A Kick In The Teeth! Podcast E26: On Peak Serialization (Patreon)

I’m tired of the over-serialization of stories, and the fact that you have to consume an entire ecosystem of content to understand what’s going on in one movie rather than letting it stand on its own. This is something that has bugged me about the MCU as well as the constant trend of reboot, remakes, sequels, and prequels for a long time, it makes a TON of money (and therefore has had such an outsize influence that serialized storytelling has become the norm and the standard across the board), but makes it very difficult for people that don’t necessarily want to participate in an overly serialized story and just want something fresh and original with a beginning, middle, and end. A lot of people are becoming personally tired of serialized stories (‘series/serialized’ as in shared universes, sequels, prequels etc) and want more fresh, unique, interesting stand alone ie ‘self contained one and done’ stories. I love movies more than tv because movies give me a beginning, a middle, and an end in two hours, if I wanted to be forced to watch a 37 part series I’d watch a tv show 😭. IMO, this is the MCU’s impact on storytelling rn along with this being the era of ‘prestige tv.’ Everything is a part of something else.

I’d prefer if this serialized storytelling shifted/remained more on television and in books. And this particular opinion is just me being a movie purist which I can accept about myself lol but esp now that MCU has Disney+, just move everything there and have large storylines like they really want. And put out movies every now and then with standalone storylines and fun Easter eggs and cameos maybe but keep the movies and shows more separate. Marvel didn’t have Disney+ and standalone series when the MCU first started, and as their ecosystem has grown I kinda feel like they are perverting movies in a way and what the expectation of a ‘movie’ is becoming… I saw somebody say they feel like you can’t tell a complete story in a movie because it’s too short 😩 you need at least a ten episode miniseries. While it does depend on the story, they were just saying across the board that standalone movies are basically useless and that terrifies me 🙃 the normalization of hyper-serialization and hyper-consumption of huge media ecosystems is really something to think about.

My Related Work:

On Nostalgia and Reboots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvhkXesUCAs

Car Video - The Mouse Is Evil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v185liqZjAM

A Kick In The Teeth! Podcast E18 - Death to the Gritty Reboot: https://www.patreon.com/posts/kick-in-teeth-to-61249821

NEW MERCH SHOP: https://the-bheezebake-project.creator-spring.com

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Did you know I wrote a book? ☺️ 'So, About That... A Year of Contemporary Essays on Race and Pop Culture'

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Links:

Death To The Gritty Reboot: https://uproxx.com/tv/gritty-reboot-fresh-prince-perry-mason/

Have We Finally Reached the End of Peak TV? https://www.theringer.com/2022/5/2/23054128/have-we-finally-reached-the-end-of-peak-tv