True. I’d argue that the three most important character relationships in the prequels are Anakin-Obi-Wan, Anakin-Padme, and Anakin-Palpatine, but none of those are really established that well in Episode I. Combined with how bad the writing and acting are throughout the trilogy, you’re left having to take the movies’…

Completely agree. If you’re jonesing for the actual story of Anakin Skywalker being a heroic Jedi Knight in a galactic war, Clone Wars really scratches that itch (though be warned that there are 3-4 episodes per season that are as bad as anything in the prequels; fortunately they’re mostly skippable). You can’t fix…

I think The Clone Wars does a much, much better job of exploring the genuinely interesting story that Lucas was trying to tell, and really sells Anakin’s arc. But absolutely none of that comes through in the movies - instead of seeing Anakin as a swashbuckling hero brought down by the horrors of war and his inability…

I cannot wait until the eventual evening when my wife goes to bed early while I smoke a ton of weed and enjoy this early frontrunner for Best Picture.

On the one hand I’m sympathetic to his point of view - the viewing experience for both TV and movies has fundamentally changed for a lot of people because of streaming services and binge watching, and the big Hollywood studios have mostly withdrawn from the mid-budget movie realm. I can see how that’s a real bummer…

Were they finally going to hire a fight choreographer or a writer or director who had ever seen literally a single kung fu movie in their life? Because if the answer to those questions is no then I’m pretty sure season 3 would have been just as terrible as the first two. 

I’m glad that the show is cherry-picking some of the interesting stuff about Wanda from the comics, but I hope that they stop short of going full House of M because that story fundamentally broke her as a character. Like, you cannot use Scarlet Witch as a character anymore without either making her a villain (even if…

I never thought I’d be the fan complaining about crossovers because it’s such a cliched complaint, but... I’m so tired of all the crossovers. Marvel has been just brutal over the last 15 years interrupting their entire publishing line, sometimes more than once a year, for these crossovers that are so rarely worth it.…

I don’t want to be too mean about it, but it does feel like the AV Club would benefit from having fresh eyes on SNL for their reviews. SNL can vary in quality pretty wildly episode-to-episode, and even within episodes, and it’s certainly fair to point out when a sketch doesn’t work or note systemic problems like how…

This is a really harsh review! Obviously with SNL there are always jokes or sketches that fall flat, but I haven’t laughed this much watching a new episode in a while.

The first time I saw Blade Runner about 15 years ago I was already in college and the version that just about anyone who owned it on DVD had was the Director’s Cut. I never actually saw the theatrical cut until a few years ago when it was inexplicably on cable, and it’s a good thing that that was my first exposure to…

What’s exhausting about it to me is that live action comic book movies and TV are essentially following the same path that comic books themselves did in the 90s: after decades of being kind of silly and low-budget (though enjoyable for what they are, if you’re into it), there has been an explosion of works that deal…

I know that it’s part of the MCU’s model to always be leaving breadcrumbs that lead to the next thing, but I thought that AoU was the only movie where you could really see those gears turning and it felt like they were just going down a checklist introducing new characters, concepts, and character arcs as robotically…

Yeah, obviously the characters have more room to breathe starring in their own TV show rather than being two characters among many in some absolutely gigantic casts, but this show has made me actually care about Wanda and Vision in a way that the movies never did. 

The character beats and situational humor strike me as being authentically Sunny, but the dialogue is really stilted and doesn’t particularly sound like these characters. 

I truly do not understand how Warner Brothers spends so much money on the DC movies yet the CGI looks like such absolute dogshit. It’s been true of all of the Snyder DC movies, but even in Wonder Woman 1984 there were multiple scenes where the CGI was so atrocious it pulled me out of the movie. 

In my experience when a creator treats Darkseid and his minions as generic evil aliens rather than engaging with any of the actual themes and ideas of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World it is a surefire sign that they’re a fucking hack. 

I don’t think that’s really the case, though? Like, there is definitely a mystery at the heart of the show that obviously will be solved over the course of the season, but that’s the nature of mysteries. Persistent uncertainty is not the same thing as mystery! In fact, I think that a mystery that doesn’t drop bread…

Same - a lot of huge blind spots in my cinematic knowledge that I’ve always meant to catch up on and have now finally been getting around to. 

Yeah that’s probably true. And if it were just “HBO but now also some Cartoon Network stuff and other TV shows that you remember from your teen years” I would have been way more hesitant about adding it, but the fact that it’s that stuff plus a pretty solid slate of movies is what swung it for me.