It would seem shoehorned now, sure, because we've seen the end product and it's more or less a complete movie. (Personally, I thought it was highly overrated and obsequious in its pursuit of hitting the necessary superhero action beats, and fell flat on any interesting development of its characters. Its problems…

Why wouldn't they need to speak? They're SHIELD agents, both working under Fury, occupying the same flying fortress for long portions of time, and both primarily invested in the same goal of stopping an alien invasion. Maria is largely responsible for helming the Helicarrier while Fury is managing the supers, so…

That's the point of the "test," though. It's a gag. The joke being that, before you even get into content or quality of characters, something as simple as having 1) At least two female characters 2) Talk to each other 3) About something other than a dude is still a hurdle that a shocking majority of movies cannot…

I'd say Pepper counts in Avengers 1. But it's worth noting that the movie still fails the Bechdel Test. Not once do any of those women interact with one another. Natasha and Maria are basically kept on opposite sides of the Helicarrier the whole time.

I liked how the most feminist filmmaker of all time just barely squeezed three female characters into Avengers, and yet still managed to fail the Bechdel test.

We need more "children's movies" about trade federations, repressing sexual urges and child murder.

I am completely about that thing.

I love this guy. Aside from his songs just being so haunting and satisfying, he's such a perfect ball-buster. What sold me on "Fear Fun" was his huge Twitter tirade against Pitchfork for the mealy-mouthed review they gave it.
"Guess this means I don't get to come play your annual Bleep-Bloop Music and Nerdy, Contrarian…

As soon as I saw the article title, I knew, "Oh, this is about Electric Version."

I have every faith that what was presented in the advertising was very representative of the final product: a toothless hodgepodge of ideas that Koepp couldn't pull together into coherent/substantial tone or characterization. As is the case with most of his movies (even if he didn't script this one).

To me it seemed like David Koepp trying to do Wes Anderson by way of the Marx Brothers. Which is beyond idiotic. Not to mention a complete waste of the material; the books are sly, clever comedic thrillers, and very much a product of their time (the mid/late 1970s). Hal Ashby probably could have made a good, tidy…

Giamatti was fine, but Tim Roth was fucking unbearable. There's "Over-The-Top" villain performances, and then there's employing so much malicious rasping that the viewer worries the actor's lungs are collapsing.

From the looks of it, I'd say it's all pretty arbitrary.

Wouldn't it be funny if this show was denounced by, like, five Cosbys right now?

Had they ever met, Ayn Rand and Little Orphan Annie creator Harold Gray would have done wet, sloppy 69 to each other.

I dunno, how bad do people really want to see Big Bad Cherry Poppin' Daddy Wolf?

You're not satisfied by the 18 hours of King of the Hill reruns that air on Adult Swim each week?

Here's how I see it going down: Guardians 2 will reveal Quill's father is Adam Warlock (a vital figure in the Infinity Gem stories). Warlock emerges from his cocoon and turns out to be a flaky space-wizard uninterested in the responsibilities of fatherhood. But they eventually bond, and Warlock ends up sacrificing…

Ebert's (largely positive) take on it:

Mostly it's just dull as hell.