Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[Grailknight]

Antitrust laws are last resorts to protect against monopolies and oligarchies  colluding to stifle competition . As long as there are half a dozen or so studios/streaming services then they really don't apply. And offering a service for free with commercials or for pay as a premium without will neatly sidestep that. It's hard to prove price gouging when there are free alternatives available(no matter how annoying the commercials are).

 

2 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Antitrust laws allow, currently, 3 cell network providers.  While there may be diverse cable providers, I believe each has a monopoly in their service areas.  Yeah, they broke up monolithic AT&T but the baby bells have no direct competition;  it's indirect at best.  My phone service is VoIP with a cable-based network connection.  Microsoft can't be forced to separate their OS and office products sectors;  that's a move that's been pushed because combining them makes competition nearly impossible.

 

I don't think your position is well-established here.

 

As long as DirecTV is out there the cable industry doesn't have a monopoly. There were rumblings about there only being one viable satellite provider but that has been settled because cable was there as an option and most high speed internet can be bundled with a TV package now.  5G technology(and even 4G) make streaming possible(if not really affordable for internet) and it's possible to stream a movie over a phone app directly to your TV now.

 

2 hours ago, Bazza said:

I’d be surprised if antitrust is heard of again. 

 

I don't doubt that. We're closer to a Shadowrun type Wild West internet than an emerging monopoly. It'll be more expensive to get everything but cheaper to get one genre.

[unclevlad]

I think the strongest point is that cellular is becoming a competitive-market service option.  DSL...no competition.  Satellite...no competition.  Cable...no competition.  Cellular has the potential to let you pick among any of the three, which will increase price pressure on the others.

 

Plus:  everyone gives better deals with bundles.  Cable can provide TV and internet;  DSL offers bundles with DirecTV.  (Let's ignore phone service.  My phone is VoIP and it's < $15 a month...with better call blocking.)  Wellll...if you're *principally* into streaming services, you may not need normal TV at all...whereas, who doesn't live on their cell phones?  I am pretty sure it's not right for me, but I haven't looked into it in depth.  (Southern New Mexico isn't exactly a cellular hotbed.)  And I think it'd take a fair bit of research to see what would, or wouldn't, work, and the overall price.  We all know the quoted prices are utter rubbish...pure come-ons.  To get a decent package, you'll get hammered by This fee and That charge, and oh, let's not forget These service charges and Those taxes and fees.  So who knows, maybe it's possible.

 

I wouldn't be surprised, tho, if the phone companies and cable are very worried;  the cell network infrastructure cost is covered in large part by the phone-based demand, so tagging on home internet should add only incrementally to system costs.  The phone and cable issues are more severe.  Satellite is very likely in the most trouble.  DirecTV is down to only 15M subscribers at this point.  Honestly...that's too small a market share to be a serious rival to cable.  Satellite is horribly expensive;  one thing I *loathed* was that you had to rent the receivers.  At, IIRC, $30 a month for the main receiver.  And each TV needed its own box.  I *detest* paying for equipment;  if that receiver was worth more than $300-400 if the market was open on them, I'd be shocked.  So I've fully paid for the damn thing in a year, and I *still* get charged.  DirecTV alone was huge;  adding internet would've been worse.  I had DSL at that point, until I completely swapped to cable...and bought my modem, with 1750 MHz wireless, for maybe $120.

 

The cable service has also been more reliable.  Satellite goes out in any thunderstorm, and we get a fair number of those.  Went out for a couple days when we got a shockingly seerious snowstorm.  DSL was mostly good...but also failed for several hours at a time on occasion.

 

Bringing it back to the content providers...yeah, I don't see any anti-trust actions for them.  What I fear is a greater transition from network TV to pay-TV or streaming (for sports) and that network TV itself will be complete, utter dreck...anything good, will run on the streaming service.  Going back to Marvel...I think What If...? might be cool, but I'll be damned if I support Disney's moves here.  Did the same with Picard...never touched it, and won't.  There is no doubt in my mind that virtually anything *good* will be locked away behind their paywalls.

[Bazza]

7 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Anti Trust laws and judgements in congress would NEVER allow any other industry to coalesce around so few megacorps controlling all entertainment, but they do not seem to care about this sector of the economy at all.

 

Of course not. The entertainment industry(ies) via their PR org Hollywood has captured one of the two major political parties, ensuring a “Hollywood democracy”. This benign corruption has been allowed to continue as it is the status quo (private interests prioritised over the common good).  The consolidation of megacorps has thus made it easier for certain asset management firms to invest-to-control these corps and dictate cultural norms.
 
And it is not just Hollywood. The biggest companies (ie “Big ‘X’”) in music, media, book publishing, technology, social media, banking, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, energy are also vulnerable or outright captured, as Hollywood is. As an aside, the list of companies (which follows) share two major asset management firms as shareholders and are either 1 & 2, or in the top 5. List: Comcast, National Amusements, AT&T, Discovery Inc, The Walt Disney Company, Vivendi SE, 1 of them only), General Electric, News Corporation, Alphabet Inc (Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Verizon, T-Mobile US, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and, EOG Resources,. You can check yourself, go to Yahoo Finance and type in the names of the companies and check the “holders” tab. 
 
Looking through these list of corporations one can see, from a big picture perspective, a shared culture, that is broadly speaking, achieving similar shared aims. That implies a shared level of coordination, which I suggest is due to the same two asset management firms are their largest shareholders.
 
So, what is antitrust going to achieve exactly? A: precisely nothing to stop these private vested interests. 
 

Sources:
https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-90-media-america-illusion-choice-objectivity-2020/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_film_studios

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry

http://publish.illinois.edu/englishadvising/big-five-publishers/#sthash.cHBvPCuh.dpbs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_energy_companies
Google searches for Big Phama, Big Banks

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah, part of the problem is that a single monolithic, zealous worldview and political mindset is also taking over, and one that is not just agreed upon, but being strongly enforced.  Its one thing to have a few companies running everything.  Its another to have that, and those companies are willing to use that leverage and position to punish and block people they disagree with politically (and religiously).

[zslane]

11 hours ago, Grailknight said:

As long as there are half a dozen or so studios/streaming services then they really don't apply.

Well, there were more than half a dozen movie studios back in 1948, so consumers had choices then too. Yet the studio system that allowed studios to own their own theaters, in effect controlling exhibition in whatever slice of the theater market they owned, was broken up by government anti-trust action. Anti-trust was designed to eliminate vertical market control, and that's happening all over again. The cynic in me agrees that we live in an era in which Hollywood is seen as "too big to fail" (i.e., too important economically and culturally to be allowed to fail) and so it eludes anti-trust scrutiny. But if the battle between production and talent ever threatens to topple this precariously poised apple cart, some form of federally mandated regulation may step in to keep the industry from capsizing.

[Grailknight]

5 hours ago, zslane said:

Well, there were more than half a dozen movie studios back in 1948, so consumers had choices then too. Yet the studio system that allowed studios to own their own theaters, in effect controlling exhibition in whatever slice of the theater market they owned, was broken up by government anti-trust action. Anti-trust was designed to eliminate vertical market control, and that's happening all over again. The cynic in me agrees that we live in an era in which Hollywood is seen as "too big to fail" (i.e., too important economically and culturally to be allowed to fail) and so it eludes anti-trust scrutiny. But if the battle between production and talent ever threatens to topple this precariously poised apple cart, some form of federally mandated regulation may step in to keep the industry from capsizing.

 

The difference here is access. 

 

In 1948, movie theatres were pretty much the only option available. Television was in it's infancy and computers and portable phones were the stuff of science fiction. Theatrical releases weren't available for home viewing until years after their release and then only once or twice a year.

 

Contrast that to today, where television is a mature industry(55" HD screens are affordable on all but the tightest budgets), internet access is counted as a nearly necessary utility alongside electricity and water and smart phones are more powerful than the machines that ran the Apollo missions. 

 

A company can  keep a tight lid on in-house products, but there's so much competition that unless it's truly superior, consumers can go somewhere else. The studios pretty much gave up after the Divxx vs DVD experiment and just decided that maximizing general sales was going to be the future. Streaming faces a different issue: piracy. As long as there are hackers(foreign and domestic), there will be pirate sites that will give away the content for free. The skills and tech(especially VPN's) are widespread and there are just too many to police. It's better to sell your product for a smaller fee, so that the difference in quality and security risks make you the more attractive option.  

[Spence]

The problem with the He-Man debacle has absolutely nothing to do with it being a boy show or a girl show. That is only obscuring spin by the sad segment of our population that has to make everything about identity politics.

 

I am not a He-Man follower but this was too amusing not to follow.

 

In a nutshell

 

1) They announce another He-Man show.

 

2) They call it Masters of the Universe: Revelations.  So far nothing here.

 

3) the begin a long term promotion led by Kevin Smith, in them you see He-Man, Skeletor and Man-At-Arms  on everything from cups to cereal boxes beside K Smith smiling face.  This lasts for MONTHS

 

4) as things get close K Smith continues to talk up the project when Clownfish puts out a RUMOR they got via some of their former colleagues the new show would not actually be about He-Man.  With some even saying it was actually about Teela.  Still no controversy.

 

5) Kevin Smith adamantly denies this, calling the rumor false and that the show was definitely He-Man and not Teela.   I watched multiple interviews where he actually initiated the discussion to say that Clownfish was wrong and that it was definitely not about Teela. 

 

6) Show releases.  It opens with Imposter He-Man that gets killed followed by Prince Adam (?) biting the big one also.  Teela (the supposed veteran one of the central Heroes of the He-Man saga) and discovers that there were actually Royal secrets that she was not privy to (imagine that) and ignoring the fact that so many were dead including the He-Man/Prince Adam.  She pulls a 12 year old tantrum and leaves.  The rest of the series is completely about Teela.  A nasty uncivil spoiled version of Teela.  But Teela. 

 

7) After calling so many people liars and misinformed the fandom finds out that they were actually right and that K Smith had been blowing smoke the entire time. 

 

8 ) Done

 

The thing is if they had just named it Masters of the Universe: Teela's Saga or something similar or just refused to comment for instance "Well interesting question, but we want to surprise people with the show so I am not going to answer that one".  Or even if they said "Oops, you got us, yep we are making a show focusing on the supporting cast".   Would there have been grumbling?  270 million people in the US and a world population of Billions.  Yep, you can't please everyone.

 

But in this case Kevin Smith actually went out of his way to make what we know are patently false statements and even "attacked" entertainment blogs/Podcasts in the process. 

 

In the end people do not like being blatantly lied to. 

 

I was disappointed in the version of Teela because it wasn't Teela.  Teela was a tough powerful Hero that had a distinctive look and personalty.    The new Teela is now a stereotypical clone of all the overly buff characters complete with obligatory shaving of one side of the head.  Unique and powerful to sarcastic clone in one fell swoop. 

 

All the boys/girls/whatever is just a irrelevant smokescreen.

 

[Bazza]

11 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah, part of the problem is that a single monolithic, zealous worldview and political mindset is also taking over, and one that is not just agreed upon, but being strongly enforced.  Its one thing to have a few companies running everything.  Its another to have that, and those companies are willing to use that leverage and position to punish and block people they disagree with politically (and religiously).

 

Yeah, agree with what you say. This worldview has been mandated on society. Depending on which side you fall on, this is either benign or destructive. Many members here agree with it.

 

It occurs to me that it is deliberate policy for Hollywood to undermine these IPs, and rework them as necessary to conform to the “New Culture” worldview. It is not just one or two, but all of them, eventually. It is as much as ownership as it is ‘cultural relations’. And when you analyse its character, and look through the catalogue of ideas and the origins of “New Culture” you find a shared history of intellectuals: Ockham, Machiavelli, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Comte, et al. What they instituted is a flattening of reality devoid of natural philosophy and classical metaphysics. The effect is that the objective world/reality is directly unknowable. What's missing is: quality, essence, substance, teleology, formal causality, universals, transcendentals (unity, truth, good, beauty), consciousness, human nature, soul, virtue ethics (prudence, fortitude, temperance, justice) and more.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

Yeah, agree with what you say. This worldview has been mandated on society. Depending on which side you fall on, this is either benign or destructive. Many members here agree with it.

 

 

Honestly agree or disagree with it, its bad how its playing out.  No matter what your worldview is, stomping on people and destroying them for having different opinions from you on something is ghastly and horrific in its import.  Banks refusing to do business with someone, sites banning people over it, websites refusing business with someone because they had a differing idea on some subject is the way Bad Guys act.

 

And if every business gets together agreeing with this ideology and approach, its not just tyranny, but the death of creativity, freedom, and independence.  There used to be a tacit understanding that what people thought and believed was none of anyone else's business and businesses were only interested in legality and the bottom line.  This overt, calculated, and coordinate religious extremism to destroy anyone and anything that varies from the (ever changing, arbitrary) dogma of the current ideology is hideous and wrong.  There is no moral or just way to defend, support, or cheer on this kind of thing, let alone take part in it.

 

And that's a real problem I see building and building in our current culture.  The MAN is leaning on everyone who dares question the religious dogma of the establishment and working together behind the scenes to make that happen.

 

Nobody, anywhere, should like this or support it.  The proper, reasoned, and just response should be horror and opposition.

[Dr.Device]

22 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah, part of the problem is that a single monolithic, zealous worldview and political mindset is also taking over, and one that is not just agreed upon, but being strongly enforced.  Its one thing to have a few companies running everything.  Its another to have that, and those companies are willing to use that leverage and position to punish and block people they disagree with politically (and religiously).

 

This is straying pretty far off the topic of this post, but I'm really curious what this "single monolithic, zealous worldview and political mindset" you see taking over consists of. 

[Ternaugh]

16 hours ago, Grailknight said:

 

The difference here is access. 

 

In 1948, movie theatres were pretty much the only option available. Television was in it's infancy and computers and portable phones were the stuff of science fiction. Theatrical releases weren't available for home viewing until years after their release and then only once or twice a year.

 

Contrast that to today, where television is a mature industry(55" HD screens are affordable on all but the tightest budgets), internet access is counted as a nearly necessary utility alongside electricity and water and smart phones are more powerful than the machines that ran the Apollo missions. 

 

A company can  keep a tight lid on in-house products, but there's so much competition that unless it's truly superior, consumers can go somewhere else. The studios pretty much gave up after the Divxx vs DVD experiment and just decided that maximizing general sales was going to be the future. Streaming faces a different issue: piracy. As long as there are hackers(foreign and domestic), there will be pirate sites that will give away the content for free. The skills and tech(especially VPN's) are widespread and there are just too many to police. It's better to sell your product for a smaller fee, so that the difference in quality and security risks make you the more attractive option.  

 

A side note about DIVX: 

 

Every DIVX-enhanced player was a full DVD player, with an additional authentication module. Their target wasn't DVD, but was attempting to circumvent the Blockbuster model by allowing rentals at home without having to return the movies to a store. It essentially failed because most other retailers didn't want to carry a product that benefitted Circuit City's bottom line (Ultimate Electronics and Good Guys carried it, but were paid to do so by CC), the players were more expensive (about $100 more than almost identical models), and the discs lacked extras or widescreen versions (wrong target audience for a $800 DVD player).

[zslane]

12 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

The MAN is leaning on everyone who dares question the religious dogma of the establishment and working together behind the scenes to make that happen.

 

A more pernicious problem, in my view, is the rise of cancel culture. That's not "the Man" in action, that's "the people" taking to the streets of the Internet looking for people to digitally lynch for daring to have a different opinion. For example, Grace Randolph recently explained that the reason she didn't give The Suicide Squad an RT rating at all was because she didn't want to deal with the vicious pounding she would take for refusing to board the pro-Gunn support train by blindly praising what she regards as a pretty flawed movie. I was a bit shocked that she was allowing cancel culture to silence her, as I've never heard her express such concern before. Sadly, I think this is only going to get worse, especially for people who make a living on social media.

[Grailknight]

3 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

 

A side note about DIVX: 

 

Every DIVX-enhanced player was a full DVD player, with an additional authentication module. Their target wasn't DVD, but was attempting to circumvent the Blockbuster model by allowing rentals at home without having to return the movies to a store. It essentially failed because most other retailers didn't want to carry a product that benefitted Circuit City's bottom line (Ultimate Electronics and Good Guys carried it, but were paid to do so by CC), the players were more expensive (about $100 more than almost identical models), and the discs lacked extras or widescreen versions (wrong target audience for a $800 DVD player).

 

Oh, I know the history of Divxx. I was right there on the frontline of the retail electronics wars. In addition to truly foolish decision to go with only one retailer they completely misjudged the composition of the early DVD consumer base( It took another year and the PS2 launch to really kickoff DVDs). At the time, DVD was strictly limited to early adopter videophiles, whereas Divxx needed to be a mass consumer product to succeed. Plus the need to keep your player connected to a phone line or the internet( which could be remotely accessed ) was a big non-starter. But even given that, they might have made it if they had sold the players at all retailers and if the discs could have been purchased at Blockbuster and other retailers and not a Circuit City exclusive. 

[zslane]

The fatal flaw of DiVX was that the studios maintained complete control over the consumer's ability to watch the disc(s) they bought. It was going to be the first home video format in which physically owning the media (a disc) did not guarantee you the ability to watch it whenever you wanted to. Moreover, DiVX threatened to split the marketplace the way VHS and Betamax did, and all the studios and hardware manufacturers who had invested in DVD's development couldn't afford another format war, as they shrewdly realized that consumers would be paralyzed with indecision as to which format to invest in, and so neither would catch on before withering on the proverbial vine.

 

DiVX was a craven attempt by entertainment lawyers to deliver ultimate control of content to their clients and the marketplace rallied against it. I proudly displayed the "No DiVX" logo on my website until DiVX officially died.

[Bazza]

Well back on topic: What If starts today. 

[Dr.Device]

13 minutes ago, Bazza said:

What If starts today. 

 

What if what starts today?

/🤡

[Ternaugh]

1 hour ago, Bazza said:

Well back on topic: What If starts today. 

 

 

As If! Like, only if you're a time traveller, who thinks it's Wednesday!

[Bazza]

It is Wednesday. 

[assault]

6 minutes ago, Bazza said:

It is Wednesday. 

 

Nearly half way through Wednesday, in fact.

[unclevlad]

Stupid Far Easterners always wanting to be ahead of their time.......

[drunkonduty]

Australians are basically Time Lords. 

[Greywind]

Disney has released its hold on Black Widow. Now available for wider streaming. Still not going to pay $30 to see it. DVD release is in a month.

[Scott Ruggels]

Well I think that The sharp decline in Box office has given Marvel pause, literally:

https://cosmicbook.news/spider-man-no-way-home-venom-2-shang-chi-delayed

 

 

Shang Chi, Spiderman, Venom 2, may be delayed. 

[csyphrett]

Venom isnt Marvel. It's Sony

CES

[Ternaugh]

4 hours ago, csyphrett said:

Venom isnt Marvel. It's Sony

CES

 

Technically, so is No Way Home.