I think that scene introducing the family is precisely what I mean though. Mon had arranged to drop Leida off at school on her way to work. The timing wasn’t perfect (Leida apparently had a later than normal start), but it’s an entirely normal and appropriate thing for a working parent to do.

I disagree. Mon is just being a parent. A working parent, yes, but there’s been nothing so far to suggest she’s neglecting her daughter in any way.

It’s the reason this story exists that’s missing. What’s the hook that distinguishes this human/Na’vi conflict from what we already saw? Because “the same, but now with swimming” is what I’d expect from a videogame sequel, not a film.

It’s not that it lacks complexity, it’s that six weeks out and after two trailers there’s not really a hint towards what the actual conflict is here, not even an inciting incident. There’s a middle ground between not spoiling everything and this odd strategy of barely telling us more than that the movie exists and…

Agreed. They seem to be approaching this as if it’s some intensely anticipated piece of entertainment that everyone should go in to with as little knowledge as possible, which is a weird choice. This isn’t Endgame or the Game of Thrones finale, it’s not even The Rise of Skywalker. It’s a sequel to 13-year-old film…

imagine a Mission Impossible movie directed by him

Does the show feature significant LGBTQ content? I’d think that should be the primary measure of the tag’s appropriateness, not whether or not it meets some minimum standard of positive depiction. It’s not like anyone’s going to stumble into a show that clearly presents itself as the life story of a notorious serial…

A prequel? Is this set somewhere within the existing Before the Incal, or does it ignore it outright? Because that ended with Difool getting his class “R” diploma and led right into the opening moments of The Incal, so based on this preview, there’s no obvious place for it to fit.

Game of Thrones should’ve been 10 seasons*. House of the Dragon should be god-knows-how-many seasons longer than necessary. Martin could stand to remember that sometimes less is more — if he did, maybe A Song of Ice and Fire would be long since done, instead of an unfinished sprawl of threads that he can’t figure…

One of the show’s strengths is that it’s not interested in those sorts of Easter eggs, even ones that it could drop in without skipping a beat. It makes the universe feel bigger and less incestuous, which is something the Lucasfilm Story Group would do well to learn, given in the past they’ve proudly boasted about…

For my money, it’s an odd choice. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not gonna turn my nose up at a few years of fun, weird, DC films (Legion of Super-Heroes please), but I won’t be surprised if this partnership ends prematurely.

That Game of Thrones should’ve been cancelled after one season for performing so “poorly” (i.e. pretty well, but not as impressively as it got further into its run)? Presumably said with irony, although I could not tell you what point is being made.

The Expanse was fine, despite having three more books worth of story to tell. The Man in the High Castle was a disappointment though — it didn’t so much have an ending, as stop.

I don’t think you can separate Scott’s work by period. It’s more the quality of the script that’s handed to him (or *shudder* he develops). If it’s great, he’ll shoot the hell out of it; if it’s okay, he may improve it with his visual stylings; if it’s bad, he’ll make a bad film. Problem is, he seems to have no sense…

I know it’s out there, and while I’ve not read it myself, by most accounts it’s equally shit, just in different ways.

How do people still look at Prometheus, a film (famously a director’s medium) that couldn’t be more emblematic of its director’s strengths and weaknesses if it tried, and blame it all on just one of the two credited writers?

Honestly, criticism of HK-influenced action was largely accurate too. It was Western filmmakers that didn’t seem to get it for the longest time (and many still don’t even now), ’cause they kept horrifically overediting when the thing that made HK action films great was that they had less cuts and allowed you to really…

but That’s not how most critics judge movies.

I think it’s perfectly reasonably to have a plan beyond the first entry, but yeah, that first entry at least should absolutely be designed to work wholly alone (which doesn’t mean everything must be tied up in a neat bow, but the main threads need to reach a satisfying resolution). How can you expect an audience to…

it bucked their expectations so hard for a Star Wars movie that they didn’t know what to do.