Paywalled for me in Canada.

I find that I am less and less willing to invest enthusiasm in American productions as they don’t get enough commitment from their streamers to make it worth it.

Apple seems to be make two season commitments for most shows, but generally they are following the self-destructive pattern of Syfy. There’s only so many times one can be burned.

Wow, that’s a lot of negativity towards both fancasting and idols. But I appreciate your laying out your perspective.

This fancasting was done with humorous intent, as one can tell by the original post text that I have included as well as the Chanel visor (since cdrama ‘traffic stars’ are known for being global brand ambassadors of high fashion houses).

So the joke is falling flat with you. The question is “Why?”

Star Trek fans always propose their ideas for new characters in the franchise and even for recasts. It’s nothing new. It’s done in the spirit of fun.

And it’s never taken particularly seriously by those who make casting decisions or we would have seen very different actors cast in all of the shows and movies over the past 50+ years of the continuing franchise. Especially, as many or most of the actors fancast are not any more skilled than idol actors — while on the other hand, the most recent Star Trek shows, that have consistently cast actors with good foundations and craft, have experienced the most fan negativity about casting.

What’s different about fancasting popularity idol ‘traffic stars’ from China vs the usual fancasting of A or B list American actors?

What I found different, and amusing, is that it’s a fancasting crossover from two very different entertainment contexts. It’s challenging assumptions with popular faces, known to the younger cdrama audience.

What’s also amusing to me is that it implicitly pokes fun at Star Trek’s baked-in tendency to cast at least some of the roles on the basis of physical attractiveness, despite its aspirational nature — and recognizes that there has been fan blowback when diversity in looks and body types are included.

I’m absolutely with you that Star Trek needs to be more inclusive of Asian actors, and generally inclusive of more non US actors to really have global reach.

The US-centric mindset of those at senior levels in charge of the franchise since Roddenberry, as well as the embedded American Exceptionalism, is a principal reason it’s cinematic features aren’t capable of making adequate profit margins.

Anime, kdramas and now cdramas, all are rising in global popularity, especially among GenZ and among young women. That’s a global trend affecting the audience that Star Trek needs to share in to survive. What’s the problem with considering what the franchise would need to do to compete with these?

Yes, there are other serious actors in Chinese film and television, as well as other Asian countries. And hopefully as the young audience that is interested in cdramas matures, they may broaden their horizons and taken productions that are more focused on quality than personal beauty.

However, it’s also true that very few, even among those who graduate from China’s top theatre and performing arts programs go directly into serious roles. Very few have the resources to create their own independent production companies. Most are contracted by agencies, with their careers managed by them — with enormous financial penalties if they seek to become independent or move agencies. Most are in their 30s before they can break into more serious film and television roles.

Let’s face it, Star Trek has historically put the most seasoned actors, with theatrical credits, in the Captain chair but the rest of the ensemble has typically been a mix of with less experienced actors included. Many legacy roles were cast with actors of an equivalent skill level to idols.

It’s very welcome to have an Asian actor of Michelle Yeoh’s calibre in a captain’s chair, but Sulu and Kim, in 60 years of the franchise, should not remain the only East Asian main ensemble characters. More, future casting of characters with Japanese, Korean or Chinese biographies should consider hiring actors who are from those countries rather than exclusively Americans with that heritage.

All to say, it’s an interesting discussion. Appreciate the engagement.

As I said, the images were posted on Reddit by someone who loves both Cdramas and Star Trek.

I’ve checked privately with the creator and they asked to watermark the images. They shared the watermarked versions with me by private messaging and agreed to let me post here.

This person is a professional vfx specialist working in television who did this for their own amusement. They have asked me to avoid sharing more detail on who they are which I believe is fair.

If you aren’t aware that there is a certain amount of directed compositing in many CGI engines for vfx and game design, I don’t know what to say.

Using generated render to rough up an idea can be part of the process.

Pursuit of Jade reportedly cost the equivalent of $100 million for 40 episodes and certainly looks like it.

S-tier cdramas are quite well funded now. I just watched the current day 2025 science fiction thriller Mobius on Netflix. It was at the production level of any American or European show.

The creator is a professional vfx artist who was playing, and has included a watermark for that reason.

Yes, AI is part of their toolkit, but these were not just a case of asking a gen AI tool fabricate something.

Not entirely sure what’s all in the mix but I found it interesting and well drawn.

It qualifies as kaiju-inspired fan art, and this community is quite generous in scope. As long as it’s Kaiju, not necessarily licensed Toho.

You can ask the creator directly by tagging him as Mastodon and Lemmy federate.

Got it.

I generally think of the vertical market niche as under 25, not a large slice of the fediverse.

I don’t see though how vertical pagination is much different than social media on phones, which we’re all fairly accustomed to.

I don’t think this is targeted to our age group at all.

The vertical format is grown in anime and Asian dramas as well.

China is starting to be competitive with vertical short dramas specifically produced for the US market.

This is interesting.

The vertical manga/manha/manhua format is where new GenZ audiences can be found.

I’m going to infer that Deadline made a typo, but I copied it verbatim from their listing.

Regrettably geoblocked for Canada. Sigh.

I really prefer the work by the team that’s now in charge of the television side. But they received a lot of negativity for K:SI so it seems the television medium is a better fit.

It will be interesting to see whether the film part of the franchise can ground things more again.

The cinematic release scheduled for 2027 Godzilla v Kong: Supernova, reported to feature Spacegodzilla, sound like it will continue to go in a different direction than the new television franchise with Apple that aligns more closely to the first two movies.

You have a point generally but underestimate how loathed the 1998 film is.

The 1998 movie sufficiently disrespected the values around Gojira that Toho has been incredibly cautious about licensing since. There are many contractual limits on how the Toho Kaiju can be used, especially Godzilla.

American interpretations have leaned too much to the younger male audiences who are just interested in big monsters fighting and threatening humans. Not so much interested in morality stories about humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

Legendary Entertainment has tried to bring a more character driven human centric version to US and international audiences. However, the films after Kong: Skull Island had a different creative team and became more focused on spectacular fights than storytelling or messaging.

M:LOM is helmed by the original creatives. They seem to be successful overall in balancing more character driven storytelling but whichever way they lean, there will be some dissatisfaction.

I’d say that it’s fairly clear that the writers had an endpoint for the season, a few key narrative, Kaiju and character milestones that they mapped out, as well as some narrative pipe that they wanted to lay down towards the third season.

The season mostly succeeds from that perspective but there’s validity in some of the criticisms.

One thing to keep in mind is that the show is serving different international audiences, including a core of American fans who only want to see big Kaiju fight.

My sense is that they got the balance a bit different for the second season such that those who liked the first season may not be as happy with the second and vice versa.

In particular, this season seems to be the natural conclusion to many unresolved issues from the movie Kong: Skull Island — one of the most divisive movies in the Monsterverse. So, if that movie is one that someone liked or found intriguing, they are likely to find this season particularly satisfying.

You really know it’s from the 1970s.

And people (quite falsely) believe an urban myth the inking choices in Star Trek: the Animated Series were due to a colourblind artist.

No folks, those of us who were alive then will tell you this was definitionally cool at the time.

As with other wild populations, the animals’ health, ecological sustainability and whether they are reservoirs of infectious disease would be the paramount concern.

Not sure that the current provincial government has the credibility in evidence-based decision making to be able to sustain any interventions.

As Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Carignan is a General not a Lieutenant General.

It’s really unfortunate when a basic error doesn’t get caught in the vetting of an article as it undermines the rest of the story.

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/organizational-structure/chief-defence-staff/cds-bio.html