Discussion
Guvernator said:
Good post and while I agree with some of it, I still think they've started to become too heavy handed. Yes you could argue this is due to the escalation in Homelanders psychosis but this is a conscious choice by the showrunners.
The meeting at the mansion and Homelanders speech, the phrases used by him and the other participants is basically a very heavy handed 10 minute attack on certain political leanings, this isn't in the source material so this is a conscious choice by the showrunners to use the show as a platform.
It's a very broad strokes painting of a scene to the point where Homelander and his supporters have become comedy evil caricature villains. They might as well all have been wearing swastika's. Homelander certainly wasn't this in previous seasons, his motivations used to be a lot more nuanced than that.
I'm also curious as to where this ends up, however I suspect it won't end in nearly a clever way as we are all hoping as the cleverness seems to be exiting stage right (pun intended)
I totally take your point on the obviousness but I wonder if this is a reflection of the absurdity of politics at the moment (not exclusively the US but admittedly a large part). Without getting into NP&E, it boggles the mind the things some politicians seem to be able to get away with and it IMPROVES their popularity. I feel the show is a mirror to this now, rather than pulling back the curtain for a peak as it was previously. The meeting at the mansion and Homelanders speech, the phrases used by him and the other participants is basically a very heavy handed 10 minute attack on certain political leanings, this isn't in the source material so this is a conscious choice by the showrunners to use the show as a platform.
It's a very broad strokes painting of a scene to the point where Homelander and his supporters have become comedy evil caricature villains. They might as well all have been wearing swastika's. Homelander certainly wasn't this in previous seasons, his motivations used to be a lot more nuanced than that.
I'm also curious as to where this ends up, however I suspect it won't end in nearly a clever way as we are all hoping as the cleverness seems to be exiting stage right (pun intended)
ajprice said:
Apart from the politics, they've come under fire for what happened to Hughie in last week's episode, making out the abuse just after his dad's death to be funny.
I've seen an article about it somewhere and the author's issue was that he felt this was a cheap shot at male sexual assault and had the victim been female they never would have gone with the plot. Personally, I didn't see it as purely played for humour nor did I really see it as SA. Hughie gets himself into the situation he does because he goes undercover. It's his choice and he knows to an extent what he's getting into (he knows he's going to be Tec Knights play thing) however it obviously gets away from him pretty fast. A big part of the storyline is this is Hughie's childhood hero and he's finding out that he's an absolute monster. Whilst the bit with Ashley was kind of funny (but also disgusting), from there I thought they really did make it quite terrifying for Hughie. Then at the end when he bursts into tears with Starlight, I thought that was actually really well done and made it clear that what happened to him wasn't ok and just a laugh, it had really affected him (along with the death of his fatherThe show continues to push the boundaries and I'm not shocked it will offend people for different reasons. For me it's still one of the only shows I'm watching that makes me say "WTF" multiple times a week and I'm ok with that.
I agree that scene was great. Started off pretty humorous but then got uncomfortable and hard to watch rather quickly as it should. Not really sure what people are complaining about tbh. They always push the boundaries so anyone whose got to season 4 should know what they are letting themselves in for.
It's for this reason I still watch the show, it's still better than most shows out there and yes, plenty of WTF moments but I'd still rate season 4 a bit lower than previous seasons.
They've made a good call with making season 5 the last season as I think the story will have run it's course by then and anything more could effect the overall quality of the show.
It's for this reason I still watch the show, it's still better than most shows out there and yes, plenty of WTF moments but I'd still rate season 4 a bit lower than previous seasons.
They've made a good call with making season 5 the last season as I think the story will have run it's course by then and anything more could effect the overall quality of the show.
Guvernator said:
I agree that scene was great. Started off pretty humorous but then got uncomfortable and hard to watch rather quickly as it should. Not really sure what people are complaining about tbh. They always push the boundaries so anyone whose got to season 4 should know what they are letting themselves in for.
It's for this reason I still watch the show, it's still better than most shows out there and yes, plenty of WTF moments but I'd still rate season 4 a bit lower than previous seasons.
They've made a good call with making season 5 the last season as I think the story will have run it's course by then and anything more could effect the overall quality of the show.
The article I read, the author was coming in for a fair amount of stick TBH for trying to find an issue that didn't really exist. Can't remember if it was Forbes or Variety, something like that. The guy posted it to twitter and then decided to go in on anyone who dared to disagree with his opinion. It's for this reason I still watch the show, it's still better than most shows out there and yes, plenty of WTF moments but I'd still rate season 4 a bit lower than previous seasons.
They've made a good call with making season 5 the last season as I think the story will have run it's course by then and anything more could effect the overall quality of the show.
Totally agree with them calling an end to it, much like Umbrella Academy they seem to have had an overall arc and have stuck to it. It's refreshing for shows to be given the room to conclude in their own time.
I'm hoping they do some sort of hand off story wise to Gen V and we perhaps get to see that group pick up the pieces from the end of Season 5 of The Boys in their Season 3. A season or 2 with Gen V to wrap their storylines up and then who knows. I think the concept will have run it's course by then.
Well, remember, one of the big plot points for Gen V was the competition to get into the 7. So advancing both of those characters that turned up isn't too much of a stretch given the rest of the top ten or whatever it was are either dead or locked up for trying to foil the virus plot. Plus they have some very useful powers for what may be to come. They've already kind of proved themselves to be scum bags with the work they did at the school so they're practically ready-made for Homelander's little squad.
C5_Steve said:
Well, remember, one of the big plot points for Gen V was the competition to get into the 7. So advancing both of those characters that turned up isn't too much of a stretch given the rest of the top ten or whatever it was are either dead or locked up for trying to foil the virus plot. Plus they have some very useful powers for what may be to come. They've already kind of proved themselves to be scum bags with the work they did at the school so they're practically ready-made for Homelander's little squad.
I just got the feeling they were a little bit more conflicted about what they were doing although I guess by the end they'd fully turned. Just felt a bit like Anakin going from having a few doubts to full on dark side, slaughtering children in the next scene, seems quite sudden.Guvernator said:
C5_Steve said:
Well, remember, one of the big plot points for Gen V was the competition to get into the 7. So advancing both of those characters that turned up isn't too much of a stretch given the rest of the top ten or whatever it was are either dead or locked up for trying to foil the virus plot. Plus they have some very useful powers for what may be to come. They've already kind of proved themselves to be scum bags with the work they did at the school so they're practically ready-made for Homelander's little squad.
I just got the feeling they were a little bit more conflicted about what they were doing although I guess by the end they'd fully turned. Just felt a bit like Anakin going from having a few doubts to full on dark side, slaughtering children in the next scene, seems quite sudden.Guvernator said:
gregs656 said:
No, I am pointing out that lots of great cinema (and art more broadly) includes political commentary. Indeed some of the most revered and celebrated art is either explicitly political or has politics deeply embedded in the themes so your suggestion that film makers just shouldn't be allowed to be critical of politics seems, at best, short sighted.
I'm not suggesting any such thing. What I am suggesting is that they don't do it so often or in such a heavy handed fashion. The Boys has always had a heavy dose of anti-right wing satire which I actually, really enjoyed. However it now seems to have dumped the clever satire in favour of straight out heavy handed messaging.Secondly it's not the only show to do this and I'm just getting a bit fed-up of seeing it in nearly everything coming out of Hollywood these days, it's just getting very boring now.
I'm a Brit, I really have very little interest in the s
tshow that is going on in the US political scene at the moment. I just wish the US would hurry up and sort out it's political identity crisis so we can get back to good TV instead of being preached at by every other show that comes out of that country.Homelanders little group are talking about taking control of the government, handing power over to the corporates and putting people into concentration camps and then I assume killing them. Whilst in the real world trump is openly suggesting that he'll politicise/and or shutdown a whole bunch of government services (including the DOJ and FBI etc), roundup immigrants and deport them soon after getting into power.
P.S. loving Tek-Knights portrait which looked uncannily like this one of trump that he has at Mar-a-lago :
ajprice said:
With the Trump shooting overnight, and how close The Boys has been to the election campaign (by accident or on purpose), I'm expecting someone to get shot in the last episode now 
.
I don't think you need to be a genius to guess thar soeones head is going to get exploded before the end of this series... .ajprice said:
With the Trump shooting overnight, and how close The Boys has been to the election campaign (by accident or on purpose), I'm expecting someone to get shot in the last episode now .
Well Ep8 is all around an assassination attempt, so now apparently the real world is mirroring fiction in real time! Had this been a show being aired on a network I would half expect it to be delayed but as it's Amazon I guess it'll go ahead... .Anyway, watched Ep7 at the weekend. Thought it was a little slow but some great character moments, I'm glad as usual we got some proper reveals and pay offs in this episode rather than having to wait, A-Train particularly. The moment where Homelander was shocked it was him just shows how removed from reality he is. Poor Ashley as well, Colby Minifie does such a good job playing her flipping back and forth between emotions. She's excellent.
No idea how Ep8 is going to go, as above there's a lot to wrap up it seems especially now with the ending of Ep7. I agree it'll more likely have some sort of cliffhanger to be picked up in S5 or S2 of Gen V but based on how the shows been everything is at play.
C5_Steve said:
Poor Ashley
I have very little sympathy. She's not an innocent victim. She climbed her way to the top of the evil empire, and now she's trapped there.The actress does a good job when occasionally the mask slips and you see her terror of the position she's in. But she made her bed.
I watched the Reel Rejects video after ep7, they did mention having Tilda Swinton as the voice for Ambrosius the octopus, probably in a sound booth somewhere completely separate from the filming, and the Ambrosius death scene with the Deep where he was acting against nothing. I'm guessing for this that the scene would have been filmed first and Tilda Swinton would have had a video to play against for the voice to be added in later? However it was done it was done really well.
But apart from that, who’s got the “See something, say something” Avenue V song stuck in their head?
But apart from that, who’s got the “See something, say something” Avenue V song stuck in their head?
Edited by ajprice on Monday 15th July 11:44
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