When you say it like that, it sounds like a good idea with botched execution. The second you get into the details, though, you'd see it's not a good idea and no level of execution would've saved it.

Black Panther's like jell-o. There's always time for Black Panther.

Was the 1989 Batman an origin story for Batman? The origin is dealt with briefly in a flashback. IIRC, when the story starts, Wayne has already been Batman for long enough everyone knows about him. You could say it's an origin story for the Joker, but (SPOILERS for a 26-year-old movie) Joker doesn't survive the film,…

Yeah, that line stands out like a sore thumb in an otherwise really good article. "Surveillance state" is pretty far down the list of themes in that movie. Aside from trauma, there's also the themes of preemptive war and targeted drone killing, which are a lot more than a villain's evil plan.

"You've done it @Kaptain Kitty:disqus . You cracked it wide open!"

Sadly, no one does this. Back to the Future 2 (98 min) and 3 (2 hours) came close, but everyone else feels obligated to churn out at least two two-hour installments.

Continuous production of sequels was all the rage at the time, between the Lord of the Rings movies and the prequels. I just wish someone would tell people wouldn't mistake a budgetary and production process for a creative principle. The individual movies still have to stand on their own.

Yep. We'd all finally learn the second verse of that Yub Nub song.

Shortening Han's rescue was a small price to pay for having a relatively balanced story. An entire movie of Jabba's palace might've been really cool, but it comes at the cost of more more time with the Ewoks, because there's no option between producing one two and a half hour movie and producing two two and a half…

It's muddled. They set it up for Anakin to possibly believe that Windu had just attacked Palpatine—by the time Anakin arrives (IIRC) Palpatine's disarmed and on the floor, with Windu standing over him and his lightsaber poised to strike. If Anakin had defended Palpatine in confusion you could say that it was Windu's…

Objectively, yes, they're bad at their job. But what's needed for this dynamic to work within the movies is that the film—or at least some characters other than Anakin—need to acknowledge that Mace and Yoda are doing things wrong. No one does. The film treats Yoda's "people die" speech as sage advice, not the…

"…but I put in that line between them about Cato Neimoida! And the pit of Gundarks! They're totally bros!"

Ugh. Even if you like the prequels, this article doesn't make an argument for them being good (or a coherent argument for anything, really). I've read good defenses of the prequels, particularly their visual style. This article doesn't so much praise the sequels as pish posh anyone who thought they were terrible.

Oh, if only they could've gotten Ryan Philippe! He was actually very good in Breach.

Presenting one or more Jedis who were bad people or just bad at their job, while still being on the light side of the Force, would've called for a lot more "shading" than Lucas could manage.

It could've been cool. If Qui Gon's death had left a power vacuum on the Jedi counsel, and whoever took charge after him wasn't good at his job, that might've made sense. But the leadership of the Jedi counsel is Yoda and Mace Windu, and the prequels don't present them as incompetent, corrupt, or done in by their…

Yeah. No one objected to the Jedi being fallible. The prequels went way across the line, and made the Jedi incompetent. No one objected to the idea that Anakin would go to the dark side, but Lucas's clumsy idea of foreshadowing made it a foregone conclusion that any casual observer could have seen. Anakin's arc in the…

I think the part that made Lou's talk about his wife clash so hard wasn't the clumsy line (Lou not being comfortable talking about his feelings is nothing new), but what preceded it in the conversation with Reagan. I can see that Lou might make that connection between his wife's problems and his country's malaise, and…

He was a 38-year-old playing a character from his teens to the age of 38. She was a 48-year-old playing a character from her 30s to her 60s. I think each of them had about 10 minutes of that movie where they were playing characters roughly their own age.

I guess where I disagree with you is that, to me, those bits *were* the episode—May's journey was clearly the A-plot, and I liked the fact that they thematically wove it together with the ongoing subplot we give a damn about, with the sun setting on May and Andrew as it rises on Fitz and Simmons. Those storylines were…