https://twitter.com/PopBase/status/1684254204091564039
How are like half of these even going to work. UNO movie? Magic 8 Ball movie? Viewmaster movie? How are you going to differentiate Hotwheels and Matchbox? Are they going to make a the Barnie movie for GROWNUPS? Wtf is Major Matt Mason? Why do Mattel own Wishbone? Who's goddamn idea was this.
(Kinda excited for a Masters of the Universe movie though not going to lie)
With the advent of AI scriptwriting and digitized actors we can finally capitalize on all of our most popular franchises! At long last we can make an UNO movie without getting shutdown by whiny creatives with their, 'there is no amount of money you could pay me to do this, its beneath my dignity, the dignity of the medium, and the dignity of the species'Didn't they already do what was essentially a rock 'em sock 'em movie called like steel something?
Real Steel and yes, though I think it's based off a sci-fi story instead
It's certainly a model for what kind of story they could tell.
Do people still watch boxing?
Gritty Barney And Friends, downtempo "I love you horror screech you love me bwaaaaah we're one great big FAMILY BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I like Thomas (because trains!) but union-busting is absolutely something the character of Thomas would do. The Railway Series is quite conservative.
Barbie Movie - Barbie declares unequivocal support for the 9 dash line
Barnie Movie - Barnie declares Aksai Chin Chinese territory.
Hotwheels movie - Hotwheels cars drive through the Galwan River valley to further the LAC
Magic 8 Ball Movie - The Magic 8 Ball declares South Korea an illegitimate colonial puppet and asserts North Korea as the only sovereign state on the Korean Peninsula
Uno Movie - Every Uno card on the planet gains sentience and issues support for the Wa State and the right of the Wa in Myanmar for national self determination.
For anyone confused look up "vietnam barbie ban" lmao.
i want thomas and friends but with real trains. no faces, just real trains with voices.
I can see
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Barney
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Thomas
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American Girl
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Wishbone
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and He-Man
working.
And I guess if they pull some totally bizarre screwball thing out they could do the rest.
idk.
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Most people I've seen, even here, seemed to like the Barbie movie.
Idk why I'm even complaining and calling this slop because I'm the guy here that still likes the MCU even today. My minimum rating for an MCU movie so far is a 5/10 and that was for that dry and boring Edward Norton Hulk movie. And I enjoy the shows too. But idk, I'm an easy lay for superheroes because I liked them before they were a cinematic phenomenon. Most of these movie ideas just seem weird and like they wouldn't work. But hey, I have almost no critical lense of my own so I'll probably enjoy the slop anyway!
My big issue with this announcement is that the vast majority of them have zero narrative in their design. I think products turned into films is just a bad in general, however I think things like Barbie worked because they’re a cultural richness to the history of the product.
Not say it’s impossible but I really can’t see these films and flicks being remotely appealing, sustainable, entertaining, or “profitable” (which is the least important thing to me but it’s worth considering cause Hollywood is terrible). It seems like they are trying to manufacture a genre that is cannot sustain itself.
“Magic 8-Ball” as a random example has no real cultural significance or fictional world to make film of, it’s just a toy in the purest sense. You the player bring the fun and narrative through the questions you ask and how you respond to them. If they made a film of it, the Magic 8-ball could only really be a plot device/bauble/gimmick. I would imagine the same or similar issues would arise for these other toys films.
Toys are fun and cool, and play is important for all ages. However, I can’t think the vast majority of these toys turned films would have anything worthwhile to say, as the very toys themselves do not.
I too enjoyed Barbie btw.
I'm not even worried about it. They're going to get overconfident and shit out flops by the second or third movie and the whole thing is going to be scrapped, I guarantee it.
Anyone remember After Earth? Will Smith was gunning for "a sequel, a live action television series, an animated television series, webisodes, mobisodes, a video game, consumer products, theme-park attractions, documentaries, comics, an educational program collaboration in partnership with NASA, cologne and perfume lines, and a social media platform." Then the movie sucked and none of those things happened.
yeah every movie exec ever is filing literal piece of shit IPs as "potentially a cinematic universe? BIG MONEY" on their reports to investors and they always flop lol. only disney struck gold, and they're quickly finding out there's diminishing returns. with the strike shit they're probably scrapping the bottom of the barrel to find any profit, it just smells like desperation to me.
Corpos and not realizing there isn't room in the market for more than one or two of a certain product, name a more iconic duo.
Its even worse in video games. So much fucking trend chasing. MMOs, COD clones, live services. It happens time and time again and they never learn.
Lol, mobisodes. Very funny to see how wrong people were about that (including shit like Quibi), when it's now pretty obvious that people prefer extreme shortform content on mobile.
Eh...I wouldn't be quite so sure TBH. Marvel basically created a money printing machine for Disney that dominated the entire culture for 15 years and is only just now finally starting to show signs of exhaustion, and while the movies will probably flop for the most part I think people underestimate how desperate other studios are to try and recreate it. DC movies have been floundering since Nolan made his exit and there's no sign of that parade stopping either just cause the prospect of recapturing that lighting in a bottle is too enticing to ignore. I just watched Rise of the beasts last night and they're pushing this shit too with Transformers/GIJOE as a shared universe thing. EVERYTHING is gonna be a cinematic universe before too much longer I think.
you can't turn everything into a CU, people can only be invested in a limited number of franchises. it's just like games as a service shit, people aren't going to be playing 20 "lifestyle" games at once, only one or two games at a time can succeed with models like this, same for CUs. what distributors are doing with shared universes is alienating potential audiences with each new installment, since the viewer is required to at least be aware of previous material to keep watching. it's already happening with marvel, while they retain a captive audience, it gets increasingly harder to grow that audience because the barrier of entry just keeps getting bigger and bigger. literally the opposite of what they want, there's a very obvious ceiling to this!
you can't turn everything into a CU
Watch them TRY. Lol.
I don't disagree with any part of your post...but the fact is that while all of that should be kind of self evident it still hasn't discouraged companies from burning piles of money in development desperately trying to follow the trend. Chasing the trend of cinematic universes from the outset is setup for the same failure of any of the seemingly infinite number of MMO games billed as a WOW killer and/or games as service is but if the mountain of failures those both present is any indication we've got a lot more failed attempts before this is all said and done.
There was also the failed reboot of the Universal classic monster movies as the Dark Universe. They had several false starts (like Marvel did, does anyone remember the Hulk movie?) before saying fuck it and quitting.
Wishbone
Wishbone could support his own entire cinematic universe. It's incredibly easy - Wishbone is just classic literature with the main role being played by a jack russel terrier, you can do a hundred of those. And then you make it a """cinematic universe""" by having a crossover teamup movie between Sherlock Holmes, Odysseus, Romeo, Frankenstein, and Robin Hood, which is a great stupid premise already, made even greater and stupider by having all the roles played by the same jack russel terrier.
Sherlock Holmes, Odysseus, Romeo, Frankenstein, and Robin Hood
So League of Extraordinary Gentleman?
The story of Sean Connery doing league of extraordinary gentleman is hilarious (if true). What I read a long time ago was that Connery was offered the role of Morpheus in the Matrix, read the script and went "what is this nerd shit" and turned it down. It became a huge hit and he missed out on a ton of royalty money. Similarly he was offered the role of Gandalf in the lord of the rings movies and turned it down for being nerd shit and missed out on like a gazillion dollars when it became a massive box office success and critically acclaimed. He was approached for league of extraordinary gentlemen and was like "fool me twice won't get fooled again", took the role and the movie was a flop, after which he just said fuck it and retired from acting.
League of Extraordinarily Gay Gentlemen and it's two hours of guys sucking each other's cocks
I'm not embarrassed that I liked it but the fact that a giant corporation that exploited girls for money made a movie that commodified anti-capitalism and criticized themselves exploiting girls for money in order to sell more toys that exploit girls left a really bad taste in my mouth
Corpos gotta play all sides. Sell salty fries, sell sugary drinks, sell insulin.
That's where I'm at. I want to, and probably will, watch the movie because it looks fun and very gay and I'm very gay, but at the end of the day it's just a Mattel toy advert.
Idk why people feel embarrassed about liking the Barbie movie.
Could be because you're a leftist and its mass market so you feel gauche for it, could be leftover internalized cultural bullshit about what things you're supposed to enjoy (if you're amab) or what shit you feel like you shouldnt enjoy to avoid stereotypes (if you're afab), could be a combination. Idk.
You just don't get it being a leftist means you have to hate everything it's literally praxis
Another grudge you can add to the list.
Also that comment you linked is not about the Barbie movie, it's about the Oppenheimer movie, responding to someone who disliked it. Saying that the reason they disliked the big bwaaam movie is baby brained. You're fighting shadows here.
Personally I haven't watched either movie and will pirate both as soon as it's possible, just to see what the fuss is about. I haven't really kept up with movies and pop culture that much, but everyone seems to be making a big deal about all this stuff and the two movies so I guess it will be fun.
Hasbro already tried this with Transformers -> Battleship and it failed miserably.
While I haven't seen that Battleship movie I can much more easily imagine how you turn that into a movie than UNO or Viewfinder.
Critique of capitalism subsumed and reproduced into capital itself. Who could've guessed that was going to happen?
They couldn't even critique capitalism. Too afraid of even making the corporate patriarchal overlords the bad guys in the end.
ENDLESS TRASH!
