And Tolkein knows his Bible. He was actually involved in the Jerusalem Bible - mostly the book of Job, IIRC.

I choose to believe this is David 'Peep Show' Mitchell and not David 'Cloud Atlas' Mitchell, regardless of what you say to the contrary.

I feel like it's a legitimate complaint in that, like King Kong, it only highlights the flaws in the storytelling of Jackson, Walsh and Boyens. The LOTR films were long but they were adapting an enormous novel; there are scenes in those movies that last a few minutes conveying information it took Tolkein a thousand…

Yeah in a sense it's like the Prequel Star Wars movies: Even if you find them bad (and it's obviously fair to do so), they're as personal as blockbuster action adventure movies of this stupendous budget are going to get.

Which is unfortunate, as you get the feeling Jackson would have really liked to have a lot of Silmarillion stuff in these movies. Or just make a Silmarillion movie.

Legolas is the least gratuitous LOTR cameo so far, I think. The most is Frodo's. I guess Legolas being in the plot is kinda hard because he can't evolve much as a character - dude hated dwarves when we met him in FOTR, he can't mellow out towards Bilbo's gang now - but if you look at it as 'with the expanded film…

And here Smaug is a boss who has long scripted dialogue and a fairly complicated strategy to deal with.

I spent a lot of time watching this one thinking about what Duncan Jones' Warcraft movie will look like. Because, ideally, not this.

I'd be interested to see a FX period drama, but ideally not under Sutter's tutelage.

When will it be Maisie Williams' turn to be Sarah Connor?

Hasn't that already happened though? Or is this a clean slate reboot? Or is it happening agai - forget it.

Will be kind of hard to remain a nun now that that's public knowledge.

Yeah sorry about that. Tired and literal-minded.

That's because he can be recast and have an in-universe explanation for it. Recasting Kirk and Spock is a lot harder to handwave.

So would Sony have the rights to use multiple Spider-Women? A Web Of Spider-Women, coming soon…

Not really? I mean I think this depends how we define the Marvel strategy. I see it as a series of standalone movie(s) and movie franchises that are also interconnected. So there's an Iron Man Trilogy, but the Iron Man Trilogy intersects with the Avengers movies, which intersects with the Thor duology, and so on.…

Oh man I just can't wait.

Exactly.

I haven't watched it yet either. But I do plan to make good on that.

To be fair, that's pretty much what Abrams did. He rebooted the universe and kept it canon all at once.