CyclonatorZ

I'll say it again: 4, then 5, then finally 6, and nothing else. 

(Alright, maybe 7 after that, if it actually ends up being good)

Don't forget about five bazillion new elements based on junk food. Toa of cheese puffs, Toa of cookies, Toa of sprite, Toa of pie, etc. In other words, canonize everything the BZP comics forum produced during G1.

If you think this wave is crazy, just wait until the next one. One word: Sonichu.

[CAVE JOHNSON INTENSIFIES]

"Science isn't about why, its about how much money you're getting out of this! Seriously, just think about the money - I'm sure you'll be in one piece after the experiment is done. And even if you're not, well, we're not banging rocks together here. We know how to put a man back together."

(I also wasn't aware that Lord of the Rings was unsuccessful? It went on for quite some time for an unsuccessful theme.)

Between the many reports of sets not selling or on clearance, and the lack of a third wave between the second and third waves of Hobbit sets, it's fairly certain that LOTR was. The jury is still out on whether the Tolkien license as a whole was unsuccessful (I've heard reports that the Hobbit sets have sold better) but as a whole it does not appear it did as well as Lego hoped it would, especially considering they temporarily discontinued the Kingdoms theme in its wake and then quickly rushed out a new generic castle theme alongside the second wave of LOTR. Overall, between POTC, LOTR, and The Lone Ranger, Lego's revivals of classic themes in licensed format have failed rather consistently.

If we get Paper Mario before we get another representative from the Donkey Kong or Metroid franchises, I will scream.

 

I'm glad a purely capitalist mindset that doesn't allow for anything else like care in your work is something to be forgiven for you. For me, trying to pass a mold that bears no resemblance to Gallimimus (even in Jurassic Park) as that creature is even more egregious than any other error they've made before.

 

I get that they wouldn't have made a new mold for a polybag. But in that case, please, for the love of God, don't try and force it as Gallimimus. Even calling it a raptor would feel less terrible than Gallimimus.

 

There's just one problem with that idea. The Jurassic park franchise already (erroneously) classifies another dinosaur as a raptor. You know, the one that Chris Pratt somehow managed to train, and which has been pretty much the star of the movies from the very beginning. More importantly, this polybag is in perfect cohesion with the rest of the theme, which is a microcosm of the entire Jurassic World franchise: a minimum amount of effort exerted to create a maximum amount of profit.

However, as I said, I don't blame TLG for this. They've had a string of unsuccessful licensed themes that contained a large number of new molds (Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings, The Lone Ranger). I totally understand why they would gravitate towards a license that would require only a minimum of new pieces (I count about three new molds in the entire theme) and will likely reap untold amounts of profit. The real objects of blame are the executives who greenlighted what is almost certainly going to be a trainwreck of a film, not to mention the current state of hollywood in general.

Also, earth physics don't apply to the Jurrasic Park universe.

 

 

... I thought that was common knowledge? Unless I missed the memo, and it's actually possible to clone dinosaurs by extracting DNA from an amber encased mosquito.

Also, I don't really get the backlash against TLG. They're just a corporation selling plastic toys to kids. Toys which are going to make a whole lot of money, and are based on a movie which is also going to make a whole lot of money. To quote Will Ferrell, "it's just business."

One more: the final book in a four book series ends with the protagonist being transported back in time to the beginning of the first book, thus ensuring the narrative never concludes, but rather circles around endlessly.

Hm, funny, I made a blog entry like this many years ago, filter bypassing at all, and no mod intervened. What gives?

How about Strange Festive Professional Killstreak Xaeraz?

I think if Hollywood truly wanted to have an honest go at presenting scary feathered dinosaurs, they could definitely make it happen. Therefore, the issue is in them not wanting to actually attempt that, and the reasoning for that is most people (like yourself) have already made up their minds that feathered dinosaurs could never be scary, and as I said, that is, for most people, rooted in nostalgia for the first movie, and the idea that any change from that is terrible. (Just look at the backlash JPIII received for daring to make small modifications to the raptor designs, and for daring to present another dinosaur as stronger than Tyrannosaurus!)

Except that from what we know of the plot, Jurassic World is basically recycling the "blasphemy" of JPIII, by establishing an entirely make believe dinosaur as the new king of dino-kind. Honestly, the whole movie reeks less of respect for the fans to me and more of pure laziness. (I guess I forgot to mention that I'm not actually defending the movie). The plot appears to be basically a remake of the original Jurassic Park, with a bunch of crazy new junk tacked on (brand new dinosaurs! Raptor commandos! The park actually opens, meaning more death!). The movie, in other words, is attempting to remake the first movie to better suit the tastes of modern moviegoers, many of whom seem to crave mindless action and explosions more than anything else. It's not about pleasing the nostalgia driven internet goers, its about trying to wow the masses in the laziest way possible. Thus, instead of a brand new, more realistic take on dinosaurs, we get whatever the D-Rex is going to be, and in all likely-hood its going to be just another attempt to one-up the T-Rex from the first movie. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it has horns and breathes fire. I'm sure the movie executives are patting themselves on the back as we speak.

Then again, they might have a point. I'm not sure I could ever bring myself to be scared by something that looks as soft as a feather pillow. I'm open to being proven wrong, but none of the artwork I've seen is really doing it for me. Has anyone tried to do a Jurassic Park quality CGI illustration with the realistic dinos? It's possible they might be more scary with less lighting and more dimension, although I'm not crossing my fingers.

Your argument is rooted entirely in subjective opinion, actually; whether it stands or not is in the eye of who reads it. You personally being rooted in the idea that feathered dinosaurs could not be scary is not definitive proof that they cannot be scary to a majority of people.

Indeed. And there was nothing in my original post that suggested I thought my argument was absolute. I was simply pointing out what I personally feel may be the root of the decisions made with the Jurassic World movie. I could be wrong, and you could be entirely right about it being nothing more than nostalgia. But I have my suspicions otherwise.

 

It's kind of hard to accomplish that when the creatures chasing and eating the humans look like overgrown chickens.

 

You can now stop pretending that's a valid argument.

 

It looks like the T-Rex is wearing a fashionable feather coat. Not exactly what I'd call scary - if I saw the actors in Jurassic World running away from that, I think it'd take about half a second for me to burst out in laughter. My argument stands.

Re: birds aren't scary. Have you ever event seen a cassowary?

It looks like it'd go pretty good with a side of fries.

Well, yeah, the Jurassic Park movies have always been monster movies.. And monster movies are supposed to be scary. It's kind of hard to accomplish that when the creatures chasing and eating the humans look like overgrown chickens. At this point, if they wanted to respect science, they should have just created a new franchise that wasn't about scares and was simply about wonder. But the current state of Hollywood renders that scenario impossible, when blockbusters have to be "pre-sold" and executives would rather green light rehash after rehash than something truly original.

No new weapons. They cut the flipping map the EotL team was developing because it was "too confusing." And the one new gameplay feature introduced is locked behind a paywall. I honestly didn't think anything could top the halloween update this year in awfulness, but somehow Valve found a way.

Oh well, at least the short was cool.

This should enlighten you, Duchess.

Can I get an example of a game made like a movie? Depending on what we're talking about I don't know where I stand.

Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls are pretty much interactive movies.

I quite liked spells, I don't hate Hightower like a lot of people do, and I thought that the underworld being a glorified arena match was a neat idea. I got almost all the achievements that year. This year, I got none. I don't hate Doomsday either, but there was literally no new gameplay additions to the map proper. And as for the go karts? Eh, I just couldn't get into them.

Blergh, thank goodness. This might have just been my least favorite update ever, and I can't wait until the official Valve servers go back to normal. Here's hoping Smissmas is better.... 

Oh, he did exist at one point, but not anymore. (pats stomach)

Minuscule? On the contrary: you have almost as many posts as me, and I've been on this site for ten flipping years. Congrats, and here's to you having double my post count in another few years.

 

What Hero Factory did wrong: giving the comics off to the same people who write the rest of the tripe that currently fills the Lego Mag, giving the movies off to people who can't even write a decent script, and in general wasting the vast potential of the storyline. If Ninjago can have decent TV and comic tie-ins, why can't Hero Factory?

Most of the Hero Factory comics were written by Greg Farshtey, the same person who wrote all the BIONICLE comics. And I don't even know for sure that he didn't write the most recent ones — after all, he is the magazine's editor-in-chief. Perhaps for some reason or another he decided that a child-friendly tone like he uses for the Ninjago graphic novels would be more appropriate for the LEGO Club Magazine's typical audience than the edgy tone he used for BIONICLE.

 

No, I am convinced that they aren't written by Greg anymore, which explains why they have gotten so much worse. My biggest reason for thinking this is that his name did not appear on the credits list for the second Savage Planet comic, in contrast to all the previous ones - and that was the exact point at which the comics dropped in quality. Honestly, I'm not even certain he is the Lego' mags' editor in chief anymore, because the entire magazine has dropped in quality in the last few years.

What Hero Factory did wrong: giving the comics off to the same people who write the rest of the tripe that currently fills the Lego Mag, giving the movies off to people who can't even write a decent script, and in general wasting the vast potential of the storyline. If Ninjago can have decent TV and comic tie-ins, why can't Hero Factory?

I agree with you though, especially regarding the idiotic gender segregation. If Bionicle had just gone the Bara Magna route from the start, we might have had even less official female characters, but at least all the many fanfiction authors wouldn't have been limited by such an arbitrary restriction. I think Bionicle is about the only fictional universe in existence where you can't write in-cannon a character that is female and is endowed with any element other than water, lightning, psionics, or light.

Well, what the fox really is saying (or doing) is pretty evident to me, but repeating it here would probably make me lose proto, or worse.