Star Wars is a direct homage to (and exists because Lucas couldn’t get the rights to) Flash Gordon ... which was very much a continuing universe of movies. And those movies were made in the 30s. They were created as serials, but they were also released as three feature-length movies that tied together, starred the…

I think about this from time to time, too, because I have spent an inordinate amount of time arguing about Star Wars online, despite the fact that I’m not sure a single Star Wars film would crack my top 100 list. Oh well. ‘Tis the internet - arguing about Star Wars, distributing porn, and funneling crackpot conspiracy…

Out of curiosity: does CBS All Access allow what would essentially be R-Rated content, or is this going to be like the 90s miniseries where the book kinda gets its teeth removed in a lot of parts? The Stand is a dark fantasy, not a horror book, but its horror elements are important.

I like Star Wars a lot. I’ve watched all eleven movies at least three times apiece (some way more than that). I’ve watched the entirety of the Clone War series. I’ve watched the entirety of the Mandalorian. I’ve read a few of the books. I’ve played KOTOR multiple times, KOTOR II, Jedi Knight, Jedi Knight 2, Tie…

It’s really, really bad too. Phantom gives us Duel of the Fates and one of the better lightsaber battles in the series. But the first hour solid of the movie is shockingly dull, obnoxious, and tedious ... and it only intermitently picks up from there. The pod race, which half the internet hates, is the first mildly…

Out of the eleven films that have been made, it’s fairly easy to argue that the only one that doesn’t “kinda suck” is Empire.

A New Hope - way more dated than Empire. Not all that much actually happens. The one lightsaber fight is garbage. Mark Hamill can’t act yet at all and even Carrie Fisher’s not that great.…

But why? At an estimated net worth of $110m, if he sticks that in basic index funds, he can pay himself roughly four million inflation-adjusted post-tax dollars a year, every year, for the rest of his life, even if he never makes another dime and without ever digging into that initial $110m.

The only reason for him to…

Gonna have to agree to disagree on this one.

People say a lot of things when they’re trying to protect someone. “After, we can go wherever” certainly falls within those bounds.

Labeling the Fireflies’ actions as “tried to kill a kid” is very weird to me. There’s a universe of difference between “creating a cure for this infection will cost this kid’s life” and “we want to kill this kid.” The Fireflies are not the heroes, but they are absolutely not the bad guys. Marlene’s journal, which you…

I could not disagree more strongly with this. I don’t believe Joel is redeemed, that Neil Druckman intended him to be redeemed, or that viewing it as a redemption makes it a more satisfying or better story.

Joel is the bad guy. He is, to be honest, a complete fucking monster. An unrepentant murderer and a terrible human being. That’s the whole reason Tommy exists in the story - to contrast against him.

Humanity is what humanity is: a complex, completely amoral natural system that can’t be assigned either “good” or “bad”…

would be no different according to Joel

I love this ending because it is a monstrous, monstrous betrayal that is completely human and believable. Joel looks Ellie in the eye and lies to her, because he can’t let her go, because he loves her. Ellie knows he’s lying. You can see it on her face. But she accepts the lie because she loves him. That doesn’t…

They had it with Kylo Ren, who was a vastly more interesting villain than Snoke, which is what Johnson was trying to show people. Then Abrams blew everything up.

Disney: “Wait, which one do you guys want? What will make you stop yelling on the internet and go see the movie again? PLEASE SOMEBODY TELL US WE’LL DO ANYTHING YOU ASK! LOOK THE WHOLE MOVIE IS ALREADY JUST A SERIES OF INCOHERENTLY LINKED FANSERVICE SETPIECES! WE DON’T CARE! JUST GIVE US YOUR MONEY!”

But it’s not a throwaway line. It’s a massive, incredibly important character moment for both parties. It’s Kylo Ren wielding the abusive boyfriend playbook to perfection, using what he knows about Rey against her to convince her that he’s the only one who can truly love/understand/etc her. But at the same time it’s…

Oh, fun ... gatekeeping!

I don’t think The Last Jedi dashed any “plot-lines” against the rocks. It maybe dashed a couple mystery boxes JJ left lying around half-open. The plot-lines at the end of TFA are:

I’m not here to defend the casino sequence, which really felt to me like “Christ JJ set me up with so many characters and I need to give this one something to do” but, I mean ... the cheapening of the franchise? Have you actually watched the original trilogy in recent years? The plotting is just as incoherent, the…