Lurker > ParanoidObsessive

Zeus posted...

That and they needed an excuse to keep Reigns from going straight after Brock. Heyman went out of his way to challenge Reigns and this gives them a way to delay that fight so they can build up to it more.

To be fair, they didn't actually NEED to do that. Brock's limited schedule means they could have just had him be somewhat elusive (sure, there's the "champion must defend every X number of days" rule, but the WWE ignores that for pretty much every belt constantly these days anyway), or just have other high-level competitors demand title shots first, fail, and then ultimately have the giant brought down by the intended giant killer. In a way, it would mimic how they tended to build the various monster heels that existed solely so Hulk Hogan could beat them in the 80s.

Roman only becomes the de facto destined final opponent specifically BECAUSE Heyman called him out. The only reason they really need to "keep Roman from going after Brock" is because they created that exact problem for themselves.



Zeus posted...

That way the guy everybody knows is going to win will eventually enter the fight as an underdog.

That's one of the problems with how they've been booking Roman, though. You can book him in all the most cliched underdog scenarios you want, but when everyone absolutely knows that he's definitely going to win (and a majority of people don't like him in the first place), he's not an underdog - and he doesn't even remotely benefit from the usual underdog sympathy.

It's the same problem you have with Braun jumping him backstage. Previous sarcasm aside, that was absolutely booked as a traditional face/heel interaction where the evil heel ambushes the face, who will then have a period of being "injured" and ultimately return for revenge (hell, see also Seth Rollins for the last year or so). The intended goal is to make the crowd hate the heel for being a dick and simultaneously engender sympathy and support for the face - it's classic wrestling storytelling. But when the crowd already hates the person you're forcing into the face role, all it really accomplishes is giving Braun the most potent face pop of his entire career, with everyone cheering as he beats the ever-living shit out of Roman. And when Roman returns for his righteous revenge, he's still going to get booed (if not more so than before).

The WWE can mute crowd noise all it wants - whether to hide just how hated Roman really is or to try and protect JBL - but in the modern world where a majority of fans are at least somewhat "smart", and where we as a culture tend to react negatively to blatantly obvious manipulation, all they're really doing is damaging Roman's career and killing his chance of ever really getting over as a face. The longer they keep pushing against the tide, the longer that resentment is going to last.

And again, it literally makes no sense. The Rock is pretty much the prime example of someone the crowd loathed, who then turned heel and won them over, ultimately becoming one of the biggest faces the sport has ever seen (and Cena parallels that evolution as well). On some level, SOMEONE in the company should be at least somewhat aware of the idea that turning Roman heel would probably produce the end-result they want better than constantly trying to force the crowd to love him ever will.

But again, in a company where merch sales are pretty much the be-all, end-all and who Vince likes is way more important than who the fans like, this isn't likely to change any time soon.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

You say that, but Jim Cornette once infamously shot that VKM reprimanded him and made him apologize for insulting Kevin Dunn's bucky beaver teeth. Dunn allegedly cried at one point, which doesn't sound like a "tolerate no weakness" environment.

Yeah, but there's three problems there.

One, Kevin Dunn has basically been a family friend and extremely close to Vince for decades, which means that situation wasn't Vince taking a stand against bullying as much as it was him essentially throwing his own dominance around to stick up for someone he was personally close to. From everything we've ever heard about him, if it had been a random stranger or just some low-level mook Vince probably wouldn't have stuck up for him at all, if not outright joined in on the mocking. Dunn is pretty much bulletproof in WWE terms, and why he's got about as much pull with Vince as Triple H does.

Two, Cornette has a history of rubbing pretty much everyone the wrong way, and he definitely represented the sort of "Southern Wrasslin" Vince has always absolutely loathed. Cornette was always walking on eggshells in the WWE, and because of it, he usually got cut zero slack for stuff he did compared to others (see also Cornette getting fired for slapping Santino Marella while they went out of their way to protect Bill DeMott for years).

And three, Cornette's also talked about just how much of a bully mentality Vince has on multiple occasions. About the only reason Cornette has never really gone off on it more than he has is because he's definitely coming from that old-school mentality where "the boys" handle their own business and don't talk about it publicly, so he doesn't necessarily see anything WRONG with being a bully. It's part of why he's actually kind of taken JBL's side in the whole current mess - and part of why he slapped Santino Marella in the first place.



Zeus posted...

Doubly so in the case of Muhammad Hassan who management liked and was trying to push, but he had pissed off the boys because he wasn't smart to the business. Granted, the kiss of death for Hassan -- who was an incredible heel -- was the whole terrorist motifs he used at times, which unfortunately lined up with a terrorist attack.

Yeah, but that's the thing. Hassan didn't even remotely get fired due to backstage stuff, he was essentially sacrificed to protect the company from backlash from UPN, who basically told the WWE flat-out that they didn't want him on SmackDown (with the implication being that, if they didn't get their way, SmackDown was going to cease being on UPN).

There are plenty of guys who get shit from "the boys" for not respecting the business, but who still get pushed to the moon. Brock's a pretty prime example of someone who stepped on pretty much everyone's toes yet never really suffered for it at all. In Vince's world, if you have the right look and can draw, he doesn't really give much of a shit whether or not you're making waves backstage (as long as you're good at following HIS orders).

It's the same reason why, when stuff like Jericho and Sin Cara getting into a fist-fight happens, Vince tends to either ignore it entirely, or side with whoever won the fight (because he respects strength) - unless the loser is a much bigger draw (because he respects money more).

He tolerates "wrestlers' court" and similar things because it benefits him, and because it reflects his own worldview. He doesn't allow it to happen because he's somehow letting "the boys" handle their own business out of respect, or because he honors the tradition of it - if it had been detrimental to him or his interests at any point, he would have shut it down in a heartbeat.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Peterass posted...

But when you don't engage in either activity, which is harder to abstain from after an extended period of time?

It actually gets easier to abstain from either if you go long enough without. Like most addictions, the hardest withdrawal period is right after quitting, with a gradual adjustment to the new reality over time.

It's also kind of been proven that sexual tends to be related to how much sexual release you're actually getting - in other words, the more sex you have, or the more you masturbate, the more you want. Total abstinence becomes easier over time, because the longer you go without, the lower your libido will drop.

The real problem is that if you go from being a chronic masturbator to complete abstinence, you're likely going to have at least some period of nocturnal emissions as your body tries to compensate.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

The Wave Master posted...

The alcoholic and moronic behavior can be tolerated if he still has millions in the bank, but who knows if he does? Either way he's probably going to die broke and alone, but man will he have a lot of great stories to tell.

He's been married like five times. I can pretty much guarantee that he doesn't have millions in the bank.

Yeah, he's extremely poor. It's been mentioned that half the reason they keep him around post-retirement and occasionally give him things to do is mostly just so that he'll have a regular income/paycheck to help cover his multiple alimony expenses, and not wind up going to jail or worse.



The Wave Master posted...

Is Roman Reigns dead now?

Do we have to listen to his terrible charisma-less promos now?

Do we have to watch him lumber around the ring doing 5 moves? (Drive by, clothesline, uppercut punch, Superman Punch, and Spear.)

I hope so!!!

http://screengrabber.deadspin.com/braun-strowman-puts-roman-reigns-onto-stretcher-throws-1794197973

Silly Wave. They did that storyline so that you'll feel sorry for the poor Face who got callously beaten up by the monster Heel, and will cheer the Face even more when he triumphantly returns to get his just revenge!

Unfortunately, they had to do that whole angle backstage and likely pre-recorded so they could mute out the colossal amount of boos coming from the arena the entire time Roman was talking, which all turned into a huge positive pop the moment Braun started kicking the shit out of him.

Roman isn't going anywhere. He's almost certainly getting booked to go over Braun as a stepping stone to Brock, who in turn is going to drop the belt to Roman, because he's the future of the company no matter how many fans refuse to accept it, because fuck you, that's why.



Zeus posted...

Roman Reigns is the biggest reason why I really don't watch any more. (That and Lesnar is the champ again, so Raw has an absentee champion once more. The only plus is that the brand split hides the fact that the championship won't be on the line every PPV.) And, in general, I started to get bored with wrestling again last year so my viewing has been more sporadic.

I've found it's way easier to watch if you pretty much skip Raw and SmackDown entirely, and just watch the pay-per-views for free at a friend's house. That cuts a lot of the extraneous bullshit out, and you don't have to justify watching three overpadded hours of Raw or paying for the WWE Network to yourself after a particularly mediocre pay-per-view.

It also helps when the people you're watching the show with are all mostly drinking, and are all more than willing to viciously mock matches, storylines, or promos that seem excessively stupid.

Between that and just watching stuff like WhatCulture and WrestleTalk online, wrestling's become more interesting to me these days than it's been since the early 2000s (which is the last time I checked out). To some extent, the behind-the-scenes info and "meta" aspects of the show are almost more interesting than the shows themselves. And Cornette's always interesting for a perspective on history and the older territory days.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

While I'm sure that JBL has acted on VKM's marching orders, shoot interviews generally portray JBL as a dick.

Oh, I'm not disputing that. He definitely comes across like a huge dick in almost any story you hear about him, even from people who like him.

But it's also a lot easier to BE a dick (or at least, to fully express your own preexisting inner dickishness) when you know you can absolutely get away with it, and that your boss will 100% defend you if it becomes an issue.



Zeus posted...

And, given VKM's nature, I'm not sure he so much encourages it as he just permits it because that's the sort of stuff that was going on during his daddy's and granddaddy's day.

Nah, because it's pretty well established he never gave a single shit about most of the "traditions" of the business (up to and including poaching from other territories and actively helping to dismantle the entire territory system by strong-arming the fuck out of other promoters in ways that were always sort of considered off-limits, and to the point where it bothered his dad even during the 2-3 years worth of early growth he actually got to see).

But what HAS been established time and time again is that Vince is a HUGE control freak, and he absolutely needs to be the dominant male in every room. To his worldview, someone getting ribbed either needs to step up and defend themselves (even if that means throwing punches or shitting on their tormenter even worse), or they demonstrate that they're weak. And Vince has zero tolerance for what he sees as weakness.

It goes way beyond just passively ignoring it, when there are stories out there of him actively laughing at incidents of ribbing or going out of his way to needle someone who'd been the victim of ribbing a bit to sort of rub their nose in it even more. He's not a school principle who looks the other way when the school's star quarterback shoves a nerd in a locker, he's the football coach who actively laughs and high-fives the quarterback after they shove a nerd in a locker and leave them in there overnight.

And what makes it worse is that, along the lines of you mentioning wrestlers' court, it's been implied at least a few times that when Vince or other higher-ups thought a specific talent needed to be taken down a peg, they'd casually mention that fact to some of the more loyal goons in the back, and suddenly lo-and-behold someone would find themselves getting fucked with by "the boys".



Metalsonic66 posted...

The Wave Master posted...

the Xbone Scropio is probably going to retail for 699.99.

Isn't that just a rumor? I don't think Microsoft is that stupid.

Most of what they've done over the last few years firmly convinces me that yes, they are absolutely that stupid. Far more so than otherwise.

I find it much harder to think of things they've done RIGHT over the last 5 years or so than I do thinking of things they've done blatantly, ridiculously wrong.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

ernieforss posted...

but at least Red Dead will be on it and it will take a year before it hits pc

Or possibly never, if the last Red Dead game is any precedent. They were really hard-core against releasing it on PC under any circumstances. They might have a similar attitude this time around, meaning any would-be PC gamers thinking "Ehh, I'll just wait for the PC version to come out" may be stone cold fucked.

But none of that matters, because it WILL be on the PS4, which is how most people should play it anyway. Even more so when the timed exclusive content is all going to come out on the PS4 first as well.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

7 Up might be the only game on that list that I ever enjoyed playing at all.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

That article actually touches on the real problem:

"Dave Meltzer notes that “everyone knows how tight Layfield is with Vince McMahon” and “the belief across-the-board is Layfield’s weeding out those who can’t take it comes from above.”"

Vince has ALWAYS been the sort of would-be alpha male who has to constantly prove he's better than everyone around him, and break anyone who he feels isn't respecting him enough. He's extremely petty and vindictive, and part of his desperate need for dominance always seems to express itself as incredibly juvenile at times (see also, writing the "kiss my ass" bullshit into storylines where it really didn't belong, mostly just to demonstrate that he could make these giant, musclebound monsters and hot women actually DO it). And it's all almost certainly rooted in a massive inferiority complex (the same one that led him to bulk up massively because the people working for him all intimidated him physically) which likely goes back to when he was (allegedly) sexually abused by his own mother as a kid. Whenever he feels powerless, he lashes out hard.

"Ribbing" has always been part of the wrestling business, but Vince seems to take it to extremes. And there've always been stories about how some people in the locker room seem to go that extra mile to be shitnozzles, and Vince hasn't even remotely given a shit (because he respects it). It's part of why Stephanie's anti-bullying charity work has always kind of come across as laughable.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

I used to have three of them. They're probably still in the Wiki for the game somewhere.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

He says without the slightest hint of irony when defending Hal.

I think that's sort of the point - they're both kind of cardboard. It's hard to rate either of them higher than the other when they're both pretty evenly dull.

But Hal at least sort of has a bit of pompous sarcasm to his personality in the comics (and served as a bit of an interesting foil when he used to hang out with Green Arrow), whereas John is mostly a lump. The closest he really HAD to a personality was when he first debuted, and even then it was more "generic over-the-top black man" (see also, Luke Cage) than it was any real character.

What most people think of when they think his personality is about 90% the creation of the Justice League cartoons (and a lot of it hinges on the fact that Phil Lamarr is a really good voice actor).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

GanonsSpirit posted...

He also used to be an architect, but that'll never come up again, because he's too busy talking about how he used to be a marine.

It comes up just often enough to justify why he (and Kyle, who was an artist) can use their rings to make really elaborate constructs while unimaginative Hal mostly just uses his ring to punch people.

But yeah, John's whole "Hey, I was a marine!" comes up way more often. Like when he got an Indigo ring and was literally Rambo for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/f/ff/JohnStewartIndigoTribe.png


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

I_Abibde posted...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Even Kyle doesn't like Kyle.

Kyle doesn't like refrigerators, as I recall.

He also doesn't like Gotham.



Bueno...


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Smacky the Frog


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

The big stumbling block that a lot of fans I knew seemed to have from the get-go was the decision to not use actual costumes. At the time, i defended it since the black outfits *seemed* more practical but I didn't realize how little protection leather actually afforded a person

I think it was less the practicality, and more just the fact that some things that look good or at least acceptable in a comic would look utterly stupid on screen. They SORT of managed to make yellow-and-blue work as a look in First Class, but even then they kind of had to modify it, and push a bit to justify it, and it kind of only worked because in your head you're going, "Hey, it's the 60s." I was perfectly fine with how they handled it (I was WAY less fine about it when Morrison had them change to costumes like that in the comics as well, but that may be the least offensive thing about Morrison's run to me), and I definitely think it would have looked worse if they were all just wearing yellow spandex.

And honestly, I didn't really think of them wearing leather any more than I usually think of Batman wearing rubber (in spite of the fact that he usually is). It's easier to just assume that it's some sort of space-age bullet-proof material or whatever, like when you assume the Fantastic Four are wearing outfits made out of unstable molecules or that Superman is wearing some sort of Kryptonian ultra-fiber outfit that can survive all the shit he puts it through on a regular basis.



Zeus posted...

and, in all honestly, the characters *still* weren't wearing masks of any kind which is a flat-out stupid choice.

That's one of those "evils of cinema" sort of things, though. Basically, when you're paying name actors to star in a film, you want their face on camera as often as possible. It's why Spider-Man had his mask torn off like 50% of the time in the Raimi films, and why the Marvel movies constantly cut to shots of Tony's face inside the Iron Man armor.

Even in some of the most faithful adaptations of comics, you're still going to have stuff like that tweaked to show off actors' faces.

And hell, out of every hero or hero team Marvel has ever had, the X-Men are actually the characters MOST likely to show up without masks, because half (or more than half) of them show their real faces all the time anyway (and then there's Nightcrawler...). Once Claremont took over the team, it became more and more common for them to go out without masks, and for people who previously wore masks to stop wearing masks.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Far-Queue posted...

I disagree. I don't expect him to identically replicate Freddie Mercury's voice, because he's not Freddie Mercury. IMO he sounded great. If you want note-for-note duplication of Freddie Mercury, just listen to the original Queen recordings.

He doesn't have to sound identical to Freddie Mercury's voice to mesh well with the songs, though. The problem is, he DOESN'T mesh well with the songs.

(As a side example - George Michael didn't sound exactly like Freddie Mercury's voice singing "Somebody to Love" during the Tribute Concert, but he's still a good fit for the music. Some of the other people who sang during that show... really, really weren't. George Michael also doesn't sound like Elton John, but his voice arguably fits the music even better than Elton John's does when they sing "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" together.)

Like it or not, certain singers shouldn't sing certain songs, and he's really not a good fit with Queen's music in general.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

shadowsword87 posted...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

EVE's also owned and published by the company that murdered White Wolf, so f*** them.

Screw you dad! I do what I want!

http://www.pcgamer.com/world-of-darkness-will-feature-a-poetic-ui-its-not-going-to-look-like-a-game

These are the sorts of people you're associating with! You're making your mother sick with worry!


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Zeus posted...

At any rate, Atrocitus would also be a good way of introducing the concept of other Lantern Corps for when Sinestro eventually does a heel turn. It's also more organic than Sinestro just coming up with the idea for a yellow lantern.

The way I saw it, you basically make "FEAR" the running theme of the entire trilogy. In the first movie, it's emphasized that Abin Sur fails (and dies) because Atrocitus made him afraid, and fear is the greatest weakness of the Green Lantern power ("Fear is the enemy of Will" as a snappy running mantra works great).

In the first movie, Hal gets the ring, and does some minor cool tricks with it, maybe saves some people or beats up some criminals. Then he fights Atrocitus, and gets his ass kicked - and his powers start to fail him, which is later emphasized as being because his fear is weakening his will. Then Sinestro shows up, actually explains these sorts of ground rules to him, and he sort of goes through his soul-searching 80s montage moment and discovers new-found motivation and courage, potentially bolstered by having Carol's life in danger or Sinestro explaining to him just how fucked Earth is if they don't catch Atrocitus (cue description of Ysmault, blaming it on Atrocitus).

In the final battle against Atrocitus, Sinestro gets decked allowing Hal to get the finishing blow, which he does by blowing up the yellow construction truck Atrocitus was going to beat him to death with (as a reference to the comics and the weakness being yellow, which we won't use because modern audiences think that's kind of stupid), because he's apparently JUST SO BADASS he's become immune to fear, and thus, THE MOST POWERFUL LANTERN EVER.

(But really, as we eventually learn in a later movie, the real trick is that he's always terrified, but has sort of come to terms with that fear in a way that just galvanizes his will even more, making him the only Green Lantern who is essentially using his fear as motivation rather than spending all of his time trying to deny or negate it.)

All of this is actually in the revised Green Lantern origin story from Rebirth, so it's not as if I'm making anything new up here.

Then the second movie continues to emphasize a lot about how emotions like fear and hate are weaknesses that sap will (and possibly throws love and compassion in there as well, to Hal's objection), while Sinestro is slowly becoming frustrated with how the Guardians are handling things, eventually learning that the Guardians lied about Ysmault (ie, THEY'RE the ones who destroyed the world, thus justifying Atrocitus' hatred of them), turning him against them. He embraces fear because it's the one power that truly makes Green Lanterns weak, and because it's the power of control and imposed order (see also Batman's entire philosophy).

After the first trilogy, and assuming it's popular enough to warrant sequels, you could always introduce other Lantern Corps, though I'd be hesitant - Orange, Blue, and Indigo are more support flavors than concepts that can carry an entire movie on their own. Violet might be a theme worth exploring, especially if the relationship with Carol is maintained over multiple movies (or possibly better, if he breaks up with her because the Guardians tell him love is forbidden and he's trying to do the right thing), because then you have something to work with if she becomes Star Sapphire, but that's another concept that might work better as the B-plot to a story with a strong main plotline.

Blackest Night is always an option, but that seems like it would be terrible as a film even though it was great as a comic.



Zeus posted...

I was just happy they didn't go with Kyle since I've never liked Kyle.

I'm not sure anyone likes Kyle.

Even Kyle doesn't like Kyle.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Llanthana posted...

Sephiroth is "cooler" but Kefka is the better villain.

Sephiroth is "cooler" in that very 90s sort of way that doesn't necessarily translate all that well when you think about it for more than 5 minutes.

Kefka's mostly just creepy as hell.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

Jiggy101011 posted...

Isn't Vulture the first villain spidey faces in the OG comic books?

Technically, the first villain he faces is the nameless burglar who shoots his uncle.

But the first supervillain he faces is The Chameleon. Vulture doesn't show up until the second issue. Doc Ock shows up in issue #3.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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shadowsword87 posted...

That came out a year after I was born. And while that's fine and all, I want my games to be pretty if I'm going off poking things.

It came out in 2014. EVE is literally a decade older.

EVE's also owned and published by the company that murdered White Wolf, so fuck them.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

WhiskeyDisk posted...

If I'm not mistaken if Sony and Fox don't at least crank out a stinker with the Marvel properties they have rights to once every 5 years the rights revert back to Marvel Studio's ownership automatically.

Not sure if it's 5 years specifically, but there's definitely a "If you don't use X property within a period of Y time the rights revert back to Marvel" clause involved in all of those deals.

I THINK the Fox deal for the Fantastic Four is 7-8 years, because there was talk of Josh Trank edging up against the time limit when he was filming his shitty Fantastic Four reboot, and that was released about 8 years after Rise of the Silver Surfer. No clue if the same time scale is involved with the X-Men, but in that case, they're not cranking out constant X-related films to maintain the rights as much as they are to cash in on the lucrative profits anyway (see also the Legion TV show and the New Mutants movie they're currently kicking around in development, on top of Deadpool and whatever else they can spin out of the core franchise. There's a LOT to work with when you have the rights to EVERY X-Men related character, story, and title).

Sony's got a similar deal (ie, they have to keep making Spider-Man films or lose all the rights), but I'm not sure the exact time limit on that one either. It MIGHT be shorter, since Amazing Spider-Man was supposedly pushed out to maintain the rights, and that was only about 5 years after Spider-Man 3.

The only outstanding deal Marvel has that differs from those is the one that ties Hulk to Universal, which is supposedly a distribution deal that absolutely no one seems willing to talk about, but which seems to boil down to Marvel having to pay Universal a percentage of the gross on any Hulk solo movie they make, which Marvel seems unwilling to do (which is why they're basically doing the World War Hulk storyline as a Thor movie instead). I have no idea how many movies are tied to that deal (ie, Marvel would have to release X number of films through Universal before that deal lapses), but it definitely seems to be a "number of films" deal rather than a time-based one, because it doesn't seem to have an actual expiration date (and Marvel doesn't seem all that inclined to deal with Universal, whereas Universal doesn't seem all that inclined to sell the rights back, so Hulk might be in limbo pretty much forever).

Namor was the only other character tied up by Universal if I remember, but it's been implied those rights have finally been pulled back to Marvel. On the other hand, DC getting the Aquaman movie out first (and the almost inevitable failure of the Aquaman movie) will probably keep Marvel from wanting to do anything with Namor.

(If they're smart, they COULD play up the period of time in the 90s when Namor associated with the Heroes for Hire and work him into the Defenders line-up of Netflix shows - doubly fitting since he was actually one of the founding Defenders in the comics - which would bypass a lot of problems, but I don't know if they really care all that much about him as a character at the moment. They've got WAAAY too many irons in the fire right now.)


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Frankly, I wish all the properties would go back to Marvel so you don't have preposterous situations like a full scale alien invasion in progress over midtown Manhattan with only the Avengers there to respond despite at least 2/3 of the rest of the Marvelverse being within spitting distance yet conspicuously absent.

To be fair, Marvel getting control of all of their property back just makes that problem worse, not better.

At the moment, it makes perfect sense that the X-Men, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four don't respond to threats in NYC because they literally don't exist in the MCU (well, Spider-Man does now, but possibly not for long). They essentially all live in parallel universes. So the Manhattan being invaded in The Avengers is not the same Manhattan that Spider-Man is in in his first five movies, nor is it the same Manhattan the X-Men save in their first movie, or the Manhattan the Fantastic Four hang out in.

(And it's not even as if this should be a hard concept to grasp, because we all implicitly understand it's ALSO not the same Manhattan the Men in Black hang out in, or the Manhattan the Watchmen are from, or the Manhattan where Harry met Sally or when the Muppets took Manhattan. Except now I totally want Kermit and Gonzo to show up to help fight Thanos in Infinity War.)

But the more characters who are incorporated into the overarching framework (like every character who has ever been on Agents of SHIELD or all of the Netflix shows), the harder it gets to justify why every Marvel movie in the future doesn't have 400 heroes show up when a major world-threatening catastrophe happens.

In the real world, it doesn't happen because you have to PAY all of those actors. But in the setting, you're still going to need to explain what the hell the Defenders and SHIELD and whoever else are doing if they don't show up in Infinity War when Thanos is trashing everything.

So if Marvel gets Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four and the X-Men back, then they sort of NEED to incorporate them all into the narrative, whereas at the moment, they don't.

And honestly, I almost kind of prefer things they way they are now. The X-Men have ALWAYS worked better alone (in the comics as well), and trying to weave them into the Avengers universe would just devalue them and their whole universe. And while the Fantastic Four have floundered in movies, I think they'd be worse off in the Avengers universe than they would be in one that mostly just focuses on them and their family dynamic as opposed to treating them like just another bunch of superheroes.

As for Spider-Man, he's already straddling that line where Sony may be going back on the deal they made with Marvel, and they're still pushing for a separate Venom movie outside of that deal anyway, sooo...


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shadowsword87 posted...

To be clear: I don't have the MMO addictive tendencies, I get bored way too fast (I have gotten a strong dislike for grinding).
Plus last time I tried it out, I did stop and completely forgot about it.

I just wanna fly around in complex ways and poke different stuff and have fun with it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous



shadowsword87 posted...

UPDATE: I was told to not get into it by a streamer because I was a poor college student, so that's no good.

It's a game where you can literally lose hundreds of dollars worth of real world money in seconds when players blow up your stuff, so yeah, it's really, really not a game for the poor. Or for people with lives. Or outside interests.



Zeus posted...

That same thing was a turnoff with Fox back when it first started to get into the comics game with X-Men, although they've been improving.

I usually don't give Fox too much flak, because they sort of came right out of the door swinging with the original X-Men films. Apart from Blade (which predated them by a few years), it was really the first time a Marvel movie was done RIGHT.

Fox had a few stumbles later on, but it never really seemed like they were embarrassed to be making comic book movies, as much as they didn't quite understand what made certain properties successful in the first place. So their main weakness was more when they picked filmmakers who should never have been working on a certain film, rather than a more endemic problem that taints every film.

I'd probably lump Sony into that same sphere. In both cases, it seems like the success or failure of a given movie creatively hinges on the director, whereas with the DC films, it feels like failure is kind of inevitable even before a director is cast because the higher-ups are actively sabotaging themselves. Fox and Sony are at least capable of getting lucky and casting a director who respects and understands the source material and is capable of nurturing it, even if they don't always DO that.

That being said, Sony seems to be sabotaging the deal with Marvel already while Fox shat out the last Fantastic Four movie, so I'm not cutting either of them TOO much slack.



Zeus posted...

If VKM was capable of planning ahead these days, I would almost wonder if the first loss was meant to just Reigns over since, to some extent, everything with Brock the first time seemed to build up Reigns.

Supposedly, it's being hinted that the current plan is to keep the belt on Brock and then feed him to Roman as well, because the WWE refuses to rest until they've managed to brainwash us all into loving him in spite of the fact that everything they try just makes people hate him worse.

His promo on Raw should be absolute proof that he could be the hottest heel the company has ever had if they'd just TURN him NOW. But they won't, because he still sells T-shirts, and all they can see when they look at him is Samoan Cena.



Zeus posted...

The thing that kills me about the Hardyz is that the Broken gimmick is off the table right now thanks to that TNA lawsuit. So yeah, they're back but they're just the Hardyz again (and man is it hard to get used to Matt acting like Matt). Great way to introduce them, though.

Matt's been trying to play it coy, because they're still suing TNA over it, and the WWE has openly said they're providing legal support if they need it.

Hard to say if they'll get the rights, but there ARE precedents that could allow it, and TNA (sorry, IMPACT) is on shaky ground in a number of ways (like not paying Reby or her dad).


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helIy posted...

what if they rebooted green lantern and still got Ryan to play it

They've actually talked about doing that, to tie in with the current Justice League push (and to save having to try and reboot the whole thing after a single movie), but it doesn't seem like Ryan Reynolds would be interested based on just how much he seems to hate the first movie.

Plus, it's kind of tainted goods now. Not that DC is letting that stop them when it comes to all of their other movies at the moment.



aHappySacka posted...

DirtBasedSoap posted...

what's the difference between Hal Jordan and John Stewart?

One's a black and one's white, people like the black one because he was in the Justice League cartoon since Hal was dead in the comics at the time.

It's more like he was in the Justice League due to affirmative action, because Kyle Rayner was the official Green Lantern at the time and John hadn't really been doing much in the comics for years beforehand. They mostly picked him specifically to add diversity, in the same way they deliberately used Hawkgirl rather than Hawkman.

(Which isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, and to be honest those cartoons were probably the most interesting he's ever actually BEEN as a character, but it doesn't really change WHY they picked him.)

The DCAU cartoons actually used Kyle first (he shows up as Green Lantern in the Superman series) before switching over to John with very little explanation of why he was Green Lantern, how he became Green Lantern, what had happened to Kyle, and so on. Though that version of Kyle was more like a hybrid version of Kyle and Hal anyway (sort of like how the version of The Flash they used was sort of a cross between Barry Allen and Wally West, albeit more Wally than Barry).



aHappySacka posted...

Other notable Green Lanterns are: Guy Gardner and Kyle Raynor but you don't really hear about them all that much.

Guy's the best Green Lantern, except when he's busy being the best Red Lantern.


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I can't even say that about Chrono Trigger.


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Zeus posted...

It could have been salvageable with some characters to character designs and not jumping between shit so often.

I said this at the time - if they'd either stuck with the Earth stuff or gone full-in with the space stuff (which is what most of the nerds want, but which I still think probably would have been a mistake), and if they'd had a better villain (not stupid Hector Hammond and Parallax as a giant evil space cloud), it could easily have been a success. Possibly helped if Reynolds had played it a bit straighter (more towards the Nathan Fillion end of the scale) rather than being the most comic relief character in his own movie.

My suggestion was a film where they just went with the modern origin story - namely, Abin Sur crashes on Earth with Atrocitus (albeit one who already has the red ring). Hal gets Abon Sur's ring, learns to use it, has to fight Atrocitus, mostly loses. Towards the end, Sinestro shows up, and a combination of Hal developing newfound confidence and the help of Sinestro allows him to beat Atrocitus - end credits. Pad it out with the obligatory Carol romance and a few scenes of Hal potentially defeating more ordinary criminals before Atrocitus shows up (or some sort of weird blood-possessed rage monsters conjured up by Atrocitus afterward, giving Hal supernormal enemies to hone his skills on), and you've got a film.

You've also got a custom-made trilogy on your hands - the second film is the one where Hal finally goes to space and trains with the Lantern Corps, while becoming friends with Sinestro (with a scene or three in the background also showing Sinestro slowly growing disillusioned with how the Guardians run things). And then you do the Sinestro turn in the third movie, with him embracing the yellow light of fear and forcing Hal to fight against someone he's been friends with for multiple movies (rather than, you know, giving them 2-3 scenes together and then throwing away the turn in a post-credits scene).

The movie we got was oddly schizophrenic, where it was simultaneously rushing way too hard to establish certain plot points while still feeling like it was dragging, and where it couldn't decide if it wanted to be a more traditional Earth-based superhero movie or space-based sci-fi. By trying to be everything at once, it wound up failing at everything. It needed to pick what it wanted to be and focus on that.


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helIy posted...

they seriously won the lottery with that dude

I actually suspect black magic.


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I'm still waiting to hear the con.


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Far-Queue posted...

That dude from Bad Company that toured with Queen for a bit did a great job, honestly.

He really didn't, though. Mainly because he didn't really try to change his own singing style to match the band in any real way, which is a problem if your vocal style doesn't really mesh with the performance.

If you want to talk about replacement singers living up to the standards set by their predecessors, Journey is where you should be looking. Arnel Pineda sounds more like Steve Perry than Steve Perry does at this point.


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Muffinz0rz posted...

Is it possible that sleeping too much can make you more tired?

It's pretty much been scientifically implied that sleeping too long is actually worse for your health than not getting enough sleep, so yes.

8 hours seems to be the golden mean. Anything too much more or less than that is bad for you.


(Also, as a related aside, "catching up" on sleep is and has always been bullshit. You can't "make up for" lost sleep by sleeping longer on weekends, nor can you "store up" sleep in advance. That's not how the human body works.)


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Sesame Street was basically created to be a show for inner city kids who lacked educational advantages. It started out edgy, and wasn't really neutered until years later.


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ArvTheGreat posted...

Back in 2008 arv was respected

That was a different Arv, though.


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And I will neither forget you nor your name.


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helIy posted...

no, it's definitely a mass effect game

it's just not the mass effect game everyone wanted

It's only a Mass Effect game in the same sense that Infiltrator and Galaxy were Mass Effect games.


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JazzMasterZero posted...

CE is a lot more poppin.

Quantity of posts isn't really much of a selling point when the quality is that of an open sewer drain.

Though I suppose there IS an advantage to having most posts and topics moving by so quickly when you don't actually want to read any of them.


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helIy posted...

it got way better, though.

It really didn't.


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FourthDimension posted...

the switch is a good successor to the 3ds

the wii u wasn't

This is more or less what I came in to say.

People disliked the Wii-U because it was a console, and people compared it to other consoles.

People like the Switch because, regardless of what Nintendo claims it is, it's pretty clearly a handheld and not a console, so people hold it to a much lower standard.

That being said, as positive as the response to the Switch has been online, it won't necessarily do all that well outside of Japan beyond the initial early adopter rush unless they can aggressively expand the library and convince people who otherwise aren't all that interested in handheld gaming or Nintendo in general to buy in. It can still easily flop just like the Wii-U ultimately did just as easily as it can potentially see Wii-like levels of success.


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Definitely not.

But the more important question is, where did you come from, and where did you go?


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MICHALECOLE posted...

KevinceKostner posted...

I have no doubt it was overblown, the previous games were wonky but that was part of the charm.

If anything the reception lowered my expectations to where I'm enjoying it more..

One of the common views of the game is "It isn't necessarily a terrible game, it just isn't a Mass Effect game." Usually qualified with "It's a relatively mediocre game if you view it on its own, but the combat mechanics are nice."


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knivesX2004 posted...

helIy posted...

I don't

Witcher 3 is boring as fuck fetch quest bullshit

There's no helping you.
I'm leaving now.

You have to remember, Helly hates good things and loves terrible things.

He also tends to like or dislike games for reasons literally no one else would ever consider important. Like back when he loved Destiny mostly because he could glitch his way out of maps and explore places he wasn't supposed to be in.

He pretty much sees the entire world through a broken mirror.


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CountessRolab posted...

"Youtubers" are horrendously overpaid and it will be nice to see them cut down to size.

You won't really see most of them cut down to size. You'll just see them producing less content, with the best of them resorting to things like Twitch or Patreon as an alternate revenue stream (or moving their content entirely behind one sort of paywall or another), while the worst will just game the system and produce even more misleading clickbait-y type videos to trick view time monetization out of stupid people while providing very little worthwhile content.

There's been a huge renaissance of online content as an alternative entertainment model lately, but that pretty much dies the moment people can't monetize it.


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The Wave Master posted...

Roman needs a heel run and could succeed at it, but Vince just isn't going to let that happen. Why? I'm not even sure because he was the heel in this feud. He is well on his way to being Cena Jr

You answered your own question - they absolutely want him to be Cena Jr. So much so that people have been accusing of trying to "clone" Cena via Roman for years now.

Cena, for all that "smart" fans tend to dislike him and for all that he gets a minor undercurrent of boos at live events (see also, the crowd booing while he was proposing, to the point of them having to mute crowd noise), sells a metric fuckton of merchandise. And for the WWE, that's a pretty major indicator of how "over" they consider someone (see also, the reason why the New Day keeps having a strong presence on Raw). They don't really care if something like 25-30% of the audience is shitting on Cena as long as the other part is still buying his merch and going to see him in movies.

In Roman's case, he actually sells fairly well when it comes to T-shirts and the like, and he has the big strong muscle idiot look that Vince loves so much, AND he's related to the Rock (a shame he doesn't seem to have inherited any of his cousin's charisma), so the WWE is pretty happy with him. Their assumption is that if they keep pushing him as hard as they have been, and basically keep giving him the traditional babyface booking, he'll eventually get over enough for them to benefit from him in the role of #1 face in the company even if a minority of the crowd continues to hate him.

The real problem is that, whereas Cena might be generating something like a 30% negative/70% positive reaction, Roman's closer to the reverse. And with the crowd reaction so strongly against him, they keep feeling the need to mute all the boos - which makes the crowd sound utterly dead for every Roman match (which means the home audience is always going to feel like he's a dud in every match). Or worse, people notice the manipulation going on and then knee-jerk turn on him because most people don't like it when they notice they're being lied to. Add to that the fact that the constant face push is probably alienating more people than it's winning over (see also, "Rocky Maivia"'s first run as a smiling happy-go-lucky third-generation wrestler babyface), .

But the WWE have always had a sense of knowing what the fans want better than the fans do (along with a stubborn unwillingness to bend), and it's only gotten worse since Hunter and Stephanie took over (to the point of multiple little "fuck you" moments to the crowd where they're pretty much straight-up taunting their own audience because they know there's no real competition to worry about losing fans to). And because of that, they'll probably keep pushing Roman until he's utterly loathed by the fans, and damaged to the point where he can't really be salvaged at all.

A good, strong heel turn could absolutely revitalize him and potentially win fans over, but as is, he's like an anchor made of turd dragging every show he's on down.


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Mead posted...

What I don't understand is why do advertisers care so much about where their ads go

A lot of times it's more a case of they're afraid that people who object to a specific type of video or show or whatever will notice that a product is being advertised on a specific video, and try and boycott the advertiser for it.

A lot of companies are deathly afraid of customer boycott or negative attention, which is why they'll sacrifice formerly lucrative advertising channels in a heartbeat if they think it will save them from a PR disaster.

In a way, it's not even really the advertisers fault, as much as the fact that we as a culture have given pretty much every psychopath and demagogue a much stronger voice than they've ever had before, and the echo box and outrage engine that is the Internet is constantly spitting out more and more niche special interest groups who are more and more willing to go on the attack over even the most petty of things.


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deoxxys posted...

fuck media and advertisers

Without them you wouldn't actually have ANY videos, because contrary to what most of the younger generation believes, there is no magical wish fairy that makes everything online free.

Someone ALWAYS has to pay. If it isn't advertisers, it has to be content consumers. And god forbid anyone ever ask most people online to ever pay for anything.


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The Wave Master posted...

Wrestlemania was pretty damn good last night. 5 plus hours of wrestling goodness, if you're a fan, but one of my favorites, The Undertaker wrestled probably his last match last night.

http://screengrabber.deadspin.com/the-undertaker-leaves-the-ring-for-probably-the-last-1793946290

It was emotional and sad.

The only thing I took away from the Undertaker match is that they're never going to turn Roman heel, and that the crowd is going to continue to hate him from now until doomsday.

The big surprise that caught me off-guard was the crowd reaction during the Goldberg/Lesnar match, where it seemed like there was actually a strong pro-Brock undercurrent. Definitely unexpected.

The Hardys showing up wasn't entirely unexpected, but it was still cool nonetheless, and the swerve to introduce them was very well done.

A lot of the rest of the show fell kind of flat, though, and there were a few pretty significant missteps. The crowd seemed dead a lot of the time, or actively hostile (to the point where they were clearly muting unwanted crowd reaction in multiple matches). Most of the matches felt somewhat rushed (understandable) and underwhelming. It doesn't really feel like it was all that spectacular a show.


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WhiskeyDisk posted...

FFV is actually one of my favorite FF games just because of how badly you can break it with the job system.

FFV is one of my least favorite FF games among the ones I don't actively hate (VIII, XII) or outright ignore (XI, everything from XIII on) just because of how there's almost literally nothing to it other than the job system.

Even FFII felt like it had better writing - which is sad on multiple levels - but what really makes FFV fail so hard for me is that it follows after FFIV (one of the better FF games ever made) and directly precedes FFVI (one of the better FF games ever made). It's like, how can it drop off SO hard in the middle when the games both before and after it are so much better?

It doesn't help that I played FFV years after it was released (probably around the time FFVIII or IX were coming out), so I was already comparing it to games years ahead of it in development and tech. But even just compared to its contemporaries it seems like so much ass.

It's not even the best implementation of the Job system in FF games (again, Tactics and IX were roughly contemporary by the time I finally played it).


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There's a lot of people on GameFAQs who are older than 35 or so. And a fair number of us have always been here on PotD.



Nichtcrawler X posted...

Wait, what?

I'm a millennial? I thought millennials were those born around 2000 or at least at the start of that millennium, not us 80/90's kids...

To be fair, most of the generation classifications are kind of bullshit anyway, since there really isn't an official standard of measure for when one definitively ends and another begins. Add to that the fact that, in recent times, the various cultural generation gaps shift a hell of a lot faster than every 30 years or so (the older standard of measure), and you've basically got people with radically different world-views all getting lumped into the same demographic.

Realistically, I've always tended to separate original flavor "Gen Y" and the newer "Millennials" term into two separate groups, with the Gen Y kids being the ones born in the late 70s/early 80s and the Millennials being the ones born in the late 80s/early 90s. Though at this point, the usual Internet shorthand of "80s kids" and "90s kids" is probably just as good a dividing line.


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Muscles36 posted...

Sauron is the first I think of

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wwinterj25 posted...

I don't take part in it so it's just another day to me and it's easy to ignore.

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