also urges fans of K-Pop to be more wary of what they expect from their idols as well.”
“I’ve seen far too many comments from people saying that celebrities get paid to be bashed on, that it’s in their day-to-day job descriptions to be judged on a regular basis,” she said.
“I want to challenge that thought — they are real people with real feelings, regardless of the retouched world they live in. Their job description entails conceptualizing, defining, interpreting works of art and presenting them in their own ways, thus allowing their audience to feel certain emotions through them. They are real artists, and are essentially doing us a service.” [x]
So David Gerrold posted a rant on Facebook.
...I'm going to be emotionally destroyed, aren't I?
