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I like the back and forth here. It lets me explore both sides of the issue without having to do all of the thinking for myself. I won't have a final opinion until the movie actually comes out and I see it (which will probably not be right away)

Now I'm actually wondering about the age of Batman in the comics. Say he was 25 when he started... which assumes that he dropped out of college and spent several years training. Say he worked alone for at least three years before Dick came to live with him. At that point, Dick would have still been a young teenager (too young for emancipation and still needing a guardian). So say Dick was 14 or 15 when that happened. Bruce and Dick work together for a few years at least... Dick is shown as still being Robin in college, right? So maybe four or five years there? So he'd be at least 32-ish by now (if not older).

Factor in time for Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne as Robin, and I would think that he'd have to be pushing 40 in the comics. It's hard to say how much time actually passes, since the characters don't age normally. Jason was Robin from 1983 to 1988. Tim's first appearance was something like 1989, and he was Robin until well into the 2000's. Bruce would have to be in his 40's right?

Meanwhile, Superman doesn't really age at all... but neither does Lois. They both still look like they're in their earl 30's.

I get the concern. It is valid. But I think we have to see if they can sell the idea. In the comics, Batman's age is questionable. Dick is in his mid-20's at least, but Bruce isn't played as an old man. It is all iffy, so any translation to screen will be weird.

But yeah, if they can't sell Affleck as a functional Batman, then the next Batman movie will have to be someone else taking over for him. Fortunately, that concept wouldn't be outside the boundaries of the source material.

Someone posted a quote from a writer named Richard Price on Facebook. I don't know much about the writer himself, but the quote seemed relevant to the discussion that we are having here, so I shall post it... just because...

"The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance."

I think that's an interesting way to approach the issue.

I just want to point out a funny part to this whole discussion...

I'm still not sure of Affleck as Batman! Everyone says he is great in the role, but I am generally not a fan of his acting. He has about two expressions, and that's it. I know he is an Oscar winner, but that means nothing to me. Argo was okay... But that was a movie written for him, by him, directed by him.

So I'm not without my reservations. I'm just trying to push them aside and hope for the best. If the movie sucks, you know I will be relentlessly critical.

It does. For example, it made sense when Scully's voiceovers were played over the visuals of her writing up her reports for her bosses. That made sense. You'd expect her to be more formal, and to try to use that poetry and scientific jargon to try to make herself sound less insane than she would if she wrote "We were attacked by a worm man!"

But Carter started using that tool in the wrong places. Scully's journal/letters to Mulder in the beginning of season 7 didn't sound like her talking to Mulder. It sounded like she was writing a report/love letter, which was a weird blend. And the way they were used in season 10 was neither of these things, but the characters' own rambling thoughts... in which case, I would really hate to live in their heads.

That's a big question to answer. I guess it depends on which perspective we're approaching this from.

As a viewer (and as a storyteller myself), success to me means that it's a good movie. Good characters, good acting, good script, good directing. If I walk away from it psyched, that is a successful movie.

I imagine that the studio's view of success would be more about dollars and cents, and what the movie can bring to their future plans. But I do think it would be incredibly hard for this movie to not serve a useful purpose, in terms of setting up future movies.

Let's flash back to before Man of Steel came out. I was not super thrilled with what I was hearing about the movie. We had a British actor playing Clark Kent, which is like an American playing James Bond, I think. We had a script written by someone who had written a comic book in which Superman declares that he's not American, he is a citizen of the world (a phrase that I hate, by the way). We had Zod, who I felt was too familiar and had already been done twice before (on film and on television). Lois Lane not only didn't look like Lois Lane, but she was being played by someone who I didn't feel too excited about. And on top of that, we knew that Jor-El was going to be playing a large role, which looked like another story where Clark is more alien than he is human. The trailers looked beautiful, but I wasn't sure where they were going with the movie.

Obviously, my opinion has changed. The things that I thought they were going to do wrong were creations of my own imagination and in the press. I think that in the end, Man of Steel was a great movie. I think it's a successful movie (in terms of quality and also profit, though it didn't blow people away in terms of money)

Then again, it's also a movie that isn't universally loved. It's sparked a lot of debate and conversation. Does that make it better or worse? I don't know. I think that most good movies are the ones that you can talk for hours about, just like a book. If you're universally loved, you're not taking chances.

I really can't speak about what success means to the studio. So for me, it will mean a good, high quality movie. Something that excites me, both as the kid who grew up with these characters, and as a writer who gets stupid excited over great characters. If I walk out of the movie depressed that I wasn't involved in making the movie, it's a success.

I do expect a Batman movie (and probably another Superman movie at some point), though it's not on the schedule right now. I expect that Affleck will produce/write that, but probably won't direct it (a huge action movie is hard to direct and star in at the same time). I'm open to the idea of messing around with the schedule of releases (if The Flash should disappear, I'd understand that). But I don't think that they will cut way back and go back to square one. Aside from the Justice League movies, Snyder isn't directing the upcoming movies. He's not responsible for Suicide Squad or Wonder Woman, aside from serving as a producer and keeping things from going off the rails in terms of the universe that's been established. I think that the success of those movies will fall on the shoulders of the people who are writing/directing/starring in them. I imagine some will be better than others, but the best they can do is keep going, trying to make each movie the best it can be, and learn whatever lessons they can for whatever sequels are down the road.

One thing that they haven't done, that I know of, is commit to three Aquaman movies, three Cyborg movies, etc., which Marvel has done. It would probably be smarter to see how people respond to characters before doing anything like that. It might be best to explore different characters, like the rumored Booster Gold/Blue Beetle movie. DC/Warner has always kept the door open for other movies along the way, whether they be Batman/Superman sequels, or things like Justice League Dark. I think it's smart to keep their options open and not just make movies with characters that they might want to use in a Crisis movie fifteen years from now.

Did any of that answer any of your questions?

Yeah, the S4 is working fine for me. I like the idea of Samsung Pay, and some of the other new features, but they are all stupid perks. My phone is still functioning fine.

The thing I don't get about the metal and glass casing is that is is more rigid, and doesn't absorb shock as well as plastic. I was working on a show with a lot of extras back in October, and I would glance over at their phones. There were so many iphones with cracked screens, and people just shrugged and said that you get used to it. Why did Samsung mimic that design, when plastic is durable and lighter? People put their metal phones into plastic cases! I have never had a cracked screen. My S4's screen doesn't have a scratch on it. And I rarely use any sort of cover.

The Galaxy S7 is sounding pretty good. They brought expandable storage and water resistance back. I still don't get why everyone is obsessed with metal bodies though.

I like new tech. Unfortunately, I will probably never see a new cell phone unless I win the lottery or start making way more money.

I can see that. I just don't think that the depiction of this idea needed to be as large as it was. Keeping it limited and personal allows them to explore the idea, without stepping over the line and looking more silly than scary. The riots and looting and all of that was too much. If they absolutely needed that, they could show a report from a less developed country (a testing ground), but still keep a distance between our characters and that huge event.

At the risk of shooting myself in the foot (as a writer), I just don't think that the chaos helped the story. Every person in that city could die... Or not... And it really won't matter either way next season. Yet, the character stories in the episode were so impersonal and disconnected that there was no emotional core, and ultimately no sense of validation or closure for all that we have been through over the years. Mulder and Scully don't share screen time. Mulder's scenes play out like a thousand before them, adding nothing to the mix. Scully's story was based on the frantic cure, relying heavily on BS science that doesn't hold up. It was like a Star Trek episode that was all technobabble.

And after spending the season dragging down the series, William ultimately doesn't play any role at all. There is an old saying that if you introduce a gun in the first act, you need to use it by the third. William is the gun, never used. Despite never appearing, he became more annoying than Wesley Crusher.

If you watch interviews with Anderson and Duchovny, they still seem vibrant and energetic. They still sound like themselves. Yet on screen, Mulder and Scully sound raspy and brood through every scene, because of the ghost of William standing in the corner of every scene.

So that was my motivation in restructuring. How do we make the threat more personal? How do we make the struggle for a scientific cure more compelling? How do we make the cure feel more fulfilling as a resolution to the series.

His expectations were high for the time, but I think they're doable now. Imagine a Netflix version of Sliders, produced by Ron Moore or Bryan Fuller.

I've always thought that the Sliders didn't necessarily need to slide in and out in one episode. I always thought they could have had multi-episode arcs on these worlds, but the formula of the time wouldn't allow it. Now we have shows like Legends of Tomorrow proving the theory. In the 90's, it would be a different time jump in every episode, but they spent a few episodes in 1975 (or whatever year it was) and it worked fine.

I agree! (but maybe don't give us Plastic Man. For some reason, I've never been able to take him seriously)

Actually, just give us Supergirl. We could turn it around.

I see the potential in the story that was presented, but the execution was still incredibly bad. It's like Tim Kring... maybe Carter is good to have for ideas, but he doesn't know how to bring those ideas to the screen in a way that makes any amount of sense.

Since I'm sitting here with some free time, allow me to take you through my version of the season finale...

For starters, I would rewrite the premiere. No alien DNA. CSM would not appear. Scully would check Svetta's DNA and find nothing alien. They can still find something anomalous, but the alien aspect doesn't really seem necessary... If the plan is to remove things from people's DNA, disabling their immune systems, then all they would have to do in order to save people like Scully is... not f*** with her DNA!

Okay, so the finale...

Scully's voiceover as we saw it, ending with her turning into an alien. Only, I would have her wake up from that dream. Show us that it's been on her mind, and that it's something that scares her. I might have played up some of the violence and victimization that she suffered over the course of the original series. She is a strong woman, but she's been through hell.

Scully shows up in the basement office, but Mulder is nowhere to be found. She finds the laptop with the Tad video on it, and presses play. He isn't as frantic as he was, but he also isn't in his studio. He is recording his video from a cell phone, talking about finally discovering proof that the government has been genetically experimenting on American citizen ever since the beginning of the smallpox vaccinations. During the video, he would make reference to the children that Mulder and Scully investigated in episode 2... he has been in contact with Mulder. Scully looks at her watch, looks around the office once again because Mulder should be there, and then walks out.
Scully walks into Skinner's office and takes a seat. Skinner asks where Mulder is, and Scully says that she has no idea. Skinner can't help but smile at that. They've started off countless meetings the same way. Before they get down to work, there is a knock at the door. Agent Miller walks in. Skinner asks where Agent Einstein is, and Miller replies by saying that he doesn't know. Scully and Skinner look at each other.

In a hospital (preferably one that doesn't look like something from a 1950's horror movie), Mulder begins to regain consciousness. He is pale and sweaty, and at first, he thinks that Scully is sitting beside his bed. He smiles. But as his vision clears up, he realizes that it's Einstein. His smile fades considerably.
She explains that Mulder was found on the side of the road the night before, beaten and delusional. The police found her card in his pocket, and called her. At first, she assumed that he was on another mushroom trip, but something else is going on. His brain scans are irregular somehow (insert medical mumbo-jumbo here) and he is fighting off a severe infection of some sort. His blood work is insane. She's having it run again, because it looked like he was infected with about three types of disease, all of which should be covered by his vaccinations.
Mulder wants Scully. Einstein says that Scully is her next phone call, but before that happens, she wants to know what the hell is going on. What happened to Mulder on that street?
Mulder says that Einstein needs to get Scully now. He tells her to let Scully know that "He's alive. The son of a bitch is alive..."
"Who?" asks Agent Einstein.

Cut to some time later. Scully and Agent Miller arrive at the hospital. Scully gets an update from Einstein, including the information that “Some cigarette smoking man is still alive...” Einstein has no idea what that means, but Scully stops walking and says, “You have to be kidding me.”
When she sees Mulder, he tells her that he was supposed to meet with Tad O'Malley at his house the night before, but when he got there, his house was a mess and O'Malley was gone. His bodyguard was dead on the front porch.
Mulder was attacked by a man who tried to use chloroform on him, but Mulder fought him off. He couldn't get to his car, so he ran for his life. That's when he was found on the road and brought to the hospital.
Scully asks about CSM, and Mulder tells her that he saw him as he was being loaded into the ambulance. He was there, smoking his cigarette through a hole in his neck and talking on his cell phone.
Einstein cuts in to say that a man who's “smoking through a hole in his neck” would probably have a hard time talking to anyone.

Anyway, a series of tests on Mulder ensues, and Scully even sequences his DNA to check for alien DNA. There is no alien DNA, but there are certain abnormalities. Blah-blah-blah, immune system being turned off through manipulation of his DNA. This is something that could have been done to him as a child, through immunizations, but somehow triggered now.
Miller jumps in to suggest that the man at Mulder's house wasn't using chloroform, he was triggering whatever was in Mulder's DNA. Mulder starts to put together that Svetta's alien DNA wasn't about them putting something into Svetta, it was about them taking something out. What if everyone who was ever vaccinated has these genetic bombs that are waiting to go off, with certain people being altered to remove the threat.

All of this is just mumbo-jumbo to get to the point that Scully needs to find a way to reactivate Mulder's immune system. Einstein says that they would need a donor who was a genetic match. Scully says that Mulder's mother died six years earlier.
“Does he have any siblings?” Einstein asks.
“That's a loaded question,” Scully comments. “But it's not an option.”
“Kids?”
Scully pauses. Of course they have a kid.

Mulder doesn't want to put William in danger That could be exactly what CSM was trying to do when he attacked Mulder. He'd rather die than put William back in CSM's sights. Scully isn't convinced that this is an issue. She thinks that Mulder was delirious when he saw CSM. He's dead. Reaching out to William might not be the threat that it once was.
Mulder points out that Svetta an Tad might think otherwise, since they're both missing or dead.

While they debate that issue, Einstein points out that if this is a widespread issue, with specific people being given immunity, there is obviously a threat for a large-scale attack here. If everyone in the country were suddenly to have their immunizations turn on them, they'd be dealing with countless types of outbreaks, all at the same time. It would be an apocalyptic event.
“For what purpose?” Miller asks.
“So that he can rule over the survivors,” Mulder explains.
“The cigarette smoking dead guy?” Miller asks, not entirely following.

And so this becomes the finale. Scully is on a search to find William and get a sample of his blood that could be used to cure Mulder. She discovers that William was adopted by a family named the Van De Kamps, but both parents fell ill soon after. Though both recovered, it wasn't until after they were forced to give up the child that they'd just adopted.
Suddenly, Scully's dream of William's adopted family is shattered. She is terrified.
Her search continues. She finds a social worker who handled William after the Van De Kamps gave him up. The woman says that the baby was nearly adopted by another family, but an FBI agent discovered that the couple wasn't actually married and their identities were faked. The child was in danger, so the agent managed to work out a sort of witness protection-type adoption for the baby. The circumstances were far from typical.
Scully asks the name of the agent who helped William survive. The social worker tells her, “Monica Reyes.”

Scully breathes a sigh of relief. She tracks down Reyes and the two talk. Reyes says that going to William would be incredibly dangerous. There are still people who would love to get their hands on him. Scully says that she needs this. She doesn't need to see him personally, but she needs his help and... she needs to know that he's okay.

Reyes reluctantly agrees to help, but she will meet with the adopted family, not Scully. Scully agrees to the terms, and waits for Monica to contact her.

While this is happening, Miller and Einstein are tasked with finding out what happened to Tad O'Malley. The investigation leads them to a big chase of some sort and a revelation about the apocalyptic plans of a mysterious group of people who have been faking alien abductions, etc... basically, it's like a season 1 Mulder/Scully investigation.

Scully returns to Mulder's side while he continues to deteriorate. She's trying her best to help him, but there's nothing that she can do. Finally, at the last minute, Reyes arrives with a sample of William's blood, as well as an envelope. In the envelope, there is a letter from William, telling his birth parents that he is okay and that he has had a good life, with a family that loves him. He knows that they didn't have a choice in giving him up, and he knows that they love him. He loves them too. He tells them to stay safe.

There is also a picture in the envelope. Scully pulls it out and looks at a picture of a teenaged William, with his adopted family. She immediately gasps, recognizing the people who have raised William. It's her brother, Charlie. William has been with family this whole time. He wasn't estraned from the family because of a falling out, he was estranged because he had taken on the task of protecting Dana's child.

She finally has closer, not only in regards to William, but in regards to her brother as well.

The blood saves Mulder, but Miller and Einstein warn Mulder an Scully that the potential for the apocalypse outbreak is still a very real threat. They don't have the answers they need to stop it yet.
Mulder tells them that they will find the answers. The truth is out there.
Scully rolls her eyes.

fin.

A little surprised. Definitely intrigued. I'm curious to see which version of Jay is which, or if any of these people are really Jay at all. And the man in the mask could still be Ronnie, I think. Maybe that is how Zoom learned about Barry's Flash.

I wonder if Barry will find a way to get back to Earth-2 on his own, or if maybe he will be Vibed over there.

It was just an attempt to make a big, grand episode that will ultimately have to be reduced and explained back to a small-scale blip on the radar when next season premieres. It's what happened with Millennium. The world ended, and Frank was forced to choose between saving his wife and his daughter. Obviously he and his wife saved their child, and his wife died. The world ended.
Then season 3 started. Turned out that the hype over the outbreak was overblown. The world went on, as though nothing ever happened.

Without fail, it is a bad idea to show an apocalypse on TV. What you have are a bunch of extras running around, screaming nonsensically, creating chaos in the background. Some fires burning in garbage cans. The sound of helicopters overhead. It always looks cheap, because it always is cheap. This episode didn't pull it off any better than when Smallville did it. The best thing that Supernatural ever did was directly avoid going this route in season 5. They kept it small and personal, which ended up making it feel bigger and more dangerous.

Scully's scene with the looter made her look stupid. She could have pulled her gun and told the guy to back away, and that would have been somewhat less stupid. But ultimately, it was still nonsense. The guy would have smacked her over the head with the sign, stolen her medication, and left her for dead.

The whole plot was so vague that it seemed like an afterthought in the middle of writing riot scenes and the bridge scene. We have seen terrorist attacks on a massive scale in this country. We have seen the threat of dangerous outbreaks. We have seen natural disasters that threaten thousands of lives. Those things don't lead to riots and looting. What leads to riots and looting is political outrage over perceived injustice... and sometimes the wrong team winning a game of some sort.

Chris Carter wanted it to look big and epic on screen, so he thought of these sequences that would attempt to give his episode that scale. What he failed to realize was that throwaway scenes of chaos don't make things feel bigger to an audience. Having Reyes spend a few more minutes explaining exactly how this all worked (similar to Lucifer revealing how every detail of Sam's life had been controlled) would have made the story feel more real and scary. But then, I don't believe that there was enough thought put into the plot to fill such a scene. I don't believe that he had any idea how to explain his vague concepts. He threw a bunch of crap at the wall, hoping that people wouldn't notice everything that didn't stick, and hoping that the audience would fill in the blanks with their own imagination.

Damn, that episode was useless.

Seriously?

Okay, putting aside the actual plot... Traffic wasn't moving at all. AT ALL. But Scully magically makes it through traffic? She stops looters by... asking them nicely? These aren't huge examples of what went wrong with the episode. There were far bigger issues, involving everything from plotting to characterization. But I'm just saying that even the smallest, simplest elements of the episode were a complete mess that could have been avoided with simple fixes, like thinning out traffic or cutting the stupid looting scene. Neither one of these things was necessary.

Then again, the last thing I want is for them to cram someone like Lex into a movie where he wasn't supposed to be. That's the problem with reactionary writing by a studio... The goal should be to write a good script, not to hit all of the marketing goals. It's all a balancing act, but it's far too easy for the studio to get that wrong. They'll say that Lex was a hit, so the next thing you know, Justice League involves them bringing in Lex to be a reluctant part of the team. Now you have Lex Luthor on the Justice League.

It's like when they made Spike a good guy on "Buffy". It just didn't work for the character or the story, and it was done for all of the wrong reasons.

There would be no way to get Batman out before Justice League at this point. It would take a year of development on that movie, followed by production, followed by post. It would be two or three years away, which would then put Justice League at at least four years away. That would push back the introductions of every other character they have... basically, as I said before, they'd be better off just scrapping the whole plan at that point. Because it's a train wreck, compounded by the horrible PR that would be surrounding them because of it.

They can still make tweaks to the script for JL, and even reshoot some stuff if they want. They can bump up colors in post. They can do a lot of things within the structure of their schedule. None of that is really unusual though.

The thing with Man of Steel is that he isn't Superman until the end of the movie. They don't use the name, because that's not who he is. This isn't Superman being Superman. This is Clark accepting what he is, where he comes from, and who he wants to be going forward. There isn't room for optimism, because the movie's plot is about this man of steel being vulnerable and terrified. And there's no way to avoid that. He was raised to be scared of what would happen if people found out about him. The whole movie is about him living his worst nightmare, pretty much. And for a lot of it, things go the way his parents told him it would. The government doesn't trust him. They come after him. His alien heritage is a threat to the world and everyone wants him torn apart.

Iron Man is a fun movie, but it's not a good character piece. And Clark can't be Tony. There was no room in Man of Steel for him to be the light, optimistic guy that we know from the cartoons, because that's not who he is yet. The movie wasn't called "Superman".

Most people (again, not you) don't care about Clark Kent. To most people, Clark Kent is the disguise that Superman wears, and that is how the earlier movies approached the character. The story of his upbringing is glossed over. The fact that he had real human emotions is glossed over. They want the man with his hands on his hips and the cape blowing being him. But if you approach the character as a real character, you can't go there. That is the end of his development, not the beginning of it.

What I see when I watch Man of Steel is a story that I can relate to. It's a story about a guy who has skills that aren't going to make his life easy. He's not going to have the normal life that his parents had. He doesn't know how to make those skills work for him. He doesn't feel comfortable in his body. He doesn't feel comfortable in the world around him. Every time his powers have shown themselves to people around him, they made him look like a fool or an outcast. Even when he saved the bus full of kids, he was smacked down because of it (not literally).
But throughout the movie, he comes to understand who he is as a person. He comes to understand where he comes from. He comes to term with what he wants to be, and he overcomes the fears that he has been living with his entire life. That's the beauty of the scene where he steps out of the fortress and learns how to fly.

He does have a sense of humor, and he does have the warmth that we have come to expect from Clark, but he is presented as a real person. The animated shows don't make him a real person. They show him as someone who is so powerful that there is always a way for him to get out of a situation with his hands clean and the perfect curl on his head. People complained about him killing Zod, because "that's not Superman". But if you put characters into live action, the bar is raised. There was no convenient place for Superman to put Zod, where he could eventually escape and destroy even more buildings later. There was only the sloppy answer. And the thing that made him a hero in that moment was that he was willing to sacrifice his cartoonish ideal version of that outcome for the sake of the innocents. It hurt him, but it had to happen. People keep saying "Just put your hand over Zod's eyes", but he will have to take his hand away at some point.

Going forward, I do expect to see a different version of the character. I'd like to see him lighter and more like what we know, but I don't want them to use the humanity, and I don't want these movies to be a live-action cartoon, like the Marvel movies. If I want a cartoon, there are plenty of them out there. In live action, I want them to take these characters and explore them in a real world, full of flesh and blood people.

I love the arc of Man of Steel. I do see it as extremely optimistic. I just think that it's a more grounded version of that optimism, and it makes the optimism more earned.

"My Struggle II" truly was... my struggle.

It was one of the most nonsensical, convoluted, poorly written, horribly shot pieces of television that I have seen in a long while. I don't think that there was one element that made sense or felt natural. I don't think there was one moment where I actually cared about what was going on. The whole thing was... the second season finale of Millennium. And just like that, they will eventually have to come back and undo the mess left in this episode.

As excited as I was for this revival, and as much as I still want the show back, Chris Carter simply has to go. Because of him, half of this revival was thrown away. It was garbage. Of the three remaining episodes, one of them had a villain that was a repeat of something that we've already seen on the show (a sign of a poor showrunner here). Because of him, this revival is two thirds wasted.

To change directors would mean reworking the script and going through the whole pre-production process again. It would set them back months, at least. And that would have a domino effect.

The whole idea of replacing Snyder is based on the rumor that he failed with BvS. This far, the studio has shown no sign of having lost their faith in the project.

Any time you have a series of movies planned out for years, they are going to be based on the assumption that the franchise is a success. Marvel's movies are based on the same faith. As are all movie series. Marvel didn't just freak out and get rid of Joss. They parted ways at a point where it made sense for them.

Right now, I see no reason to assume that Snyder should be replaced. I see no reason to believe that BvS is already a flop. This looks like business as usual.

It's always something, isn't it? My phone has storage issues too. I don't store music or pictures on the internal storage, but my phone is constantly low on internal storage space. As a result, YouTube videos get out of sync, and I also have issues with updating apps, because there isn't enough space on the phone. I shift as many apps to the SD card as I can, but it doesn't seem to help.

I am hesitant to flash a custom rom, because I have horrible luck trying to do that stuff. But I might have to. Since you can't get free phones for renewing your contract at AT&T anymore, I probably won't be getting a new phone for a long, long time (I can't justify paying $500+ for a stupid cell phone when I used to get them for free).

In other news, my Kindle Scout campaign ends tonight! For the last day, I made it to the "Hot & Trending" list, which was pretty exciting. I'm still making my plans to self publish, but I'm still holding out hopes that I'll get through. Best to prepare for both scenarios.

http://movieweb.com/batman-v-superman-d … rner-bros/

Another article where people make up comments "from Warner Bros." and then create a huge stink about them. I don't even understand why people are so worked up about these things. But it feels like a negative press tour to me. These aren't legit reports by any stretch of the imagination.

I have to agree. I mean, there were always episodes where Mulder was called upon to use his profiling skills on a normal case, or Scully had to do something medical. In those situations, the X-File element could be minimal. So, talking to a comatose terrorist could fit with some of those stories. But the way it was executed just felt off to me. Their approach to introducing the concept of talking to someone in a coma wasn't elegant at all. Maybe the nurse should have had the ability, instead of turning her into a political cartoon. Or maybe Miller could have been coming to Mulder to inquire about a specific person from an X-File, and see if Mulder could help track them down. But as it was, they all come up with the idea of talking to someone in a coma, as though everyone could do it if they had just thought of the possibility in the first place.

Like I said, there was a good episode in here somewhere. They just needed to sculpt it a little more smoothly.

NY is the only true pizza.
I actually do have a solid NY style pizza place, owned by some Italians from New Jersey (that is a weird sentence since Italians can't be from New Jersey, but you know what I mean). But it isn't like up north, where you can throw a rock and hit an awesome pizza place.

What is your North Dallas barbecue place? I don't eat out much, but I was thinking of finding a good place for the next time family comes to town.

Yeah, I'm the last guy who should demand that a writer should reflect reality all the time. I just think that Carter could be so much better if he had a really good writing partner. Someone who could take his ideas and reel them in when necessary. One more pass on this script could have made a huge difference.

Babylon--

There were some strengths and a lot of weaknesses here. First, I will talk about the weaknesses (so I can end on a positive note).
Chris Carter can't write. That is a weakness. He forces the episodes and the dialog to be far more convoluted than they have to be, in order to make them feel super deep. But sometimes depth doesn't come from a five minute monologue, using the biggest words you know. Sometimes depth comes from a quick glance, and you have to trust the audience to pick up on it. He needs to learn how to be subtle. This also goes for the mushroom trip... what the hell was that? (though I'm glad that this was the only way the Lone Gunmen came back and they are still dead).
Carter has never depicted Texas well. In the first movie, it was just poorly filmed (they used deserts and mountains as their Dallas location. Not remotely accurate). In this case, he allowed his disdain for Texas show through like a spotlight. His version of Texans, with their cowboy hats and their blind hatred of anything that wasn't white, is arrogant, self-righteous, and wrong. This episode was based on the attempted attack in my own town (though the outcomes were quite different). There are a lot of Muslims around here, and the number seems to be rising. We don't just go around giving them the evil eye or making comments about their color, or else we would have no time left in the day. Newsflash: We have quite a lot of non-white people around here!
Also, nobody wears cowboy hats and boots, unless they're going to a country-themed club or they actually work on a ranch. Even then, probably not. People claim that this episode was racist toward Muslims. I disagree. All that stuff was based on the news, and Carter went out of his way to sympathize and humanize them. If anything, the episode was racist toward Texans.
Once again, he also showed his inability to relate to or sympathize with anyone he doesn't agree with politically. The nurse who tried to kill the terrorist could have been a really interesting character, but he turned her into a rambling idiot who started going off about random political issues that weren't even related to the situation. Who does that? And if she is that crazy, why would she have been put on that patient? Why would she still be working in the hospital, instead of being a patient there?
I know that it is hard to write characters who don't share your values or opinions. We all struggle with it. But you don't usually just throw in the towel and make the whole lot of them cartoon characters!
Argh.

Miller and Einstein. I don't get it. Why did they have to be such copies of Mulder and Scully? Again, it lacks any hint of subtlety. We don't need to be bashed over the head with it. The characters could have been great new characters without all of that. As it was, they seem like failed parodies. Failed, only because they were actually pretty interesting on their own, once you cut through the crap.
Unfortunately, the energy that the new agents brought to the episode only highlighted the lack of energy in Mulder and Scully lately. Their spirited debates and excitement over new cases has turned into monotone exchanges, with neither seeming like they care much at all. Is this because Duchovny and Anderson don't feel excited to be there, or is it just because the characters have been bogged down for the entire six episode run, with broody stories about dying mothers and a lost child?

Okay, now the positive...

I did actually like Miller and Einstein, aside from the over the top similarities to the original actors/characters. Robbie Amell and Lauren Ambrose were fun to watch, and worked well with Duchovny and Anderson.

Mitch Pileggi seem exactly the same! How is he the one who didn't age?

I'm glad that they didn't bring the Lone Gunmen back to life. They found a way to include them without ruining another element of the old show.

And the terrorists were terrorists! This never happens anymore! Since it's considered racist to depict Muslims as terrorists on TV, we usually get the "shocking twist" where the crazy Christian extremist is actually behind the attack on whatever show they're on. I can't remember the last time I saw a Muslim attack like this on TV. They did almost go there, with the "he decided not to do it at the last second, so he's not too bad" thing, but overall, I was impressed that they actually went through with this storyline. Especially since it was based on a real story.

Snyder has a pretty good record, doesn't he? Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen... those were all pretty well received, right?

I think there is a disconnect in the media about comic book movies. A lot of the reports that I see talk about how these movies are for kids, or they say that comic books are funny, light, colorful stories. I think that's true... if you're talking about cartoons based on comic books. The comics themselves are not necessarily for young kids. They can be pretty dark and serious, and depending on who is writing them, they can tell some pretty complicated character stories.

I think that Snyder puts a lot of thought into how he can bring the feel of the comic books to the screen, which is not what people expect to see on the screen. The same was true for the Nolan Batman movies. And they call that "Nolan style" now, or grim, or dark... but those Batman movies were so good because they felt like the best of the comic books. People had just come to expect an over-stylized film when it came to Batman, based on the previous movies and even the animated series.

People say that Man of Steel was too washed out... I disagree. It just looked like a film, rather than a cartoon.

Anyway, I guess we'll talk about BvS more next month. But I will still say that it is sloppy, annoying, bad journalism to keep reporting on the uninformed opinion of one person, who isn't connected to the movie or the studio in any way. Nothing he said has any more substance than a random stranger on the street who is being asked their opinion on the trailer.

It's just annoying to me. Every time a Marvel movie is released, everyone bows down to worship it. They've gotten about a billion free passes on some pretty huge mistakes. It's all fun, so everyone plays along. Same with Star Wars. Everything new is high-budget fanfic, but everyone goes along for the ride because it's all good clean fun.

Then the one time I manage to get excited about one of these things, everyone has to go on a non-stop slamming press tour, before anyone even sees the movie. It's more about my own frustration than any fear for the movie itself. Man of Steel was one of the best comic book movies I've seen. People dump all over it, but that hasn't ruined it for me. So if BvS comes near that, I'll be happy with the film. I'm just frustrated that the one time I decide to jump on the geek-joy bandwagon, everyone keeps trying to blow it up.

I'm allowed to be childish every now and then!

Cool. I wonder what they'll do with that.

In other news, I keep seeing reports all over the place about the HitFix report about Warner Bros. being unhappy and rethinking the whole plan. It is starting to irritate me, because the original report was an unconfirmed rumor, followed by supposition and wild theory. Now the entire internet is reporting it as though it is the truth. I frickin' hate the internet. This whole thing could have been caused by Disney slipping HitFix $100 for all we know.

Ah. We may have. I had heard that somewhere, but didn't know if it was confirmed.

TF, I'm responding to your comments, but I'm going to move that response to the MCU thread. I think I've shifted the conversation toward Marvel here, and now I must set right what once went wrong...

To be continued... in the Marvel thread.

(EDIT: I was posting this before the thread was moved. Ireactions became the evil leaper and stole all of the glory)