Christopher R Taylor

Marvel has a few more "successes" like The Marvels and they will go out of business.

Yeah they have five years to put out each film, and they are putting out like one a year.  So they aren't struggling to keep their licensing, they're trying to make money but are cheap and not doing very good work.  Now, it takes about 3 years to put out a modern movie (especially with CGI) so they can't just sit around 4 years and crank something out.  But a 5 year deadline doesn't explain this release schedule:

Venom: 2018

Into the Spider-Verse: 2018

Venom 2: 2021

Morbius: 2022

Across the Spiderverse: 2023

Madam Web: 2024

Incidentally I think the Tom Holland Spidey movies count as Sony movies under the contract which would pad the release schedule even more, but I cannot say for sure.  So there's more to it than just "we don't want to lose our ownership"

Yeah its not impossible, however unlikely, that Madam Web will make money in rentals, Blu Ray etc.

But as for licensing, you can go quite a while without losing the license/rights for a character.  For example between Superman IV killed the franchise and Superman Returns was from 1987 to 2006.  So Sony isn't required to make crappy Spiderman side character movies every year to keep the license. 

My best guess is that they figure they have their own little cinematic universe that they are trying to create with as little effort and money as possible and at first it was working.  Venom, inexplicably, made a lot of money.  Even Morbius made a handfull of cash.  But its been diminishing returns, and Venom 2 was a huge bomb.

Almost nothing whatsoever has changed in basics of combat in Hero from the first typewritten pages.

Yeah the trailers looked awful, I'm not sure why Sony keeps doing these.

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The only location would be Ukraine, and well, before the invasion?

And China as I listed.  Where they were doing "gain of function" research.  And rumored in several other nations.  Not exactly the kind of thing they like to let people know about and the press is conspicuously disinterested.

I'm amazed that people missed the labs in Ukraine story LOL.

They aren't secret, you can read about it on the CDC page, described as "cooperative" labs

https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/countries/ukraine/pdf/ukraine_09262022.pdf

More data here

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11886

The Pentagon reported on these labs as well

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2022/06/18/fact-check-pentagon-military-funded-labs-ukraine-russia-invasion/7646221001/

They were reported by Russia as "secret" labs for bioweapons, which may or may not be true (I don't trust anything from the official news from Ukraine or Russia) but the labs exist.

It is inescapably true that China operates labs with the US researching bioweapons and doing "gain of function" research.

CDC has labs all over the world in the worst places on earth doing experiments not legally permissible in the US.  We had several labs in Ukraine (probably still do) that were doing this kind of research.

Yeah it was a lot like that, but less Hanna Barberra.  And I never mind cribbing some existing idea for a character

Its not enormously grandiose but one of my favorite scenarios Hero published was in the 4th edition Viper book, and it goes like this.

A celebrity who has a chain of restaurants* opens one in The City.  Viper comes over with a powerful flying ship and uses gravity control to rip the entire building, including all the dignitaries and celebrities inside, and hang it in the air.  Then VIPER demands all of them pay a ransom or they will drop the building.  Obviously destroying or damaging the ship will cause the same result.

*They clearly meant Planet Hollywood and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but had to file the serial numbers off, but I used them in my campaign.

It was a good time for all, including a Hero who was inside the restaurant with his family.

This is the kind of Champions adventure I love.  Does it make sense?  Kinda?  Is there any real chance that VIPER could get away with it?  Nah.  But its fun and exciting and requires more careful thought than "punch the bad guy" with real dramatic challenge but not too depressing or deep.  This is the kind of VIPER I like, not terrorists, not super serious spy masterminds, but comic book bad guys who do comic book crimes.

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The U.S. government could ban AI tomorrow and AI development would promptly move to India or Mexico.

Yeah its like nukes or guns or porn or whatever.  The cat is out of the bag, you cannot put it back.  Superman could grab all the nuclear weapons in a net and throw them into the sun, and nations would just build more and keep them in lead silos or disguise them as something Superman ignored.  You can't unlearn tech, unless there is a horrendous catastrophe that resets civilization.  You just have to learn how to use things responsibly and how to respond when people do not.

Approximately 1.2 million people die each year as a result of auto collisions.  That's a price we have come to accept as being worth having cars; how many are saved as a result of automobiles?  Ten times that, if not more.  New tech requires new responses, moral judgement, and law.  It takes time, and study, and analysis and cultural change.

We're in the process now of getting used to the idea of instant communication on the internet.  We're trying to learn socially how to handle that, legally how to approach it, and it takes time, philosophical thought, theology, legal study etc.  Every new wave of tech makes that necessary, and people adapt.  The problem we're facing right now is that tech is happening so fast and is so potent in terms of cultural impact that its rough trying to get it all straight.  Making matters worse is that our culture has removed nearly all consequence to certain kinds of behavior, so a lot of corrosive things are consequence-free, or consequence-light, at least.

It will all get worked out to at least a functional level, but not perfectly, in time.  Until then its a rough ride, like when the Model T drove through town and scared all the horses and womenfolk.

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I've been watching the entire X-Men movie franchise in like 2 weeks, and it really made me think about this... in the movies, there are no other supers, just mutants.  In the comics, the "mutant panic" didn't feel so real because there were so many other supers

Yeah there's a reason that the X-Men comics generally felt like they were not a part of the Marvel universe at large.  Although the mutant menace thing was not really a major factor in most of the stories, it only really works if mutants are the standout changes rather than all the other origin stories and people with powers.  So if you want to do that kind of paranoid, enemy of the people kind of campaign, it works best to isolate things, I think.

The key with Multiform is to make sure that the characters are to design, not just "I wanna do a lot of different stuff".  In other words, use multiform to build a character with a theme and a concept, not just to have lots of characters.

I did make a guy who could turn into like 20 different superheroes, each a different build, but... they were random. He never knew what was going to activate when he turned on his superpower, and the GM chose them at random for me.  The concept was kind of like Miracleman's body suit thing, where they were all in this stasis and he could tap into them, but had no control over who.  It was kind of fun, but sadly the campaign didn't last long enough to really explore how it would play out.  So it was a tight concept, and controlled.  The GM could at any time just say "you get to be aqua boy this time" at will instead of rolling a random character, even if we were in the desert.

Right, all those restrictions are in place but people are finding ways around them for images.  We've seen quite a few images of politicians already -- they look fake, but how long will they be recognizably false?

Yeah my Golden Age game all powers came from a single source (magic and Asgardian fruit).  Its very restrictive, in some ways, but in others it makes storytelling work better and the overall campaign has more cohesion and focus.

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Did the characters have to fight their way out of it or think their way out of it?

 

A combination.  The street level part of the team handled the alien invaders (who turned out to be Gweenies) and saved lives, the heavy hitters kept Godzilla busy while part of the team looked for who caused this and dealt with him.

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Had a villain once that had the ability to completely alter reality. He decided that the world was too bad a place and decided to transfer everything into cartoons.

Yeah I had a guy like that, a reality manipulator who was fixated on movies, so he kept creating these cinematic events.  The biggest disaster was he had Chicago attacked by the aliens from War of the Worlds and Godzilla who rose up out of Lake Michigan.  I never did massive super grandiose stuff, I wish I had at least once.

The Fantastic Four is cursed, they should just give up trying to make a movie out of them.  At least, until they figure out what makes them work and lean heavily into that.

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Personal Immunity, Ranged, useable as attack.

Heh wow I had never considered that.  Its too cheap to allow but its a neat twist.

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I wanted to be able to beat someone that has Magical Darkness that covers all senses, including Mental Detection.

Detect the magical darkness, or dispel it, suppress it, etc.  Use an area effect images spell that causes objects to glow.

I did love the crime attempt in Despicable Me a lot: steal the moon and hold it hostage.

Reed housed the gate to the Negative Zone prison in the Baxter Building but he really, really should have known better.

Its not a book per se but I have been reading Savage Realms magazines on Kindle.  They are sword and sorcery short stories bundled, a handfull every month.  Some are a lot better than others, but overall its fun stuff and worth reading.

I kept up with the Dresden books for a while but got tired of the escalation of the story and it got ridiculous to me after a while.  Dresden wiping out a thousand vampires with a single spell claiming he could have cast it at any time but never had the acreage required.  The stories were at their best just as PI with magic street level stuff, not this huge storyline of epic proportions.  Butcher lost his way.

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Stronghold also suffers from that vulnerability, its power negators and hot sleep chambers, which need a steady supply of energy. But at least Stronghold has multiple backup measures in case those devices fail.

In terms of narrative, that's useful though.  The story needs a way for things to go wrong and people to escape for the genre to work.

I cannot remember all of them but I liked the ideas in Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.  They had that cube on its corner in the Nevada desert, the shrunken prison in Ant Man's lab, an undersea one, one in the Negative Zone, one floating as an island, and one other.  I think Tony Stark designed all but the one Ant Man controls.