LogFAQs > #950517058

Zeus posted...

I love how you give a long post without actually stating any of your own opinions about it >_>

I've said multiple times in multiple posts that I don't really have a strong opinion of it, because when I watched it as a kid it didn't really appeal to me. My opinion of it is basically "meh".

But I'm also open-minded enough to point out that just because I didn't like something 30+ years ago doesn't mean that other people can't like it now.



Zeus posted...

lolwut? There were probably more fantasy films in the 80s than the 90s. And, given that you mention the genre as a whole, the 80s were a time when D&D was really taking off.

And most of them bombed (other than maybe the first Conan the Barbarian). Even Disney couldn't manage to mine the genre for success (Black Cauldron is literally used as the symbol of Disney's near-collapse as a creative force in the 70s/80s). Even the films that became popular cult hits that people still love and talk about decades later (like Labyrinth) failed in their own era (Labyrinth only made half its production budget back).

As for D&D, not really. D&D took off in the late 70s, peaked very early in the 80s, and then spent the rest of the decade dying. But even at its peak, it was still fairly niche at best. As much as ET and Stranger Things would have you believe every kid in the 80s was playing D&D, they really weren't (almost none of the core books sold in the 80s ever sold better than 500k copies - by contrast, the 5e PHB sold more than that in the first two months alone). But none of that really matters anyway, because I was talking about fantasy movies, not fantasy as a whole across all media.



Zeus posted...

I'm not talking about Cornette's completely justified dislike for AEW and its "talent" (using talent pretty loosely for most of them), I'm talking about the introduction of bias from listening to Cornette about AEW.

You're kind of missing my point. Because Cornette's bias is so strong, and because he's your main source of information about AEW, you're only hearing about the worst aspects of the company, and they're being painted in the worst possible light, so your own impression of the product is far more biased than you actually realize.

It would be like you watching MSNBC and The Young Turks as your only news sources and being convinced that you fully understand every facet of modern politics.



Zeus posted...

VKM wouldn't hate AEW because the only thing he'd see it as a potential competitor and clearly it's no competition.

He felt threatened enough to immediately counterprogram against their show in a desperate attempt to cost them ratings, and his show is regularly beaten by them in the ratings every single week. When you take demographics into account, their show is actually right on par with Raw, his beloved baby.

The WWE also felt the need to completely restructure how they offer contracts in an attempt to lock up as much talent as possible, and then spent a few years refusing to fire or release anyone in an attempt to starve AEW of talent. They only really eased back on that because of the pandemic (where cutting costs to impress investors became more important), and after it became clear that it wasn't really hindering AEW anyway.

VKM is seriously fucking bothered by the existence of AEW, no matter how hard Cornette likes to dismiss the idea that Vince cares. We're talking about the man who deliberately sabotaged and destroyed the UK indie scene because he was afraid that World of Sport could grow into a potential rival promotion halfway around the world... Vince does not like competition (no matter how often WWE likes to trot out the "Vince likes competition because it brings out the best in him" bullshit). Deep down he's always terrified of another WCW scenario, where some upstart rival he'd dismissed as a threat manages to find its feet and actually sucker-punch him into second place. Bischoff may have named his podcast 83 Weeks, but Vince probably still has nightmares about those 83 weeks to this day.

Hell, even Cornette and Brian Last themselves have freely admitted that for all that they hate AEW, they still tend to like it more than the current WWE product. WWE really isn't attracting new fans, even NXT (which was the trendy, smark-favored brand for years). Regardless of what you might think of the product, AEW is.



Zeus posted...

You're going to need to explain that one.

Cornette's mentioned that the Montreal Screwjob was his idea (though it's up to the individual to decide whether or not he's lying - considering other people have claimed credit for it as well, I'd argue his version of the story seems the most plausible). Or that, at the very least, he's the one who gave Vince the idea.

He's also mentioned that the blowback from that was that Bret went to the newspapers afterward and annihilated kayfabe by ranting about how Vince screwed him. That, combined with the controversy it created (and the filmcrew literally filming everything behind the scenes for a documentary) drew more attention to the behind the scenes reality more than almost anything else.

And then all the negative publicity from the fallout of the situation led Vince to give his "Bret screwed Bret" speech where he outright talked about "doing the job", what was "best for business", and the "time-honored tradition", before leaning fully into it and giving his "we're tired of insulting your intelligence" speech where he outright says "Sure, wrestling is fake and always has been" (at least partly due to the advantage of no longer having to pay sports taxes in New Jersey and other places).

So when you talk about the idea that kayfabe is dead and buried, and that the lack of kayfabe is a large part of what has killed the industry as a whole, then at least some of the fault for that happening has to be traced back to Montreal. Cornette has openly said that he feels at least somewhat responsible - which then starts to feel like bitter irony when you realize no one on Earth mourns the death of kayfabe as much as Cornette does. He's basically like a Greek hero who destroyed everything he loved through his own accidental hubris.
---

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