They really should have just shelved Part III when Duvall wouldn't play ball. Morally, Michael's entire arc is covered and completed in the first two movies. That's largely why the third film—which isn't at all different from the first two in terms of structure—is hated, it just feels completely unnecessary to revisit…

The Killing is going to be one of those shows nobody gets the hate for in the future. If you have the forewarning to stop watching the case that opens the series halfway through season 1 and skip directly to the two final Netflix seasons, it's actually a pretty enjoyable show for binge watching.

I'd have killed for someone to have walked into the scene during that monologue and exclaimed "It's like some secret white language I can't decode!"

From the dawn of the medium to about somewhere between the 70s and 80s, I'd agree with you. In more recent years, it's gotten dicier because the mid-budget movie is pretty much were great comedy in the movies lives and less and less of those are made every year. In Bruges is the last 'funny haha' movie I can think of…

Regarding the writing, it has improved. It's no longer inexplicably doing nothing while waiting for the premiere of a movie. (If they were just literally going to stall until Winter Soldier dropped, I just don't get why SHIELD wasn't just released in tandem with the movie. They own the goddamn network.)

The Arrowverse hasn't really pinned down exactly what model of time travel they are using at this point. As it becomes more obvious, it'll be interesting to see if that approach becomes less useful than it might appear.

If the time travel aspect of the show makes the show more expensive than they bargained for, that's easily fixed. You could have the ship break down and strand the cast in a particular setting for the bulk of a season and cut down on costuming and staging costs, etc.

I don't know. The show seems to exist as a way to retain character actors for both shows en-masse and on-the-cheap that they want to reliably re-use. It would have to tank pretty hard for that financial justification to go away

Part of the problem is Arrow tried to do too much in its first episode. Constantly bouncing around the timeline and introducing characters just completely stalled whatever momentum the actual A-plot of the pilot had.

I think its combo factors. Due to the advances in technology, cinema-quality digital effects are getting cheaper all the time. A splintering audience means you need exciting content to hook and develop your audience. And half the country having a net worth of less than $1000 means most people with a television are…

They really need to just embrace that it's a weekly version of the Flash and Arrow crossover episode. Given the premise, treating it as its own thing seems like a recipe for disaster.

My nieces binged the entire first season of Flash in a few days but only got through half the Arrow pilot. My middle niece's reasoning: "The Flash is fun and Arrow is sad and boring."

I agree wholeheartedly about the pilots for this show and Arrow—but disagree on the Flash. I thought the pilot handled the duties of setting up a series, introducing a kind of ridiculously convoluted backstory, and telling its own self-contained story pretty well.

Just on production value alone, SHIELD is vastly inferior to both Arrowverse shows. Somehow, it's on one of the original broadcast networks in the country, is basically a serialized infomercial for the owner of that network's related projects, and yet looks cheap compared to basic cable shows that are afterthoughts,…

In fairness, most feature-length comedies suck. Per generation, you get how many comedies that stand up with the best dramas released over the same period of time? 1 or 2 if you're lucky?

I have a feeling it's the corporate synergy thing. A lot of where they might want to go might be roped off already for books, games, other tv shows, anthology movies, etc.

While The Clone Wars isn't as bad as I thought it would be, it's helpful to remember why he was brought on instead of continuing with the Samurai Jack team from the miniseries that ran when the prequels were actually in release: Lucas doesn't like to compare poorly to the hired help. He threw a fit and directed ROTJ…

The movies strongly suggest that, by the time they happen, Yoda and Obi-Wan are the only survivors of Vader's campaign to exterminate the Jedi and Luke and Leia—or the still unidentified character Yoda refers to when Obi-Wan laments Luke is their last shot at taking down the Sith—are the only force-sensitive people…

The only lines in A New Hope that express disbelief in the Force are from Solo and the imperial officer Vader Force chokes—and both of them paint a picture more of personal disbelief than "the galaxy has forgotten the Jedi completely." (Even Luke has heard some of the Clone Wars stories and the movie goes out of its…

SoA is basically the FX show I had in mind when I wrote that. (The other three I wouldn't include as examples of that—though Rescue Me did take a massive dive in quality over the course of the show and only really went as long as it did to get to the 9/11 tenth anniversary—because they are either actually shows that…