Since you bring up Tarkin, I really thought that the Hux character was very badly overdone, and especially against the backdrop of his ancestor Tarkin.

“Grandson, if you keep straining like that during your potty training, you will give yourself hemmroids.”

Since they’ve staked Deadpool as something like an action-comedy crossed with a bit of Cronenberg body horror and Freddy Kruger wisecracking, I’m going to say that what really matters is if the film’s got more in the tank than a bunch of superhero-movie in-jokes. If it’s just a straight parody of superhero movies,…

Luke throwing aside the lightsaber was the original *drops mic*.

Phasma definitely got the short end of the stick. The character was promoted as the next Boba Fett, only they gave the lame “Getting eaten by the Sarlaac” version instead of the cool “Figures out Han’s hiding in the space junk” version.

As mentioned by Rancorr above, the thing about the original trilogy’s lightsaber duels is that they weren’t just these martial arts set pieces. They moved the plot along, and functioned to give a certain level of exposition. Empire Strikes Back did a bunch of ancillary things to enhance the scene (including Vader and…

That’s a good point. Whereas the point made in RoTJ’s unmasking was that underneath the Vader mask was the “true” Anakin Skywalker, the characterization is altogether different for Kylo/Ben: the mask is the “true” Kylo and his face is actually the false persona for seduction.

IMHO, it also runs counter to the power that the themes of the original series had, in which the Force is all about choices. Luke turning off his targeting computer, refusing to join his father to rule the galaxy, then choosing not to kill him; Han coming back to shoot Vader, evacuating Leia, then choosing to lead the…

Right, that much is pretty well documented.

That’s another thing that was missing from the Prequels —there’s no “tension” in the Force. In the prequels, the Light-vs.-the Dark dynamic is flattened into a Jedi/Sith Hatfields-and-McCoys feud. Plus, we all knew that Anakin was turning into Darth Vader. So instead of the drama of contingency, characters all feel…

Kylo being whiny and childish works because there’s a theme throughout the film, with immature characters ripped from their “natural” roles and thrust into new and unfamiliar ones. That’s in line with the greater themes of the original trilogy, which is all the twists and turns of Luke, Han and Leia through suffering…

Comic book Bane was given a fairly sympathetic back story (imprisoned as a child, etc.) where he was allowed to parallel Bruce Wayne, and then allowed to be at least anti-heroic in Secret Six.

It’s mostly done either (a) with contraband or (b) with non-contraband MacGyver’d into being tattoo equipment.

Yeah, the idea that Foxconn is somehow victimizing Apple is laughable. Apple are the ones who insist upon incredible profit margins; Foxconn are the people who guarantee a steady supply. Apple’s always charged a premium for commodity hardware. What changed from the early Jobs years to the era of it being the most…

What’s with the incomplete pattern here? Did he buy a sweater from the Defective Argyle Factory Outlet?

IIRC, the 1990’s Serpent Society was also a convenient way to try to tie Marvel’s contemporary Earth-616, its licensed Robert E. Howard sword-and-sorcery books (Kull/Conan/Red Sonja), all while tapping into the Cthulu mythos (where Marvel used Set instead of Cthulu).

Maybe include some printed of instruction manuals and/or specs for whatever media you’re using? For the future, they could be quite a coup in and of themselves. Think of how an inscription with a droll little curriculum vitae for Ptolmey V ended up becoming the Rosetta Stone.

Reason is a magazine that accepted funding from the tobacco industry to do hit pieces on consumer advocates. NYRB is, of course, a vanity press that will accept any article that a sufficiently obsessive-compulsive writer will submit. Neither of those are really worth mentioning in opposition to the original expose.

As PR for the company, maybe. As marketing of a luxury good, this is de rigueur. Luxury goods depend on snob appeal. You only get snob appeal by acting like a snob, e.g. implying that people who don’t buy $10 bars of chocolate somehow just don’t get it.

Is this the white people version of Bloods and Crips?