TheOtherTed

So I finally figured out the most bothersome things in the trailer. All IMO, of course. The saccharine (pun not completely intented) quality of it - everything's all Disney-Mary-Poppins wonderful, without a trace of anything remotely frightening. Even the trailers for the sanitized Wilder film had scenes that could make one question Wonka's intentions and/or sanity. I suspect this film has sanitized things even further. This Wonka gives off a strong "Marty Stu" vibe. Everyone in the trailer (outisde the obvious bad guys) seems to like him, including apparently some whose job it would be to keep his brand of chaos in check. Plus, I don't know how old Chamelet (sp?) is, but he strikes me as way too young to have spent the past seven years travelling the world to perfect his craft. A big "Enterprise" moment - people literally floating around years, maybe decades, before Wonka supposedly developed his Fizzy Lifting Drink. The CGI of Hugh Grant's Oompa-Loompa is a bit off. After the initial reveal, it slowly but surely sinks into Uncanny Valley territory. Not looking forward to more Oompa-Loompas. On the plus side, it does give me an incentive to read Dahl's original book...

Much as I'd like to see Hugh Grant as an Oompa-Loompa, I'm gonna pass. Not sure why (yet), but that teaser turned my stomach in a way that Gene Wilder at his wildest could never do.

I never played Colony Wars, so please forgive my first impression. It looks like a Fallout 4 mod, and sounds like it will make my brand new computer feel obsolete. That said, it has promise. I'm curious to see how it develops. Too bad Bethesda decided to nuke thier game forums a few years back...

Now playing in the Death Star Cabaret: Richard Cheese - Darth Vader Imperial March

Good song lyrics are gold for this kind of thing! At one dark point literally decades ago, the song "One Slip" by Pink Floyd told me what I needed to hear - "Was it love, or was it the idea of being in love?"

...I wish you hadn't reminded me...

This will sound picky (because it is), but the art and animation style kind of kill it for me. Well, not "kind of." The only charcters I immediately recognized were Sheridan and Londo; the former only because of the voice and the latter because, well, Londo. Garibaldi took a few seconds; Ivanova took a few more, even with Claudia Christian's iconic voice. And my brain still refuses to match the Narn in the last scene with G'Kar. I'm making an intuitive leap to connect the person at 1:35 with Lyta Alexander, and that's only the basis of hair color. Silly complaint, I realize, but I'm not getting a sense of connection between this trailer and the live-action show. ... ... ...if, however, Lennier sings "Fish Heads" in this, I may reconsider.

A place to share your favorite sayings, quotes, aphorisms, etc. No expectations that this spaghetti will stick to the wall, but figured I'd throw it anyway. “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.” ― John Maxwell

Well, mainly, he was famous for being the guy with a silly voice. He could also be a bit... energetic... with his stand-up routines and talk show appearances.

The voice of Pain in Hercules. How can this be?

Not one of you mentioned Bobcat Goldthwait.

Quick tangent - James Woods as Hades seems like it would almost, almost, be worth swallowing my stubborn pride and watching one Disney movie. Just one. What harm could it do? That said, Andersen's (presumably translated) words above struck me as a bit Disney in a sort of "can't have the kiddies crying over the protagonist's fate, now, can we?" kind of way.

"You, poor little mermaid, have tried with your whole heart to do as we are doing; you have suffered and endured and raised yourself to the spirit-world by your good deeds; and now, by striving for three hundred years in the same way, you may obtain an immortal soul." By the dour standards of nineteenth century European literature, that's a pretty happy ending. Quite possibly the happiest ending that a being without an immortal soul could hope for.

Nope - I just wondered if it was another IMDB/ROP situation, but the circumstances don't track, and OG's explanation is good enough for me. Believe it or not, it is possible to have a fascination for pop culture weirdness without having some sort of agenda.

@Techwright I actually (does usage of that term make me an honorary neckbeard?) meant Hans Christian Andersen's original story (which did have a sort of kind of happy ending, although very metaphysical, and not involving a handsome prince). Never saw Disney's take on it, in no small part because I already hated Disney with a burning passion back then. As for the current state of movies or shows, I don't think it's COVID-related. I think it's the culmination of trends that started in the first decade of the current century. For example, though I watched and enjoyed them (kind of), not one of the reboot Star Trek movies could hold a candle to the OG cast movies (except maybe "The Final Frontier," but we don't need to talk about that one). I have my ideas about why that is, but I also have ideas about other people's ideas about my ideas, so it's probably best to let it drop...

I'd heard it was good, from some surprising sources - but the dramatic flip from "meh" to 90+ percent in a week or three surprised me. Never really cared for the story itself, though, even the original. All those head-over-heels love-at-first-sight stories just leave me shaking my head and saying "yep, no good can come of it."

...did anyone else notice the strong discrepancy between Rotten Tomatoes' and Metacritics' audience reviews of "The Little Mermaid"? I tried to backtrack ownership of those sites to see if there were vested interests behind one or the other, but I came up empty. Disclaimer: I have no interest in "The Little Mermaid" one way or the other. I check out movie reviews for "controversial" flicks whenever they pop up in my social media feeds, and the Rotten Tomatoes audience review did a complete about-face since the last time I checked looked. I briefly thought that review bombing might be in play, but that should have affected both sites.

The RealID thing happened while I was on a break, and I didn't get wind of it until much later. Otherwise, I would have deleted my account right then and there. I came back to the game shortly before Cata released, in part to pay final respects to Cairne Bloodhoof, and partly because I found out that an old college buddy of mine was actively playing. Speaking of Cata, that expansion convinced me, even before release, that the developers had basically run out of stories to tell. I figured they'd release one, or at most two, more epxansions before putting the game in maintenance mode. I still think I was right on the creativity front, but as for it's longevity, I was wrong. Yes, I, even I, TheOtherTed, was wrong.

Yeah, well, I'm not, so...

Apparently EA Games is shunting SWTOR off to Broadsword Online Games. Not sure what BOG can or will do with it, or what this means for EA's other MMO titles. BTW, anyone have any info on BOG? My paranoia sense tells me this is a Nemesis plot, since the two games BOG reportedly took over a while ago are still listed in EA's stable of MMOs.

Cautiously optimistic as usual. All the stuff is there, but we'll see if round 2 of Neil's little Miller-Urey experiment will spark up something new. My only concrete reservation at the moment is that I'm not sure if a deliberately one-dimensional character from the first season can work as the plot focus of the second. I am very curious, though, if this is something that Gaiman and Pratchett discussed before the latter's passing. Regardless, I probably won't see it for a while. Amazon has a lot to live down before I give them another dime.

Design by data analysis. If all the data suggests that the majority of players had settled on one "meta" (though I hate the term), decision-makers (not necessarily the devs) may see nothing wrong with to supporting that "meta" to the exclusion of other playstyles, and build from there. It sounds "clean" and "rational," but it completely ignores all the little voices saying that there's much more to the game than the "meta." That said, DCUO's leveling content was short to begin with. A filthy casual like myself could get to max level within two weeks without trying. The first time I quit, it was because the transition from open-world leveling to gear leveling felt like I was suddenly thrown into a pool of sticky molasses that had gone a bit "off."

Watching: Star Trek TOS (albeit remastered - though, strangely, the remastering itself is showing its age now). Just finished watching "The Corbomite Maneuver," and though it's not my favorite episode by a long shot, I realized there were a couple of subtle "human element" moments that I'd completely missed previously. Reading: The Kalevala. Again. Its relation to Tolkien's story of Turin Turambar still completely eludes me. The Kullervo in the version I'm reading seems more like Anakin from the cursed Star Wars Episodes 1-3 than anything else. I might need to try a different translation. Listening: Very slowly building up my "evil genius" (aka "descent into madness") music playlist. Strangely, other folks' ideas about "evil genius" music often feels neither very evil nor very genius. I get the sense that I'm I'm picking through a haystack to find an occasional needle which, on discovery, I realize I'd already found. If that makes sense. On the plus side, though, I've discovered that there's a veritable cottage industry of violin players doing covers of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." A couple of them are even good enough to forgive the cheating!

Credit where credit is due. Frankly (and sadly), it's refreshing these days to see an entertainment studio not blame their customer base for the failure of their product...

DC Universe Online. This game had so much going for it when it was released. For those who hadn't played way back when, you'd choose a powerset (e.g., Fire, Ice, Nature, Mental - I think there were about half a dozen choices) and a weapon skill (from Hand Blasts to Martial Arts to Dual Pistols), and you'd level them up independently. Each powerset had two branches - one "role" branch (e.g., Tank, Controller, Healer) and one DPS branch; you could either specialize in one branch or mix and match the two. Surprising amount of versatility there. Weapons also had branching trees, but with a lot of "no-brainer" choices, as the later weapon skills gave you passive stat bonuses that you kind of needed. That said, starting at level 10 (IIRC), you could choose to invest in different weapon types instead of the one you picked at character creation. The world had three "open world" leveling zones - one in Gotham, and two in Metropolis - and you could mix-n-match the quest lines you followed. For example, you could do the 1-8 level chain in Gotham, hop over to Metropolis to do a 9-16 (?) chain there, back to Gotham, etc. So for concept players like myself, the game allowed you to customize your characters' experiences. (Side note - IMO the music and world design for all the zones were really good, so much so that they kept me coming back, even after... The Streamlining...) Chapter 2: The Streamlining As with many other MMOs at the time, the devs decided that it would be a great idea to offer the players a "streamlined" leveling experience, rather than leave all those silly, distracting, confusing options open. After all, if that's the optimal way to play, who wouldn't love that? This happened in two ways, though I can't remember the order in which it happened: 1) The power trees were not only condensed into one branch, but the element of choice was taken away. In other words, you were railroaded into an immutable linear progression with respect to your powers. 2) Once you completed your starting arc, all choice of which story arc to follow when was also removed. You were railroaded into a linear story progression, no matter what your characters' goals were. To this day, I have no idea why this second decision was made. You may note that I haven't said anything about weapon skills. That's mainly because I tuned out to weapon skills around the time "Weapon Mastery" made its appearance. WM rewarded you heavily for investing in two different weapons, IIRC, maybe to the point where you'd gimp yourself if you didn't. In retrospect, that may have been the beginning of the end... The Streamlining is what killed my interst in the game. To be sure, the game had many intrinsic issues, but for my money (literally), it still had a fair amount of replayability before The Streamlining.