Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man. You take a step forward, he takes a step back. Meet me in the middle says the unjust man.

When reading the consulting company list, you skipped over James Mendez Hodes. The eagle eyed among you will remember him from the Extra Credits "Orcs are Black People" debacle.

1: Kotaku doesn't have journalists, they're political activists trying to stay relevant. 2: Synder needs to delegate creative power. 3: These Disney projects being axed could be tax write-offs. 🎉

Your money is your power. Don’t give your power away to people that don’t respect you. We are all accountable for our actions, one way or another.

I remember when entertainment was more about entertainment.

There's a reason Nintendo has stopped giving Kotaku their games early for review

What's amazing is that anyone who studied social marketing knows that making your audience angry or threatening them with cancellation actually hardens the existing values you want to change. They are not serious about being accountable to making positive change for the disenfranchised groups they claim to represent. It is a grift for the con humans surfing on this social blackmail and a way for activists to feel better about themselves with no ethics about the consequences of their extremism.

Mr H talking about diversity in programming vs diversity in casting - hit the nail right on the head 👌🏻 I think that was the most concise way to put it. Forcing diversity through casting leads to the same homogeneous tropes being repeated over and over.

These "journalists" forget that the games they "disapprove" and "belittle" from the 90s onwards are what have paid their salary all these years.

Thanks to Sweet Baby Inc, now I know that Peter Parker is such a shit nephew to Aunt May, a horrible mentor to Miles Morales, a failure of a boyfriend to MJ, a disappointment to Harry and most importantly, an embarrassment of a Spider-Man to the whole city. That’s why he outright said that the city doesn’t need him anymore because it has a better hero like Miles.

Best panel ever! More informed, more interesting, more impactful than any major media panel. Excellent.

Miles Morales is Miles Morales. Peter Parker is Spider-Man🕸️

What makes the Batman death so much worse is how horrible of a person Arkham Harley actually is. In the lore, disguised Joker and Harley convinced a wealthy oil baron to construct an amusement park for his dying daughter. After the amusement park was complete, Joker and Harley secretly killed the daughter and then talked the baron into killing himself by using some pills the pair gave him. Harley specifically told the baron that "the pain will only get worse" and that "there is no point in going on". He was told his suicide would be painless, but of course that was a lie. In reality the pills were a nerve toxin that basically caused the baron to laugh himself to death. With him gone, Joker and Harley took over the amusement park and used it as a base of operations. Thats just ONE example of the horrible things Harley has done. And THIS is the person SSKTJL has lecturing Batman on morality.

I laugh at the fact that the Sweet Baby Inc. CEO and the villain from Stephen King's "The Perfect Storm" both have the same motto: "Give me what I want and I will go away."

it blackrock and vanguard are the ones forcing the companies to comply through invest and corporate loans/lines of credit.

the problem is (RE sweet baby) that during gamergate, people did shitloads of research and undercovered so much damning shit about these types of people, no one thought that they had a leg to stand on and yet gamergate lost. and no, there wasn't "some misogyny mixed in there", that's what the opponents said in order to get rid of gamergate and that's what they will be saying about you in 10 years time. Anita didn't fulfil her kickstarter promises, got criticized and she said it was "sexism". Zoe Quinn got caught fucking 5 people for positive game reviews, got called out for it and she said it was "sexism" Brianna Wu turned up halfway through out of nowhere pretending to be a victim even though no one had heard of her and made "herself" a victim before anyone said shit about her. so no, there was no misogyny in there, just professional victims claiming that there was with zero proof, zero screenshots and zero credibility.

What doesn't make sense is losing money to get a better interest rate on loans...unless it's money-laundering and fraud.

They are spelling out why my gaming has recently shifted to indie games

To go against what Mr H said at around 48:00, it's not that video games are more niche than movies because they are not. It's that participation is not passive. You actively play videogames rather than just watching a show or movie. The participation creates a greater bond to the user so they feel responsible for protecting the medium.

I can't believe there's people STILL denying that all this propaganda is being put into our entertainment when there's literally a myriad of these consulting agencies who job it is is to literally insert propaganda into entertainment.

You guys only scratched the tip of the iceberg, this rabbit hole goes much, much deeper. Sweet Baby Inc. is just ONE of many such consulting companies. While they might have gotten exposed, there are plenty of others that the people who work there can move to at any time. It's why they don't fear getting fired or losing their career because *everyone* involved in this thing is connected. Sweet Baby's origins go back all the way to Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. And, those two were just the "faces" that were used as industry consultants before it was decided to switch to becoming a faceless company. Additionally, this is about way more than politics and the culture war grift - it's an epidemic of corruption that has completely infected the video game industry.

I find it infinitely funny how the head of a company called _Sweet Baby_ derides her customers as "whiny babies."

Big Trouble in Little China is a good example of "im the main character!" when really theyre not at all and its hilarious and well done, and somehow also not mean spirited.

None of these SBI defence articles never mention the targetted harrassment campaign people at SBI did to try to destriy the Steam group that only lists their work. They also tried to get the creators Steam account banned.

Its also the fact that suicide squad was Kevin connroy's the voice of batman for nigh 35-40 years last acting roll before he died and they sent Batman off in such a disrespectful way at the same time is also why people aren't happy with how that went.

This hyper political plague taking over almost every aspect of corporations and entertainment is so uncanny. It's obviously normal for everyone to have their opinions and beliefs, the problem now is they are being constantly forced on the public and immediately judged for not worshipping them. This whole movement of hysterical identity politics is truly a dangerous road, whatever your beliefs are there will always be an absolute scale of morality that we shouldn't ignore. Anyone manipulating the public with identity politics is absolutely not morally good, not even close.

Strong shwing from Mr H this week in a good panel

The back story for “From Dusk til Dawn” is interesting, the idea for the film came from a special effects guy, who wasn’t a writer & he’d been pitching it to writers for awhile & no one liked it. So, when Tarantino was making Reservoir Dogs on the cheap, the effects guy said he would work on the film & do the effects for the movie at “scale” price, saving QT tons of budget, on the condition that QT would write his film idea into an actual script. So, QT wrote it, but didn’t want to Direct it, so he tapped his buddy Robert Rodriguez who loved the script & the effects guy who had the original idea, did all the special effects on it.

Disparu's comment about "Why can't you lower your standards?" First answer: Well we like attractive things in our games, it's escapism from reality. Second answer: If we are talking about lowering standards - why are we going after men? It's clear that in the current year it's women who's got too high standards anyways.

Mr. H: "...it's organized chaos." MauLer: "WHY'D YOU SAY THAT NAME?!?"

Imaging the level of narcissism at play here... people who make it their life's work to PICK at other people's creations and PICK out the things that make *them* feel icky, they really have the stones to call unsatisfied customers "picky babies"

Drinker. Yes Kotaku is not as powerful as it once was ten years ago but remember these people have connections to other people in other media outlets that still have power & they will use them, like they did back then to gain control over what is happening.

Zach’s response to the no killing rule for Batman is so appropriate and sums up who he is so well. I’ve noticed throughout life that a lot people that grew up very privileged and “vanilla” for lack of a better term seem to think it’s so cool and edgy to act like a child as an adult.

Gamers collectively allowed this for years. A lot of the inclusivity narrative stuff didn’t cause noticeable pushback against big studios. Fortunately it seems like the grifters have finally outstayed their welcome

Hey, I'm 65 year old woman and I like gaming and I'm not the only one.

She's called the CEO - so yes - we can call her that. Chief Enforcement Officer.

It's not just the money that makes Iger cling to his position, it's the power, the status and the acceptance by the genuine heavy hitters not only in Hollywood, but throughout the United States, including the government, i.e. the political heft. All of these things come with being the head of the largest and most powerful entertainment company in the world.

"The Bad Batch" is fun TV adventure stuff. It not being great cinema should not be held against it.

Alway great to see Disparu on open bar

Zack Snyder should give the employees at Sweet Baby Inc public fashion tips.

When I got my Harley Wuinn tattoo in 2006 I thought, “here’s a cool fringe character that I won’t get sick of.” Fast forward to 2024…😑

Saw it coming from a distance of 10 years. It was fun to watch everyone keep denying it was happening because we need them to lay their plans out in AND wait till it has spread like wildfire. Like it or not they know the average person pretty well.

I just wanna say I love this whole critic circle.Gore and nerd and all not present as well. Good shit. Getting my seven year old into it as well as I flood him with awesome 80s and 90s cinema. He asked me if i was watchin a Drinker video the other day and before I could answer he proclaimed that if so, he wanted to watch. I WAS SO DAMN PROUD!

I remember being a die hard fan of Funhaus at the beginning, back in the day when they first moved to Rooster Teeth, and tbh seeing what went down, I'm surprised RT lasted this long. They were prime content producers based on edgy gamer stuff but got infested by a new generation of "woke" failed movie/ tv producers that actually hated the content and audience they were producing for. Think Fox from G4. I remember seeing the shit scared look in their faces towards the end when making jokes, like I know we're not allowed to say this stuff sort of thing. Hence why the OG team broke off to do their own thing. Losing Meg Turner was huge too.

Yeah, exactly. Nobody is saying SBI is actually responsible for the games being bad, but it's a damn good indicator of poor judgement at a managerial level for the companies that hire them. Which in turn is an indicator of how their games will turn out.

Mr H is right. Please bring us back games that work are mostly bug free on launch. We are tired of playing beta for a year after a supposed release of what should be a finished product. Its like buying a car and being told: "We'll fix the unclosing windows soon, and please don't mind the holes the machines made in the ceiling, we'll patch them asap..."

Is basic "supply and demand" not a thing anymore?

1:31:56 mauLer just casually doing a spot on David Lynch impression 😂😂 then morphing into Leo freaking out in his trailer 1:40:51 😂😂

That would be a great pannel topic. They say it's all for ESG money but that begs the question how are they compensated. Is it the availability of credit. You would still have to make profit to pay these loans back!

1:56:00 Yes, it's insider trading if you do that. Regardless of whether it's 'you' or you tell a friend, it's illegal to place a trade based on "Material Non-Public Information" (MNPI). MNPI includes selloffs, closures or layoffs amongst other things. On that basis then, it's better TO tell the staff first as they can't, legally, use the information. Often though that doesn't happen to prevent leaks.

I really like this panel. I think everyone had good contributions and 5 is manageable. Plus, completely shallowly, I love hearing all the different accents.

Lucasfilm should look at some of the people making fan films which are so much better than what they are producing. The fight scenes are so much better done than what Disney hhve put out and they tell stories by people who understand and love these projects. Reach out get them involved, let them pitch and idea. Given they have produced some amazing stuff on tiny budgets, imagine what they can do on a modest one.

Destruction of the agenda leads to the prospering of quality. Hail!

1:41:28 You're talking about the villain of KFP 1 Tai Lung. He spent his entire life with the expectation that his destiny is to be the Dragon Warrior. Tigress is just the opposite side of the coin where she learns to accept the disappointment with dignity and grace while Tai Lung is driven to madness.

SBI would have gotten away with murdering Batman. The Straw was that it was Kevin Conroys last time as Batman

How do you talk sweet baby inc and not give a hat tip to Az? He's been sounding the alarm on them for months before anyone cared!

Just FYI, when I use to have to deal with Insider Trading law, I can tell you that if you have insider information you are not allowed to trade until the information becomes public.

Super H (talking about his decor): It's organized chaos Bauler: WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME?!! Dx

The thing is, if Miles Morales Spider-Man doesn't suffer the same as Peter Parker spider-man, then he's really not spider-man. Suffering, and persevering is one of the character traits of the real spider-man.

Strong panel again. These guys with Az and Little Platoon should be on every time, though, I understand why you mix it up.

Can I get an audio version of this podcast anywhere? Doesn't appear to be on podcast services. Thanks.

Perfect. I am sick and now I can skip work and be entertained for 3 hours. Love it. Thanks you guys

"Sweet Baby Inc. doesn't do what most gamers think that they do." No,they do far worse. 🤨 "But we don't have to try it! AND WE DON'T HAVE TO BUY IT!" - Fugazi - 'Repeater' "Am I so out of touch? No,it's the children who are wrong." - Principal Skinner - 'The Simpsons'

COMMUNITY NOTE: Zack Snyder did not claim that Rebel Moon would be more succesful than Barbie if it was shown in cinemas, he pointed out, that by streaming it on a portal, he propably was able to reach more people in the end than a very succesful cinema released movie was able to do

Love the all English Panel. We have a Scottman, A Kiwi, a Welsh and 2 Brits (2 think) 😁😁😁 SBI is probably frothing in the mouth now! 😂😂😂

„He made the argument that viewers are not suffering from franchise fatigue.“ That made me laugh hysterically.

The irony of sweet baby inc destroying Spiderman's character more than J Jonah Jameson is insane

You'd think after 10 years of this, they'd be tried of losing by now.

7:33 There is something you guys should know about is the definition of racism. 🤓 According to the left, racism equals prejudice plus power, as viewed from a historical perspective. They say that whites, white men in particular, have always had all the power; so the left says only white people can be racist. Some person of color can be as bigoted as the day is long. But if they are not white, their bigoted comments are not considered racist, because--historically speaking--their culture had no power. ⚖️ This is why, for many years, a visible minority could tell a racist joke at work, and it would NOT cost that person his job. (Nowadays, that is starting to change...) 🤔

I actually kind of like the first of the new Tomb Raiders, despite some of it's narrative flaws (going zero to 100 in the okay with murder was *not* a good idea). The problem was at the end of that game, you were supposed to see how a fairly normal girl in Lara, became a hardened badass which was symbolised with Lara wielding 2 pistols ala classic Tomb Raider. Then they proceeded to effectively ignore all that development in subsequent entries instead of being a more updated version of her old character. Like maybe she'd try just a bit harder to not completely extinct a few species, or at the very least, feel a bit bad afterwards :D

Just hearing about these activists (they’re not journalists) keep being delusional and coming up with excuses in order to avoid being responsible and accountable is tiring and pretty much reaching a level of apathy by this point. They’re just children who never experienced anything outside of their bubble and expect to be handed everything in life, and for everyone to listen to their delusions. Their failures are on them, not us.

I swear before I properly listened to the intro (and actually looked at the subtitles) I heard "Oh, look its Mauler and Drinker... They're reviewing the latest stinker..." And then when I actually sang it in my mind, it turned into Az's voice - and went on loop.

I mean, I'm guy, and in Witcher 3 i can acknowledge that Geralt looks pretty damn good (especially considering his age!). This doesn't make me feel bad, so i don't see why women would be annoyed at playing a sexy femme fatale or something. You kinda get into the role you have in an 'RPG' after all!

Honestly, I’d love to see if you guys have ever watched and/or have any thoughts on the HBO show “Tokyo Vice”. Seems like an underrated gem that has flown underneath everyone’s radar, but it’s a great show and deserves some attention.

Zack Snyder doing Scott Steiner math 🤣

The utter hilarious irony of Drinker bringing up avatar and then the whole panel talks about Avatar and then they all say that no one talks about Avatar....

The male characters should have Dad bods ... so I don't feel self conscious.

What Disney gets wrong is that they made a series with the end goal of explaining the origins of Snoke and NuPalps. First, we know cloning is a thing. Secondly, any real fan of the franchise knew already that cloning Force Users was possible (Palpatine clone, Joruus C'baoth, etc in various novels). What fans hated wasn't the fact that there was a Palpatine clone. We hated that he was THE SAME PERSON with all the knowledge and memories of the original. It was just another example of them taking a popular story arc from the canon that people enjoyed and butchering the hell out of it to put a retarded spin on it so they could say they came up with the idea fresh. Edit: They could have thrown a younger actor in the role to play a fresh Palpatine clone. Keep the imperfect clone thing if you want to and maybe put in a throwaway scene of him downloading his memories into the next one to continue on (again not a very Palpatine thing to do to entrust your legacy to someone else). It would have been SLIGHTLY better than the route they took which has now been memed to oblivion.

My Sunday evenig is saved. I was afraid I was going to have to watch Argylle. Thanks for the upload!

Never forget that it was writer Michael Arndt (who I believe was a choice of Lucas originally) who pushed Luke out of Episode 7 because he said he couldn't figure out how to write Luke without him taking away from Rey... Arndt was supposed to write the first script and treatments for all three films (a plan!?) but couldn't even finish a full draft for Episode 7 in time. All he had was a series of notes. This forced Lucasfilm to ask Lawrence Kasdan to stop working on the Solo script and to very quickly write Episode 7 with Abrams (Kasdan also gets left out of the blame most of the time). Abrams was only hired to direct, not write, but was forced to work with Kasdan to hammer out something with the limited notes they had. Because Arndt had pushed Luke out of the story outline, they couldn't easily write him back in with the limited time they had, so they left him as a teaser at the end. And originally Abrams shot the film so Rey found Luke with rocks levitating around him. It was Rian Johnson who "asked" Abrams to take out the rocks because he decided Luke would be cut off from the Force. It has also been said that the idea of Luke being in self-exile was part of the story even when Lucas was still there, which doesn't fit with other things Lucas said about his trilogy ideas, but I think the idea likely evolved while he was working on it and he left after Arndt pushed Luke out of the script into just a cameo. Lucas reportedly described Luke as being similar to Col. Kurtz from Apocalypse Now in that he was a recluse and Rey (who was likely Han and Leia's daughter originally) having to go "down river" to find him and bring him back. But that story was supposed to take place in Episode 7, not Episode 8. Again, it was due to Arndt that that arc for Luke was pushed to Episode 8, which is where Luke was reportedly going to die. But we would have had Luke back to himself by the end of 7 and throughout 8 rather than killing him off right after he comes out of his depression, which was a stupid choice that should have been changed.

Batman also let Liam Neeson die in Batman Begins. "I won't kill you...but I don't have to save you." Snyder's contributing nothing new, except indiscriminate murder and A New Cope.

Anita Sarkisians birthday is the saddest thing I've heard in a while

@35:45 - replace Ryan Gosling as 'Ken' with James Corden, same clothing... see who complains.

Basing a stock sale/purchase on information that you received ahead of the public release is insider trading. Basing it on their impression of how business is going for your employer or from an assessment of info in the public record is not insider training.

Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway are the two most direct films Lynch made. Mulholland Drive has multiple videos “decoding” it, but the shorthand is it’s about a starry eyed young woman who is broken by Hollywood corruption. Lost Highway is about guilt and the moment of a man trying to escape his inevitable execution.

When sweet baby inc killed Batman, they jumped the shark.

I remember John Frankenheimer saying all action happens in with real speed in real time. Slow motion “action” is most of the time ridiculous.

58:27 Literally WTF are you talking about?!?! Batman has killed in EVERY movie adaptation and MAYBE one was a justifiable kill Bruce actually would have done.

The people who don't want attractive characters in video games are themselves generally unattractive. It's jealousy. They know people don't want to look at them. They can't force attractive people in real life to be unattractive, so they pick the low-hanging fruit of attacking fictional attractive characters.

DEI and social justice and social credit do not work in the video game field. We've seen so many developers and studios lose fans and lose players because they dont listen to their player base...and they think that making games full of stuff that they don't care about or want is a good thing? Indie development is honestly the only bright spot in gaming right now.

Finally. Been waiting for this bar to open. Cold cider in a colder glass please.

Iger saying he's seen these productions three or four times doesn't mean that he's seen them as a whole three of four times. I took it as, he's seen so many parts that have been shown to him (Probably for approval or different shots/cuts) that it's the equivalent of watching the production three or four times for him.

Bob Iger: "We will make less stuff so we can focus on quality. So we will put the money the other projects would have, to fund executives to direct directors we cast for the movies we haven't cancelled".

The Helldivers CEO literally told people to NOT buy the game until the servers were fixed. So I'd say they earned their reputation.

I am a bit sad that my favorite internet critics so badly misunderstand the appeal of Helldivers. HD2 is popular because it IS so revolutionary. The fact that all they can see is bugs getting shot speaks poorly of their critical abilities.

Always good to see Echo

2:08:20 Hear! Hear! Happiness is great. The show is filled with all kinds of quirky characters that you can root for and the main couple is super adorable.

2:22 Bob gave this poor man PTSD

There's a reason why some entertainment is called "brainless". Movies, tv shoes, sports, games, we're supposed to turn off our brain and enjoy ourselves. The moment you try to put people to "think" in these products, you're missing the point.

Godzilla Minus One won an Oscar!!🥂