Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

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In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat amongst yourselves.

Couple of notes for our American members; today is a local election day across the USA. You can check to see if you have anything going on locally here.

Also, enrolment for the 2018 Affordable Health Care Act started on 1st November and ends 15th December, advertising for this program was slashed by a certain someone in the White House, and the website is down "for maintenance" at times during the weekend, so keep trying if you need to register.

Trump is in Asia... and it's going about as well as one might expect. But have no fear, he's back on Twitter after being cut off from it for 11 minutes last week due to the actions of an employee of Twitter on their last day. I think around of applause is called for for this anonymous hero.

The woman who flipped the Presidential motorcade the bird has been fired from her job because she used the photo of the moment, which she didn't take, as her profile picture on social media and that apparently violated social media policy at her workplace.

Another week, another shooting tragedy, this time in Texas. As other, more trenchant observers have noted, one immigrant killing other people by driving a truck, and there was immediate high level talk of cancelling the visa scheme which that person used to enter the US. Another white guy murders dozens with guns... not a word about changing a damn thing. Anyone might think there was a double standard.

The UK Government continues to convulse under a double whammy of sexual misconduct allegations finally being listened too after decades of being ignored or hidden away and the release by a German Newspaper of a list of the great and the good who are using "Tax avoidance" loopholes to squirrel away their earnings without paying tax (This includes the Queen, it would seem). Whilst not illegal it's certainly viewed as being ethically dubious and not really appropriate for those who are supposed to be representing the country and it's governance.

Also Theresa May and co are being forced to publish 58 impact studies over what Brexit might do to aspects of the economy, which they had sought to keep buried. I suspect we'll find out why soon, but we're already getting pre-emptive damage control from our Minister for Brexit, so who knows.

PS: And it turns out they're trying to worm their way out of it, despite very clear instructions

I've finished listening to podcast series EOS 10, which I loved, and was delighted/relieved to find that it will be returning for a third season at some point.

Lego's set of minifigures of "Women of NASA" has become an instant best seller

The Walt Disney Company is looking to purchase most of 21st Century Fox (though not Fox News)

Scientists in Scotland are developing a technique of breeding "Low emmission" cows. So that's a thing that's happening.

Comments

[onsokumaru]

And I hope it keeps failing.

Now that Fox has done a lot of X-Men movies and spammed Jackman everywhere, they are interested in the other parts of the X-verse. We're going to have a New Mutants movie, there will be X-Force, too. And who knows, maybe at some point we'll get X-Factor, X-23 and even some New X-Men.

But if Disney gets the rights back, it's back to square one.
Deadpool trilogy, Wolverine trilogy, X-Men trilogy featuring the same old characters as usual (Storm, Cyclops...)

[janegray]

To be fair to Disney, they would be likely to pick a direction and stick with it. No throwing mud at wall and hope it sticks, no starting a new direction only to change their mind in the very next movie and have the entire previous cast killed off offscreen, no screwing with timelines so messily that you don't even know what happened and what didn't.

Plus, they did make Ant-Man, Deadpool and Guardians of the Galaxy movies. So it's not like they couldn't be expected to give more obscure characters a chance.

But, yeah. The timing is bad. Years and years of focus on the main X-Men, and just now Fox is starting to focus on other characters. I would have been happy if Marvel got to make X-men movies years ago, but right now would be the worst time for Marvel to swoop in.

[cyberghostface]

Well there are pluses and negatives to both I suppose. If Disney bought X-Men I doubt we'd have ever gotten Logan or Deadpool. We probably wouldn't have gotten something as out there like Legion either.

Marvel definitely deserves credit for building a more cohesive universe but with the exception of James Gunn's stuff (who seems to be able to do whatever he wants) it sometimes feels routine in ways that Fox's output doesn't. Like we're getting an X-Men horror film right now, I can't see Marvel trying that for a theatrical film.

[janegray]

Personally, I'd give Disney the benefit of the doubt. After all, they did make Rogue One, a movie far grittier than standard SW fare, that deals with both the brutally honest ramifications of Spy Ops (OMG you mean when an army fights a war against an oppressive genocidal regime they sometimes have to get their hands dirty for the greater good??? *shock*) and the actual consequences of war (aka "everybody is dead, Dave"). I honestly never would have expected Disney to be able to produce something like that, but they did.

[cyberghostface]

I liked Rogue One but it didn't feel that off the beaten path in comparison to the other films in the series (aside from being a self-contained one-off). It was still a PG-13 movie used to sell toys to kids and banking off nostalgia for the older fans like The Force Awakens did. Disney's never going to make an R-rated adult film under the Star Wars brand or do something with the f-word or graphic violence and nudity.

If anything Civil War was more of a risk taker given that it dealt with the 'reality' of kids being killed as a result of superhero fights, a morally gray villain with a legitimate grievance against the heroes and the most popular MCU hero taking on the role of an antagonist.