#franchise fatigue

[silveragelovechild]

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

The thing about a franchise like McDonalds is that you can go to any outlet and knows exactly what to expect. A few years ago I toured Turkey and Greece. After 3 weeks of lamb kabobs and souvlaki I was desperate for something familiar. When I got back to Athens I went straight to the McDonalds on Syntagma Square and ordered a Big Mac meal. It was delicious and exactly what I wanted.

Movie Franchises operate in the same way. A movie with a new idea, or state of the art effects will be successful. It becomes a franchise when the studio orders sequels. The marching orders are to make the sequel more of the same. The hero is never in any real danger, otherwise who will star in the next sequel.

When George Lucas and Steven Spielberg reinvented the 1930s serial adventure with Indiana Jones, a new iconic hero was born. Four sequels followed over the next 42 years.

Of course, like everyone else I loved Raiders of the Lost Ark. I don’t remember the details of Temple of Doom except that the excessive violence gave birth to the PG13 rating (and Spielberg himself hated it). Last Crusade was fun, with Sean Connery as Indy’s dad.

Then… a 19 year wait until Crystal Skull. Ugh. In my opinion it’s worse of the bunch. Adding scifi to Indy’s resume was a big mistake. But did Lucas and Spielberg learn their lesson not to go back to the same well again? No.

With another 15 year wait, Dial Of Destiny arrived at theaters this week. What did these masters of cinema deliver? More of the same… lots more of the same. There are more Nazis, more long chase scenes; more Christ-related artifacts, and more science fiction! Did I mention more Nazis?

I’ve got to hand it to Harrison Ford. He gives it the old college try, huffing and puffing through each chase. At the age of 81, for his sake I hope a stunt double did most of the hard stuff. I imagine insuring Ford in case of accidental death took a chunk of the $295 million budget.

But it was nice seeing John Rhys-Davies in a couple of scenes. I probably shouldn’t say this but I was surprised he is still alive. But guess what? He is 2 years younger than Ford.

Co-Star Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the most unlikable character in the entire Indiana Jones pantheon. She is an annoying and untrustworthy - more so than the Nazis.

I need to mention Ethann Isidore, he plays a young teen who is this film’s Short-Round. I suspect Harrison Ford will forget all about him until Isidore wins an Oscar in 20 years.

Speaking of the Nazi villains, Mads Mikkelsen plays a Nazi scientist trying to get his hands on the McGuffin. Mikkelsen can play Nazi villains in his sleep but I thought the character was underwritten. No real motivation other than “I’m a power hungry Nazi.”

Boyd Holbrook and Thomas Kretschmann also play Nazis. I’d love to ask them “Don’t you ever get tired of playing Nazis?!?”

As I mentioned, there are several chased sequences - in streets and tunnels of NYC, in the crowded streets and alleys of Marrakech, and another that I’ve already forgotten entirely about. But here’s the thing about the chase scenes… it doesn’t matter how fast they go or the short cuts they take, the Villains always catch up to the heroes within a couple minutes - every single time.

And the most annoying thing of the entire plot… Mikkelsen and his Nazi thugs kill plenty of innocent people throughout the kill. But when Mikkelsen finally obtains the McGuffins he was searching for, does he kill Indy? No - like a Bond villain, he decides to Monologue is plans and bring Indy with him through the <redacted> to witness his triumph. Such Bullshit.

And the scifi element? I won’t describe it but it is full of plot holes and so far beyond anything featured in an Indiana Jones movie so far, it’s more laughable than the aliens in Crystal Skull.

I’m sure you’ve read that, like other movies starring old actors, Harrison Ford was “de-aged” for portions of the films. While it looks better than the first de-aging I saw in “X-Men Last Stand”. Young Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen looked like cabbage patch dolls!

The problem with the de-aging here it that the scenes go on way too long. And the longer you see it, the weirder it becomes. It’s especially noticible when his face is in shadows or in profile (his nose just looks weird). They should have just used it briefly, but the scenes go on about 15 minutes.

NOTE 1: There are NO scenes after the credits BUT the final scene of the movie may be its best.

NOTE 2: The film is rated PG13. It’s probably due to the extraordinary people shot and murdered throughout the movie - lots of Nazis and lots of civilians too.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) 93%

Temple of Doom (1984) 77%

Last Crudade (1989) 84%

Kingdom of the crystal skull (2008) 77%

Dial of Destiny (2023) 66%

[giffingthingsss]

Enterprise followed the same pattern as the rest of the treks. First couple seasons, they’re figuring stuff out. Mid-show, hit their stride. Last few seasons are grea-

[yourapple56-blog]

This is an excellent analysis on franchise fatigue, though I would go even further to say that I myself extend this to sci-fi, fantasy and horror fatigue!

[scopophobia-polaris]

Wait did yall notice the guy they're getting to write the screenplay was one of the dudes who wrote "somehow Palpatine returned" are you fucking joking

[bigassbowlingballhead]

Me every time someone says Marvel should hire Taylor or Nick: GET BACK YOU DEMONS! BEGONE!

FUCKING LOUDER

Why would anyone want them locked into marvel contract when they could be doing so much more

[antlerqueer]

I think it's important not to beat yourself up if you can't participate in every single organic boycott and instead focus on the BDS consumer boycott targets.

"Boycott Amazon" sounds good until you realize so much of the Internet runs on Amazon web services, same shit for all the entertainment providers - there's too much of a monopoly to reasonably ask people to stop consuming all entertainment. Diverting funds from Amazon, Disney, Google, whomever will be a drop in the bucket because most of their money comes from corporations using their services and investments. That's why those are pressure targets.

Not to say "don't boycott anyone else", that's your choice, just that if you can't boycott those outside of the consumer boycott list you aren't a bad person and you do not need to beat yourself up. You are not a bad person for being unable to escape the omnipresence of these fucked up monopolies.

[wildmelon]

guys wait the new hunger games was so good…

[on-leatheredwings]

yeah i have to stop reading the comics

aw man

[nothinkonlyhannah]

Not 👏 Everything👏 Needs 👏 A👏 Sequel👏 Or 👏 A👏 Franchise👏

[shivieroy]

i haven't watched the marvels yet but these dudebros using the movie to show the "mcu downfall" are pathetic af

[shadowwingtronix]

When The "Cool Kids" Are The Wrong Audience

BW Media Spotlight tries to figure out When The "Cool Kids" Are The Wrong Audience

Everytime I think about the “cool kids” that song’s chorus enters my head. Even in a small high school like the one I went to you had your cliques. Ours got along mostly well…not counting the bullies and my people of course…but every school has their “cool kids”, the ones everyone wishes they were. Ours actually were cool and were nice to everyone, including myself, but we didn’t exactly have a…

[asclepias0819]

the thing w p3 reload is it looks stunning but also has lost some of the edge and stylization of the original and ik that’s not a bad thing but idk again i am not the biggest fan of hyper realistic graphics…

[sprintingowl]

Deadball

Deadball Second Edition is a platinum bestseller on DrivethruRPG. This means it's in the top 2% of all products on the site. Its back cover has an endorsement from Sports Illustrated Kids.

It's also not an rpg I'd heard about until I discovered all of these facts one after another.

I was raised in a profoundly anti-sports household. My father would say stuff like "sports is for people who can't think" and "there's no point in exercising, everything in your body goes away eventually." So I didn't learn really any of the rules of the more popular American sports until I was in my mid twenties, and I've been to two ballgames in my life. I appreciate the enthusiasm that people have for sports, but it's in the same way that I appreciate anyone talking about their specific fandom.

One of the things that struck me reading Deadball was its sense of reverence for the sport. Its language isn't flowery. It's plain and technical and smart. But its love for baseball radiates off of the pages. Not like a blind adoration. But like when a dog sits with you on the porch.

For folks familiar with indie rpgs, there's a tone throughout the book that feels OSR. Deadball doesn't claim to be a precise simulation or a baseball wargame or anything like that---instead it lays out a bunch of rules and then encourages you to treat them like a recipe, adjusting to your taste. And it does this *while* being a detailed simulation that skirts the line of wargaming, which is an extremely OSR thing to do.

For folks not familiar with baseball, Deadball starts off assuming you know nothing and it explains the core rules of the sport before trying to pin dice and mechanics onto anything. It also explains baseball notation (which I was not able to decipher) and it uses this notation to track a play-by-play report of each game. Following this is an example of play and---in a move I think more rpgs should steal from---it has you play out a few rounds of this example of play. Again, this is all before it's really had a section explaining its rules.

In terms of characters and stats, Deadball is a detailed game. You can play modern or early 1900s baseball, and players can be of any gender on the same team, so there's a sort of alt history flavor to the whole experience, but there's also an intricate dice roll for every at bat and a full list of complex baseball feats that any character can have alongside their normal baseball stats. Plus there's a full table for oddities (things not normally covered by the rules of baseball, such as a raccoon straying onto the field and attacking a pitcher,) and a whole fatigue system for pitchers that contributes a strong sense of momentum to the game.

Deadball is also as much about franchises as it is about individual games, and you can also scout players, trade players, track injuries, track aging, appoint managers of different temperaments, rest pitchers in between games, etc.

For fans of specific athletes, Deadball includes rules for creating players, for playing in different eras, for adapting historical greats into one massively achronological superteam, and for playing through two different campaigns---one in a 2020s that wasn't and one in the 1910s.

There's also thankfully a simplified single roll you can use to abstract an entire game, allowing you to speed through seasons and potentially take a franchise far into the future. Finances and concession sales and things like that aren't tracked, but Deadball has already had a few expansions and a second edition, so this might be its next frontier.

Overall, my takeaway from Deadball is that it's a heck of a game. It's a remarkably detailed single or multiplayer simulation that I think might work really well for play-by-post (you could get a few friends to form a league and have a whole discord about it,) and it could certainly be used to generate some Blaseball if you start tweaking the rules as you play and never stop.

It's also an interesting read from a purely rpg design perspective. Deadball recognizes that its rules have the potential to be a little overbearing and so it puts in lots of little checks against that. It also keeps its more complex systems from sprawling out of control by trying to pack as much information as possible into a single dice roll.

For someone like me who has zero background in baseball, I don't think I'd properly play Deadball unless I had a bunch of friends who were into it and I could ride along with that enthusiasm. However as a designer I like the book a lot, and I'm putting it on my shelf of rpgs that have been formative for me, alongside Into The Odd, Monsterhearts, Mausritter, and Transit.

[beccarooni]

i genuinely don't think that there's ever going to be another franchise like guardians. i can't put my finger on what it is, but they're all filled with so much heart compared to the rest of the MCU. they've all been consistently good, and gotg 3 was maybe the best one yet - and imo the best marvel movie ive seen in a while.

im so grateful for the happy ending we got, and im so sad to see this franchise go. it really healed part of my MCU fatigue tbh, like especially in how the guardians got absolutely shafted in infinity war / endgame. they're so good, and im going to miss them so much.

[kustas]

Finally watched the CSM opening, I'm blown away by the animation but it's more worrying than exciting. These shots are insanely detailed in animation and compositing, and there's already been reports of worker abuse at Mappa - a (french) article I read two days ago interviewed an animator saying they had to animate a whole minute by themself (for comparison the dayly average for hand drawn animation in France is around two seconds) and has contracted carpal tunnel syndrome at the layout stage. That is, the first stage of planning after a finished storyboard. This is before actually animating all frames.

Given Crunchyroll has also been exposed recently for paying it's dub actors a few hundreds of dollars per person, per role, and that regarding Mappa, actual information about working conditions are mostly kept secret, it could be way worst.

This isn't to say don't watch Chainsaw man, it does look extremely dope and beautifully made. But if you're enjoying the show and others like it, and are genuinely passionate about animation, please try to be mindful of the conditions in which these shows are made. I don't think I'll be able to watch it myself after learning about this without a ball in my throat and for now will opt out.

Translated excerpts from the linked article below.

To meet Mappa studio leads, you need to [present yourself as harmless]. Some topics, like working conditions in the studio, are taboo.

Mappa's style goes against traditional Japanese animation's style, most often semi-realistic. A demanding style, not for everyone [...] With eight series currently in production at Mappa and animators "in a state of utter fatigue", it is hard to follow this market undergoing constant expansion.

Mappa's working conditions are getting more and more called out [among animators]. "If you don't talk to the animators you will never hear about the working conditions", laments one of them, under the cover of anonymousity.

While Mappa does not necessarily pay more than other studios, its productions often have higher budgets. And if animators from all around the world rush to work there it's because of the aura of these projects. "That's precisely why I am not working for them," says a big name from the industry. "I find that Mappa abuses of the aura it has to enslave young people, who are fans of animation and of these franchises"

[vermont-writes-fanfic]

Hi I was wondering if you’d be okay with writing yandere Alucard (hellsing) with a human s/o. Maybe they try to escape?

You are mine~

Request: Yes

Warnings: Mentions of kidnapping, blood, vampirism, typical hellsing stuff, unwilling relationship, yandere

Characters: Alucard

Franchise: Hellsing

A/N: Woo, sorry that took so incredibly long, hope this is a long the lines of what you were hoping for! Let me know if you would like a continuation or perhaps a mini series.

A dull thud beats in your head as your consciousness swims through your foggy mind, what had happened? The last thing you can remember is walking home from the store and hearing someone behind you…oh god. As you attempt to sit up you feel like you’re swimming through a thick pudding, every move makes that throbbing pain in your head a little sharper. Where are you? Heavy with a drug induced fatigue, your eye lids lazily open and close a few times as you fight to see where you are, whatever you had been dosed with it certainly worked as intended. After a few minutes, you manage to open your eyes and propr yourself up against some pillows behind you so you can look around. Deep red is the first thing you register, the silken texture had made the fight to sit up that much harder for you, and now that you can see what it is apart of clearly the panic worms its way in. A small voice in the back of your muddled mind that something isn’t quite right. A thick duvet had been over you before you moved and now it rests heavy on your lower half. Underneath you, dark red silken sheets cradle you in a luxurious hold that threatens to lull you back to sleep, but you can’t go to sleep again, you need to figure out where you are. Slowly, you move your legs, sliding them across the sheets towards the floor. The moment your feet hit the cold stone floor you recoil and hiss, the coolness waking you up a bit further. Now the room seems less bleary and you can see the grey stone walls stacked up like the bricks of a house, and the equally stone floor that is cold to the touch. As your eyes adjust to the dim candle light, you spot a staircase leading up, up, up, into the darkness where you can just barely hear faint sounds echoing down. Fueld by the need to escape, to get away from this dark place, you steel yourself and step back down onto the floor beneath you. Fighting through the shivers that wrack your body as the chill touches your bones. After somewhat getting used to the chill in the air all down in this, what you assume to be, cellar, you walk towards the steps and one by one climb up the staircase only to find a locked heavy oak door.

You don’t give up, heading back down the stairs to look from some other way out. A lone window above the bed of your new eclosure catched your desperate eye and you quickly move over to it climbing on the bed. Your hands press against the window and it just barely has any give except for in one corner where the pane of glass seems to be looser. Looking out of it it seems to ground level if a little above it and you would be able to get out of it. You push, all of your weight leing on that one slightly less stable corner until the glass budges and a small piece of stone falls from under it. You quickly pick up this new tool and make use of it hitting the glass until that corner breaks apart from it. You curl your fingers around the open piece and take a deep inhale as you breathe in the crisp night air. It burns a little, the coolness of it, but you couldn’t be more grateful for such a feeling. pUshing and pulling against the window you finally make the glass come out in a few pieces. The rock serves as a tool for removing the sharper edges that were too stubborn to move by your hands alone, and finally you begin to shimmy through the window and onto the dew covered grass outside.

When you stand, you stretch and sigh, the feeling of the grass between your toes and up your ankles tickling your bare skin. The gentle midsummer night breeze that catches you and ruffles your hair, you hm’t even been in their for very long but this feeling felt as if you’d never felt it before. You don’t linger on this though, as the anxiety sets in and you pick a direction to start running in. North, this is the way your feet choose to take you as you run from what you ca now see to be a manor or estate of some kind. Dwelling on it isn’t within your line of thought as you run into some wood, the full moon shining bright over head. Branches and thorny vines catch at your clothes and skin, they create tears and light scratches on your clothes and skin and you close your eyes willing yourself to go faster and faster until the feeling beneath your feet changes to a hard unpleasant feeling. A light on the black of the road beneath you makes you snap your head to the left where two large headlights comes zooming at you., just as you are about to feel the harsh cold of metal and death a different kind of chill picks you up, and the feeling of gravity no longer weighs you down. You can hear the car swear nd crash and you an feel the breeze brush past your legs as the ground stays ever stationary below you. Much farther below you…you look up to see blood red eyes and a large grin staring at you their black ahired owner letting out a loud laugh,

“Where do you think you are going. Hm? You belong to me, little one, you are not going anywhere.” He says, his voice a deep velevty smooth as he speaks. It almost has you, until the sounds of panicked drivers bring you back. You kick and squirm only to grasp on to the stranger again when you nearly fall.

“Put me down!” You shout, trying to move barley doing so against his strong hold.. For a moment he does nothing but watch you squirm, predatorial eyes hidden behind his orange glasses before a wolfish grin spread across his face.

“Let you down? As you wish, little human,” 

You feel the wind rush past your ears as your heart plummets to the round much like yourself and as you close your eyes to wait for impact, it never comes. You are in the arms of your kidnapper once again. The feeling of your body shaking against his, the scent of your fear and the blood in your veins rushing everywhere as fast as it can is enough to make him chuckle as he looks down at your quivering form.. Despite the initial fear of being dropped from so high in the air, you manage to glare at him and through chattering teeth mutter.

“Asshole…”

His smirk level leaves his face and a feeling of nausea washes over your mind , feeling your stomach turn you close your eyes and try to will it away only to open your eyes to the same room you had woke up in. The window seems to be fixed and you doubt that you’ll be able to break it again, whatever he is, you bet he has some sort of magic that would prevent you from doing what you did the first time a second. As you look around you find that the sheets are perfectly tucked in around you again. In the corner of the room, sitting in an ornate chair like a king on his throne your capture sits watching you’re every move.

“Thinking about escaping again, little bride?”