I’m totally fine with different takes on the character, although I can also kinda see why “this longstanding aspect of the popular character I’m playing makes no sense, so I ‘fixed’ it” is alienating to people.

Before the MCU, it seemed like 9 out of 10 comic book movies were made by people who didn’t really enjoy the…

If we’re picking apart people’s motives here, every statement he gives is clearly less about making sure we get to the bottom of things than to make sure that he doesn’t have to take any (legal) responsibility for the accident. And even if that’s at least understandable, if not totally forgiveable, he really should…

Yeah, this is the problem exactly. The fun of Eurovision is finding out about whatever weird cultural tics do and don’t translate from Europe’s overlooked nooks and crannies. Sisqo doesn’t sound like Maryland the way Norwegian black metal sounds like Norway; he sounds like turn-of-the-century party R&B, and it could…

He walks this very fine line where he wants me to feel for a hideous asshole, which can be okay, but then also wants me to root for them to succeed, sometimes without their really having changed, which doesn’t always work. E&D did this more, where Kenny Powers would be a dick for six episodes straight and then be sad…

you’re a partofaregionallyknownactwhich,withagenerousenoughdefinitionmightkindacountasa rock star...

Jules starts the movie in an apartment shootout and ends it by disarming and getting the drop on a restaurant hold-up man. Maybe action is the wrong word due to the lack of elaborate fight choreography, but tonally, it’s pretty far outside the Academy’s wheelhouse, is my point. That’s obviously not a knock.

Both are incredible performances in what I would consider each director’s best movie (don’t @ me, Jackie Brown/Edward Scissorhands fans), but I would give the edge to Jackson. Looking back at the past (Jesus Christ!) nearly 30 years, that’s the performance that spawned a thousand imitators and has become truly iconic,…

The “American West” is like a dozen distinct biomes. New Zealand is a good match for several of them. If you dropped 99% of Americans in Rotorua, it would take less than five minutes to convince them it was Yellowstone.

I can see an interesting take on Batman where all the colorful villains are providing him a focus for his rage at the fundamental injustice of an indifferent universe, preventing him from spiraling into a more existential depression.  But I’m not sure that could reasonably be unique to the Joker.  

Lex Luthor is possibly my least favorite of the major superhero archenemies. He feels like a bog standard arrogant mad scientist character with a boring design, one who admittedly lucked out and got in early to fight the first real American superhero.

It seems like you’re arguing he’s the ONLY villain in BR.

Frasier followed one of the original characters from Cheers into a new setting, something we typically call a “spinoff.” While technically accurate, nobody was describing it as “a new show set in the Cheers universe,” as that’s usually reserved for sci-fi or fantasy settings with fundamentally different structures…

Yeah, for me it goes:

Good: Jessica Jones Season 1, Daredevil Season 1, Daredevil Season 3, and I’d include the Punisher, while acknowledging that it’s the most arguable of these four.

Mixed Bag: Luke Cage Season 1, Jessica Jones Season 2, Luke Cage Season 2, Iron Fist Season 2, in roughly that order

I feel like there are two solid different reads on Batman: that Batman is a scary badass persona constructed to protect the traumatized kid, Bruce, that he still is deep down, and that Batman is the hardened, bitter man that he really is and Bruce Wayne is the mask he wears to function in society. There are good…

An “expanded universe” that includes none of the original characters and is not a sci-fi or fantasy genre show makes very little sense to me. That’s just...present day Earth?

Like the Mandalorian has to be a Star Wars show because otherwise, it would be distractingly weird to have mandalorians showing up, but bored…

The number of people in the American prison system for nonviolent, low-level drug offenses is estimated somewhere between 20,000-150,000+ depending on your data and definition, a criminal record that can make it difficult to find employment, housing, and just generally live a normal life on top of, you know, being in…

I agree that there are conditions where this might be justified, but it’s an oppressive and borderline cruel thing to do to an adult, so the bar needs to be set very high — like at imminent threat to the safety of themselves or others level; spending money like an idiot doesn’t count — and there shouldn’t be such a…

It’s more that crypto’s wild value fluctuations make it unreliable as a currency, and all the missing monetary controls make it extraordinarily vulnerable to manipulation by bad actors and other opaque external factors. It’s not that it’s necessarily going to go away tomorrow, or ever.

Beanie Babies are actually a…

1.) He is right, and there is enough money involved that this, shockingly, apparently does need to be said.

2.) The Big Short broke down some fairly complicated issues with how banks were packaging mortgages and financial investments in a way that undermined the U.S. economy and lead to the 2008 recession, and required…

Iron Man 2 is goofy; Thor 2 is boring. It feels like a lot of people have more of a problem with the former, but I think that should be flipped around. I can remember multiple Whiplash scenes, and while many of them are not great, I’m having trouble even picturing what Malekith looked like.