Search options (Page 16 of 58)

Okay now I'm curious.  Are you saying they made changes to the plot or just that the novelization doesn't capture the spirit of the movie?

Spoilers for Episode 18 of the Flash

*
*
*
*
*
*

So what are they doing with Diggle?  I've generally been an Arrowverse apologist, but the Diggle storyline is really bothering me.

As we all know, they've dropped hints that Diggle might actually be John Stewart, the famous Green Lantern.  From his family name to people asking him about his ring, there were seeds planted for a while that Diggle had a greater destiny.  Then, in the Arrow finale, Diggle finds a glowing green...something.  And it felt like a good end to the character.  Whether they're allowed to use Green Lantern on the CW or not, they pretty much said it.

Then Diggle came back - he was essentially the crossover for this year with all the covid restrictions.  He bounced around from show to show with his little box...and nothing really happened.  He had headaches and claimed to have turned down some sort of great opportunity, and now he wants another shot.  It all still pointed to a Green Lantern ring, and they're just delaying until they get some sort of permission.

Then Diggle shows up again, unexpectedly, talking to Thawne.  And Thawne helps him open the box with promises of cosmic adventures.  And...

...it's something else entirely?  And now that arc is over?  And now Diggle can teach young people about justice in his own non-Green Lantern spinoff?  What is this?

I get that David Ramsey is going to be in some spinoff, and the Green Lantern thing can't be hanging over him forever.  But it's pretty annoying to be teased with something for *years* for it to be written off like this.  Don't want to make him a Green Lantern?  Can't make him a green Lantern?

Fine, whatever.  But why not just have him reject it for good, on screen, with the same reasoning.  I don't want to leave my family to be an intergalactic cop.  Refer him to someone else - bring back Rene or Cisco or Wally.  Let them do it.  Make it vague if you have to, but don't just swap out the story.  Finish it.  Otherwise, what's the point?

I wrote up a post about Kamala Khan, but it wouldn't post.  In case, it doesn't again, I'll give an abridged version.

Kamala Khan is an important character, but I struggled a bit with parts of her 2014 series.  I understand that a large portion of Marvel readers are probably Islamophobic on some level, and they might be less willing to accept Kamala.  And to work around that, they have people vouch for her that those readers would respect.

However, what the 2014 series ends up doing is repeating the same thing over and over again: Kamala meets a fan favorite (Wolverine, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, etc).  They work together, Kamala saves the day, and the hero remarks that they've been keeping an eye on her and she's going to be great.

The problem is that, when Kamala meets Wolverine, she hasn't been doing it very long.  And she's only done a couple low-profile missions as Ms Marvel.  I doubt Wolverine heard anything.  It makes more sense for SHIELD to know, and the comic versions of Phil Coulson and Gemma Simmons both claim to be fans of hers.  Or for Carol Danvers to hear about her since she's wearing her old costume.  But it's a bit odd for Carol to take a couple of hours to do a side mission with Kamala.

I get why they did it.  I think it's probably good that they did it.  But as someone who already accepted Kamala, I just found it annoying and somewhat unrealistic to have that reinforced over and over again.

Yeah I don't mind a darker tone.  I'm just not sure it works for Jean-Luc Picard.  His story was always hopeful and bright.  And I think you can do dark with the lens of someone like that, but I'd prefer to see something different with him.  That's why I think it might be fun to do little sequels to TNG episodes.

Because Picard made a lot of tough calls, but the show tells us that it was the right call.  But what does the right call look like 30 years later?  If you save a kid from a burning building, it's the right call.  But what if that kid ends up becoming a tyrant?  Was it still the right call?  If you stop a genocide, but then that race ends up building a terrible weapon...were you right to save them?

To be fair, this is essentially the same idea I'd do for a Sliders: the Next Generation.  I'd have Quinn leading a group of younger sliders, and they'd occasionally end up on worlds they'd visited before.  How did Last Days world change with the introduction of the Bomb?  How did Weaker Sex world change now that the Men's Rights movement got a kick in the butt?  How did Eggheads world change now that....Quinn isn't there anymore?

That wouldn't be the primary driving force of the show, but in an E214 sequel show, I was going to do something like that.  My fun twist was going to be that one of the new sliders was going to get swapped out for his double (in my plan, he was autistic and could create wormholes organically).  So instead of trying to find their way home, they'd still be able to slide where they want, but they'd be looking for their lost friend.

I like Picard.  I like Seven.  I like Q.  I really actually like most of the cast of Picard, both in Season One and Season Two.  I don't understand why it is what it is, though.  I get that they're kinda working through some of the sins of the past - his connection with the Borg and the Romulans and Q.  But I wonder if it would've been better as a non-serialized sequel to TNG.  Where maybe Picard and Riker go around the galaxy fixing mistakes they made.  Picard is close to death and, while everyone keeps talking about how great his life was, he's haunted by some of the things that didn't go right.  Or the way he'd planned.  Or ended up going south anyway.

You'd need a real TNG fan to work on this (certainly not me) but pick a handful of TNG episodes where Picard makes a difficult choice or gets overruled or things don't go the way he wants...and write sequels to those episodes.  Maybe two aliens were at war, and things have gotten worse.  Maybe he helped save a leader who's become a tyrant.  I don't remember enough minor episodes of TNG that I could come up with any real examples.

But that's kinda what I'd like to see out of Picard.  Small stories that are sequels to small stories.  What does it mean to make these life or death decisions for decades and then have to live with them?

******

But I totally understand not being able to start Strange New Worlds until you've finished what came before it.

That actually makes a ton of sense.

I loved the episode and was willing to forgive the super awkward ending to season 2 because of it.

I've also loved Strange New Worlds, which feels like both a throwback and a remake of TOS.  It think it's wonderfully done, wonderfully acted, and a lot of fun.  I will even forgive another TOS-era show when I feel like Trek should always be moving forward and never backwards. 

Strange New Worlds is the best of the new Trek, and I think the Orville is just as good.  In fact, I think they do a lot of the same things about as well.

I think you're onto something here.  What if same-sex couples are the minority but the group in power?  And what if heterosexual couples have to give their children up for adoption upon request.  Essentially that the society views same-sex couples as being better parents/providers, and that hetero couples are some sort of genetic backdoor to keep the species alive?  Something biologically necessary but shameful and filthy?

You could also add a layer of socioeconomic metaphor and have hetero couples only be lower class people who are "forced" to be breeders to stay afloat? They get paid enough to survive (again, for the good of society), but it essentially marks them as untouchables in society.

I think I saw that it's on Amazon Prime?  I'll have to check that out.  I'll get it done, especially as many of the shows I'm currently watching are about to be over/on hiatus.

Hey, that will do!

That would be absolutely great.  I'm in.  Make it happen.

The problem is that the Democratic Party is a combination of three loosely-bound groups of people that don't really have all that much in common.  Someone in the Democratic Party needs to somehow both fully support things like Defund the Police (to keep progressives that like that) while also downplay it for people that are more in the middle who wouldn't support it.  They have to downplay Critical Race Theory as some kind of movement, but also not completely write off the ideas that are in it. 

How do you limit the "woke" stuff without alienating the people who are only here for the woke stuff?

The Republicans succeed because they don't have a platform.  They don't stand for anything of any substance.  They can just pick and choose the minor items from the left that most people think are too much and attack them. And when they get in power, they don't do a ton.

I think Discovery seasons 3 and 4 were a huge improvement on the first two seasons.  It's what they should've done in the first place.  New technology?  They're in the future!  Aliens have been redesigned?  They're in the future!  Things look slick and futuristic?  They're in the future!

It feels like a clean slate, much like TNG was to TOS.  And I think that's a great thing.  There's no canon to navigate, and they can chart their own path.

The only thing I haven't liked is the almost complete abandonment of Trek-style one-off episodes.  I typically love serialized television telling a story.  It would be fairly annoying when LOST would take a week off to tell a little one-off story and not advance it's primary story.  But I think Trek needs stuff like that.  It's great that they're using more modern storytelling, but come on, give us a planet in danger or two civilizations that need Federation support.  Especially after (SPOILER) at the end of season 3.  And even though (SPOILER) sets that up just as well in season 4, I think they could easily tell a collection of standalone episodes that tell a larger story about (SPOILER).

Picard is doing the same thing.  I want to see some new adventures with Starfleet.  All my favorite TNG/DS9/VOY characters are out there having adventures.  And now, instead of more fun reunions, we're getting a time travel story?  Hopefully Picard season 3 has more fun in that sandbox.

Also apparently Strange New Worlds is going to be more standalone adventures.  But I'm so bored of that era...

I liked Batwoman, but the corporate stuff drove me crazy.  I'm not even that business savvy, but it just felt like a writers' room that has no idea how the corporate world works.  I don't think the season even has to change that much if the Wayne CEO storyline isn't that big of a deal.  The Wayne building was abandoned at some point, and there's a serial killer that's regularly there.  Have Marquis take over the building some other way.  It was just really weird to me.

Flash has been a lot more fun this year.  After thinking it needed to wrap up, maybe it's good that it was renewed.  I think the new blood has helped.

Superman & Lois is still strong, but is it on Earth 1?  I know Diggle showed up, but that's been the only indication that it's even in the Arrowverse (let alone Earth 1).  There was a recent episode where Superman was away, and they kept showing news clips of accidents going unhandled and no other heroes responding.  Where's Kara?  Where's any of the Justice League?  Obviously, I'd love to see more connections, but considering the timeline also seems really off, maybe it's best for it to just be it's own world.  Pllus, the Diggle episode didn't even feel connected to the other Diggle episodes.

I loved the Legends season.  I'll be sad if it doesn't come back, but I feel like they'd find a way to wrap up the characters in other shows.  I hope (SPOILER), who showed up in the finale, stays in the universe either way.

I don't think the movie ever states that they'll be returned to the present day.  You've obviously seen it more recently than me, but Strange specifically says that they'll be returned home to die since it's their destinies.  That's why Peter is trying to save them - what's unclear to me (and from what I've seen from a lot of people) is how removing their powers saves them.  If the process itself (being drawn into the MCU) saved people, then what was Peter even doing?

You could easily argue that Osborn and Octavius needed Peter's help because something was causing them to be evil.  But Max seemed to like his powers and was being cooperative.  Same with Dr. Connors (for the most part).  Marko didn't seem to care either way.

If you're right, maybe removing their powers keeps them from dying at *some point* because, with no powers, there's no chance they'' *eventually* put them in a position where they'll die via their Spider-Man.  But that doesn't seem to be what Strange is saying - Strange is saying that they need to be put back in their own timelines.  So whether or not Peter takes away their powers or rescues them from insanity, Strange is still intent on putting them back in the reality *and timeline* where they belong.

I think there's just a disconnect with the logic of the movie.  If Peter is wanting Strange to simply not kill them by putting them back where they left, then the powers part is an unrelated side mission.  If Strange is unwilling to alter the timeline of other universes, then Peter succeeding in his mission is irrelevant.  And I don't think that conflict is resolved.

I mean, your way is happier.  But if Gwen is resurrected (because she's saved from death and put back in the "present" of the Garfieldverse), would Harry be resurrected and returned to the present but just still be powered/maybe crazy?  Would Venom?  Would Captain Stacy?  Would Spider-Verse Peter?

They opened some doors and I'm just genuinely curious what it meant.  If Andrew stopped pulling his punches, he's a murderer, right?  Or at least he's putting guys in the hospital.  I read some Superior Spider-Man, and I know Octavius brutalized some people because he didn't realize how strong he was.  So it'd be interesting to see a Spider-Man who may be a bit out of control and brutal.,  And then Tobey is probably in his 40s and still Spider-Man.  He has the back issue - I think that might be interesting in an Old Man Peter kind of way.

It opens the door for another movie with Tobey or Andrew.  I doubt we'd ever see it, but DC has multiple Batmen.  Raimi is back at Marvel.  I'd love to see it.  I'd even watch a Grindhouse-like double feature with Spider-Man 4 and the Amazing Spider-Man 3 where they do two mini-movies to wrap up their characters.

I wonder if they would've gone the route of Madame Web or something like that.  I don't know who has the rights to the Beyonder, but maybe even try to make into a Secret Wars situation?

I'm glad you liked it.  It was so much fun, and I thought they hit most of the major character beats.  My only real complaints:

1. The Andrew saving MJ scene was perfect, but the CGI when Andrew lands is wonky as hell.  I don't know if they fixed it for the home video release, but I hope they did.  It looked terrible even the first time I saw it.

2. I get that we are only focused on Holland's Peter, but it would've been nice to see all three Spider-Men swinging back in their home dimensions with their scores.  I think it would've made for a perfect ending.  So perfect that I honestly can't believe they didn't do it.

3. Since we will almost certainly never see any continuation of their universes, I wish they'd been a bit bolder with what had happened post Spider-Man 3 and the Amazing Spider-Man 2.  Andrew talked about stopping pulling his punches and Tobey alluded to things working out for Mary Jane, but I'm curious what all happened to the characters since we last saw them.  It would've had to be a re-write of the Spider-Men talking about their adventures, but I would've liked a little more.

I guess the Mr. Knight suit was popular, though?  It's being presented as the suit that people should be excited for.

I actually just started the Ellis run.  It became free on Comixology

Peacemaker was AWESOME, and I can't believe they pulled off (SPOILERS).  James Gunn needs to do more stuff.

Yeah they even have Wallis Day as Kate Kane.  But I agree that Javicia Leslie is good. 

The CEO stuff still bothers me.  If Wayne had three CEOs in a year (Kate, Ryan, and Marquis), all with no experience and all crazy young, the company would collapse.  I get that it's TV, but they clearly don't have any idea what a CEO is or what they do.  I think they should've just said "owner"

***********

Peacemaker is really fun and funny.  I'm really liking it.  I didn't think it was going to work after Suicide Squad (I thought Cena was good but that the character couldn't support a show), but it absolutely works.

Spoilers for the Book of Boba Fett

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

I though the first few episodes of Boba Fett were really boring.  The flashbacks weren't interesting, and I didn't think the main story was all that interesting.  Then the story shifted to the Mandalorian and Grogu and Luke and Ahsoka and I was fully on board.  I even found Cobb Vanth to be much more interesting than Boba.

I've never found Boba Fett to be cool or interesting, but I was hoping this show would turn me around.  It hasn't.  I wish they'd just done some sort of show like this instead of just a Boba Fett show - a Cobb Vanth episode, a Mandalorian episode, a Luke and Grogu episode, an Ahsoka episode.  And if they wanted to do a Boba episode, fine.  But the show is significantly better without Boba, and he's supposed to be the main character.

I think the consensus thought is that the Democrats are going to lose both chambers of Congress.  Biden is not polling well, progressives feel lied to, Republican enthusiasm is higher than Democratic enthusiasm, and the president's party tends to lose at midterms.

I think there's plenty of time, and I think Democrats can maybe muster up enough "Democracy is on the Ballot" concern to get Democrats to the polls.  But I think the Breyer retirement is a signal that the Democrats don't feel good about 2022, just like the Barrett speed-confirmation was a signal that the Republicans didn't feel good about Trump in 2020.

I don't know if I've written about this here or not, but I have an idea for how I'd do James Bond.  They're going to redo it, and I can think of only three options:

1) Set in the 60s and tell fun, Roger Moore-like stories.  Gadgets and humor and fun.  None of Craig's seriousness.  Just a Raiders of the Lost Ark popcorn movie with James Bond every couple years.

2) Old Bond.  Like 60s or 70s.  Get some younger MI6 agents but Bond is more of a mentor.  We've seen "older" Bond, but we've never seen "I can't be in the field, but I can try to help".  We've never seen it but obviously it has a short shelf life.

3) My idea.  Which they can have for free if they ever see this.

A multimedia experience.  Since Amazon owns Bond now, you do a show on Amazon Prime with events in the movies.  You sign everyone for 8 10-episode seasons and 4 movies.  Two seasons.  Then a movie.  And you tell the story from beginning to end in multiple formats.  The show could feature flashbacks to Bond's youth, leading him from the death of his parents to him joining MI6 (like Arrow, taking him from the shipwreck to off the island).  Build up tension, build up character, and build up plot.  Then every two years, you ratchet it up to a movie.

The flashbacks can allow for the actor playing Bond to film the movies without having to take a ton of time away from the show.

We haven't seen anything like this, and Amazon is (fairly) uniquely suited to do it.  Like Game of Thrones, get mostly unknowns and lock them in for an epic that will take 10+ years to complete.

Haha, your money is no good here.  I'll get it done

Oh I know.  I'm just saying voter ID is a hot button issue for Republicans.  It's trending on twitter right now.  If you add voter ID to a bill, Republican voters will make sure it passes as long as there isn't anything overwhelmingly negative or socialist in it.  You have to give them what you want and make the rest of the bill clean and on topic.

But these days, no one thinks about the compromise even though, again, this is an issue that both sides say they want.  So do it.  And once the election is secure, you can worry about getting people IDs.  But if the election isn't secure, who cares about anything else?  You could get 100% of the vote and they'll legally overturn it.

Hahahaha, that's awesome.

Let me see what I can do.

I don't think 74 million Americans are alt-right or fascist just because they voted for Trump.  People could vote for Trump for any number of reasons, and I don't think it's all intertwined.  If you're very wealthy, voting for Trump would make you money.  You could hate the guy and still vote for him if it benefits you.

And while the Republican Party might not want voter ID, Republicans do.  So if the Democrats put out a bill for that includes the voter ID that Republicans want, I think the Republican Party would have to go along with it.  If the Republican Party doesn't want it, it'd be calling their bluff and it would make it very difficult to call voter BS ever again.

I've been disappointed in Biden in a lot of ways.  And the Democrats in general.  And I think, especially among younger voters, they're going to get punished.  What was the point of winning the White House and winning both Georgia Senate seats if nothing got done?  Sure, infrastructure got done, but while everyone likes infrastructure, no one loves infrastructure.  None of the hot-button stuff that people wanted has gotten done, and I think cynical young voters aren't going to have the same level of engagement.

I listened to a months-old Five Thirty Eight politics podcast that was essentially just an interview with Adam Schiff where Schiff had all these concerns about democracy.  The interviewer kept trying to get him to say what he's doing about it, and Schiff didn't have any answer besides passing HR1.  HR1 was written before 2020 and wouldn't solve all the problems.  Plus, it's entirely unpassable in this environment.  They needed to throw out HR1 and write a bill that actually fixed the problems that Trump was trying to exploit.

And I think it's easier than the Democrats are making it out to be.  It would just take compromise on their side, and they're already compromising on their side.  The Democrats are essentially saying that if the Republicans are going to make it harder to vote, they need to work harder to get people out to vote.  Well, okay...but you aren't getting anything out of that.  This needs to be codified, and I think there's a fairly simple way to do it.

Republican voters want election integrity.  Democrats want election integrity.  They just don't agree on what that means or who's doing it.  I think that's fairly simple to fix, though.  I think the Democrats needed to offer up the right compromise.  What I would've done is written a law that provides some sort of independent oversight to state elections - states get to choose how elections are done, but they don't get to choose who won.  I'd also do what I could to end partisan gerrymandering.

How would I pass it?  I'd give in on Voter ID.  It's a huge hot-button issue for Republicans that I think they'd have to vote for.  And instead of spending four years trying to get people excited to vote, I'd spend four years getting everyone voter IDs, which I think would've been easier and harder to exploit.  And instead of getting nothing in return, I'd either prevent Trump loyalists from messing with elections, and/or I'd get rid of partisan gerrymandering.  And if that doesn't pass, I'd see what I could get for national voter ID. 

I think this was an issue that they could've easily solved.  It would've been a win for everyone, just like when Cory Booker was so excited to vote for a rebuke to Defund the Police.  People agree on this, and I think it would've been really hard to get 40 Republican senators to vote against Voter ID, as long as the rest of the bill wasn't full of insanity. 

Plus, it wouldn't require ending the filibuster, which I think would be the most temporary of solutions.  You can end the filibuster, pass HR1, and there's a good chance that a Republican congress dismantles it before 2024.  It wouldn't matter.

Pass it legitimately, truly secure elections, and figure out how to work within the new lines.  I think in four years you could get voter IDs to everyone in the country, and if you do it right, maybe they never expire.  So it'd be a lot of work from 2021-2024 and then you're set for the most part.

Democrats don't know how to get out of their own way.

I've had several friends who all got the booster and all had very mild side effects.  My worst was a sore arm - I *might've* had a headache, but it might've been more my brain expecting a headache and making it feel like I had a really dull one.  No nausea, no chills, nothing else.  Now I got my shot strategically in the late morning so maybe I slept through the side effects, but I didn't wake up drenched in sweat like I did with shot two.

My wife got her shot while breastfeeding and, since it can cause lymph nodes to swell, it caused her to develop mastitis.  So she's hesitant to get another shot because of how rough her experience was.  Hopefully stories like mine will encourage her and others to get the booster.

Regarding the possible end of the pandemic, I agree and am hopeful.  I have a friend turning 40 this week and I'm going to skip his party.  I told my wife that if we hunker down for a couple months (our biggest risk will be our 2-year-old at daycare), we could start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  At least here in the US, we had a million cases the other day.  We've gotta be moving to some form of herd immunity / conversion from pandemic to endemic.

And once we're there, I've read that we might not even need the vaccines - that it might end up being lesser than the flu / more like a cold, and only the high-risk people would need a yearly booster.  That would be nice.  At the same time, if the science recommends a quarterly booster forever, I'm fine with that too.  My experience with the booster took 30 minutes from door to door, and that included 15 minutes sitting around to see if anything happened.

A book (and a movie but less so) that I like as inspiration is The Martian.  It shows what humans are capable of if we work together.  The book is a little more realistic (if I recall correctly) because the Chinese agree to help in exchange for something from the US/NASA.  In the movie (again, if I'm remembering correctly), they just do it in the spirit of humanity.

“If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do.” - Andy Weir