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See, I can get into this.  Let's say that Dick was the only Robin and he died....that clears Bruce from any wrongdoing (and the filmmakers from touching on a *very* important part of Bruce's life).  If Batgirl is about a grown-up Barbara Gordon returning to Gotham for the first time since her childhood and working with her father....and meeting Batman, I think that could be cool.  It's sorta Barbara's arc in the Lego Batman movie, when I think about it.

The way I see it, if Dick is alive out there and Bruce didn't call him, Bruce is a terrible person.  If Bruce was trying to kill Superman, and Dick didn't call him, Dick is a terrible person.  And if Alfred didn't call Dick or tell Bruce to call them, then he's a terrible person.  So for the sake of the characters, I'd just prefer for there to be no Dick (Jason Todd was the only Robin) or for him to be dead.  It's the only way to clear everyone of, in my eyes, terrible wrongdoing.

If you're right and the call might've happened offscreen, then the writers are awful for cutting out a part that could've easily been Bruce's entire emotional crux of the movie.

*******

Everything else is sorta in that whole "personal preference" thing.  I get what you're saying about cutting off Flash/Aquaman/Cyborg's stories.  And I can see some merit in using Justice League as a launching pad so that they can hit the ground running in their own movies.  Barry now has the confidence to be the hero he wants to be - his life is starting anew.  Aquaman knows the value of trusting others and working as a team - that will drive him to face his Atlantean roots.

Victor......well, Victor was the worst part of the movie....which wasn't really his fault because it seems like the emotional core of his story might've been lost in edits.  And he's the one who's least likely to get a solo film at this point so there's that.

But I think if you carve out the stories in Justice League and create solo films from them....your story in Justice League can grow exponentially.

FLASH - I actually like a Barry that's a timid version of Clark from Smallville.  He has these powers, but his primary advantage is just being able to move so fast that people can't see him.  So he shows up, saves the day, and no one even knows he's there.  It can play into the fact that he's so fast that he doesn't really feel like he's on the Earth with anyone else.  Maybe it physically affects him (he stays sorta one half/step from the rest of the world so that he can speed up immediately if anyone is in danger).  The only time he slows down is to talk to his dad.

Over the course of the movie, he learns to control the speed, gets the courage to talk to Iris, and through his dad, decides to become a forensic scientist.

In Justice League, now he's his own man.  He's built the suit, he's taken down some criminals and he's made a name for himself.  But now he's standing beside these literal gods, and it knocks him back down.  How can he stand with these guys?  He wants to, but how can he?  He has this doubt because he still doesn't know how to fight.  And maybe, when Superman comes back, there's a scene where Barry thinks, "I'm the Fastest Man Alive.  It's what defines me.  If this guy is as fast as me but can also fly and punch steel and shoot lasers from his eyes, then what am I anymore?)

Instead of his solo movie being an extension of his journey, Justice League becomes an extension of his own movie.

AQUAMAN - You can do a lot of the same stuff.  Arthur starts in the same village, but now an Atlantean scout comes to find him to bring him home.  Maybe tie it to the World Engine in Man of Steel - it's destroying Atlantis.  So he has to face these two sides to himself and his mother and feeling abandoned and all that. And the movie ends with him in command of Atlantis and feeling good about his connection to the Earth.

Now in Justice League, he's not this lone wolf who decides to help.  He's a man torn between two worlds.  He has to fight Steppenwolf to defend Atlantis, but he also has this moment where he realizes that he's about to abandon the people he just spent a movie fighting to earn the trust of.  Can he do that?  Does he even want to?  And you can tie him in with Superman, who's in a similar situation.  He identifies with everyone else, but he has this destiny that seems so alien to him.

*****

The Superman stuff we are never going to agree on

*****

I started thinking about Steppenwolf and the villains, and I wonder if, in hindsight, they got the villains backwards.  What if the villain of Man of Steel was Steppenwolf?  You have to change some of the Krypton stuff around, but maybe Jor-El faught against Steppenwolf back on Krypton.  Maybe a war with Darkseid is what destroyed Krypton.  I don't know how you make it tie emotionally but let's say that's how they did it.

Steppenwolf shows up, tries to destroy the world, and Clark stops him.

BvS plays similarly.  Lex re-animates Steppenwolf instead of Zod.  And in the final fight, Clark still uses the Kryptonite spear, either because it's the strongest weapon available to him or because zombie-Steppenwolf was raised with Kryptonian tech. 

So in Justice League....Zod breaks out of the Phantom Zone (maybe there's still a scene in Man of Steel where Zod, having tried something illegal to try and win the war against Darkseid, gets sentenced there) and shows up on Earth to get revenge on Jor-El's son.  Only Jor El's son is already dead.  So he just decides to try and enslave the Earth.

Now now Batman's looking at a situation where there are three evil Supermen and no good one.  Diana maybe could fight one of them, but they're still outnumbered.  Bruce starts the team, but they realize they need Superman back.  They resurrect him, and how Clark can fight Zod.  You get this big payoff from the start of the movies that's been years in the making, and you get bad guys that are truly worth the risk of bringing Clark back.

Plus, with Zod's subcommanders, you get some fun fan stuff.  You get Flash vs. the speed of a Kryptonian.  You get Batman v Superman rematch with Bruce fighting a Kryptonian with no one holding back.  You get Wonder Woman vs. a Kryptonian.  You get Aquaman vs. a Kryptonian.  All these chances for the League to show how powerful they are up against these military-trained Supermen.

Could've been a whole lot of fun.

Okay instead of using quotes, I'm just going to put stuff in bold and hope you get the idea.

On the Avengers model vs. the Justice League model

I still think there's some disagreement here on what I mean.  I completely understand where you're coming from, but you're still talking about "how the Avengers did it" vs. "the Avengers model."  The Avengers model is simply "Do a movie for all the main characters, and then do a movie where they team up."  Man of Steel, in effect, followed the Avengers model.  So did Wonder Woman.  So did Iron Man.  I know you don't actually like Wonder Woman, but they all followed the model of "tell a story about these people."

I agree that Avengers gets bogged down in setting up sequels, but that's not really what I'm talking about.  The First Avenger doing too much to set up the Avengers isn't a problem with the model itself - it's a problem with the movie itself.  If they'd done a "Man of Steel" film for Aquaman/Flash/Cyborg, you'd agree that that's better, right?  Because that's what I'm talking about.  If we knew these characters before we came in, we'd be more invested in what's happening.  Wonder Woman drops Steve Trevor's name without an extended flashback sequence because we know who he is.  The Atlantis/Barry prison/Victor and his dad scenes would've had a lot more weight if we weren't learning who they all were on the fly.

I feel like, because I watch the Flash, I pulled some of my emotion from that for the Henry Allen stuff.  For the Victor stuff....well, I just had to look up Silas Stone's first name so that's one problem.  I also know they cut a lot of the Cyborg stuff out, but you don't think he was in desperate need of a movie?

I said a long time ago, but I think WB could've made a cool movie where they introduced all three new heroes.  Sorta like a grindhouse movie.  Three 30-45 minute adventures setting everyone up.  It'd be super-unconventional, but at least we'd know. Even if they did an in-universe animated movie like "Gotham Knight" (before The Dark Knight was released).  Give us something.

It's like the Atlantis scene - you make a couple different theories on why the air bubble is used.  Imagine if, in Avengers, there had to be an extended sequence in Asgard so that we could understand where Thor was coming from, where he lives part of the time, who Odin is, how he can send Thor to Earth, what Loki and Thor's relationship is.....it'd bog down the movie.  They can explain certain things because we've been to Asgard.  We've seen Thor and Loki, how they grew up, and how they fell apart.  We've met Odin and know about his magic.  You can just catch us up with a line of dialogue.

The Flash

I'd completely forgotten about the Suicide Squad cameo, but looking back, it feels out of place now.  Barry seems, at least to me, like early Clark on Smallville.  The convenience store robbery seems more his style (and he was able to do that without his clothes burning off).  I rewatched the cameo, and it feels like a post-Justice League Barry.  Someone who's proved himself and has more confidence.

I know there's a difference between fighting a regular guy with a boomerang and alien monsters, but Barry (in Justice League) really flips out at the idea of even being on-location for the fight with the parademons.  He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who's been a hero long enough that he does quippy one-liners when he's with Digger Harkness. 

Again, if we'd had a Flash movie before, we'd know more about his character

Steppenwolf

He's not as bad as everyone is saying, but he was completely one-dimensional villain.  Another gray CGI person with no personality.  The only thing he brought to the table was that he was good enough to fight the heroes on his own.

This is another problem with having to spend so much time introducing characters - your villains suffer.  I don't even know if the movie would've had time for a character with any sort of backstory.

I don't think the movie was necessarily hurt by a bad villain (I like tons of movies without charismatic or interesting villains) because he was simply a catalyst to get these guys to work together....so, in that sense, he "fit the story" - but I can't imagine you're actually saying that Steppenwolf is a good villain by any means.

Bat-Family

The problem with "it might've happened off screen" is a huge problem for this character.  This is Bruce's family.  We got to meet Aquaman's family and Barry's family and Victor's family.  A huge part of this movie is about how Diana closed herself off because she lost her family.  A huge part of her story is about how desperate she is to get that back.  Superman is brought back because he has connections to other people.

If Dick Grayson is alive, Bruce has to make that call on screen.  Commissioner Gordon is in this movie.  Bruce has to call the man's daughter, if she's alive, and tell her that the end could be coming.  Same with Tim Drake, Cassandra Cain...all of them.  Again, Bruce goes on a suicide mission in this movie.  He expects to die.  Calling his family, on screen, is *crucial* to rounding out his character.

There's a moment in Max Landis' retelling of the Death and Return of Superman (I know he's got his own problems now and is probably a garbage human but get passed it for this point) where Bruce is about to go on a suicide mission, and Dick realizes that his father is about to die.  Dick swoops in to save Bruce before he does something stupid, fighting Bruce to make sure that he doesn't get himself killed.  When Dick looks down and says...."Dad....", it makes me tear up every time.  Imagine if Bruce had called Dick as he was driving toward certain death.  It would've added emotional weight.

No one called Bruce when he was fighting the darkness in BvS.  Bruce doesn't call anyone when he's confident he's about to die.  If there's a surviving Bat-Family, they're too torn apart to ever come back together and don't need to be mentioned again.  It's going to do irreparable damage to the characters.

On BvS Revisionist History

Its hard to really explain because I think the movie wants to treat BvS like it happened....the way you saw it.  The only problem is that it didn't happen that way for me.  Bruce keeps talking like Superman was a beacon for hope, but he was literally on trial for murdering civilians.  He was hated by many for what happened in Metropolis.  Bruce literally tried to murder him in the previous movie.

Superman's heroism and sacrifice might've been what eventually saved Batman, but it wasn't Superman's "beacon" that brought him out of the darkness - it was a coincidence.

I think BvS did revisionist history too.  We've talked for pages about how I can't imagine that Superman did enough to be universally loved in Metropolis after what happened at the end of Man of Steel.  it seems crazy to me that he'd have a statue that wasn't constantly being protested at.

Justice League wanted us to think that Superman was a loving, charismatic hero who was universally beloved when, on screen, he should, at the very least, be a very controversial figure who *tons* of people would be happy was dead.

Zack Snyder, at least to me, is showing me one thing and telling me another.

Discovery returned last night.  Pretty exciting episode if you ask me.

But people were very upset about the (SPOILER) of (SPOILER).

I wonder how much the 4-part crossover really screwed with everything.  But I sorta agree with the idea of limiting the number of superhero shows that run at any certain time.  I like TF's idea of cycling them throughout the year - you could even drop each show down to 13 episodes and run them one at a time with no breaks on one specific night/time.

I mean, heck, what if they got really crazy and did one show that ran 52 episodes a year called "Arrowverse" - sign each actor to a 20-something episode commitment and do it Justice League Unlimited style.  One episode, it's Barry and Cisco and Diggle.  One episode it's Black Canary and Killer Frost and Supergirl.  One episode it's Green Arrow and White Canary and Martian Manhunter.  Could be cool.

Was Barry supposed to be on the autism spectrum?  I couldn't tell if they were going for that or him just being awkward.

I think the characters were good, but since these characters were just being introduced, I think they fell behind because we didn't get a full picture of them.  We got some parent drama with all three new characters, but it wasn't half what we knew about Clark or Diana because we got full movies with them.  You felt more when Diana mentioned Steve Trevor than you did when Arthur was talking about his mother because we have no idea what happened there.  We knew Steve Trevor and cared when he died.

So while we know Diana, we only sorta know Barry/Arthur/Victor.  I feel like we got the clearest picture of Barry.  I don't know if we really know much about Arthur except that he has a good time, he likes saying "my man", and that he doesn't feel like he belongs in Atlantis.  I know we'll get more of him in Aquaman, but if we're talking about *this movie*, then I still say that the three new characters were "guest stars" as opposed to stars

Sounds like you want to talk to me about the Avengers' initiative.

Or should we just form a league of our own?

Something I've been thinking about since I saw the movie a second time?  Does Rian Johnson hate the Force Awakens?  I feel like he took a lot of stuff from that movie and either openly made fun of it or snuffed it out.  Is it pretty consistent that people that liked TFA didn't like TLJ and vice versa?

Things I've noticed:

The Rey/Luke scene:
TFA - Treated like a huge deal/cliffhanger.
TLJ - Treated like a joke.  Luke throws the lightsaber away and walks off.

Anakin's Lightsaber
TFA -This is the key.  Why is it back after so long?  How did it get here?  Now that Luke has it, what will happen?!?
TLJ - Luke doesn't care about it.  Ends up destroyed.

Kylo Ren's Costume:
TFA - "Here's your new Vader!"
TLJ - Treated like a joke.  Snoke specifically says that the helmet and the costume is dumb, and it seems like Kylo did it on his own because he thought it looked cool.  Kylo destroys the helmet and never wears it again.

Rey's Parents:
TFA - A huge mystery.  Maybe *the* mystery of the entire new trilogy.
TLJ - They were no one.  Doesn't matter.

Maz:
TFA - This character knows everything.  Knows everyone.  She holds all the secrets if you know how to ask.
TLJ - She doesn't have time for this movie.  Get your deus ex machina somewhere else.

Hux:
TFA - Here's your new Tarkin.
TLJ - Except he's a total idiot.

Phasma:
TFA - She's a badass.  You'll see.
TLJ - Not really.  Maybe dead?

Snoke:
TFA - This dude is the ultimate evil.  Very mysterious.  Fear him.
TLJ - Wears a dumb-looking gold robe.  Cut in half.  He doesn't matter.

Rey:
TFA - Everyone loves Rey, and she's great at everything.  Always rescues herself.
TLJ - Luke wants nothing to do with her.  Suspects she might be evil.  She struggles with her training.  Has to be rescued by Kylo in the Throne Room.

Finn and Poe:
TFA - Finn is an insider with so much knowledge of the First Order.  Can use that to take them down, and Poe is the only guy daring enough to help him do it.
TLJ - Finn's plan is ridiculous and doesn't work at all.  Nearly gets everyone killed.  Poe's plans are reckless and gets tons of people killed.

Nostalgia:
TFA - Star Wars is the best!  Here's a reference!  And another!  Look, a bigger Death Star!  The Millennium Falcon!  Anakin's Lightsaber!
TLJ - "Let the past die.  Kill it if you have to."

I've never heard this comparison before and googling it didn't give me much.  What happened in the comic version?

I listened to the Weekly Planet review.  Mason hated it but James said he had a lot of fun.  Even after all their breakdowns, I still agree with James.  It isn't a great movie, but it's a lot of fun.  Informant might not like this, but there's a Marvel quality to it.  You can tear apart something like Civil War, but at the end of the day, if you have fun...you don't want to. 

A lot of Mason's complaints were about the weird tonal shifts of the movies.  His complaints about Justice League were really complaints about the whole DCEU - which I think is fair in some ways and unfair to the movie itself.  I think some will disagree, but I think Justice League wants us to remember BvS happening differently that it did.  And once you accept that, the ride is a lot of fun and the universe makes more sense.

Seeing this again today.  Gonna focus on the Luke stuff and see how it comes across.

Note on this: I saw it yesterday in the middle of the day on a weekday, and there were a couple dozen people in there.  I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but the movie has been out over a month.  I 100% expected it to be completely empty.

Okay I saw it.

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Its early but I think it was well done.  It was fun, and I think they did a pretty good job juggling everything.  Scattershot opinions.

- The mustache thing only bothered me because I was always looking for it.  I don't know if I would've noticed it otherwise.  I still can't believe they did that, but they did an okay job with it.

- It was short, but I liked the slight adjustments to Superman.  He wasn't as jokey as I was led to believe, but he seemed like a Superman without the weight of the world on him.  I wish they'd done the black suit, but the way they did it, the regular suit was better.

- The Marvel model is simply better.  When the Avengers got together, they were four protagonists joining forces.  In this movie, it feels like three protagonists (BvS is a Batman movie) with the three new folks as guest stars.  It was Bart/Victor/AC on Smallville....big-time heroes in Clark's show.  Nothing about the quality of either set of movies, and I'm sure DC would've done the same thing if they'd had more time.

- On that same note, they did feel like they were a part of a team and not individual heroes.  I realize that they're using this movie as a leaping point for Victor/Arthur/Barry, but I can't picture this version of Barry fighting, say, the Reverse Flash.  Again, I understand that that was sort of the point of Barry's character, but why'd he even bother with a suit if he's doing anything more than just nudging and running away?  I almost think Bruce should've made the suit if Barry was going to be this green.

- I know DC already has a lot on slot, but I'd watch an Amazon/Atlantean War movie.  I know part of that is in Flashpoint, but I'm talking a whole movie.

- Atlantis was also more bizarre than I would've thought.  Is the whole Aquaman movie going to be done underwater, and does Mera have to make one of those "talking bubbles" every time they communicate?  Or was that chamber underwater and the rest of Atlantis is open-aired?

- It was cool that we got a pretty good feel for all the heroes.  The stuff with Mera, Barry's dad, and Victor's dad was cool.

- Wonder Woman continued to steal the show.

- I don't know if Affleck was sleep-walking through the role, like I'd heard.  I think he did a fine job.  But he looked weird in several parts of the movie - I don't even know how to describe it - he looked doughy maybe? 

- It felt like a soft reboot at times.  Bruce was almost a completely different character than he was in BvS.  Superman too.

- It's weird that we got a Legion of Doom tease but not a Darkseid tease.  It was cool to see the Green Lantern in the flashback, but a cameo during the Steppenwolf fight would've been better.

- I liked that they had some parademon fight scenes, but the final battle was just the team vs. the villain.  Although I thought the villain was weak.

- All in all, I thought it was done well.  The most fun of the new films and on par with Wonder Woman.

I keep thinking about the scene from Clerks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdDRrcAOjA

Does the canon have an explanation for this?  Or does their acceptance of the job take away their innocence?  Were there any families on the Death Star?  Were there any rebel scouts or spies?  I agree that Stormtroopers are probably not innocent (although there could easily be people like Finn that didn't use their weapons and didn't agree with the cause), but some people probably didn't work on that station (slaves, indentured servants, people like chefs/janitors/service people that needed to earn a living).

Really great analysis, but that seems to also apply to Star Wars fans as a whole.

What's funny to me is my idea of Luke as a fringe fan of Star Wars.  I've seen every movie, and I appreciate them all.  But they're not movies I've seen a ton of.  I've seen A New Hope a couple dozen times, but I'm not sure I've seen Empire or Jedi more than a couple times each all the way through (I've seen pieces of them a lot since they're always on TV).  In a recent discussion about the quality of the prequels, I realized that I think I've only seen episodes II and III once each (again, aside from scenes here and there on TV).

But, for some reason, Luke holds a place in my heart.  And as Episode VIII approached, I started to worry that Luke could die.  Or, possibly even worse, go to the dark side.  I felt that, in some way, my heart would break a little for him to not be alive.  After all, he'd been alive and young my whole life.

The movie actually handles Luke, for the most part, in a way where I was okay with him going.  After all, we know Luke will live on in the Force so he's not really gone.  And even as someone who's a fan of Luke, I wasn't really bothered by the Luke stuff in the moment.  I was surprised, but I wasn't offended.

I agree with everything you said.  Luke is, on paper, a cold-blooded killer.  I watched "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" the other night, and Robert Downey Jr. gives a great performance when his character shoots and kills a bad guy in the middle of the movie.  He breaks down at the idea of shooting someone....even as a career criminal who killed a truly bad guy in self defense.  As you said, Luke killed millions of innocent people but doesn't really seem bothered by it.

And yet....killing a child in his sleep?  At least Anakin did it to the younglings when they were awake and could, at least theoretically, defend themselves.

The only thing I can really think is that they wanted Kylo to have this tragic backstory.  And it really does make him a truly interesting character.  Kylo is this kid who romanticizes his grandfather (who had his own tragic backstory) and feels this pull to the Dark Side.  He has this mother who cares so much about her Rebellion and a father who's not really built for fatherhood.  Then his parents sent him away to live with his cooky uncle, while this other dude is pouring propaganda in his ear from across the galaxy.

Then, one night as he's as conflicted as ever, his uncle tries to kill him.  Whether or not Luke meant to do it or not, that's Kylo's backstory.  He truly believes his uncle tried to kill him.  And then he starts to wonder....wait, did my parents send me to die?  Is all the love I had as a child a lie?  Is the only one who has truly cared about me....Snoke?

It happens all the time.  Kid gets betrayed by his/her family and falls into the arms of an abusive relationship.

The problem with the Last Jedi is that it doesn't really excuse any of it.  Even with all the talking from Kylo and Luke, there's still not enough context to understand what really happened.  What did Kylo really do that scared Luke so much?  What did he do where Luke would even consider that Kylo couldn't be saved?

You say that Luke was working off instinct, but that's not really what Luke says.  If he'd explained it that way, I think there's a chance they could've sold it.  When I watched it, it seemed like Luke was saying that he *did* want to kill him, but it was just for a moment.  Because he definitely walks in, thinks about it, and then ignites the saber.  It didn't seem, at least to me, that he got caught up in the moment.

So to me, and to a lot of people in the audience....they turned Luke into a guy who'd consider murdering kids.  And, yes, I agree that he's probably killed kids in the past (you'd gotta think that some families were on the Death Star).  But this was so much different that that that, I think, it really bothers people.  Thus the hate.

And so I wondered, was there a way to give Kylo this cool backstory without harming Luke's legacy?  Some ideas:

1. I like the idea that he's working off instinct.  I also love the idea that Luke, flat out disagrees with the teachings of the Jedi.  So what if you combined those two things?  Luke goes to the Jedi Temple and learns an old Jedi technique for defeating evil - Force Meditation (name can be workshopped).  As a Jedi Master, Luke can meditate and enter a sort of trance where he becomes one with the light side of the Force and can seek out true evil.

Luke enters one of these trances in an attempt to find Snoke.  And in a sleepwalking state, he finds a strong Dark Side presence, and the Force Meditation draws him to it.  And draws him to destroy it.  Maybe it's Ben himself or maybe it's Snoke's Force projection.....but either way, Luke (still "sleepwalking") ignites his lightsaber.  Ben wakes up....and so does Luke.

So Luke isn't doing it...this flawed Jedi artifact did it.  The Jedi aren't interested in saving people - they're interested in killing bad people.  If the Jedi had been around to fight Vader and Palpatine in A New Hope, they'd have killed Vader and then lost to Palpatine.  It took seeing the good in Vader to save the galaxy, and that's why the Jedi are flawed.

2. Do the twin brothers.  I know in the (abandoned) expanded universe, the Solos had twins.  So maybe you bring that back.  Ben and Lando Solo are twins that are sent to train with Luke.  Ben is a quiet boy with a strong love for his family.  Lando is a wild and rebellious son with an obsession with his grandfather Anakin.  At the Jedi Temple, Lando keeps asking about the Dark Side.  He starts experimenting.  He builds a....red lightsaber.  Ben tries to talk to him, but he loves his brother.  He wants to save him from these dark thoughts.  Lando is drawn away from Ben to a new father figure - Snoke.  And through Lando, Snoke starts telling Ben that their family abandoned them.  Han and Leia don't love them.   And, one day, Luke will try and kill them.

At training, there's a tragic accident.  Lando is sparring with another student and accidentally maims/kills him.  Ben is horrified - Lando doesn't seem bothered by it.  Luke keeps an eye on him....and, yet, it happens again.  So Luke, in the middle of the night, goes to take Lando away from the Academy.  Lando defends himself with his lightsaber.  Ben wakes up, Luke loses his concentration, and Luke slices through Lando.

Luke has no time to explain.  Ben simply sees Luke kill his brother, and Snoke's prophecy is coming true.

Luke does kill a Solo twin - but it was one who was definitely a Dark Side user.  But it still drives him to exile, and it still drives Ben to become Kylo.

3. Just make it the Dark Side.  What if Snoke was influencing them both?  What if Luke starts seeing all the students turning evil....not just Ben?  Meanwhile, Ben is getting the same sort of influence?  Luke doesn't sense it, but Snoke starts feeding the lies to Luke.  "Your nephew is evil."  "Your uncle will try and kill you."

And Luke falls for it.  He lets his hate and his fear and his jealousy turn him to the Dark Side....and he tries to kill his nephew.

Mark Hamill wanted this as far back as Episode VI.  He thought it was where the saga was going and pitched it to George Lucas - so it would've been interesting to see that come true on the screen.  It wouldn't be a full Dark Luke - just enough Dark Luke to try and kill Ben.

Luke snaps out of it, but it's too late.  So he does go into isolation and close himself off from the Force - he can't trust it again, and it keeps him safe from Snoke's influence.

I think if you do something like that, you protect Hamill's vision of Luke.  Which, it seems, is a lot of Star Wars' fans visions of Luke.

It's crazy the polarization of this movie - Rian Johnson saw what people said about the Force Awakens and tried to take Star Wars in a new direction.  He tried new things.  And the theme of his movie is "forget the past.  It doesn't matter.  This is our adventure now."  If Disney is really going to make a new Star Wars movie every year, the series needs to grow beyond what's there.  He tried....and people are rejecting it.

Disney is pretty reactionary.  Going back to Abrams, I think, is going to lead to another Force Awakens: a movie that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside but contains almost no real substance.

True.  And it could easily be a soft reboot of the whole universe if that's what they want to do.  It'd just be weird if they didn't change anything but "now Bruce is Jon Hamm"

Yeah, I wasn't really directing that at you (despite quoting you).  I see the "DO LESS EPISODES" stuff all the time time.  Defenders was only 8 episodes and struggled from the same stuff - it's one story.  If they do one story, 13 episodes is too many.  Eight episodes is too many.  Five is too many.

If they're only going to do one story, don't even bother doing a show.  Do a two-hour movie.

I worked in the compensation department for a Fortune 500 company.  If the CEO of a company wants something, it can happen - it basically just becomes a fire drill for the people who do the grunt work (read: us).  I know from people that work compensation at retail places that, when Target announced they were taking all their employees to $15, all of them were met the following morning with "I need you to model what this would cost to implement ASAP."  It didn't matter what the cost would be - they had to keep up and they had to keep up immediately.

Unexpected costs happen all the time, and this wasn't even that unexpected.  AT&T, possibly even with help from the Republicans writing the bill, have known about their potential tax savings for a while.  It would just be a matter of doing some simple math and throwing some things on a spreadsheet.  If it could be easily incorporated into an existing budget (a fire drill for the finance folks), then it wouldn't be that much of a problem.

Even if this was dropped on AT&T yesterday and couldn't fit in the budget, it's still possible.  It'd just be a giant headache for finance/tax/FP&A/compensation and a few other departments.  But AT&T's CEO probably doesn't care - he gets goodwill from his employees, the media, shareholders, and the party in power (since he is being used as evidence that the tax bill is doing what they said it'd do).  Even if it hurts the bottom line, it's a $200 million move for a $250 billion company.  A drop in the water.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/40956 … t#/slide/1

Interesting thoughts on Man of Steel 2 if Matthew Vaughn had gotten control of it.  Informant would've hated it since it would've been done by a Donner-lover

I really like that.  And I think it makes sense....I wish that was conveyed by the movies themselves, though.

A lot of my problems are simply a lack of context that the movie needs to provide.  You know my disdain for "here's the product....if you want to understand it, here's your extended universe homework" stuff.  And I think a lot of this stuff doesn't have to have grand, Episode-I like political discussions.  I think small snippets of dialogue can help.  The problem is that The Force Awakens didn't even give us much of any background.

The Republic was small and weak -

CHARACTER 1 - "They're going to attack the Republic's home system!"
CHARACTER 2 - "The Republic?  They're still around?"
CHARACTER 3 - "I thought they collapsed years ago."

Was it corruption?  A lack of resources?  How do you go from a galaxy *starving* for freedom (as the end of Return of the Jedi shows) to a Republic that is only really active in one star system?  I was expecting a failing government (think the League of Nations or the United States under the Articles of Confederation).  What we got was....the state of Petoria?

http://familyguy.wikia.com/wiki/Petoria

Was the First Order a new thing or a rebranding of the Empire?  How was that sold to people? 

CHARACTER 1 - "They sold the First Order as the New Republic.  Using the enemy's old weapons to bring peace and freedom to the galaxy."
CHARACTER 2 - "People needed to feel safe.  They chose to believe Snoke's lies."

What's the difference between the Resistance and the Rebellion?

CHARACTER 1 - "This is it?  This is the Rebellion that took down the Empire?"
LEIA - "The Resistance.  When the Empire fell and was replaced by the First Order, the Republic was too weak and too scared to start another Galactic War.  So they signed peace treaties.  We're the only ones fighting them, and we have to stay strictly off the books, or the First Order will crush what's left."
CHARACTER - "The Resistance?"
LEIA - "The Empire rebranded.  So did we."

I like the disillusionment of the galaxy.  They won something big and then realized that the enemy was still as strong as ever.  So why keep fighting?  *Cue Sonic Youth song*  It isn't worth it.  I'm done fighting.  Done trying.  Who cares?

It would just be nice if the characters in the movie would fill in the gaps for me

Not sure if we need a new post or not, but thoughts on the Last Jedi.  Please keep in mind that, after seeing Force Awakens a couple of times, I really didn't love it.  Better than the prequels, worse than the originals.

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I think I'm going to see it a second time, but I thought it was a lot better than Force Awakens.  Instead of just being a retread of Empire Strikes Back (and, trust me, there were times that it really wanted to be that), it went about things its own way.  It took risks!  It made the characters gray and interesting, even though it feels a little weird in Star Wars, where it feels more natural to be black and white.

I thought killing Snoke was a great twist, and it'll be interesting to see what happens with Kylo at the head of the First Order.  It might've been too much, but as a writer, I might've chosen to have Kylo and Rey leave together.  So the First Order would have no leadership, and the Resistance wouldn't have had Rey.  Might've been cool, but it would've been really out there.

And I thought Luke was handled pretty well.  It sucks that he died, but I don't know if there would've been a satisfying way for him to die in battle.  He dies on his own terms, like Yoda and Obi-Wan.  Which is cool.  The Yoda cameo was also great, and we better get something similar to it with Luke in IX (and we almost certainly will).  I only wish Luke could've been slightly more badass in the movie...or, at least, show him at the height of his power.  He doesn't really do much....especially when you realize his coolest achievement (taking all that blaster fire) wasn't really an accomplishment.  I guess it'd feel like watching Obi-Wan in A New Hope after watching him in the prequels, but we never really got to see Jedi Master Luke....which is disappointing.

All in all, I thought it was fun, and I'm excited to see where they go, actually.  I almost saw this movie because I felt like I had to, not really because I wanted to.  Now I actually feel energized to see where they go next.

Some talking points:

- It was way too long.  It's 2:30, and it feels like it.  I think the main problem is that it feels like almost two full movies, and there are multiple moments that feel like a climax.  I don't like when movies feel like they're about to be over and then keep going for another 30 minutes.  After the great action and tension of the Throne Room scene to then have an entirely new set piece and have so much happen just felt tacked on.  I almost wish it'd happened differently., with Hux leading the attack on the rebel base and the Throne Room stuff happening simultaneously.  Although that would've been a lot like RoTJ and after all the retread talk of TFA, I guess I could see why they didn't do such a similar parallel.

- So was Benecio Del Toro actually the codebreaker that Maz wanted them to find?  I kept waiting for them to reveal that (maybe he lost his jacket at the casino), but they didn't reveal that, did they?

- The Leia stuff was sad, and I wonder if they considered just killing her when the bridge blows up.  With such a small group of Resistance fighters, after losing so much leadership, I think that's going to be a devastating blow.  Although I guess Poe will just take over.

- I still do not understand what's going on in the universe.  We still have no idea how the First Order got so much control, how the Republic was so weak after 30 years in control, and why the Resistance is so small.  We saw in the celebration scenes in Return of the Jedi that the entire galaxy celebrated the end of the Empire.  The Republic should've had a ton of new soldiers willing to fight for them.  Did the First Order take all of them?  Did they somehow convince people that they were the good guys?  How did any of that work?  No one in the galaxy came when Leia was in danger?  No one?  I get that they were talking about the spark of hope being so small, but I still don't understand what happened post-ROTJ that led to the First Order being so powerful and the Republic being weak enough to be destroyed in one fail swoop.  Especially after Starkiller Base was destroyed.  I wish they'd just kept Empire and Rebellion and just said "look, killing the Emperor was cool and all, but Snoke just took his place as Emperor and the machine kept turning for another 30 years"

- I thought it was weird that Hamill's force ghost came back with a dark beard - it sorta ruined the surprise that he wasn't really there.  I'm also not sure why he died when he did.  Was it just too much effort to send his spirit across the galaxy.  I wish they could've sewn some seeds that something like that was possible but really dangerous or something....so that it would've paid off a little better.

- I liked the twist with Rey's parents being nobodies, and I really hope they don't retcon that in a future movie and say Kylo was lying.

Where does Gotham film, by the way?

Legion might benefit them, but it's so weird and out there.  I'd suspect, if they're going to reboot the X-Men, they're going to do things their own way and get rid of whatever Fox was doing.  Which sucks because FOX was actually, sorta, figuring out the X-Men universe.  Yeah, the "main" movies suck, but they're actually branching out and doing some cool stuff. Legion is a trippy drama, Deadpool was a crude comedy, Logan was a violent, gritty western, and the New Mutants is a horror movie.  Say what you want about some of the crap they've produced, but some of their new stuff could be moving the superhero genre in new directions.

Americans is done after this next season, and they've already talked about not doing more Fargo.  Existing shows will either wrap up or find a way to work with disney - what I'm more concerned about is the next idea.  Whether its American Horror Story, the OJ miniseries, Fargo, Legion, The Americans, The Shield, Always Sunny, The League, Sons of Anarchy, etc....FX has produced a ton of great TV.  It took chances on some weird concepts by some great artists, and it's paid off.  If Disney is going to kill it, something else needs to step in and take its place for shows that are great but a little out there.  AMC might get to take some of it, but they think they're pretty artsy.

Yeah, the network isn't a part of the deal, but (I think) the TV studio is.  In reading a lot about the television side, the only way these shows make money is if they save money on studio costs (by owning the studio that makes the show).  That's why you always hear "XXXX might be on the cancellation block because they're owned by YYYY studio and so ZZZZ is a cheaper show to keep" at cancellation time.

In that case, *every* show would be owned by another studio since Fox would be a network without a studio.

From what I'm reading, Disney might be inclined to keep shows that work with their "brand" like The Gifted and shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy that are cheap and big moneymakers.  Maybe they could sell off something like Gotham to the CW, but I think that'd kill the feel of that show (you'd probably lose some of the cast and a great deal of the budget).

Apparently this deal might take a year or so to complete, and I feel like Gotham could be ending in the next couple of seasons.  Maybe Disney will let some FOX properties end on their own terms before changing directions.

My worry is about FX - it has produced a ton of stuff in recent years that I've loved, and I don't want Disney to dismantle it.

With Disney buying FOX, what does that mean for.....everything?  I know people are excited about Marvel, but what about the entire FOX network?  What about shows like the Simpsons and Gotham and the Orville and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and the FX shows?

Are these going away?  Some moved to ABC?  What's going to happen?

The first episode is great in a lot of ways, but it's so much different from the rest of the episodes that it's a hard judge of anything.  I guess it's still focusing on technology in the sense that we're so distracted by the news and being grossed out or whatever....and that's what sets up the ending.  But, still, it doesn't even have the same "feel" that pretty much every other episode (even the 3rd season ones) has.

A lot of people didn't like the "bikes" episodes or a couple of the new Season 3 stuff, but I think every episode they've made so far has had merits of one kind or another.

It's been too long since I've seen it to get too specific.

I don't think Jon Hamm's character was a very good person, and I liked the way his punishment fit.  He's a good-looking, charming, and suave guy who can't use any of that anymore.  He used people to get by, and he can't do that anymore.  I know he ends up getting a guy killed, but I thought his treatment of the "cookie" was the most damning to his personality. 

The other dude....I can't remember if he kills his father in law on purpose or accidentally.  But I don't remember thinking his crime was unjust.

Agents of SHIELD is so bizarre this season.  Not bad....just really bizarre.  The space angle and the "end of the world" angle is just a really weird place to go with this show, especially since this could easily be the last season.  Very Fringe, honestly.

And I've finally decided that bringing the MCU to the small screen was a bad idea.  They've done a good job making the universe their own, but I just don't buy that the universes are connected.  The AoS world seems just as different from the world of the Avengers as the Netflix world does.

And I wonder about the "time travel" angle they're going with - I almost would've preferred to send them out to deep space and have them be a part of the Cosmic MCU.  Especially since that's allegedly where things are going in Phase Four.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/40913 … e#/slide/1

This is a weird strategy.

I actually think Legends answered the whole "why kill off Stein when he could be happy?" question pretty well in the fall finale.  Yeah, death sucks and Stein didn't want to die, but he lived a full life and was ready to accept that it was his time to go.

Since Jax is leaving the show too, seemingly, it might've been better (read: more tragic) to have Jax be the one who dies (hopefully, more heroically), allowing Stein a bittersweet homecoming.  Maybe Stein leaves the Waverider, Jax tries to be a hero on his own, and he dies.  So Stein will always have to wonder whether or not he made the selfish move or not.

Either way, I feel a little better about the decision.  And I started wondering....is Legends actually handling character growth the best of the four series?