Ep 4 spoilers.

I loved this episode. Castle Nokmar was properly menacing. I loved seeing General Kale again, even if only as a spectre. Jade had some really great moments. I thought she was headed towards the annoying female does everything right and rubs men's noses in it character, but this episode showed she has some depth. And the actress sold it. I like her a lot more than Kit or Elora at this point. 

Favorite part was when they wound up in the tower, and Willow busts in and reminds them that's exactly what he warned them not to do. 

The end, while I really hate the use of pop music in the end credits, this one wasn't that intrusive, and the imagery of the Immemorial City was simply great.

Ep 5.

Saving spoilers for a couple of days. I'll say, the word for this episode is frustrating.

Merry Christmas Mother f****ers.

So, ep 5. There were plenty of moments in this ep that felt like Willow. The brownies... yes original Willow had silly brownie comic relief. The moment when Elora Danan did the butterfly thing. Borman doing the charming rogue thing with the leader of the skull people.

But, and this is a big but. The intro fight/chase set to the most annoying modern music, and the last half of the episode turning into a teenager drama fest... it was a Prom in the woods! Fully half of this episode could have been ripped out and I wouldn't have missed it.

Hrrrhhh. I dunno. It's like the show has schizophrenia. One moment it's good, and the next it's taking a juicy shit on the TV screen.

If I had a magic wand, I'd give this show a do-over, and send the people making the bad decisions back in time to write for Beverly Hills 90210.

Note that I haven't mentioned the gay thing yet. That's because it's the least of this show's problems. And only in that bad teenage drama garbage way, not the gayness itself.

Episode 6, another one shot primarily in Dark-o-vision.

Decent apart from that.

Christian Slater is good, as are the bad guys in this one.

So far, 3 and 6 have basically been dungeon crawls and the only episodes I liked.  5 was the worst of the lot, really uneven and annoying.  It occurred to me that what's happened is that Frajeen and Rool are drunk and writing the scripts.  There was probably some dust of broken heart involved in episode 5 as well.

My brother put episode 6 on, and I was so checked out I put my headphones on and played Prodeus.

I saw out of the corner of my eye that there was a troll that talked like one of the bigfoots from that commerical, and Kit got Madmartigan's sword. Otherwise I was shooting chaos demons in the face with a shotgun.

Dissapointing. I really don't want to invest any more attention into the show knowing it's going to swerve between awful and decent at a moment's notice. Maybe I'll go watch some hate reviews and get some entertainment out of that.

Even the hate reviews couldn't entertian me, and apparently, they couldn't entertain anyone else.

'Willow' Cancelled On Disney Plus

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 16, 2023, 12:50:12 AM
Even the hate reviews couldn't entertian me, and apparently, they couldn't entertain anyone else.

'Willow' Cancelled On Disney Plus

(sad trombones)

The best part is that now there's a big round of whining about how the cancellation is a slap against LGBTQWTFBBQ types.

I feel kinda bad for Warwick Davis though.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 16, 2023, 12:50:12 AM'Willow' Cancelled On Disney Plus

My two main takeaways are these:

1) Not every old movie or TV show needs to be a multi-generational franchise. Some movies are just movies, especially those that have a very narrow audience age range. This is because most movies don't have a broad enough background to support a sequel or a TV show. Even Star Wars, as good as it was, doesn't have much to offer once you remove Luke, Vader, and the Jedi. They had to completely rewrite much of the established lore just to have new shows like Andor or Mandalorian to the point where they are just generic sci-fi series.

2) Disney+ is screwed. For these subscription services to work, they need a constant input of new shows to get new subscribers and to keep their current subscribers from canceling their subscription. Yet Disney has realized that it can't afford to produce quality shows with the money it currently makes from subscribers. So it either needs to go into debt and hope new people show up or it needs to cancel a bunch of projects and hope people don't leave. Hope isn't much of a business plan.

Personally, I just rotate through the streaming services, Netflix one month, Paramount+ the next, etc. For the price of one streaming service, I can watch 100% of the shows that all these services create.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on March 17, 2023, 10:32:50 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 16, 2023, 12:50:12 AM'Willow' Cancelled On Disney Plus

My two main takeaways are these:

1) Not every old movie or TV show needs to be a multi-generational franchise. Some movies are just movies, especially those that have a very narrow audience age range. This is because most movies don't have a broad enough background to support a sequel or a TV show. Even Star Wars, as good as it was, doesn't have much to offer once you remove Luke, Vader, and the Jedi. They had to completely rewrite much of the established lore just to have new shows like Andor or Mandalorian to the point where they are just generic sci-fi series.

2) Disney+ is screwed. For these subscription services to work, they need a constant input of new shows to get new subscribers and to keep their current subscribers from canceling their subscription. Yet Disney has realized that it can't afford to produce quality shows with the money it currently makes from subscribers. So it either needs to go into debt and hope new people show up or it needs to cancel a bunch of projects and hope people don't leave. Hope isn't much of a business plan.

Personally, I just rotate through the streaming services, Netflix one month, Paramount+ the next, etc. For the price of one streaming service, I can watch 100% of the shows that all these services create.

No, Disney+ isn't screwed, all of the streaming services are!

There's no market for THAT many streaming services, at most Netflix + 1 or 2 more that concentrate the output of the studios.

The proof is that Disney & Warner have already said they will put some stuff on other services (likely Netflix).

When they sell the rights to Netflix they cash on it if it's a hit or a flop, they have no further risk.

The crazy idea was to transition away from physical media at all, that was their other cash cow before putting it on cable or open TV. But there was a secondary market, people buying and selling their DVDs plus the dreaded piracy, so they transition to a model that's easier to pirate, then they get greedier and don't want Netflix making any money, so they stop selling to it and become their direct competitors, so now they all have their own little walled garden where I need to sell my liver to afford it.

To put the cherry on top here comes a recession/depression... They all are fucked, imagine México, where even people who CAN buy the original often times buy the pirate, Netflix with adds costs 5 bucks/month here, for the same price I can go buy 10 pirate DVDs (100 pesos for Netflix vs 105 pesos for the piracy), each with a season of one of their shows or a movie. That's if I don't want to spend my time downloading it for free.

I bet the same is true the world over, and to make things worst for them now I would need to pay in excess of 600 pesos to have all the streaming services, they choose to get fucked with a baseball bat wrapped in barbwire sideways.

Not that I would dream of committing piracy or am recommending anyone do so or even saying I condone it, I'm just explaining the economical reality of how hard they are fucked and that it was of their own making.

Oh! Best of all? I have to sell my liver to watch their woke wankery!

Speaking of how fucked Disney is, the parks are failing:

Quote from: GeekyBugle on March 17, 2023, 12:38:55 PMNo, Disney+ isn't screwed, all of the streaming services are!

There's no market for THAT many streaming services, at most Netflix + 1 or 2 more that concentrate the output of the studios.

The proof is that Disney & Warner have already said they will put some stuff on other services (likely Netflix).

When they sell the rights to Netflix they cash on it if it's a hit or a flop, they have no further risk.

All the big streaming services are hurting but IMO Disney is hurting more than most. Simply because starting their streaming service has split their focus. We saw with Star Wars that Disney was having a hard time coming up with good ideas for movies, now they have to make movies and TV shows that all mesh with one another. Marvel has been especially hit as now you need to watch the movies to understand the TV shows and watch the TV shows to understand the movies. And bad shows make people less interested in the movies and vice versa so it is a compounding failure.  It's all too much.

Warner Brothers has been affected less because the DCEU was already a huge mess and HBO Max didn't make it worse. (i.e. they had less to lose).

Quote from: hedgehobbit on March 17, 2023, 05:20:23 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on March 17, 2023, 12:38:55 PMNo, Disney+ isn't screwed, all of the streaming services are!

There's no market for THAT many streaming services, at most Netflix + 1 or 2 more that concentrate the output of the studios.

The proof is that Disney & Warner have already said they will put some stuff on other services (likely Netflix).

When they sell the rights to Netflix they cash on it if it's a hit or a flop, they have no further risk.

All the big streaming services are hurting but IMO Disney is hurting more than most. Simply because starting their streaming service has split their focus. We saw with Star Wars that Disney was having a hard time coming up with good ideas for movies, now they have to make movies and TV shows that all mesh with one another. Marvel has been especially hit as now you need to watch the movies to understand the TV shows and watch the TV shows to understand the movies. And bad shows make people less interested in the movies and vice versa so it is a compounding failure.  It's all too much.

Warner Brothers has been affected less because the DCEU was already a huge mess and HBO Max didn't make it worse. (i.e. they had less to lose).

Oh, they ARE hurting the most, and now they're hiring the writers for Rick and Morty to write the Marvel stuff, doubling, tripling and quadrupling down on stupid with the swapping of characters. They are loosing about 1.5 Billion per quarter on the Direct-to-Consumer side of things. Meaning merch, streaming, etc, even the Parks (which used to fund their other stupid stuff) are falling way behind the competition.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on March 17, 2023, 05:20:23 PM
Marvel has been especially hit as now you need to watch the movies to understand the TV shows and watch the TV shows to understand the movies. And bad shows make people less interested in the movies and vice versa so it is a compounding failure.  It's all too much.

Warner Brothers has been affected less because the DCEU was already a huge mess and HBO Max didn't make it worse. (i.e. they had less to lose).

In terms of stocks, all of Netflix (NFLX), Disney (DIS), Warner Bro (WBD), and Amazon (AMZN) have gone down more than the S&P 500 over the past year. The one that has held on the best is Netflix, but Disney is doing second-best. Warner Brothers has fallen the most.

I don't have a strong opinion on the business models. I know that my movie and TV tastes are not representative of what is most successful in the market.

Quote from: jhkim on March 17, 2023, 06:39:49 PM

Quote from: hedgehobbit on March 17, 2023, 05:20:23 PM
Marvel has been especially hit as now you need to watch the movies to understand the TV shows and watch the TV shows to understand the movies. And bad shows make people less interested in the movies and vice versa so it is a compounding failure.  It's all too much.

Warner Brothers has been affected less because the DCEU was already a huge mess and HBO Max didn't make it worse. (i.e. they had less to lose).

In terms of stocks, all of Netflix (NFLX), Disney (DIS), Warner Bro (WBD), and Amazon (AMZN) have gone down more than the S&P 500 over the past year. The one that has held on the best is Netflix, but Disney is doing second-best. Warner Brothers has fallen the most.

I don't have a strong opinion on the business models. I know that my movie and TV tastes are not representative of what is most successful in the market.

Stock "value" is a meme as proven by the stonks guys. It's worth X because people think it's worth X.

Disney is loosing Billions every quarter in revenue, the market will catch up to it soon.