Half in the Bag: Ant-Man

Here's another wall for you - not by me this time - kinda more a 'Great' one. The stuff I posted about China/far east censorship limiting Hollywood content is already happening. This isn't funny. The game is over: <a href="http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/china-film/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/china-film/</a>

Jonathan Sillis

Looks like this was already pulled, I assume it got hit with a copyright notice.

anon

wow

wow

Try clicking the comments page open, Robin, instead of just reading previews over the quick text box. I promise if you try that you’ll be able to join me in exploring the mysterious world of paragraphs. It’ll blow your mind.

Jonathan Sillis

Holy wall of text, Batman.

Taylor Hensley

“It’s an interesting time that we’re in with movies. Things have definitely changed.” Absolutely. The two most definitive books that painstakingly detail what the film industry has become over the last few decades are still ‘The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood’ along with ‘The Hollywood Economist 2.0: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies’ by Edward Jay Epstein. Basically Hollywood is now a corporately owned storehouse of film libraries and IPs (hence all the remakes, rehashes and reboots) geared toward generating most of its revenue from TV sales, product licensing and the DVD/Blu-ray market. Cash return from theatrical exhibition is actually low down in order of importance, despite the emphasis continually placed on it by the press. Once you add an increasing dependence on profits made outside of the US and Europe – in regions where there is often heavy-handed state control of the media (that obviously won’t allow access to politically/thematically challenging content), along with audiences that want broad, universally translatable storytelling – the picture becomes even more homogenised and depressing. This is why Steve Soderbergh has been trying to develop production outside of the system for the last five years or more. Likewise Peter Jackson is currently pursuing the exact same goal (and yes, I do mean *that* Peter Jackson, the franchise king himself) by shipping-out production independently to New Zealand. So whatever the perceived sins of either of these guys I find myself wishing them well, at least faced with the alternative. In any case, great review as always, RLM. I’ll take your word for it on Ant-Man as I decided a while back (in a futile gesture that obviously means nothing against a tsunami of money) to never pay a single penny to see another reboot or costume hero movie again. The same goes for the Star Wars franchise, groaning into over-hyped zombie existence this coming December. I sincerely couldn’t care less about it, not least because I despise Disney more than I can tell you. They are the frickin’ Empire and in a better universe the Rebels would have already blown them clean out of the sky ;-)

Jonathan Sillis

OMG!

Marvin Falz

Oh god, you poor bastards.... PIXELS... Well at least it should make for an angry episode...

Sean Graham

WHEN IS THE NEXT- part of the episode?

Fewes

My mind immediately thought of that ds9 rationale too. Moar star trek :-)

Snakeinthegarden