[HoneyBadger]

Watching the movies is one of my favorite things in the game!

I'm definitely against getting rid of it. It's not like you're forced to watch it, anyway, and by watching it, you can improve your tactics for the next combat.

The merc thing isn't bad, although the way I'd do it is give the commander units the Merc ability, which makes them freespawners for whatever their particular specialty is-elephants, icthys, villains, pirates, whatever, and then you hire the mercenary captain from the merc pool, and you get the captain and whatever starting troops, and the captain freespawns for whoever's paying the bills.

The longer you pay, the more benefit you get.

Here's another idea: the ability to customize forged items, in-game. Have certain abilities, like armor piercing, regeneration, magic resistance, whatever, pop up at certain levels of Construction-1-9, and then when you forge an item, you can design it, and pay for something custom, on the spot, with gold and gems. Kindof/sortof like NWN2. This would go hand in hand with the way forging works now, the custom items would just cost less than the "standard" ones.

I'd get a kick out of customing say an "ice axe" or a "fire trident", and then selling it on the MP open market, or equipping a hero with all custom stuff.
The balancing would be the higher expense and a limitation on what would be possible.