Raiders is fine. You’re not supposed think to hard about why an artifact exists and why it works even when it doesn’t make a lot of sense in an action adventure movie. Ideally everything would make perfect sense, but when it doesn’t it’s no reason to get your panties in a bunch.

They could’ve accomplished things in Raisers a lot more smarter too. Indy could’ve just waited until that Nazis dug up the Ark and then stole the truck once it was loaded. Which is exactly what he ended up doing. Would’ve cut out a lot of the action and adventure by doing it that way. And that’s what we want, right? Efficient plot lines which minimizes the action and adventure.

Characters using scanners or fictional magic constantly is boring. And besides, why couldn’t a knife that was made by a sorcerer (that had the ability to see the future) have magical properties? Seems you’re upset they used one kind of magic instead of a different kind of magic. Odd thing to be upset about when watching a popcorn action adventure movie.

Sure there are a few minor flaws in RoS. But it feels like you went into the movie looking for something wrong with it and it gave you what you wanted. I went into it wanting a fun action adventure movie, and it gave me what wanted. So the movie delivered for both of us, didn’t it?

Daenerys had to always be talked out of solving problems with Dragonfire. If she didn’t die, it wouldn’t be an ending because we’d be left with a question about whether or not she might someday go Mad Queen.

The point of the show is that it’s fairly arbitrary who sits on the throne. Robert Baratheon because he won a rebellion, Joffrey because he was supposedly the son of the King (but really wasn’t) his brother because Joffrey was poisoned, then their mother because… well she was an important person that was in the capital. Big army diplomacy, claims based on blood relations to dead people who were previously the monarch, fast army diplomacy… that’s basically a monarchy in a nutshell. It’s really the advisors that run everything so why does it matter who sits on a fancy throne?

So it’s fitting that it ends with someone on the throne being arbitrary, it’s ultimately what a monarchy is, just some arbitrary person that people agree is the person that site on the throne. And it was the point of the story. It’s all just a silly game the powerful play while the peasants die for because of it.

None of the decisions were bad, it was just rushed and clumsy. Just people didn’t pay a lot of attention to the fact that Daenerys was using dragonfire to solve her problems more and more. Didn’t pay attention to the fact that who’s on the throne doesn’t much matter, the most important thing is that people agree on whoever it is. Didn’t pay attention to the fact that the prophecy was just some bullshit that made Stanis do horrible things (like burning people alive) and didn’t notice Daenerys was going down the same path I guess they thought she was the real chosen one. People just didn’t pay attention to what the point of the story was, and were disappointed that there was never a real Prince of Light, just a bunch of assholes getting a lot of people killed for their petty game of thrones.

Destroying a planet is a comic book kind of evil. Massacring some school children is real life evil.

Luke’s aunt and uncle were killed by Stormtroopers… guys you’re not supposed to sympathize with. Are we not supposed to be sympathetic towards Anakin? Is he supposed to be a generic bad guy with very little depth like a Stormtrooper or Jabba?

Why not fund raise and set up a lobby group and fund politicians to pass laws.

Do you think some kids are going to be able to buy the support of politicians by outbidding the oil companies?

Yeah I don’t know why they wouldn’t block the entrance to an oil refinery. Some people would be unhappy about this especially the people that work there. But the general public could understand, who knows it could possibly slow production for a few days.

What is it the activists wanted people to think? Did they consider their actions might lead people to turn against them instead of against the oil companies?

Can’t make any money off Winnie the Pooh content in China… for reasons.

I feel like it should be the life time of the creator of the work provided that person is still getting a significant percentage of the royalties. Otherwise something like 20 years.

That way companies might be less likely to force artists to sign away all rights to their work. So like “hey this kid could live another 50 years, so lets make sure he gets his percentage so we can keep control longer.”

Apparenlty telling your customers to go fuck themselves isn’t a good business strategy.

The Big Bang Theory has that silly name because it’s what people trying to discredit it termed it.

There’s bias in everything, but empirical evidence wins out in the end.

Yeah I think a story about an arms buildup and a defense industrial complex just doesn’t work well in a movie. In real life it’s about subtle influences on politics not “pew pew pew”, there’s not even any opportunities for passionate speeches. Just “maybe it’s bad to put so many resources towards building warships and once you have them you might be tempted to use them to justify the expenditure… someday.” In the real world it’s a trend over time, so how do you make a compelling story about that? If you deviate too much to make it more interesting it’s not accurate to the real world, and then it’s more like a fictional problem.

Yeah there were some animal rights people that ran out onto the field at a ballgame I was at. The fine for running onto the field is $5000. There were two of them, so that was $10,000.

TV broadcasts don’t show people that run out onto the field since they don’t want to encourage it. So the only people that saw their banner were people at the ballpark. Someone shouted “get off the field you hippies” and the whole section laughed.

They probably should’ve just donated the $10,000 to an animal shelter.

It’s just how internet activist groups work. Most people aren’t motivated to improve things for their cause, they’re motivated to prove to others in their group how zealous they are. The more outlandish and untrue the things they say are, the more they prove their loyalty to the cause and the more points they’ll get from others in the group.

It’s the same pattern of behavior for every internet activist group. Whether it’s a vegan group, a socialist group, a MAGA group, an antivax group, Qanon, whatever. Promoting the cause doesn’t really matter, it’s about promoting yourself to others within the cause. Which is why you see insane lies about every kind of contentious issue. They aren’t trying to convince you, they’re trying to convince the others in the group how dedicated they are to the cause. “I’m willing to lie to help the cause!” gets a lot of points from the people already supporting the cause.

And the ST is about Vladimir Putin working in the background before revealing that fascism has been there this whole time, we just didn’t notice. Somehow fascism returned! An authoritarian with thousands of super weapons capable of destroying entire cities suddenly attacks out of nowhere and everyone in the world has to band together to help the resistance.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine didn’t happen yet, but JJ Abrams predicted it! The JJ Abrams Star Wars movies were about high-minded philosophy and politics.

Your comment rests on the assumption that JJ Abrams movies are mindless entertainment that never comments on the real world, but that’s always been false.

Really though, the JJ Abrams movies have quite a lot to say about the emotional paths to fascism. From indoctrination to bad relationships with a father figure, the relationship to our ancestors, our need to restore a past empire. It’s all there. The prequels are very dated, just immature shots being fired at a W. Bush and Newt Gingrich. The JJ Abrams movies explore the emotions that lead fascism, which will always be relevant.

Ever see the statue of a confederate general being removed? If you did, you’d see a reproduction of an evil guy that died a long time ago being moved around with a crane. What do you see at the beginning of RoS again? You might see it as mindless entertainment but there’s a message there, it’s just that JJ Abrams isn’t spoon-feeding it to you.

Yeah maybe I’m just bitter because they advertised TLJ as “being about strong women” and it made me think we were going to see Leia do some bad ass shit with a light saber. I was so down for that. Instead she Mary Poppinsed her way across the screen and was in a coma for most of the movie.

Having older people do action is always a challenge, check the scene where Liam Neeson is climbing over a fence and there’s like 20 cuts before he makes it. But Star Wars is the kind of thing where that isn’t much of an issue. Carrie Fisher could wave around a s stick and throw out her hand and with some CGI she’s be deflecting blaster shots and throwing around Stormtroopers using the force.

Instead we don’t see Leia with a lightsaber until RoS and it’s CGI. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate them finally showing Leia with a lightsaber. I will always defend RoS because of this… and Palpatine blasting X-Wings with lightning bolts, because fuck it, it’s Star Wars have some fun people.

Ok, we have so, so much established canon to work with, what parts of it can we focus on or interweave and tweak a bit to tell precisely the kind if story we want?

Yeah but you gotta consider what Star Wars is about at it’s core: some kids going on an adventure to save the galaxy. A lot of the EU wouldn’t work because the actors that portray the characters are too old to do those stories in the same way. Still they should’ve had Leia with a lightsaber and bring in Thrawn, who could have some younger underlings himself. And yeah Mara Jade could make an appearance too, but it wouldn’t be a starring role. But at least have the older characters doing things to help and maybe have the good old “I’ll deal with this” thing happen so the kids can get away.

TFA was the best of the three because Han Solo did stuff. Luke and Leia just didn’t feel all that relevant in the other movies. I give RoS a pass because Luke Skywalker was dead in the story and Carrie Fisher was dead in real life. Not much could be done at that point. TLJ was where things needed to go down, but it just didn’t.

It’s all just Meta wankery to me. Like the writer is thinking “how do I portray this character has reached mythological levels in our culture? I know I’ll make the movie about that! I’m so brilliant!” Fap fap fap

It’s a “sir, this is a Wendy’s” kind of thing. This is a Star Wars. Fun action adventure movie. Kind of movie kids wear costumes when they go see it. It’s not that I don’t understand the “Star Wars movies are an illusion, but if that illusion inspires children, that’s what really matters!” message to it. And it’s not that the message is wrong. It’s just that it’s obvious and boring.

It’s fine to have this kind of wankery in a Knives Out kind of movie or whatever, but it’s a Star Wars FFS. Pew pew pew voom voom. The challenge is to have a message in the subtext of a fun action adventure, not to spew out an obvious and shallow message overlayed on top of the action that’s constantly telling the audience the movie isn’t real. We know it’s not real, but make a movie that lets us turn off our phones and pretend it’s real for a few hours.

There seems to be a correlation between Ass and Fuck for awhile. But then we see an upward trend of Shit following behind Fuck and Ass. Once we start seeing Shit become more pronounced, we see a temporary decrease in Fuck followed by a recovery and an large increase in Fuck while Ass doesn’t see a corresponding increase.

What does it mean?

Both wrong.

It’s just a process. Find evidence, make theories. Find more evidence, adjust theories or replace them.

People gotta stop injecting their religious beliefs about “the truth” or “socialism” or whatever into science. These are just your personal beliefs and science don’t give a shit about any of that.

Unilever is doing business with Russia? I was told previously that P&G was still there.

There’s not a lot of options for buying soap, so which of these is the least worst?

Maybe some of the the other ships are upside down but because we always see them that way we don’t know?