For Eric Kripke, ‘The Boys’ Was Always About Trumpism
For Eric Kripke, ‘The Boys’ Was Always About Trumpism
As the showrunner grows his darkly comic satire into a franchise — and spoofs a certain trial and presidential election in the new season — he says he’s fine losing the viewers who just figured out his social agenda: “Go watch something else.”
As the showrunner grows his darkly comic satire into a franchise — and spoofs a certain trial and presidential election in the new season — he says he’s fine losing the viewers who just figured out his social agenda: “Go watch something else.”
They are not gonna "go watch something else" because as he also says:
Some people who watch it think Homelander is the hero. What do you say to that? The show’s many things. Subtle isn’t one of them. So if that’s the message you’re getting from it, I just throw up my hands.
Basically many are hopeless
As a European, I thought that was obvious from the first episode. So many stabs at a specific worldview, it's obviously a criticism on modern politics.
Oh yeah. Stormfront is not subtly named.
StromThurmondFront
It really hit the nail on the head once I watched the stormfront episode.
The comic book came out in 2006 so way more likely it was about George W. Bush's america. I don't know what this guy is on about.
This guy is making the show, I think he knows what the show is doing.
The original definitely took swipes at George W. Bush, but definitely felt like it had more focus on anit-capatilistic/corporate America than the show. The comics also have a better subplot around vengeance and finding forgiveness/moving on than the show.
Its interesting, cause while they start with exactly the same setup, the show and the comic are completely different stories. If you like the show it may be worth reading the comics (although they can be a bit much).
it is not a copy of the comic book plot verbatim. Its without question a parody of modern politics in the series.
Conservatives were always about what Trump is about, they only hid behind dog whistles pre-Trump, but nothing is different. The only difference, Trump was too dumb to understand he was supposed to not say the quite stuff out loud
I can't believe anyone ever thought it was anything but a representation of trump and his worldview.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But it was a cheap, genre show on an unsexy network, The CW, so even an ensuing string of doubles (Revolution, Timeless) did little to move his needle.
But Kripke crafted a scathing satire of 21st century America where Homelander, the chiseled superhero in the American flag cape, is an authoritarian proxy for Donald Trump.
Critics immediately took a shine, but its commercial success — the most recent season earned more eyeballs than The Rings of Power, with 106 billion minutes viewed in 2022 — made Kripke a priority at the streamer.
Suddenly, we were telling a story about the intersection of celebrity and authoritarianism and how social media and entertainment are used to sell fascism.
It’s happened now almost every season, and we write them sometimes close to two years before they air and again we’ll find that the news is accurately reflecting whatever we’re talking about.
But, especially for young showrunners, I do wish there was still that Syfy channel and CW model of learning how to stretch your dollar, both in terms of writing and producing.
The original article contains 2,169 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 92%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Sometimes just cutting out paragraphs to "summarize" the text is just plain bad. This is one of those times, and time for me to finally block this thing.
But but suddenly critics it's but. I'm not defending the bot this is just the first words of each paragraph and it's really annoying to read.
You realise you are reacting with feelings to a bot? I read the whole article and it's just an interview format which makes no sense to summarise. I mean you can always disregard, but it does save some time most of the time, helping you quickly judge if the content is worth a full read or not without opening the link. It's a technology
I stopped watching the show because it seemed a little over the top and graphic. I may check it out again, though.