In terms of trailers I watched yesterday, Trainspotting 2 trailer > Wonder Woman trailer but I'm pretty fucking psyched for both.

Strong second.

The question was:

Pepper Potts is certainly a love interest role, but I dunno, I'll take a sharply written love interest with a clear personality over a wan, vague counterpoint who has no more function than a love interest. And I'm just not that into the "well, in future films" argument. It can be applied to a lot of weak stuff in…

Yeah, I wasn't super-impressed with Strange's characterization, either, now that you mention it. It's largely Iron Man Lite. But the discussion was about the female characters in the movie, so that's what I was discussing.

Because whether or not it's consummated in this particular movie or not, she's clearly in the love interest role. I only brought it up because a commenter above said it was an unfair comparison. I wish it was, but it's not.

I feel like I knew more about her professional life, maybe because she interacted with people besides Thor (e.g., the Kat Dennings character). And though I don't love having the female lead be an automatic love interest, that did give her more of a developing relationship with Thor than "we used to date, now he shows…

What are the actual facets of her life as depicted by the movie? Besides her saying/implying, I have this life and now you're just showing up. What are her personality traits, besides a generic smartness? She's a smart professional woman, but she doesn't seem to have any thoughts or opinions that are unrelated to…

It's pretty much been once a month! There was one month we skipped because of sheer volume of other stuff going on, but generally it turns up in the last week or so of the month.

I will say, although I try to go for less obvious pairings (e.g., DiCaprio instead of De Niro for Scorsese), I plan on doing Depp 'n Burton at some point. But not next month. :)

I do picture her reading the script for Body Double and De Palma pitching her on playing the gal who gets stabbed to death with an electric drill and her going "OK I'm out."

If only I had addressed this in the essay.

So while she could definitely have a lot more to do in the film, she isn't a repeat of either Pepper or Jane. She's hardly even a love interest.

downvoted

Ah. Like I said, it's been ages. Maybe the trailer doesn't give him away as the bad guy? That still sort of primes you for the Snake Eyes reveal.

Yeah, and I think it turns out he's one of the kidnappers. Twist!!!

From what I've seen, it sure doesn't help.

I think it's a mid-movie twist, isn't it? Does he start off as seeming to help Gibson in some capacity? Been years since I saw it.

I will also say that I have an unofficial rule for this column: It needs to be at least three movies where none of the three are sequels to each other. Like, for a weird example, Will Smith and Barry Sonnenfeld wouldn't work, because while their total of four qualifies, three of those are Men in Black and one is Wild…

Further elaboration on this point may be discussed in the actual essay.