LogFAQs > #950651328

I'm going to read over the remaining wrestling comments, etc, once I've seen that full episode of AEW... if I can find a place to watch it.

The Wave Master posted...

Finally, Michelle Trachtenberg said there was a rule on set where she wasn't allowed to be alone with Joss Whedon. Dude is just a creep.

Well, who initiated that rule? Oo

Naruto_fan_42 posted...

You guys watch WandaVision?

Not yet, although I'm a little confused what in the MCU set up the fact that the two were in a relationship. I just vaguely remember that they'd been living together at some point (which I think was referenced in IW, which is strange because continuity-wise I think Civil War was last film to feature them before IW and there wasn't anything happening there), but I don't remember any real build-up to it.

Was there any build? Or is it just something fans are supposed to go along with because we know it was a thing in the comics?

I_Abibde posted...

I enjoyed Cornette on commentary on NWA Powerrr (until he made a gaffe that cost him that job),

It didn't cost him the job, he got annoyed at the management reacted to it -- despite the fact that they vetted the show beforehand and didn't find anything wrong with his comment (which apparently was something he'd been using for decades) -- so he took some time off then decided not to come back.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I literally said "I never really cared about Willow as a setting/story" and "I suppose if I watched Willow now I might have a different opinion of it" in my post right before yours. That seems pretty clearly indicative of my opinion of it.

Didn't like it, didn't hate it. Meh.

Well, I missed it because that part was several posts later whereas the post that I'd originally saw where you responded to the subject didn't cover any of that.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But most of the rest of the films you mentioned were either blatant failures (Munchausen didn't even make back a quarter of its budget), or the sort of technical failures where they theoretically recoup production budget (and thus succeed, if only barely), but were actually failures when you factor in marketing budget. Beastmaster may have gotten a TV show 17 years later, but it was considered a commercial failure when it was released (and its sequel was a straight-up failure without equivocation). And that's not even including films you didn't mention, like Krull, Ladyhawke, and Sword of the Valiant. There were definitely a few successes (I never said every fantasy film in the 80s failed), but the majority did.

I'm not sure why you're so obsessed with commercial success as a metric. I was talking about fantasy was big in the 80s because there was a fantasy film boom (among other things). If we were talking about a single film and its relative impact, then you could reasonably look at commercial success. However, when you have DOZENS of fantasy films coming out, the fact that they exist at all is the most pertinent metric. Keep in mind that horror movies were also big in the 70s and 80s, yet the vast majority of horror movies didn't pull in huge amounts of money (and the ones that were massively commercially successful was often more the result of the low budget than the box office take; the original Friday the 13th making $59m may not have been "huge" compared to other movies, but it was made on a $550k budget so even doing $4m would have made it massively successful from a commercial standpoint although if it had a $4m take then it would mean that not that many people actually saw that one particular film).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I actually agree with the idea that commercial success isn't necessarily the best metric for the popularity of a genre (and definitely not the creative or critical value of a genre), but on the other hand, it doesn't really matter how many films the studios are putting out if no one is going to watch them in theaters.

And that was mostly the point of my initial comment - fantasy wasn't really overly successful in the 80s. Most films failed right out of the gate, and even the ones that succeeded failed to spawn lasting franchises (and the few that managed to produce sequels almost always tanked at that point). People who were kids in the 80s may have loved 80s fantasy movies (I certainly did), which is part of why they became cult hits (and why some of them have gotten nostalgia-fueled remakes more recently), but that didn't really translate into success for them THEN.

I don't recall saying "successful," I said popular. And if everybody and their brother is putting out fantasy films, clearly there was money being made or they wouldn't be able to afford the habit. It's not like you just had a few films at the start then the whole thing collapsed, these were running throughout the 80s because studios saw a market for them (which in many cases didn't exactly materialize, unless the budget was bullshit).

You can't exactly call something a dead genre -- which you literally did (and was the original point of contention) -- when you have dozens upon dozens of often big budget films (in fact, so big that they weren't profitable) coming out in that time frame. You can compare that to the 90s where you didn't really see as many fantasy films -- at least that I remember -- but then at the start of the 2000s Harry Potter and LotR tore the house down. (Which led to more fantasy films, many of which were adapted from book series yet never made it past the first novel (Eragon, The Golden Compass, etc). Offhand, I think the only other successful series might have been the Narnia stuff, which was pretty big... although I never saw a single one despite having read a few of the novels)


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