I don't think it's cynical, because they succeed directly in what they're trying to do - they go into it knowing it's a dangerous mission, and predictably die, having achieved their ludicrously difficult objective. If anything, I'd say that's less cynical than an ending intended to make the audience happy that they've…

They're all standing underneath Disneyworld like the decommissioned hosts from Westworld.

This was a really good episode, and the final showdown was very much one of those cool things that gets better as you digest it and think about it more.

Yeah, that's a good example of attitudes dramatically changing for the better in a tiny space of time. It's sometimes hard to wrap your head around how backward people's views were decades in the past - it's horrendous how shabbily she was treated less than a decade ago for being the victim of what is now, rightfully,…

It's the George Lucas principle: bar a select few, the directors and writers who have imaginations and tastes weird enough to come up with the most beloved things also need to get a lot of… more critically polarising stuff out of their system too. Vader and Jar Jar; Agent Smith and the Architect: it all comes from the…

Abso-fuckin-lutely. Saving Private Ryan is a good example of this bizarre thing where, in a self-conscious attempt to quickly make a character likeable, the writers craft an irritating douchebag. See every guest love interest in every sitcom.

The First is a funny villain: it's a very good idea for an ultimate fantasy villain in an abstract sense, but as a character it's fundamentally tricky to make that interesting. I'm not a huge fan of villains that are supposed to be aspects of nature - like the Nothing in The Neverending Story, the umpteen villains…

The Gentlemen are so fucking great. I was 10 when 'Hush' was broadcast, and fairly experienced horror-wise, but it's the only time in my life I actually did the 'behind the sofa' thing.

The amazing thing about Buffy's second and third seasons is that neither's really better than the other, they genuinely have different strengths: the third is definitely a billion times more consistent, with way fewer duds, but the villains of both are incredibly engaging. Angel's a very personal villain, whereas the…

That's a superb piece of advice for anything creative, and it's made me like Joss Whedon all the more.

See, I really like the haphazard climaxes and anti-climaxes TV creates sometimes. If Buffy were a planned out novel, or series of novels, the Master would be built up and properly dispatched at the end of the series, with everything tied together. That's great - but it's more novel and odd if such an important villain…

I just assumed they were waiting there for a few hours*, and it was just cut for the audience's sake.

PALPATINE AD: 'I may have blown up planets, and am planning on blowing up more; I may have killed trillions in a conspiracy to become Emperor; I may be pursuing brutal policies across the entire galaxy… but what about Senator Mothma's holo-mails, hmm?"

All the fighter pilots in ANH are incredibly well characterised for such tiny, tiny roles. The Hoth guys in ESB are nearly as memorable, but in RotJ only Wedge stands out, and the pilots in TPM, TFA, and RO - despite trying to make each pilot distinguishable and striking - don't really leave an impression…

Someone's almost certainly made this joke, but whatever!

I agree with you on the Grey Havens and the Pelennor fields. While I loved the architecture of Gondor, I think they made Minas Tirith awfully small, and while Mordor being all of twenty miles away makes a cool visual, I think Mordor being fifty miles away, as in the book, would be cooler. I've never seen a painting of…

I completely agree. The Lord of the Rings has its own tone - like if you took Beowulf, WWI, L'Morte D'Arthur, and the English countryside and mixed them all together.

Something I do not get about these games is the art direction: great chunks of it - Gollum, the Crack of Doom, and Minas Morgul - are directly lifted from the Peter Jackson films. But other designs - Sauron, Barad-dur, the black gate, the fell beasts, the wraiths, the Gondorians - are either totally different or…

Winning that race will be what loses Lando the Millennium Falcon. He then threatens Han angrily, causing Chewbacca to pull out Lando's arms. (It turns out he has prosthetics later on)

I really hope this steers clear of the Empire/Rebellion stuff. This is not a film which should have a dramatic trailer about who Han Solo will become. It's a good opportunity for them to do a western story with a strange, 70s counter-culture Star Wars backdrop, in the vein of the weird ass books they published before…