WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Remathilis]

After that poll, I think we can say not only does WotC not need an Elon Musk, TWITTER doesn't need an Elon Musk!

 

[Umbran]

Well, things just got interesting, don't you think?

No, I really don't. I think it was repeat fan-service, nothing more meaningful than that.

Most likely it's a goof caused by two different writers going for the same in-joke. But canonically, Mysterio guessed the same three digit code that Christine Palmer from a different reality gave the MCU, and that's a helluva coincidence.

Which is why I say you should not confuse Easter-eggs for meaningful canon.

 

[BrokenTwin]

Weighing in on the MCU discussion... it honestly DID feel like they had a solid direction they were building towards (introducing and adapting the Young Avengers), but then it just kind of... didn't happen? At the time it felt really obvious that they were building in that direction, what with introducing more and more of the core Young Avengers cast in the various movies and shows. But then it just... didn't go anywhere. It still might, with Kang being set up as the new BBEG, but we're nowhere near establishing them as I thought we would be by this point. Heck, the only one currently missing offhand is Teddy, but his backstory would make him fairly complicated to add to the current MCU. Billy and Tommy wouldn't be that difficult to re-add.
And for the record, I enjoyed the comics long before the MCU happened, and I STILL think what they did with Wanda in MoM was straight up character assassination, alongside a clear swerve from what was originally forecast for her in the MCU. Just because MCU-Wanda is different from 616-Wanda doesn't mean that I can't get invested in the MCU version. If anything, it was nice having a version of the character that wasn't under constant retcons and decades of immensely varying writing quality.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I hope to be not off-topic. I have read now Elon Musk is too busy with certain business, and I am not talking about economy.

Other point I have read Blackrock and Vanguard, the most important investment funds in the world, have changed of the owners, and this could cause a radical revoluntion in the global economy, and also in the entertaiment industry. 2023 could be a year with a lot of troubles, with mergers and acquisitions we could't imagine. And thes M&A could be with companies Hasbro has got some important partnership deal. And we could see intercompany crossovers we couldn't guess now. Some IPs could be changed of owners.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Is that a typo for 2020?

Because if not, it's some of the worst hyperbole/memory failure I've ever seen. There were only three MCU movies out by 2010 - Iron Man, Hulk, and Iron Man 2. No-one even talking about the MCU, let alone about the "MCU dying" in 2010. The MCU wasn't even discussed until Avengers in 2012.

If we're going to be real, it's 2020 when the "the MCU is done/dying" stuff started. Endgame was done, the Avengers had disassembled and lost their lynchpin, and for a lot of people, there wasn't an obvious way for the MCU to go after that. Then we had a bunch of TV series of varying quality, and that was when people really started saying that. Ain't nobody was saying that in 2010. What people said in 2010 was very different - "Iron Man 2 sucks" - that's not pretending anything. It did suck. It was not a good movie.

Regardless of all that, the MCU isn't likely to collapse under the weight of canon unless they force it to by making a bunch of movies that rely on you knowing a ton of canon. That's a choice. They don't have to do that. I mean, I will say they might, but like Wakanda, whilst it was pretty, full of good performances, and just slightly boring, didn't rely on a ton of canon knowledge, just you having watched BP1. And I expect that to continue. Ant-Man 3 seems like it might be a bit of a "The microverse is brown" car-crash, but not for excessive canon required.

Believe me, the sad oinking about 'superhero fatigue' started way early. Maybe not 2010, but real early.

People now use Endgame in hindsight, but that's not the whole story. I remember people just flat out celebrating that Thor: The Dark World wasn't as good as the others because that meant the franchise was on its way out. It's the same thing as people who keep saying D&D is dying: delicious sour grapes.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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

I saw a bit of this when I skimmed the various articles, seemed like a few different rumors of different factions pushing him out so I wasn't sure how true any of it was. Adds layers though, if he is being pressured by someone else, but decides to set up a Twitter poll and allow the people to vote him out, then follow their will and hide his being forced out by a different group.

 

[Umbran]

Believe me, the sad oinking about 'superhero fatigue' started way early. Maybe not 2010, but real early.

There is also an issue that movies, broadly, aren't doing so well in theaters any more.
From 2009 to 2019, total domestic box office gross was a pretty dependable $11 billion or so.

In 2020, that dropped to $2 billion, for obvious reasons. But it hasn't really recovered - this year looks to be about $7 billion.

Domestic Yearly Box Office

www.boxofficemojo.com

 

[Vaalingrade]

Sounds like a lot of yachts won't be getting smaller yachts as pets this Christmas.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

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.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Which is why I say you should not confuse Easter-eggs for meaningful canon.

How are you supposed to be able to tell the difference?

 

[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.