VintageComics

I have learned through extensive discussion with you both here and elsewhere that you're very disingenuous when the conversation deepens and so I'm not going to engage in debate with you. I feel it's best for everyone here. If you ever want to discuss this stuff in person or privately without the distractions of a cheering audience, I'm down - like when you walked into me in Baltimore 2 years ago or via PM. I'd have been happy to engage but it was just a quick pleasantry and we moved on. Thanks for reading my post, though.

You have to wonder why Disney, who has more market research and investigative power at their disposal than 99% of all the entertainment companies in the world, would put out a movie about "good vs evil", because let's face it that is what every movie is about, but completely emasculate and psychologically disarm the single most powerful being in the movie, a DEITY no less who is most capable of saving the world from all that evil. You CAN empower men to be more sensitive without emasculating them. It happens in my family every day. I don't think you can empower them by emasculating them and taking away their manhood. You never have to emasculate or demean anyone to make a point but the new way says it's not only acceptable, it's THE PREFERRED WAY. Would this make me want to fight off dinosaurs to defend my family from them? This movie would be better served if it were sold as a parody, but instead it's being projected as "real life". Seriously.

I will not amend.

There are two important facets to this discussion as I see it. 1) The world is very diverse and there are many successful (and unsuccessful businesses) but in order for a business to be successful for the long term, it needs to be honest with itself and allowed to operate freely to produce it's art form as it sees fit. This includes things you don't like. Businesses are being pressured and influenced by outside forces. It's happening in every area of life without exception. Every single person reading this feels it, sees it and knows it. They are not allowed to operate as they see fit and the internet that was supposed to connect everyone is the single most divisive tool in all of human history. You put out something someone doesn't like and they can destroy your life from their smelly sofa covered in popcorn and soda pop. I'll add that honesty / integrity is not a highly valued commodity these days. Dishonesty is, and the end product of dishonesty is dismal failure. When you are trying to please many masters, you're dishonest with yourself. So why are people surprised that there are so many failures when there is so much dishonesty? Honest businesses know exactly who their audience is and they target that audience effectively but outside forces cause businesses to be dishonest with themselves and corrupt the art form, just like in music and in EVERY OTHER ART FORM. It has happened to every major rock band, film director, creative editor, media mogul, you name it. And you know it's true. ------------------------------------------------------- 2) Children are not being raised to want to read and learn. They're being raised (actually, groomed) to avoid reading and avoid learning. Our children are being raised to avoid things they might disagree with and chase things they agree with, and in doing so are raised to act like crack addicts chasing what feels good. Children are being distracted from reading by the influences of social media. Their attention spans are getting shorter, their breadth of material to experience real life from is getting smaller due to different things, including but not limited to cancel cultures (which is really just a projection of the few on the many), manipulation of their psyche by social media (we are physiologically / psychologically changing the evolutionary path of humanity with tech) and by an over saturation of shiny, sugary, addictive forces that have nothing positive or productive in them at all while starving them of true human connections that come from family and community. How do you expect your kids to want to sit down and read a book that may disagree with when they've been programmed to hate complex things that they may disagree with? The only way to grow is to face complex things you disagree with and learn to navigate them but we've disarmed them and this has caused them to avoid it all and seek the sugar hits. Your comic book now needs to catch them with a Taylor Swift hook to get their attention, be promoted on Tik Tok and not be over in 180 seconds long for it to be successful. And I have nothing against Taylor Swift. There's a new Tik Tok craze and Gen Z are realizing what it's like to unplug from the digital world. This is a pathetic failure on the part of US, me and you, and the ones who led the way. Believe me, I have tried. You've seen me trying. Why did it take nearly 30 years for children to realize en masse how devious social media is and how many countless millions of lives have been ruined before they realized it? You all know this is true too. ------------------------------------------------------------ You want to expand your reader base? You need to focus on these two things. TLDR for the crack addicts? More more autonomy, more honesty, less social media, building better families and stronger communities. It's the only thing that will work.

The 'new crowd of readers' generally don't spend nearly as much of their money as legacy supporters do, and never will. Do you want proof? Comic dealers live by the phrase "cosplayers have no pockets in their costumes" meaning, they don't carry money to spend. All they want is their 15 minutes of fame and they're gone. They're too busy chasing fads. Stop pandering to people who have no money, no will to even get up in the morning, no real life experience to make mature, long term decisions and no business sense to dictate what other people should do with their money. You can't build anything lasting from the top down. It's not how nature works AT ALL. It is how BIG MONEY works, though. You can only grow it from the bottom up and the fact that Big Money is willing to torch the 80 years of organic growth everyone one of us has put into this hobby should be a lesson to you all. Don't believe what they tell you. Believe what they show you.

I've posted this story many times before. I was at the Motor City con in the Detroit area about 12 (may have been longer - like) 14 years ago and I see Carmine Infantino sitting there and NOBODY is talking to him. Nobody cared. It was like having one of the Beatles sitting there being ignored. So I went up and got to talk to him for 20 minutes with no interruptions. I couldn't believe it. Even if I wasn't a DC guy, I'd have been an IDJIT to not appreciate his contributions for nearly single handedly fueling some of the greatest storytelling in the hobby. I ended up buying a book as a gift for a best friend who was the largest DC fan. So happy I got to do that.

Gotcha. I didn't watch the movie for it's representation of the conflict, but even so I thought they did that REALLY well. They didn't pull punches at show the atrocities of war, they just didn't dwell on them in much the same way in Apocalypse Now was about Sheen's journey. But the "feel" of the movie, and I'm not sure if people can relate but some movies have this ability to create and isolate this dry (in a good way), clear feeling as it moves you through the narration and it never lost sight of that "feel" I'm talking about around the lead character. Anyway, always interesting to hear how everyone gets something different from the same film.

Sounds like code for "I don't want to be involved with a struggling franchise". These little moments shape people's careers and choosing the wrong one can make or break you.

What didn't you like about it? I thought the scene when he came out of the building after shooting the sniper upstairs was pretty epic. As he was running through the ruins of that town, with that amber glow it was magical and very reminiscent of the Apocalypse Now to me. In fact, the way each scene was a mini-arc to itself and the flow actually felt like the movie was a tribute to Apocalypse. I found it very moving.

Sorry, you are absolutely correct. It is a flop economically, but it's gross is in line with what this movie would have expected to pull. So yeah, basically they spend triple what they should have spent to make it. Question: Did anything change about this movie between Chapek's departure and Iger's arrival? I'd be very curious to know about this and see if the switch between CEOs had anything to do with the flop. Also, the conversation really was over in the Marvels thread from my end and locking it was unnecessary. I didn't have anything to add since we'd pretty much talked through most of the disagreements. It could probably be opened up safely as I know a lot of people have opinions about the movie after seeing it. Is it possible to have it reopened?

I doubt it was easy on her and I'm sure it took a lot of courage to post that. The movie actually isn't a flop. It's just that the world's expectations weren't managed well by Disney. Disney projected the expectations of a $1BIL film when in fact, if they'd projected the expectations of a $300MIL film everyone would have been thrilled. In effect, Disney threw the careers of the people involved with the movie under the bus because of their poor decision making. What they did to the people involved is actually pretty disgusting in hindsight but common practice in the corporate world. -------------------------------------------------- Similar thing happened to John Carter of Mars. Remember that movie? It really was a well done movie with a $263 Million dollar budget that should have been a BLOCKBUSTER. Instead, John Carter inexplicably bombed and basically ruined Taylor Kitsch's career. He hasn't been cast in a similar 'blockbuster' movie since, has he? These people literally are willing to ruin the lives of the people they employ. Bud Light did it too. The CEO LITERALLY went public to beg the public to to "think of the employees" for HIS mistake while he collects $12 Million a year plus bonuses? EFFING CLOWN WORLD. These people are literally mentally ill. And if they do it to them, they'll do it to you and anyone in their way. They would bury you in a heartbeat if it meant saving their own skins. These are the people everyone loves.

Separate question that would really put things into perspective. What are the best grossing children's movies of all time and should Marvels be placed in that category? It seems that kids movies generally gross roughly half of what the top adult movies gross, so maybe it's a mistake to box in Marvels with other MCU movies in General then, as all the previous "canon" MCU movies were actual adult movies. So if Marvels grosses $300MIL, it would be considered a failure as an MCU canon movie but would actually be considered a top 20 flich as a children's movie, albeit not against it's budget. And THAT is where Disney execs blew it. The marketing was so convoluted and the budget so overblown for what this was, that it HAD to be corporate blunder after corporate blunder that made this movie the dumpster fire it became. Y'all see how easy it is to problem solve when everyone isn't bickering amongst each other? Does anyone disagree? https://www.statista.com/statistics/792519/kids-box-office-revenue-north-america/

No I'm assuming he's talking about why the movie is doing poorly in general because he didn't quote anybody specifically. According to Jaybuck the majority of moviegoers, or the "target audience" aren't "fanboys" (or fangirls for that matter) so they can't be responsible for the movie doing this poorly. They'd only be responsible for a small slice of the pie and the movie would be doing low numbers, but not "all time low" numbers. Or was he talking to specific people in this thread without quoting anybody and saying because there wasn't any sexual innuendo they don't like the movie? Aren't these young girls in the movie and the movie was made for a young teen crowd? If so, that's an inappropriate way to discuss it. What am I missing? I think the reason the movie bombed was nailed in the locked thread by the female critic Bosco posted (can't remember her name). The movie seemed to be targeted to the young female crowd (pre adulthood) but was marketed to adults. That's a marketing bomb of biblical proportions and that makes the most sense in light of everything discussed.

Using their brains to avoid a movie that tells a dull story with childish character development and no depth. On this I can agree.

Now you're just speaking out of your...buttock?

I forgot about that one. Yeah, except we're well past that. If it was just video games and entertainment it would be one thing, but we're actually blending reality and the digital world in everyday life now. It's called "Biodigital Convergence" and for example, the Canadian government has pages dedicated to the topic on their Government website that have been been there for years now. I first saw it 2 years ago. I'd post a link but someone would call it politics even though it isn't. Cue the usual, opposing opinions cutting in from the usual crowd, who I'm sure will arrive shortly spinning it's value in medicine and society, but ultimately it won't stop there. We're already seeing it in real life. The good things get abused and spun into corporate consumerism and it overtakes everything. Most people didn't realize what NFTs were or why they were so 'valuable' 3 years ago but it was just the earliest runup of people who were buying "properties" in the coming digital realm. Quite literally. And yet if you tried to explain it to someone 5 years ago they'd think you were a crackpot of some sort pushing "conspiracy theory". We used to call it science fiction, folks, before people became invested in the outcome. Well, pretty much every "theory" that people had real concerns about has become a true living conspiracy today, and so this AI discussion will be irrelevant and fall by the wayside in just a few short years to everyone except historians and those that never wanted it. There is quite literally a "Matrix" being built, slowly, in real time around everyone. And people are buying it up hook line and sinker. Some because they hate their own lives, some because they're naive to it happening and some because they WANT it to happen. And it's those that want it to happen, the "dis-agreeable people" who rule society (like the people who own movie studios) and push their ideas through on those that are "more agreeable" or have no clue. That's AI, why it's so important to everyone and where we're headed. The SAG strike is like a drop of dew in an ocean.

All this talk of AI, fake dolls, etc. Pretty soon everyone will look like this, the 'scientists' will argue it's normal evolution and NOBODY will remember this thread except the people who didn't want reality to be taken away.

The same place all the strong females are in the WNBA when it comes time to buy tickets. It's easy to preach solidarity through a social media account but that's very different than acting in solidarity in real life. Social media is a different world but it's not the real world.

You're twisting the reality. Fanboys don't "hate it", the GENERAL PUBLIC hates it. You can't build the argument in one thread that "fanboys don't even make up the majority of movie goers" (like Jaybuck - a true media expert by trade made) and then in another thread just say "it's the fanboy's fault". Ridiculous but typical if you only see the world through selfish glasses.

Real dolls. Should we start a thread on which one is our favorite?

Me and my kids walked out of the last Suicide Squad movie after about 45 mins. I'd never done that before. It was so atrocious.

One of the things that I always notice (or think about) is WHY a character is appealing. Visuals, associations, behavioral qualities. There are a lot of factors. Like, why is Superman so appealing? Or Batman, Spider-man, Wolverine etc. Why were the NEW X-men more appealing than the OLD X-men? One reason I've noticed is the use of primary colors in their outfits. The old X-men outfits were mostly black and yellow (I always loved The Beast's red and always thought Marvel Girl looked like a 1960's horticulturist). The new X-men outfits were a mix of blues, yellows, reds and other colors thrown in for some diversity. Look at the color they used to pop on the cover of GSX #1. It was RED right through the center of the cover that caused that cover to pop! Reds, blues and yellows seem to draw more attention than purples, greens and blacks etc. Batman is the exception because he doesn't rely as much on visual appeal. The character is one of the most compellingly written in all of comics (but they still use blue, which is a primary color ) MOST great characters incorporate these colors in their ensemble. Prove me wrong. Even great comic book covers more often use this formula. The other is his name. It's just, plain DUMB. His name quite literally sounds like what you hear when you throw a pop can into a garbage can. KANG!!! Every time I hear that word, all it does is annoy me. Now try to take something that is visually and audibly working against you and try to make everyone like it. They missed the boat and have been trying to paddle and catch up ever since, but the raft has such big holes in it that even fixing a power motor to it won't allow it to catch to the boat it's chasing.

Well, I guess "it wasn't me" but my apology fell on deaf ears, so....anyway... ---------------------------------------- I'm going to move a post OUT of the Daredevil thread and into here to not take the Daredevil thread OT and offend people who obviously can't just ignore what they don't like. This brings up another excellent point that is worth discussing about watching shows, although in by extension it really applies to every area of life. Media has changed the behavior of society by shortening our attention spans so that we quite literally act like squirrels chasing a nut in every aspect of life, from relationships to entertainment and it really is causing a cumulative negative effect across society. This lack of attention span causes people to crave something they're not getting but keep doing the same thing to try to get it rather than alter their behavior. The parallel here would be the sugar effect on the physical body. The brain runs on glucose and craves it. When people feel down, they turn to quick hits of sugar like soda or candy. This send a quick dopamine hit making the brain feel "good" in the same way a drug would, until that simple sugar runs out and then they get a serotonin crash that is just as bad as before they took the sugar hit, so they hit it again and repeat the cycle. What the body REALLY wants is complex carbs that break down slowly and feed the entire body in a measured way that the body doesn't crash from and if you don't actually FORCE YOURSELF to ignore the sugar craving and with intent, seek out the more complex carb, you become a slave to the sugary dopamine hits and serotonin crashes. What happens, is you never really figure out what it feels like to feel "normal" and people quite literally spend their entire lives living in this unhealthy cycle. The reason I made that parallel is because movies and television are exactly the same. People quite literally watch television craving those dopamine hits. Once you start on a series of poor quality television that feeds those sugar cravings (like men watching terrible television just to see scantily clad women, or women watching shows just to watch horrible patterns of behavior like gossip and sex the way soap operas offer) people quite literally spend their entire lives feeding themselves these things. When you put a show in front of them that's quite well written, a little more complex and is a slower burn they won't find it entertaining. I see it with my younger kids, who are on their phones and can't pay attention through the first 45 minutes of a movie where all of the complex carbs are being offered. I try to really give a show or a movie a chance, like you did if I'm interested as sometimes I can be "won over" if the quality is there. Did anyone enjoy the movie 1917? I just watched it and was pleasantly blown away at the cinematography, writing, dialogue and acting.