ICantDoThatDave

True. It's important to the story that Norrin Radd is male. In the initial comics he turns against Galactus on our world because Sue (originally Alicia in the comic, but if you want to short-hand it in a movie, Sue works, as in the '07 film) reminded him of Shalla-Ball.

Sure! Agreed! Marvel movies already (Iron Man 1 through Endgame) was both. More male than female audience, sure, but massive $$$. But post-Endgame they started trying to... some sort of weird social engineering. Instead of just keep telling stories & making movies which attracted both genders in massive numbers (again, granted, more male than female, which should be fine). I don't think Barbie represents "female-oriented genres and films", but it was clearly a female-oriented film. Which is totally fine! It simply makes for a good counter-example. I think Marvel films started out as a "male-oriented genre", with, of course, some female fans. No big deal. My point was that if studios look at the success of Barbie & say to themselves: "Wow, we have a very successful female-oriented film. What if we made it more male-oriented to attract a wider audience?!?" then they would be... um, dumb? Take the audience you have. Appreciate the audience you have. You have a massive audience, even if it's not exactly 50-50. If they looked at Barbie's success & said to themselves: "females love this! what if we made Barbie 2 more male-oriented & that would make us even more money?!" then that would be just dumb. That's totally fine with me, but that would be done to attract more women to the existing Barbie audience. My analogy is: "make some of the existing Barbies into men & add more gun-fights & explosions to add more males to our existing audience mostly female audience which we take for granted". An absurd idea. Red Sonja would be great. I'm all for it. But that's very different than some studio exec saying "we need to make Conan appeal to a more female audience". Know your audience. It is for Silver Surfer fans. Some people love that character & grew up with him. To go back to back to Barbie, & this is not a perfect analogy, but imagine if the next Barbie film was called Barbie 2: Ken's Journey.

I mean, I don't really know how that relates to the discussion, but I'll try to guess. It was an anomaly in their track record. In that Marvel has essentially gone 3-9 in wins/losses post-Endgame: No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine, & Guardians 3. The rest either barely broke even or lost money. And studios don't make movies to do either. A few successes don't invalidate my point. 3 "hits" out of 12 attempts makes you a decent-but-average baseball player but certainly don't make you a successful movie studio. EDIT: Plus, in No Way Home's case, Marvel only received 25% of the profit, due to the deal they have with Sony regarding the rights to Spider-Man. So, still counts, but not exactly a huge win for Marvel.

Well, I mean it seems obvious to me that there are some successful male-dominated genres & films that some, but not the majority obviously, females also already enjoy them. And they made billions when they stuck to that. There are also some female-oriented genres & films that some, but not the majority obviously, males also enjoy the way they are, & they also made billions. Barbie is a good example to me because if studios say to themselves: "Barbie was a huge success! But... what if we tried to attract more males to our movie? Genius, right?!" is an absurd concept. If they made Barbie 2 more male-balanced, maybe gender-swapped some of the Barbies, maybe added some gun-fights & explosions... what would happen would be that they actually would not attract more male viewers & would alienate their current mostly female audience. I mean, I don't mean to twist your words, but in regards to Barbie does this sentiment make sense? "in a genre and medium that's been [female]-dominated for decades, I think [pursuing more men is] a good goal to pursue." Is it really a good goal to pursue? If you want to make money that is? It's totally OK for some genres to be male-targeting & others to be female-targeting. Trying to alter Disney princess movies in order to pursue more males is a losing strategy, IMO. Trying to make Conan the Barbarian more female-oriented is a losing strategy, IMO. Same thing here.

Then you haven't been paying attention to the last 5 years of Marvel movies' box office returns. Or the internet over the past few days. Any other actual purpose then. If you truly think balancing the gender roles in films is an actual legitimate purpose that should be pursued, then I look forward to hearing that take echoed when the cast of Barbie 2 is announced.

No, but the decision was made before any casting decisions were made. After deciding if B is a good or bad idea, you'd only then go to: C) Get a good actor for the role D) Get a bad actor for the role At which point the choice of C > D is equally obvious to me.

My take on the gender-swap is that it serves no purpose except to hurt the box office. Consider two groups of people: A) People who would NOT go see this movie because Silver Surfer is male B) People who would NOT go see this movie because Silver Surfer is female I would go so far as to say A=0. Literally no one who was inclined to see this movie would watch that trailer & go "Male Silver Surfer?! I'm out." But B is definitely non-zero. So it's an easy decision: Don't do B.

Ask Disney. I think this episode actually explains what really happened with the Snow White remake.

Just watched the whole season (was waiting 'til it was all released). I found this season pretty boring overall. No one (except "British Teeth Girl") was really interesting or entertaining. I didn't care if we found out in the last episode if any of them died. I guess I was kinda rooting for Gaitok, I suppose.

Didn't have them at the top of my head, so looked up a few episodes: "Mad Dog" - Jack harasses a released prisoner so much that the guy re-offends. It's pretty clearly implied, even by the show, that absent Jack's harassment, the guy would not have re-offended. When even the show implies Jack can sometimes go "too far". There was the episode [EDIT: Found it: "Bodies", s14E1] where Jack indicts the randomly assigned Public Defender of a serial killer who (stupidly) went to the location of his client's bodies for "accomplice to murder" (Jack knew that was BS). That guy's life was RUINED b/c he (rightly) valued the Attorney-Client privilege more than his own liberty. Jack thought he would "blink", but he didn't, ruined the guy's life for abiding by his principles. In "Gov Lov", s7, Jack literally gets Gay Marriage overturned because he wants to convict someone & needs Spousal Privilege to not apply in his case. "Ramparts", s9, Jack tried to use the death of one person to illegally crowbar open some Vietnam-related files, not because it was legal, he knew it wasn't, but because he wanted to see them. "Rubber Room", s20, the one where teachers who have "attitude problems" get sent to a mandatory AA-style meeting building (which it turns out are often faked) - here's Jack to a completely innocent person, who he *knows* at the time is innocent: "You get no argument from me there. But if your obstruction allows a massacre to happen, I will crucify you, Mr. Kralik. I will charge you with negligent homicide, and after I convict you I will resign my job and represent the families of the victims in a wrongful death suit against you and the union. By the time I'm done, you'll be finished. So, my advice to you is GET OUT OF MY WAY!" I get that's over the top. But the point is he knows at that time the guy is just doing his job, does not actually merit that charge. It's probably the most outlandish example of what I'm trying to illustrate: Jack blackmails/extorts people all the time. It's what Jack does. He's essentially a Mob Boss with a Badge. As I alluded to above: "nice life you got here; it'd be a shame if I made up a charge against you, right?"

You're right about the plot points, but I'm interpreting them differently... Jack threatened him with indicting him. As I mentioned, even Jamie, who was a bit of a hard-ass herself, called him out on that. He threatened prosecution he never intended to pursue & knew couldn't be sustained. That's extortion & the type of behavior I never liked ("nice kids you got there, sure would be a shame if something happened to them"). Right, but that clearly shows Jack was just blackmailing the guy. He was guilty of it (he used the escort service to butter up clients), but Jack used the threat to get him to bring his daughter back to the US then dropped the charges! He was clearly using the charge simply as extortion. Agree to disagree is fine. I enjoy watching the show, but just thought Jack abused his office just as much as Cutter (which was where this discussion started). Cutter used under-handed tricks. Jack used blackmail/extortion by threatening to charge ancillary people with fake crimes & then dropping the charges when he got what he wanted.

This is where I think we disagree for the most part, & it's not that the people he was trying to get to testify were necessarily innocent, it's that the people he was threatening to indict (often for "conspiracy") were innocent & Jack knew they were innocent. It was legal blackmail - threatening to bring (what he knew were) false charges against a third party in order to compel someone to testify or take a plea deal. I can't recall most of the specific episodes off the top of my head, but I recall Jack threatening to indict husbands*/wives/sons/daughters, bankrupt businesses**, & take away/put into foster care children, using charges he knew were trumped up & bogus. * The first example I could think of was the one where an ex-cop/PI is found dead & it leads to a couple upstate housewives who are call girls. Jack threatens one of husbands with "obstruction of justice" & losing his kids when he knows that's BS. Jamie even calls him out on it after the meeting. ** I remember a specific example here with the father of the girl who was running an escort service with her college friends - he literally dropped the "enterprise corruption" charges as soon as he got his daughter to come back to the US - the charge was clearly just used as blackmail (Jack went back on his word later in the episode though).

Agree with all that (except see below*). Cutter used underhanded trick after underhanded trick to "win", no matter the legality or if the person was even guilty - I mean, they often were, but he clearly didn't care. *I will disagree with you on Jack though. He was just as bad, but in a totally different way. He used literal blackmail, extortion, just total scorched earth tactics. "We'll take your kids away if you don't testify!" "We'll bankrupt your business if you don't testify!" "We'll deport you if you don't testify!" "Your wife will be charged with conspiracy if you don't testify!" ** "Your child will be charged with conspiracy if you don't testify!" ** ** these were the worst examples Jack was the personification of Prosecutorial Misconduct. Cutter was just as bad, just in a different way, by cheating rather than blackmailing. They were both just awful in those respects. Fun to watch on a TV show? Sure. Want someone like that in real life? Absolutely not. Jack (& Cutter) are like the caricature of the "ends always justify the means" types that the whole 4th-8th Amendments to the Constitution are meant to protect us from. Still love watching the show, don't get me wrong, but the prosecutors give... well, prosecutors a bad name, IMO. EDIT: It's like how Batman is fun in a movie, but do I want an actual Batman running around? No, of course not.

I watched By Perjury, the one where the lawyer testified against his own client saying he didn't allow smoking in his office which led to his client getting the death penalty. Cutter's "trick" of smoking in the lawyer's office to show he committed perjury doesn't make any sense. Think about the amount of time that had to have passed since that incident: The lawyer testified that he didn't allow smoking because he had recently quit. So this incident would have happened before the client was even arrested. Then a whole murder trial takes place. Numerous appeals happen, then the execution, then several months. So we're talking years, at a bare minimum let's say 5 years have passed. "Your Honor, for a couple of years after I quit smoking, I didn't allow it in my office. I do now because it's been so long since I quit that it no longer bothers me." That simple. Done. He goes home.

That's certainly... a take. Is Connie Nielson not aware that... 1) Wonder Woman 1984 happened? I mean, Joker made a billion dollars, but there's certainly not going to be a Joker 3 either. 2) James Gunn is rebooting the whole DCU?