I think also if they had not sent all the tech into the sun a lot of nitpicks about that plot point would go away. Just leave it a mystery what happened to all the tech in the billions of years since they settled. Or maybe better yet, they should’ve made it a plot point that the tech was for the most part damaged…

I’ve come to realize how much the ending of TFA shot the whole ST in the foot.  It should’ve ended with Rey and Chewie taking off in the Falcon, not in actually reaching Luke.   It locked in way too much of where the story could go in TLJ, and destroyed any chance for in-between movie development.

This. A frequent counter argument to the lack of plan in the ST is that Lucas didn’t have a plan for the OT, but he was still the main person overseeing everything, so it was still “one voice” in a way. It’s doable to create something like this without a plan, but you have to be willing to follow where it goes, and…

Rey and Finn were the primary heroic movers of TFA. Poe’s role in TFA is so reduced that he’s only comparable to Leia in plot function but not dramatic weight. 

I hear what you are saying about Nyong’o’s Maz, but I think the counterpoint is that POC should have a right to be motion captured characters, too;  I didn’t see it as hiding her so much as she was playing an alien. (The rendering, I honestly don’t know. It seemed okay to me but I will totally grant if I’m missing…

I felt that Rey and Finn were definitely the stars of TFA, with Ren as the main villain. (Poe was barely in the movie.). I’d say that Boyega was justified in thinking Finn was the main heroic male character of the sequel trilogy after filming it.

For everyone coming to Johnson’s defense, I’d say that just giving an arc or role to a POC isn’t enough if it’s not a good one. Mere presence is not enough.

I get you, but a lot of the b-team guys you mention were sort of supporting while they were in the Avengers, too. (And some, like Black Knight, do have trouble fitting in anywhere else after serving in the Avengers).

I’ve been generally unhappy with the increasing blurring of membership between the mutant teams and the Avengers, but I did like Hickman’s work with Sunspot and Cannonball during his Avengers run.

But even in real life it doesn’t work that way. Just because you may be more objectively attractive than someone else will not matter if you are socially awkward or have some other aspect of your personality/background that has been targeted for whatever reason by bullies or the “in-crowd”.

I think his aim with the Freaks and Geeks cast was not so much that they were the non-beautiful people, but that they were not the in-crowd with the preoccupations that most other teen shows dramatize.

I don’t know what these idiots think would happen if Disney buys DC. Marvel and DC as comics universes would just get less interesting after the initial shock of having everyone smushed together. It would be too many overlapping characters and guaranteed someone’s favorite character would be diminished, and less…

He was a male teenager with the usual identity issues about being real, selling out, masculinity, on top of whatever troubles he was experiencing back in Philly, on top of having his whole life uprooted and being sent away by his mother. I think maybe only a really well adjusted kid wouldn’t act out about all that,…

I thought the Chili Peppers were having a good resurgence there with Frusciante back in the band.

So when we were watching Mission Impossible: Fallout, at the end when Cruise has to deal with one seemingly impossible feat after another in stopping Cavill’s helicopter and it culminates in the crash and rolling wreckage and these two characters still fighting, my wife and I just started cracking up. Because we…

I stand corrected. Had no idea it lasted that long, and without original cast members for a large part of it.

I’m sure the success of Fuller House has opened the door to these reboots of kiddie target sitcoms of decades past. (Thought Girl Meets World, which premiered before, didn’t exactly catch fire.)

I guess. It has an iconic look and setting. Hollywood keeps resurrecting other IP that has less going for it than that.

I get you. Sometimes it works really well, and you can appreciate the magic even if you can clearly see the soundstage trappings.

I like Tom’s writing and this column, just felt he was off the mark a bit here.