I know a guy who sold a script to a studio. Basically they took a clean script and in a series of six rewrites jammed in everything a movie "needs" to make money. Certain types of characters, a certain type of pacing, and merchandising. They stripped out any cultural references non-American moviegoers might not understand. In the end if it were soup it would be lukewarm and tasteless. He didn't care because he knows the business and he new better than to get attached (and they pay well), but they might have made a good movie out of the original. Nobody would bother with the rewrite (not that they actually made the movie).

So falling domestic numbers really aren't much of a surprise. The studios have a formula for making money on a world audience, so it's no surprise so many movies come out to be mostly the same.

I don't know if it's still true, but years ago when a friend of mine ran a theater he said the ticket basically pays the cost of the movie itself. All the overhead and profit came from concessions.

It's not like he made a ton of money, either.

I don't know why, but women never seem to get charged for this kind of stuff. Remember Crystal Mangam, who made up a gang rape by Duke Lacrosse players out of whole cloth? Never charged. Well, until she started knifing her boyfriends. They charged her for that.

Someday the legal system will treat women as harshly as men, but that ain't today.

Bullshit. I wish people would stop trying to sell that nonsense. Gamergate is about 1) corruption in the gaming media, where a chick can sleep her way into good reviews for a horrid game and 2) a gaming press that insults the people who pay the bills and then pretends it's all about sexism when they get called on it (you fell for that part. What a sap.) and 3) journolist-style story coordination by people who are supposed to be independent.

Attention whores like Sarkeesian only showed up later when there were enough people interested they could provoke a response on 4chan.

Though, really, rules concerning the appropriate way to make war are just another example of a cartel colluding to protect their monopoly on the use of deadly force by raising the bar of entry.

Eh... no. The rules are there to ban the use of weapons which are low on utility but high on pain and suffering. Gas, mostly. The poor man's deadly force is still RDX and its children.