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It looks like someone took League of Legend's K/DA group and made a whole movie out of it. K-pop isn't my usual bag but the music is catchy. The anime-inspired art style works pretty dang well, too. The demons adopting their own band persona to fight the heroine trio is a fun twist and if there are any plot connections to the unhealthy obsessions fans can develop with idol groups, this could actually be pretty interesting.

I think it depends on the particular take for Batman, really. For a more 'serious' version - which most often just means more realistic or grounded, like the Christopher Nolan or Matt Reeves versions - a suit lacking trunks fits the vibe. For more comic accurate or animated takes? Bats needs the trunks. Trunkless Batman is not the Batman that'd team up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example. Much as I'd love to see Robert Pattinson's Batman with David Corenswet's Superman, the Matt Reeves stuff is off in its own bubble. Which is probably for the best overall. Lets the current Batman media keep its more Sopranos/The Wire-eqsue tone and level of success while still allowing for a more earnestly comicbook Bats for the main universe.

The core issue of 'choose your character's weakness' as a mechanical system in an MMO like CoH is that while it's fascinating for player narrative, mathematically it'd be absurdly difficult to balance around and would impact player experience in wonky ways. For the system to even be worth using the weakness would need to be significant enough to impact at least some portion of play, while also offering a significant enough benefit worth taking said weakness for. That's already a balance nightmare between all the ATs and the wide gamut of IOs, then there's the impact on Incarnate and Hard Mode content. There's also the issue of CoH being so readily modular outside of initial character creation - are the weaknesses treated the same way? Could they be swapped out on the fly, like Incarnate powers? Maybe swing by Null the Gull? Or would they require something like a respec trial to change? Are you allowed to change them while running a taskforce, or are characters stuck with them from the creation screen? Making them too easy to change just adds an extra step of busy work to interrupt team progression between each mission and making them too difficult or impossible to change could render wide swathes of content much more difficult (let alone how ramped up weaknesses might be in endgame runs). Any additional system would also exacerbate the instances where bespoke weaknesses are inflicted on characters via story arcs or by enemy groups, like the Vahzilok Wasting Disease or the Curse of Weariness from the RWZ. There's also the interaction of custom weaknesses with other characters and how they work when on a team. If my character has a weakness to magic - say taking more damage when fighting the Circle of Thorns or Banished Pantheon - does that mean buffs from other players are less effective against them too? Or are teammate buffs fully effective and possibly nix the weakness entirely via overwhelming numbers? It doesn't matter that the Ruin Mage hits my character harder than a Council gunman if the Force Field buffs make it so neither of them can land a shot to begin with. I think this overall concept is already better served by the existing framework of AT choices, IO builds, and powerset themes. If you make a Fire/Fire Scrapper who is built for recharge, regen/heal, and resistance, you'll do fantastic melee damage, be somewhat tanky, and heal quickly, but also get hit more often than other characters with higher Defense and have next to no ranged damage or control powers. You'll be great against enemies that deal fire damage, but weak to cold. You might get knocked around more than a Willpower or Invul characters (depending on slotting), but you have greater PBAoE damage by default.

Certainly true! Also that reminded me of another instance I somehow forgot - Jason Momoa is coming back as Lobo for the Supergirl movie. Which seems a much more natural fit for him rather than Aquaman, much as I enjoyed his take on Arthur. Dude is just made to be the Main Man. Agreed on the superspeed thing. I get the 'untethered to normal physics' vibe they were aiming at but that really doesn't sell fast movement, just comes across as really warped, uncontrolled momentum. Portraying it all in slow motion never helped either. IMO the best portrayal of the Flash's style of movement from mainstream movies has been the Sonic films (which is a Hell of a sentence). If the new DC films present Supes racing Flash or any speedster fights like that? It'll be comic-accurate and look good.

It's almost entirely a new universe, yeah. There's a handful of characters carrying over from the tail-end of the former DC cinematic universe - Blue Beetle has the same actor and James Gunn's prior DC projects with The Suicide Squad and the Peacemaker series have carried over - but all the prior mainline films (Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, Justice League, Aquaman 1/2, Wonder Woman 1/2, The Flash, etc.) have all been nixed. The CW shows (Arrowverse) were all basically off on their own continuity for the most part and ended before the DC film universe proper did AFAIK. So it's mostly a fresh start, with a bit of 'the MCU integrating Netflix' business thrown in.

A one word review from ten years ago for a move released twenty-five years ago is not remotely equivalent to the context of modern internet 'reaction critics' whose entire personas and ad marketability are built around culture war nonsense. That one word review is actually a surprising comment - not by someone who has seen Battlefield Earth, but from the author. For modern 'critics' like Drinker (and reactor-types, like Tyrone Magnus, StarWarsTheory, etc.) there is no surprise in their reviews because it's the same regardless of the movie. They repeat the same script each time because the script is their revenue stream. 'Female character? UGH, girlbosses am I right? More like M-She-U' is what gets them ad money and clicks, it's what keeps their audience coming back to feel validated, so it's become what they have to say each time. Which is why, inevitably, they run the same script on something where even their return audience goes 'Hey, that's not what happened' - like with Thunderbolts. Or with Andor, where the overall reaction and objective quality of the content is so sterling even they can't spin the usual pablum about it. To tighten focus back, all that ties into why there was even a 'We know where this is going...' comment posted about Superman in the first place, referenced earlier in this thread. Before the film has even released these 'critics' are priming their audience to expect the usual reaction, inherently attempting to pivot to their spiel and preemptive apply it to a movie they haven't even seen. It's what @battlewraith has been posting about via poisoning the well. They can't ever go 'hey, see it without thinking of my comments and find out for yourself' because, as with Thunderbolts and Andor, their audience getting an unbiased viewing might mean they don't agree with the revenue script anymore.

It looks like a wholly new giant monster, though the fight itself could be a reference to this. Not that Supes hasn't fought lots of giant monsters across his history, but a modern take on stuff from the classic Fleischer cartoons absolutely seems like a thing Gunn would include.

Supes does Big Damn Hero stuff and actually wants to help people, Lois is an intrepid reporter who takes no guff from anyone, Lex is a conniving mastermind who hates that his spotlight is taken by 'the alien,' and Ma & Pa Kent are supportive parents who provide the moral heart. Core elements all seem to be there in spades. Kicking the trailer off with an interview scene containing actual chemistry and personality already has me more engaged than any of the grimdark nonsense the Snyder films did. The cast might be a bit overstuffed, but I'll take 'busy and hopeful' over 'shallow and nihilistic' any day.

Never said they weren't looking to gain the attention of folks who already read the comics or who had passing recognition the characters, just that the 'I read X comic run back in the day' folks are not nearly as numerous as they like to pretend, nor are they the primary niche these films are chosen for or marketed toward. Heck, your example of 'I never read the comics but I could recognize X' is itself a much broader selection of people who see these movies, and that still isn't the majority. The actual majority the movie decisions and marketing is focused on is the much larger amount of the audience who had never picked up a comicbook and probably never will, who didn't have any prior knowledge of most of these characters are beyond appearances in MCU content, yet who are still willing to see superhero films. The folks for whom the MCU adaptations are, by and large, the formative, interest-building versions.

'People who read X comic run' is a much narrower section of the pie chart that is 'audience of superhero films' than any longtime comic fan ever wants to admit. The Infinity War saga was over twenty years old when the first GoTG film released, from back when comics were firmly considered 'esoteric weird nerd stuff' consigned to convention diehards. Even then the Guardians were obscure. Amongst the general public 20+ years later? They might as well have been made up just for the MCU. Given that Gunn's MCU versions have been the basis for most of the Guardians' multimedia appearances afterword, arguments could be made that in some fashion they still were (especially given how different they are).

Yes, Star Wars and Marvel Comics - two media franchises celebrated for lacking any sort of moral agenda or political commentary before the 2000s. Captain America, famously non-political superhero who never punched out active world leaders of opposing nations. Star Wars, where the Empire of the original trilogy are lauded for being 'generic bad guys' with no political, cultural, or historical context whatsoever. Ignore the accents, the costumes, the names, and the entirety of the Vietnam War. The flaw with the MCU post-Endgame is that they stuck with the wrong part of the original brand strategy. They should have continued to restructure and consolidate like at the end of the whole arc, rather than going back to separately introducing even more moving parts that 'will appear again!' next time. The initial build up to the Avengers worked because there weren't nearly so many building blocks to keep track of and the stakes weren't increasingly dire every time. 'X will return' makes sense when the audience can count on one hand how many characters are gonna show up and the current threat is plausible most of them would not be involved. It doesn't when they're wondering where 15 other heroes who know the title character are during yet another massive conflict. If more of the films/shows had been condensed, with established heroes working together with the new ones to rebuild a post-Blip Earth, it would have been a lot easier to maintain interest and keep a cohesive direction.

Regarding the old school costume pieces being player options, the quibble there is most of them aren't actual costume pieces. At least not in any player-functional sense. A lot of original NPCs are all single-piece models. AFAIK there is no separate pieces for 'top and bottom robe' for the original CoT, for example. Or the original Skulls, where the entire outfit - jacket, shirt, tattoos, skull mask, pants, boots, and even skin - are all just part of a single texture map. A lot of NPCs have warped, custom rigging, where multiple costume pieces are all linked to a single anchor point and cannot be used separately (and clip horribly with anything not part of the 'intended' outfit). Or parts that can't be recolored at all (5th Column, Council, Arachnos pre-VEAT, various signature NPCs). 'Swhy Homecoming has so many of the old mobs as costume powers that outright replace the player model, because that's the only way they're near functional for player usage. Don't get me wrong, I fully agree that actually having access to those items as functional options would have been - and still would be - cool and allow for a lot of fun concepts in ways the character creator still doesn't offer. It's just getting them player usable that's the trick. If they'd been player options from the get-go we probably would have gotten updated versions rather than replacements, but that would have required the original devs to have designed them with 'players will want to use NPC outfits' in-mind. Which would have required a lot more work for the graphics and art team (reasonable hurdle!) but also been a design choice that Jack Emmert probably wouldn't have run with (much less reasonable hurdle).

They changed them because the enemy mobs from launch all looked incredibly dated after all the other graphical improvements to the game. Plus using actual player models for enemy groups allowed much easier modification for story arc content and provided functional costume pieces to sell for player use. 'This boosts the overall graphical quality of our game, allows for more content opportunities, and gives us more stuff to put in the cash shop' is a no-brainer for an MMO.

So long as they get Michael Gross back along with Kevin Bacon I'm on-board. Burt is the face of the franchise by this point, even if the movies after the first three aren't all that great (which is saying something, considering the direct-to-video dip in quality after the original...). Sucks that Fred Ward isn't around to be involved, but I'll take as much of a main cast reunion as we can get.

I don't agree, though I do get why wanting something closer to the original version would leave the film version as disappointing. I think if T'challa had actually been part of the movie as the intended counter to him it might've gone better but that's all musings at this point. The MCU does try to course correct via fan response (look at Iron Man 3 and Mandarin for example) but no idea if/when that'll happen here. With the way the MCU has advanced and was originally constrained via film rights, available characters, and chosen arcs, there's only so much room to adapt stuff in by this point. Like, as cool as an Invaders team up would have been, it's a bit hard to shoehorn Namor and the OG Human Torch into the background of Cap's first movie, especially considering they weren't even on the board when the initial MCU films were made. Thinking about it, a more traditional Namor appearing in First Steps would make a lot of sense, and jive with the way the MCU seems to be using multiverse content anyway (Loki, Deadpool, Fox, etc.). Also he'd get to pine after Sue in a context that works a lot better if Namor is, like the FF, an already accepted part of that world's politics and history.

That still leave the 'appeal to modern audiences' bit - which is actually kind of important when wanting to put butts in seats, considering the modern audience is the only one buying tickets. Some things need to get adapted out or adapted differently, otherwise we would've been left with Ant-Man as a domestic abuser, Iron Man fighting Fu Manchu the Mandarin, and Namor looking like Spock in a green speedo. Don't get me wrong, I'm 1000% on-board that comicbook films have finally come around to treating the source material more earnestly rather than as 'inspiration' for drab, edgy, or realistic alternative takes - it's just that some aspects from the original comics weren't going to work at all for various reasons. With that in-mind, I think First Steps is actually doing pretty good. They're embracing the 60s roots of the Fantastic Four in ways that none of the prior film adaptions did, while still keeping the structure of the family and their overall story intact. Also Galactus actually looks like Galactus rather than a space cloud. That shouldn't remotely be a hard call to make, but given how some adaptations go it still gets them points.

Yeah, most everyone in CoX has mitten hands - which thankfully include thumbs or we wouldn't even have the texting emote. That said, Arachnos soldier models do have individual fingers. Give them the peace sign, as a symbol of Lord Recluse finally mellowing out.

You know, a misappropriated Superman/Doctor Strange mash-up gormlessly hawking a product deliberately designed to dull the consciousness of its consumers having been made by AI is just spot on. Especially considering the amount of artistry using AI takes. Which, to be explicitly clear, is none. Really embodies some of the issues plaguing CoH's playerbase, too. Had this been an actual creative effort devoid of shamelessly plagiarized material - say an AE arc made in-game or a real piece of fan artwork - it could have been an almost poetic remark regarding the way some players mindlessly steal from their favorite IPs and regurgitate warped, watered-down versions of things they enjoy without regard to the creative process that made them in the first place, then scream and complain when said superficial counterfeits are rightfully taken away. Instead it's just AI, so rather than being a commentary on those issues it just exemplifies them.

The main issue with any system like this is that most of it can already be accomplished in-game. You make a Fire Armor character? They're weak to Ice. You make Invulnerability? Weak to Psychic. Bespoke weaknesses beyond the scope of powersets or archetypes - like needing to be in-contact with water or consume a magic item per day or whatever - can be roleplayed out. The same goes with various NPC connections. Your character has a special relationship with an NPC? You can write whatever AE arc you want to run for it. Your character owns a bunch of corporations? Slap them in a fancy suit at the Tailor and make fitting a supergroup base (and play the market so you have a lot of inf). Codifying these with a system would make the free-form DIY approach CoH already allows much, much narrower, as I don't imagine any mechanic-based arrangement would allow for the sheer amount of facets some people put into their characters. How many drawbacks or perks would even be allowed per character, and how many of one would be required to earn one of the other? What exact benefits would they even provide that the combination of costume options, badges, IOs, AE, and base building doesn't cover?

I was reading old school as in 'pre-Sunset' since the Family and the Skulls had their original versions replaced with updated models and power options in the final issues on Live. Seems like a really fun way to keep doing future revamps and upgrades to villain groups while keeping the original incarnations around occasionally rather than entirely shelved.

Alignment has nothing to do with a powerset embodying its particular theme, though. Powerset theme is composed solely of mechanics and SFX. The Demon Summoning powerset compromising it's core gimmick of 'You summon demons' by using pistols or an assault rifle is a broken core theme, regardless of the alignment of the character it happens to be on. Beyond that, basing prospective changes on whether a powerset is inherently 'heroic' or 'villainous' is a non-starter - that's a purely personal bias. As far as the game is concerned, any powerset is a heroic one if the player clicks the 'I'm a hero' button at the end of character creation. Nixing that nonsense as a basis for AT and power design is why we have Empathy on Corruptors and Pain Domination on Controllers and Defenders now.

Not opposed to increased customization when it comes to weapon models and attacks, but mix and matching from outside set boundaries breaks any reason for there to be thematic differences in the first place. Sure, a player might be able to conceive of their own concept for a Thugs MM that makes sense with the Demon fire whip attacks, but the purpose of each set is to emphasize its specific theme rather than half-ass multiple ones. It's far more likely that any unique MM attack animations, like the aforementioned fire whips, would be used in expanded ancillary power pools instead. Hell, having MM primary themed ancillary pools structured like the Patron Pools would be amazing alternatives. Demon Mastery could have two whip attacks, a fire armor/healing flames, a debuff power, and a demon summon (succubus or some hordelings, maybe). Thugs could offer dual pistols, Ninjas could have Archery, etc. Allows more mixing and matching but in a format that fits the game's established power design.

Always found it suspicious when posts like these coincidentally lack any details on the powersets, costumes, bios, or anything about the character beyond the 'perfectly acceptable' name. It's possible the GMs were overzealous against a giant fiery bird with the name Eternal Phoenix, but if OP was running around as Eternal Phoenix the redheaded psychic in a green and yellow costume... Yeah, that's a rightfully earned bonk with the Generic Bat. Also the conspiracy that the GMs generic characters because they happen to want to take certain names for themselves is certainly a statement, especially considering how many fantastic names are actively being used by player accounts. The Everlasting name release thread and Post Your Best Costumes Here thread would just be a shooting gallery of folks wondering why their posted characters got wiped if that were the case, but since that isn't happening I have to admit I've got doubts.

I'm not opposed to demon mob modifications, but not for changing Bat'zul. Use the image in OP as inspiration for female Behemoths/Hellfrosts or incubus/Boyfriends from Hell counterparts to the succubus/Girlfriends from Hell. Bat'zul is the leader of the hordelings, so he's got that specific appearance for a reason and should remain the kaiju-sized fusion of Audrey II and a rotisserie chicken he's always been.

I understand why the initial power was made as just 'hero summons Longbow chaser and villain summons Arachnos flyer' but yeah, allowing customization options for this would be really fun. There's a whole host of in-game model options for it, too. The aforementioned military helicopters and jets, a scaled up magic carpet, one of those Carnival of Light portals, a circle of fairy mushrooms or a glowing henge from Croatoa, a Rikti assault suit... Heck, get silly with some of them, like summoning the Golden Roller or a police call box.