You realise that Star Wars was even a cultural phenomenon in 1976? Additionally, how we view Shakespeare now might not be how we view Shakespeare in the future but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about him now. Just because he might be more or less important in the future has no bearing on now.

Oh don’t get me wrong; Bill Shakespeare was really fucking good at what he did, and if you put together a “best of” list, he’s gonna be at the top or at least near it. I’m just pointing out that he was good precisely BECAUSE he had “broad”, “four-quadrant” appeal and it’s not like he’s an entirely separate breed from…

Well, I mean, you compare it to every other Marvel movie as if they’re bad movies. Black Panther has themes and issues as well, I mean anyone can see the themes of wealth, privilege and the burden of resonsibility. As for Shakespeare, I’m not sure how subtle “if you prick us do we not bleed?” is.

The CGI was bad enough that they LOOKED like toys, I’ll give you that

The world moves too fast nowadays for us to have the luxury of waiting 400 years before having the necessary time and distance to analyse something. If something’s culturally significant, sometimes it takes time to have an impact but sometimes the impact is immediate. It’s only been a few decades since the advent of…

People need to remember that if Shakespeare* was alive today he’d be doing “low brow” popcorn movies. His oeuvre includes romantic comedies with dick jokes, “edgy” action romps with ghosts, witches, tragic villains and suicidal heroes, and most of his stuff includes actors rapping the closing dialog of a scene in…

Two things:

The reason nobody has a problem with them killing is because Tony Stark et al don’t patrol the streets dealing with street crime like Batman does. Spidey and Punisher and the Defenders do, and that’s why Spidey doesn’t kill anyone (and even saves the Vulture’s life), the Defenders have only killed in situations where…

^This is a vastly underappreciated point. Part of the fun of The Avengers was seeing this team of characters who (on paper) shouldn’t work in a single film. Cap was an aw-shucks square-jawed hero from the 1940s mood; Iron Man was a futuristic gundam pilot; Black Widow was a spy; Hawkeye shoots arrows really good; Hulk…

Man, when I played through the bizarreness that was the Patriots controlling civilisation by using AI to curate the “truth”, I never thought I’d be LIVING in that world

I like how this movie uses the black experience to discuss something that hasn’t really been discussed in this way in mainstream culture before but is still universal: the human need to belong. This isn’t a specifically black issue but examining it from a black perspective is illuminating (no pun intended). This need…

Ehh, I think that was down to bad CGI more than anything. The models obviously weren’t mocapped so the attacks and motions had no “emotional content” in them.

Americans tend to get rejected by the nations of their ancestors. For example, in Ireland there’s a phrase called “Plastic Paddy” which refers to somebody who knows nothing about Irish culture but still refers to themselves as Irish just because their great-great-great-whatever was Irish. In Ireland, Irishness isn’t…

Shuri was shouting internet memes though. Wakanda didn’t let the outside world know much about it but it sent War Dogs around the world learning about the world, and has presumably done so for centuries. Wakanda imports culture, it just doesn’t export it. Well, it didn’t.

You do realise that one of them died, right?

I get that the natural assumption is that he’s barking but I assume he’s actually gorilla-grunting.

Exactly! Everyone knows you give it to whoever can pick up a hammer.

I mean the UK has a monarch too and it doesn’t stop it from being a modern nation.

This is a kingdom that’s untouched by colonialism, yes, but that’s not to say that it couldn’t acquire knowledge of Hinduism through normal trade and travel. It doesn’t have to match any real African country.

THPOILERTH