I think Majority Report is on to something - the guy has a very controlling father/producer and it’s fucked him up something fierce.

Between that and the solid decade of shit he got from fanboys over the PT, I get the feeling if Disney came to him with an offer to buy back, he’d slam the door in their faces with a cry of “IT’S YOUR CURSE NOW!”

Also heavy Christ imagery

Oh God, do I second this.

Star Wars has always been a wildly uneven (if overall still pretty watchable/readable) brand that has a tendency to get its problems papered over with time.

This.

Having said that, it does feel like we also tend to ignore that Lucas cribbed pretty hard from THF when making The Phantom Menace as well (again, not a 1:1, but with the two mains being a respected older warrior and a princess of a conquered people in disguise as a servant, both of whom then stop off in a village…

This is why, for as much flak as people give it Temple of Doom had the right idea for how to handle prequel storytelling.

We don’t need to work in Marcus. We don’t need to answer questions about his backstory. It’s just a younger, slightly more mercenary Indy on an adventure who starts realizing this isn’t all just…

To this day, the romance with Banner bugs me in terms of its execution.
Like, I wouldn’t say it’s completely unthinkable on its own. But Whedon basically went from the last movie where their two main scenes together consisted of Banner menacing her, and in the latter case quite literally trying to kill her, to suddenly…

In the time it took them to get around to this, we got two Wonder Woman movies, and several femme fatale spy thrillers that read like Black Widow stories with the copyright material markered over.

It certainly never hurt their box office, so I don’t expect them to.

It’s kind of the most frustrating thing about the MCU - even when it fucks up, it still comes out on top (see: the big push to make the Inhumans render the X-Men obsolete, only for that to fold and Disney buys up Fox, meaning they still get the X-Men…

I’d call it ‘Patient Zero’ but same idea, yeah.

Even knowing you said it was for CSI, my first thought of Caruso was just having a print of the “HEY! Fuck youuuuuuu!” scene from Session 9 in a cubicle.

Now I’m tempted by the idea.

(Jesse Ventura also successfully sued Kyle’s estate over a false claim that Kyle had punched out Ventura in a bar once.)

The blessing and the curse of being the ‘Own the Libs’ party the GOP has become. You have no moral compass worth a damn, but that also means you’re free to turn against anyone at any time to suit whatever your needs at any moment. It doesn’t have to make sense or be consistent, just do it!

This.

I enjoy Star Wars. I have a lot of love for Star Wars.
But the fact we as a culture got it into our heads that its this elevated art form and not just a buffet of cinematic comfort food was a big mistake on our part. Empire was probably the best it was ever going to get and as much as I love them, ANH and RotJ…

I read that book one. It still haunts me to this day.

Also, you left out how its main antagonist is an extra-dimensional blob running a space healing cult.

The EU had some good points, but for that alone, I can’t argue it was all as good as some have built it up to be in recent years.

Unless something’s changed that I’ve missed, Universal still has the final say on that.

And at this point, I feel like encouraging that further is just gonna lead to more buyer’s remorse because it’s gonna lead to Disney not wanting to stop at just the Hulk.

On the one hand, I’ll concede WW has its flaws.

On the other, Iron Man 2 is basically Patient Zero for one of the worst conceits of the modern comic book movie (i.e. Making large chunks of your movie exist purely to set up later franchise entries, leading to a large chunk IM 2 becoming the Nick Fury & Black Widow show.)

…

The question is, how much of that was relevant and how much of that was riffing. Cause that movie’s already got a problem with too much letting the actors riff as it is (and I say this as someone who likes a good number of the people in that movie.)

“It’s a big, wide universe. But the fans only really want that small corner of it.
For your own sanity’s sake, stay in the corner.”

Guaranteed, part of her career plan is to All About Eve someone like Lahren out of their position.