VintageComics

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.

Fair points. You can understand why I thought it was me, right? If it wasn't me then I genuinely apologize.

So, you're suggesting we should have a thread for every minority interest in comics so that nobody gets forced to read something they don't want to?

The problem is that people are convinced as a rule that more money means more quality and that's not the case. It's quite literally like a brainwashing and it's apparent in every industry. It certainly was in cars and comics, the two I grew up in. For example with comics, people think paying top dollar for a 9.8 is enough, but people have varying criteria for even 9.8s but novices don't see that. Same with automotive. You can spend $500K for a Bentley, and while I can't say definitely due to being out of the industry for 14 years, but it used to be that a $20K honda was technically a more reliable car. So it's a general rule that you get what you pay for but it's not a specific rule. This is an incredible point, and one that can't be stressed enough. Necessity is the mother of invention, and in the same vein when I coached soccer when I gave the kids plenty of time (resources) to score a goal during drills, they couldn't make it happen. I would cut the clock by a few seconds with every drill. 10, 7, 5 and finally 3 seconds. At 3 seconds, the pressure was so great that they would hyper focus and something eventually would lead to goal more often than not. In fact, procrastination and hyper focus under pressure is often a sign of a high achiever and MANY highly successful people operate like this. The adrenaline gets going and you get into salvation mode - you have to save your skin and come up with a solution and all the gears then align. Feige's bank was so bloated that it literally lulled them to sleep. I'll bet if he cut his budget in half for every movie, they'd make better movies. (Disney, send me the check please?) Look at Oppenheimer. $100MIL budget, ZERO CGI effects, one of the best movies of the year. And it made $1BIL (rouhgly), so 10 X it's money. Meanwhile, The Dark Knight, probably the best of the trilogy was filmed at nearly DOUBLE the budget ($185MIL) and made the same total ($1BIL) and 'only' made 6 X Which is the better investment? Which is the better movie? That's what I'm talking about, biznatches! Pressure is a GOOD THING, but most would have you believe it's bad. Those people are missing out on shaping diamonds!

Yes you, Biznatch.

BTW, it's worth pointing out that if Paqart hadn't made the OT post about ARQ, I'd never have heard about it. Conversation and interaction is the lifeblood of society. It's a beautiful thing. How some accept it is on them, not on the person talking.

I'm at a point where I just can't be bothered to watch mediocre stuff anymore. I'm old and my time is limited! I've cut out the majority of my television and will usually only catch either an old movie I love or something new if I really feel it's worth my time. Every once in a while I come across a hidden gem that I think is great, or someone recommends something like the ARQ Sci Fi movie Paqart recommended which was incredible, for example. I'd NEVER have watched that movie otherwise but I thought it was better than anything Disney put out in the last 3-5 years (honestly). And it was low budget - like $2MIL. The entire movie was pretty much filmed in one house. I normally HATE movies that are all filmed in one location such as movies all filmed in an airplane or a phone booth, but this movie was so well paced, well filmed and even well acted that it was GREAT. I just don't understand how someone can spend $2MIL and make a great film but "the pros" spend $250MIL and make a flop. The formula is absolutely broken and it needs to be thrown away and reinvented. And that doesn't mean Feige needs to go. What it means is that Feige needs to be given total control with zero pressure from the bosses because THAT was the formula that worked. Feige may have "total control", wink, wink, but Iger (or Disney / Chapek / whatever outside forces there are that we previously discussed) ABSOLUTELY are still influencing Feige and it's apparent. They've openly admitted it. Even if it's just pressure to produce more content (as the execs yell from the back office "WE NEED ANOTHER RECORD") it is RUINING THE COMPANY. The best art comes from the artist, not from the accountant.

Dude, I have ALWAYS posted this way. For nearly 20 years nobody cared. Now all of a sudden 'everyone' cares. Well, everyone except the dozens of people who keep either agreeing or quoting and adding to my points. Would you like me to find 1000 off topic discussions in threads for you that aren't caused by me to ease your pain? Bosco posts 100 memes a minute that have nothing to do with movies and gets a pass? Get off my ***favorite play toy*** and just ignore what you don't like. It's really simple.