Yup, that is it and it is not a conundrum. This setting applies to both Amazon Prime and Netflix (other layers too). You see, their valuation is set to a larger stage of WHAT and HOW MUCH they can bring. And in a stage where we are on the brink of active militant debates, having an alternative is never a bad idea. You see, for some unknown reason I have been thinking of the Dutch movie ‘De Prooi’ (1985).
I remember how stunningly beautiful the leading lady played by Maayke Bouten was. But there is more (there always is), the story was quite good, it was done as it always was in those days. Like a race to the destination with several scenes in the middle. Yet the foundation of a decently good movie was there and it could be remade, the story needs a little adaptation, and if it is set to a different location (San Francisco, Vancouver, Fort Lauderdale, New Orleans) a little extra work might need to be done. A script ready for collecting (whomever has the rights) and it is not a small setting. There are hundreds of scripts out there where the rights are no longer active, where the rights to a movie are nickels and dimes away from ownership (instead of tens of thousands or more). A setting that all streamers need at present and they are all over Europe, all over the commonwealth too. We forgot about the younger watchers, did we not? So what happened to the dozens of movies that were part of the Enid Blyton collection, the hardy boys, and there was a female version too. Sweden has its treasures (beyond Pippi Longstocking that is) and so forth. Even the Netherlands has its share of treasures. All forgotten, all in some drawer catching dust, all whilst everyone is chasing the next mediocre version that comes from one of these great stories.
As such I wonder how long these stream chasers keep on chasing a reinvented wheel, whilst there is a place where you can find a good collection of second hand wheels at 10% of the price. You will spend op to 5% rewriting it, but is one in 5 is a decent success, you will have an interesting track record as well as a decently fast growing library of works. If we look back to the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s we see movies all with a gimmick, but as long as the story is good, it can be rewritten with the gimmick of today and tomorrow. So where are these writers? What will Netflix (Amazon Prime too) do when the budgets are trimmed down? I did not forget about Apple and Disney, but it seems that they have a different approach to where they want to go, or how they want to get somewhere. I might be wrong, but that is how they feel to me. It is up to them and it is up to Netflix and Amazon, they might to get ahead of the curve before the are chasing it in some uphill battle against that very same curve, because that is what falling behind the curve tend to be. A never ending uphill battle.
And I reckon that this is a race where the number two has no reward, they merely chased the other one too late. Who will it be? I have no idea, I am not buddies with either on that level, I need not be (not entirely true), I have my own stories to write and for now I reckon that I might have a new chapter coming up in the mini series ‘Residuam vitam’, I think it had a different name earlier. For some reason the others have titles set in stone, this one does not. I cannot figure that part out, even as the story was pretty much set, but now there is a new stage, but I need to write it differently, because the party involved are not like us and that changes the stage. I should say that Meng Po alerted me to that part, but I cannot, because every time she serves me soup I forget what I was doing, but the soup is so delicious.
Today I feel sadness in my heart, but not for any reason you would expect. The Dutch NOS informed us (at https://nos.nl/l/2414328) that the Haunted castle will go. The Haunted Castle is one of the oldest attractions in the Dutch Efteling. I remember seeing it in its first year in 1978, it was my third visit. I would visit the Efteling about 6 times more but every time I wanted to see the haunted castle, it felt magical and there was so much to see. So when I see that future generations will be denied this, I merely feel sadness. I get it, it is almost 45 years old, but it kept millions of people staring at the floating violin, the running couple, the hanging man and so many other parts engaged, its departure is saddening.
In part I hope that the access route to the haunted castle will remain as the entrance for what comes next, but that is merely my look on the matter.
I decided not to include photo’s of the attraction, not that I am against it, but because the image would never show what it offers, even a YouTube film will mis parts of the show, it was that amazing. Yet the Efteling had so much more. In 1955 the Belgium Queen Fabiola wrote stories one of the was the Indian Waterlilies. It rook some time, but in 1966 the Efteling pulled it off and gave light to the Indian Waterlilies. I saw it in its second year, I must have been 5. I remember the overwhelming atmosphere it held and over time I would see it again, now as an engineer I would see through the show, but weirdly enough it would not lessen the show, because it was not a trick , it was a show and that made all the difference. The Efteling would bring more over time, the Pagoda, the Python, The Halve Maen (the half moon, a galleon on a swing), the enchanted forest, Villa Volta. So many amazing feats, and always there was the Haunted Castle. This summer will be its last time, so see it if you can. We can go on an awards and so on, but the truth is that the Efteling is a journey in itself. You should take the time to treat yourself at t’ Poffertje (The Little Dutch Pancake). It gives the vibes of the old Pancake house that I visited in the 60’s and 70’s. I still have an Anton Pieck Replica of that, the image takes me back to those years and the smells surround me. Only the Efteling got me there before and over time too much of this will vanish. There is the awful realisation that M2 must exceed €x for the event to survive. We have become a much larger accountant than history would be pleased with and too many parts will vanish over time. Not merely in The Efteling, but any themed Parc will go through these motions. I reckon that the same will be seen in Disney and Universal. I never saw the Jaws exhibition with my own eyes and perhaps I will have time to see the Harry Potter places, yet I am not holding my breath on that. For now I feel the sadness of the Haunted Castle leaving us and I cannot say goodbye, I last saw it in 2004, 17 years ago. The things we are denied because M2 did not exceed €x is just sad, it really is, as economy decides on what is worthy the numbers deny another path, that of the people it inspires on art and new ideas? A question most of us (including me) cannot answer, only historians have that ability, and even then it is limited and redacted to a hypothesis.
Sadness over what once was and soon will be no more. Consider what you will miss out on and if you have that ability, do something about it whilst you can. Just an idea to consider.
I was underway to consider and learn about the Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon. I am till focussed on getting my 3.75% bonus from China and selling a heap of these to Saudi Arabia will seal the deal. I reckon that selling the goods amounting to $2,000,000,000 will seal my retirement deal, I will get a few additional services sold, but I am not greed driven. So whilst I was setting up the presentation on the versatility of the stealth systems, it was then that I saw the flaw in the Indian Indian Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa presentation on the Sukhoi Su-30MKI. I rechecked the files several times, someone there was tying the cat to the bacon! I reckon that unless the Chengdu was flying right in front of that Sukhoi, the Chengdu could never be seen, for me and my capitalistic nature, this is good. You see, Iran is all over those sexy Russian beasts and so they should; America and the UK will not do business with them, as such two remained and they chose Russia. Now the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will end up with the better racehorse of the sky and I should get the bonus of my desire. So it was around that moment when my memory took me back to 1987. I got exposed to Framework 2, it was an interesting and short lived introduction. I was already on board with Ashton Tate, dBase 3+ was revered by me and in the two years that followed I created database systems, container systems and I found out how people in Rotterdam were cooking the books. All with one program and it was running on an IPM PC XT. Two years later with the Nantucket Clipper compiler I went off to the races to a much larger degree and that is where my programming skills stayed. I only blame myself, there was too much infighting, to much politics on software decisions, who had the best friends, not who had the superior software and in that era Frameworks 2 was lost to the crowd, what had the potential to crush Lotus, set limits on Microsoft Office and a few other beasties was drowned in marketing disasters.
This matters, you will catch on soon enough. It was then that my mind took a leap. You see Apple, Google, Amazon, Disney, HBO and a few others are on the fence. They are in a spending setting that goes nowhere. They think it is, they claim that others will solve it and they are ignoring the larger danger that is staring them straight in the face.
You see they all make the claim that Final Draft is the bees knees. I agree it is good, it really is but it is set to the singular writer, I had version 6 at some point, it is now at version 12, so improvements will have been made and the industry calls it the standard. But what decides that standard? Final Draft, the writer or the industry and its needs?
There is the rub, when you see that they are all relying on larger series, all hoping to be the next game of thrones. In that era you need a better solution, a much better solution. You need something that has the abilities of Frameworks 2, a Microsoft successor (OneNote) and take it all to the next level. A system where the writer writes and can set the backstory to any person, any object and any event. You can then set the view to a moment and see where everyone and everything is. The power is to add to the writer, not limit the writer. So the writer can or his writing to set text segmentations. He can flag people, he can flag objects and he can flag places, and so on.
The story book now gets an upgrade, the stage of 3+ people keeping track of it all one system does so and when that system passes the industry standard, places like Netflix and Disney will jump at the chance, you see whomever has THIS advantage gets to shape the industry. It is the one who is the most efficient and it is the one that shows that savings are made, As long as the producer sees the magic moment of 189% profit being passed that is the one who wins, you can make more money, or limit expenses and in this world the one who limits the expenses has the clearer field to win that game, go look for yourself, the knowledge is out there. I am simply amazed that no one thought this through. Not the militant woman (Amazon) and not Google.
Me? I do not care, this is not the place where my strengths are, but if it is you take this idea and make it the new industry standard. My Christmas present to you. So enjoy the idea or throw it aside if it is not for you, which could be fair enough as well. And it is now 19:41 (pure coincidence), so it is your early Christmas present for the year.
Getting back to my (upcoming) bonus, I just realised that intelligence analyst Robert Gates copied to some degree the deception that Air Marshall B.S. Dhanoa started in 2018 by downplaying the significance of the Chengdu J-20 by questioning how stealthy it would be, they all forgot how stealthy it could become and by downplaying that part, they optionally squandered funds to keep equal. That made me realise that it is possible that the fuel tanks were upgraded, consider two hardpoints that are weapons or auxiliary tanks, now consider a new kind of hardpoint that can have both. A fully armed J-20 with an additional 12% range, a side none of the adversaries considered. I cannot prove this part, but it made sense, and the images I saw 2-3 years ago gave me unwittingly the idea, the shapes were off, this was a way to have both, not aerodynamically reasoned, but a tactical choice. A side ignored by all, oh I hear the sleigh-bells ringing for me too (I am allowed to delusional at this point), for me it is about to be Christmas too.
There is a nice side to the 90’s. We all had a go at new things, there was the start of a new side of gaming, there were new frontiers in IT, there were all kinds of approaches to marketing and there were all kinds of new movies, movies that before that were never pushed to the larger extent. It gave us David Cronenberg, it gave us comic books and there was a new side of horror, at times more playful, but for the people who loved the comics, it was just awesome. One of these makers (Clive Barker) was already pushed into a few realms, but one side was to often ignored, I cannot tell whether it was because of how the non knowledgeable try to sell it, perhaps the review line of “a commercial and critical failure” was linked to it. Yet the story of the Nightbreed, Cabal and Median has potential, not as a slasher movie, but as a horror thriller that needs to be really dark. The kind of story that will make any average psychiatrist decide to retire on the spot. The story has so much to offer, that I am a little bewildered how movie makers 32 years later are ignoring that gem. Craig Sheffer played it decently (considering that there were the 90’s). And. Personal speculation is that he might have been chosen as he more roughly resembled David Boreanaz in Angel (and Buffy) and the makers knew how excited the ladies got over him. Yet I believe that Craig played a decent Boone, the rest of the cast was OK. That is not against them, but against the film makers who were all about slashers and posturing and not about maximising the impact of the large amounts of side stories that Cabal represented (as did Median). I reckon that Nightbreed might too large for a movie, and a miniseries (4-6 episodes of an hour) might make it a lot better and lets face it, this station is ruled by Clive Barker, wasting material that excellent should be considered a crime in TV and tinseltown land.
Is there more? Well yes and it is not limited to Clive Barker (although if I can ever revitalise Lords of illusion, I would). Consider the amazing result that IT became and what we saw in the works of Anne Rice in other movies. Now consider the challenge that the Mayfair witches leaved the film makers with The Witching hour. Anne Rice drenched the story in all levels of controversy and that works great in most horror, now add new levels of darkness that we can push for today and you have three books that could ultimately be a next generation focal point of fear for decades, I reckon that the film makers can push into this when the film maker looks at the colour black and considers it to be too light. That is where the boundaries are pushed and there is a larger station, the books of Wes Craven, Clive Barker and Anne Rice have shown them to be masters, they were used for quick revenue fixes and discarded, yet the people at Netflix, Amazon and Disney can make that into a realm of options with 3-5 movies, or larger miniseries with several movies in 5-7 parts, not as a cash cow, but as a station of creating new levels of fear. We can see Neil Gaiman stories making it into that realm, yet he need not be alone (even though he might like it), there is plenty for a while range of stations and now, 30 years later it is time to drill into those treasure troves again, the darker film maker is the most likely winner here and you only have to look at successes like American Horror Story to see that I have a decent case here.
I wonder if someone in Tinseltown wakes up to that part of the equation, first come, first chance of becoming an accomplished winner. The 90’s produced a whole range of excellent ideas for the big and the 75” screen.
In support of the previous article, I add a little more. We were talking about the creation (on Sony) of new RPG games, I gave part of that setting in that article but the largest station is not merely the game, it will be the story. A stage where we game away generations, we need the setting of a larger stage, a larger story. The story needs to be bigger than us, or bigger than any person could fit. Not exactly Disney’s ‘Once upon a time’ but you get the idea. It is there that we need to set the storyline.
The drive. Bethesda was pretty good in starting with the prisoner part (Oblivion, Skyrim) and even as that seems appealing, I needed a larger stage (and avoid copying Bethesda). I wanted more than a steeplechase of serving (or servicing) others. In this upcoming poverty tends to be a decent stage, we all avoid that and we tend to van more or less ethical constraints. In addition there is the need to be more than one’s expected self, I tried it, it is mesmerising. In the age when too many people stated that I would never amount to anything, I ended up with a Master degree, the first in my entire family tree, so trust me, it is mesmerising, and that is also the push. If you can relate to a push, the story becomes a lot easier to write.
The Narration. On some early Monday in my youth I actually worked (freelance) for Playboy for a short time and the editor gave me the biggest wisdom in writing that any person had given me in decades. ‘Write like you are talking to a friend’, I have taken that to heart for training manuals, for articles and for other writings and I believe I became a better writer because of it. The narration is more important then the dialogue, the narration sets the foundation, the atmosphere and the chase.
Bullet Points. Yes, I do hate them when they are in some memo, but to get the story train rolling setting up 1-2 dozen bullet points of what you need to cover in a chapter tends to be a decent golden rule, it keeps you on track, it keeps you focussed. For me, whilst pondering the concept TV series ‘keno diastima’, it helped me focus on what was important (at that moment and that part of the story), and if it works there, it will work in a RPG game as well.
Realistic. Yes it is an odd word to find in an RPG, but the realistic approach still matters, sometimes when the bridge is out, it ends, swimming across the stream seems nice, but the rules of thermodynamic are no joke and that is before you get introduced to Mr. Salty, he tends to be where you do not expect him and you never expect him in the first place. In other news, realism also applies when you try to kill an enemy the size of a main battle tank with a dagger, Daniel Boone is the only one who actually pulled it off, if the stories are true. That is one in thousands over the last 200 years, the odds are not good my friends, they are not good indeed.
In previous stories I gave something towards that storyline, but in the end, you are the best storyteller, you need to be, because you are making an RPG, and that is one play-style that cannot survive without narration. In this there are two ways, keep the stories separate (always good) and try not make them intertwining too soon, when you have enough of a narration, you can start to see if they can be combined or intertwined. It is a lot easier to have 12 small stories (300-400 words each) and after that see if and how they can connect, than trying to be clever and make one story of 5000 words that goes nowhere (i tried this earlier in life and failed dismally).
And there you have a decent winning combination into the storyline for an RPG. Have fun Playstation programmers!
Yes, we have a life, it is staged on the Disney mould, but we do have it. We are empowered by the marvel characters, we are defended by the Jedi, we feel entrusted by Frozen, a Disney production. It has to be, there is no other explanation. You see there was a story that I saw on BBC, and now on the Dutch NOS. We are given “The Royal Family of Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates, has released a statement about Princess Latifa, the Emir’s daughter. Videos appeared this week in which she says that she is being held hostage by her family and that she fears for her life” (source: NOS), I get it, it plays nice yet it is a princess, one princess. Yet in this, who remembers “Yemeni minister accuses Houthis of using displaced people as human shields in Marib” (source: Arab News), over the last two weeks, the NOS was all about reporting on how the Houthi movement is not a terrorist one, and that is it. We now see ‘UN: Houthi Attacks in Northern Yemen Risk Triggering Humanitarian Crisis’ (at https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/un-houthi-attacks-northern-yemen-risk-triggering-humanitarian-crisis), there we are given “The Marib governorate has been relatively unaffected by Yemen’s six-year long civil war. That is until Houthi rebels recently mounted a military offensive to try to seize control of the region from Yemeni government forces. Because of its relative safety, hundreds of thousands of people have fled there to escape fighting in other parts of Yemen. At least 800,000 of them are now in the region” and they are not alone we also have ‘Yemeni minister condemns Houthi bombing in Taiz’ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1813001/middle-east) mere hours ago where we are given “Mubarak said the militia had drafted students to frontlines instead of schools, and was working to change school textbooks to “lay the landmines of death and extremism in the minds of young generations instead of dialogue and peace.”” All less than a day ago, most of the western media ignores it, merely the Disney approach towards a frozen stage, a stage of a princess. So at what point have you, the reader become obsessed with the Disney life?
Consider the stage that Yemen has and stop blaming the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Iran has been fuelling this from day one, but the news ignores it. Terrorist actions by Houthi’s against children and civilians, yet the media ignores it. Why is that? Why are these actions not on the front pages of EVERY newspaper in the west? This is what I meant with filtered information. I wonder if you investigate the news not given which share holders and stakeholders are seen with their fingers in the pie. Yes, there are several issues, there are hard times. The people in Texas are seeing that. In the UK we are given ‘More than 7,500 families across north-east given winter hardship payments’, which is fair news, it is news yet it seems that the BBC did not pick it up, yet the princess story did.
We seem to be given an emotional charged Disney life, are you not sick of that? There are huge problems out there and someone is trying to make us look somewhere else. When is that ever a good idea?
Yes, I had not forgotten my promise, so before I start resetting the Saudi Airforce from the American options to either the BAE Typhoon or the Chinese Chengdu J-20, all whilst bagging myself a rather nice (and large) commission, I have a promise to keep. It took me a whilst, yet when Bethesda made the Elder Scrolls, they had the alone stage for Fantasy RPG and they grew it rather nicely, close to perfection. Yet I am no ones second fiddle, as such I thought it would be nice to change the game. In the setting where you are a ranged ‘fighter’, or a stealth type, I decided on the Indonesian blowpipe. It has the benefit of stealth, speed, some distance (not overly large) poison dart options and a few more, as such the blowpipe would be in, there is the Trisula (Indonesian version of the Japanese Sai), the Gollocks, yet they also have swords and spears, so there is a whole range of new weapons giving the RPG lover a new set of discoveries to make in how to best give the realisation of mortality to your enemies. And as I was taking a look at the weapons, I came to the conclusion, that as I spread the power of magic, the same could be done to the weapons. Even as we might like all weapons (some people do), giving them the power of one (agility for the blowpipe) removes strength for the sword and spear. It is a little more natural that way. Stealth still has knives and blades, but that person would be less in other weapons, the other way as well, those adapts and better in swords and spears are lousy in the precision of the blowpipe, they can still use knives for stealth parts, but not much more, the stage to reply is set. As I set the stage of magic and weapons, the third need would be there. The support of the craft of artisan. The agile are good at pottery, but slow and less able to be the armorer or blacksmith, the blacksmith would be less of an alchemist and pottery person, item can always be bought and the fighter can still be a good alchemist in nearly every way, yet the division pushes a person to become passable and average n all directions, or set towards excellence in one or optionally two directions. Too many RPG’s are about inclusions, the ‘you can be all approach’, yet as I have stated towards Ubisoft for the longest time, a game that states it pleases everyone, in the end will please no one. That setting set a larger stage, a stage where you can reply the game, optionally multiple times and face the stage where you see new things at least twice over, it makes for longer joy in a game.
And all whilst doing this, I got the inside idea of yet another game, based on a golden oldie. It was done by Melbourne House in 1985, yet not unlike the older version, you have to grow your skills, go to places and unlock abilities and unlock moves. So what happens when the stage is not all, but you get one night to do it, you get 5 hours until the final showdown where you are the challenger, and every time you play the game, the powers are somewhere else, so no running to the 6 points to get the max character, you get a stage where the skills you acquire are the skills you have for the final fight, yet the stage is not who presses the button faster, it is more like Nioh, a tactical challenge, we keep on forgetting that the old games have actual diamonds in the rough (sorry Disney), actual gems that can shine, even now on the PS5 can bring joy to millions of Playstation gamers (as such all ideas are always free for Sony Playstation exclusive games).
So as I finished the ideas of fighting, artisans and magic, it is time to think of a storyline, a main story where we need to set a new level of adaptability, because if you are in one place in one chosen group, you will not face the same story, so what happens when the main storyline is not one story, but there are 5 for you to find? How to go about that part? I can tell you one thing, that has never been done before, I wonder why not?
It is something we all face, we see what we had and we miss it. Consider NCIS, an awesome series, and when we were introduced to Agent Fornell, I remembered Joe Spano, he was young innocent, wearing a bowtie and being the psychiatrist at Hill Street blues station. I miss that series at times. I know time moves on and we got Blue Bloods now, yet Hill Street Blues struck a chord in 1981, others did less so, it is hard to explain, because it sounds negative on the series that are out now, but the reality is that something got lost in TV series in the last 10 years. There are series that spring outside the equation, series like NCIS, the Magicians, Lucifer, Fortitude, American Horror Story, but the equation is very unbalanced. When you are trying to figure out how that happened, do not worry, it is simple. In 2019, the number of original scripted television series in the United States hit 532. It is almost 450% up from 1981. Hollywood is so much towards creating amount and less about creating quality, which is why the series I mentioned and a few more stand out. I keep n hearing mentions of Game of Thrones, but not much more, one show takes the cake and that used to be different. Discussions were going on regarding Hill Street Blues, Dallas, Dynasty, Bergerac, Tatort, and a few more. Yet nowadays, the amount of series crossing our eyes increases, yet it seems that nothing between the ear sticks. That tends to be quality, not quantity. There is a reason why a series like NCIS has been around for 18 seasons. Yet at times I still think of the old Hill Street blues station. And each nation had its own quality shows. Germany brought us Tatort and Derrick, the UK gave us Bergerac, the Avengers, Hammer house of horrors, and the list from other nations goes on. But now it seemingly needs to be American, whilst overall (with a few exceptions) the quality is not fantastic, not bad, just not great. And I do believe it is not the cast, not the team and not the writers. It seems to be the pressures to create on too limited a schedule with repetitive ideas again and again.
Why is that? It is no secret, Hollywood is all about return on investment, but that circle becomes virtual and fictive when quality goes down. There is a need to make money and we get that, I am not against the idea of making money, but what do you think when 2019 had 532 series, all needing originality, all needing ideas and only so many writers with actual original ideas around. It didn’t require rocket science, it was a simple equation. So how long does it take for the Hollywoodians to figure out that there is a limit to quality series that can be produced? You might think that I am talking out of my (non-mouth), but the setting of Netflix handing over $18 billion in the last year for IP should get us to ask questions. Netflix’s 2019 costs to buy, produce and license content will be $15 billion. And when you considered they made a little over $20 billion in 2019, it seems that I am wrong, but am I? Consider how long this pattern can continue? No one denies that you have to spend to make money. Yet, how is the equation correct? And
Netflix is merely one of several stations, so when this model implodes, we will see Netflix, HBO, Stan, Apple, Amazon and Disney, all spending billions, all whilst the people will have to make choices and we get that, as such some will survive, some will not, we all get that. Yet at that point, what happens to HBO, Stan, Disney, Apple, Amazon and Netflix? Where will you be?
Differential I need to set a separation here, we have the money side and the creation side. Yet the money side will hinder, impair, and optionally drive the creation side, even though the negative sides are only looked at after things go wrong. I believe that continuation can only exist if the quality is of the highest caliber and I personally believe that this is not possible when you create 532 series in a year. At some point something has to give and that is before we consider that there are really good series out there and no one denies that they are good. Yet consider that in 2009 Joss Whedon created an amazing series called the Dollhouse, not merely a good series, it set the tone on serious matters and was cut off after two seasons. He also lost the tone on Firefly, yet that one is still around, after 17 years, now seen as a cult classic. Out of the 532 series, what else will we lose out on, because they are the silent victims, scrapped because the moment was wrong, the analyst did not get what mattered and as such the makers lose out. This setting is important, because with 532 titles that group will increase, too little time, too much to miss out on.
Creation cut short for reasons not within the stage of an audience. Streaming makes this a much smaller factor, but it still will not make it zero. Yes streaming will be important to give good series a larger chance, but in all that the numbers are not adding up, not when you consider what Netflix as one provider sets their cost at and all the other streamers with their own costs as well. Soon it will change again, yet not for the reasons you considered before. You see streamers have one larger station, and internet congestion will hit them too, especially in light of the issues hitting the internet. And we will see places all over the world get a earful of fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) and fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), and int he end we will rely on all kind of matters, but we forgot that streaming is not alone, there are PC’s for gaming, there are computers for FaceTime, there are computers for work from home, gamers and now with PS5 and the new Xbox it will increase, there are ‘digital editions’ consoles without 4K drives and they all have to download. And they will need to do so a lot more than before on the Xbox One and PS4. The stage is not on the gamers, but we have already seen the news on YouTube and Netflix throttling down, so how can the growth rate continue when the internet is clearly becoming the weakest chain in that link? In March the Guardian reported ‘Disney+ streaming service to launch in UK with lower bandwidth’, so there you are, your new 4K TV so that you can admire Baby Yoda in the Mandalorian, and the service can merely give you 1080 resolution. That is the reality and it is not getting any better until 2023, so can you consider the issues that streaming has and cannot deliver? It is not merely the amount of series, it is the stage where we cannot see their full potential and the UK is not alone, these elements are showing up all over the Commonwealth, al over the EU and the US is also not absent of issues. It was a stage I saw coming in 2018, yet they all declared me a fool, now they say it is a complex issue. Well it is not, it is the issue that was clearly out in the open, ignored by too many. Even now we see the blame game continue n other fields, how long has the PS5 been sold out? How long did we know that this was a setting of hundreds of thousands per nation and we get ‘The UK’s biggest game retailer blames PS5 size for launch delivery delays’, really? The size was known for months, the amount of systems were known for months. Too many people are reacting at the 11th hour, in systems, on the internet and with the ISP’s. Who will they blame when streaming is cut down again? When do the people get the next news from ISP’s that there are issues? Oh, wait, that moment passed already. When we are treated to “Possibly the most common form of buffering occurs when your internet speed is too slow to download the amount of data needed”, as well as “You need at least 25 Mbps for 4K streaming video on your computer or Ultra HD enabled devices”, yet on a global scale and especially outside of metropolitan area that issue is becoming an issue in streaming. So as Net Neutrality is back on the political table in the US, it becomes a massively larger issue to face. This all is not the fault of the streamers, lets be clear about that part, they are a factor, but not the cause, like the blame game couriers, here the ISP’s should have been ready to a much larger degree and we cannot blame them for the covid lockdowns, yet the setting of bandwidth limits has been known for some time, at least a year and that was also out in the open, as such the stage we see will be a larger issue and that I merely a fraction of the station that I see, the math does not add up, it was clear for a much longer time and so far too many parties are aligned to ignore that part. We see solution A, option B and everyone dances around the overwhelming lack of bandwidth.
Consider that Saudi Arabia has a 5G internet that is 750% faster than anything the US has, did anyone consider the weird setting in that regard? And the interesting part is that no one is asking the questions that matters, how come that Saudi Arabia of all places has an internet is so much faster? It is a much larger setting and the people are seemingly kept blind, which is fine by me, but when you lose out on HD episodes of NCIS, American Horror Show season 10, Superman & Lois (2021), or A Discovery of Witches season 2 (2021)? When the throttling continues or increases, what happens to streaming? What happens to net neutrality? Did anyone consider that part of the equation when they saw the $15,000,000,000 bill that Netflix had for 2019? There was a reason why sacking Huawei was a really bad idea and others will soon catch up on that idea. I have no issues with an alternative being found, but none have the capabilities at present and they are unlikely to have them until 2022, should you doubt that? Take a look at how abysmal the USA has its 5G at present, look at how fast streaming is in rural USA, you see the US is a lot more than the 25 large cities and plenty of people live outside these places, should they not be able to stream at the max? When we see that discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, as is the streaming of rural versus metropolitans discrimination or not? Consider that for a moment. So let’s not wait until the 11th hour, let’s make sure that the right people look to the right places quickly, the term sooner rather than later cannot apply, we are already 2 years too late for that. It is the technology side, with the finance and creativity, too many forgot about the technology side of it and now it starts calling foul, it cannot deliver more.
I was pleasantly surprised today when I got treated to: ‘Can Harry Potter magic tourists back to Japan?’ Yes, we can argue on when things need to be done and how things need to be, but consider the long term view, a case can be made that soon enough Japan would be a much more interesting place to visit than the US. Japan has its Disney Park, and when the Harry Potter park is completed another reason to visit Japan is born. It has interesting culture, it has entertainment, it has arcades, it has numerous food markets and overall In the direct vicinity of Tokyo most tourists can get a large amount of entertainment, and in all this they still have an upcoming Olympics. Japan is not the solution for everyone, yet I see it as an option for Asia and the Middle East, the nations shunned by President Trumps facade of idiocy, they can all relax in Japan, as such the US (and Europe to some degree) will have a larger faltering getting their economies back up, Japan will have a much larger stage of reserving their economy. Should Australians take the same route, Japan will push forward to a much larger degree whilst the US slowly limps into a less amicable endeavour.
When we consider the options on a global scale, we see a larger contemplation. It is not where we were, but where we can go in the near future that counts and at present we see a larger absence of options in both the US and Europe. This is not about checks and balances, it becomes about the balance of opportunities and as such blatantly following the political needs of the US the entire setting of balance crashes for both the US and to a larger degree for Europe as well. So how does the view matters?
As we are being told that ‘The USPS is shutting down mail-sorting machines crucial for processing absentee ballots as the 2020 election looms’, as well as ‘A Fight Over the Future of the Mail Breaks Down Along Familiar Lines’ most consider quotes like “Without a financial rescue from Congress, they have warned, an agency that normally runs without taxpayer funds could run out of cash as soon as late September, raising the specter of bankruptcy and an interruption in regular delivery for millions of Americans”, that and the issues around voting issues are raised, but the stain of what might matter, the massive debt that the US has is left outside the bullpen. When we see “It was the White House that intervened in March, nixing a bipartisan plan to provide $13 billion to the Postal Service” (source: NY Times), we think it is about blaming this presidency, yet the larger truth is that the postal services need $13,000,000,000 just to stay alive and that is the issue, rural isolationism and connectivity issues are a much larger stage in the US, as such and only because the previous 4 presidents did not push rural internet enough, we see a stage of isolationists and it will go from bad to worse in the US. That is the stage that the US was always going towards and the Coronavirus issue merely hastened the direction it was going in, in an age where the US is bankrupt it had not many options in all this the China setting and the covid ignoramus people are merely speed accelerators, and as we see the
Middle East taking a different course, the US has more dangers as billion after billion in trade falls away and now we see Japan moving in the direction that Japan needs to be in and they will enjoy what comes off it. No matter what the US publishes on the ‘victories’ that they have in writing, 2021 will be a lot worse than 2020 was for them, the Americans that see this approaching will most likely m Ove to greener pastures in Canada, hastening what will come even more. Even as the NY Times makes the statement that Jeff Bezos is the nemesis, he really is not. Amazon made the decisions that were best for Amazon, and as Amazon grew, so did its delivery service, there is no issue with the USPS, they were merely outclassed by the existence of eMail, and the fact that it grew much faster than the USPS could adjust to. Amazon was a factor but not the cause, a bad budget was a much larger factor in all that and now we see the endgame and the struggle within the US to avoid whatever it can whilst the Wall Street bad boys have made enough to live larger than life for the next few decades. This is the stage we see there, yet Japan has a huge debt as well, in this they have the benefit of the 2020/2021 Olympics and after that it will be about tourism, because those people tend to come and spend money and the Harry Potter park was the one thing missing, we tend to go to places for a range of options and the more options the better the setting, in this a place that has close to a billion fans is not the stage that should be missed, that and the millions who love Disney and now there is more than one place where it an be enjoyed, all whilst the unacceptability of Americans can be avoided. I cannot answer how these matters are in Japan, but the louder stage of America is striating to rub a lot of people all over the world the wrong way and they seek another place to go to. I reckon that 2022 will start to be a shining light for Japan when things work out and it is up to them to shine that light stronger luring tourists like moths to the lighthouse.
Is it the only option? No, it is not, but at this stage the US has so much going against them that Japan is a lot more likely to push for a new economy than the US is and that is perhaps one of the scariest things yet.
Yes, the news is full of the overwhelming success that Avengers: Endgame is and rightfully so, yet the Washington Post looks further. The article (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/avengers-endgamemakes-disney-invincible-in-2019-then-what/2019/04/29/b5e35016-6aaf-11e9-bbe7-1c798fb80536_story.html) gives light to the strategy that is surrounding Disney plus as owners of the Marvel franchise. We get part of it with: “Disney’s films will no longer get licensed to partners such as Netflix during what’s known as the “pay one window;” instead, they’ll go exclusively on Disney+. That’s a big selling point for the streaming app, but it’s a costly decision that reduces the amount of licensing revenue Disney can earn from its films after they leave theaters.” this is a point of view that is true and the strategy is valid, yet having the stage where we see a time exclusivity (like in gaming) where the others get the option after 6 months is not to be ignored as an alternative. In addition, the mention of the ‘real’ editions of the time honoured animations like Aladdin and the Lion King are now on screws, especially after Dumbo has become a miserable flop. That is the puzzle that comes next, as I personally see it, the cast was golden, the director is phenomenal and the story is sound, so why did it flop and is that the premise for the other movies? We know that Robin Williams made Aladdin the success it was; this puts a megastar like Will Smith in an awkward position. To willingly step into the shadow of a giant takes monumentally sized balls to begin with and even as we know that Will Smith is no coward, willing to step into the fringe of movie making, I cannot stop being worried on how Aladdin will fare. As such the other Disney productions will be under pressure as well and that is just the beginning.
Disney has had the longest issue with being too sweet for most adults and even as we saw Pretty Woman in 1990 as a new view on what Disney could do, there was a distinct feeling that the Disney people were so far out of their comfort zone that they needed guides to find their way back. This is particularly important as Marvel has its own dark parts (more than just a few) and without that defining dark there is a larger concern down the road. I believe that so far they handled it fine, yet the worry remains: “will the wrong Disney executive demand the Marvel TV version to be lighter, sweeter and less dark“, so far what we have seen from X-Men: Dark Phoenix, The New Mutants imply that we should not be worried, yet waiting with worries for too long is not good either. What I saw from Cloak and Dagger season 1 is a clear warning, yet perhaps it is also important to consider that the movies will be less in danger of becoming laced with Disney Sweetness than the TV series. Their Metascore of 68 could be considered as supporting evidence in all this. Some gave the following views: “a horribly sentimental soundtrack“, as well as “If you want a show chock full of “edgy” liberal issues thrown into the plot regardless of if it fits with the story, then look no further” (which was the most negative review) we see the initial issue. Even the more positive ones give us “Through its initial four episodes, the real star of Cloak & Dagger is the structure and editing and overall environment more than any individual actor“. I believe it that some of the changes took away the dark side that would have made Cloak a lot more appealing, it was his dark side that appealed to me in the original comics; the TV parts I saw were too emotional, I am not stating that this is a bad thing, merely that . The comic books decently graphic about his devouring hunger, I missed seeing that in the few episodes I saw. Yet it is not all bad, Mayhem is showing to be the direct confrontational angry type she was in the comic book.
This is in part my issue; Disney is seemingly trying to skate away from the darkness is what will have a larger non positive impact on series that were pretty phenomenal in comic book form. So far the silver screen Marvel productions have exceeded expectations swimmingly; it is what I saw in Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and the defenders that felt off, not bad, but off.
It is not the cast or the work done, no matter what, Mike Colter makes Luke Cage totally believable and real. I believe that the scripts fell short (from my personal point of view). Perhaps it is my non-US view, the fact that there had to be complications and conspiracy plots from day one in these series is why it is falling short. Even as we hear noise like ‘creative differences’, I believe that the entire conspiracy twinkle has ran its course to the largest degree, to be honest, that is why I stopped watching Kiefer Sutherland in Designated Survivor. The series started great and then when we suddenly see an FBI director compromised around episode 6 that was it for me. Oh, and before I forget this is a series that is all about conspiracy, but the way it is done was too far out there, it lost flavour. I believe that Marvel series have been pushed into that field too much as well (as well as several other comic book based series). I believe that the effort to go too deep too fast to please an audience is exactly why appeal is lost to some degree and Luke Cage gets to pay for it (as well as Iron Fist). With over a dozen movies coming in the next 2-3 years as well as optional TV series, this critical look early on will be more essential than most realise. You see, a Marvel overdose is pretty much similar to a Star Trek overdose, at some point we lose the interest to watch it, which is actually opposite to the feelings we had with the comic books and as such we have to consider our point of view. Now, like the comic books there is a filtering, most of us do not care for all the franchises. I was a die-hard Batman and X-men fan and I never got into Spiderman that much. I still loved the movies and I read the comics at times, but it was not my number one, neither were the Fantastic Four. That’s fine because Marvel (and DC) had a flavour for everyone, so much choice, as such we would be more protective of the comics we were nuts about and that is fine too.
Yet there is still Disney to consider and their long term need to make everything too sweet and too ‘pink’. Even as we realise that most cancelations might be linked to IP and the fact that Netflix will be a direct competitor of Disney+, yet the idea that Disney is a little too uncomfortable with these dark tainted series on Disney remains a concern for many fans and as such it is a concern for some fans of these series that they are now part of Disney. The factual reasons are not out there, or perhaps better stated, there is no source I trust to give me the actual truth (except a joint statement from Marvel and Disney and that is unlikely to happen).
Even as Forbes gives us: “Marvel meanwhile plans live-action series for characters including Loki, Scarlet Witch, Winter Soldier, and several other characters“, the die-hard fans will now wonder whether we will get the Asgardian Wars on TV or silver screen, not only as it was an awesome story, but that also puts Asgard, the X-men and the Canadian Alpha Flight team on the range implying the coming of a few more series, or movie franchises. All of them have a large following, so Disney would be nuts to walk away from an optional few billion more. Yet that does require Disney to allow for very dark streaks in their acquired paintings and that is where the problem is likely to rise, or at least that is what I think is likely to happen.
Even as Disney can ignore everything this year, the year that Avengers: Endgame broke every record, the long term view is less of a given, with view n 2020-2023, there will be more issues and other issues to deal with, not all of them revenue driven, but revenue will be the mainstream in any discussion that surrounds whatever ‘creative differences’ we will see make the headlines on all kinds of media channels and to ignore this so early in the year is not a healthy thing to do, especially as most of the upcoming movies will be staged to bring in a billion plus each. As stated, I do not think we need to worry about the movies too much, but the Marvel TV series that will be another matter, they will be the bread and butter of Disney+ and those people like their shows a little too sugary to my taste.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 