Who would intentionally put their time and effort into a movie, risk hurting their careers and risk losing the studios money? And all that to upset fans of the characters?
That movie could have easily went the way of Batgirl and be shelved for a tax cut.
Okay, a bunch of thoughts come to mind.
I love Diablo. However, I think a big part of it is the atmosphere and also me being young and never having seen anything like it. That's pretty hard to recreate. I heard the game Halls of Torment nailed the Diablo atmosphere, but as a Vampire Survivors-like. Basically it's focused on the grind and progression. Maybe, that's something for you? Personally, I haven't found anything that is as fun as Diablo, so every now and then I play Diablo 1 with a new mod, like the new The Hell 3 Mod. It brings back the wonder of the unknown, because there is lots of new stuff in there. I also loved Book of Demons, which is basically a streamlined version of Diablo 1 with a dark comedic twist.
I think you underestimate the satisfaction that comes from clearing levels in Diablo. Yes, it could be a different theme and still work, but isn't that proof of how potent it is? So the question is, why does it feel like a grind to you? I wager it's because the magic Diablo had for you got lost over time. You know how they work now, you've seen behind the curtain and thus don't feel the danger, the intrigue like you used to. Maybe you will find it in games like Elden Ring that you don't see through right away?
About the stats progression: I think a very big part of the fun of progressing your character comes from doing it the way you want. It's a form of expression. You want to be a Necromancer that only uses Golems or a Mage focused on ice. I think what a lot of Diablo-likes miss is finding a good way to allow lots of expression in character development. Too often I feel boxed in by the class and it doesn't feel like it's my Tinkerer, but the Tinkerer instead. A good Diablo-like has abilities that define the character instead of just simple stat increases and cooldown reductions and all that.
Lastly, if you haven't seen it there is a great Diablo 4 Critique on YouTube that might give some more food for thought!
I don't think that's how it goes, either. I mean sure, for Pride Month all the corpos glam on to it to market their stuff "to the gays" and there is the odd product line designed for them as well. But I'm pretty sure nobody is adding gay characters to video games, shows or movies, because the market research shows that it's popular now. It's still quite the opposite.
Companies would still rather have nothing that could be seen as "controversial" in their products, with the odd exception that wants to be controversial. Games, shows, movies are made by creative people and among them are and have always been queer people. They have always been pushing for representation. Over time this pushing of the envelop as well as social movements lead from characters that can be read as queer (mostly villains, though), to clearly queer coded (still mostly villains) to finally openly queer characters (only villains and side characters). Only in the last decade it has become acceptable to have openly queer main characters in media. Not because marketing pushed for it, or because it's trendy, but because queer people exist and they also work in media and they write their experiences and it has now become socially acceptable enough for them to get a little representation in mainstream media as well.
In my opinion the reason why "queer" seems "trendy" and everything seems "woke" and "political" is because we are still so used to the conservative, status quo, straight white guy/girl media that anything outside of that sticks out like a sore thumb. And, as they say, the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.
Not sure if it's underrated, but Sunshine (2007) is really great!
...because they know how to swear in Russian?
Better late then never, thanks!
I think there is enough precedence to come to the belief that remakes are bad in and of itself. Big movie companies do like to put their money in already established or at least known franchises or names. This leads to them forcing a movie they think should make money rather than letting the creatives follow their passion, which may or may not lead to better movies. And then there is also the typical knee-jerk online reaction in play here. People like to be dismissive and jaded about things. I think it's partly because we have a lot of reasons to be jaded, but it's also because it's easy and it makes you feel smarter. I believe in most cases people aren't actually informed enough to form a real opinion, they just like to shit on things online to make themselves feel better.
In my late teens and early twenties I had a phase where I basically disliked every new movie. I thought old movies where perfect and new movies where all just cash grabs with the exception of indie movies. After a bit of growing and working in a creative industry myself, I now know that this is bullshit. There are lots of reasons why movies turn out bad, but in most cases the people working on them are trying their best and genuinely want to make something great. With that in mind I've become much more open and appreciative. It's so easy to shit on things online. It is very, very hard to make a movie, even a bad one.
Sure, sometimes the movie turns out bad and yes the chances of a reboot, remake, sequel or prequel to be bad is higher. But it might also turn out to be a great movie in it's own right! To be honest lots of old movies did not age well and could use a remake. If you don't like it, the original movie is still there for you to watch instead.
I doubt enough people realized this for this effect. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan myself and this went completely over my head. I don't doubt that dedicated Star Wars fans picked up on it immediately, but most probably only heard of it from these. I see that a lot online. People decide to hate a piece of media even before it airs and then collect reasons for it after the fact.
But that's just my guess, anyway. I haven't watched The Acolyte farther than episode 4 or 5, but not because of anything specific. Just didn't grab me to keep watching. I thought I'll come back to it eventually, but now that I know it's canceled I probably won't.
No idea, but one of the most recent (negative) reviews says:
you may wonder how its possible to make something more pay to win, non-functional, scummy and devoid of anything resembling fun than war thunder but gaijin manages to make lightning strike twice. if you are somehow able to take one look at the 2nd-to-none worst ui in gaming with less readability than mobile games, and continue to press the play button. you will be met with the most uninteresting cluster♥♥♥♥ of tanks and planes raping the handful of players and their army of bots.
lets also not forget the initial steam launch of this game, which was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews, was taken down because you couldnt get this free game on steam without also paying for a dlc(which by its nature is non refundable). Now the game has been re-listed under a different name specifically so that negative reviews and associated community news/discussions are lost to time and not carried over onto this page.
But I mean, it's free to try if you have time to spare...
Dark patterns are basically best practices at this point
Yeah, I really hate these. It looks like the cutscene of some fighting game, stilted and soulless. I'm sure they put a lot of heart and effort into it, but I don't feel it unfortunately.
We got that one in Germany as well