If Rudy was smart, he would have done that. Instead, he jumped on the Trump Train and proceeded to put all the good will he had built up over 9/11 to the the torch.

It lives now as a fluke in the shitshow that is his larger career.

Honest question - how much of that was helped by the fact one was genuinely expected to be good and the other was (in general) expected to be Tom Hooper’s Cats with capes?

I dunno. This doesn’t work as well because their Paul Sheldon is willing to give them what they want, he just can’t get a publisher.

I’m seeing more like Mr. Me-Mania from Perfect Blue - actively trying to ‘remove’ the obstacles (real or perceived) that they see as standing in the way of their perfect fandom idol.

We’re talking about a man who has said his dream project would be an adaptation of ‘The Fountainhead.’

This is right in line with that ‘the auteur can never, and should never, be second guessed line of nonsense.’

Someone take this guy aside and tell him the tale of Michael Cimino.

I mean, his son tortured and murdered a dog and he helped get him off the hook for that. I think it’s not too much of a stretch to say Mike’s sense of morality takes a backseat to his sense of political expediency.

Memory serves, isn’t his dad still in good with Mike Huckabee?

Conservative dads with problem sons gots to stick together, ya know!

Ooooh God, yeah.
SotM is the ultimate smoking gun that Luke and Leia being siblings was an idea that didn’t arise until much later into development.

As shown by the scene still in that book where Luke is watching Leia and feelin’ kinda Lannister.

Fair (to be honest, this is also part of why I think MacGregor and McDiarmid fair the best out of the PT cast - they’re playing characters that  had prior performances they could look to for reference.)

I keep feeling like the George Lucas school of filmmaking is, somewhat ironically, best summed up in a Clerks paraphrase:
“Man, my movie would be so great if it wasn’t for all the fucking actors!”

It’s fascinating when you look and realize how much more, on paper, Lucas gave Lee to do than Peter Jackson.
But on screen, Saruman is the far more memorable character/performance of the two because it actually gave Lee more to work with (granted, it also helped that was basically a dream project for him, but still.)

That moment when you realize there’s better than average odds at least one of our heroes experienced the taste of long pig before that night was over.

This so Goddamn much.
The more you really dig into the production history of Star Wars, the more you realize just how much of what we’re told about it is retroactive bullshit, much of it in service of the George Lucas monomyth.

Check out some of the early story developments on The Empire Strikes Back for some prime…

Okay. Here me out -

If, for some damn reason, they decide this has to happen, a proposal:

Tony comes back. Big triumphant moment. Everyone’s happy. Movie ends.
Credits start.

Mid to post credits scene, cuts to Stark Tower. Tony is putting whatever armor he was previously using away as he becomes aware of someone behind…

It’s a consequence of the mediums changing.

Star Trek and Holmes were cases of fan letters. They were between the fans and the creator.

ZSJL was social media blasted which meant
a) a lot more people who otherwise wouldn’t be involved were seeing it
and
b) the jackasses in the group were a LOT more prominent as a result…

and let’s not forget the mercurial nature of Black Widow as a character, again, pending on who’s writing her.

Two years later and I’m still surprised this movie didn’t get more blowback for how that shook out.

Like, I don’t know if they were consciously shooting for “Drone warfare’s actually not so bad so wrong as it’s in the right hands”, but THAT’S WHAT THEY FUCKING GOT.

I feel like he’s one of those people who’s off crack, but he’s substituted it by doing rails of crushed adderall or some other more ‘respectable’ drug now that he’s got money.

Pixar: Gonna Cry? Gonna Cry, Crybaby, huh?

A corollary to this, and one that tends to get left out of the discourse of the film these days -

AV Club Team Stannis member for life!