As long as I get a decent MORBIUS movie, I’ll be happy. 

“as well,” I mean.  Not “instead.”

For what’s it worth, TUC is my third-favorite Trek movie, after Khan and the whales. And, yes, TUC had Kirk and Spock confronting their mortality and changing times.

“Can it be that we have outlived our usefulness?”

No reason Picard can’t be at a difficult crossroads, too.  He’s complicated guy, not a plaster saint. 

Ditto. Judging from TOS at least, the Federation always struck me as a loose alliance of myriad different planets and civilizations, each with their own customs and cultures, not some centralized, monolithic entity.

Pretty sure every species in the Federation doesn’t allow for ritual combat at wedding ceremonies.…

The Last Jedi was great.  The new SW movies are reminding me why we all loved STAR WARS in the first place. 

On the other hand, every third episode of TOS reminded us that humanity was still a half-savage child race with a long way to go. We hadn’t destroyed ourselves and had made a lot of progress since 1966, but people were still people, struggling to balance logic with emotion, getting their hearts broken, encountering…

Oh, I finally figured out why you were confused. I meant that the movie adaptation had been in Development Hell for ages, not the book.  Development Hell is a Hollywood thing. 

Bingo. Sometimes you want fancy fine cuisine and a nice wine; sometimes you just want a burger and beer. Depends on your mood—and also the context.

If I’m at a Fourth of July barbecue, I damn well want a juicy burger and maybe some macaroni salad. If I’m at an ethnic food festival, I’m not going to stick to pizza and…

Same thing with popcorn movies. Some are incredibly well-crafted and entertaining; some are simply inept. Same with serious dramas, art films, musicals, costume dramas, goofy comedies, etc. Genre does not determine “quality.” Execution does.

It’s not an either/or thing. Dismissing all art films as pretentious garbage…

It’s funny. Some books zoom straight from print to the screen: GONE GIRL, HARRY POTTER, THE HUNGER GAMES, FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY, etc. But other books can languish for decades in Development Hell before they finally hit the screen: INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, OUTLANDER, ENDER’S GAME, THE ALIENIST, etc. And some books…

It’s just easier than using italics or quotation marks.

Although I supposed one can argue that hyperbolic titles like WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST or BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB practically cry out to be in all caps!  :)

Yep. Hollywood has been talking about making the first book into a movie since 1997, but it took twenty-plus years for THE MEG to finally hit the big screen—after many false starts and announcements and “creative differences.” 

Whoa, folks. We can defend movies like THE MEG without trashing more artistic films in general. My point was that popcorn flicks and more ambitious films can and do co-exist, not that “art films suck.” Great art films are great, just as goofy shark movies can be great fun as well.

You can have “2001" AND “Barbarella”…

Isis on “Assignment: Earth,” of course.  Gary Seven’s partner. 

Big, fun monster movies have been around for forever. If cinema survived VALLEY OF THE GWANGI or THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD and its ilk, somehow I think it will survive THE MEG.

Here’s the thing: the problem with the “popcorn movies squeeze out quality movies” argument is the questionable assumption that,…

Yep, to give credit where it’s due, we should note that this is based on a book by Steve Alten, which has been in Development Hell for forever.

I confess it always bugs me a little when movie reviews fail to mention the original book or author. Go figure. :)

I assume you’ve seen THE COMPANY OF THE WOLVES?  But, yes, Carter is overdue to be revisited onscreen.  

Can’t resist pointing out that Angela Carter and Tanith Lee and, yes, Anne Rice were doing the “adult” fairy-tale thing with style decades ago. 

Two words: artistic license.
Three words: suspension of disbelief
Four words: old continuity, updated visuals

Works for me.

But Kirk got seven movies. Picard only got four. :)