I mean a significant portion of Microsoft’s big brands involve the sort of game (often an RPG) where the main character is a cipher for the player to project themselves onto.  Honestly I like this sort of thing well enough that I’m fine without a MS Smash Brothers- I don’t even really care for the Nintendo Smash Bros.

Listen, if anyone can be trusted to deliver a script about media pandering, it’s South Park, the ancient franchise that’s been pandering nonstop to mediocre edgy white dudebros for a quarter century.

Yeah, I don’t understand the take in this piece. Everything Everywhere All At Once was wildly successful, but that success was so unexpected that calling it “the studio’s side-step into mainstream filmmaking” only makes sense in retrospect. Even then, it’s only “mainstream” in that it pulled big numbers and that it…

Don’t you know? Having multiple universes automatically makes a movie Marvel schlock, despite *checks notes* literally everything else about it

“multiverse MacGuffin”?

“the Marvel-esque Everything Everywhere All At Once”

the way actor’s brains work is so special.

The film stars Zac Efron as Kevin Von Erich (played by Holt McCallany)

Maybe they should have all the authors dress up in goofy costumes and we would have to guess which one wrote the piece.

Oh for fuck’s sake, adultery isn’t a crime. Let’s save the “this guy shouldn’t be on TV” for the actual predators since we have a hard enough time even keeping them out of work.

Isn’t being mad at a reality tv person for relationship drama with other reality tv people like getting mad at Andre the Giant for betraying Hulk Hogan?

I thought I’d be sad when I got to the age of not knowing about current pop culture trends, but now that it’s happened I’m pretty cool with it.

Damn, you’re right.  I just tried saying “The line must be drawn here!” in Bane’s voice and it works great.  Thanks for the new self-amusing hobby.

Tom Hardy’s on-set behavior aside, Shinzon really is a terrible villain. One step above a low rank Bond villain. His actions in Nemesis only make sense if you act like he doesn’t really want to invade the Federation and is trying to sabotage himself at every opportunity.

“You won’t find my holographic projector, so…

Hardy was pretty deep into a drug addiction at the time, if I recall, so that’s not surprising. Glad he got past it, and by all accounts he was far from the biggest issue with that movie behind the scenes (*cough* Stuart Baird *cough*)

“Wouldn’t the Arconia should shut down with all these deaths? Who would want to keep living there realistically?”

When is The AV Club going to win the Pulitzer for this kind of hard-hitting investigative reporting?

This might be the weirdest thing they’ve ever turned into a slide show here.

In general terms perhaps, but I think the situation does become greyer when it comes to the kind of Nanette-eseque “this is My Truth” autobiographical-confessional-didactical strain of stand-up comedy which has become a lot more common of late, where the whole point is that the comedian is supposed to be expounding…

So he’s like Shaq on Inside the NBA.