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Spike's Alternate History: Nazi's Win WW2 (2011)
- Thread starter Gary Oswald
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It’s difficult to be too scathing about a failed pilot that brought so much joy to the AH community in the way it crashed spectacularly like the napkinwaffe it features were often wont to do. I remember the anticipation for it at the time and following the watch party on The Other Place, the standards for it were purely based on how entertainingly bad it would be, coming from the network which had featured the IRA fighting the Taliban in a car park there wasn’t much hope for anything else.
Unlike many famously bad TLs I can’t think of it generating any ill will and some of the riffs it has inspired, particularly the one done by Talkernate History, have made it a worthwhile endeavour. Truly the Plan 9 of AH media.
Unlike many famously bad TLs I can’t think of it generating any ill will and some of the riffs it has inspired, particularly the one done by Talkernate History, have made it a worthwhile endeavour. Truly the Plan 9 of AH media.
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
It's like they were deliberately trying to include and amplify every single cliche in mass-market AH.
Or write something that appealed to everyone and therefore ended up appealing to none.
Chris
I wouldn't call a lazy Nazi victory scenario something that appeals to everyone. The Wunderwaffen thing, for example, is very much a niche phenomenon--it's just that Wehraboos tend to be overrepresented in the AH community.Or write something that appealed to everyone and therefore ended up appealing to none.
OUCH.
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I mean it was a bad project but it also wasn't written for the navel-gazing eye of the AH Community.
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
I wouldn't call a lazy Nazi victory scenario something that appeals to everyone. The Wunderwaffen thing, for example, is very much a niche phenomenon--it's just that Wehraboos tend to be overrepresented in the AH community.
Not quite what I meant
They start with a Nazi Victory, which makes sense because most people know about the Nazis and WW2; there’s no need to add lots of explanation and suchlike to the show because people already know what it means. Then they come up with something that sounds good and reasonable, at least if you don’t know the background; jet fighters, submarines, a-bombs, etc (all of which are nonsensical to us), and do their best to outline a possible alternate world, using every cliché in the AH lexicon.
It makes little sense to us, but we’re already deeply invested in AH. The general public is not. The most popular AHs are WW2, US Civil War and American Revolution because the people already know the basic background. If they did a show on ‘What If Jenkins Didn’t Get His Ear Cut Off,’ you would have to explain who Jenkins was and why him having his ear cut off was important; if you did one based on the Taiping Rebellion, you’d have to explain a lot more to the general public.
WW2 also has the advantage of there being a clear bad guy, without any controversy that might repel (or attract) viewers. No one is going to complain if you paint Hitler as the worst person in the whole in human history. He’s certainly in the top 10!
Still, it looks as if they tried to be clever. It would probably have been better to have the UK invaded in 1940, the USSR defeated in 1942, then you can have a sneak atomic attack in 1950 or so … if you must have the US occupied by the Nazis. Still incredibly implausible, but better than what they had.
That still isn't "appealing to everyone". It appealed to WW2 buffs. There are a lot of them, but the story didn't have anything for audiences with other interests. It didn't fail because it tried to appeal to everyone, it failed because it was a poor idea poorly executed.Not quite what I meant
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I mean it was a bad project but it also wasn't written for the navel-gazing eye of the AH Community.
The thing is that I’m not quite sure it’s even that given it makes some basic mistakes. As I noted in the review, where’s any mention of the Soviets, Japanese, or British? Though it perhaps fits into a very US-centric image of WWII a lot of Americans seem to have.
It’s difficult to be too scathing about a failed pilot that brought so much joy to the AH community in the way it crashed spectacularly like the napkinwaffe it features were often wont to do. I remember the anticipation for it at the time and following the watch party on The Other Place, the standards for it were purely based on how entertainingly bad it would be, coming from the network which had featured the IRA fighting the Taliban in a car park there wasn’t much hope for anything else.
Unlike many famously bad TLs I can’t think of it generating any ill will and some of the riffs it has inspired, particularly the one done by Talkernate History, have made it a worthwhile endeavour. Truly the Plan 9 of AH media.
Having not been involved with AH at the time (and to an extent still not outside of this forum and Twitter) I appreciate the perspective. Certainly the reading and watching I did related to writing the review didn’t quite give that impression as most of it was mocking or outright disparaging about it.
OUCH.
That’s a fair assessment! As a rule, I don’t typically write scathing reviews. This has proven the exception to that rule…
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ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
That still isn't "appealing to everyone". It appealed to WW2 buffs. There are a lot of them, but the story didn't have anything for audiences with other interests. It didn't fail because it tried to appeal to everyone, it failed because it was a poor idea poorly executed.
That too.
Chris