I’m ok with something using AI art... if they aren’t charging for it. If they are just sharing their homebrew and want a picture to make things nicer, I’m fine with them using AI or even any art found on the web (though attribution is always appreciated). After all, it’s just people sharing free stuff.

No storyline, but it did have some lore. There were character blurbs and in the PS2 game, ending cinematics for each character.

Oh, absolutely, a known IP itself is not enough, as we have seen countless times over the years, including multiple times this years. A good IP will make it easier to grab people attention, but your movie still needs to look good. And that means you need to have, as you point out, talented creatives who are passionate…

And I’m a man who never played with Barbies (well, ok, not fully true, I had a lot of close female cousins I visited often and we did play Barbie from time to time, to my dad’s eternal frustration), and I was there opening day too. And next to me was two 20-something guys who fit into the “neckbeard gamer“ stereotype…

Honestly, I think the marketing is what really cinched it. It was able to really showcase the movie’s strenght, and got everyone’s attention.

Please read the entire commemt chain including my answers to others. I've already adressed that point. 

Even if studios didn’t have a history of learning the wrong lesson, the reality is that I’m not sure there are right lessons here. What movie will turn out good and embraced by the audience is pretty much always a crapshoot. It can seldom be predicted except in hindsight.

Please read the entire comment chain and my responses to others. I’ve already covered the reason why I described Oppenheimer as I did.

So this is just a collectible in the shape of a DVD (Blu-ray?) box. I think that’s the best way to see it - a licensed collectible in the shape of a nostalgic object.

I mean, with Barbie, it’s clear that the brand helped promote the movie - people got dressed up in pink or with Barbie-font shirt and were clearly there because of an emotional connection of some kind with the concept of Barbie. People were also talking to each other before and after the movie, in the way they do only…

It’s a biopic about a “great man” and his “great discovery” who helped the United States win World War II and bring freedom and peace to the entire world.

I haven’t seen the film yet either, but that’s how the trailer are selling it, with an emphasis on beating the Nazis and Matt Damon screaming about how this being the most important endeavor in the history of the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie is not as celebratory as the trailer is. 

So this is a nitpick, but I’m not a fan of the header saying that writers and actors “remain out of work”. They aren’t out of work, they are *striking*. The writers and actors are choosing to stop working in order to get better conditions. “Out of work” robs them of that agency.

I don’t think the last joke was terrible or throwaway, but it’s certainly a joke you need to think about before you get it. It’s a joke that makes you go “Uh?.... oh....OH!” Which won’t work for everyone.

But that’s kind of the point of the movie - that Ken (and by extension, the modern American man) is put in an untenable position where he’s told by the system that his entire worth as a man rest in his ability to get a woman as his girlfriend. He doesn’t even know what to do with a girlfriend, he just needs to have…

Germain Lussier reviewed First Man in 2018, aka 5 years ago.

Here you go. i09 review of The Imitation Game by Cheryl Eddy:

Oh, they will find a way to say it’s actually super not woke and totally in support of traditionnal gender roles and the reality of biological sex and what not. And they will jump on the first really radical feminist they find criticizing the movie (and there will be a few, because its a movie advertising Barbie…

At least Transformers has had a number of different kid-oriented shows in the years since that make the franchise more intergenerational: You got Beast Wars in the 90s, Transformers: Animated, Transformers: Prime, the Netflix/Rooster Teeth stuff, the current EarthSpark, etc. I haven’t seen any of them beyond Beast…

Delavigne was pretty good in Valerian, to the point I wished the movie had been about her, not the dude.