Post-WS AOS was so much better than what came before it. But if you didn’t watch the earlier episodes, then the WS twist wouldn’t have had anywhere near the impact.

The music also enhances that scene in a big way - and the rest of the movie. Love the building tension, it always felt ready to explode.

I know what you mean. I like when the Nu-Metal recedes and the show gets a less-obvious “bro”-type vibe, but that is secondary to the plot and the character interactions not involving the Strike Team, and if audiences can stomach the unexpected ending to the first episode and are still intrigued about where this is…

THE SHIELD is my favorite show of all time and I have never seen any other show before or after completely stick the landing like that. The events of the first episode rippled through the entire run of the show and carried through to a payoff in the finale. Even virtually all of the secondary and tertiary plots got…

The final confrontation in IM3 was not my favorite, but I liked how Pepper went apeshit to save the day and was then like “Oh my god - that was really violent!”  Another great line reading for an absurd moment.

Paltrow is uniformly great in the MCU. Downey would have walked all over a lesser actress.

Rockwell would be more at home in a latter-day MCU film like RAGNAROK. The early days of the MCU were a bit less goofy and freewheeling. I think GOTG and ANT-MAN changed the tempo a bit.

Odds on seeing a wight Hodor during the final season?

The thing that defines HULK to me is actually . . . the opening credits. It showed us that if you want to, you can just skip an origin movie and handle it in a different way. In this case, the whole origin story is told during the opening credits, which show you everything you really need to know about the Hulk and…

I agree with most of the guy’s comments, but I agree with you about Marvel’s risk aversion. Both THOR and GOTG were *massive* risks that seemed absurd on paper. I didn’t know how they were going to mesh the cosmic world of THOR into the reality-inspired sci-fi of IRON MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, and HULK. When both of them…

If you liked the portrayal of Arthur Dayne, know that the same actor went on to totally kill it in a very different role on BLACK SAILS.

Mustafa Shakir was incredible on LUKE CAGE S2. He brought a ton of charisma, gravitas, and menace to that role. I am excited to see what else he can do.

That’s a good one but at that point in my life I don’t believe I had ever watched an episode of STAR TREK, so it’s doubtful to be what influenced me. GRRM, on the other hand...

About 30 years ago I thought it would be an awesome idea to plan a Forgotten Realms AD&D campaign based around a super-powerful Necromancer or Demon that would emerge from underground and lead an undead army in a bid for world domination. The concept of an army that keeps replenishing itself with its victims sounded…

Maybe they got away with writing Bran out for a year simply because Isaac Hempstead Wright said “you know what, I think I’d enjoy a year off.” And I’ll bet he felt fairly secure in having a job to come back to later since Bran had just been re-established as a pivotal character.

It’s an intriguing thought and I wonder how it would have worked out. Our imaginations tend to conjure up even worse things than what we see onscreen. And we didn’t really have to see so much torture to get the point that Ramsay is going horrible things to Theon and changing him. So basically giving Alfie Allen a year…

...and one of the few scenes where I was thinking “oh god no!” as two characters I really liked seemed to be locked in a combat where one of them would die.

Here are the three Mountains side by side so you can do the Pepsi Challenge:

CLOUD ATLAS was 2012. Hanks probably just doesn’t get a lot of offers like that.

That trailer is sub-SHARKNADO quality.