No offense to Anderson, who remains an entertaining, quirky comic with surprising dramatic skills, but who was the studio exec that said “ not enough white people will go see an Eddie Murphy film UNLESS Louie Anderson is in it?”

As I said, the condemnation of Whedon and Johns doesn’t seem to depend on Fisher alone. Even Patty Jenkins and Chris Nolan have weighed in on how problematic they found the JL project, a rare rebuke from fellow filmmakers.

Tail spin. Maybe, I’m not making any claims for his stability. But Hollywood is also replete with actors who have been crazy, self-destructive and largely correct on facts. At the very least the downfall of Johns and Whedon wasn’t dependent on him alone.

He peaked playing the Air Marshal in Bridesmaids.

Do you really think that Ray Fisher believes he is the main character of the Justice League or do you simply have problems with the way he is expressing his issues with the production? Which, by the way, is entirely your right. But to me its inaccurate to claim Fisher believes he was the main character. He believes…

Would anyone say that the X-men movie is “centered” on Rogue, as opposed to Xavier, Magneto or Logan? Was Hellboy centered on the young agent character whose name and actor I no longer remember? More to the point, do you think anyone believes that Cyborg is going to be the main character in a Justice League movie?

The reason Paquin’s young Rogue is used is that Xavier’s School is a refuge for mutants. She is not just introducing the audience to the X-men, her narrative is explaining why they exist as a team. The motif of less prominent characters as a narrative viewpoint was used frequently in the X-men franchise.

The “We can’t have an angry black man at the center of the movie” comment raises some thoughts. Let’s presume, for the sake of argument, it does reflect the sentiment of the studio:

As TGGP noted in this thread, it’s common to use a minor character or lesser known actor as an audience surrogate in action and adventure movies of all kinds including the superhero genre. Anna Paquin’s Rogue was the audience surrogate for the first X-men movie, even though Famke Jannsen (Jean Grey) and Halle Berry…

Hitler was the no-talent assclown who became famous and started invading countries!

You have no idea what the filmmakers are doing with this story. Just like there is a black Green Lantern named John Stewart, DC has several black versions of Superman who are not Clark Kent. I don’t care if they go in that direction or not, but given the success of Miles Morales Spider-Man, it’s highly likely it was…

the Krypton portion of Man of Steel (especially the music) was some of the best movie sci-fi in the past decade,

I’m seeing bald medieval priests in long robes.

I agree that the mechanics of the game make it easy to isolate and dramatize individual plays and players. At the same time, fact that as a team sport the outcome depends upon multiple characters has a different emotional resonance than individual sports achievement in boxing or golf.

I really liked this show, but knew it was a long shot even while watching it. It was trying to bring together two audiences— rabid, largely male, largely white baseball fans and viewers of stories about young black women—who didn’t necessarily feel a strong need to be together. Baseball has never been my favorite…

Nobody can really top Washington and Cheadle’s performances, just bring their own unique spin. Hopefully one benefit of this news is that it leads people to revisit that film. And fortunately, we are in era with an abundance talented actors who can bring Easy and Mouse to life. So many, in fact, that I have no…

Harley’s costumes and the overall visual esthetic were two of the high points of the movie, but for me the film falls into the “tantalizingly good enough that I wish it could be better” category. One of the area’s where I feel it falls short is in highlighting the Birds of Prey — I notice you devote little more than a…

Willems would agree with you, but he would also add that good songs tell the audience things about characters, tone and plot that aren’t obvious or superficial. It’s a comprehensive and entertaining look at all the uses of needle drop in film, with plenty of examples.

Someone needs to make a video on why the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack works where the DC films’ soundtracks, especially Suicide Squad, don’t...your wish is granted.

Valid. I will counter-counter that often when friends are asking me for streaming show recommendations, they want to know that it’s worth their time investment and usually don’t think that a single episode is enough to gauge that.