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True, but for team up movies, you sorta have to be willing to get your one moment, cheer, and then try and enjoy the rest of the movie.  You can't really expect your favorite person to be the star because there's so many people to choose from.  That's why the ads can make it seem like Spider-Man or the Guardians are the star, when, in reality, the writers used the best character they thought the story demanded.

If TF is right, then Thor probably makes the most sense as a Adam Warlock equivalent.  Hulk as Silver Surfer....and then, after that, it's a lot of ground-level people.  Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, Spider-Man....they're not going to be able to put up as much of a fight in a brawl with Thanos.

That's what's sorta fun about Avengers movies.  While I enjoy the DC characters more, all of them are just so ridiculously powerful that team-ups seem almost pointless.  Flash is sometimes an afterthought in the Justice League, but Flash would destroy most of the Avengers by himself.  And don't even get me started on Superman...he'd put the Avengers out of business.

But in this movie, anyone can die.  Not just from a realism perspective....but since this is essentially the end of the road for a lot of these characters....anyone can die.  And that's why I'm seeing it the first showing in town

I'll certainly be grading it on a curve.  To take all these huge characters and somehow make a movie that makes any level of sense will be impressive on its own.  I'm expecting it to either be a clusterf*ck on at least one level, and that's how I'm going to rate it.

The Russo Brothers have come out and said that the two main characters in the movie are Thanos and Thor.  So if they're gonna spend any time developing Thanos as a character and if they're able to determine that there *is* a main character, then a lot of these guys are going to be background characters.  And if you're a big fan of Scarlett Witch and she doesn't get an important role, you're just going to have to get over it, unfortunately.

I bought tickets to see Infinity War on opening night.  Whether or not the movie lives up to the hype, I want to see it the same time as everyone else.

It was kinda cool to have Oliver wear the old Hood uniform again.  Although, looking at it now, I'm not sure how we ever took that look seriously.

I also thought the Legends finale was pretty solid.  That show can be fun when it wants to be, and it showed that it has a decent amount of it's own lore to pull on.  Supergirl is back tonight.

And a funny thing happened to me while I was watching the Flash.  When Barry "benched" Ralph, I absolutely thought "wait, does Barry have the authority to bench someone?"  I honestly wasn't sure if The Flash was powerful enough in his own team to make decisions like that

And the Wells stuff is interesting.  I wonder if they're setting up for him to be the real Thinker.

Gabriel's fake out death both makes some sense (in a Loki sort of way), but I still don't like it.  I feel like Lucifer would've noticed.

And it's still one of my favorite scenes, and for it to be retconned just really upsets me.  *Especially* since I liked the character.  His death might've been the most effective in the entire series.  Maybe more than John's.

I guess I'm watching this tonight.

I read the title today and thought it sounded too much like a Westworld thread.  Which it obviously isn't.  Changed it

Well I think that's sorta the plan here, even if it ended up being a joke.  If you just give people the information they want, they won't try and figure it out on their own.  Because people that are trying to "figure out the mystery" are, essentially, trying to spoil it for themselves.  Instead of enjoying the mystery, they're trying to outsmart it.

And since theories are now turning into spoilers, they just want to cut out the middleman in a way.

Or Roy could be the villain.  Student vs. Teacher type stuff.

I mean I like his character and think he could be an asset to the show....but.....I don't understand what they're doing with it.

(Obviously going to give them a chance to make it work )

Well, I wouldn't go that far.  I think the villain this year is a nice change of pace, and I think he's a lot better than Zoom or Savitar.  What bothers me about him is that I don't really get a feel for what his actual motives are.  He seems like he wants to change the world for the better, and he was only fighting Flash because he stood between him and his goal.  That's certainly what his wife seems to think, and even though he's obviously moved beyond that, it's unclear what his *new* motives are.  Does he just want to prove that he can beat Flash now?  Once he does, does he have a goal?

Well, there were tons of ways they could've done it and made an emotional impact.  What if Joe insisted that she be the leader because he felt sorry for her.  And then, it turns out, she's really good at leadership, and she earns their respect.  Instead, it reminds me a little of the storyline on the Office where Nellie decided that she was the manager, sat in the chair, gave orders, and everyone just sorta went along with it.

They obviously put some thought because she makes sense in the role she's in.  But they apparently just decided to not explore the emotional side of it for whatever reason.

RIP

The original Sliders were tortured all the time in the original series.  My original intent, in my head, was for the FBI to try and get the information out of them, but they'd just laugh it off because they'd all been through Kromagg torture techniques.

In the X-Files post, I talked about how I'd continue the X-Files.  Have a connection to the old series but don't make it a reboot.  In that sense, the connection I would choose is Quinn....although, with some work, I think it could work just as well with Wade.

It's 2018.  Quinn Mallory and the Sliders made it home some time ago.  (Editor's note: it doesn't matter which Quinn this is.  Either it's Season 1-2 Quinn with Seasons 3-5 redacted, it's Seasons 1-5 Quinn who was separated from Mallory and got home, or it's an all-new Quinn).  He's spent years working on sliding on his own, but he ran out of money some time ago.  The FBI has been pestering him to give him the sliding secret for years - he's been arrested, his friends have been arrested, he's been tortured...nothing worked. 

But Quinn has run out of options - sliding has become his life's work, and he has to fix the wrongs of his past.  He agrees to work with them, and he's brought to a massive, technologically magnificent lab.  He has brilliant scientists working for him, and he's free to work on whatever he wants.  But the government isn't giving him free reign - they want him to help them chart the multiverse.  They want him to lead a team of soldiers that go on exploratory missions.

Quinn refuses.  He's been out there, got lost, and he's not doing it again.  (Editor's note: He's in mid-40s, and he saw what sliding did to the Professor and Rembrandt.  Maybe he's married.  Maybe he has an adopted kid or something.  Either way, he's not interested).  But he has the next best thing - one of the things he's worked on is a miniature pinhole vortex that stays open indefinitely.  With it, he can stay in radio contact with the team at all times.

So Quinn leads the team as they go out into the multiverse, but there are tons of different factions at work.  Quinn's told that it's a simple exploratory mission.  But he also knows that there are factions in the government that are looking to steal resources from other worlds.  Or maybe even flee Earth Prime entirely (global warming or some other planetary threat).  Of course, Quinn has ulterior motives of his own - he's secured a few demands of his own, including the ability to send the team on missions of his own choosing.  What is Quinn looking for?  Or is it a who...?

For the most part, the team would be the star.  They'd go on missions, get in trouble, and find their way out.  For it to work, there'd need to be some sort of technological limitation (like random sliding)  to keep them from just leaving when things got tough.  And, of course, they'd have their own motives and reasons for going on the trip.

Supernatural is back for Season 14.

And Scoobynatural was tons of fun.

Possibly.  But since My Struggle IV is canon, I'm cool letting them have a happy ending.  Maybe Skinner wants to investigate them because they've fallen so far off the grid, but it feels like "saving Quinn" in season 5 of Sliders.  What's the point if you aren't sure if Gillian is ever going to come back?

To keep with the TNG analogy, when that show first started....I think the natural assumption was that the TOS crew lived happy lives.  We see McCoy, and we know that he lived to a nice, old age.  It wasn't until episodes like "Relics" and movies like "Generations" that we learned what really happened to them.  I'd like X-Files to, at the very least, give the illusion that Mulder and Scully lived happily ever after.

And maybe in season 3, we can learn the real truth.  Because, of course, they can't live happily ever after

Okay I finished it.  Nothing still really happened.  It was a really long chase scene, really.  And I just don't really know what the point of any of it was.  Was there a conspiracy or an alien pathogen or any of it?

Well from what I heard, most of the political aspects were Roseanne defending her decision to vote for Trump and the rest of the family busting her balls for it.  If you looked online, I'd have assumed that the whole show is pro-Trump when it sounds like Roseanne is the only one on her own side.

I don't care about Trump.  I think he's a doofus, and I think he's totally in over his head.  But I also don't think that we need to vilify people that like him.  There used to be a dialogue between people that didn't get along.  It was how people got along with each other, and it was how understanding was found.  I might disagree with someone with the opposite beliefs, but understanding their POV is a goal of mine.  When you've cut out all your friends that disagree and cut out all the media that disagrees with you and formatted your social media to only include people that agree with you, you start believing that you're in the vast majority of sane people.  You've cut out the dialogue.  You've cut out the understanding.

It's easier to hate something you don't know and don't understand.

Well, that's because we've stopped seeing each other as people with different political beliefs.  If you're a Republican, you see liberals as whiny, weak, East/West coast snobs who look down on hard-working people.  If you're a Democrat, you see conservatives as naive, prejudiced hillbillies who hate everything that isn't Fox News.

Voting for Trump doesn't mean that you agree with everything he does or everything he stands for.  There are countless issues, and everyone weighs those issues differently before they make their choice.  If your number one issue is (EXAMPLE) and your candidate is still advocating your side of (EXAMPLE) , then you'll support that candidate no matter what else they do.  You could be a fiscal conservative and a social liberal and you could vote for either party depending on a million factors in your own life and how they rank at any particular time.

So you can like what Trump has done with the economy and still support gay marriage.  Or protect children from bullies.  Or a hundred different things that Trump might not support.  It's not as black and white as people want it to be.  It wasn't 20 years ago when Roseanne first aired, and it isn't now.

I didn't turn it off.  The plane landed and I stopped caring

If it were good, I'd probably have pursued the ending.  But there wasn't enough good to outweigh the bad.

So is the DC Animated stuff trying to aim to a more mature audience?

How tall are you, Grizzlor?

Note: I haven't watched the finale.  So I don't know what was wrapped up and what wasn't, but I assume based on what I've scanned that it's a mess.

All that being said....I don't like reboots.  Whatever the property, I like the idea that the previous continuity exists in one way or another.  I prefer a "Next Generation" format when it comes to follow-ups because you're building on a foundation, even if that foundation is weak or full of holes.

I'm completely cool with ireactions' idea for a second series, but I'd make it a second series.  Whatever the conspiracy between Mulder/Scully/CSM/etc ends up being, it's over.  It's done.  And assuming it being done doesn't end the world, I think it's done.

So Summer Glau's character shows up at the FBI, and she stumbles upon the record of Fox Mulder.  She has her own ties to the supernatural, and she's interested in the fact that these files show that werewolves and vampires and aliens are potentially real.  And whether Fox is dead and whether Scully is in England, it really doesn't have to matter.  There can be a new, fresh conspiracy with no ties to the original....whether or not the original conspiracy made any sense.

That way, the universe continues to grow.  Maybe we see the ripples from some of Mulder's work, even though Mulder may or may not appear.  X-Files fans can get their new adventures with new characters and new villains....while also knowing that nothing that ever happened previously has been erased.

I haven't seen the finale, but I watched the penultimate episode (catching up from missing everything the week of my Honeymoon).  Alan Sepinwall says that it would've made a great finale, and I agree.  It definitely feels like the end of the Mulder and Scully adventures.  I don't know if it plays into the final My Struggle, but I could've easily seen that be the end.

One question I have - Duchovny seems really wooden this year.  I can't tell if he doesn't care or if he's just gotten bad at acting, but it just seems like he's reading his lines.  There doesn't seem to be much emotion behind them.  A lot of people claimed he was checked out last season, but this one seems just as bad (or worse).  Has anyone else thought that?  I think Gillian has been great, but Duchovny seems really out of it.  I know he's a good actor because I've seen it before.

Well, here's my $0.02 as someone who doesn't like guns and doesn't own one.  Guns might not have value to you, but they clearly have value to millions of people who don't want to kill others.  And while it's easy to dismiss that as someone who doesn't like guns, I think it's important for the debate to take that into account.

So what might some of those reasons be, and what would be a safe and effective way to appease both parties.

"I like to hunt with guns"

This is a big thing for people.  Hunting can be a time-honored tradition with families, and guns are essential to the process.  People will fight hard for tradition and family and memories, and so I think there needs to be a hunting exemption. 

My idea - either you "rent" your guns from a specific office where you keep it (near a hunting ground) and you aren't allowed to take it off the ground.  If you only want the gun when you're hunting, this makes sense (just like how you rent bowling shoes or a paintball gun or ice skates).

"Guns are fun to shoot"

This is something that people have a problem with, but it can be a hobby like anything else.  It's a skill you can learn, and there's adrenaline that you get from shooting. 

My idea - create special gun ranges where people can go and shoot guns for free.  Everything is subsidized by the government - the guns themselves, ammo, targets, and most importantly, security.  And assuming that the security is strong enough, I'd be okay letting people shoot basically whatever guns they want.  This is where I'd want background checks to be run, but if people want to shoot and it can be safe, I don't see any reason why they can't be allowed to shoot.

"I need a gun for protection"

This is the trickiest one.  I saw an online debate where people were arguing in favor of AR-15s because they were better for protection.  That the gun makes it more likely that you'd only hurt an intruder.  I don't know nearly enough about guns to know if that's true, and honestly, it doesn't matter to me.

What's interesting...and it's something that I don't see much....is why people are so scared.  Home invasion seems to be a very-real threat that people are concerned about, and it's not something that seems to be addressed.  So I wonder...are home invasions more prevalent in the US than other countries?  If not, how do foreigners make their families feel safe?  If so, what do other countries do to keep home invasions down?

And I honestly don't have an idea here.  You could stiffen the punishment for a home invasion to hopefully keep the numbers down.  Maybe that might help people feel safe.  Maybe subsidize other forms of home security so that people don't think guns are their only option.  Additional police presence?  Subsidize something like tazers or a non-lethal form of home protection?

And that's the thing.  I think most people just don't feel safe.  And not from the government....from each other.  And when the government talks about taking away people's guns, I think most people aren't worried about the government taking over - I think it's just that they're going to feel less safe.  That the police won't get there in time.  That their spouse or children could be killed because they don't have the tools to defend them.

Now I know it might seem silly to say an assault rifle is necessary for security, but some people feel that way.  Take away their gun, and they feel like their child is in danger.  And I think until both sides understand where the other side is coming from, we're just not going to get any better on this issue.

I don't think that's true.  I watch a lot of sports, and if I want analysis, I could look at millions of fans' opinions....or I could seek out an expert that either played the game or has studied it for a very long time.  I usually choose the latter.

While I do find it silly that reviewers are forced to take a movie like Dumb and Dumber and somehow put it on the same scale as The Shawshank Redemption....I think critics have a lot that they can offer.  I would just like to see movies judged on their individual merit - Dumb and Dumber can be a 9/10 if it's a movie that tried to be a dumb comedy and succeeded in making me laugh.  A movie that's more serious and classical can be a 4/10 for failing, even if it's a movie that's "better" than Dumb and Dumber.

Because, yes, moviegoers can be more selective.  So critics shouldn't say "go see the Shape of Water because it's a better movie than Super Troopers 2" because some people don't want to make that decision.

Instead, it should be "if you've chosen to go see this movie, here's how it performed."

I felt like the episode was 100% a case of ireactions' theory on the X-Files.  This was just a writer/writers being given the X-Files sandbox and being allowed to do whatever they want with it.  This episode took place at some point in the future where technology is more advanced than it is now, and this is one of their stories.

I loved it.

I don't only think it was one of the best episodes of X-Files I've seen in a while.  I legitimately think it was one of my favorite episodes of any TV show that I've seen recently.  It was far-fetched (AI team up to kill the guy that won't tip his robot chef), but it was thrilling and engrossing and a whole lot of fun.  It could've easily been an episode of Black Mirror, but the fact that it was Mulder and Scully made it that much better.  It's these two legends of TV, brought back into the modern time, and now they have to deal with this Black Mirror scenario.

So many things were effective.  I thought, for the first part, that Mulder and Scully wouldn't speak the whole episode.  That only the AI would speak.  The silent movie effect was still powerful.  And the cold, alien, lifeless setting of the rest of the episode made the final scene in the full-of-life diner so much livelier. 

I'm not kidding.  I absolutely loved it.

What I think is funny is there are people who will make fun of "thoughts and prayers" and then post some hashtag like #BanAssaultRifles to Facebook.  They're making fun of the worthless gesture and then making a worthless gesture themselves.

I don't like guns.  If there were a vote, I'd happily vote to ban gun sales or guns or whatever.  But at the same time, I also see the problem as being way bigger than most people think.  I think there are a lot of angry people, and I think there'd still be mass shootings if all guns magically disappeared.  We should be working on guns, but we also need to work on ourselves.

But what's funny is that people on the left talk about the NRA as being this big juggernaut, and it isn't.  The only weapon the NRA has is the same weapon that everyone on the other side has.  The big difference is that the NRA.....has much smaller numbers than the anti-gun people. 

NRA voters are single-issue voters.  They only vote on gun-related things.  If they were another organization, they'd be considered a bastion of American democracy.  They're active.  They vote.  They rally.  They contact their government.  They do everything that American citizens are supposed to do.

The anti-gun chunk of society has all the tools they need to run the NRA into the ground.  If they actually got up and called their congressmen and women, if they actually went out and voted, if they actually rallied, then they'd be fine.  Some do.  There are gonna be huge rallies regarding the stuff in Florida.  But the NRA does it *every day*.  The anti-gun people can't match the NRA's intensity, and that's why the NRA wins.

I don't know if I agree with that.  Steve is a boring character, but he's boring in a lot of the same way (comic) Superman is boring.  He does the right thing.  He thinks with his conscience.  And he's willing to fight if someone disagrees with him.

That's sorta what I'm talking about in my review.  I was surprised at how much character stuff there was.  I think they missed the mark on some stuff, but you get a pretty good idea about the depth of his friendship with Bucky.  You get a pretty decent idea of what makes this guy tick and what makes him angry.  When you look at the Captain America trilogy, there's actually a decent foundation for those movies.  First Avenger is the worst of the three (in my opinion), but it's almost a Batman Begins situation.  Dark Knight is a better movie, but there's no Dark Knight if Batman Begins didn't do heavy lifting.

I was impressed.  Not blown away.  But impressed.