WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[AnotherGuy]

Well, while I haven't seen most of the recent ones, there was a really simple version many people have been talking about.

Wandavision and Multiverse of Madness.

1) You need to have seen Wandavision to understand why Wanda is calling herself the Scarlet Witch and some of her changes.

2) If you have seen Wandavision then you know that she already learned the lesson and largely dealt with the issue which in Multiverse of Madness is driving her to go on a murderous rampage until she learns the lesson she already learned and deals with the issue she already dealt with.

You could say it is just a problem of bad writing, but it is actually deeply tied to the problems that come with Canon. You have to have seen a TV show to understand the movie, but you can't assume the people who see the movie have seen the TV show. So you try and write around it.

Additionally, there has been much speculation that the reason for Multiverse of Madness was to bring in the X-Men and Fantastic Four into the MCU, because if they had existed, they would have mattered for the canon of the movies. So to maintain canon, you need a more complicated explanation. Which is really something that already happpened with Captain Marvel, who had to be in a movie and explained before Endgame and so her movie felt rushed and shoe-horned in, because it existed largely to make sure that she was established in canon before fighting Thanos.


Maybe the studios will be able to salvage it, not saying that it cannot be done. Just saying that, at this point, you can hear the structure groaning and struggling to support the canon.

Right, so canon of their own doing, which essentially boils down to the writing and plotting.
We shouldn't move the blame from piss poor writing and plotting to the nebulous term canon.
People messed up, badly. It is not some quasi-external force they had no control over.

 

[Velderan]

It could also be because there is starting to be pressure from Tesla shareholders to oust him as CEO of Tesla as a result of the Twitter circus.

'Elon abandoned Tesla': The EV maker's 3rd-largest individual shareholder calls for a new CEO as the Twitter circus tests investor patience

KoGuan Leo owns $3.57 billion of Tesla stock, building his stake during the pandemic when shares traded at a split-adjusted price of about $40.

www.yahoo.com

And then there's this.

(Politics, so don't click if you don't want to read about politics.)

 

[codo]

...wut?

You know, this feels kind of like that Dave Chappel thing a little bit ago. Elon strode out on stage with swagger, expecting cheering crowds and adulation, only to be shocked by the amount of hate he got. This feels like him putting out a poll to say "see, the people love me!" only to once more be caught flat-footed as his fantasy crashes with reality.

It's.... it's really kind of sad.

Elon had already decided to step down as twitter CEO before he put up the poll. Musk's stupid antics at twitter has cost him billions of dollars and crushed the share price of Tesla. Investors in Tesla are close to rioting. Musk is facing a massive law suit for destroying Tesla share price.

All of this twitter poll B.S. is just Musk trying to save face after funning twitter into the ground, and threatening to take Tesla down with it,

 

[codo]

I'm not sure I understand how you see canon hurting the movies.

I would say it is a combination of 3 things that are affecting reception
1) Change in economic landscape
2) Superhero fatigue
3) Studios going in a direction opposite to the desires of a sizeable portion of the fan base as is explained by various prominent podcasters on pop-culture. This along with their poor writing and plotting is driving away seats at the cinema.

Its not that complicated. The more setting cannon a franchise has, the more movies people are required to watch to have the background needed to understand a movie. If people need to have watched a dozen movies to actually understand a current movie, you are going to start loosing your audience.

Having a deep and complicated cannon, build up over dozens of movies may be good for the hardcore fans, but the more you cater to them the more you are going to start loosing the casual fans.

 

[Faolyn]

Sure. By that same token, "Yes" is winning by over 1.5 million votes. If he's rigged it to ensure "Yes" wins, that...would seem to indicate things have gone pretty poorly, I think. If he's rigged it to ensure "No" wins, then either he's failed miserably at rigging it, or people hate him that much that even with attempts to rig it the "wrong" answer is winning by more than an eighth of all votes, or he's going to do something real hinky right at the end which will draw attention to the rigging (which one could argue is a form of failing miserably at rigging the vote.)

There's literally no world where this doesn't look absolutely awful for Mr. Musk if he's rigged it.

Personally, I think he's just that much of a narcissist and blowhard that he genuinely believed there was a legion of "silent majority" folks out there who would back him up if he just gave them the opportunity. It fits his overall public personality and his past behavior, and explains why he would do a thing that is so obviously untrustworthy to anyone that doesn't have a massive craniorectal inversion.

I've heard that he was planning on jumping ship (or switching to chairman of the board or CTO or something similar and that he already has someone (possibly Jared Kushner) lined up as the new CEO; this is no different than when he proposed $20 for a blue check and immediately went down to $8 when challenged. He already has a plan but is presenting it so to give his followers the illusion of choice, and here he can set himself up as a martyr forced out by those nasty libs.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

WotC needs an Elon Musk, I know I'll get dumped on for saying it, but when 50% roughly that the D&D studio works on gets tossed in the trash and the rest tends to be shades of poorly done when the D&D studio doesn't have adult supervision (freelancers Keith, Matt, or George for examples of adult supervision).

We should be getting products equal to the 5e Southland Kickstarter, instead we are getting setting products without the settings. This is absurd.

New visionary leadership is needed.

And as big as the problems with D&D are, the issues with MtG dwarf it with a major consumer revolt going on, and multiple WotC studios that have been around for years and yet have yet to produce any products at all.

Maybe this is finally the time for the activist investors to make their next more or at least close to that time because it appears they have been vindicated.

Part of WotC's problem is they are too focused on casuals, but it's the hardcore fans that create the buzz that draws in the casuals in the first place (this is shown by the Fandom survey/research that basically fandoms in 4 grades from the most hardcore fans to the most casual casuals). Their current approach is to alienate hardcore fans to court casuals, and that is a problem because it's the hardcore fans the build the foundation the gets you the casuals.

It's what made the MCU (and ignoring that truth is killing the MCU) for example.

Given Elon Musk just put out a poll voting him out as CEO clearly my opening post aged well. .

I really should have gone with owner of Kobold Press, less chaos (admittedly a fun ride, Elon is one hell of a naughty word disturber), and more relevant choice to the type of vision I want for WotC then Elon Musk.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Its not that complicated. The more setting cannon a franchise has, the more movies people are required to watch to have the background needed to understand a movie. If people need to have watched a dozen movies to actually understand a current movie, you are going to start loosing your audience.

Having a deep and complicated cannon, build up over dozens of movies may be good for the hardcore fans, but the more you cater to them the more you are going to start loosing the casual fans.

Well, I am a hardcore fan, so I'm hoping they keep it up as long as they can.

 

[codo]

Well, I am a hardcore fan, so I'm hoping they keep it up as long as they can.

The problem is that a major Marvel movie will cost you something like half a billion dollars to produce. There just are not enough hardcore fans to make a movie profitable. If you can't make films that appeal to a wider audience of casual fans you will be bankrupt in short order.

 

[Umbran]

2) If you have seen Wandavision then you know that she already learned the lesson and largely dealt with the issue which in Multiverse of Madness is driving her to go on a murderous rampage until she learns the lesson she already learned and deals with the issue she already dealt with.

You really didn't get the impact of the final scene of Wandavision with the Darkhold, did you?

 

[Vaalingrade]

The point of the Darkhold is kind of how it keeps you from learning your lesson. It's like the book version of a Spider-Man writer.