Могила зверя обоснуя

There is a dangerous thing happening with screenwriting in Hollywood right now, and The Boys is clearly also a victim of it. Writers are trying to control how their work is perceived, which makes for garbage writing. They want, so badly, for you to know exactly whom to hate, whom to love, which plots they like, and which plots they know are really fucked up.

Take, for example, Kripke saying this about Stormfront :

Your opinion of your character as a showwriter or showrunner colors your treatment of them. It’s how you get boring, one-dimensional, unmemorable villains. You make a caricature out of them and then point bright, neon signs at it, going “HATE THEM!!! YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO HATE THEM!!”

This is either because a) writers are scared you will think they like the villain, or b) writers think we’re too dumb to understand, or worse, c) they think they get to make a judgment call on whether a character is good or bad (they don't!)

The focus of a writer should be to write a good story without judging their own characters. This allows all characters, good or bad, to have good individual stories.

Game of Thrones, for example... yes, Tywin Lannister was a proper cunt, but if George R.R. Martin hated him, he wouldn’t have the characterization he had. Tywin’s intelligence and strategic thinking made him a scarier villain, and he was given that intelligence because the writer didn’t hate him or see him as a bad guy. He was just... a guy. And it was left up to us, the audience, to decide whether Tywin was good or bad.

Let’s take a more recent example: Mike Flanagan. The Fall of the House of Usher is one of my faves, and despite the main characters being obvious raging capitalists responsible for a lot of bad shit, you can tell Flanagan doesn’t HATE them. He treats them as a parent should treat a child - give them chances, set consequences in place, allow them to make choices, take away agency when necessary.

Now... Homelander.

It’s clear that Kripke was starting to get frustrated with the love Homelander was getting, and he took it upon himself to “educate” us on what he really is. (“Ban abortion”, really Kripke??)

This idea that if you see overwhelming love for a bad man, surely the audience is dum-dum. Audience need to be told. Audience see hot man and go stupid. Must make clear, this bad bad man!

The sad thing is, I don’t think anybody in the fandom expected him to live at the end of the series. The audience is not naive... we were already mourning Homelander before the finale aired, because we knew he’d be scapegoated one way or another. The insult isn’t that he died but the WAY he died, very obviously hated by Kripke. If there was any love or respect for the character, there would have been a slightly more dignified death, in private, after Homelander truly got to display the power of the V1 in his blood.

It concerns me that this is the place film and TV are headed, because we’re quickly getting into a territory where, because writers don’t trust their audience to use their brains, the power of choice will be snatched away from us, and we will be made to watch watered-down, one-dimensional characters. Worse, we lose our ability to reason, find context, appreciate nuance, and basically use critical thinking skills.

Now, Homelander aside...

I also don’t think the audience expected Vought to pay for its crimes. Again, this fandom is not stupid. We understand how corporations can come out clean after the worst disasters, and it was inevitable that Vought, not an entertainment company but a pharmaceutical company, would find a way to carry on anyway.

The insult wasn’t that Vought survived...

The insult was this promo pic...

If the message was that Homelander is a representation of Vought and bringing him down means bringing down Vought, boy, was that stupid!

The show set up some absolute banger finale posters and delivered on absolutely nothing.

Giving us these posters as if he literally didn’t say...

(Can we sue for false advertising? I heard Elon Musk didn’t like the episode either, maybe we can use his money to fight Kripke, idk. Fund the filming of an alt finale, I’ll even write it for free.)

But I guess that’s a marketing thing, not a script thing, so let’s get back to the actual episode.

I don’t agree that Vought should have been brought down, because that is highly unrealistic. But the fact that The Boys didn’t make a single dent in the workings of Vought is also ridiculous.

I understand a group of rebels rarely have an effect on a towering institution in real life, but for the sake of a satisfying ending for the audience that stayed with the show through 5 seasons and a spinoff, it might have been good to see one meaningful change The Boys made in how Vought operates. Instead, Stan Edgar is back where he was, no kinder than he was earlier. Having stricter control over supes is hardly a solution when the problem is the company’s practices.

ALSO, and I know this is minor, but Starlight literally flying The Deep to the ocean, where he would be strongest? ........... Lazy. I know they wanted to create a situation where the ocean would rip him apart, but no. Lazy and stupid.

Things I did like:

MM adopting Ryan, because Butcher had asked MM to raise him. Starlight returning to tapping police radio to find people to save. Hughie has an AV store (in the age of streaming, who needs it? Whatever, it’s cute.)

All in all, yes, it’s easy to say "oh you just liked Homelander and didn't want him to die,” --- and yes, it’s true. Without his powers, he was a 5-year-old, and the fight with Butcher just wasn’t a fair fight.

Emotionally, I thought it was undignified and cruel. I wanted to get in there and hug my baby boy, carry him out if necessary, and let him live like a human---fragile and scared but ultimately having agency.

Logically? I think the show set up a fantastic villain and nerfed him in the way that felt easiest. Either they made him so powerful that they went and asked ChatGPT, “what do now?” or they simply got lazy. There are enough posts talking about what Homelander has been able to overcome in the past and how fast he can fly, so I won’t repeat all of that.

I’ll end this by saying, if Kripke is going into Vought Rising already hating certain characters, it will not be a fulfilling or even interesting show. I like that it’s a murder mystery, but I am so apprehensive.

Curious, what do you guys think? Will you be watching Vought Rising?