Excraft

I wonder, would you have no issue at all were a film or films produced as period pieces during WW II where all of the Germans were cast with gay, black actors? How about a biographical drama on the life of Nelson Mandela with an Asian man in the lead role as Mandela? Would you be fine with a film set in Wakanda cast with all non-black actors? Or a bio-pic of Queen Elizabeth with a latino man cast in the role of the Queen? Do you honestly believe there wouldn't be massive backlash against movie studios were any of this to happen? Jack Kirby and Stan Lee did it for decades. JK Rowling did it too. So did George R.R. Martin, Tom Clancy, Stephen King and so on. It may not be easy, but it isn't impossible. I get that historically there wasn't as much opportunity for non-Caucasian actors and actresses, but that's not really true any more and hasn't been for quite some time. There is a long and growing list of non-Caucasian actors and actresses winning the highest awards in the entertainment industry. You talk about staples of the comic industry like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and the like selling well because people want familiarity. Isn't it understandable then for some people to question why race and/or gender swapping needs to take place if they want to see the characters they're familiar with? The LoTR trilogy brought in around 3 billion in box office. The Hobbit trilogy brought in just over 2.9 billion. Seems they replicated the success just fine. You could argue that that the Hobbit films had a much higher budget for various reasons so all tallied it made less overall in terms of profit compared to LoTR, but it still brought in a ton of money. But there again, it had fantastic source material to work with. It doesn't matter who is doing it. Those spewing division and hate should be ignored wherever they are and whomever they are. I think your assumption on this is about as wrong as wrong could be. As someone said above, it's not the message, it's the delivery.

Correct. It shows that for whatever reason, people spent their money on the film because they found it to be well crafted enough to spend money on. That's undeniable. Opinions are subjective whether you like it or not. You may believe that Citizen Kane or The Thing are much better movies than Barbie, but that's your personal opinion. The majority of movie goers disagreed and spent their money elsewhere. Again, that's undeniable fact. That's not at all what I said. Again, the "quality" of a film based on opinion is a subjective measure. Box office numbers don't lie. If a movie tanks, the audience didn't find it worthwhile to spend their money on. If a movie pulls in billions in profits, it's a success regardless of what some movie critic might say. There's been tons of movies that are critically acclaimed but failed at the box office. It's great the critics loved them and we may agree with their opinion, but the opinions of those critics didn't put money in the bank for the studio.

Both of those lists are meaningless as their based on the subjective opinion of the writer compiling them. How one person defines "good" and "bad" are entirely different than the next person. I can remember way back in the day movie critic Gene Shalit calling Star Wars a "nothing movie" that would "go nowhere" when it first premiered. I'm sure you could find people out there that believe films like Gymkata, Ishtar and Battlefield Earth are the most underrated true masterpieces of cinema in human history. Those are all a matter of opinion though. Ticket sales and box office numbers don't lie and aren't subjective. Whether someone likes a movie or not, if that movie brought in a ton of money to the studio and turned a hefty profit, it's successful and that means the majority of movie goers thought it was well written and well produced enough to spend their money on it. That's a fact and no matter how much you want to try and deny it, history proves that out.

So let me get this straight - films that are both critical and financial successes are not well written and produced? Just want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly. If that's you're point, then you're way off base and yes, history does prove that out. I'm not speaking for anyone either. However, it's not supposition that audiences who aren't attending movies aren't all of one group or another. Audiences in general aren't going to the movies anymore. You've been throwing around all sorts of reasons as to why people aren't turning out to see movies - post COVID, foreign competition and the like. While those are true to a degree, people are still turning out for good movies and there are well written, well produced movies surpassing the billion dollar mark at the box office.

The general audiences, made up of people from all genders, races and orientations, who haven't been paying to go and see movies. You seem to be trying to lump everyone into one group or another.

I'm not sure I understand what point you're trying to make. Are you suggesting that successful movies aren't well written? Well written and produced films do well financially. History proves this out.

Why should he have to? Are you suggesting what he's saying is not true? All one need do is point to films like Oppenheimer to prove that out. Well crafted stories with a talented cast and crew are successful. Are you suggesting that the studio executives who are looking at cratering ticket sales, cratering profits and abysmal critical reviews are turning to their shareholders and saying that they're on the right track? Peter Jackson didn't have as much control over the process as you might think and as I recall, the Hobbit was originally meant to be a two film project that was "requested" by the studio to be made into a trilogy that tied into the LoTR trilogy more. As I recall, he didn't even want to direct it but MGM forced him into it. Ezra Miller is a lunatic. He's also not a very good actor and isn't "leading man" by any stretch for a film like that. Digging out 72 year old Michael Keaton to come back as Batman as nostalgia bait was done for a reason. Unless I'm mistaken, I think the point was more that it's an example of a financially successful, well received and reviewed film being done on a budget a fraction of what it would have cost in Hollywood. I certainly hope you don't work in the finance or banking industry in any way. I can assure you as I have friends working at major film studios, they are most definitely in the business of making a profit.

This is a good point too. Look at Secret Invasion on D+. 200+ million dollar budget?? For what? Where did that money go? Disney is definitely all about churning out as much crap as possible to throw onto D+ and competing with Netflix. CBS/Paramount are talking about merging with WB to be more competitive for streaming too.

Well no, the strategy should be to make good films. Hire talented writers, directors, producers and actors who know what they're doing regardless of race or gender or whatever other check boxes you feel are important. As others have said, write a good story with well thought out characters and you'll be successful, doesn't matter what race or gender writes it. A good story is a good story. What you're suggesting in your 3 points here is just complete ignorance and looking to bait people into an argument. No one, including the "pissy YouTube critics" you're complaining about have suggested anything like that. Quite clearly they don't and ticket sales cratering with flop after flop after flop is a crystal clear indication of that. This isn't true either. See the box office receipts of the MCU films prior to Endgame as examples. Those weren't solely aimed at "white guys". If you want to see who the fans are, go to a comic con sometime and take note of how many women dress up as Iron Man or Captain America or how many people of varying races and genders are cosplaying as Black Panther or Blade. @ZacKing is spot on here. Movies are expensive because studios have become over-reliant on VFX to compensate for lack of story. @Ghost is right on the money here. The studios aren't packing in more demographics. Quite the opposite as ticket sales and profits are cratering. People know a bad movie when they see one. Try as they might, these studios aren't able to push people toward what they want. There's a similar situation in the music industry today. Music studios have been pushing people into buying digital media for years since they sold off all of their manufacturing facilities to press vinyl and burn CDs. There's nothing physical for them to produce, so it's near pure profit for them to sell digital music. Despite that effort, sales of Vinyl and CDs and even cassette tapes if you can believe it are still very strong. Heck, there are a few bands out there who have bought their own vinyl presses and such to sell their music on vinyl and they can't keep up with the demand. People want something physical to hold in their hands and connect them to their favorite artist. You can't bring a digital download of a song to a venue to have your favorite artist autograph. It's something the studios don't understand or just don't care enough about. Regardless, they haven't been able to change their audience behavior.

I'm wondering if part of this has to do with skins of copyrighted/trademarked characters being allowed and so readily available in so many other games now? I know I see people making clones all over the place in other games. I don't think there's ever been a day where I haven't seen players with exact clones of Kirk, Picard, Spock, Worf or various Star Wars/Comic book characters in STO as an example. Lots of games have skins in their official store or readily available for download on sites all over the internet. Having access to them is commonplace. I'm not saying that these should be allowed here, just curious if part of the issue may be people are just used to doing it elsewhere where there's no such restriction. Now before anyone decides to jump all over me for that, here are some clarifications - Yes, it is a rule here to not allow copyrighted characters and yes, everyone needs to abide by that rule. Anyone violating this rule should be reported and dealt with accordingly. No, I don't think people should be allowed to make copies of copyrighted or trademarked characters here. No, I don't think the rules here should be changed and I am not advocating for the rules here to change. I have no issue following the rules here on the topic of copyrighted or trademarked characters.

Studios apparently haven't gotten the message yet that the superhero genre has been over saturated for years and pushing "the message" isn't working. Hiring "writers" and producers who've never read a single comic with no respect or reverence of the source material isn't helping either.

No thank you. Casting Pedro Pascal just cements it for me that this movie is going to suck. I'm sure he has fans and that's ok, but I personally think he's awful and can't act his way out of a wet paper bag. His performance in WW 1984 made an already terrible movie even worse. Also seems like this is going to be a period piece? Which means yet another multiverse setting of some kind or other silliness. Honestly, the MCU is dead at this point. This is going into the "maybe watch it once its available on streaming for free if there really is nothing else even remotely interesting on" category. I could not agree more.

Same here. Been more of a hassle in the few times we had to queue to log in if I'm being honest.

To be honest, I'd rather that older, slogfest TFs like Synapse and Citadel get a refresh rather than a straight merit boost. HC could more than quadruple the merits for Citadel and I still wouldn't run it unless I wanted the badge for the accolade.

While I agree with the sentiment behind what you're saying, this is making an assumption that all of the names are "high quality/desirable". Unlikely as it might be, someone may have created characters named "test001" through "test1000" or any combination of gibberish letter/number combinations just to try various costume concepts. I've done that and I know of others who do the same. We don't have hundreds of characters like that, but it does happen. I'm not sure banning people for poor houskeeping of gibberish names on unplayed characters is a good idea.

Sure. Please circle the words where GM Crumpet spoke to the specific quality of the names. Maybe I missed it, but all that was said was they saw accounts with 300 and 400 names being camped. No mention of what any of those names were, gibberish or otherwise. It also wasn't stated how many accounts there are like that or how large a portion of the total accounts they comprise. You seem to be the one making assumptions about this, not me.

Why? For all any of us know, those characters were all named gibberish or something like costumetest001 through costumetest400.

That's exactly the point. I'm sure were you to ask most people who was Indiana Jones, they'd say Harrison Ford, not any of the other actors.

Why not?

That's easier said than done though. Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones is iconic. When people think Indiana Jones, they think Harrison Ford. It's not a simple thing to recast iconic roles like that.

Going to be honest, this looks terrible to me. Sad as it is to say, I'm pretty much done with superhero movies. The MCU has stunk since Endgame and don't even get me started on the DCU. Good luck to James Gunn. Everything I read about upcoming projects sounds like it's all going to be another steaming pile. The trailers for this look like more pushing of "the message" instead of actually writing good characters that have good characterization that go on a journey.

Would you happen to know how many accounts with 300 and 400 level 1's are there in relation to the total number of accounts? I would wager it's a very small, fractional percentage, if that. Also, how are you determining they will "never be used"? Unless those accounts belong to someone you all know personally who is definitely never coming back, it's still possible someone may use the name, small as a chance as that might be. I'm not suggesting this policy get changed or removed. I'm just curious about the stats as I think it important and more data provides more clarity. Thanks.

I believe you either missed or misunderstood what I wrote. I was only commenting on the design of the costume, and not in context of whether or not is should have been genericized. It definitely should have been based on the name and character bio.

You're still misrepresenting this. It's not impossible, nobody said it was impossible to write code that would allow names to be non-unique here. The people who do know the code here and know what kind of effort would be involved with that said that it was a lot more work to do versus re-using the old name release code from live server days. That does not make it impossible, just more work.