I wouldn't trust the 'sense of humour' here on FSM. That little trailer cracked me up.
What's to trust? Humor is subjective. (Personally, it lost me at the hoary "toilet seat" gag.) If it makes you laugh, it makes you laugh. If it doesn't, no explanation can change your mind.
You know what else is subjective? What being a lovely chap is.
It is not subjective. My sense of humour is superior, and all must strive to reach the same level.
Humor must have some subjective level, whether one wants to admit it, or we compare the vast wit of Mark Twain to a kid making farting noises with his armpit. A thing Twain no doubt did himself in adulthood... ;-)
Found the trailer to be deeply unfunny. Show might be ok, I'll give it a look probably, eventually.
I have to admit I'm not a fan of Seth McFarlane. American Dad I liked, some of Family Guy but i just found it one note for the most part. Ted was pretty awful and his Western was absolutely abysmal, though he wasn't terrible in it himself.
If the "premise" is "space comedy," I guess "Galaxy Quest" and "Quark" (and "Spaceballs," and "Dark Star") preceded this. Close to ten years ago, there was a Fox pilot called "Boldly Going Nowhere" that also had a similar milieu. But I don't know that that's really a premise one can be too protective of.
As somebody else said, I think only MacFarlane could have gotten this on the air. Parody is a very hard sell as a series. I would never say it's impossible, because that's too limiting. But in general, once audiences get the joke, they don't come back week after week for it. "Police Squad" is a famous example. Maybe MacFarlane will background the parody aspects and concentrate on character, but the trailer doesn't indicate that (granted, he likely didn't cut the trailer).
I don't really care if people think Seth MacFarlane is funny, but can we maybe have one thread where the guy doesn't get shit on? It has nothing, ZERO, to do with the music. More importantly, MacFarlane is one of the very few high profile (enough to make a difference) champions of old fashioned symphonic film music that we have left in mainstream film and TV production. The guy hired Joel McNeely, for crying out loud, a composer who almost always pops up in those "Hey who should score X?!?" threads. Enough.
I never understand these criticisms re being 'laboured' etc.. Some comedy is meant as subtle, some not. Some is subtle in its unsubtlety, some unsubtle in its subtlety. Bottom line is that it should be funny.
If it's like most MacFarlane, it'll have decent satire in it. Give it a chance. Well done to Broughton and McNeely. Neither of those gents allow themselves to be temp-tracked into a corner, so Seth must've given them free rein.
With apologies in advance for being too impatient to go back and read through the whole thread -- has there been any announcement about a release of the music? (You remember music, right?) I'd pretty much buy anything that these two composers had a hand in, even a comedy score, which I wouldn't usually buy...
Just to digress, I find it hard to get too irritated with my phone's built-in facilities since the spell-checker stopped me from signing off an email to a new client "Kind retards".
I never understand these criticisms re being 'laboured' etc.. Some comedy is meant as subtle, some not. Some is subtle in its unsubtlety, some unsubtle in its subtlety. Bottom line is that it should be funny.
I'll elaborate on what I mean by laboured: in his animated shows, at least, McFarlane tends to use the same joke construction methods over and over again, so I can see the workings of the gag quite clearly, which makes his stuff predictable. I watched the first four seasons of Family Guy, and it was vaguely amusing at first but eventually became tiresome because it was so repetitive.
Now, to take some other examples of people who tend to repeat the same methods frequently, intellectually I understand how John Sullivan constructed a lot of his gags on Only Fools And Horses or how Larry David constructs his farcical plots in Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it doesn't matter. I'm not thinking of that when I watch the shows, they're just funny. But with McFarlane's stuff, it's just not funny enough for me to get past him using the same tricks all the time.
Purely subjective, I don't expect you or anyone else to agree with me, but that's what I mean by laboured, and just because it isn't laboured to you doesn't mean it isn't a valid criticism. It's nothing to do with how subtle the comedy is.
Hope the score is good, though! Shame he didn't use Ron Jones, but maybe Jones doesn't want to rehash old material. Unlike McFarlane.
I’m looking forward to both – the show and the score. I thought the trailer quite funny, maybe not hilarious, but got quite a few laughs. MacFarlane’s humor (at least the style in the trailer), with the constant one-liners and snarky asides can keep you watching or can wear thin pretty quickly. Also, it’s one thing to sustain and keep it fresh for the length of a movie, but doing so for a weekly series can be another and ideas can run out before the series does. He’s certainly shown himself capable of this kind of durability, but this is supposed to appeal to a fairly demanding niche audience. I hope it’s as good as the trailer. Not to sidetrack, but I wonder if Galaxy Quest came out about twenty years too soon and was also undone by its appeal to that same niche. With the new Star Trek films, perhaps there would be a wider audience.
I don't really care if people think Seth MacFarlane is funny, but can we maybe have one thread where the guy doesn't get shit on? It has nothing, ZERO, to do with the music. More importantly, MacFarlane is one of the very few high profile (enough to make a difference) champions of old fashioned symphonic film music that we have left in mainstream film and TV production. The guy hired Joel McNeely, for crying out loud, a composer who almost always pops up in those "Hey who should score X?!?" threads. Enough.
Don't forget about his heartfelt thoughts on John Williams at the AFI Awards Gala last fall... any project that Seth McFarlane is involved in will have a quality score! because he actually gets the contribution that music makes to film/TV. Unlike 90% of the rest of Hollywood these days! And as a longtime fan of Bruce Broughton, it's awesome that he's returning to TV for "Orville" after his collaboration with John Debney for "Texas Rising" -- never saw the show but the music was GREAT!
I don't really care if people think Seth MacFarlane is funny, but can we maybe have one thread where the guy doesn't get shit on?
And Hitler loved Wagner (and hated jazz). What's your point? That we should ignore the fact he's behind a constantly racist, sexist, dirt-dumb series of shows? Fuck no.
With apologies in advance for being too impatient to go back and read through the whole thread -- has there been any announcement about a release of the music?
