The thing with Marvel movies is that none of them have been outright bad. Even the weak Marvel movies are still decent and, more importantly, don’t fuck things up so badly that it makes it hard to course-correct. Incredible Hulk is pretty inessential, but it’s still a fun movie. Iron Man 2 and Thor 2 both struggle…

To me, Rise of Skywalker and STID are outright failures—although I know STID has its fans, it’s a brutally stupid film that betrayed the promise of its predecessor, with a couple of nice moments mixed in. And I can definitely blame him for Rise of Skywalker—the stuff that’s bad about it isn’t TLJ’s fault or even,…

The big difference is that Iron Man 2 and Thor 2 made money, so even if critics didn’t enjoy them, audiences accepted them. Even Incredible Hulk performed roughly as expected, particularly given that Norton didn’t promote it because he was angry about losing his writing arbitration. Eternals was both a critical…

The closest anyone else has come is Fox’s X-Men universe, which managed to branch out some successful offshoots (the Mangold Wolverines and the Deadpool series) and successfully reboot itself after losing its creative way in the late ‘00s. And even that only barely holds together.

What I find interesting is that none of the copycats have actually tried to follow Marvel’s formula. They think they can just get any directors and any actors and any IP with more than one main character and just throw them in a blender. Marvel made sure the solo movies like Iron Man and Captain America were good…

Calling Abrams a hack seems kind of ridiculous to me. Overrated? Sure. But he’s had enough good credits against his name and production company that I can’t believe anyone would think of him as a complete hack.

Not the point. He’s framing this attack as a war on the LGBTQ community. Maybe rescinding that Reedy Creek situation was the right thing to do, but the fact that he chose to do it now means the decision was ENTIRELY partisan politics.

DeSantis’ name was mentioned in 50 states yesterday and today. Mission accomplished. This will be thrown out because the State doesn’t have the authority to dissolve a special district. There are dozens and dozens of special districts (water control, mosquito control, Everglades, etc.) and DeSantis thought he could…

Yes! Thank you! I know that flick has become more well known as “the movie the meme is from” but his performance in that is wild and the movie itself is a trip. Highly underrated in my opinion.

How to Succeed is my favorite musical, and Morse was the quintessential Finch—just a perfect balance of unctuousness, mischievousness, and charm. Loved him in Mad Men as well, and his reading of “Mr. Campbell, who cares?” is probably my favorite moment in the series.

Its the double-edged sword of being a tech company first and entertainment company second. They’re easily the best in terms of UI, clearly have the most sophisticated algorithms and machine learning for recommendations, and have all the benefits associated from maturity as a platform. But they’ve always been…

Walken is lucky. I was there in 1965 and Stonehenge was surrounded by tanks!

If a Hercules TV mini series can be greenlit, I’d like to see this. The writers can get very meta and satirical with the backdrop of Pluto (what’s his fake name? Something Greek..) and Underworld Studios buying out a failing studio Amazon/MGM style, then going on a spending spree that causes folks to speculate, “hey,…

And I really think the TikTok sketches are excellent. Really finely observed stuff.

Danny, I’m killing my eyes. Killing my Danny. Kill Danny.

Never put salt in your eyes!

Dammit. I just wish they had consulted you first.

Ooohh I wonder where Tony could be!

You're muddled.

The Dipping Areas are back!