Correction: They have to pay residuals for it being there. Whether anyone watches it is irrelevant. Streaming residuals are based on the size of the subscriber base to who could stream it, not the viewership who actually does.

The issue is residuals. Residuals for streaming content is paid out based primarily on the subscriber count of the service, regardless of whether any of those subscribers are watching that content. So even if something like Crater gets zero views, Disney still have to pay out just for it being available to their 150m+…

From what quotes I’ve read from him previously, it’s always sounded to me like Villeneuve means Messiah specifically. If it’s that short, perhaps there’s some aspect of it that he wants to explore in more depth than is covered in the novel, but I don’t think he’s afraid of ending on a downer.

My daughter commented that the action set pieces just went on and on and didn’t know when to stop

What Maverick did so well was to successfully market itself to older people who remember the original well, but very rarely go to the movies... and they came out in droves for it. The genius was in achieving that whilst also keeping it accessible and appealing to younger viewers. The Goose and Iceman stuff will…

And humanity, despite having not reached enlightenment by any other measure, unanimously stuck to their guns on this one issue for 10,000+ years?

They’re not writing the show though. The question is whether there’s a decent idea in there that better writers could do something with.

You just don’t understand the genius at work. Everyone knows that the way to make a website more appealing to advertisers is less people who can see it.

Why would the Skrulls make Hydra’s takeover less plausible? They’re not psychic, they just have unusually good disguise abilities. Fury would’ve needed to suspect Hydra’s existence before he tried using Skrulls to infiltrate them.

Also, FFS, we’re only a third of the way through the story. There’s still 3-4 hours of content that might answer whatever questions anyone might currently have.

What could Fury do? For all the resources he’s had at his disposal, he’s earthbound.

I want to trust Gunn, but have little to go on. Superman as a character is totally out of sync with his oddball Troma sensibilities.

Those are largely easter eggs, not set up. I’m not a fan of easter eggs myself, but again, the MCU is light on them and usually keeps them pretty unobtrusive. I cannot think of many examples of it being very “Wink-wink. This guy, eh? You know who he’s gonna turn out to be, right? Wink. Wink. Wiiiiiink.”, the only one…

Frankly, I think one-and-dones should be the way forward, at least for a while. Bring in top filmmakers who would usually be reluctant to work under the demands of a greater franchise, and just let them make totally standalone entries with no semblance of shared continuity, and each getting to cast their own Bond.

Dragon Age 2 is not perfect, but it’s my favourite Dragon Age. I couldn’t even finish Inquisition — it felt like a backwards step after DA2 (and oh so much busywork).

Yeah, there is a little in Age of Ultron. But I specifically didn’t say the MCU totally avoided that sort of thing, just that it’s extremely rare. And in the case of Thor’s sidequest, which is probably the worst exception in the entire series, it’s maybe 2 or 3 minutes of screentime in total, and the central focus of…

I didn’t feel the push to link it with the other movies

“I think you fall into a bit of a trap if you try and set up a first movie whilst also planning for sequels”

Tons of great movies started shooting with an unfinished script. Tons of movies that did have a complete script turned out to be shit. It’s not a particularly good indicator of final quality.

Your attempts at analysis are incredibly shallow, which shouldn’t be a surprise when elsewhere you were comparing Birds of Prey to The Suicide Squad on pure box office performance, as if there hadn’t been a pandemic between their releases (and still a major ongoing concern when the latter came out).