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Nazis = Bad Guys

Nazis are the Bad Guys. Saying that shouldn’t be considered going out on a limb, and if you disagree then you probably won’t like this one. In fact, it’ll probably make you pretty angry... although, there are seemingly endless ways to make Nazis angry. If you’ve been a regular reader, it should be no surprise, given some of our other posts , what our stance is. Perhaps you just need a reminder, though. Nazis are the Bad Guys. You should have easily figured that out during your school years by reading and learning of the atrocities they’ve performed and the abhorrent things they continue to espouse. Perhaps you didn’t receive the best education, though, or struggled with your studies, so you might need a reminder. Let me assure you, Nazis are the Bad Guys. You don’t have to take it from Never Say Dice, though, or pour over history books, or visit museums - but you probably should, lest history continue to repeat itself. However, you should still be able to find continual reminders v...

Fixed In the Edit

Given the power they exert over film and other visual media, it's no surprise that some editors think of themselves as gods... and when it comes to turning raw, disorganized messes of raw footage into complete narrative products, they might as well be. Not to mention the advice that a (possible) god once told (wannabe god) Bender, that goes doubly for editors: "when you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." Not to say there isn't flashy editing, of course, the kind of cuts that demand a viewer's attention and acknowledgement through sharp juxtaposition or shifting from one part of a story to another in a manner reminiscent of a page being turned or curtain pulled. But these examples are notable because they're standout exceptions - most editing has the far more mundane, but no less miraculous, task of turning a three-walled set filled with lights, cameras, microphones, and all the people running them into the illusion of...

Wrestling with Retcons

How did we get by so long without the term “retcon?” As a phrase, “retroactive continuity” goes back to at least 1973, with our current definition appearing a decade later to describe some of the way DC comics was engaging contemporary storylines with characters and plots from decades prior. Even without a name, the concept is about as old as storytelling itself, with some retcons becoming such a significant part of their respective narratives that they’d be unthinkable without them - no one involved in the creation of the 1977 film considered Vader to be Luke’s father, but inserting that retcon into The Empire Strikes Back has defined every iteration of Star Wars ever since. But “retcon” is a term that carries as many connotations as it has applications, with plenty of room for interpretation as to what exactly counts as a retcon, what it effect retconning has on a work, and how that in turn affects an audience’s relationship with that work and its creators. So this week, let’s take a...

Analyzing Analyzing Horror

There's something of a cottage industry in dissecting people's interest and love of horror media - I've certainly delved into the discussion , myself. Nonetheless, the sheer number of words put into understanding the genre's appeal is simply staggering , to the point where I find myself asking why horror is widely subjected to unique scrutiny rarely applied to other genres. (Well, maybe porn, but I'm certainly not going to unpack that here.) So, for today's Spooky Season post, we're going to look into why the quest to understand horror's popularity remains a topic as perennial and evergreen as... well, as horror itself. After all, what's scarier than getting meta with media? To start with, a lot of these articles present an engagement with horror that I find... odd. Many focus on the psychological effect of the fear response, the adrenaline rush that comes with being scared (from the safe distance afforded by being an audience), and even some weird ...

Never Say Disc: Return of the Jedi

Star Wars Day may have come and gone, but this May has a different significance for the franchise: the fortieth anniversary of the third film, The Return of the Jedi. Not only did this movie bring the original phase of Star Wars to a close, its significant in the lives of the Never Say Dice founders as the both the first Star Wars movie to be released in our lifetimes, and as the series’ ending during our most formative years (Ewok movies notwithstanding). While it’s no longer Star Wars’s cinematic capstone and many of its plot points have been rendered moot in subsequent installments, Jedi remains an important part of our development, both in our relationship to the franchise and in our understanding of what narrative means and is capable of. So let’s venture to the Galaxy Far, Far Away for the final time… or so we once thought. A : Return of the Jedi is little more than a marketing ploy to get children to buy toys. That's why they put the Ewoks in there. Cute little furry things...

Telling Tales of Traps

The season has come once again for the Home Alone movies to make their run on our viewing devices. There's something powerful when you’re a kid about seeing children your age in media take on and defeat adults. Perhaps that's one of the reasons that this movie worked for me so well when it first came out. After all, Kevin/Macaulay and I are around the same age, and not only does he run the house for a few days, but he also defends it from the wet bandits. The movie(s) even entertain and inspire my own children. My older son can often be found studying and making his own battle plans, and my younger guy is usually making traps around the house - just in case bad guys show up. Somehow, though the premise laughs louder and louder at the suspension of disbelief the older it gets , the movie still stands the test of time for holiday entertainment. Maybe it will survive for future generations out of the nostalgia of parental figures, or maybe it will slowly fade into obscurity. For n...

Putting the Howl in "Howl-loween Specials"

There are three things I've learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin. But this is our blog, and that means we can discuss whatever we want. Being the spookity time of year, it's a good opportunity to do just that. While "horror" might be the word of the month for many, there's also something to be said for the more mundanely macabre - the things that, while not horrific, blend right into the spirit of the month. Here at Never Say Dice, one thing that brings us into that space are the old Halloween specials of our childhood. While some should probably  stay buried in the past, worms crawling in and out of their corpses, others seem to endure over the years. The favorites might vary from household to household, but shows like It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown or Garfield’s Halloween Adventure are still commonly well-liked. That begs the question, though: what makes a good Halloween special work, and what can we take from t...

Rewind/Remake (B Side)

It's no wonder most genre fans have an involuntary twitch whenever they hear the word "remake." I don't need to go into examples - if you're reading this, I'm sure you're already thinking of one (or many) that utterly missed the original work's point, or was only tenuously connected, or veered into a more "test audience-friendly" direction. And yet there are legitimately beloved remakes that have largely supplanted their predecessors in popular consciousness: The Thing (1982), The Fly (1986) , Battlestar Galactica (2004), Westworld (2016)... If we include works that respond to, while also recreating, the originals, we can include things like Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) and The Little Shop of Horrors (1986)... although musical adaptations probably deserve their own category.  With such unpredictable results, why do remakes happen? Setting aside the purely commercial reasons often trotted out as conversation-terminating cliches ("t...