zslane

Ternaugh is absolutely correct. We single folks are not expected to get the same value from the PVOD price as a family, or even a couple. As usual, those of us who do participate subsidize all the families out there (just like with health insurance and other financial programs with society-wide reach).

I just finished watching WandaVision. I liked Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany tremendously. I found the show entertaining and enjoyable overall. However, this show firmly proves, to me at least, that "magic" in the MCU is an incoherent mess. That is not good (for the integrity of the MCU). Not being able to make sense of a setting's magic removes viewer engagement. We become trained to just accept that anything can happen at any time because plot advancement requires it. Sure, there was one magic "rule" that was established towards the end of the show that had a dramatic payoff, but I fully expect that they will forget all about that rule going forward and we'll never see or hear about it again in the MCU. Magic is like time travel in that nobody in Hollywood seems to know how to use it properly as an element of world-building. Next up...Falcon and The Winter Soldier.

Shazam! was mediocre at best, in my view. It tried too hard to be an homage to Big, and while that worked for lots of people, it didn't work for me. The movie suffered from tonal whiplash to a degree, and the supersuit was awful. As for Aquaman, I agree with you. It was colorful, but the underwater action scenes made no sense whatsoever and were a complete cinematographic mess more often than not. Moreover, I don't care for this take on the character, which isn't Jason Momoa's fault; he does a great job doing what he is asked to do. I just think this particular Aquaman characterization is rather misguided, and almost a little embarrassing to watch sometimes.

WB/DC is the studio where they just throw stuff at the wall in the hopes that something will stick, and then make sub-par movies after a successful first outing. Box office disappointment follows. Then they decide audiences must want something diametrically opposed to what briefly worked, and they throw something else at the wall. That's how we get Latino Supergirl, black Superman, gender-bent Terry McGinnis, and a desperate "multi-verse" play. It's sad, really, because the traditional DC superheroes have a lot to offer, and, with the exception of Gadot's Wonder Woman, have yet to be depicted authentically in live action in my view.

I wonder what the studio execs think the reason for that is. I wonder what the real reason for that is. (The answer is rarely the same for both.)

Decades from now, when history looks back on the evolution of social media, it will be said that the greatest trick TikTok ever played on its dim-witted members was to convince them that lip-syncing was a cool and clever way to express oneself.

Were you able to follow and understand Rashomon?

Unreliable narrators add a great deal of verisimilitude and (realistic) ambiguity to a narrative, but they drive people who love "canon" bananas.

Dependence feels like the wrong area of the system to look for a solution for this, but maybe that's just me.

Do the +1/4 Advantage and -1/4 Limitation cancel each other out in this case of "modeling the fiddly bits"? If so, then this is functionally equivalent to just describing how it works in a small block of text and not assigning any modifier(s) to it at all, right?

That depends. Is Feige a DC super-fan? If not then I'm sure he would let someone else take the mantle of that IP. He's already the Marvel Czar and even has a Star Wars movie in development (supposedly). His plate is full.

I happen to think it matters just how often this slow-drain END issue is going to affect the character. If the answer is "very rarely" then I question the merit in modeling it so accurately and bothering with all the bookkeeping it requires.

James Gunn managed to get hired at WB (and rehired at Disney), so anything is possible. Especially in Hollywood. The general public has a rather short memory, even if hardcore fans do not.

Is there some place where forum ranks and the point system are described/explained? Apparently I am rank 12 out of 14 ("Mentor") and need 111 points to reach the next rank. But I don't understand what any of that means.

I guess you could assign a -1/4 "Real Powered Armor" Limitation, like the Real Weapon Limitation that imposes "real world" limitations to weapons as a single catch-all Limitation worth -1/4.

Well, yeah, they got the spirit of the character and setting right, but the execution was just plain awful in so many ways. It is actually kinda sad that any of us feel compelled to agree with the above statement.

It just seems to me that Disney isn't maximizing the potential of the IP they are working with, and merely because it is the small screen that is the delivery device. For instance, I've seen season 1, chapter 4 of The Mandalorian done twice before; once when it was called The Seven Samurai and then again when it was re-skinned as The Magnificent Seven. But since this is teevee we're talking about, it had to be scaled down to The Rugged Two apparently. The grand cinematicism of Star Wars and the MCU is being reduced to "fit in the home", which I find disappointing. WandaVision was similar in that it spent far too much time developing a single idea, primarily I suspect because that was much cheaper than producing 6 hours of story that had the scope and intensity of a trilogy of MCU Scarlet Witch movies. Which, IMO, should be the whole point of producing 6 (continuous) hours of anything that takes place in the MCU (or the Star Wars universe).

I am more curious about Eternals than I am about Black Widow or Shang Chi, but even there the teaser was underwhelming, and I really expect/want to be whelmed. C'mon Marvel, you can do better than this! (Oops, sorry, this is the DC thread...) There isn't anything from DC I am eager to see. I had cautious hope for Matt Reeve's Batman movie, but having seen what they did with their so-called "Riddler", I am less enthused about it.

I'm sure it is all in an effort to make gods "relatable" to general audiences. It seems that television is still not regarded as the place for epic spectacle. Teevee is small, you see, and so too must the action be. Agents of Shield tried to put the entire world in peril every season, but the show didn't have the budget to really do it right, and so everything seemed really small even though we were constantly told how huge the stakes were. And while Disney presumably gives these Disney+ shows bigger budgets and permits them to have whatever scope Feige wants, there seems to be an unspoken rule that says the shows can't be allowed to match (or eclipse) the scope and spectacle of the movies. In Disney's mind, teevee can never be allowed to compete with the movies. And it usually shows (no pun intended). It is the same with Star Wars. The Mandalorian is just low- (okay, medium) budget side action; (mostly inconsequential) events in the margins of whatever epic struggle the movies intend to cover.

In some ways it is good that Marvel is publishing it themselves. They have unfettered access to all of their IP and don't have to pay anyone else for that privilege. On the other hand, this new RPG will only be supported for as long as it looks strong and profitable in Marvel's ledgers. RPGs are not Marvel's core business, and my prediction/expectation is that as the CoV2 lockdown eases and people have other things to do (again), this game will inevitably end up on Marvel's chopping block.

That also describes the aspirations of the first Suicide Squad movie. It was dumb and violent, but it wasn't much fun. I'm skeptical that even James Gunn can elevate the core premise to the point where it escapes its intrinsic dumbness and delivers on the fun. But I'm willing to be proven wrong.

I liked the Shang Chi character as a kid growing up in the '70s (because let's face it, who didn't love Bruce Lee when they were kids in the '70s), but I am only slightly more interested in this movie than the Black Widow movie, which isn't really saying much.

Game mechanics aren't protectable IP unless granted a patent, which is exceedingly rare, and did not happen for FASERIP in any case. Those game mechanics are free for anyone to use/adapt. Only trademarked Marvel characters are off limits without a license. Unsold stock of previously printed games belong to whomever published them, until sold off to someone else. You can't reprint an out-of-print copyrighted game without permission from the copyright holder (again, either the original publisher or whomever they sold the copyrights to). A lot of old games become orphaned and fall into copyright limbo because the copyright holder no longer exists (as a business entity). Just another flaw in our current IP laws that we have to live with.

I'm actually surprised anyone is bothering to do this game. I mean, is Marvel publishing this new RPG themselves? If not, then the actual publisher has to weigh the cost of the license against expected sales. Particularly with a license that is likely very expensive. Other Marvel RPGs in the past have failed to endure because sales were not enough to justify continuing to pay for the license. There is little evidence that the popularity of the MCU will translate into (significant) superhero TTRPG sales, so I don't see how anyone could think that this is Marvel just printing money for themselves.

Whenever a debate about superhero comics strays down the path of, "well in the real world...", you know something is wrong. In my experience, comic book writers--even the highly regarded ones--generally don't write with enough deftness (and depth) to make any "real world" allegory actually work because there are too many essential things they handwave away just to get on with their story. You can't say, "Well we have racism and bigotry in the real world, and so it makes sense that mutants would be victims of such," and also ignore the fact that in the real world, non-mutant superheroes would also be hunted down and destroyed if they behaved as they do in the comics. The massive amounts of collateral damage they regularly incur would see to that. I mean, something like the Sokovia Accords would never have any legal authority in the real world, but the sentiment behind it is nevertheless 100% dead on realistic and sensible. I largely agree with Christopher that attempts to say something deep about racism and bigotry is completely undermined by these stories being implanted in a universe that is inconsistent and conceptually dishonest/oversimplified about the interaction between normal humans and superpowered beings--mutant or otherwise--in general.