Rumor Avengers E-Ticket More Dead Than You'd Think

[No Name]

WDI has some research to suggest that younger guests prefer linear narratives and active roles in theme park attractions. The bigger question is whether today’s teens will like these kinds of rides when they’re 80 or whether their tastes will shift toward the tastes of today’s 80 year olds. Theme parks are so relatively new and these linear narrative rides only really took off in the 90s, so there’s little data and lots of feedback loops. One problem is that big-budget new rides are built based on this guest preference, but rides tend to be most popular when they’re new for a lot of reasons, so then that strengthens this supposed guest preference. Things like nostalgia and IP also conflate. It’s hard to get any good data and easy to get whatever data suits their narrative. That’s a huge problem they have. But overall, the company is perpetually afraid of aging out with their audience and losing relevancy to Universal, so this is the path they think is best. Did that make any sense? Maybe. What’s my point? I don’t know. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Children are connoisseurs of impressionistic narratives in which a motif is abstractly related in dioramic tableaus that establish a heuristic interpretation of folklore and communal cinematographic experience that is deconstructed in non-lineal beats that are contrasted and ultimately betrayed by the hegemic transportation device that propels the audience on an unwavering sequential tour of audiovisual mannequinnistas and marionettistas that imprint a both fascinating and horrifying real and surreal homage to the artiste's revelation of a shared tribal mythos of the pedantic voyeur that internalizes the heroic pilgrimage in self actualization and ultimately gets dumped in a gift shop.

 

[CaptinEO]

What's with all this Story crap? What are we, a buncha old ladies watching daytime soaps? Stories never mattered. Hate to break it to Imagineering. There's little to no Stories in most of the best attractions. When was the last time you boarded the Disneyland Railroad and questioned The Story? There was no such time.

Preshow: Hey recruits! We are sending you on a mission around Disneyland Park to catch Bob The Theif. Board our time traveling train vehicle and get ready for the adventure of a lifetime!

Ride Exit: Wow you were awesome! That was incredible! You are amazing!

 

[CaptinEO]

What's with all this Story crap? What are we, a buncha old ladies watching daytime soaps? Stories never mattered. Hate to break it to Imagineering. There's little to no Stories in most of the best attractions. When was the last time you boarded the Disneyland Railroad and questioned The Story? There was no such time.

What are you talking about? Imagineering are the great storytellers of our era. There's a whole documentary about it.

One time the Imagineers (since they are so creative) wanted to tell the story of a movie that came out 20 years ago by redoing a normal roller coaster. They added a whole amazing William Shakespeare esque novel about babysitting.

The story has dramatic twists and turns and ups and downs, just like the track.

Another time the great storyteling Imagineers were hard at work crafting stories about Cars and then a company called Pixar coincidentally happened to be making a movie about Cars, called Cars, so they colloborated together.

There was a movie once called "The Little Mermaid" and the Imagineers independently came up with a story identical to the film.

When they realized a film with the same story and name existed, they still released the ride anyways.

 

[CastAStone]

Children are connoisseurs of impressionistic narratives in which a motif is abstractly related in dioramic tableaus that establish a heuristic interpretation of folklore and communal cinematographic experience that is deconstructed in non-lineal beats that are contrasted and ultimately betrayed by the hegemic transportation device that propels the audience on an unwavering sequential tour of audiovisual mannequinnistas and marionettistas that imprint a both fascinating and horrifying real and surreal homage to the artiste's revelation of a shared tribal mythos of the pedantic voyeur that internalizes the heroic pilgrimage in self actualization and ultimately gets dumped in a gift shop.

until we realize that the folklore was probably a little racist ok maybe a lot.

 

[TragicMike]

I’m sure there will always be an audience for loud, cranked-out superhero films. Bless ‘em. It just won’t be nearly as large an audience. And there’ll always be appreciation for the occasional excellent movie in the genre.

That's weird, I guess the rest of the world didn't get the memo that there isn't supposed to be as large of an audience for superhero movies anymore.

 

[Tamandua]

That's weird, I guess the rest of the world didn't get the memo that there isn't supposed to be as large of an audience for superhero movies anymore.

It's not really that surprising that this movie that takes place during the Infinity Saga timeline with popular characters like black window and iron man would be popular. Let's see if the Eternals and Shang Chi can muster a reasonable audience as newcomers.

 

[MisterPenguin]

It's not really that surprising that this movie that takes place during the Infinity Saga timeline with popular characters like black window and iron man would be popular. Let's see if the Eternals and Shang Chi can muster a reasonable audience as newcomers.

You keep hammering away on your pet theory, without any proof, that the MCU is decline. The rest of us will be over here in reality.

Marvel's Eternals Trailer Gets 77 Million Views In First 24 Hours

Eternals trailer gets 77M views on its first day.

screenrant.com

 

[TragicMike]

It's not really that surprising that this movie that takes place during the Infinity Saga timeline with popular characters like black window and iron man would be popular. Let's see if the Eternals and Shang Chi can muster a reasonable audience as newcomers.

My bad, it's hard to keep up with the moving goalposts.

First it's the general population is losing interest in superhero movies.

*shows box office numbers clearly proving that as false*

Uh...no, now it's people DO care about superheroes, but they don't care about NEW superheroes.

 

[Tamandua]

You keep hammering away on your pet theory, without any proof, that the MCU is decline. The rest of us will be over here in reality.

Marvel's Eternals Trailer Gets 77 Million Views In First 24 Hours

Eternals trailer gets 77M views on its first day.

screenrant.com

Trailer views don't equal sales. A lot of people watched the Cats trailer too.

77 million views in the first day is actually low for a Marvel movie, so I will still continue to speculate on decline. Endgame had 289 million views in the first 24 hours. Judging by this single metric, you could say that Eternals has <27% of the interest that Endgame had.

 

[Tamandua]

My bad, it's hard to keep up with the moving goalposts.

First it's the general population is losing interest in superhero movies.

*shows box office numbers clearly proving that as false*

Uh...no, now it's people DO care about superheroes, but they don't care about NEW superheroes.

If you actually read my posts instead of selectively cherry picking comments, you'll see that I said I wouldn't be surprised if people went to see black widow for various reasons and that it would be subsequent films that will indicate whether the MCU is holding up.

 

[the_rich]

Black Widow along with Hawkeye are the least popular of the original 6. The movie is going to have an iron man cameo and it is going to be archival footage. Downey isn't really in this movie. The fact that a black widow movie could open to 80-90 million is crazy. Even i wouldn't have pegged it at that number. I understand that some of you are over it or don't see the appeal of the mcu. But you are either being willfully ignorant or blind to the fact that it is still insanely popular.
And marvel is being smart. They are basically soft rebooting the mcu. Most of the old guard are done and they have new characters being introduced to keep things fresh.
On top of the fact that they still have 2 of their most popular groups coming in the xmen and fantastic 4.

 

[TragicMike]

If you actually read my posts instead of selectively cherry picking comments, you'll see that I said I wouldn't be surprised if people went to see black widow for various reasons and that it would be subsequent films that will indicate whether the MCU is holding up.

You clearly stated that the theatrical numbers were going to dip due to it getting a premiere release on Disney+. You added you "wouldn't be surprised" if people went to see Black Widow in theaters but you sounded a lot more confident the theatrical numbers would 'certainly" be hurting.

Black Widow is getting the Disney+ premiere release at the same time as the theatrical release, which will certainly hurt the theatrical numbers. As they don't release Disney+ data, at most we'll be able to guess how popular it is, though if it does make a relative flop I bet piracy will be blamed. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people went to see Black Widow just to feel normal again after covid, but then again I think a lot of people are happy to leave the theatrical experience behind.

But I'm not here to argue semantics, rather that your prediction the general population is losing interest in superhero movies is off to a rough start.

 

[the_rich]

Who cares about a Black Widow movie, honestly? That doesn't move the story forward at all. That's why Falcon and the Winter Soldier sucked and Loki is so good (I haven't seen the new episode yet, so no spoilers please).

You don't care about it. But obviously alot of people do if it's doing this kind of business.

 

[Tamandua]

You clearly stated that the theatrical numbers were going to dip due to it getting a premiere release on Disney+. You added you "wouldn't be surprised" if people went to see Black Widow in theaters but you sounded a lot more confident the theatrical numbers would 'certainly" be hurting.



But I'm not here to argue semantics, rather that your prediction the general population is losing interest in superhero movies is off to a rough start.

How do you know the theatrical numbers aren't being hurt by Disney+? Are you suggesting that the Disney+ release has no impact on theatrical performance?

 

[Tamandua]

Let's compare apples to apples. Black widow and Captain Marvel are both stand alone MCU films with a female lead.

Captain Marvel has a $1.3 billion worldwide gross. If Black Widow does anything less, can we call that decline?

 

[the_rich]

Let's compare apples to apples. Black widow and Captain Marvel are both stand alone MCU films with a female lead.

Captain Marvel has a $1.3 billion worldwide gross. If Black Widow does anything less, can we call that decline?

No because one was the introduction of a major character in between Infinity war and endgame. Black Widow should be compared to the first ant man if anything.

 

[Stevek]

Who cares about a Black Widow movie, honestly? That doesn't move the story forward at all. That's why Falcon and the Winter Soldier sucked and Loki is so good (I haven't seen the new episode yet, so no spoilers please).

So stories that provide add'l background on characters aren't worth being interested in? I personally loved Rogue One and Solo...not really moving the story forward, just filling in blanks.

 

[the_rich]

For me a big success would be 250 million domestic and around 550 million international.

 

[lazyboy97o]

WDI has some research to suggest that younger guests prefer linear narratives and active roles in theme park attractions. The bigger question is whether today’s teens will like these kinds of rides when they’re 80 or whether their tastes will shift toward the tastes of today’s 80 year olds. Theme parks are so relatively new and these linear narrative rides only really took off in the 90s, so there’s little data and lots of feedback loops. One problem is that big-budget new rides are built based on this guest preference, but rides tend to be most popular when they’re new for a lot of reasons, so then that strengthens this supposed guest preference. Things like nostalgia and IP also conflate. It’s hard to get any good data and easy to get whatever data suits their narrative. That’s a huge problem they have. But overall, the company is perpetually afraid of aging out with their audience and losing relevancy to Universal, so this is the path they think is best. Did that make any sense? Maybe. What’s my point? I don’t know. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

We both know that Disney could get together research showing that kids like to eat broccoli while getting punched in the gut.

The increase in linear narrative and elaborate backstory also parallels a significant cultural shift in which the lives of children has become increasing and overwhelmingly structured. Structure and organization has come to so strongly dominate our lives that it is what we have culturally set as a default that we’re starting to see isn’t entirely healthy. And we are starting to see growth in the area of non-structured experiences with things like Meow Wolf’s offerings and even how a lot of FEC and museum type experiences are being developed.

The commercial nature of the design process also creates conditions that favor not just linear narrative but ever increasingly complex and convoluted narrative. If you are pitching an attraction like The Haunted Mansion with art and a brief description it’s going to look like less work compared to a Phantom Manor where you now have all of this extra elaboration. This is compounded by the fact that people who don’t draw, who so often are in major decision making positions, too often believe that drawing is merely a talent, not a skill, and doing drawings is therefore quick and easy but they almost certainly have had some experience in having to write something and therefore can better relate to the effort that goes into drafting a narrative. If you want your team to look productive more narrative and backstory can help make that happen.

A far bigger issue though in my opinion is the crisis of confidence that has far bigger ramifications. While there are prominent individuals, the themed entertainment industry has largely eschewed notions of the auteur and singular creative vision. This has slowly but surely been taken to an extreme that is detrimental to producing work. There are the proverbial “too many cooks in the kitchen” and a deep fear of decision making lest one make the wrong decision, even when an obvious decision is there. The frightened creatives must also appease executive leadership who can issue singular fiats without question, experience or taste. The whole point of backstory is to provide a team with a common basis upon which everyone can work, but when there is a deep resistance to personal preference and the air of arbitrary decision making it can become a bloated crutch. The backstory becomes a sort of Bible, sometimes literally referred to as a story bible, that provides truth and guidance on all decisions. It isn’t enough that this lamp would be fitting for the business of some era and the designers like, no, it was found on so and so’s grand adventure into town one day, made by some wise old lampist who has peddled his craft for decades. The narrative gives a semblance of structure and rationality to the project in the face of at times competing egos and sensibilities, including those above whose taste cannot be rebuked but could be gently guided to see that it doesn’t match the story, which they understand as a work of significant effort.