Rumour that Disney will have to sell Lucas Film and some parks to pay for Hulu

[trappedslider]

Has anyone else heard the rumours

No, since you haven't posted an actual link.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Has anyone else heard the rumor that Disney is selling their rights to the Tron franchise to finance a remodel of Bob Iger's office washroom?

 

[trappedslider]

Has anyone else heard the rumor that Disney is selling their rights to the Tron franchise to finance a remodel of Bob Iger's office washroom?

maybe @Henadic Theologian has?

 

[Zardnaar]

Has anyone else heard the rumor that Disney is selling their rights to the Tron franchise to finance a remodel of Bob Iger's office washroom?

Trons worth that much?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Few people seem to care about the characters or the plot and this is why I think it'll never leave a deep cultural footprint.

I think you're confusing "nerds" and "people".

None of the characters in either movie are "nerd bait" nor particularly likely to appeal to intellectuals or academics (so that's 90% of columnists and the like out right there). On the contrary, they're total normie-bait. They're mostly straightforward and relatable characters.
But thinking no-one cares about them is a failure of imagination of the same kind as thinking no-one cares about Jack and Rose in Titanic.

I will say the second movie does move a bit beyond the first in this. But not far beyond.

Looking at the people in the cinema when I've seen the movies, it's fascinating because there was a near-total absence of trad nerds. Like, you go and see GotG3 or the D&D movie or whatever and it's like "Nerd, nerd, nerd, normie, nerd, nerd, normie" and so on if you watch people coming in. Avatar 2? I think I was one of about two nerds there. Almost everyone else was like, normal, often with kids. And of my nerdy friends, how many saw Avatar 2? Exactly 0%. And what was particularly interesting was it was mega-packed, and this was on like, week 3 or 4 of release, whereas I haven't seen, say, an MCU movie that packed since Black Panther 1 on opening night.

Re: watching the movies - they're insanely more effective at the cinema than on home TV and I think this another factor, especially with the 30+ nerd crowd. A lot of us just rarely go to the cinema anymore, and instead watch 90%+ of our movies on TV at home. And neither Avatar movie has remotely the same visual impact or "woosh" factor outside of an IMAX-capable cinema doing 3D. And I say that as someone who thinks 3D is generally complete trash. Like, almost everything I've seen in 3D didn't need to be, and didn't benefit from it. At all. Whereas Avatar 1/2? They do kind of need to be, and hugely benefit from it.

I think it would be dangerous to think of this as an American problem. The UK has it's own share of people who are outraged over any depiction of the British empire as anything other than a good and noble endeavour.

I didn't suggest it was an American problem.

What I'm saying is that there's a large section of the Western populace who is fine with say, colonialism (or in some cases outright racism) against Native Americans (or other indigenous peoples who were more tribal/nomadic rather than city-builders) being depicted relatively positively, and Native Americans being depicted as barbaric, but who is outraged if colonialism against, say, people from the Indian subcontinent is depicted positively, or people from there depicted as barbaric. It's a fascinating and reliable double-standard. It's most extreme in the US, where you even have some fairly far-left PoC activists who are happy to sneer at Native Americans and to try and keep them out of discussions of racial equity and so on (though I understand that is an issue with complexities of its own).

The "colonialism must always be positive unless other people than the British are doing it!" crowd are separate from that and have limited overlap with it. Ironically my experience is that they're slightly more likely to be sympathetic to indigenous peoples, albeit only because they have a tendency to see them as "free" or "natural" in some kind of concerning/fetish-y ways.

 

[MGibster]

I think you're confusing "nerds" and "people".

None of the characters in either movie are "nerd bait" nor particularly likely to appeal to intellectuals or academics (so that's 90% of columnists and the like out right there). On the contrary, they're total normie-bait. They're mostly straightforward and relatable characters.
But thinking no-one cares about them is a failure of imagination of the same kind as thinking no-one cares about Jack and Rose in Titanic.

Who said nobody cares about Rose and Jack? If I shout, "I'm on top of the world," say "Draw me like one of your French girls," or argue that Jack totally could have shared that door with Rose most people will understand the references. I've never seen Titanic, but you can bet your hat that it feels like I've seen it because it's been parodied or referenced in so many other places over the last 26 years. Titanic left a much deeper cultural footprint than Avatar.

I don't know where this "nerds" and "people" argument is coming from. Attracting normies is how you get that cultural footprint. It's why Star Wars, The Godfather, and Titanic are so well known even by people who have never seen them.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Trons worth that much?

Well... presumably it will be a very modest remodel.

 

[Hatmatter]

I don't know where this "nerds" and "people" argument is coming from. Attracting normies is how you get that cultural footprint. It's why Star Wars, The Godfather, and Titanic are so well known even by people who have never seen them.

This distinction of "nerds" and "normies" from some people is cracking me up. My experience has shown me that people who role-play and are deeply invested in pop culture are exceedingly normal. Extraordinary people are more off the radar and unlikely -- as recounted above in Ruin Explorer's post -- to be going into a cineplex to watch a superhero movie.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Who said nobody cares about Rose and Jack?

Loads of people have suggested it - it's been a common comment about the movie, particularly in nerdy circles.

I don't know where this "nerds" and "people" argument is coming from. Attracting normies is how you get that cultural footprint.

Disagree, or rather, it doesn't get you what nerds call "cultural footprint". Films can be incredibly successful with normies and have zero nerd-acknowledged cultural footprint.

It's why Star Wars, The Godfather, and Titanic are so well known even by people who have never seen them.

That's kind of the thing, though, aside from a few key scenes/lines which are much-parodied and the like, the amount people who have never seen The Godfather or Titanic know about them is absolutely minuscule these days. Star Wars is different (MCU arguably was getting that way but it hasn't sustained it.)

This is why I made my "It has to be like how people think of Star Wars or it doesn't count" comment earlier. Because that's really the only thing where what you're saying is fully true. Godfather particularly is increasingly down to "An offer you can't refuse", "Look at how they massacred my boy", the general broad concept of horse's heads in beds, which is increasingly just a vague "mafia" trope, and maybe, if you're lucky, something about Fredo, but that's increasingly not a thing with younger people because it kind of requires you to have watched Godfather 2.

This distinction of "nerds" and "normies" from some people is cracking me up. My experience has shown me that people who role-play and are deeply invested in pop culture are exceedingly normal. Extraordinary people are more off the radar and unlikely -- as recounted above in Ruin Explorer's post -- to be going into a cineplex to watch a superhero movie.

I'm talking more about self-defining categories, ever since "nerd" became a point of pride for a lot of people. There's never been anything "extraordinary" about being a nerd though, that's some some really silly and pompous self-valorisation, imho. I'm talking about the sort of people who intentionally wear t-shirts with D&D-related slogans on them, or buy those ghastly dolls... Funko Pops... or the like. There's not anything extraordinary about those people. They're common-or-garden. But they're different from "normies", culturally, who wouldn't do those things (still, right now - give it a decade or two maybe that changes), and despite being common, are a minority at all age groups above children.

As per my example re: the crowds for the D&D movie and Avatar, virtually everyone at the D&D movie was wearing some kind of intentional nerd signifier (mostly not D&D-related). I was one of the few people who wasn't, and that's arguable because my jacket kind of has Commander Shepard lines on it. Whereas with Avatar 2, virtually no-one was, indeed, it was more similar to what you'd see at a pub on a Saturday or something (early in the evening), just with more parents. MCU stuff tends to split the difference but has an awful lot of nerds.

Star Wars seems to exceed all boundaries here, so I discount it as a nerd identifier unless it's really extreme.

 

[MGibster]

Disagree, or rather, it doesn't get you what nerds call "cultural footprint". Films can be incredibly successful with normies and have zero nerd-acknowledged cultural footprint.

Uh, yeah. That was my point. You get a deep cultural footprint when your work is embraced by the normies. I just don't understand what point you're trying to make with the nerds and normies argument.