We're sorry to say that there will not be a regular episode of The Expanded Fandomverse this week. Our guest, Joseph Yglesias, had cancel on us at the last minute due to a medical emergency. A quick trip the hospital later, we are happy to report that Joseph is doing much better, and will be back with us next week to talk all about bootleg Star Wars merchandise.
BUT, never fear, we would not let a week go by without releasing some kind of audio for your listening pleasure. Instead of a regular episode, we are going to put out one of our Scum & Villainy episodes. Scum & Villainy is our "aftershow" where just allow ourselves to ramble on. The show is un polished, unedited (for the most part) and always long winded!
We also use our Scum & Villainy episodes to respond to listener feedback. Back in December of last year, we received and email from Mr. Joshua Starnes. Joshua is a professional film critic who had sent us a letter about the perception many of us have about the prequels. After reading his letter, we invited him on to explain his point of view in a S&V episode. - You can listen to our conversation HERE.
WELL… Mr Starnes feed back lead to us receiving an email from a self proclaimed Film Critic Critic, Mr. Michael Coates. Michael stongly disagreed with almost everything Joshua had said! His email read in part…
"So to sum up, Josh is a reviewer and is able to detach himself emotionally from the film and as such his take on it is better than fans whose opinions can be dismissed easily because they care too much about Star Wars.
What a load of self righteous, sanctimonious rubbish.
20 minutes in so far and I just can't agree with anything; Who says the prequels get better as they go on? Who says green screen makes something bad? Trying to be clever by pointing out an inverse correlation between CGI and quality (designed to trip up fans) is only relevant when it's not made up in the first place.
I personally do not anyone that thinks AOTC is better than TPM and I definitely don't know anyone who think ROTS comes anywhere close to the quality of the original trilogy (is it better than the other two? Who knows, maybe, it certainly isn't leaps and bounds ahead!).
If these are genuine thoughts and feelings amongst fans then they are not ones that I know and not the general consensus from the countless forums, comments and blogs that I have read on the subject. Furthermore, no one blames CGI for them being bad films, everything I have read suggests excessive CGI only manages to compound issues already present in the film and this is echoed in interviews with the cast who complain how difficult it is to have a conversation with something that isn't there or walk around a room that isn't there or to act shocked at things that you're 'seeing' but never actually seeing. The conversation between Anakin and Palpatine may well be one of the best in the prequels (I didn't particularly think it anything special and I don't remember it making a lot of sense either) but this should be no surprise because it's a conversation between two people, who are there to react off of and work with.
I could go on but it's fair to say I'll only get more annoyed at the way fans are represented here."
After reading this, I just knew I had to get Michael on to tell us more about what he thought! So we connected and recorded and episode in late April.
Then, my computer crapped out on me. :-(
Well, after much cursing and googling and false starts, I finally got my 'puter back up and running, and was able to recover the files with our conversation. So, that is what we bring you today, a conversation I had with Michael Coates nearly two months ago, about another conversation I had with a listen nearly seven months ago!
And as a note, because the Scum & Villainy episodes are unpolished (not that our regular shows are so slick!), we do not release them in our regular feed. So, if you subscribe to the show on iTunes or Sticher, this episode wont show up in your feed, it can only be found our our website, TheExpandedFandomverse.com
AND, like Michael and Joshua, if you have something you feel very strong about, please, let us know! We love your feedback! Tell us what your thinking, and maybe we will get you on a future episode of Scum & Villainy! Email us anytime at TheExpandedFandomverse@gmail.com!
