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Post by eJm on Jun 21, 2021 4:34:31 GMT -5
I think my main problem with the Bliss thing looking at what happened is...why didn't she just hypnotise Baszler to lie down and pin her? Like, I guess it's a "cooler visual" to do it with someone else but...just do that.
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Post by El Cokehead del Knife Fight on Jun 21, 2021 5:09:23 GMT -5
I think my main problem with the Bliss thing looking at what happened is...why didn't she just hypnotise Baszler to lie down and pin her? Like, I guess it's a "cooler visual" to do it with someone else but...just do that. Once you establish that someone has powers and it's not just smoke and mirrors then it opens up too many questions that cannot be adequately answered.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2021 7:33:59 GMT -5
I think my main problem with the Bliss thing looking at what happened is...why didn't she just hypnotise Baszler to lie down and pin her? Like, I guess it's a "cooler visual" to do it with someone else but...just do that. Once you establish that someone has powers and it's not just smoke and mirrors then it opens up too many questions that cannot be adequately answered. This. With Taker and Kane and even The Fiend, it could easily be played down as them playing mind games. Until Orton burned The Fiend, it made sense that it was just Bray Wyatt f***ing with people. But now Alexa has genuine superpowers and it's genuinely embarrassing because "Why can't she just force everyone to lay down and win all the titles then?" Plus, I just don't think she's convincing in the role. Shes not scary like Abadon and Mei Ying for example. It really just comes across like a hot chick dressing up for Halloween. The casual fans reaction to this tells me everything I need to know. Once THEY think it's embarrassing, it probably is.
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Post by Clash, Never a Meter Maid on Jun 21, 2021 7:59:30 GMT -5
There’s no exact science to working in supernatural elements in wrestling, but this clearly isn’t working. None of the voodoo stuff happening feels all that interesting to look at, it’s not visually impressive. It’s asking too much of the audience to buy into.
I know everyone points at Lucha Underground as the ideal template, but they were a niche within a niche. The problem is that this is just a more bell-to-bell audience for wrestling in 2021. They can see better SFX on a cheap Netflix show.
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Post by Harry The Arrow was Wrong! on Jun 21, 2021 8:09:09 GMT -5
What is going on with Bray tho? He essentially has had like 5 matches in 8 months and 4 of those came in Oct-Dec No one seems to be saying anything. It was speculated that Brodie's death hit him hard. Apparently that isn't true and was made up by someone from Ringside News or some crappy dirt sheet site like that. SRS said he's fine and ready to go and that this is just the plan wwe always intended.
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salz4life
Grimlock
Prichard is a guy who gets that his job is to service his boss.
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Post by salz4life on Jun 21, 2021 8:17:23 GMT -5
It's painful to me because I really like Alexa Bliss...... but, yes last night was AWFUL and the storyline is just over the top hokey.
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Post by eJm on Jun 21, 2021 8:41:58 GMT -5
I know everyone points at Lucha Underground as the ideal template, but they were a niche within a niche. The problem is that this is just a more bell-to-bell audience for wrestling in 2021. They can see better SFX on a cheap Netflix show. It's also more with LU, they honed the concept across four seasons and were allowed that break to fine-tune the stuff that wasn't working more into stuff that did which, well, WWE doesn't have breaks. They barely take holidays off these days so ideas have to be figured out on the fly with rare exceptions (ironically, with Bray Wyatt's stuff since, well, you're not going to rush Tom freaking Savini). Like, you said, it's not a perfect formula but it's a different beast from "find a way to have this heated feud be more heated" and "what odds can this babyface overcome to get to the bad guy".
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JoDaNa1281
Crow T. Robot
Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender. #BLM
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Post by JoDaNa1281 on Jun 21, 2021 8:59:59 GMT -5
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Post by Finish Uncle Muffin’s Story on Jun 21, 2021 10:04:24 GMT -5
I like Alexa and I think she does a good job with the material she's given, but it's really taken a nosedive since Bray went away. I don't know what else they'd do with her but they need to change things up. It feels like they know the Lily stuff wouldn't work because they seem to be moving her away from that, at least.
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Jun 21, 2021 10:25:31 GMT -5
Who knew Alexa Bliss would end up taking inspiration from Kendo Nagasaki?
(Robbie Brookside, wherever he is, just sat up in a cold sweat)
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2021 10:31:13 GMT -5
I have said it time and time again that this will never work in any company grounded in reality and one of those reasons like some already said it leaves too many questions for the audience that will never be anwsered.
When you bring supernatural anything into any medium IMO in order to make it work means your writing has to be top f***ing notch and Lucha Undergrounds writing , attention to detail etc was top f***ing notch to where for me it is the best written wrestling show of all time , because they cared about what they were writing the overall attention to detail is not just the overall story but each individual character how they all affected the world they inhabited and each other.
Alexa may be doing the best with what she has got but what she has got is a crate full of crap....The woman has powers that seemingly can take Shayna to the shadow realm , telepathic powers that can render her immobile , posses people to point she can literally turn them into human puppets to mimmick her ....and she is only going after Shayna why? none of it makes sense other than someone in higher up saw a movie and thought...hey this is cool lets use this without any care about the actual character and narrative and how it makes sense to the overall world of WWE.
There is an obvious reason why whenvever supernatural aspects in wrestling are brought up now that LU is looked at as the standard because they showed how to properly do it not simply from a template aspect but in just the overall writing.
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Post by eJm on Jun 21, 2021 10:33:03 GMT -5
Who knew Alexa Bliss would end up taking inspiration from Kendo Nagasaki? (Robbie Brookside, wherever he is, just sat up in a cold sweat) "Oh thank God, it's not about my daughter this time"
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Post by Finish Uncle Muffin’s Story on Jun 21, 2021 10:33:20 GMT -5
Another thought now that I'm actually watching the Bliss/Baszler match -- Alexa does work differently with this character and it's cool to see her change up her style, but I liked the "bordering on dark" Alexa where she had the remix of her original theme. Going full Fiend hasn't worked.
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krozor
Don Corleone
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Post by krozor on Jun 21, 2021 10:55:32 GMT -5
Taking into account everyone has said in this thread so far, one thing is very clear: Reginald should also get superpowers.
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Jun 21, 2021 11:04:02 GMT -5
If your setting includes supernatural powers because you strucutre it to, you can gert away with a lot. And you'd need to have answers to questions. "Why can't she hypnotize Shayna?" is something that in a well established fictional universe where the people care to figure these out can make total sense. She can only hypnotize people who do X. Shayna is too strong mentally to be controlled because Y. In the writing world, a lot of advice for genre fiction is built around trying to tighten up the fantastical elements of what you've created. About finding its boundaries and defining rules so that not only can the audience understand your story, but understand the boundaries of what it can impact within that story.
But the secret here is: Vince isn't actually a good writer. Not in any technical capacity, at least. And the room is full of too many writers with no voice and no individual control over anything so even if one of them does know how to do this, what use is that knowledge? It adds up to a total mess. Supernatural stuff has always been a big hole in WWE and now it's getting bigger because of how hard they're leaning on this stuff. They sincerely have no idea what they're doing in this area and it shows.
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khali
Dennis Stamp
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Post by khali on Jun 21, 2021 11:15:50 GMT -5
Stuff like this fails for a couple different reasons. In a place like LU, everything fits in their world. In WWE, I have to watch voodoo or the Miz getting eaten by a zombie before an athletic contest for a world title. It’s ridiculous.
And the fact is that whatever supernatural/horror stuff WWE tries to do, I could find better versions in movies or TV shows. This company can’t even tell a simple wrestling story right, why would I want to watch them try something like this?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2021 11:59:13 GMT -5
Let me make sure to spoiler this one incase Gecko wanders in here as it is a pretty big future LU spoiler. {Spoiler}{SPOILER: CLICK TO SHOW} So the question becomes why did this work...but Alexa's whole act built around it does not....IMO goes to what I said and that is the strength of the writing and care and attention to detail. LU set this up many moons prior...so you were being preped for awhile but not only just for the doll reveal but also Ricky Mandels change...world wide underground was doing nothing but shitting on him for the longest while including the man he was idolizing....so when we finally get to the doll reveal you have full context as to the doll and where it came from and why Ricky is so attached to it....BUT the doll then plays an even bigger narrative purpose to the overall story of LU. Alexa and her doll have none of this type of narrative even though they are at their base level the samething a doll has influence over their holder and really I just felt this was a fair comparison as they are at their core the samething just one is so much stronger narratively then the other.
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Post by Clash, Never a Meter Maid on Jun 21, 2021 12:07:18 GMT -5
I’d rather WWE not delve into full bore Lucha style narratives. I kinda like when they’re more “sport”. It’s personal preference, but still.
They really would be fine if they just bothered to explain where Bray gets his damn powers from. They don’t need to write a whole other sub-series to do it, just tell me some of Bray’s origins (and don’t involve IRS) and that will give Alexa way better context. LU was hyper detailed in their writing, but that was their choice.
When Paul Bearer cut that promo about Kane burning down the funeral home, that added to Undertaker’s mythos a lot. But I don’t know if *every* character in WWE needs this.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2021 12:13:01 GMT -5
I find this current incarnation of Alexa to be one of the worst things in the entire history of the WWE. To me, it's like if Mantaur or Phantasio or some character like that actually became a prominently featured part of the show that was played entirely straight and meant to be taken seriously.
But, she seems to be pretty popular with the audience at large, so I think I must just have different tastes these days.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2021 12:16:27 GMT -5
I’d rather WWE not delve into full bore Lucha style narratives. I kinda like when they’re more “sport”. It’s personal preference, but still. They really would be fine if they just bothered to explain where Bray gets his damn powers from. They don’t need to write a whole other sub-series to do it, just tell me some of Bray’s origins (and don’t involve IRS) and that will give Alexa way better context. LU was hyper detailed in their writing, but that was their choice. When Paul Bearer cut that promo about Kane burning down the funeral home, that added to Undertaker’s mythos a lot. But I don’t know if *every* character in WWE needs this. And that is the crux of the problem...nothing is explained. But even when they do WWE is so inconsistent that it just makes something so simple needlessly complex. It is a small thing but I just watched Alexa's video where she first showed Lilly and then watched the video where she explains Lillys backstory and again it is a small detail but even paying attention to something like this can screw with the narrative....she first calls lilly her new best friend...very next week Lilly has been with her since childhood. Again small detail to most but can wreck havoc on any story.
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