zslane

I completely understand where you're coming from, Bazza. Sure, as just about anyone would, I like a bit of humor in my action movies. It helps keep them from becoming too grim. But when the humor strays into the realm of parody, I start to lose interest (and respect, for the characters). It's why I never warmed up to Venture Brothers, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and am struggling a little with the new Harley Quinn cartoon. Fat Thor felt more like parody to me than simple humor.

In a single movie: Tony Stark goes from arrogant weapons dealer to shutting down the weapons division of his company and becoming a superhero. Thor goes from spoiled, arrogant, Asgardian prince to humbled hero who realizes he isn't fit to be king. T'Challa goes from believing Wakanda should stay hidden and isolated (the "old way" of his father) to reaching out and sharing its science, technology, and culture with the world. Dr. Strange goes from arrogant, narcissistic surgeon to sorcerer supreme protecting Earth and the multi-verse. Other characters, like Nebula and Bucky were supporting characters who didn't enjoy the luxury of being the stars of their own movies in which to travel a full character development arc. For them it had to happen over the course of a larger story arc dedicated to other, more prominent, characters. I think it's only fair to nevertheless recognize their development despite the longer, draw-out trajectory it had to take.

I don't quite understand why Marvel gets a bad rap for "lack of character development". Tony Stark, Thor, Loki, Bucky/Winter Soldier, T'Challa, Captain Marvel, Banner/Hulk, Dr. Strange, Nebula, and Spider-Man all go through clear character development, sometimes during a single film, other times over the course of several films. But the development is undeniably there in a way that isn't there for any DCEU character.

If I were ever to write a campaign setting for the Hero System, I'd use the Plot Point Campaign structure. I think this structure can be adopted for any system, and I'd like to see it become the preferred approach for all future Hero System campaign settings, regardless of who authors them.

This presents a nice intersection of pure setting (ala gazetteers) and plot hooks. It is hard to imagine an interesting setting that doesn't have something epic brewing within it. I like the Savage Worlds structure of the Plot Point Campaign: an over-arching epic plotline engulfing the entire setting. The core campaign setting book provides the major beats of the epic plotline with lots of suggestions for where GM-made adventures could be inserted. For GMs who don't have the time to do that, there are published adventures that have a plug-and-play relationship to the overall storyline. This structure gives you the best of both worlds: broad scale guidance on an epic crisis affecting the entire game world, with space created for GMs to fit their own adventures within it, along with pre-made adventure support for GMs who need that.

Yeah, well I'm so over the bi-annual debate over how to best breathe (new) life into the game in the marketplace. These are issues that don't ever go away because nothing ever changes.

In my view, Dark Champions is misnamed today. It started out as a dork dark roleplaying tribute to the Image Comics superhero stuff hitting shelves in the '90s. But since then it has expanded to more general coverage of the modern action genre. I share the opinion of others here that it should be more accurately called Action Hero, and as such is as much a replacement for Danger International as it is a source book for comics like Shadowhawk or Wetworks.

American Woman? (Cue The Guess Who...)

The core of their character absolutely should be set in stone. It is literally what defines them as characters. However, the full spectrum of those core personality traits can, and should, be explored and evolved in careful, nuanced ways over time. In that context, I would not categorize Snyder's Superman as a carefully curated, nuanced exploration of the character. It would categorize it as something of a hatchet job. With Wonder Woman it is harder to tell if she was more responsibly handled since we didn't get to see her personality evolve between 1918 and 1984. But I would expect that for a woman who had lived for hundreds of years prior to her first interaction with "Man's World", her core character would have been firmly established and not subject to dramatic shifts. Not even the horrors of the Great War would change a warrior princess like Diana enough to strip her of her core identity and value set. That's why it is difficult to watch her suddenly transition from warrior to sentinel without any explanation whatsoever.

The lasso is basically a Plot Device object. Listing its powers seems unnecessary to me since it can--and will--have whatever powers the writer(s) need it to have at any given moment.

I thought it was pretty darn terrific, excluding the uninspired final boss fight, of course, and even that wasn't bad, per se, it was just not up to the level of the rest of the movie. Wonder Woman was better than many MCU movies, IMO, and far better than any other DCEU movie. I guess it comes down to the small intangibles that either really resonate with you or don't. The first WW movie checked all the boxes for me, including a few I wasn't expecting. It is a hard act to follow, and from the get-go I was highly skeptical that Patty Jenkins could repeat that magic in a sequel. I'm not at all surprised that WW84 is a let-down; I really didn't see how it could have been anything but a let-down, to be frank. Movies like Godfather 2, Terminator 2 are extremely rare; more often than not sequels to great movies turn out like Jaws 2 or Temple of Doom. Maybe Patty Jenkins can redeem herself with the third movie and make something more like Last Crusade than Godfather 3.

At the moment Patty Jenkins is feeling no pain. She's got Cleopatra for Paramount and Rogue Squadron for Disney keeping her busy for the next 3+ years. After that she's got the third Wonder Woman movie--which WB has already greenlit--to look forward to. Seems to me that the divided reception of WW84 isn't likely to slow her roll much, if at all.

Yeah, I'm pretty "meh" on WW84 as well. For me the first film was truly wonderful, while this one felt rushed (storywise) and lacked nuance. Moreover, the whole swapping of the Fish Out of Water trope with Steve being the fish this time just didn't resonate with me for some reason. And this rendition of Maxwell Lord, while very well acted by Pedro Pascal, was not very compelling for me, especially at the end. I felt like I was watching a movie version of CW's Supergirl (who solved a world-ending crisis in pretty much the exact same way in one of her seasons). Lastly, I think they could have done without Dr. Minerva in this movie; that whole sub-plotline felt so tangential--and largely inconsequential--that it caused the movie to feel unfocused to me. I absolutely love Gal Gadot in the role, and I think Chris Pine is fine as Steve Trevor, but overall I just felt underwhelmed by this movie. I'll just go and watch my Blu-ray of the first movie again (and again) instead.

Indeed. I feel there is little to no chance that anyone is going to try to challenge the TOS in court. The only way this gets "fixed" is in the marketplace. A competitor would have to come along offering the same services without the overreaching TOS and Hero Forge would have little choice but to respond in kind. In the mean time, it is probably wisest for artists/writers/animators/creators who intend to monetize their superhero creations avoid Hero Forge like the plague.

Lego owns the patents on their bricks, but they do not own the rights to everything created by others using those bricks. Just like Hero Forge has no intrinsic right to ownership over things created with their "bricks" (i.e., their body parts, clothing bits, weapons, etc.). A copyright exists the moment a "work" exists, and someone using the Hero Forge software to design a character is equivalent to drawing it on paper (or drawing it using some other software like Photoshop) prior to manufacture. That drawing, that concept, that character belongs to the creator, not the product manufacturer (unless the manufacturer comes up with the character design themselves, which they don't in this context). Hero Forge is essentially compelling creators to give up the rights to their creations in return for having them made into minis. I am willing to lay down money that the Hero Forge user agreement would not hold up if challenged in court.

Hero Forge owns the sculpted pieces, yes, but not the character (concept) and its distinctive appearance. For example, Superman still belongs to DC even if you create a Hero Forge mini that looks exactly like him. That's because the character's "likeness" is owned by DC, and doesn't magically transfer to Hero Forge just because their pieces were used to produce a physical miniature figure of it. The same should apply to any character a customer creates and uses Hero Forge to produce a physical mini of it. In this sense, Hero Forge's sculpted pieces are like Crayola crayons used to "draw" a specific instance of a character created by someone other than Hero Forge.

I'd say the Conan movies are good pulp movies to watch, as is the Solomon Kane movie with James Purefoy.

This is almost like Crayola trying to claim ownership of any drawing their "tools" are used to create. Or Kinko's trying to claim ownership of anything printed off one of their printers. I wonder how well such a TOS would actually hold up in court.

Not all comic book tropes and practices are good ones worthy of imitation in other media. Just sayin'.

I think Marvel Studios stands to make more money by introducing new characters and new franchises than trotting out the same old characters forever. And the roadmap they revealed at their investor presentation backs that up. The 2012 Avengers line-up will be giving way to a Young Avengers and other teams made up of entirely new characters, with maybe the occasional cameo by the "old guard" characters. That is the way forward. That is how creativity and commerce maximize their potential. However, I'm willing to bet that only Kevin Feige truly sees it that way. The minute Feige steps down and retires, I fully expect Disney to abandon this winning strategy and reboot the entire MCU by, eventually, re-casting Tony Stark and all the others and "re-imagining" them for a new audience all over again. This will prove, at least to me, that the only force steering the MCU in the direction of quality and creative diversity is Feige and Feige alone (with a minor assist from Alan Horn who smartly stays out of the way for the most part).

I thought the Jane Foster as Thor story arc did quite well sales wise. Was that not true? In any event I basically agree with you @Christopher R Taylor. As long as there is an Iron Man I don't see much point in an Iron Heart, unless she is going to be a member of some kind of Iron Family with Pepper Potts (Rescue) as mommy, Tony Stark (Iron Man) as daddy, and Uncle Rhodey (War Machine) to round out the cast. I think the main reason why "Go woke, go broke," turned out to be so prescient is that the publishers made their diversity plays with poor writers and poorly-conceived characters/storylines. I think diversity could have been more organically introduced into Marvel canon had it been done with more care and attention to good writing. The goal isn't really so bad, it's the execution that sucks. However, I will go on record--again--and say that I do not agree with "re-imagining" long-standing (dare I say, iconic) characters by gender-bending them, race-bending them, or giving them updated origin stories and rewriting their histories. If writers want to tell new stories for which existing characters don't fit, then they should invent entirely new characters. When given someone else's toys to play with they just end up breaking them.

That's a little too cynical even for me. Over the last ten years Disney has shown a very shrewd lack of meddling in the MCU. Disney likes money and isn't about to knock over the MCU apple cart with so many billions to lose by doing so. However, I will say that Disney is playing a tricky game by scheduling so much MCU content over such a short period of time. Either fans will continue to gobble it up and ask for more, or audiences will get tired of it and look elsewhere. The pandemic has created a huge surplus of pent up demand which Disney will be more than happy to fulfill with MCU movies once theaters open up again. So I think it will be several more years before the air goes completely out of the MCU's tires.

Some very good trailers for the upcoming Disney+ MCU shows such as WandaVision, Falcon & Winter Soldier, and Loki. And a whole slate of new Disney+ shows were announced that we didn't know about before, like Secret Invasion, IronHeart, and Armor Wars. Christian Bale will be the God Butcher and the Fantastic Four movie has a director. I think Ms. Marvel could do okay if it can get past the current #FixMsMarvel PR hurdle the SJWs have put in its path. I also think IronHeart could do well if Feige manages to make the character interesting and relevant in ways never achieved in the comics.

Does your low opinion extend to Kevin Feige as well? And to Alan Horn who has allowed Feige free reign with the MCU?

Really, this should come as no surprise. Anyone who thought Disney would even consider recasting T'Challa has a very, very low opinion of Disney.