Chapter 4804

Greed had naturally thought of this point as well, but this couldn't be blamed on Chris either. Whether a Hollywood commercial film gets a sequel depends on the reception of the first one. Even if this film wasn't purely a commercial film and had a certain promotional purpose, if the commercial performance was too poor, even Strange wouldn't force a second film to be made.

In other words, when they were filming the first one, they only wrote the script for the first one. Chris also filmed entirely according to the feel of the first film's script; he tried his best to make every character brilliant, which was a manifestation of his professional ability and professional ethics.

The character portrayal in the second film conflicts with that in the first film, but this can't be blamed on the first film's director trying too hard. Because at that time, no one knew what the film's future would be like; they could only do their utmost to make it the best. And later, in order to conform to the tone of the film series, supplementing character backgrounds and fine-tuning settings is also normal.

However, obviously neither Greed nor Pride were very satisfied with this portrayal. Aside from it being hard to act, they were also worried this might smash the brand. The second film's results could be worse than the first, but they absolutely could not be the breaking point; otherwise, the trouble would be huge.

"Has the director read this script?" Pride asked. But he quickly realized this question didn't mean much; the film was already about to start shooting, so the script had definitely been approved, which proved Chris had no objections to this script either.

However, for Greed, who knew Chris better, his mind became active. This script was indeed middle-of-the-road and had no problems. As the general director of a highly anticipated film series, the pressure Chris faced was immense; he would choose a more stable script to keep his film production from being affected by greater external forces, which was completely understandable.

But Greed understood that Chris was a person with higher artistic pursuits. He would even, for the sake of filming, go talk to every one of Shiler's personality traits, and even remain unfazed in Mephisto's Hell. Within such a person's compromise, there were certainly many hidden dissatisfactions and helplessness.

He wanted to do better, but had no choice but to compromise with reality; this kind of thing was unavoidable. But, since it was compromising with reality all the same, why not compromise with a better reality?

Greed immediately made up his mind; he sent Chris a message inviting him to meet, but didn't propose a time, because he knew Chris must be very busy recently, and they could only meet when he had time.

Greed wasn't in a rush either; he had to settle Pride first. The reason it was called "settling" was because Greed actually didn't have a dedicated residence; he generally lived in the sanatorium.

In the past, it wasn't a big deal; there were no real patients in the sanatorium, the environment was beautiful and quiet, and it wasn't bad as a place to live. But now there were real mental patients in the sanatorium, and quite a few patients came for consultations every week, making it more like a real mental hospital, which wasn't very suitable for living anymore.

Greed had also been looking at houses recently, just not too urgently. But he definitely couldn't let Pride stay with him in a mental hospital. Although Pride didn't say it, Greed knew he absolutely couldn't be skipping classes to run out; he must have taken his annual leave and Christmas leave consecutively to have such a long vacation.

Teaching was annoying enough to begin with, and after taking annual leave, he'd have to face a huge pile of half-assed holiday homework when he went back. If he didn't rest well on top of that, Greed didn't dare imagine what the students of Gotham University's Psychology Department would face.

"I plan to buy a house," Greed said.

Pride was genuinely startled for a moment; he said, "What kind of trouble did you run into?"

"Not buying it for you," Greed rolled his eyes and said, "I still don't have my own residence to this day; it's either live at S. H. I. E. L. D. or live in the sanatorium."

"Then why don't you buy one?"

"Hah," Greed was practically sneering, "Why don't I buy? You don't even look at what city I'm in, and what year it is here!"

After speaking, Greed pulled out a property report from the drawer. Since he wanted to buy a house, he had naturally done investigation beforehand. Matt had introduced him to quite a few reliable real estate managers, and they had all given him many good options. And the reason he hadn't bought one outright was actually very simple.

Pride had just picked up that property report when his eyes were dazzled by the string of zeros on it. There were no pictures or text descriptions on this report that were as eye-catching as that string of numbers; just one glance made one a bit dizzy.

"Not afraid of you laughing, I've earned this much money, but wanting to buy a satisfactory house in New York, there are actually not many choices." Greed leaned back against the chair back, looking utterly despondent, "My speed of earning money can't even keep up with the speed of New York land prices rising."

Although he said this, Pride also knew that Greed's difficulty in buying a house wasn't entirely a price issue; there were other reasons as well.

Buying a house in the US involves considering a great many things. Aside from some issues ordinary people all know like location, layout, lighting, there are some attributes that people from other countries would find incomprehensible that need to be selected.

For example, what structure the house is. Greed's requirement was naturally reinforced concrete. But due to certain reasons, most decent quality finished villas are not completely reinforced concrete structures, and some aren't at all.

Even those top-tier community villa districts in New York, even the top luxury mansions of the rich, are not completely reinforced concrete structures; this counts as an American tradition.

One also has to select elevation and wind direction position. Because US coastal cities more or less have some waterlogging issues; those without wildfires have floods, those without floods have wildfires. If elevation is chosen too low, it's easy to be flooded; if the direction relative to the forest is wrong, it's easy to be affected by wildfires. And in the US, disaster relief is the most equal for everyone; whether you're a poor devil or a tycoon, they uniformly don't save you. And the insurance industry is equally equal; not a single one pays out.

So if these aspects aren't vetted well in advance, the subsequent losses will be extremely heavy.

As for things like community class, neighbor character, there's no need to look at them; just uniformly treat them as vain, snobbish mental patients; American high society is all the same flavor.

The two biggest difficulties Greed faced: one was no finished house meeting his requirements, the other was that if he bought land to build himself, the price was really too expensive.

For Greed to utter the word "expensive," it was absolutely not ordinary expensive. And the reason it was so expensive was because New York currently has land that's hard to come by. Rapid technological development also drove economic development, naturally also driving up land prices in big cities.

Even before development, New York land prices were already very expensive. After more than a decade of rapid development, and with continued development visibly still to come, that land has already become ridiculously expensive.

The money for buying a house is secondary; the key is to grease all kinds of palms. Government officials, property consultants, real estate managers, transaction intermediaries, sellers — every link has to be fed full before this thing can succeed.

"Why didn't you buy earlier?" Pride asked. He was indeed puzzled by this question; actually, not long after arriving at Marvel, Greed already had a lot of money, and buying land wasn't unaffordable at that time.

And Greed clearly knew New York would develop rapidly afterwards; he should have bought the house early, otherwise he'd definitely have to spend more money; Pride didn't believe Greed hadn't thought of this.

"Wouldn't that be handing a handle to the federal government?" Greed sighed, looking somewhat helpless, "When you don't have the certainty to completely suppress them, you must act like a saint with no private desires whatsoever. Once they know you have material pursuits, they will definitely use this to manipulate you; they're best at this."

Pride's movement paused; only then did he remember that Marvel's side was different from his side. Gotham is a black hole no one wants to touch; the federal government wishes it could kick this city into the center of the Atlantic; whatever happens here they don't care, out of sight, out of mind.

But on Marvel's side, this is impossible. The US government Places Great Emphasis On the East Coast; this is a battleground both parties must contend for; they've invested a lot here, and absolutely won't let go. Anything Greed wants to do here will inevitably be constrained by them.

And the federal government is indeed very skilled at using material things to corrupt others. Wanting to make some changes in this territory, one must be a saint completely without material desires, and must even achieve that the purpose of promoting something is for the thing itself, and cannot be any additional benefits it produces.

For example, Greed's previous sanatorium, seemingly a windfall picked up during the Immortality Factor incident, but actually this sanatorium itself was for developing the Immortality Factor. That is to say, all the private property he acquired was just to help him work better.

The later farm was the same; essentially still to provide a platform and foothold for a certain group of people. Greed barely still lived in the sanatorium; the farm he basically didn't go to.

And the reason Greed only earned money and didn't spend it was also this principle. Once he chose to use the additional benefits brought by development to purchase things for himself, it was very easy to be manipulated by the federal government.

Take buying a house for example; first, the government officials' gate alone can set up countless traps. Today this one doesn't pass, tomorrow that one doesn't approve, just finding all kinds of reasons to stall you. You want to pass? Agree to their conditions.

You spent a huge amount of money, promised a huge amount of conditions, official approval finally passes, then every property consultant and such you come into contact with, existences serving private individuals, also definitely prepared a huge amount of traps and pits waiting for you to fall into. Even if you carefully avoid them all, they can still pull tricks at the last moment; anyway, they just won't let you have your way.

Greed isn't unable to resist, but the problem is, the other side only needs to say "Isn't it you who wanted to buy it yourself?" to completely occupy the moral high ground. Because this is fact; Greed is very easily defeated by his own greed. But precisely because he is too greedy, he doesn't allow himself to be bound by such low-level material desires, to bow his head to that bunch of people.

There isn't a single Shiler who is very adapted to this society; even Greed, who appears to be like a fish in water in ordinary human society, is the same. He transforms this society not by those common interest-exchange means, but also by a way that looks very crazy.

"Then why do you want to buy now?" Pride asked again, "They can similarly use this method to manipulate you."

"No, your enemies actually aren't important; what's important is your friends." He suddenly asked and answered himself, "Because you changed many things, that's why you'll try to buy a house. When your friends discover your change, they will definitely be very pleasantly surprised, and then think of every way to satisfy your wish."

"Really?" Greed looked still not too sure, "Would this look too... greedy?"

Pride laughed in a low voice: "I believe they'd want your kind of ordinary-person greed even more."