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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.

We should not be surprised that yet another WB superhero movie is a complete disaster. They should just stick to animation; seems to be the only thing they are (reasonably) consistently good at.

WB reluctantly rolled out the 2021 pay-out plan just to get through the pandemic. It prevented a ton of lawsuits (over lost box office revenue due to WB refusing to release any of their movies to theaters in 2021) that were looming on the horizon if they didn't. The fight over streaming subscription revenue sharing is a completely different battle, and WB will be defiantly standing its ground, in terms of negotiations, right along-side every other studio.

The TV shows aren't as big of a financial risk (as blockbuster movies), and the first three all lean more heavily into the currency of being known and accepted franchises than they do into their wokeness. Throwing in a bit of diversity here and there costs them nothing. However, you can expect the budget of a show like Ms. Marvel to be smaller than the others because of the higher risk it entails. And if it doesn't pull its weight in terms of bringing in subscribers to Disney+, don't expect to see a second season. Subscriber numbers are far more important to Feige's corporate overlords than how many brownie points a show scores with SJWs.
 
Black Panther and Captain Marvel were risks, roughly on par with giving Guardians of the Galaxy a try, and they went into production despite their wokeness, not because of it. They were expected to deliver on other more important strategic goals (i.e., as final pieces of the Phase 3/Infinity War puzzle and, in the case of Capt. Marvel, as setup for Secret Invasion). Had Black Panther not done as well as it did at the box office, we wouldn't be talking about its sequel today since its most important function had already been served by the time of Endgame. Disney is willing to play the PR game of appealing to the social agenda of the moment, but only so long as it doesn't interfere with their larger financial considerations.

When did He-Man join the MCU? Did I miss something? 😉

...and this is what lead to difficulties in Season Two of the Mandalorian. Pedro Pascal, who I think is a pretty good actor, was tired of wearing the mask all the time, to the point he was losing enthusiasm for the role. Compromises were made.  It's what makes me admire Karl Urban all the more in Dredd, as he committed to the bit, and never took the helmet off. (Really good portrayal of Dredd, too, by the way.)
 
It is looking like The Batman, may be a disaster, but mostly because of antics and sabotage by it's star.

Now I wish someone would explain that keeping the mask on "outside of "headquarters", means it's easier to conceal stunt performers, and therefore reducing the budget slightly as they don't need as much CG. CG Ain't cheap, as my price sheet displays 

With any luck, Namor will be portrayed so well in the MCU that everyone will just forget about Momoa's Aquaman. I find the entire DC cinematic line-up completely underwhelming except for Wonder Woman, and even there Jenkins managed to foul that up in her sequel.

Scarlett was tapped to be part of the Tower of Terror movie with Disney, but that won't happen now. The worst thing you can do (for your career) in Hollywood is become litigious. This will end her relationship with Disney full stop. And other studios will be very cautious to work with her, afraid that they might get sued if she doesn't like something.
 
She should have saved this fight for the next SAG contract negotiation, and used her clout to assist the entire union, rather than making herself persona non grata in Hollywood.

Unlike comic book characters who can remain the same age for decades, actors get older, they want to move on to other things, or they social-media their way out of a job. Clearing the decks of one set of characters to make room for the next generation of characters is an unfortunate necessity of live action cinema. Until we perfect digital actors who look 100% real, with no uncanny valley effect, and can be performance-captured and voiced by numerous actors over time, we won't have superhero characters that continue on for two, three, or more decades. The Iron Mans will have to give way to the Ironhearts, and one Captain America (or Black Panther) will be replaced by another, and then another, etc. All we can hope for is that Kevin Feige does a good job of this. I, for one, have no problem with Kate Bishop taking over for Hawkeye, to take just one example. As long as they do a good job with these new characters, I'm still all in on the MCU.

Unlike comic book characters who can remain the same age for decades, actors get older, they want to move on to other things, or they social-media their way out of a job. Clearing the decks of one set of characters to make room for the next generation of characters is an unfortunate necessity of live action cinema. Until we perfect digital actors who look 100% real, with no uncanny valley effect, and can be performance-captured and voiced by numerous actors over time, we won't have superhero characters that continue on for two, three, or more decades. The Iron Mans will have to give way to the Ironhearts, and one Captain America (or Black Panther) will be replaced by another, and then another, etc. All we can hope for is that Kevin Feige does a good job of this. I, for one, have no problem with Kate Bishop taking over for Hawkeye, to take just one example. As long as they do a good job with these new characters, I'm still all in on the MCU.

Unlike comic book characters who can remain the same age for decades, actors get older, they want to move on to other things, or they social-media their way out of a job. Clearing the decks of one set of characters to make room for the next generation of characters is an unfortunate necessity of live action cinema. Until we perfect digital actors who look 100% real, with no uncanny valley effect, and can be performance-captured and voiced by numerous actors over time, we won't have superhero characters that continue on for two, three, or more decades. The Iron Mans will have to give way to the Ironhearts, and one Captain America (or Black Panther) will be replaced by another, and then another, etc. All we can hope for is that Kevin Feige does a good job of this. I, for one, have no problem with Kate Bishop taking over for Hawkeye, to take just one example. As long as they do a good job with these new characters, I'm still all in on the MCU.

Unlike comic book characters who can remain the same age for decades, actors get older, they want to move on to other things, or they social-media their way out of a job. Clearing the decks of one set of characters to make room for the next generation of characters is an unfortunate necessity of live action cinema. Until we perfect digital actors who look 100% real, with no uncanny valley effect, and can be performance-captured and voiced by numerous actors over time, we won't have superhero characters that continue on for two, three, or more decades. The Iron Mans will have to give way to the Ironhearts, and one Captain America (or Black Panther) will be replaced by another, and then another, etc. All we can hope for is that Kevin Feige does a good job of this. I, for one, have no problem with Kate Bishop taking over for Hawkeye, to take just one example. As long as they do a good job with these new characters, I'm still all in on the MCU.

Unlike comic book characters who can remain the same age for decades, actors get older, they want to move on to other things, or they social-media their way out of a job. Clearing the decks of one set of characters to make room for the next generation of characters is an unfortunate necessity of live action cinema. Until we perfect digital actors who look 100% real, with no uncanny valley effect, and can be performance-captured and voiced by numerous actors over time, we won't have superhero characters that continue on for two, three, or more decades. The Iron Mans will have to give way to the Ironhearts, and one Captain America (or Black Panther) will be replaced by another, and then another, etc. All we can hope for is that Kevin Feige does a good job of this. I, for one, have no problem with Kate Bishop taking over for Hawkeye, to take just one example. As long as they do a good job with these new characters, I'm still all in on the MCU.

Unlike comic book characters who can remain the same age for decades, actors get older, they want to move on to other things, or they social-media their way out of a job. Clearing the decks of one set of characters to make room for the next generation of characters is an unfortunate necessity of live action cinema. Until we perfect digital actors who look 100% real, with no uncanny valley effect, and can be performance-captured and voiced by numerous actors over time, we won't have superhero characters that continue on for two, three, or more decades. The Iron Mans will have to give way to the Ironhearts, and one Captain America (or Black Panther) will be replaced by another, and then another, etc. All we can hope for is that Kevin Feige does a good job of this. I, for one, have no problem with Kate Bishop taking over for Hawkeye, to take just one example. As long as they do a good job with these new characters, I'm still all in on the MCU.

Rogue will humble her down just fine.

CM is a mythological movie but it is not a hero’s journey mythological movie. It is more a ‘amnesic goddess that falls to earth and later remembers she is in fact a goddess’ movie. Goddess is symbolic of the divine feminine archetype/symbol. That this goddess is an earth woman makes it even more impactful, as symbolically, it is that the divine feminine that has been reawakened on Earth.

I stopped the video about 1/3rd of the way because it was evident to me that he was mostly just harping on DC, and I don't need to be reminded of just how misguided and inept WB/DC is. But the future of the genre isn't dependent on them; they've managed to make themselves almost completely irrelevant, in my view. I'd say that as long as Feige is in charge of Marvel Studios, the future of the genre on film is still pretty bright. And the fact that he has successfully supplemented big-screen MCU with connected small-screen content shows that there is still an awful lot of life still left in the genre.

Much of the really cutting-edge drama these days is being done for television, while movies tend toward broadest-appeal films. It used to be the reverse, when television was the medium targeted for the masses. But as the range of channels and services has proliferated, television has more and more had to find niche markets appealing to specific tastes and expectations; whereas films, more and more obsessed with blockbuster box office, is aiming for as many targets as possible with every release.
 
I'll just add that one person's junk is someone else's treasure, one size does not fit all, etc.

The large amount of content out there confuses the issue. There are so many bad to mediocre shows out that they seem to drown out the good to excellent ones. But the percentages of awful, bad, mediocre, good and excellent stuff is pretty much the same with possibly a shift towards the middle overall.
 
Remember, we're judging new content against not just other new content but also against everything that's come before and some older stuff gets bonus points because it was the original . So the classic westerns, detective stories and war movies hold up pretty well while the SFX heavy genres of sci-fi and fantasy lean heavily to more modern stuff. 
 
Movies and TV haven't gotten worse, our standards have gotten higher.
 
 
 
 

Hollywood is becoming dependent on Chinese box office the way western society is dependent on Middle Eastern oil. It is difficult to be the master of your own destiny when you are beholden to someone else's resources.

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.

As an aid to the GM I guess this has merit, but aren't there computer tools to help manage all this during play?
 
Players, even new ones, shouldn't need anything more "stripped down" than what you find on an old 2E Champions character sheet. Obviously for something like Fantasy Hero where you've got more adventuring equipment to track, and possibly lots of spells to keep track of depending on your chosen magic system, you might need more than what a single-page superhero sheet provides, but I think the essential premise is the same: keep it as simple as a 2E Champions character sheet in terms of overall information density (which, BTW, included the maneuver table and a line for circling your Phases during a Turn).

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.

The One Ring was designed to make it easier for its wearer to dominate others, particularly those of weak mental fortitude or those easily corrupted. Sauron was all about domination and control, and the One Ring reflected this. He knew he would never be able to subdue and control his most hated enemy, the elves, through military action or the sheer power of his will alone, so he tricked them into crafting the means by which he could: the rings of power. His greatest fear in the Third Age was that his ring would find its way into the hands of someone who could use it against him; an elf lord, a descendant of the Kings of Westernesse, or another maia. They would have the means to bend Sauron's armies to their will rather than his, and he would be supplanted as the "lord of the rings" (and all of Middle-Earth as a result).
 
In terms of FRPG "powers", I would say it grants Invisibility with a very slow Transform Self into Wraith side effect, and a small Cumulative Mind Control with a massive Area of Effect that can only be unlocked by someone with a massively high EGO and PRE (and the Endurance to keep it going long-term).