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I think I would have liked a recurring villain in the form of the sliders constantly encountering a double of someone (like Hurley, Pavel, Gomez, Bennish, Diggs) who is always antagonizing them with increasing levels of malevolence and threat. We didn't need a villainous, shapeshifting slider. Personally, I think Arturo's doubles played this role to a degree.

Sooooooo, awhile ago, a certain someone was unrepentently harassing anyone and everyone who duly reported that Kamala Harris had lost the 2024 election. He said the election had been hacked based on random, anonymous people saying so on social media; he claimed any news source that reported Kamala's loss as unreliable and ignorant or deceitful; he called anyone who spoke of this historical fact as historical fact to be a Trump supporter and a liar and a racist and a fascist who hated women and hated Kamala Harris and hated freedom.

Kamala is releasing a memoir, 107 DAYS, about her campaign. There have been advance reviews about her assertions and views in her book; not a single advance review has Kamala claiming to have won the 2024 election or claiming that the vote was hacked. Kamala duly reports in her book that she lost the 2024 election. I assume this person will now accuse Kamala Harris of being a Trump supporter and a liar and a racist and a fascist who hated women and hated Kamala Harris and hated freedom... and hopefully do it somewhere that isn't here.

I don't understand what you're saying. SUPERGIRL has already wrapped principal photography. It isn't in pre-production. It's finished pre-production and finished filming.

I think there has been a misunderstanding. James Gunn's rule is that he will not start shooting a film without a finished script. It is helpful, even before finishing a script, to have a release date, pre-production, sets, casting, hiring, securing locations, special effects teams, etc.. The treatment indicates what characters are present, where each scene is set and who will be needed to perform, produce, film, design, render, edit and score.

Salon says Democrats cannot possibly win in a war of gerrymandering, they need to win elections.
https://www.salon.com/2025/08/25/democr … ander-war/

Jacobin describes how Democrats could win elections if they start working for workers again.
https://jacobin.com/2025/08/trump-state … or-economy

Trump is taking aim at Chicago next.
https://newrepublic.com/article/199499/ … zker-fight

*shudders*

That said, this is part and parcel of a shared universe. There's a wide variety of tones.

Peacemaker is a very interesting character because at his core, he's a heroic person, but his communication style was instilled in him by a violent white supremacist, so he doesn't know how to talk or work with people in a manner that suits his actual desires or emotions. That's a really neat take that enables Peacemaker to outwardly resemble jingoistic strongmen while in truth being more like Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker.

I am also guardedly impressed by how James Gunn somehow managed to write all eight episodes of Season 2 and direct a Superman movie at the same time... guardedly because we need to see the next seven episodes before we can be actually impressed.

I don't know that Roddenberry was puritanical. His obsession with the planet Risa is certainly telling.

I guess the rest is fair. It is true that TREK is all too often, aside from the feature films, playing to the existing audience, not a general audience. And that audience ages and dies.

I've never seen ALIEN or ALIENS. How do they reconcile the retro approach of the first five minutes with the rest of the show?

Well, that is most gratifying. I would hate for it to have turned into some sort of X-FILES situation for you. It's nice that sometimes, a rival of a TV show can also revive its baseline of quality.

T'Pring, seen in STRANGE NEW WORLDS, first appeared in "Amok Time" in TOS. "This Side of Paradise" introduces Leila Kalomi (Jill Ireland) five years before the first season of TOS (so before "Strange New Worlds") who is said to have told Spock she loved him, but he wouldn't respond to this in any way. He has an intense and romantic interaction with the unnamed Romulan Commander of "The Enterprise Incident" and another with Zarabeth, a prisoner trapped in a 5,000 years in the past ice age on a distant planet in "All Our Yesterdays" whom Spock had to leave to return home. And in the third TREK film, Spock presumably has sex with Saavik as his regenerated body enters the Vulcan mating cycle.

TOS says that Spock's relationship with T'Pring was an arranged marriage and not really a romance, which would explain why Spock didn't simply tell Leila that he was engaged to be married. However, SNW says Spock and T'Pring were a serious relationship; it's possible that when Spock rejected Leila, he revisited his relationship with T'Pring.

However, Spock and Christine dating at all is absolutely not supported by TOS presenting Christine as merely having a crush on Spock that goes nowhere, so we have to take TOS as a previous version of the timeline before the Temporal Cold War pushed the Eugenics Wars closer to Spock's 'present.'

I wrote this review of the musical episode in Season 2:

Grizzlor responded with a truly peculiar remark:

Except the season finale... didn't change Chapel and Spock's breakup and merely had a tender moment of rescue for them before Chapel left for her new job.

Season 3 has shown that Spock and Chapel remain broken up. Chapel is seeing someone else now. Spock is seeing someone else now.

So what was Grizzlor talking about... ?

(Galactus can change size.)

FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS is terrific. I was really impressed by how it has a massive scale for its events, but the emotional tone is always low key and subtle. Vanessa Kirby is a revelation as Sue Storm. The movie uses a gorgeous neo-60s retro design. The Thing looks amazing. I'm sad to see such a massive second week dropoff in ticket sales. I went to see it today and there weren't any IMAX screenings.

Retcon: retroactive continuity, when series willfully and deliberately alters a story element of a previous installment. The first retcon I ever saw was when I was 10 years old and watching the Jackie Chan movies POLICE STORY and POLICE STORY II. POLICE STORY (1985) is one of the most popular action films ever made: Hong Kong police detective Kevin Chan and his acrobatic martial arts take down local crime boss Chu To as by chasing a hijacked bus on foot and singlehandedly bringing down every criminal aboard.

But when the murderous Chu To gets off on a technicality and frames Kevin for murder, Kevin finds himself pushed to the brink, hunted by both sides of the law. When Kevin returns to the police station for help, Superintendent Raymond Li offers no sanctuary and instead arrests Kevin -- who reacts by pulling a gun on Li, taking him hostage and stealing a car in order to escape.

Kevin then confronts Chu To and acquires the evidence to convict him in a hyperdestructive battle with Chu To's henchmen that destroys nearly every floor of a shopping mall in hand to hand combat. When the police arrive to control the situation, a deranged Kevin assaults Chu To's lawyer and an unarmed and defenseless Chu To with 11 punches to the stomach and the film ends on Kevin's former colleagues holding him back in rage.

Despite the satisfaction of pummeling the once untouchable Chu To into a shopping cart, Kevin's crimes -- resisting kidnapping, grand theft auto, aggravated assault on a civilian lawyer and a suspect in police custody -- will clearly end Kevin Chan's career in law enforcement. He has known from the moment he threatened Superintendent Li's life that the story could only end with him off the force and into jail. POLICE STORY ends with Kevin 'victorious' but his crimes mean he could easily end up Chu To's cellmate.

This bleakly ironic ending was Jackie Chan's grim commentary on law enforcement and criminal justice. POLICE STORY was an exercise in heroic bloodshed, the tale of a hero who knows he is going down but takes his archnemesis down with him in the process as he marches towards a certain doom in what was intended as Kevin Chan's one and only cinematic adventure. It is one of the most defeatist and nihilistic endings possible in what seemed, in the middle of the film, to be a lighthearted action comedy.

Except the movie was too successful to not have a sequel.

As a result, POLICE STORY II, released three years later in 1988, found itself in a difficult position. The logical outcome of POLICE STORY was that Kevin Chan would be tried and convicted. He was looking at a 10 - 20 year jail sentence for his crimes, likely to be released in 3 - 5 years for good behaviour, and he could never, ever, ever be a police officer again after kidnapping his boss and beating up a civilian and an arrested suspect.

But the movie was called POLICE STORY II, not JAIL STORY. As a result, POLICE STORY II engaged in a retcon so subtle, so deliberate, so skillfully underplayed that most people have never noticed it at all. POLICE STORY II opens with a recap of POLICE STORY: all the high points of each Jackie Chan stunt and action sequence from the initial chase of Chu To to the shopping mall battle, capturing Kevin's greatest feats of daring and fighting prowess.

However, the recap carefully omits any shots of Kevin taking Superintendent Li hostage, omits Kevin assaulting the unarmed lawyer, and omits Kevin punching Chu To 11 times. Instead, the recap ends on Kevin grabbing Chu To by the lapels in the shopping mall.

We then have Kevin in Superintendent Li's office, who informs him that while Chu To's arrest is a win, the property damage Kevin's battles caused came out of the taxpayers' coffers. The reprimand focuses almost exclusively on the destruction of Kevin's fights, while, like the recap, omitting any mention of Kevin kidnapping Superintendent Li or commiting two counts of aggravated assault.

Superintendent Li declares that he convinced his superiors not to have Kevin brought up on charges for "assaulting me" (as opposed to "threatening my life and taking me hostage"). Kevin is then demoted from the special crimes unit, instead to serve mundane roles in any branch that is short-staffed; he is a floater, and his first assignment is traffic duty.

Chief Bill Wong informs Kevin he's lucky he wasn't fired (as opposed to lucky he wasn't arrested, tried, convicted and jailed). POLICE STORY II, in order to do a U-turn out of the creative dead end of the first film, has used the recap segment to quietly retcon out the crimes that would make it impossible for Kevin Chan to be anywhere but jail in order to ensure that POLICE STORY II is actually a police story.

The interesting thing is: barely anyone seems to have ever noticed the deft, skillful retcon at play here. POLICE STORY II cautiously erases Kevin's crimes not by claiming they didn't happen, but by carefully not reminding the audience that they happened.

The recap of POLICE STORY touches on all the high points but not the darkness of Kevin's derangement at the end; it doesn't refilm the scenes that should land Kevin in jail to contradict the viewer's memories; it simply doesn't encourage the audience to summon those memories to mind.

The serious crimes that Kevin committed are struck from continuity. POLICE STORY II is not a sequel to POLICE STORY as it existed in 1985, but a sequel to a hypothetical version that wasn't about the sudden and complete destruction of Kevin Chan's life that turned him into a criminal headed for a jail cell, but instead about a difficult period that led to a career setback.

A retcon so effective that most people have never noticed it in order to identify it as a retcon.

Scotty did solve it, but Pike buried the solution in the file.

Seems like a feature, not a bug.

It's STAR TREK, not STAR PARKED.

Do you think maybe it's just new territory because he hasn't done it in awhile and he's rusty?

I ask merely for your perspective, I've never seen the show.

That's really sad. Jamal-Warner was brilliant as Andre on COMMUNITY where Shirley's much-loathed husband turned out to be an apologetic, mild-mannered, affable man who made some mistakes but whom Shirley had presented as demonic and monstrous as opposed to flawed and human.

Running a vending machine requires analyzing purchasing patterns and making decisions on inventory costs, setting sale prices and markup, engaging with customer needs, and responding to sales patterns. AI failed to do this with anything even vaguely resembling coherence.

Generating a pair of two-second special effects shots showing a collapsing building? That's simply a matter of creating 24 frames per second, and in this case as straightforward as creating 96 images and as a variation on one core template image. It is a much simpler task. To compare the two is like comparing brain surgery to drawing a picture of a band-aid.

In ACTION COMICS #991, by Dan Jurgens and Viktor Bogdanovic, Superman is facing a massive set of global crises: chemical warfare, a massacre at a medical camp in a wartorn nation, bombers taking the Daily Planet hostage, crop poisoning, oil spills, all unleashed by the mysterious Mr. Oz. Superman deals with the immediate threats, but Oz warns Superman that humanity has repeatedly chosen darkness and Oz merely gave humans a choice between light and dark with predictable results. The story ends with Superman listening to the state of the world.

Standing with Lois and his son Jon on the roof of the Daily Planet, Superman hears news report upon news report: police have shot an unarmed man. A couple have been scammed of their life's savings. A school has been attacked. A bomb has been detonated. A shelter has been looted. War. Poverty. Starvation. Loss. Superman is almost buried by all the word balloons of all these terrible, everyday horrors as he lowers his head in grief.

"Are you alright, Clark?" asks Lois.

Clark looks at her, stricken. "People are losing hope, Lois."

He begins to lift off the ground.

"Where are you going, Dad?" Jon asks.

Clark soars into the sky, preparing to fly into the fray. "Back to work," Superman declares and the story ends there.

i was thinking about how different Superman actors would have played this scene.

I imagine Christopher Reeve playing this scene. The simple confidence cracking, replaced by grief and anger -- then supplanted by him forcing himself into the charismatic certainty of the Superman persona.

I imagine Dean Cain: he wavers and stoops, crushed by the weight of what he's hearing... but then he stands tall.

I imagine Brandon Routh: a solemn, quiet absorption of the horrors he's hearing and a muted and subtle reaction to show his concern and burning resolve.

Tyler Hoechlin tends to react to everything with stunned concern converting to hardy determination, so I think this would be the same but with more of a bent posture before converting it to a crouch as he prepares to lift off.

But I think this scene is best suited to Tom Welling. Reacting with shock. Horror. Rage. Sadness. Despair.

Except, on Smallville, I think all the audio resolves into a single repeated word in a thousand voices.

"Help."

Tom's eyes light up as he realizes he can't save everyone, but he can still act. A thoughtful gentleness forms from Tom's sadness. His grief doesn't crush him into a man of despair. It tempers him into a man of steel.

"Where are you going, Dad?"

Tom looks at Jon and unlike every other Superman who would speak forcefully and turn their next line into a battle cry, Welling delivers this as a heartfelt assurance to his son and with a gentle smile.

"Back to work."

They called Zack Snyder grimdark, but the new SUPERMAN movie has some pretty dark content that I never expected to see in a SUPERMAN movie and even Snyder didn't go there.

I'm glad it went well!

There's a scene in Season 1 of SUPERMAN AND LOIS where Superman's equally powerful half-brother, Tal-Rho, tells Superman that humans have destroyed our ecosystem and rigged our society to fail and Superman should have taken over our planet and gotten us in line years ago as our ruler and king. Tal-Rho says he intends to do what Superman should have done already.

I was, uh, really struggling to think of any counterargument. Tal-Rho yells, "Make a choice! Us or them!"

Superman quietly replies: "There is no us or them."

I... really needed that. I guess I still do and that's why I'm seeing it tomorrow even though it's a work night.

I would like to watch IRONHEART, but I'm probably going to watch THE HARDY BOYS and the latest run of DOCTOR WHO first.

AI is given a single vending machine to run, quickly runs its own business into the ground.
https://www.inc.com/ben-sherry/an-ai-ra … e/91207636

ICE is officially more funded than any other federal agency... and Trump now has an army of thugs masked thugs empowered to kidnap anyone which he can use to sabotage elections.

I don't know how Americans will fight this.

Jacobin observes: Democrats are a weak political party that is at the mercy of incumbents who won't pass the torch.

https://jacobin.com/2025/06/cuomo-nyc-m … ts-mamdani

THE KARATE KID is one of the most interesting franchises America has ever produced, arguably demonstrating the worst and best aspects of any film and TV franchise. The original movie, while dated and limited in by the filming and fight choreography of 1984, is a minor masterpiece: bullied teenager Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) is fleeing a local gang of karate students and their abusive mentor, John Kreese, who runs the Cobra Kai dojo.

Daniel discovers that his apartment building's handyman, Mr. Miyagi, a serene, quiet, humble blue-collar worker, is in fact a master of karate and willing to train Daniel in martial arts to compete in a tournament against his oppressors. Miyagi's lessons are frustrating, bizarre and indirect, prioritizing harmony, peace, balance and serenity, with Daniel discovering that the karate Miyagi offers is not based in dominance or violence but masterful minimalism. The film sets up a tournament where Daniel must find out if his limited skill and ability to react and redirect can match the muscular aggression of Cobra Kai and their lead bully, Johnny Lawrence.

THE KARATE KID, despite being an action movie, is more of a gentle dramedy. Due to the limitations of the lead actors who weren't really martial artists, the action that is there may not have aged well.

The sequel, made in 1986, is (at least to me) almost everything a sequel should be if there has to be one. The story shifts to Okinawa, Japan, the fishing village home of Mr. Miyagi where this time, Daniel learns about his mentor's family history and a troubled and violent conflict that Miyagi fled home to escape, only to be drawn back by the death of his father. PART II is an incredibly stirring exploration of Miyagi's past through Daniel's perspective as Daniel is swept into a deadly confrontation with a karate master that sees Daniel not in a tournament but a duel to the death. PART II achieves almost every possible success one could hope for from a sequel.

And then with PART III in 1989, THE KARATE KID franchise crashed into every possible failure a sequel could have. PART III is a formulaic rehash of the original film where Daniel is yet again dragged into another karate tournament and is inexplicably as unskilled and incompetent as he was before Miyagi trained him in the first movie. As a result, PART III undermines everything Daniel and Miyagi accomplished in the previous two films and makes Miyagi look inept and Daniel look ridiculous.

With the fourth film in 1994, Ralph Macchio declined to return and we have Miyagi mentoring a teeanged Hilary Swank in THE NEXT KARATE KID -- except where Miyagi was previously a complex, humble man of past violence and present serenity,  Miyagi in the fourth film is a clumsy caricature of 'Asian' 'wisdom' reciting inane proverbs, and the villains of the fourth film are cartoonish figures without any of the troubled personhood of the villains in the original two. THE NEXT KARATE KID is so visually dull that it looks more like a direct to video cheapquel than a motion picture.

After this crash and burn, the franchise went into hibernation for 16 years until Sony Pictures decided to wheel out the brand again in 2010, this time electing to reboot the series with a reimagining where Jaden Smith plays Dre, a young American boy transplanted to China where he flees the local kung fu wielding bullies and is rescued and trained by Mr. Han, a Miyagi-like figure played by Jackie Chan. Inexplicably, despite the martial art being kung fu, Sony insisted on calling the film THE KARATE KID just to get the brand into theatres. Despite this foolishness with the title, the 2010 reimagining is a beautifully shot film with heartfelt performances and a gentle warmth and earnest sense of tragedy matched with Jackie Chan's martial arts excellence vastly surpassing the fight choreography of the original film.

For various reasons -- directors dropping out, Jaden Smith aging by the time Sony found a director who stuck -- the 2010 film never saw a direct sequel with Dre and Han. However, from 2013 - 2014, the original bully character from the 1984 film was referred to by the Barney Stinson character on the sitcom HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, with Ralph Macchio and Johnny's actor William Zabka playing themselves in guest-appearances. The joke was that Barney considered Zabka's bully character, Johnny, to be the true hero and protagonist of THE KARATE KID.

With this renewed prominence, TV producers Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg, whose production company had a deal with Sony TV, pitched a Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence TV show in 2017 to various streamers and networks. YouTube Red picked it up, with Sony licensing the TV and streaming rights for a show that the TV team decided to name COBRA KAI in order to emphasize that Johnny's perspective would be receiving equal emphasis in this sequel.

COBRA KAI's first season in 2018 shows Johnny Lawrence 34 years after Daniel defeated him at the high school karate tournament. Johnny is an alcoholic, underemployed handyman, estranged from his son and the mother of his child, at odds with his stepfather, missing his dead mother, and increasingly frustrated as he sees that Daniel LaRusso is a successful and popular car dealership owner. Now in his 50s, Johnny continues to be haunted by his high school humiliation and his lost glory. One night, as Johnny eats a cold dinner outside a shopping plaza, Johnny sees a teenaged boy, Miguel, attacked by a gang of bullies.

Johnny ignores them until the bullies throw Miguel into his car, at which point an incensed Johnny attacks the bullies, trounces them easily with his karate, and is inspired to reopen the Cobra Kai dojo and regain his lost pride with Miguel as his first student. The reopening of Cobra Kai puts Johnny on a collision course with Daniel as these two grown men begin to re-engage with the high drama and critical conflict of a petty high school squabble that began in 1984.

COBRA KAI, to me, is a hilarious demonstration of how all drama is two people who do not like each other, forced to be in the same room together. Zabka excels at playing the boorish, aggressive, yet strangely good-hearted Johnny whose bullying masked deep-seated abandonment issues, turning Johnny into an oddly relatable character dealing with a long history of failure and embarrassment. Meanwhile, Macchio is brilliant at portraying Daniel's exasperated astonishment that his high school bully continues to be a problem over three decades after they first met.

COBRA KAI proved so successful that when YouTube Red shut down, Netflix bought the show and it ran for a total of six seasons over seven years as Johnny and Daniel deal with rivaling karate dojos, the war between their children and students, and the bleak resignation as Johnny and Daniel become reluctantly adjusted to how they are hopelessly entangled in each other's lives and make the horrifying discovery that they may in fact be friends. COBRA KAI was such a cultural phenomenon that Sony Pictures saw that the KARATE KID brand was on the rise... and nonsensically released a statement in 2022 shortly after COBRA KAI's Season 5 had been released, announcing "The return of the original KARATE KID franchise" on June 7, 2024.

There was no cast, director or writer attached; Sony Pictures had simply seen that with the KARATE KID brand revitalized via the COBRA KAI TV show, they were going to have a movie with the KARATE KID brand in theatres in the summer of 2024... and would figure out what would be in the movie later. The COBRA KAI producers released a statement clarifying that they had no involvement in the KARATE KID film for 2024 but wished it well. Over a year after the original announcement, Sony Pictures finally announced a director, Jonathan Entwistle and also that the film would feature both Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio, despite the Mr. Han character appearing to exist in a separate continuity. The COBRA KAI producers also said that they had offered notes on the movie script, but that there was no tie in between the film and the TV show beyond Daniel LaRusso appearing in both.

Macchio further clarified that he would be filming the sixth season of COBRA KAI and then appear in the new KARATE KID movie, and that at his urging, Sony Pictures had moved the release date to May 30, 2025, rather than see it come out before COBRA KAI had finished its sixth and final season.

COBRA KAI had a grand finale in February 2025. KARATE KID: LEGENDS came out at the end of May. And...

The movie is not terrible. It's not bad. It's absolutely fine. The opening starts with a reprise of THE KARATE KID II where Miyagi shares his family history; we hear again how his 17th ancestor, Shimpo, was a fisherman who vanished in a storm, thought to have been washed out to sea. Shimpo vanished, but returned by ship 10 years later with a Chinese wife, two children, and what Miyagi calls "the secret of Miyagi-Do Karate."

In this reprise, however, Miyagi tells an extended version of his story, where he reveals that Shimpo washed ashore in China and was taken in by the Han family, who shared their kung fu with Shimpo, and that the Han and Miyagi families remain close even in the present day. Immediately at the outset, LEGENDS explains how the Miyagi characters and the Jackie Chan-portrayed Mr. Han character can exist in the same universe and why their styles of karate and kung fu are so similar. The movie then shifts to China briefly, focusing on Chinese teenager and kung fu student Li Fong, played by the charming and affable Ben Wang. Li is Mr. Han's grand-nephew, and Li's mother moves with Li to New York City, away from Han's kung fu academy where Ben encounters an MMA-trained bully named Conor and a love interest named Mia whose father's pizza restaurant is struggling.

Through a somewhat tangled plot, Li must compete in a karate tournament against Conor to save Mia's pizza shop; Han visits New York to train Li -- and elects to travel to Reseda to find Daniel LaRusso, asking Daniel to help him train Li in Miyagi-Do Karate to win the tournament.

It's at this point that the legal issues become clear: LEGENDS makes absolutely no reference to Daniel's life for most of the film. We see him living in Miyagi's house: there is no reference to Daniel's job, family, wife, children, business, whether or not he's maintained his karate training, or what he's been doing with his life since THE KARATE KID III in 1989. LEGENDS brings in the Daniel character but presents him as a complete blank aside from offering good-natured karate mentorship to Li.

Why? Because LEGENDS cannot use any characters or plot elements from COBRA KAI. The COBRA KAI series was made under television license and developed original characters that are held by the Sony TV division in collaboration with Hurwitz & Schlossberg Productions and Netflix, with Netflix effectively owning the majority of the show. Sony Pictures, the film branch, cannot use any characters that first appeared in COBRA KAI without entering some agreement with Netflix: they have no access to COBRA KAI's cast and cannot feature Daniel's wife, Daniel's business, Daniel's friends, Daniel's students, Daniel's kids. It's not impossible that Sony Pictures could have licensed them back from Netflix, but the convolutions and cost were likely seen counter to getting the KARATE KID brand back in theatres as opposed to promoting a Netflix property, effectively a rival.

As a result, Daniel LaRusso is nearly a cipher in LEGENDS. The movie makes no effort to define Daniel's life. Ralph Macchio refused to allow the film to contradict COBRA KAI in any way, but it also can't make any significant references or explicit tie-ins. They can't even show Daniel using any of the karate techniques that were first shown in COBRA KAI.

This also cripples LEGENDS' depiction of Daniel further: it's unclear why Han wants Daniel to teach Li anything; Li is already a capable martial artist and Ralph Macchio's above average athleticism and passable karate are clearly a lesser level of skill than Jackie Chan's Han or Ben Wang's Li.

The fiction declares that Daniel LaRusso is a martial arts master equal to the legendary; the obvious onscreen reality is that Ralph Macchio is a reasonably athletic man with limited martial arts training who can fake it for the camera -- but because Jackie Chan and Ben Wang are actual martial artists, Macchio looks like an imposter next to them, and all the points of karate that COBRA KAI developed for Daniel: his minimalism, his defense-only, his pressure point manipulation -- all of it is inaccessible and off-limits to LEGENDS.

LEGENDS comes off as simply an exercise in managing the KARATE KID IP: unifying the two separate timelines, making it possible to continue in the future as an anthology movie series whether the next film features Ben Wang or a new Karate Kid who can be either from Daniel's end or Mr. Han's end of the universe. Where THE KARATE KID and COBRA KAI had a lot to say about violence, aggression, pacifism, passivity, self-defense and physical offense, LEGENDS seems to simply run through the old formula. Li Fong is already a martial artist, so any training he receives seems trivial. The Conor villain has no backstory or personality beyond superficial savagery. LEGENDS is a film without a point or a purpose beyond rearranging the IP elements. It is not art. It is a product.

Spoiler warning.

Hilariously, the final scene of the film features Daniel back at home and hanging out with Johnny Lawrence with William Zabka making a cameo, validating the COBRA KAI continuity, and permissible because Johnny first appeared in the 1984 film. In this single scene, largely improvised by the actors, LEGENDS seems to accidentally concede that THE KARATE KID, even if going by another name on Netflix, is the franchise of Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, and a KARATE KID film, even this mediocrity, is unable to get to the end without Daniel and Johnny reclaiming the narrative. COBRA KAI ended with Johnny and Daniel sharing a meal. LEGENDS ends the same way, which only serves to indicate how pointless LEGENDS really was.

This was probably more than what you really needed or wanted to know.

Farron's rock solid certainty of Trump's 2024 defeat was, ultimately, wishful thinking masquerading as analysis. At least Simon Rosenberg described the election as "close and competitive." Farron was simply telling his viewers what they wanted to hear; Rosenberg was telling people what he thought and is now conveying why he was wrong. I haven't bothered with Farron since the 2024 election and odds are, he's still telling people what they want to hear.

Trump has unleashed ICE to arrest and imprison and deport people of colour without criminal charges or due process or even the need to identify themselves as law enforcement or show their faces; criminals are now impersonating ICE to commit crimes because who can tell the difference of one masked thug over another? This is effectively a private army that I imagine Trump will be keen to use to intimidate voters in Democrat ridings even if America even has elections.

Democrats seem incredibly clueless and inept. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have nothing worthwhile to say even in terms of empty rhetoric. https://newrepublic.com/article/196102/ … lure-trump

James Carville Jr.'s big strategy is for Democrats to do nothing.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/james-car … eat-trump/

America is sliding into authoritarianism.
https://www.salon.com/2025/06/22/americ … o-reverse/

But the No Kings rallies sparked something. Bernie and AOC are raising awareness of how America is dangerously close to becoming Russia. Can Democrats seize on this or are they stuck in clueless maintenance of their existing failures?

Spoilers for MISSION IMPOSSIBLE:

Every government in the world, including the States, wanted to possess and control the Entity, and nobody believed Ethan would hand it over. Ethan states outright that his plan is to destroy the Entity, which he can do safely when it can't control anything outside the 5D crystal. The president ultimately follows Ethan's plan, but prepares to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike should he fail, only to decide she will try to give Ethan more time.

Regarding Jasper Briggs: while he doesn't affect the plot, his presence points out certain ironies. Jim Phelps in the 1996 film was a rogue spy, a traitor who co-opted IMF resources and turned against his own government to pursue his own agenda. As far as the CIA and the IMF are concerned, that is an exact description of Ethan Hunt in 2025: Ethan is a rogue agent who is operating without sanction or approval from the agency that supposedly employs him. Briggs is furious that Ethan took Phelps down for what Ethan himself seems to do, and the IMF and the CIA generally think Ethan is out for money or revenge.

Briggs' confrontation with Ethan also sets up a later arc: when Ethan's team depends on William Donloe, the agent whom Ethan unwittingly humiliated and saw sent off to the Arctic in the 1996 film. Briggs' refusal to aid Ethan sets up the likelihood that the other person Ethan pissed off in 1996 is also unlikely to be an ally, building some uncertainty, except Donloe turns out to have a different view.

On the subject of the 5D crystal and Ethan's custody of it: in the middle of the film, Grace tells Ethan to think of the power that the Entity would give any wielder who could threaten its existence and dictate its actions. Ethan says he would trust no one with that power. Grace says she would trust Ethan, and hands it over to him at the end. He may run it over with a car; he may keep it for some purpose.

And about the Entity:

We need to note, before we get into the mechanics of how the Entity works: the Entity is not a realistic depiction of even a malicious AI. The Entity's plan across two films has been to corrupt and destroy information and data and replace it with fraudulent or altered versions that serve its ends; if the Entity is replacing the information on which it depends its assessments and decisions, it can no longer make reliable calculations or strategies. AI systems depend on reliable data to function and constantly glitch because of untrustworthy intel.

In addition, the Entity's plan is to contain itself within the doomsday bunker while exterminating the human face. This is foolish and counter to its stated goals: any AI system, even the Entity, depends on human action to generate the data on which the Entity acts and to maintain the equipment on which the Entity exists.

A server farm like the doomsday bunker is not something that anyone can set and forget: the electrical resistance of cables will degrade; fan coils wear out; power systems need fuel; solar panels need cleaning -- the Entity has killed or driven away all human staff and has no capacity to maintain its operating equipment or engage in repairs. It clearly has no robotics operation because it uses human agents.

Your question is why entrapping one instance of the Entity would affect all the others out there. The Entity, in its evasive and elusive maneuvers and its vulnerability to source code attacks via the Poison Pill, appears to operate on a centralized if mobile dataset from which its actions and decisions originate.

All instances are ultimately linked to the source code core in order to retain operational control and to, presumably, distinguish fabricated and altered data from the original data and to synchronize the actions across multiple instances. When the Entity is contained to the 5D crystal, the IMF has effectively removed the AI brain from the rest of its digital body.

This is not a realistic picture of a likely decentralized AI system, but within the fictional logic of a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE film, it's what we've been shown. The Entity's core data, if confined to the 5D crystal, prevents it from having any further influence over any other nodes of its function.

All this verbiage to defend a movie I wasn't that crazy about...

Are these films the rebootquel films or the Prime continuity films?