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Arghhhh's Replies
"Politically-motivated attack".
What?
An attack against whom?
The blogosphere?
And what political motivations? The political motivation that thinks race baiting is a bad idea?
"I couldn't care less if it's done well or not."
Whelp - there you have it folks:
"I don't care if a film is any good and you shouldn't either"
Thank you for your insight.
I know we don't have to agree; if we agreed there'd be no point to a forum!
But I enjoy a good argument and I suspect you do to.
Now R1, you see, it *did* annoy some of the hard core fans. *some*. Because it overwrote pre-existing stories and I saw a fair few people complaining about that, but ultimately, a flawed movie was very well received because people LOVE star wars, not because they're too picky.
I suspect our points of view intersect at some point: I agree that people like Star Wars too much - I see these Youtube video clips of grown men with walls of Star Wars paraphernalia behind them and it makes me cringe. But then I'm watching them aren't I? So who am I to judge. I think my point is that because people love Star Wars so much they've blinded themselves to bad products and stories leading us to the point where we now have more bad Star Wars movies than good ones. Your point here seems to be that no matter what Star Wars fans won't be happy - and you are right there, it's just a question of the scale of the unsatisfiable fans. You think it's a lot, I say it's a few. And we will never know...
What we need is a genuinely great Star Wars film that tests the hypothesis... but that seems very unlikely to materialise in the near future.
"You're assuming 20 years of profit and no losses. Twenty years of good investments, no bad. You can't assume all positive outcomes and forget any possible negatives."
This is a good point and that 5% estimate on return is a finger in the air. But it's also another simplification as it wraps up lots of other factors, including inflation & risk. This theoretical return is called the 'Cost of Capital'
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/costofcapital.asp
and there are books written about the best ways to estimate it (it can never be known with absolute certainty). It's especially complicated for a transaction like this with cash and stocks involved but, just because something is hard to estimate doesn't mean we have to ignore it: unfortunately, we can't. The usual 'finger in the air' value is 15% so I was being very fair to Disney by using 5%.
"In your scenario no one could ever break even. Breaking even simply means getting back to where you started."
People "break even" when they recover the costs of their investment plus their opportunity costs. So for example, say Disney have made $2B profit on the films and that the 5% cost of capital is in fact, fair. There are 6 years of OC (they bought in 2012) so that gives us $4B * 1.05 ^ 6 = $5.36B so in order to break even Disney need to sell for $3.36B ($4B initial cost - $2B profit + $1.36B OC).
Again, the $1.36B is a total guess but the point is they can't just sell for $2B and be happy that they didn't make a bad investment. Hopefully you can see that even with a small number like 5%, after 6 years that equates to Disney needing over a Billion dollars more to recoup the value of their investment.
Not sure I'm explaining this well but this is the industry standard for evaluation investments and when I'm not skiving from work here this is what I do all day.
Think of it like this - if you give me $1B in 1950 and I give you back $1B in 2000 (worth around 16% of the 1950 dollars) have you 'broken even'?
Glad you think so Ziggy and sorry again for being a bit of an arse above.
But there is no 'they' - we're talking about millions of people with wildly different tastes; it's nonsensical to group Star Wars fans into a box. And what should people do - just say 'Thank you, mrs Kennedy!' and doff their cap as they get yet another Shitty Star Wars movie? You don't even like Star Wars and you seem to be arguing that people should be less picky, less discerning, more accepting of crap movies churned out by a massive corporation that just up and bought somebody else's ideas. If people just universally raved about Disney Star Wars you'd be calling them 'children' and that they're blinded by their 'childish obsession' with Star Wars but when enough people get together and say, 'nah, these movies are a bit shit' suddenly that is even worse?
You make no sense Renovatio and the reason why is no doubt due to your rather strange hate boner you have for Star Wars. Did someone jab you in the eye with their IG-88 toy when you were a child?
And if you don't believe me that Star Wars fans are INCREDIBLY forgiving just look at R-1. It's the least divisive SW movie since Jedi, has 85% on RT from both critics and audience, has no Youtube channels dedicated to mocking it, has no accusations of Mary Sues or whatever else and yet it's ultimately a very mediocre dirty dozen in space with multiple redundant scenes and a cast of characters that all die the moment they've served their purpose for the plot.
So yes - if Disney knocked out an Obiwan movie that wasn't objectively shit and just ticked a few god damned boxes the fans would cream themselves silly and be throwing their money at Disney. Well... they *would* before this whole thing turned into 2016 2.0 and Lucasfilm decided that insulting their customer base was a good business decision.
Good to know Froggy but that doesn't change the underlying logic. The opportunity cost of the stock still needs to be recovered.
But I didn't know Disney paid $4B for Marvel. Or $7.4B for pixar. That seems insane that Pixar cost almost double that of Lucasfilm.
Well I'm using the financial definition of the term, not the accounting one (this is something I do for a living) and I'm trying to avoid using finance jargon. If I called it - "the point at which the Net Present Value of the investment is zero" most people aren't going to understand. Or care!
And the point is, even if they make back $4B in pure profit, they won't be 'even', they won't be where they started - due to the opportunity costs and the time value of money. So Disney needs to make a LOT more money than a lot of people realise, roughly $200m a year ON TOP of what they need to 'break even' from an accounting perspective.
"Droid please" wasn't so far off from just that...
You make some good points Ziggy, but it's not the lack of explanation for Rey's abilities that make her a Mary Sue (though that is yet more bad writing) - even if it's revealed she's a clone of Palpatine, that she was created by the force, or she is Cthulu incarnated, none of that will stop her being a Mary Sue they would just be explaniations for *why* she is a Mary Sue and it's not the 'why is she so powerful' that's the problem it's the effect her power has on the story (and other characters).
She can fly the falcon better than Han ever could - thus diminishing his achievements.
She can speak all languages - thus removing the need for C3PO (or similar character)
She can learn the force instantly - thus diminishing Luke's achievemnts
She rescues herself - thus robbing the other characters of an heroic moment and helping to create that vital group chemestry
She beats Kylo - this robbing their rematch of any chemistry (you see it doesn't matter if he was wounded - she still won, and that's the 'problem')
There are lots of stories written about amazing people that are brilliant at everything. Take James Bond. Bond films are loved because of the enjoyment we get from watching someone who is awesome be awesome. Now drop James Bond into a Mission Impossible film. Suddenly the other team members have nothing to do because JB is already better than them at everything and Ethan Hunt now looks like an amateur in comparison. This is why JB only has very minor recurring characters and isn't part of a team: he doesn't need a team, he IS the team. Same with Superman - the Justice League films where hamstrung because they had to spend 80% of the plot explaining why Superman would even need a team in the first place.
I hope you see my point. It's not Rey power levels that are the problem, it's that they've dropped a maxed out character into the hero's journey/group adventure story line of Star Wars and the result is a total mess.
Buffy - if you'll scroll up a bit you'll see about 1000 posts by Tristianreloaded where he systematically dismantles the argument that Rey isn't a Mary Sue. Don't pretend you haven't seen his posts (or similar ones in the past).
I realise this post is 3 years old but I agree!
I couldn't believe it when I saw it... it's just a cliche filled story with lack lustre action. At the risk of sounding like a snob I think its simplistic politics ("It's, like the government, man!") combined with the power fantasy of indestructible-guy-in-mask-killing-bad-guys is very appealing to a lot of people, but especially to young adults. You get the 'depth' of "fighting back against "the man", with the visceral thrill of watching the hero stab lots of people. And I wouldn't mind this is the fight scenes were better but I found them pretty boring and lacking tension as I had no idea who V was or what his 'powers' if any, where.
Antagonistic maybe, but I didn't see anything immature.
And if Lindelof is talented at anything it is at being a hack. Seriously, the man is the very definition of the word.
Lindelof's work - and that of his co-conspiritor, JJ Abrams - operates off the same basic principles as a cult: The promise of esoteric wisdom, only the answer to every question is another question, and the only way to obtain true enlightenment is with.... *money*. Then by the time people begin to realise they've been fooled the sunk cost fallacy keeps them trapped in the endless cycle. It's a bit like a mystery box ponzi scheme.
The pair of them are shameless.
Could also control fish apparently!
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paimon[/url]
Yes but which film in history doesn't have people complaining about it?
I just find the idea that Star Wars fans are 'difficult' hilarious when there were three, near universally derided films in a row and yet TFA, a shameless knock off which made no sense earned over $2B and rave reviews from fans and critics alike.
I'm sorry - I take that back. I genuinely thought you were trying to wind me up but looking at your other posts I can see you're not a troll. I just didn't like that you were saying I was defending racism and sexism, when I so clearly wasn't.
OPs points were articulated well, all you've come back with is insults and yet you call the OP a child. Either reply to his points or shut up.
Froggy appears to be a gestalt character comprising multiple personalities. As long as you steer clear of Rey and Prometheus he's quite insightful and occasionally humorous.
But you're totally right...
FilmBuff is a perfect example of this. I made a post, he replied to it but didn't address any of my points so I said to him 'You've clearly not even read my post' and do you know what he accused me of? He said I'd gone back and edited my OP! Yup, that was it! Not that you're just blinded by your own biases - I actually took the time to stealth edit my post (in a way that meant all the other replies still made sense!) so I could gaslight a random account on Moviechat.org.
It's like they're wearing the glasses from They Live. Or not. Which ever way around it needs to be.
Whelp you're either an idiot or a troll.
Either way: I'm out.
I'm always impressed by how wrong you can be in such a few words Renovatio - you have that down to an art form!
Hardcore fans have been crying out for a Kenobi movie for years - it's got great potential for a story and it has a perfect actor at just the right age to play the part. Solo - whatever it's merits/flaws - always had a huuuuge hurdle to overcome in that it was never going to star Harrison Ford and who wants to see anyone else play Han?
The only reason I can think of that Disney has been avoiding the idea is that the story would be required to be different (not much room for massive Space Battles) and seeing as Lucasfilm lacks a single strand of creativity this is enough to give them cold feet.