Quote:
Originally Posted by Fastway
The attitude era is over, they need to get rid of the 15+ min promos
No one gives a shit
|
It progressively comes off as high school theater and a bunch of dudes that are afraid to get into a fight too. Austin or The Rock talking shit this is not. Hell, did Austin even do monologues? That was like Triple H's thing and even then it was pretty shit. But it was "his thing." Like, Triple H was a mustache-twirling narcissist who liked to get under his opponent's skin and remind them of the power he wielded by taking the platform. It doesn't really make sense for babyface Seth Rollins to do that.
Most of the time it accomplishes nothing that a screen saying "Seth Rollins is going to fight Kevin Owens tonight" would. This makes it redundant. This violates cardinal rules of television right there. You don't watch a character taking a shit unless it serves a purpose. It's frustrating, because WWE tries to move away from being professional wrestling, but as far as legitimate entertainment goes, they'd actually be on-point if they had a professional wrestling format.
And Vince might get the final say, but he can't write everything, and you can feel the writers' hands in the insults. Feels like the sort of barbs someone would write for Hannah Montana. Fucking weak sauce. You don't need swearing, but you at least need to be able to convey two people really don't like each other. It's so...performative, but with no real charisma.
When you are over, you are able to get away with a lot. The Rock could take a shit in the ring and get a standing ovation. During the Attitude era, wrestling was over. They could get away with a lot of stupid, wacky insulting stuff. People count the hits and not the misses. We remember Austin and the beer truck fondly, so we brush over "choppy, choppy your pee-pee." But they've kept the choppy-choppy stuff without any of the beer truck stuff and wonder why it isn't anywhere near as hot in 2017. It's because you aren't over and the misses are registering.
I'm not even talking huge stuff, but seemingly benign things that we are used to as wrestling fans that I bet turns potential new fans off the show. The big one that gets me is the backstage soliloquy. The camera just happens to be on Stephanie McMahon comfortably talking on the phone as a babyface walks into her traveling office to get eviscerated. Why are the cameras on her? Why doesn't she care? How low does the self-esteem of a wrestler have to be that they'd play along with that set-up? If the cameras are "invisible," then it's implied they all inhabit a fictional world, but as we all know, kayfabe is dead. Stephanie McMahon is the villain that hates Bayley and the hero that loves sick kids all in the same night, on the same show, in the same world.
I seriously wonder how many times Joe Fan turns over, remembering the buzz he's heard about wrestling, or to check out that Brock Lesnar guy he keeps hearing about, only to see something like this go down and respond emotionally with "This makes me uncomfortable." They're constantly crossing over the axis of their own continuity and doing shit which is clearly fake in a company that still depends on emotional investment by suspending disbelief. People believe The Rock can kick ass so he could get away with it; but if they don't believe you can kick ass, you're not going to get over by doing it first.