Emphasis on “impotent.” 

For all the X-Men movies’ problems, the core cast was iconic. First Class just highlighted how Stewart, McKellen, and even Rebecca Romijn owned those roles.

While I hope this movie gets Nia DaCosta the clout to do some more stuff, the whole issue with the MCU for years has been its contempt for artistic vision beyond maybe some shots that reflect a director’s visual sensibility.

Hey, a box of hammers is a smart investment. You never know when you’ll need more than one. For example... Well just because I can’t think of an instance where I would need more than one hammer doesn’t mean I wasn’t smart to buy this box of hammers.

Number 1 and Number 4 are at odds, which is how they ended up in this mess (and Number 5 is arguably how you tank any long running collaboration).

They killed off their most popular characters, and they don’t really have a new slate to build their solo movies around. Instead they’re trying to do team ups (and incorporate Samuel L Jackson into as many movies as they can), but it’s just doubling down on the fact that they don’t have a core group of Avengers to, um…

It’s a catch 22 - as action movies they’re formulaic, bland, and way too long. Their personality comes from the longer continuity, but that personality is exhausting. 

I should have specified - by “that song” I meant “Astronomy.” There’s no way watching the cast hang around the Four Winds Bar, occasionally chatting about that crazy Godzilla attack, would be less fun than the actual movie. 

I can assure you that parts of Wandavision and to lesser extent the second Spider-Man were meaningless without seeing the Thanos movies. It didn’t tank the stories (the third acts did), but it was useless bloat. 

Without the interconnections, though, they’re just action comedies that run 150 minutes without a decent action scene. 

Describing the original Oldboy as an action movie is a misnomer - the hallway fight is spectacular, but it comes pretty early in the plot, and whole point of the movie is undoing that visceral impact. It’s kind of a mystery movie, but it’s also a very weird fable about the futility of revenge (which is probably why an…

It’s rarely boring and often very funny. 

Yes. It’s not a good movie and only shares the barest plot outline with the original movie, but it’s hilariously overwrought. In includes (in no particular order) Cage on a motorcycle rescuing a teddy bear just before a car explodes, Cage in Furry gear punching Kathy Bates in the face, and (my personal favorite) Cage…

Roland Emmerich could have done himself a favor and just filmed scenes from that Blue Oyster Cult song, with fifteen minutes of exposition in between each verse and a helicopter chase or something during the guitar solo.

I'm struck by that line about putting everything into the show. Ironically they could have shot it on a soundstage with Styrofoam sets like and old BBC series, and people would remember it just as fondly (or more fondly). 

While this is all technically true, these are lifelong employees in a terrible, terrible industry. “Man dies” isn’t news; “Matthew Perry dies” is. Similarly, “man’s coworkers share public statement” isn’t news; “cast of Friends shares public statement” is. Ghoulishness is part and parcel to the whole celebrity…

The one that stands out is a joke where someone has a horrified look on his face, and Kevin says, “Oh, Lana Wachowski just showed him footage of her operation.” It’s tacky and ignorant, but (iirc) he genders her correctly.

My favorite joke!

I forget how intentionally funny Obama could be. “Cut the President some slack” is a perfect button on that clip.

Yeah, but it’s intentionally incoherent. Consider that your second paragraph says “things” can’t tell you what to do, and your third paragraph implies that a book (ie, a thing) can tell you what to do. There isn’t a problem with didactic art, but Fight Club is didactic while pretending not to be didactic, so it ends…