How badly has D&D been mismanaged?

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I remember the dark times. When the last big Superhero screen outing was Superman 4. When to say Batman conjured thoughts of 'Pow' and 'Biff'. When the last coherent take of a property was the late 70's Incredible Hulk.
The best we could hope for was a b-movie Captain America, The Punisher without the skull, a myriad of non-franchise supes without the backstory or emotive hooks of the traditional comic book heroes..

I now live in a golden age where even the worst performers are light-years ahead of what we had. So I will ride this Marvel Franchise machine wherever it takes me until it finally peters out, sputtering and croaking it's last in the face of whatever the new, popular thing is.

(I'm hoping the 'new, popular thing' is a fully immersive experience like 'Better than life' but I'll settle for Young Guns 3).
 
Stumpydave said:
until it finally peters out, sputtering and croaking it's last in the face of whatever the new, popular thing is.
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I didn't see it (apparently there were few who did), but didn't this already happen with The Marvels?
 
Stumpydave said:
One blip does not doom the entire franchise.

Plus it wasn't a bad film, on par if not marginally better than The Eternals.
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That was meant to be a joke based on how bad the internet keeps telling me the movie is. As I'd already stated, for me the franchise ran its course at the end of the Avengers movies. Marvel / Disney may be willing to keep pumping money into them, but the conclusion of that saga was my last stop on that particular train.
 
The thing about a movie that you don't see is that it can be as bad as you can imagine it to be.

One day a movie will be released that will be seen only by angry nerds* so they can all watch it and then make Youtube videos which will by then also only have an audience made up exclusively of other angry nerds with Youtube channels.

And the universe will collapse into a singularity or something.

*I'm not sure what it would be, maybe some kind of Transformers - He Man crossover or something.
 
Savage Schemer said:
That was meant to be a joke based on how bad the internet keeps telling me the movie is. As I'd already stated, for me the franchise ran its course at the end of the Avengers movies.
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Despite my love for anything superhero shaped, I feel you may have chosen the righteous path.
 
I always seem to enjoy the nonmarvel-DC comic movies more. Movies like Dredd, Hellboy, Rocketeer, The Crow, A History of Violence. Are they better? I think so (Exception being the Daredevil series. That was absolutely fantastic). But I haven’t really liked superheroes since I was younger so this is probably irrelevant and only a matter my taste.
 
lategamer said:
I've not seen their TikToks. :wink:

Scorcese only mentions his hatred of the MCU when he has a new movie to promote. :grin: None of them call the audience stupid for wanting to see them.
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100%. Scorsese's anti-Marvel tirades are as choreographed as a WWE wrestling match. "What's this?! The Academy-Award-winning director of Goodfellas and Taxi Driver is stepping into the ring! AND HE'S GOT A CHAIR!!!"
 
TJS said:
The thing about a movie that you don't see is that it can be as bad as you can imagine it to be.

One day a movie will be released that will be seen only by angry nerds* so they can all watch it and then make Youtube videos which will by then also only have an audience made up exclusively of other angry nerds with Youtube channels.

And the universe will collapse into a singularity or something.

*I'm not sure what it would be, maybe some kind of Transformers - He Man crossover or something.
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Believe it or not, I've had the same thought before. How "fun" it might be to make a movie solely for the purpose of getting "content creators" to react angrily to what you've made. It'd be one hell of an expensive troll though, given how much it takes to make even low-key films anymore.
 
Savage Schemer said:
Believe it or not, I've had the same thought before. How "fun" it might be to make a movie solely for the purpose of getting "content creators" to react angrily to what you've made. It'd be one hell of an expensive troll though, given how much it takes to make even low-key films anymore.
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Wasn't the last Matrix movie done tongue in cheek to troll the studio?
 
TristramEvans said:
I remember a crapton of D&D computer games in the early 90s.
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There were indeed lots of D&D computer games back in the 90s. The majority remembered today were made by SSI and Westwood Studios.
SSI made the two excellent Dark Sun games; Shattered Lands & Wake of the Ravager. Westwood Studios made the Eye of the Beholder series.
I also really like the two Ravenloft games; Strahd's Possession & Stone Prophet made by Dreamforge Entertainment.
Here's a full list of D&D computer games: D&D Computer Games

Endless Flight said:
Baldur’s Gate II was pretty big back in the 90s, even more so than BG I or Icewind Dale.
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Baldur's Gate ll was released in 2000. Baldur's Gate l in 1998.

lategamer said:
it seems to me that tie ins are more popular and standalone as tend to stink. (I may be basing this on …. Eternals)
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My opinion on this is based on not being a superhero comicbook reader. Which I would hasard a guess, is probably the majority of viewers of Marvel movies.
 
lategamer said:
You stated people are sick of franchise films.
Evidence if the MCU franchise is that it's made a bundle and will continue to. Recent falls, like The Marvels, were more likely due to lack of promotion (from the writers/actors industrial action) and literally thousands of hairy comic fans complaining about women superheroes.
If you have evidence that the franchises are failing, I'd love to hear it.

So, Phase 4 movies
Dr Strange 2 cost 294M, made 955M
Thor 4 cost 250M, made 760M
Black Panther 2 cost $200M, made 859M
Eternals cost 236M, made 402M
Shang chi cost 150M, made 432M
Black Widow cost 288M, made 379M

Sequels were the high performers. Franchise Sequels. The other three (Eternals, Shang chi, Black Widow) weren't really part of any continuity. And performed poorly. That's evidence that people wanted sequels and franchises.

Phase Five
Ant Man 3 cost 326M made 476M
Guardians 3 cost 250M, made 845M
Captain Marvel 2 - The Marvels cost 274M, made 206M

These are all sequels too.

Phase Five has a poor showing so far but it has just begin. We'll see which way Deadpool and Wolverine shifts this curve. I reckon up (but will be countered by projected poor performance for Captain America 4 and Thunderbolts.). I think Phase Five will likely be regarded as the worst Phase of the MCU on box office.

Outside of the MCU
Jurassic World cost 150M, made 1.6 billion
Jurassic world dominion cost 265, made 1 billion
Jurassic world fallen kingdomn cost 432M, made 1.3 billion

and I'm sure the Kong/Godzilla and Planet of the Apes franchises are doing ok.

Any of this evidence that people are sick of franchises? Nope. Quite the opposite
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I doubt continuity has little to do with the success or otherwise with the films. Of course familiar characters that the audience like are likely to do better than new characters at this point, hence why the studios prefer to give people something they already know rather than something new.

I agree that franchises aren't per se the issue, the Godzilla/Kong films have been doing well.

But there does seem to be some flagging interest in superhero films. This is a bit clouded because many of the recent film have ranged from poor to okay.

Hard to judge for sure right now but the fortunes of future superhero films that aren't established 'properties' like Deadpool are not looking promising.
 
To unite the Marvel and Hasbro discussion, they both have the problem of fan-blaming. People dislike Marvel movies and the D&D products that WotC produces for a wide range of reasons. Once you start giving interviews saying that the reason your latest release underperformed was because the public is bunch of racists/incels/grognards, you are entering a death spiral. And once you hit the point where you are making product to attack fans, like that Matrix movie or the She-Hulk series, you've forgotten what your job is entirely. It was bizarre watching the She Hulk creators rubbing their hands together with glee over how they predicted how much people would hate She Hulk.

On a smaller scale, it's like how John Wick (the game designer, not the assassin) blew himself up online by needing to argue online with any criticism of his work.
lategamer said:
Good, because I wasn't debating that. I was just showing that the 'people are sick of franchises' argument is bullshit. Whether or not D&D was released at the height of Marvels popularity is specious. Franchises plainly work.
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They work until they don't. Disney has been going all in on franchises, and now that people are drifting away, they don't know what to do, and even if they did, they already have more of the same booked through 2030 or so.
TJS said:
One thing I've noticed, just anecdotally from talking to people (although come to think of it this comes up with reviews too) is that people are really sick of movies that seem like they are trying to start up a franchise.

There's a sense they don't end properly, even for a Hollywood film.
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That's the problem with everything. I think it's partly marketing driven. Every product is made to sell the next product. In theory, it's good for building anticipation, but after a while, it means nothing actually feels satisfying. It reminds me of '90s metaplot RPGs. Book would give the GM more information, but it would hold back secrets, telling the GM they would be revealed in the upcoming Book of Even More Metaplot. As a GM, books like that would discourage me from starting a game. Maybe I should wait until the next book comes out so I have all the information in front of me. But that next book would tease more information, and I'd eventually give up on the game.
 
Voros said:
But there does seem to be some flagging interest in superhero films. This is a bit clouded because many of the recent film have ranged from poor to okay.

Hard to judge for sure right now but the fortunes of future superhero films that aren't established 'properties' like Deadpool are not looking promising.
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Well,, if superhero fatigue was a thing then Deadpool 3 will tank.

I think bad concepts tank. Like “eternals”. I’ve not been a comic book reader for decades and even when I was I wouldn’t have touched Eternals (or inhumans).

MCU turned Avengers into something valuable. Previously the only team people were interested in was Xmen.

We’ll see. A couple of bad outings doesn’t meant the concept is worn out. The box office kinda indicates that people want more even against the previous common wisdom that sequels do worse than originals.
 
Baulderstone said:
It was bizarre watching the She Hulk creators rubbing their hands together with glee over how they predicted how much people would hate She Hulk.
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It wasn’t too my taste but my wife and her daughter loved it. And The Marvels. So I guess I shouldn’t worry about the predilections of middle aged grey haired men. Not everything has to be to their liking.
 
Baulderstone said:
It was bizarre watching the She Hulk creators rubbing their hands together with glee over how they predicted how much people would hate She Hulk.
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But isn’t that kind of fourth-wall-breaking meta-ness, self-mockery, and low-key trolling of the audience true to the She Hulk comic? Which isn’t to say the show was done very well (the jokes were mostly pretty lame and the visual effects looked bad and Deadpool has already mined the self-parody vein so it didn’t even feel fresh or transgressive) but it seemed to me like a lot of the most vociferous complaints about the tone of the She Hulk show were missing the joke and inadvertently revealing their lack of true comic-fan cred.
 
T. Foster said:
But isn’t that kind of fourth-wall-breaking meta-ness, self-mockery, and low-key trolling of the audience true to the She Hulk comic? Which isn’t to say the show was done very well (the jokes were mostly pretty lame and the visual effects looked bad and Deadpool has already mined the self-parody vein so it didn’t even feel fresh or transgressive) but it seemed to me like a lot of the most vociferous complaints about the tone of the She Hulk show were missing the joke and inadvertently revealing their lack of true comic-fan cred.
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I don't have a problem with the meta. I'm not even talking about the show itself, but the counter-productive nature of the creators talking about how they made the show to troll Marvel fans.

As someone that is not just a moderator here, but for my much more volatile neighborhood Facebook group, a TV show that pitches itself as a continuation of twitter spats is not going on my watchlist.
 
lategamer said:
I think bad concepts tank. Like “eternals”. I’ve not been a comic book reader for decades and even when I was I wouldn’t have touched Eternals (or inhumans).
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Eternals should have been at least as innovative and mind blowing as Into the Spiderverse, people should have been walking out of the theatre with their minds blown. It should have been impossible to explain the plot.

The problem with the Inhumans is that the people in marketing see superheroes instead of a twisted isolationist cult. They work great as a foil for the Fantastic Four and Avengers but it's just one more thing that needed to be set up way earlier for it to work. That's the MCU's real problem right now, there's great material out there that won't work because they didn't set it up earlier. Thunderbolts is in this category. I don't think there's even one of the characters from the Thunderbolts comic in their movie. The plot doesn't work without the sadsack B list villains trying to make good. It will probably flop.
 
David Johansen said:
Eternals should have been at least as innovative and mind blowing as Into the Spiderverse, people should have been walking out of the theatre with their minds blown. It should have been impossible to explain the plot.

The problem with the Inhumans is that the people in marketing see superheroes instead of a twisted isolationist cult. They work great as a foil for the Fantastic Four and Avengers but it's just one more thing that needed to be set up way earlier for it to work. That's the MCU's real problem right now, there's great material out there that won't work because they didn't set it up earlier. Thunderbolts is in this category. I don't think there's even one of the characters from the Thunderbolts comic in their movie. The plot doesn't work without the sadsack B list villains trying to make good. It will probably flop.
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I thought Red Hulk was in the Thunderbolts in the comics? That said I know what you mean. Many viewers are just going to see the Thunderbolts as a Suicide Squad knockoff.
 
lategamer said:
Eternals cost 236M, made 402M
Shang chi cost 150M, made 432M
Black Widow cost 288M, made 379M

Sequels were the high performers. Franchise Sequels. The other three (Eternals, Shang chi, Black Widow) weren't really part of any continuity. And performed poorly. That's evidence that people wanted sequels and franchises.
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Or maybe... and just go with me here... there were other circumstances?

The Eternals was a long shot like GotG that missed. GotG was successful, but no one thought it would be. I think anyone that looked at the Eternals on paper would have put it in that same category. And it missed. Nah... of course that wasn't the issue.

Black Widow was during the height of the pandemic and release on D+ at the same time. Nah... that couldn't have been an issue, could it?

Shang-Chi made over 2.5 of it's production, so is considered a success. It's not a huge runaway, but I think we have to stop expecting things to perform explosively and put that on them.
 
The Mad Hatter said:
There were indeed lots of D&D computer games back in the 90s. The majority remembered today were made by SSI and Westwood Studios.
SSI made the two excellent Dark Sun games; Shattered Lands & Wake of the Ravager. Westwood Studios made the Eye of the Beholder series.
I also really like the two Ravenloft games; Strahd's Possession & Stone Prophet made by Dreamforge Entertainment.
Here's a full list of D&D computer games: D&D Computer Games
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I remember playing those all the time (often to do things like just attack the town guard in Pools of Radiance)
 
The analysis of Marvel Phase 4 & 5 box office to prove or refute audience superhero/franchise fatigue is incomplete without Spider-Man: No Way Home, which wasn’t released by Disney but is part of the MCU continuity-wise (part of Phase 4) and made $1.9 billion (currently #7 on the all-time box office list) on a budget of $200M.
 
David Johansen said:
That's the MCU's real problem right now, there's great material out there that won't work because they didn't set it up earlier.
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The big retcon is the consolidation of multiverses which will culminate in Secret Wars and the integration of the Xmen.

Then it’s gravy.
 
lategamer said:
The big retcon is the consolidation of multiverses which will culminate in Secret Wars and the integration of the Xmen.

Then it’s gravy.
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That’s true, the rebooted X Men movies should do well.
 
lategamer said:
It wasn’t too my taste but my wife and her daughter loved it. And The Marvels. So I guess I shouldn’t worry about the predilections of middle aged grey haired men. Not everything has to be to their liking.
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Sure, but when the demographic they need to succeed is told “don’t watch it/don’t come to see the movies, etc” then said movie studio/game studio/entity should not be surprised when the people they told “don’t watch it” do just that.
 
The term 'fatigue' is Hollywood's excuse to coverup that their movies are lacking. It implies that no matter how good the movies are, people are just tired of it. Which is counter to everything they've ever released about what the Audience wants.

Which is MORE OF THE SAME. The average Movie Goer (Well humans in general) don't like new things, they see new as 'bad', always have. We even have a saying for it, 'Better the Devil you know, then the Devil you don't.'

Meaning that if the movies were AS GOOD as before, the Audience would be there. So why aren't they? Could it be that the Studios are changing them too much and in a direction that the audience doesn't like?
TJS said:
And how do those Marvel numbers compare with the numbers of the movies before? Is the trend up or down (especially if you don't discount the movies you seem to want to discount for arbitrary reasons)?

This seems to be be a personal bugbear for you but I don't really care. I also don't care whether or not Disney ultimately makes a profit or not, or whether the movies have dipped in quality (at best they were always, as the kids say, no more than 'mid').

Clearly the audience for Marvel is not what it was, which is what matters. You've not said anything to change my mind that the D&D movie would have had a much better chance of success had it been released before the pandemic and the at the height of Marvel's popularity.

Guardian's of the Galaxy showed how a D&D movie could work, but by the time they put that into action they were late to the party.
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So you're blaming the AUDIENCE for the Movies failures? Not that the 'quality' might have dipped? Look, I get that you clearly don't think the MCU films were ever good enough, but the general Movie Audience would disagree with you and I trust their numbers more than your opinion.

And no, GOTG did not show that anything other than a goofy space adventure works as long as James Gunn directs it. Other directors have shown that Fantasy can work, the problem is that Current Hollywood, post 2008 Strike, doesn't care enough about any movie to actually put effort into it. It's all about checking certain boxes and nothing else. It's why most of the modern entertainment is currently so haphazard and often boring or meaningless. No one cares enough to make a good product to sell.
 
Chris Brady said:
This The term 'fatigue' is Hollywood's excuse to coverup that their movies are lacking. It implies that no matter how good the movies are, people are just tired of it. Which is counter to everything they've ever released about what the Audience wants.

Which is MORE OF THE SAME. The average Movie Goer (Well humans in general) don't like new things, they see new as 'bad', always have. We even have a saying for it, 'Better the Devil you know, then the Devil you don't.'

Meaning that if the movies were AS GOOD as before, the Audience would be there. So why aren't they? Could it be that the Studios are changing them too much and in a direction that the audience doesn't like?

So you're blaming the AUDIENCE for the Movies failures? Not that the 'quality' might have dipped? Look, I get that you clearly don't think the MCU films were ever good enough, but the general Movie Audience would disagree with you and I trust their numbers more than your opinion.

And no, GOTG did not show that anything other than a goofy space adventure works as long as James Gunn directs it. Other directors have shown that Fantasy can work, the problem is that Current Hollywood, post 2008 Strike, doesn't care enough about any movie to actually put effort into it. It's all about checking certain boxes and nothing else. It's why most of the modern entertainment is currently so haphazard and often boring or meaningless. No one cares enough to make a good product to sell.
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Audience blaming is such an interesting tactic, it’s as if they don’t know who buys the tickets and thus determines success of said media.

giphy.gif
 
Willmark said:
Sure, but when the demographic they need to succeed is told “don’t watch it/don’t come to see the movies, etc” then said movie studio/game studio/entity should not be surprised when the people they told “don’t watch it” do just that.
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This is called 'Fan Baiting' in Marketing Circles. Which CAN and HAS worked, but it has to be done in a specific way to get people intrigued. Telling them to as I quote a former Comic Writer, "If you don't like my Politics, don't buy my book." all you're doing is getting people to say, "OK, then."

Which they will. And have.
 
Chris Brady said:
This is called 'Fan Baiting' in Marketing Circles. Which CAN and HAS worked, but it has to be done in a specific way to get people intrigued. Telling them to as I quote a former Comic Writer, "If you don't like my Politics, don't buy my book." all you're doing is getting people to say, "OK, then."

Which they will. And have.
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She is exactly who I was thinking of.

People turned around and shrugged and said “OK”
 
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