Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1076173All I know is that The Last Jedi killed my enthusiasm for Star Wars to the point that Solo is the first widespread theatrical Star Wars release I skipped in thirty years. I'm probably just an outlier, though; too attached to Legends, too old and not woke enough to begin the training in the ways of the glorious New Order.

What killed my enthusiasm for Star Wars was The Force Awakens. It happened right there at the beginning of the movie, when I realized I was watching a bloody remake of the original Star Wars I just... stopped caring. Disney took the most cynical and safe route possible, the "soft reboot." And people still defend this movie using marketing speech, as if they hold shares of Lucasfilm or something. "It was needed to present Star Wars to a new generation..." Yeah, right.

I liked some things about TLJ and hated others, but overall I still couldn't care enough to be excited or angry. This is SEQUEL NUMBER 7 of a tired movie franchise. It's exactly as relevant as any Hellraiser direct-to-video sequel. I was PISSED at the awfulness of much of the prequels, but this time? "What did we expect?"

We should let it die and get hyped for the Denis Villeneuve DUNE movie instead. :cool:

Quote from: RF Victor;1076196What killed my enthusiasm for Star Wars was The Force Awakens. It happened right there at the beginning of the movie, when I realized I was watching a bloody remake of the original Star Wars I just... stopped caring. Disney took the most cynical and safe route possible, the "soft reboot." And people still defend this movie using marketing speech, as if they hold shares of Lucasfilm or something. "It was needed to present Star Wars to a new generation..." Yeah, right.

I liked some things about TLJ and hated others, but overall I still couldn't care enough to be excited or angry. This is SEQUEL NUMBER 7 of a tired movie franchise. It's exactly as relevant as any Hellraiser direct-to-video sequel. I was PISSED at the awfulness of much of the prequels, but this time? "What did we expect?"

We should let it die and get hyped for the Denis Villeneuve DUNE movie instead. :cool:

Much of what made TFA different from A New Hope was the plot hook set ups that TLJ spent the entire movie throwing away or burning.

Solo was a movie meant to pander to the more hardcore fans who were either burnt by TFA or TLJ. So after alienating everyone the movie was for, it flopped.

Much like how D&D 6e will flop after Mearls is fired and JC feels the need to make a new more ideologically pure edition directed towards people who don't play and won't buy D&D products.

Quote from: RF Victor;1076196Disney took the most cynical and safe route possible, the "soft reboot." And people still defend this movie using marketing speech, as if they hold shares of Lucasfilm or something. "It was needed to present Star Wars to a new generation..." Yeah, right.

  I was willing to cut them some slack on TFA because I could see TFA as 'proof we can do Star Wars after taking over' and suffered from other limitations (they had to be able to market it as containing all three stars, and there was no way you were getting Harrison Ford to do more than one movie), but I still considered it weaker than anything but Episode I and arguably II. I started getting alienated when the expansion material (which they kept pounding into our heads was canon) made it clearer that virtually nothing of substance had been accomplished and Both Sides Were Deeply Flawed. Rogue One, for all the hype, left me cold, especially when the Rebel Alliance wasn't willing to take a chance on the Death Star plans until our Designated Rogues and Outcasts took the lead. Then TLJ was filled with character and plot points that led me to conclude that whatever merits post-Lucas Star Wars has, it's grown beyond, or at least away from, me.

  I'm enjoying going back to older material like Flash Gordon and Zorro, myself.

Quote from: RF Victor;1076196What killed my enthusiasm for Star Wars was The Force Awakens.

TFA was a big letdown for me, especially after hearing glowing reviews of it from people I thought I could count on.

Star Wars just hasn't been the same for me since Lucas released the enhanced editions back in the 90s. I haven't been a big fan of the property since that time period, with every new release making me less so. I wish Star Wars had stopped with ROTJ.

I can't find the quote, but a commenter in a thread a few months ago said words to the effect "Star Wars is 3 movies that people love and bunch of shit people buy because they love those 3 movies".

Indeed.

Quote from: HorusArisen;1076171If you say so, I'm sure mismanaging and poor advertising didn't affect it as much as the 1.3+ billion dollar success before it did :rolleyes:

Off Topic:  The Last Jedi has been the lynchpin for Solo's failure.  It's affecting the Merchandising, TLJ and Solo toys are not selling, Hasbro is in panic mode over it.  Also, the various advertising for the Disney Star Wars theme park is using ALL the old pre-Disney characters.  The new 'sequel' trilogy is not doing as well as Disney was expecting.

Anyway, I have to ask again, why does it matter?  Very few gamers care about who writes the game books in the first place!

Quote from: S'mon;1076152...When a corporation is Converged, sadly they very often will prefer going Broke to dealing with the Woke. It becomes a sort of religious test of faith - to Suffer for their Belief. And of course they cast the moral blame on the 'Toxic White Male' fanbase - ie their customers.

And that MAY be the plan at WotC.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't see Hasbro permitting that.

Quote from: RF Victor;1076196We should let it die and get hyped for the Denis Villeneuve DUNE movie instead. :cool:

Gag. I had hope after Sicarrio, but the lame ass Arrival and Boring Runner 2049 there's no hope for Dune.

He doesn't have the mad genius of either Lynch or Jodorowsky. It will be pretty, and pretty boring.

But hey, I'd LOVE to be totally wrong and see an amazing Dune movie.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1076212Anyway, I have to ask again, why does it matter?  Very few gamers care about who writes the game books in the first place!

I think it matters for the same reasons the whole satanic panic and moral outrage brigade impacted 2e D&D and not for the better as TSR tried to appease these nuts and the general gaming public wondered WTF was happening to D&D. Id bet the same has happened to Vampire players as WW tried to appease these nuts.

And actually I think some gamers do care who writes the books as they may have liked that writers prior works. Way back I used to keep an eye out for anything by Moldvy and Cordell as I'd liked their work on certain modules.

Quote from: SpinachcatWhen the Hasbro CFO sees the drop in WotC revenue, they will sound the money alarm awakening the One True American God and you can bet there will be house cleaning like a wildfire through the Seattle offices.

Quote from: S'mon;1076152Because that's what happened to Disney-Lucasfilm over the The Last Jedi debacle?

Right?

Right?

...When a corporation is Converged, sadly they very often will prefer going Broke to dealing with the Woke. It becomes a sort of religious test of faith - to Suffer for their Belief. And of course they cast the moral blame on the 'Toxic White Male' fanbase - ie their customers.

I am extremely doubtful of starting from the position that Disney just didn't want to make more money on the franchise. I am, in fact, more inclined to suspect that Internet experts who recite "Get Woke Go Broke" are not, in fact, the experts they think they are. The biggest grossing movie of all time was Avatar, which was full of liberal themes of native culture vs corporate greed and more.

I can believe that Disney made mistakes, but I don't believe for a second that they aren't trying to make money or that they are incompetent fools. This is a multimillion dollar enterprise with armies of market analysts who actually know about how wokeness affects market choices. If Disney went that route, it is at least a plausible route to make money - as indeed it did. The same goes for Hasbro. At the level of WotC, I'm sure that individual contributors have much greater control, and I have less faith in their market savvy. That doesn't mean that the same Internet experts who second-guess Disney are more right, though.

There is a tendency to think that selling to one's own politics is always the best business plan - but I think that's weird identity stuff. Within gaming, I certainly don't think that marketing to my tastes is in the best interest of companies like Wizards of the Coast. More broadly, there are companies that can do well selling to liberal customers. There are companies that can do well selling to conservative customers. There are companies that can successfully split the difference, including selling to more moderate or apolitical gamers.

As for what's the best path financially for WotC, I don't have a strong opinion. That's different than what I think they should do according to my politics.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1076173All I know is that The Last Jedi killed my enthusiasm for Star Wars to the point that Solo is the first widespread theatrical Star Wars release I skipped in thirty years.

Yeah, me too. And millions of others.

Studios love flops like Han Solo: A Star Wars Story.  

I mean, they'd love them better if they weren't perceived as flops, but the movie made back the cost to produce and more.  The production budget was $250 million (more than any other Star Wars movie to that point, and was certainly due to major problems).  The cost of marketing a movie like that was probably in the neighborhood of $40 million.  Let's be generous and assume that the total cost was around $300 million.  

The worldwide gross for the movie was $393 million.  That works out to a 31% rate of return.  

I have not seen Solo; I will not see Solo.  I wasn't much of a fan of the sequels, but that didn't really impact my decision on whether to see the movie.  For me, it had much more to do with Harrison Ford's iconic portrayal - I don't think that anyone could do the character justice, and even if they could, his character arc is most interesting from the point where he intersects with Luke and Obiwan.  The story of how he got to that point is BETTER when left to the imagination.  Trying to make a better story that ends right where we met him isn't a good idea - if we add too many things we impact his later relations.  For example, if he were married (and still married) in a New Hope, his relationship with Leia becomes a lot weirder (like the revelation that Luke and Leia are siblings).  If they decided to make it a film specifically about how he and Chewie became partners, that could be alright - sort of a buddy cop type film.  But I think that a much better movie would have been about Lando - he went from some one that hangs around Smugglers to the Lord Mayor - there's a story there for sure!  I would have been concerned that they wouldn't find anyone with the charisma of Billy Dee Williams, but from what I saw of the previews, Lando's portrayal would have been just fine by me.  

There are major issues regarding AMBITION and CLOSURE.  The second is really the most important.  When people like a character, they want to keep seeing them, even if it ruins the story.  Think: Death of Sherlock Holmes.  If heroes have to keep coming back, they can never actually just drop off the scene and let a new generation take over.  But that's what Obi-Wan did.  If Han and Leia lived happily ever, would that have been so bad?  People would feel BETRAYED by it, but the alternative is that they'll HAVE to be violently killed so we can move on.  But in order to make that happen, they had to sacrifice ambition.  Leia and Han never made the galaxy a better place.  Defeating the Empire didn't accomplish ANYTHING.  More people died because the Empire was defeated than not.  

The Galaxy is a big place.  I know there are a lot of stories that are no longer canon about what the collapse of the Empire means.  I maintain that stories like 'Heart of Darkness' where military commanders of Star Destroyers have set up their own monstrous empires would be a world ripe for Jedi Knights to explore - they needed a 'Knights of the Round Table' saga, not a reboot.  They needed to allow the events of the original movies stand and deal with the consequences, rather than try to reset everything so we could go back to exactly the way it was before and do it all again, only worse.

Quote from: jhkim;1076226I am extremely doubtful of starting from the position that Disney just didn't want to make more money on the franchise. I am, in fact, more inclined to suspect that Internet experts who recite "Get Woke Go Broke" are not, in fact, the experts they think they are. The biggest grossing movie of all time was Avatar, which was full of liberal themes of native culture vs corporate greed and more.

With a straight white male protagonist.
Same with Robocop (also anti-Corporate)
Same with Starship Troopers (anti-Military).

Of course Aliens and Terminator 2 had female protagonists, and were anti-Corporate too.

Kim, have you noticed that these days the Corporations are Woke and the Woke are pro-Corporate?

Wokeness isn't at all about being pro 'native culture' or anti 'corporate greed' - that's all very 1980s. Wokeness is about being anti Straight White Cis Male. Anti the majority of the action/fantasy/sci-fi audience.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1076234Studios love flops like Han Solo: A Star Wars Story.  

I mean, they'd love them better if they weren't perceived as flops, but the movie made back the cost to produce and more.  The production budget was $250 million (more than any other Star Wars movie to that point, and was certainly due to major problems).  The cost of marketing a movie like that was probably in the neighborhood of $40 million.  Let's be generous and assume that the total cost was around $300 million.  

The worldwide gross for the movie was $393 million.  That works out to a 31% rate of return.  

Your $40 million marketing budget is complete fantasy, though. As noted above, marketing budgets tend to be around the cost of production. And of course cinemas take a cut of the gross.

Jesus Fucking Christ On A Stick what does Pundit have to do to get you fuckers to stop taking this thread off-topic about your little pet beefs concering movies?

As for the consultant names being removed from DDB, I don't care because who would ever look at that page in DDB given how it's structured? You'd have to seek that page out, because navigation normally wouldn't ever take you to that page the way it's structured. However, in terms of physical reprints, I'd prefer the leave those names in because that's how the book was written and print changes should be part of errata, which this is not.

EDIT:  Sorry!  Mistwell is right. I got pulled off topic.

Regarding WotC, I suspect that when 5E was released, they were trying to straddle the middle by citing Zak S and Pundit as consultants in addition to nods towards more liberal gamers. At this point, I suspect that they are going to avoid moves like that, and instead just try to be more neutral - and not cite any consultants either way.