Harsin

I think the endgame for Disney (and others) is to eventually have fully digital actors. They're already halfway there with deepfake Luke and the AI voice thingie they used for Luke and Vader in this is pretty effective. Then they don't have to worry about pesky things like contracts or actors' trade unions or paying Scarlett Johansen what she was promised and whatnot. Then they can keep making films where Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones or Thor stay forever young like Bart Simpson.

6 hours ago, Dirty Harry Potter said:

 

I don’t blame Deborah Chow as much as Joby Harold. While she’s the director, he’s the writer AND show runner. 
 

The writer, after having written such stunning movies as “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” and “Army of the Dead”, and currently working on the latest of the “Tranformers” franchise. That’s who they gave writing and show running duties to.. 

And with a pedigree like that, it maybe explains why there is so much garbage in this show. And shame on Disney for not taking more care with it. 

Good article on the showrunner crisis that's currently going on due to streaming services needing CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT quickly at any

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epxeze/television-is-in-a-showrunning-crisis

The latest series of Barry (an excellent series that more people should watch) had a subplot about someone going direct from PA to showrunner after noting the random things the algorithm likes and then basing a vacuous series entirely around that.

Apparently this doing none too hot at the box office.

https://deadline.com/2022/06/lightyear-box-office-2-1235047729/

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Well, this wasn’t suppose to happen. Disney’s Lightyear, despite an A- CinemaScore and 4 stars/85% positive on PostTrak, is coming in way under its $70M-$85M projection, with a $51M-$55M 3-day weekend to Universal/Amblin’s second weekend of Jurassic World Dominion with $57.1M, -61%. Jurassic could even reach $66.3M through the four-day Juneteenth holiday.

I was watching a lot of the episodes thinking whoever is directing this is directing the absolute hell out of it. Turns out those were the Bill Hader directed episodes. Bloody hell, he's a talented guy,

It’s such a weird show in that it ping pongs from a slick professional big budget production to looking like an ITV Thursday night drama, sometimes in the same scene. In the last episode there was a scene where all the baddies and goodies form horizontal lines, stood up with zero cover and just spend ages firing at each other for ages barely managing to hit each other. It looked like something from Police Squad.

I think that the volume (the big OLED screen dome thingy they use for filming) is a fantastic tool that can produce some amazing results. But between this and Boba Fett it’s becoming increasingly clear you need a director who knows how to utilise it properly and scripts built around its limitations.

It’s a good point about why the hell do they use Hayden Christensen for the in-suit stuff leading to a reliance on camera tricks to try and make him look big, when they could have just stuck a big bloke in the suit and just use him for the bits where you need to see his face.

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Re your first paragraph, I'm merely suggesting that they were obviously happy with the story to let it go ahead so their knee jerk reaction was purely based on fan backlash because it made $1.33bn. What performance metrics are they looking at when that isn't good enough? It was never going to make TFA money, you cant compare the situations, in the same way that not all MCU movies will make Endgame money.

You’re essentially arguing that Disney went well this film is doing absolutely great for us and meeting our internal expectations, but some weirdos didn’t like that it had some diversity and were vocal about it so we’ll scrap all that and do the opposite for the next one (and then stop making films altogether for a while). You’re simultaneously saying that they considered the project was a great success and also that the corporation had a knee-jerk reaction to it (despite considering it a success). In terms of critical reaction it’s actually one of the highest scoring Star Wars films on Rotten Tomatoes. Even if it had got slated by critics, while studios like good reviews they care far more about profit than critics or we wouldn’t have so many Transformers films.

I thought I’d been fairly clear in terms of performance metrics I think it probably didn’t hit. There’s a whole industry devoted to pumping out Star Wars toys, novels, comics, games, action figures, kitchenware, breakfast cereals and on and on and on. Oh and an actual billion dollar theme park that they built. The box office receipts for the actual films in mega-franchises like this are very much just the head of the snake when it comes to generating profit. Obviously this is all conjecture since I don’t have access to the Disney/Lucasfilms boardroom.

Your parents called you Wonder. Bit cruel.

18 minutes ago, Stigweard said:

They didn't change their mind because they saw the finish product and didn't like it because there's no way in hell they ever started filming without not what Johnson was doing.

???

I never even suggested that Disney just let Rian Johnson have free reign with no oversight and then their monocle popped off their face  when they saw the finished product. So I’m a bit perplexed where you got that from.

The knee jerk reaction after release was because it obviously didn’t meet various performance metrics. If you think that was purely down to chuds moaning and that was the only thing Disney cared about then fine, I disagree. They may have factored some of it into their decisions but tentpoles like this look at far wider markets than that.

Out of interest why do you think Disney consider Captain Marvel and Black Panther big successes (almost immediately greenlighting sequels for both) when they had just as much online gnashing and wailing from arseholes on the internet?

If pandering to a sub-culture of trolls worked in terms of generating profit then surely we’d be getting loads of Rise of Skywalker adjacent content and merchandise, instead of them shuffling the entire sequel era into a dark hole until they decide what to do going forward.

I feel this kind of accepted narrative that Disney had such a panicked knee-jerk reaction to The Last Jedi just because of a some chuds on the internet is complete nonsense. Chuds hated Captain Marvel and Black Panther and virtually any blockbuster that dares to cast anyone who isn’t a cis white guy and guess what the films still do great. In fact studios know that it’s generally good publicity to the wider public to highlight diversity. Disney in particular will make a song and dance about a chaste kiss in the background between two women (that can easily be cut out for some foreign markets) whilst funnelling money to the worst right-wing shitlord Republicans imaginable.

Whatever the reason Disney 'bottled’ it for, some basement dwellers are way down the list, they’ll be looking at far wider metrics than that and it obviously didn’t hit them. People often point to the box office of The Last Jedi (and Rise of Skywalker after it), but these films are the tip of the iceberg in terms of making money. You only have to look at the merchandise situation. They’re pumping out OT era/Mandalorian merch at a rate of knots. For quite a few years HotUKDeals was clogged with Porg stuff (that they obviously thought was going to be a big deal in the way Baby Yoda eventually was).

Get your Porg slippers, oven gloves and tie. Available at the back of a dusty warehouse somewhere.

Take Lego, they’re still regularly releasing prequel stuff as well as OT era sets, so it must be lucrative to them, but dropped the sequel era like a hot rock the second the films’ release windows closed.
 

Going back to the conversation on why the franchise is currently so backwards looking, that’s the reason they’re strip mining this narrow time period for every last drop of content as they know it’s a cash cow.

Cheers that worked

I can’t even find it on the GamePass app on my phone or the console itself

On 12/06/2022 at 19:13, Thor said:

Hmmm, perhaps I'm being overly harsh, but I still find it difficult to find validity in criticism born of the player's own failure. 

Copy to gamer.txt

Now we’re a decent way into this generation I thought I’d do a quick straw poll to see if/how choice of gaming platforms has changed.

I kept things to big screen gaming (yeah I know Switch is both) before anyone complains about lack of mobile phones on the poll.

Always wanted to play Persona 4 so this is super news.

24 minutes ago, Pob said:

I think it looks brilliant. Yeah it’s a bit ropey, but that’s far outweighed by its ambition.

 

The good thing about all those procedurally-generated planets is that you can hide your hand-crafted environments and missions among the stars. That could really make the player feel like an explorer and archaeologist. Proper narrative and 

mission design embedded within a vast play area encompassing many star systems is not something I’ve experienced before. 
 

I hope the space flight is fun. 

My guess is there'll be about 5-6 main planets with proper hand-crafted quests and intricate locations and then maybe another double figure number or so with more basic stuff but still 'designed' if you're lucky, and then 900 odd random ones with copy paste portacabin enemy bases.

I did lol at the bit in the reveal where your blokey comes across a locked box and goes to his stock of 'digipicks' to open it and then it brings up three tumblers you have to pick, but because it's the future they're now green pixel tumblers on a screen. Struck me as a bit 'So, Poochie okay with everyone?'

Hideo Kojima's Excel

10 hours ago, Festoon said:

 

Boba at least looks cinematic all the time,

Were we watching the same show? The Robert Rodriguez directed episodes looked like an ITV adaptation of Star Wars.

Just catching up on the news on this. Holy fucking lol they really want £70? My PS5 is currently gathering dust and sort from God of War don’t see much else changing that soon. Jim Ryan is starting to make Cyril Sneer look like a philanthropist.

I know you shouldn't judge a book by it’s cover, but if I was a casting director for Law and Order he would be getting a call if we were looking for someone who looks like a sex creep for an episode.

Something I've noticed with a lot of these nostalgia projects is that they seem to lean on making the characters having lived in abject misery about 5 minutes of the supposedly happy ending of the original. Star Wars. Ghostbusters. Star Trek: The Next Generation… I liked that in this Maverick is pretty happy and still doing what he loves. 
 

I now have three years later sequels I actually rate, this, Fury Road and Blade Runner 2049.