TrueGentleman

Until we see everything that will be offered in the Paragon Store, we won't have an indication of whether Paragon Studios thinks CoH Freedom will be mainly attracting back a core of previous players as free-spending premiums or mass-recruiting typical F2Pers who pay for only a few items here and there. Out of the so-called "Five C's of MTX", if the Consumables like XP and loot boosts (i.e. pay-to-win items) outweigh the Content like signature missions and the Conceirge services like respecs and transfers, then, well, Posi and War Witch welcome our new F2P overlords (as trusted developers, they can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their farm missions).

How about if we have no idea, especially since the status quo is going to change radically as soon as F2P launches and we've received only limited information about what CoH Freedom content will be like?

If F2P does change the CoH community significantly enough for some to quit over, I can see premium players popping in and out to socialize and maybe buy shinies from the Paragon Store with accumulated points. Since we don't know the full range of offerings for the microtransactions, though, it's hard to predict how tempted a premium player might be to pay real-world monies for them (which is the $64,000 question for Paragon Studios).

This will be an interesting question to revisit in a few months. At the moment, only those already preparing to quit will have a firm answer.

He certainly possesses one of the most demoralizing fighting techniques in comics...

If BAB can be encountered as a standing NPC in another neighborhood after newbies meet him in CoH Fredom's Galaxy City tutorial zone, he deserves his own task force.

One thing I'll miss about Galaxy City is how its discrete neighborhoods had a real sense of individuality, much more than the sprawl of Atlas Park. Some time ago, I'd recommended the zone be revised so that they flowed better from one to another, but I never imagined that the devs would decide razing it was better than urban renewal.

No Kingpin? He was always a solid Spider-Man antagonist, and his first-rate arcs in Daredevil by Frank Miller and later Brian Michael Bendis raised him to A list status as a dangerous opponent, the closest the Marvel Universe has to a Professor Moriarty. (And let's not start about how John Byrne bit his style when rebooting Lex Luthor back when.) Has a supervillain ever so ruthlessly exploited a hero's weaknesses as he did in the "Born Again" arc?

Does dangerousness rank here in terms of simply overall scale or the particular threat represented to the protagonist?

Or put more simply, some people like arguing. I dislike arguing with anyone who ignores primary sources and refuses to acknowledge accepted definition. (And the biographic school of literary criticism went out with the late 19th century.)

Then again, sometimes NCSoft adopts rather curious methods to do so, e.g. sponsoring the "Golden Chippies" awards for MMO journalism. These include such tongue-in-cheerk categories as "GM Award for Appearing to Know More than the Developers", "Emote Award for Most Eminently Cheery Journalist", and "AFK Award for Hardest MMO Journalist to Track Down" and will be handed out at the Develop Conference next week in Brighton. Media relations is serious business.

Aqueline is not as curved or hooked as a hawk-nosed profile and is considered distinct from it. And Downey has more of a Greecian profile, a straight bridge, which isn't like either.

The point is, Downey differs physically from Holmes in so many ways, he has a totally different presence, which makes for an utterly different performance (not that Downey's interested in playing Holmes, really, just a fancy-dress MDJr recycling his incongruous Chaplin accent). Even Benedict Cumberbatch, who hardly resembles Holmes in most respects, has the lean kind of tallness that at least plays into the right dramatic blocking.

Is this some laudanum-soaked nightmare? Do I have to drag out the old Identi-Kit?

This is what a hawk-like nose looks like:


Because this is what a hawk looks like:


Bell's nose is aqueline, if anything.

If the evidence does not conform to the hypothesis, as the Great Detective would agree, one must devise a new one.

If you think that Bell has a "hawk-like nose", then you have your own highly idiosyncratic definition of what that looks like. There has to be a distinct hook to the profile, which neither Bell nor Downey possesses.

But the problems of phyiscal resemblance are nothing compared to the egotism of RDJr's performance. He's playing himself, again, as he does these days (I miss the actor who dedicated himself to channelling Charlie Chaplin). It's fun, but it's not Holmes.

Then it's a matter of literary criticism. I go by what Conan Doyle wrote when he created Holmes. His brilliant medical mentor is as relevant to his fictional character as his belief in fairies. "Never trust the artist. Trust the tale."

You go by Bell, I go by the book. Brett took a long time to win me over, and I still don't hold him up as the physical embodiment of Holmes. I don't know why you introduced him yourself into this thread. (At least he was tall enough to fill Holmes's shoes.)

I'm quoting Conan Doyle's own description that first introduced Holmes (incidentally, I know all about Paget and his bloody deerstalker, and Brett won me over chiefly by his performance, not his physique).

But here's what I look for in Holmes's facial features, following Conan Doyle: "sharp and piercing" eyes, "thin, hawk-like nose", and a square, prominent chin. If an actor doesn't have these exact features, then his performance must somehow convince the audience he does. Downey, a performer I generally enjoy even though he's basically always playing Robert Downey Jr., just doesn't have these. His dark eyes are too dark to focus in a piercing gaze, his nose is a ski-slope, and his strong-ish jawline has sagged with age. It's almost as badly off as casting Gary Oldman as George Smiley.

Seriously, nobody can call that nose remotely "hawk-like".

He's facing real competition with John Noble for Fringe (his first) and John Slattery for Mad Men (his third in a row). Although Dinklage is awesome, his standout "I once brought a jackass and honeycomb into a brothel" speech might prove a little ... awkward in a For Your Consideration show reel.

I don't want to belabor the 1990 movie too much since it was certainly an improvement on the 1979 one, but the simple fact is that the upcoming Captain America's art direction decided to follow Jack Kirby's origin design, particularly the brow, cheek bones, and nose (or lack thereof), plus Hugo Weaving knows how to grimace. The 1990 version just looks like a burn victim the color of a tomato.



The two types of problems with these various adaptations in this thread are that either the art direction decides to depart from original character design without considering why they worked in the first place or lazily translates them unchanged without worrying about what they'll look like in a different medium than the four-color comics page.

Does this sound even remotely like the physiognomy of Robert Downey, Jr.?
Or did Holmes really let himself go because of cocaine addiction in the years following A Study in Scarlet?

Chin and nose aside, Brett definitely had the piercing eyes and alertness down pat, whereas Downey just looks like he's tweaking when he becomes animated.

But why settle for this as the Red Skull (left) when you can have this (right)?

Campbell has clarified: "Good people. My tweet was about remaking Evil Dead - not Evil Dead 4."

I don't care - Evil Dead 2 was a remake of Evil Dead - but although there's a director on board, I can't find confirmation of the indispensable Bruce in the cast.