But their mission wasn’t about the willingness to keep fighting in the face of defeat. I think we all could have gotten behind a plucky Rogue One style last gasp mission. The problem was that Rose/Finn only went on their mission because Poe didn’t trust Holdo for no well established reason. It was all about Poe’s need…

I don’t think TFA is a sandcastle of the previous trilogy at all. People always complain about it, but it’s fans who force all the characters into echoes. There wasn’t even really a main triad... Poe was just a tertiary character in TFA, who only got promoted to main standing because of fandom clinging to him as the…

The situation with the original trilogy isn’t comparable. We knew that there had been a war and the Empire won, which is sufficient to explain how/why both the Empire and Rebel Alliance exist. An Empire logically has an Emperor in charge, so we didn’t need to know much about Palpatine. Since we first met Darth Vader…

That may have been the intention, but it makes no sense and wasn’t clearly portrayed on screen. That was one of my many problems with TLJ. The whole First Order/Resistance/New Republic politics did not seem to flow logically from where we left them in TFA. Why was the Resistance on the run and the First Order…

I don’t think saying f—k you to fans is a great reason to tell a particular story. Subversion is amazing and breathtaking when it works. But in order to work, there needs to be a clear, solid, emotionally/artistically satisfying story that is revealed from the deconstruction. IMHO, Johnson failed on every level there.

…

Yes! I don’t think the movie realized how horrible they made Poe. Poe’s a military commander. Lives depend on him following orders. The weird thing is that the movie knows this enough to show that Poe is wrong in every instance. People die because he’s so wrong. Rose’s SISTER dies because Poe is wrong, which is an…

Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Palpatine don’t get killed off and all play a huge role in the trilogies (both the dooming and the saving).

If you haven’t seen Clone Wars, go watch it. Clone Wars fulfills the potential of the prequel trilogy. Anakin works. The Jedi corruption works. Anakin/Padme even basically work. It’s not perfect (it suffers from the writers not being able to fully overcome their desire to have the Jedi cleanly be heroes), but it’s…

Clone Wars, which I’m fairly certain is canon for this continuity.

I agree that the Darth Maul stuff was not Clone Wars’ greatest moment. It ended up being a disturbing storyline, but that initial aspect of it was ridiculous. Clone Wars does establish a lot of mystical Force use that makes Leia’s pulling herself back…

The irony of Jez’s hate on Taylor Swift is that I only listened to Taylor’s new music because Jezebel wouldn’t stop posting about it. I’m sure I’m not the only one. So they’re promoting her as much as they’re doing anything else.

But most of the critiques I see of Taylor Swift aren’t about thing she’s actually done, but are complaints that she isn’t doing what commenters think she should be doing.

She didn’t use feminism to make herself famous. Quite the opposite. She was famous already and it was a thing that she WOULDN’T embrace feminism. Then when she did—again, well after she was already famous, successful, and award winning—she got critiqued for not embracing feminism correctly.

Taylor Swift’s testimony in…

I had no idea, and that’s terrifying given what a star Elijah Wood was.

That’s the part that wouldn’t be in the spirit of radical inclusion.

“Is such a disparity really in keeping with the spirit of “radical inclusion” on which the tradition was founded?” I see you couldn’t be bothered to look up what “radical inclusion” is. Your question makes no sense.

Your aunt speaks for many Burners. The whole debate about participation vs. tourism at Burning Man has…

The responsible way to film scenes that involve violence are to have open, explicit communication with the actors as well as repeated checks ins to make sure they’re doing okay. The violence should be choreographed and specific. The actors should have control over the ability to call breaks.

Per Malik’s account, the…

They can’t unless their pipes have been replaced (which apparently 6,000 out of 18,000 estimated have). Unfortunately, it is very hard to know what non-Flint/non-MI residents can do at this point to speed things along. It’s much like the crisis in Puerto Rico... it’s horrible to watch unfold but it’s not only about …

I mean, if you heard women using cunt affectionately around you, you couldn’t really be off about it. It would be an experience that you really had. Being a dude wouldn’t make that less real.

You are probably not mistaken. There are circles where “cunt” is an affectionate in-group word for women to use. I’ve been in them.

Yeah, I’m waiting to hear more details on that. Because it does, indeed, seem unlikely that Keillor’s account is the end all and be all of what motivated MPR to rename Prairie Home Companion.