Neither story can support itself without the original villain concept to refer to.

Exactly. Obi-Wan and Yoda were already clear precedent for the idea that individual Jedi had survived the purge and gone into hiding by themselves. There doesn’t need to be a secret community of them somewhere to explain if and when any more reappear. And some of them may well have been helping fight the Empire…

You realise Fast X is not a Disney film, right? You think Disney is paying this site to have someone point out that Universal’s film is doing decent business (and that Super Mario Bros., another Universal film, did really great business)? Just, wow.

What are you talking about? Disney do release their movies for review before opening. The review embargo for The Little Mermaid lifts later today, I believe, and the film doesn’t come out until Friday. That’s an entirely unremarkable schedule.

Also...

I think it’s treated as an afterthought because it literally is one. At that point, all the characters are still focused on saving Rocket, and by the time events have slowed down enough for them to reflect, there’s considerable narrative distance, and going back to it would feel either clumsy or half-hearted.

And yet I would still be shocked if they really said it to Devlin and Emmerich.

the[y] told us, ‘This is the best first draft we’ve ever read of any script.’

What you’re missing is that they’re paying residuals to Willow and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, regardless of whether you watch them. Residual payments for streaming have nothing to do with if people are actually watching the show or how many are, just that the show is available to be watched.

Fixed might have been the wrong word, but if a show you made is licensed to a streaming service, your residuals are tied to the overall subscriber base of that service rather than the performance of your show.

Kasdan’s comments screamed desperate optimism from the off. It may not have officially been dead when he made them, but it might as well have been.

You’d think that the answer is that residuals should be tied to primarily to views rather than subscriber base. Popular shows are what earn those subscription fees, and should be reflected in residuals to the people who make them.

I wonder how much of it is that they’ve shown a lot of behind the scenes stuff already, so you know exactly what is and isn’t real. Although I suspect that the smooth ride along the very conveniently ramp-shaped rock formation has a fair bit to do with it too.

The narrative is tighter than ever

I mean, they were already teasing a big death in the issue. “Most shocking issue of Amazing Spider-Man in 50 years” was the selling point. The “Fallen Friend” issue was announced a while back without specifying who it referred to, but with promises that all would be revealed on May 31st.

Nah, this was almost certainly a genuine leak. All the media campaign stuff was ready to go in a couple weeks when the issue came out, and they’ve had to push it out early.

That’s absolutely what this is. She’ll be revived before the movie, and somehow have been reclassified as a mutant in the process.

Fair enough. I never saw Planet Terror at all, but other replies have suggested that a bunch of twists occurred in the missing reel, so it’s definitely not just a sex scene.

No, they definitely cut stuff from the double bill version. The standalone versions are each ~15 minutes longer, which includes restoring the lap dance sequence in Death Proof, which I believe is what you’re actually thinking of.

I mean, they’ve been doing literally impossible stuff on the regular for a fair few movies now. Jumping between skyscrapers, driving on a collapsing rope bridge (then swinging across on the single rope left behind), going into space. It’s all well and good that they crash a bunch of cars into each other for real, but…