Actually critics are a pretty good metric of whether or not a movie is good. Fandoms are weird and incestuous and develop all kinds of cancerous drama and opinions that no one else cares about.

Except TLJ is a genuinely good film and Solo is mediocre fan fiction.

Rogue One took a mundane background detail and made it interesting and exciting.

This is exactly right — it was mediocre. But the fact that it was about a beloved character, whose backstory used to be fascinating (and is now, consequently, mediocre) makes it so much worse.

It supposedly cost about $300 million after all the reshoots. A movie needs to double its budget to become profitable (not sure why - marketing costs?) so it would need to hit $600 million.

Two thoughts: 1) The line they cut actually sounds kind of homophobic in a weird ‘90s-esque way and I’m glad it’s gone because it’s a dumb line. 2) LGBT stuff will keep getting cut from these kinds of movies, partly because China.

Jesus Christ, shut up dude. I can’t even stand discussing this with you. For the third time, I’m not an SP fan, and your baseless pronouncement that the recording quality is “unintentionally bad” is laughable. You know who the producer is right? It sounds exactly the way they wanted it to, ffs.

What the fuck are you even talking about? An intentionally unpolished sound can very much seem like a “bad recording” depending on your viewpoint. And if I was a fan of the band I would openly admit it.

I said it was intentionally unpolished, not intentionally bad. And I’m actually not much of a fan, certainly not since the ‘90s. I just think your opinion is bad.

It’s intentionally less polished sounding than their other work. It sounds good, it just isn’t what you were expecting.

“A quick look on...Reddit...show a lot of people actually disgusted by it”

I agree with you on everything except Jessica Jones season 2, which was actually good and fairly tight storytelling. Whoever was in charge of that should be put in charge of the whole shebang.

You just have bad taste, it’s okay lots of people do.

Things I like about Phantom Menace:

All those complaints about TLJ are firmly in the suspension of disbelief category for me. Because as soon as you start nitpicking space physics, the entire Star Wars universe pretty much falls apart. This is space opera, no need for the close logistical scrutiny. The other critiques seem to be coming from an…

I find the wooden acting endearing. It’s worse than the OT in that regard, but not so much worse as people think. Nostalgia has warped people’s perception of Mark Hamill’s performance in ANH, which was hilariously bad. I think if you’re going to love Lucas’s movies you kind of have to accept the cheese.

The Phantom Menace is actually Good. It has cringey moments but when you adjust for the effects of nostalgia, all the OT films do too.

Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about racism in Japan? Where are all the white people working in the Japanese manga industry? Time for some representation durr durr.

I really, really enjoyed season 11 (if you ignore the first and last episodes). It’s too bad about the awful final episode, but what can you do.

I think they’ve finally figured out that these beloved fandoms have to be steered by creative interests rather than boardroom decision-making. They’ve given Feige and Kennedy basically unlimited power to decide what works for the franchises.