OT: Capitals Cinema Club: TV and Movies

[Jags]

Perspective is funny though, you see the insiders seem to view this as a hatchet job against Vince now. I felt like the series was pretty down the middle…not too heavily slanted either way.

I thought it was very well made, and excellent for people that don't know McMahon's story at all. But even if you have a cursory understanding of his background -- I'm not a pro wrestling fan, but I grew up in the 80s when you couldn't escape it -- there's nothing new to discover. The most shocking moments are still the Stossel/Costas/Keteyian interviews and the gruesome demises of so many of the wrestlers in his stable. And all of that happened ages ago.

The recent stories surrounding the company were his pretty obvious affairs (not shocking because his fake affairs and storylines were more salacious), the typical fall of a titan as they lose the spotlight and power and become decrepit (Kraft, Cosby, Weinstein, and on and on), and the stuff with his version of Eric and Ivanka (also far more interesting in their on-screen personas written by 9-year-olds than in real life).

For the uninitiated, it's appointment viewing. Very well done. But if you know anything at all about WWE, there's nothing new.

 

[CapitalsCupReality]

I thought it was very well made, and excellent for people that don't know McMahon's story at all. But even if you have a cursory understanding of his background -- I'm not a pro wrestling fan, but I grew up in the 80s when you couldn't escape it -- there's nothing new to discover. The most shocking moments are still the Stossel/Costas/Keteyian interviews and the gruesome demises of so many of the wrestlers in his stable. And all of that happened ages ago.

The recent stories surrounding the company were his pretty obvious affairs (not shocking because his fake affairs and storylines were more salacious), the typical fall of a titan as they lose the spotlight and power and become decrepit (Kraft, Cosby, Weinstein, and on and on), and the stuff with his version of Eric and Ivanka (also far more interesting in their on-screen personas written by 9-year-olds than in real life).

For the uninitiated, it's appointment viewing. Very well done. But if you know anything at all about WWE, there's nothing new.

I mean come on if you’re not a pretty hardcore wrestling fan, you wouldn’t typically know much of what’s happened in that world unless you watched all the seasons of Dark side of the ring and read up a LOT lol….hell a lot of wrestling fans don’t know all that stuff. I didn’t. I learned a ton watching Dark Side of the Ring myself, especially the older years.

I think there’s plenty to enjoy from this series for the average fan.

Pretty sickening how Hogan dropped Belzer….I mean put him to sleep ok, but to drop him so his head hits was crazy…

 

[Jags]

I mean come on if you’re not a pretty hardcore wrestling fan, you wouldn’t typically know much of what’s happened in that world

Fair enough, but like you said, perspective is tricky that way. I'm not a wrestling fan at all, but I love sports. So I've watched sports news a ton since I was pretty young. The WWF was all over the place in the 80s, but McMahon shot to the forefront when they got sued by Stossel, which was a huge news story at the time, and Vince definitely makes an impression that lasts.

So over the years, when it happened over and over again pretty much every time he was interviewed outside of his wrestling bubble, those of us that live outside that bubble got pretty frequent reminders that, "That dude that owns wrestling is f***ing nuts." The Costas and Keteyian interviews made major headlines.

My point is that if you're not a wrestling fan but are a big sports fan, most of those stories were pretty common knowledge if you just followed sports news. Outside of being a fan, WWE's only claims to fame are the deaths, steroids, and crazy shit that happens outside the sport, most of which involved McMahon. I haven't seen the show you mentioned, but Gumble's HBO show covered the ongoing nuttiness at semiregular intervals, and there were a couple 30 for 30s.

Inside of pro wrestling, there were absolutely things I never heard. A couple behind-the-scenes things were interesting -- stuff like taking the belt from Hart -- but most of the stuff that was new to me were just things that illustrate how juvenile and often disgusting the "stories" are. Less interesting than just kinda f***ed up, y'know?