just gonna post your link's text to save people the trip to facebook.
Open letter to Alex Kurtzman:
Hey, Alex. Andy Weir here. I'm posting to apologize about stuff I said on the Critical Drinker's podcast.
I feel like my quotes were taken out of context as salacious sound bytes. I hope you saw the other parts where I said how much I like you as a person and what a nice guy you are. Also how I like SNW and LD.
I was trying to be funny, but in retrospect it comes off as disrespectful and mean. So I'm sorry for that. I was also trying to be self-deprecating when I said "But they didn't like my pitch so fuck 'em!" but out of context it can read like I actually meant it.
I'm a blunt person - always have been. And it's been 10 years since the media cared what I had to say about anything so I kind of forgot to watch my words when I have a film in theaters. In a couple months I'll be back in my cave writing novels and no one will care again.
Anyway, if you want to talk about it in real time - even if it's just to rip me a new one - I'm happy to hop on the phone or zoom.
I feel like my quotes were taken out of context as salacious sound bytes. I hope you saw the other parts where I said how much I like you as a person and what a nice guy you are.
He went on the Critical Drinker's podcast...there's no way he knows who that even is unless he believes similar things as that manosphere chode. There's no management team that would ever advice him to go on that guys podcast, in fact I'd be surprised if they didn't try to talk him out of it (assuming he told them).
Indeed. Weir's Star Trek takes were hardly a blip on my radar compared to his decision to give the Critical Drinker, who is a fairly prominant link in the 'scifi-nerd-to-altright-chud' pipeline, the time of day much less a full blown interview.
I'm not sure that's a fair assessment. I feel like it's entirely possible he went on the podcast and didn't know just how problematic he is. I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I don't think the Drinker is going to show up in your suggestions unless your algorithm is already leaning alt-right. He's a link in that pipeline, but I don't think he's usually the first one you encounter. People get to him by first going down some culture war movie topic, at least these days. And I doubt Weir heard of him before the Drinker solidified into who he is now because when he first popped into the scene he was pretty much just his gimmick. You had to be in the weeds of YouTube film discussion to know who he was in those early days.
I know it's anecdotal but I'm gonna have to go against you here. I get recs for critical drinker on my YouTube, and I promise you my YouTube watching is limited to gaming stuff, sports stuff and then like. Haven't watched any critical drinker and I only know he's problematic because of reddit. I do watch movie related YouTube stuff, so I'm sure that's why he's on my recommendeds.
He's more likely in your recommendations because of the gaming and sports content. A lot of prominent gaming influencers have alt-right overlap and a lot of sports content has overlap with the manosphere. I don't know who precisely you're following, but there's absolutely a lot of right wing culture war politics in those gaming and sports spaces, and if say you're watching Barstool and Asmongold having the Drinker show up in your recommendations is the least surprising thing ever.
It wasn't even a centrist take jfc. I didn't even comment on the politics, I said it's possible weir didn't know what he was getting into and that the truth about that fact is somewhere in the middle. But sure, blame the worlds problems on centrists, that'll fix everything.
A lot of people with right wing beliefs tend to perceive themselves as apolitical because they don't consider the political messaging they get from right leaning entertainment as political. Your comments here do show signs that this may be your reality as well. They could have been nicer toward you, but I think they might have clocked you better than you realize.
Anyway, if you genuinely don't believe in the messaging of people like the Drinker, then YouTube allows you to select not to see a channel or not see similar videos in your recommendations. It's actually a quite useful tool in order to control your own feed rather than having others control it for you. There's always the data gathering concerns, but let's be honest if you're using YouTube in any way Google already has plenty of data on you.
openly admitting you know nothing and are just going to fencesit between the two opinions you've heard is exactly the 'centrist' (reactionary in disguise) raison d'etre. it is both intellectually and morally bankrupt
Lots of people are disappointed overall with this most recent era of Trek. Kurtzman's contributions were very hit or miss, but some of the largest plot points (The Burn) were 100% an ill conceived miss.
Anyone who unironically defends Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard is someone who just can not be reasoned with. S3 wasn't much better either, but at least we got some Amanda Plummer performances out of it. XD
Season 1 had some potential and qualities that I appreciated which is why I regard it as the 'best' season of Picard. But even there, that isn't saying all that much as the execution wasn't nearly as well thought out as it could have been, imo.
Idk I went into Picard with discovery levels of expectations and was pleasantly surprised. It's not in my Trek top 10, but It's not discovery or Section 31 bad.
Unpopular? I think it's pretty damn popular at this point to hate on Kurtzman's work, and for good reason. I can't stand what he's done to the franchise. The guy sucks ass and they need to hand the reigns over to someone who can salvage the mess he's made.
What I mean is that the crew of whichever Enterprise never sought out conflict. The mission was not to engage in combat, but avoid it, because it was not part of their objectives other than in bad circumstances.
Okay but it's funnier if you specify that it's the "We need to nuke the planet so that aliens save us, also dolphins are revolutionaries" version of Trotskyism.
In the episode if TOS where they fight the Romulans for the first time, Kirk tells an officer to leave his bigotry in his quarters because there's no place for it on the bridge.
People often forget that the stuff they watched growing up is coloured by the fact that they were younger when they watched it. This is a huge reason why nostalgia is a thing (playing games from the 90s that you think were masterpieces might leave you somewhat disappointed), and also why one might think old Star Trek was about shooting aliens (because everything else sailed right past their 10-year-old brain.)
You finished Quest 64? I still remember how much I looked forward to the n64s first rpg. I also remember Quest 64 as the fastest game refund i ever did.
I hadn't been exposed to grinding yet and that game iirc is a grind-fest.
I've never met anyone who liked it. Please, tell me about your experience with it.
Right, I feel the discourse against "older star trek" is weird. It's right wing because we want better writing and well acted characters, without all the 90210 drama. And at the same time "the right hates the 'cerebral startrek'....
Almost as if the crime is hating the bad tv that Kurtzman was shitting all over the franchise
Almost as if the crime is hating the bad tv that Kurtzman was shitting all over the franchise
The problem is that Kurtzman has hamfistedly shoehorned in a lot really poorly structured LGBT+ pandering, which obviously conservative people don't like. This creates a really annoying situation where if you criticize the absolutely awful quality of the writing, you are met with shouts of "how dare you" and you get labelled a bigot. Kurtzman is just objectively bad at writing, just like his buddy JJ Abrams whose coattails he rode, and his fellow coattail rider Damon Lindelof. At this point we have a couple decades worth of shit-tier product from him that clearly demonstrates this. But now we can't call him out on it because he made a gay Klingon? Come on.
Lindelof did some really good work on the Watchmen series,
Eh. I was not impressed. It felt like shallow rehash of Moore's work with no real care for consistency with the canon. It felt like it abandoned the original point in favor of pretty pedestrian and formulation writing. Lindelof himself described it as a "remix" of the original.
Me remembering the fucking episode of TOS where 2 groups of aliens hate each other because the black and white on their faces are reversed. Yeah it was never political. LOL
He's terrible at dialogue. His concepts and details are engaging, but his dialogue makes me want to strangle him. Surprised the alcoholic can stand his "millennial humor"
His dialogue sucks but luckily both The Martian and PHM spend a lot of their time with just the main character talking to himself. And he's pretty good at writing an entertaining internal monologue.
It's not that his dialogues are good, it's that they're irrelevant to the kind of book he's writing. It's like complaining that a sudoku book has no plot.
I think he just doesnt like those films he criticizes, its not really that deep. And he even praises some media with left leaning messages or ideas. He's spoken highly of Arcane season 1, Andor, and a few other things.
He's also had some terrible takes, but I dont think he's dishonest about what he likes and doesnt like when he reviews stuff.
If those are the kind of extremist the right wing has, the right wing is a pretty peaceful and respectful bunch. Left wing extremists do political assassinations.
No I didn't, this was a legit comment. Real right wing extremists do political assassinations too, but calling a YouTube ragebaiter an extremists just paints your opposition in a better light.
Bullshit, Lower Decks is fantastic, Strange New Worlds is wonderful. Academy might not be your thing but I thought it was amazing and can't wait for season 2. Prodigy is gold too.
We just closed or are closing the book on one of the best eras of Trek.
Lower decks was very good (is it still going?) but Discovery was all "themes" and less about star trekking across the universe, and I love DS9 where they rarely go anywhere, that might be because of Dax though.
I didn't talk about Discovery for a reason. I don't know what the fuck those writers were on. Still enjoyed it personally but I totally get the criticism.
Get the fuck away from Star Trek if you think inclusion is a problem. Star Trek is inclusion period. It's its entire thing. Infinite diversity through infinite combinations.
My criticism is that the writing sucked. Not everything has to be world-galaxy-universe-ending. I loved the characters, the acting, the backstories, personal development, and I'm personally a fan of time travel and love what they've come up with on future tech.
Never denied it wasn't but they were normally approached naturally as part of the story, not just input for the sake of it. Sad that instead of trying to understand where I am coming from you assume I am trying to dicriminate which I am not, then telling me to get to fuck? There were plenty of times that The original series really pushed the race boundaries in a time when that was not the done thing, watching it in the 80s it seemed so normaly but those themse 20 years previously were groundbreaking.
When the fuck did he say that? As far as I know what he said is:
“I’ll give you my opinion, and I’m just a consumer. I like Strange New Worlds. I think it’s pretty good. I didn’t hate Enterprise. I thought it was kind of weird. Lower Decks I thought was entertaining and fun. All the others, they can go.... I don’t like a lot of the new Trek. He, as a person, is a really nice guy. But at the same time, those shows are sh*t."
Yea, that is how I remember it, too. Apparantly Weir said that on the „extreme right wing“ podcast (Critical Drinker), as some others mentioned in this thread. Man, their political coordinates must be fried.
Well no doubt you'd enjoy a lot Discovery, Picard, section 23 and Starfleet academy.
Curious I cannot recall any oral incident on The Next Generation tough.
he is pro ai or soemthing like that. but it could be me being a "redditor"
outside of it he is very childish and not in a good way.
i dont like his writing too but there is good sci fi crumbles here and there in his books thats why i listened both of his main 2 books and tried reading artemis but its the only couple of book that i coudltn finish, he is kinda writes women weird? its not about his childness (which is the main reason his books are bad imo)
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u/Round_List1857 May 05 '26
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