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I think, besides the colors being totally different, the tone of the character is so much different in Gunn's film.  Snyder's Superman doesn't seem to care at all about humanity, and I can't imagine he cares at all about any other Earth animals.  Snyder's Superman is sad that his father dies, but he still allows it to happen.  At the end of the day, he agreed that his father should die to protect his secret.  I think Gunn's Superman would've found a way to save his dad, even if it meant sacrificing his identity.

I'm also pretty sure that a comic-accurate Superman could've saved Jonathan without anyone even noticing he left.  Clark in Smallville was able to save someone during a football game without anyone noticing he'd moved.

I think Gunn's Clark will always do the right thing.  I think Snyder's Clark will do the right thing as long as it doesn't make his life any harder.  I think Gunn's Clark is there to protect humanity with no interest in allowing any collateral damage if he can help it.  I think Snyder's Clark is there to protect some humans and willing to accept as much collateral damage as it takes to get the job done.

There is a very dark moment in Gunn's Superman, but other than that, it's a very hopeful and bright and character-forward movie.  I could easily see Gunn making a pessimistic/hopeless Superman movie like Snyder did, but I think he did a good job of making Clark more comic accurate.

Yeah but would you say any of that was in Superman?

I think the idea of a recurring villain is interesting, but I'm not sure it's necessary.  I probably would've rather had Logan be the "recurring sliding villain" since she's a flip side on our main character.  I think there's also an argument to be made that maybe you replace the "which Arturo slid?" story with a Quinn double that can't complete sliding on his own and steals Quinn's place.  Then you have a villain inside the group, and the person "chasing" them is our original Quinn.

This might be too mystical, but I'm thinking based on what ireactions and DMD said about a villain that can somehow "slide" their consciousness from place to place into a new double.  Maybe they interact with a villainous Bennish on a world, and they leave him behind.  But then in future episodes, they keep running into doubles of Bennish on each new world.  And like ireactions said, each time they run into him, he seems more of a threat.  And it turns out it was the villainous Bennish each time.  Maybe each time he enters a double, he gets more control, and by the end of the arc/season, he can finally do whatever he wants.  Or maybe he has full control each time but is playing the long game.

Sorta like Sliders meets Quantum Leap.

I don't think we've ever had that here.

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So I think this is an instance where more episodes would have been useful.  The big bad for the season was introduced midway through the season and then wrapped up in a single hour.  In a pre-streaming Trek season, the finale would've at least been a two parter, and I think you could argue that it could have been longer.  Even commercials vs non commercials, a two-part finale would have been 82 minutes-ish vs 60 minutes-ish.  And I think we probably needed those additional twenty minutes.  Some of the episode felt very rushed.

I think you could argue that maybe you get rid of the documentary episode or the "everyone is turned into a Vulcan" episode and give more time to this.  You could've probably done an entire episode of the future scenes if you wanted and give additional weight to Pike's life with Batel.  I know the crew probably had fun doing the Vulcan episode so they'd probably vote to get rid of something different, but I wish they'd used their time a little more wisely.  And, honestly, I thought they got the opportunity to ham it up on the proto-Holodeck episode (and that episode also covered "why Star Trek is important" which was sorta covered by the documentary episode).

And when there's going to be a muppet episode next year when they're going to be trying to wrap this whole series up, I have concerns.

But again I really liked what they aired.  It had a lot of heart.  Like Pike, I wish there was just more time.

I heard the other day that Gunn used to have some sort of substance abuse problem, and he's replaced that in his life with writing.  Good for him.  I think he's a great writer, and I'm impressed with how much he's been able to do and how fast he's been able to do it.

At the same time, I don't think the DCU can succeed with Gunn throwing it on his back.

James Talarico is running for US Senate in Texas.  If you don't know him, do yourself a favor and look him up.  He's the son of a Baptist minister, he's gone to seminary, and he's a Democratic state rep in Texas.  Every time I've seen him, he's impressed me.  I don't know if he has a chance to win, but he's been on Joe Rogan and he's been on different talk shows and I think he has the potential to be presidential.

Of course I thought the same thing about Beto O'Rourke, but I think Talarico is different.  He's an evangelical himself, and he wears his Christianity on his sleeve.  I think he can talk to Christian nationalists in a way that other Democrats can't.

Wouldn't that cause the same issues, though?  If Supergirl starts preproduction but isn't ready to be filmed, it still puts the next project to feature Supergirl in some kind of limbo.

Imagine if Endgame needed additional work on the script but Spider-Man: Far From Home was ready to shoot.  Do you wait to start filming Spider-Man until Endgame is filmed?  Go ahead and film but wait to release?  I guess the other option is to remove all the references from Tony from Far From Home, but I don't think that's even possible.

I assume James Gunn would say that they'd prioritize fixing the Endgame script and there wouldn't be a significant delay, but I don't know if you can do that for everything.

I've seen a lot of this sentiment.  I think the episode was entertaining, but I think there were a lot of issues with it.  I think the issue mainly goes to the idea that the writers and/or the cast had a fun idea, but they didn't really think through some of the issues.  And in an attempt to get an idea they liked on screen, they (pun intended) made the episode illogical.

The whole premise was a little flawed.  So they needed Vulcans to do the repair work, but Spock is the only Vulcan on board the Enterprise?  I know there aren't a ton of Vulcans in Starfleet compared to humans, but no one besides Spock?

Second, they made a joke of the repairs taking hours and then only taking seconds.  But if the repairs only took seconds, couldn't Spock have done it by himself?  Did it really take five people?

Third, they made some sort of implication that Spock's DNA allowed the converted Vulcans to show Spock-like emotion and logic, but that's done with training, not DNA.

Then there's silly cartoon stuff like Pike's hair changing.

So the question has to be asked - do writers of modern Trek know what Vulcans are supposed to be like, or do they know archetypes?  Are these Trek writers or just Sci-Fi writers?  I don't really know, but are there signs that these writers revere Trek?  Are there easter eggs and references that only true Trek fans would know?

Yeah, I agree.  I also think Vance would respect the job and the history of the presidency.  I think he's been bought and sold, but Vance used to be a reasonable person.  I think Trump has always been someone with fascist tendencies because he was raised in a world where he was in charge and what he wanted just happened.  He wants to run the country like he ran his company, and that's just not how it works.  I think Vance might enjoy the power of being a dictator, but he's only been MAGA for a short time.  And I think if he actually had the big job, he'd understand the historical significance of the job in a way that Trump just has no interest in or understanding of.

That's not to say he wouldn't be a bad president or even a worse president.  But I think Vance would allow there to be elections in 2026 in a way that Trump might not allow.  And I think Vance would be softer on the media (which might allow more scrutiny on the office as journalists feel emboldened to actually do their job and ask tough questions).  And while I assume some of the Cult of Trump would pass to Vance, I think a lot of it is directly tied to Trump himself and those people might abandon Vance.

That being said, Vance is infinitely more capable and intelligent than Trump so if he wanted to ruin the country in 3-3.5 years, I think he'd be able to do that.  I'm optimistic that he'd be more of a standard Republican president than a Trumpish president, but I don't know.  I don't have a ton of optimism left in general.

I'm doing my physical in a couple weeks.  I'll ask my doctor.  I know her office doesn't carry the Covid shot (I asked) so I'd have to get referred to someplace that does have it.  I have a couple of nurse friends, and they've said they're seeing a lot of cases so I'd like the additional protection.

I don't know if a trip to Canada for a vaccine is an option.  If I can just pay for it out of pocket somewhere, I'd just do that I guess.

One of my friends talked about giving up on Strange New Worlds because he thought the show was too hard on Spock.

I do feel like Spock gets the short end of a lot of things.  He's constantly being teased or transformed or heartbroken or whatever.  I think we sometimes ignore the emotional damage that things would cause when they happen to Spock because he always bounces back.  But, man, if he was a human, this show could be downright depressing for Spock.

******

I know it will never ever ever happen, but I would really love either a full season with Kirk in charge or a second spin-off with Kirk in charge or a Paramount Plus movie with Kirk in charge.  I think we've never really seen in Trek an established ship adjust to a new captain.  Not like Voyager where the whole crew is new to each other, but a crew that already works together well adjusting to a new voice.  And I think Paul Wesley is really really good in the role, and I'd love to see more of him.  He adds something to every episode he's in, and I think that's why they loop him in whenever possible.

I don't want to lose Pike, but seeing Kirk take command and having him earn over the crew would be really interesting television, I think.

No I get that and I assume that young children who loved Superman aren't going to be forced to watch an NC-17 rated TV show on a premium network to enjoy the next movie.  But I do think it might be funny for someone who only knows James Gunn for the Guardians movies, jumped over to Superman and enjoyed the wholesomeness there, and then to immediately jump into Peacemaker Season 2 and see a dramatic shift in tone.

And technically Gunn has written the entirety of the DCU.  Creature Commandos, Superman, and Peacemaker Season 2.  He's also writing the Superman sequel.  I assume he's a guy who either works really fast or really loves working.  I do worry he's either going to have to do the whole thing himself or the whole thing will lose momentum.  Supergirl will be the first thing released he didn't write, and I don't know how Clayface really fits in with the overall narrative.  After that, it's a lot of question marks.

I agree with having a final script before proceeding and I think he's learned a lot from working in the MCU.  But they gotta make stuff that he doesn't make himself, I think.

Hahaha I can't help it.  I really can't.  The past and the present and the future have to matter or none of it matters.  Headcanon to make it all work is half the fun

Well, I think it might be more complicated than explaining it.  The rest of the episode doesn't feature Star Trek - like ships with futuristic tech.  It's just more modern-looking technology.  But since the rest of the show takes place on Earth, it's possible that technology is better there and people have more access.

But honestly I think the in-universe explanation is that the Weyland-Yutani ships shown in Alien and Alien: Earth are blue collar scavenger ships.  It would be like aliens finding a fishing boat made in the 90s and assuming that's how technologically advanced we are. 

To me, I just liked that they went out of their way to completely re-create the aesthetic of Alien for this.  I don't think the rest of the episode abandons the aesthetic at all, but it secures the 70s aesthetic, at least for this portion of the universe, as how things look.  They could've easily reimagined how people look or act or how the ship looks and operates.  But they didn't.

Again, I assume the juice isn't worth the squeeze if the whole show took place on a ship (it doesn't).  But for that section of the show, I liked the respect for continuity.

*******

Okay so I finished Dexter: Original Sin.  I really liked it.  The show absolutely takes liberties with continuity with characters' ages being off, people joining the police force earlier than they were supposed to, things happening differently than they were originally explained, etc.

But I think there are two reasons I'm okay with that:

1. Dexter is our narrator - modern Dexter - and, while there has never been any evidence that he's an unreliable narrator, he's still a psychopathic serial killer.  So if an unreliable narrator explains things two different ways, that's not a huge deal to me (think the Joker in the Dark Knight).  There's also the fact that Dexter is, canonically, retelling his origin story to the "audience" as his life passes before his eyes as he believes he's dying (at the end of New Blood).  So even if Dexter is a reliable narrator, maybe his brain isn't functioning properly

2. The show is just a lot of fun.  I tried to explain to my wife that the show isn't scary at all.  The concept of Dexter is dark, but I don't even know how violent Dexter is.  Some of the people he kills are violent, but Dexter usually stabs his victims one time in the chest with a big knife.  There's blood, but it's usually captured by the plastic wrap that Dexter uses to contain his crime scenes.  He chops up the bodies, but either I'm completely desensitized by it, or it's shot in a way that isn't gory.  I don't like torture porn, and I'm skittish at stuff like Saw so I don't think it's the former.

But Dexter is a charming guy, the side characters are all interesting, and Dexter never tries to convince the audience that he's not a monster.  He's just a monster who is doing good in the world.  I think you can root for Dexter to keep doing what he's doing since he's getting rid of worse people, but I don't think Dexter even wants you to like him as an audience member.

I'm going to try and show my wife the original series.  I'll let you know if she likes it.

I finally saw Fantastic Four.  I thought it was a lot of fun.  I think the whole cast did a great job.  I only read a handful of Fantastic Four comics so I can't speak too intelligently about how they nailed their characters, but they all felt like individuals.  Let me do a couple spoilery thoughts:

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- I liked that the characters felt evolved.  I like that Ben seemed like he had come to peace with what had happened to him.  He's not yearning to go back to the way things were, at least outwardly.  I liked the Chiklis version, but this one felt like a matured version of that.  I like that Johnny got his own little side quest where he can show that he's also really smart.  I liked everything about Sue.  I liked that Reed was very smart but also cautious and anxious.  I think a scene with him and Tony Stark would be interesting because they're both smart leaders, but they approach things very differently.  I think he'll make a good Avenger.

- I liked that the movie was its own thing.  I think previous versions were supposed to include Kang in some way, and as far as I know, there are no references to any future crossover in this.  I was sorta blown away that the movie didn't end with them crossing over into the main marvel universe.  I wonder if that will even be a permanent thing, now.  Like will Fantastic Four: Second Steps (fake title) be in this universe or will they be crossed over?  Or will the multiverse be gone by that point and there will just be one universe?

- I understand all the reasons.  Covid.  Jonathan Majors.  Shakeups at Marvel.  But we've had 29 movies and TV shows in Phases 4 and 5, and the main villain for the next two Avengers movies has barely appeared.  Now I know that Thanos barely appeared before Infinity War, but we at least understood who he was and what he wanted to do.  Doomsday is going to have to do a ton of work in the first 30 minutes to get us up to speed.  Maybe it'll be great - the Russo Brothers know how to make that work.  But it just makes me nervous that we've had so much runway and haven't done a ton with it.

Thank you all for your Spock answers.  Clearly I need to go back and watch more TOS

By the way, I'm still really liking Dexter: Resurrection.  It's inspired me to watch Dexter: Original Sin (which I also really like), and I'm considering a rewatch of the original series.

So there's three ways to look at this.

1. The Republicans will succeed in further gerrymandering Texas and gain five seats that the Democrats won't be able to recover, either by their own gerrymandering or by simply winning back seats.  Trump will keep the House and the Democrats will continue to be powerless to do anything.

2. The Texas Democrats will be able to delay the vote with their current stall tactics, and the gerrymander won't happen.  Democrats will have a good shot at getting the House back.

3. This will backfire.  Texas Republicans have gone to extreme lengths to gerrymander as much as possible, but there's a limit.  Texas is red, but it's not deep red.  Democrats did terribly in 2024, but Texas has been moving purple for a while.  Maybe it'll never happen, but the shift has happened.  Beto O'Rourke almost beat Ted Cruz.  For a time, it looked like Colin Allred could beat Cruz.  At the moment, it looks like Allred could beat Ken Paxton.

And it's possible that they could stretch their Republican votes too far.  If 2024 Republican votes either shift back to Democrats or stay home and/or Democrats show up in 2026, Democrats could gain seats with the gerrymander.

The problems I see:

1. Democrats have, for the most part, decided to either voluntarily not gerrymander or to make gerrymandering impossible.  It's the right thing to do, but doing the right thing has gotten them where they are now.  I think it's time to fight dirty as well.

2. The Democrats are extremely unpopular in polling right now.  Maybe more unpopular than Republicans.  At least some Republicans still like their people.  No one likes Democrats right now.  Democrats told everyone that the world was going to end if Trump won.  Well Trump won.  So Democrats think the world is over.  Some are sad, some are angry, and no one is hopeful.

Can't have a blue wave if no one wants to step up.

You're correct.  Complaint withdrawn.

I thought the episode might have been a tad bit too meta.  I do like the idea of a proto-holodeck, and I like that it gets indefinitely delayed.  My only issue with that is that it took 100 years to solve for it?  I figure that would be a fairly big priority, and I feel like Scotty could've solved it if he had enough time.

I am mixed on this whole thing.  I do want the series to continue to move forward.  TNG was exciting because it was a new era.  Things could look modern and new and we could rationalize that with all the time that passed since TOS.  It made sense and that continued into DS9 and Voyager.  It looked brighter and more "futuristic" as technology in universe continued to get better.

I think it's really genius.  TOS looks old because it's in the past.  Now TNG looks old because it's also in the past.  We keep moving forward with leaps and bounds as the technology from our world (in some cases) eclipses what Kirk had.

Strange New Worlds is a lot of fun, but it would've been just as much fun if they'd used this cast to have a new show post-Picard.  Or even post-Discovery.  This is supposed to be about new frontiers, and the TOS is well-covered ground.

So I like that we're jumping way ahead to the 32nd century.  There's some "dark age" in there but now we can think ahead to what over 1000 years in the future would look like.  Everything is new.  I think the only problem is that I'm struggling to really identify with this universe or how it's supposed to work.  It's hard to know what the Federation looks like or what Starfleet is or how the universe works.  Hopefully a new show will sort all that out.

"Parts: the Clonus Horror" is my favorite MST3K.

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So I agree we shouldn't hold the Legacy title against it.  Maybe there was more legacy stuff and he ended up streamlining it.  It was a good decision to drop the subtitle.

It's funny...I do this a lot where I rewrite movies in my head.  Or in this case, I wrote Superman: Legacy in my head.  To me, I was thinking it might be interesting if the movie took place after the Justice Society (or just another team of superheroes) had aged out.  And when something (I assumed Brainaic) shows up, this second generation of heroes was going to have to step in and save the day...along with this brand new guy who doesn't know where he fits.  There would be a second Green Lantern (although I know he's the third one), a second Hawkgirl, a second Mr. Terrific - these heroes who have a clear legacy that they're following in.  And Clark, who's trying to blaze his own trail.  And how each of those has positives and negatives.  Clark could tell Guy how scary it is to be out on his own and be this alien and not sure if people will trust him.  And Guy could say that he's always being compared to Hal and how he wished he could be his own guy. 

That's what I thought the movie would be.  It would be a fresh start but it would feel lived in.

The post-credits scene was confusing to me.  Were they repairing the city, or was that just how the city reformed?  There's the scene at the end after the portal is closed where the building comes back together on its own.  That's what I assumed the building at the end was done, but obviously the scene doesn't make any sense if that's the case because why would Terrific feel any ownership of how that building came back together?

It's funny.  Most of the criticism I've seen is that the movie is too messy, and I do think that some of the movie could've been streamlined a bit.  The movie, to me at least, was trying to talk about what it means to be human.  Because I think Clark has every right to think of himself as a human.  And as long as the movie ended with Clark telling Lex that, I think the movie would've been good.

My relationship with Dexter is a bit complicated.  While I might be one of only a handful of people on this Earth who didn't hate the finale, that isn't to say that I loved it.  Dexter did have a steady decline in quality after the brilliant season 4.  I do think that I have a better ending for Dexter in my mind (Dexter is captured and has a season where he's a Hannibal Lecter type advisor to his sister), but I think the story they told is a fine one.

I think New Blood was an appropriate next chapter for Dexter.  He's always wanted a normal life and stripped of all of his ties to Miami, he was able to live a fairly normal life.

What's strange about New Blood is that it doesn't do much of the things that Resurrection does.  Resurrection is a parade of returning characters and cameos to take Dexter through the journey of his life.  Resurrection forces Dexter to face the consequences of eight seasons in Miami.  New Blood, in a lot of ways, allowed Dexter to start fresh.  Resurrection doesn't really appear to let him do that.

The question with Dexter is always: "Is he a good person?"  Yes, he's a killer.  But can killing be used for good?  I don't know if New Blood really tried to answer that (or if it did, I forgot).  Resurrection comes out and says it - Dexter kills bad guys which saves good guys.  But he also involves himself with bad guys, bringing bad guys close enough to him that good people in Dexter's life are killed.  There's good and bad, and it would be almost impossible to settle Dexter's accounts to know if he's saving more people than he's getting killed.

I think I like the version of Dexter where he knows he's a bad person and he's just doing the best he can with that.  Where he acknowledges that he likes killing, and if he's going to kill, he might as well kill bad guys.  I don't really like the version of Dexter where he's some kind of victim.  He's not Batman - he's the Punisher.  The Punisher knows he's a bad guy who does good by doing bad things.  I don't know if the Punisher has ever had a sidekick or an apprentice, but I would assume he wouldn't want to raise anyone else to be like him.  Dexter has a son, but he's gone back and forth with whether or not Harrison even has a dark passenger.

I don't think Resurrection overturned anything I cared about.  If the original Dexter was the end, I would've been fine.  If New Blood was the end, I would've been fine.  I don't think we *need* Dexter stories, but the character is so compelling that I'm happy to get new stories.  I haven't had a ton of interest in the Dexter prequel because I think Michael C Hall's performance is 99% of the fun.

Is the revival plausible?  I'm not nearly educated enough on stuff like that.  Dexter was shot in the chest (I'm not even sure if where he was shot is a place you can survive), and from my memory of New Blood, the show was pretty clear that he was going to die in the wilderness.  But he was shot in the snow, and Resurrection says that the show slowed down his heart enough to keep the blood loss from being too severe.  Is that a thing that happens?  I don't know.  But it's plausible enough for this silly show in my opinion.

And yeah I did like it.  I liked that it gave us the parade of former villains.  I like that Batista is back and still looking into LaGuerta's death (one of the few deaths that paints Dexter as a truly bad guy).  And if Hall is going to keep playing this character, I'll watch.

I thought Ironheart was...fine?  I'm not sure why this was held on for as long as it was.  Unless they did major reshoots (which I didn't hear about if they did) or unless they needed to work on the CGI (which I think was pretty good), I'm not sure why they waited.  The show was fun and entertaining and seemed to fit in well with the other phase 4 introductory series.  I think it's a fine addition to the MCU, and I hope we get to see Riri again.

I'm glad that Marvel is trying to focus on making their movies better because there's no question that the Phase 4/5 movies weren't as good as the Phase 3 movies.  But I think completely moving away from the Disney+ shows is a mistake.  You can understand from stuff like The Marvels and Brave New World that the movies have a little bit of a hard time with the Disney+ shows because they have to rehash some stuff because not every movie-going audience member will have seen 6-10 episodes of a Disney+ show.  Cool.

I think the solution is somewhere in the middle.  Because I think the shows have value, and I think the shows should continue to be made.  But I would use the Disney+ shows the way I thought they were originally designed to be: a bridge between movies.  One of my favorite things about Agents of Shield was the fact that we were living in this MCU world in between movies.  I know some people hated it, but I loved when we had the cleanup from Thor: The Dark World or the big reaction to the Winter Soldier twist.  And while I think the show got better year after year, the fact that it felt less and less a part of the MCU was to the detriment of the universe.

So when we got the announcement of WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki, it seemed like we were doing that.  Doing side adventures for key MCU characters that moved the story along without having to do an entire movie.  I don't think we need 10 shows a year, but I would like to see shows that fill in the gaps and get us from Point A to Point B where the next movie picks up. 

And that takes skill and luck and planning, but I think Marvel is perfectly capable of that barring no more strikes or pandemics.

I agree with all of this.  But I think it goes deeper than that.  Hakeem Jeffries isn't an aging politician - he's 54.  But who is Hakeem Jeffries?  What would be the most relevant thing he's done?  He's in a real position of power within the Democratic Party, but I don't think he's really making a name for himself.  I know the Democrats don't have any real power, but that doesn't always matter in today's media environment.  Trump had no real power from 2020-2024, but he was still everywhere.

Since Trump was elected, the only real thing anyone did was Cory Booker.  Voting against Trump's agenda and saying "we don't have any power until we win back the House and/or Senate" isn't good enough.  I think the Democrats need to do more to be getting attention.  I don't know if they're going on Fox News or Newsmax or places like that, but they need to be reaching everyone.  Trump's bill will do real damage to Republicans, and they need to be reaching those people with "I'm telling you what's about to happen to you, and here's how we would fix it"  You won't reach everyone (or maybe even a lot of people), but you have to try.

They can't just be the party of "we're against Trump" - that will probably be very useful in 2026 (if there are elections) and maybe 2028 (bigger "if there are elections") but I was worried about this even if Harris won.  The party has a very tenuous coalition, and if Trump isn't in the picture, there's no guarantee that the rich suburban white people stay with them.  And there's definitely no guarantee that the Obama-Trump voters they lost ever come back.

I don't know if they're working on that.  But I think they're fumbling the ball.

I don't know how or why, but I completely missed the Karate Kid franchise.  It feels up my alley (I gravitated towards both 3 Ninjas and Surf Ninjas instead).  I watched the original a couple years ago, but while I enjoyed it, I felt like it had passed me by.  So while I want to watch all the movies and Cobra Kai, I just can't find the energy to put into actually doing that.

But I'm interested in how the rights work that the movie and show can use the same character but not share other pieces?

Ha, that all makes sense to me.  I'm genuinely curious where, if anywhere, this franchise goes next.  It's a little crazy that there are 8 movies, of wildly different styles at times, that were all good to great.  I'm not sure enough people appreciate that this might be the overall best franchise we've ever had.

So I saw it.  I wanted to give some thoughts:

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So I know the director has talked about filming the prequel scenes and de-aging Cruise and filming it like a Mission Impossible movie that would've been made in the 80s.  And they decided, I believe, it was too distracting.  But I think you're right - even if they didn't go all out, they probably still could've explained a bit more.

I think, overall, the movie is really good.  I thought it was fun and engaging.  But at the same time, I struggled with some things.  I think the ending was a bit bizarre.  The whole movie is set up as a culmination of 8 movies, and the movie goes out of its way to show clips from previous movies.  This was a love note to fans of the franchise, but the movie doesn't really sell itself as a farewell to Ethan at all.  The movie keeps talking about it as "one last mission" or whatever, but what's stopping Ethan from continuing the work?  He doesn't talk about retiring, and he's not injured in any significant way.  I thought for a few minutes that the movie would end with Ethan falling out of the plane to his death, sacrificing himself to kill the Entity.  And that's almost exactly what happened.

But it didn't.  And if, immediately after everyone walks way, someone calls Ethan and tells him that Benji has been kidnapped, Ethan would go right back to work.  So what ended?

I also thought it was a bit crazy on two levels:

1. The movie says multiple times that "cyberspace" will end if they kill the Entity.  Did that not happen because they captured the Entity?  Or did it happen?  The movie simply doesn't say.  If there's somehow no Internet anymore, that's a giant change to the universe that the movie simply doesn't address

2. The movie ends with the Entity intact.  Shouldn't someone smash that box?  What's the point of capturing the Entity and holding it?  That doesn't save the world, it just delays the inevitable.  I figured Grace or Benji would smash it immediately, but then they just give it to Ethan?  And he just holds on to it?  I don't understand.

Then there's some other stuff that goes unaddressed.  They talk about martial law across the world, but that doesn't really play into anything.  Ethan and company are able to pretty freely cross borders and get through places and have chases without running into any problems.  I also found Grace's character to be a bit frustrating.  In Dead Reckoning, she was pretty clearly in it for herself, shifting a bit at the end.  In Final Reckoning, she starts off seemingly in it for herself, but at some point she's all in.  I don't know if that was earned.

I also think the dialogue was a bit clunky.  They used the word reckoning way more than it's usually used in normal conversation, and I think some of the flashback stuff was very distracting.  I have recently seen all eight movies, and I did some homework to remember some things.  So maybe it was useful to people who haven't seen any of these movies since they came out.  But to me it was distracting.

And I was also a bit blown away that the movie only had one big returning character.  Where was Jeremy Renner or Michelle Monaghan or Sean Harris or Vanessa Kirby?  I really expected that Renner would show up in a surprise appearance, and he certainly would've been helpful in this mission.  And if they wanted to make this the final movie, I sorta expected some sort of "Endgame" sequences where people showed up to help.  I know that Renner stepped away from the role and turned down something, and I don't know if there's animosity, but Renner almost took over this franchise.  And for him not to be dead but also never be mentioned or even shown in flashback just feels super weird.

And the Jim Phelps Jr stuff....I didn't think that was earned at all, and I'd be interested in seeing whether or not this satisfies people who were turned off by Phelps being the bad guy in the original.

I know that was a lot of negative, but the negative just sort of stands out.  I think the movie is really good.  It might be one of my least favorite movies of the series, but this is a series of extremely strong movies.  And this one, I think, bit off a bit more than it could chew.  But, man, Cruise knows how to make a movie, even a movie this long, super fun and engaging.  The action was fun and clear and didn't make my eyes gloss over.  And the stunts he does at his age are so impressive and memorable.

All in all, I would love to see this series continue.  And I think the way they actually ended it, this isn't really the end for Ethan, right?  There's gonna be another one, I gotta think.