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Jumbie

Drunken Deities Royalty
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Posts posted by Jumbie

  1.  

    Narratively, it makes little sense for Arya to die since she's the last thread in that storyline. The past 2 seasons of training would have been for nothing in terms of where the story goes.

     

    Compare that to other famous character deaths and you see that there was always a second character or more to carry the arc of that storyline on. So for instance the Red Wedding left the Lannisters as victors so they could shift to the war with Stannis. Joffrey's death got Sansa moving. The Hound's death got Arya moving on etc.

     

    The exception is Jon Snow's death which made little sense and everyone instinctively KNEW he was coming back because there was no one at the wall to continue that location's storyline except Ollie.

     

  2. Lawrence would cost too much.

     

    They need a name with recognition balanced with price.

     

    Remember, when they first cast RDJ as Stark, he was paid very little. IMDB says $500,000. Not even a million.

     

    So, quick, who's a well-known, highly skilled, decent looking woman with a history of drug use that's coming off a rough patch?

  3. No Kessel Run, please.

     

    I remember reading in the ANH novelization that Obiwan picked up on the 12 Parsecs mistake as an obvious attempt to impress Luke with nonsense jargon. The new YA novel of ANH has kept this interpretation according to wookieepedia.

     

    This is a clever bit of characterization that stays consistent with Han Solo's behaviour in the movies. He tells Leia they're not tracking THIS ship. He makes up a lie about a reactor leak and botches the conversation with the guards in the prison by asking them 'how are you?' etc.

     

    Divine pilot skill is commonplace in StarWars and every other galaxy. Solo's gift is the art of bullshitting.

     

    Ironically, the Han Solo novels took the excellent Kessel Run joke away from him by trying to explain that the 12 parsecs thing had to do with folded spacetime so that how short a distance you made a run in showed the speed of your ship.

     

    The Millenium Falcon doesn't NEED to be shown beating the Kessel Run record. There doesn't even need to be a real Kessel Run. The Falcon's glory is looking like garbage, breaking down, being unheralded THEN pulling the speed out just when it's needed.

     

    Of course, if I start talking about the Han Solo novels, I'll be complaining so long my words would FILL a novel, so let me stop.

     

    Also, telling the story of the Chewie/Han meeting is indeed unnecessary.

     

    I like how they keep their past coming out in snippets.

  4. Every movie has reshoots.

     

    Also, the issue of phrasing is important because some articles say the movies isn't testing well 'with execs'. If it's not testing well with actual test audiences that's very different.

     

    In terms of the reshoots though, I feel that one things Disney has always understood, even in their less successful films, is good visual storytelling. We saw that in TFA when even with the pushing of fan service for various things they still managed to put together a serviceable story while moving around multiple pieces on the fly (I hear for instance Maz was supposed to go to the Resistance base an earlier draft etc). I suspect a lot of what they do is very formulaic, as in beat sheets and all that, but that stuff tends to work in making a good story though it can restrict the ability of the tale to be unique. Then again, ANH was the original beat sheet blockbuster.

     

    It worst we get a serviceable space action movie.

  5. watchwrestling.to used to carry all the WWE PPVs live/ minor delay, but they didn't for the last one this weekend. No explanation. Hopefully they get back to it. They do have the last PPV up as an archive item now though.

     

    And they have a big back catalogue of Raw, Smackdown, NXT etc.

     

    Also UFC/MMA events.

     

    Usual warnings about making sure you have a secure browser and adblocker etc.

  6. You guys think Jane Foster is done? How can you not understand trickery after all these years of dealing with Loki?

     

    All this stuff about Portman not coming back is a ruse. After Thor dies, the post credit scene will be her finding Mjolnir.

  7. I mentioned that in my first post. It's part of the modern/western muslim angle.

     

    Besides, Bond could have 5 martinis a movie and he'd still be drinking less than the average Saudi prince.

     

    In a very real sense, ISIS is seen as the MI5 off the muslim world. Due to propaganda and even western press coverage, their fighters are seen as cool rogues amongst a lot of the muslim youth because they use guns, get laid constantly and have cool hair. Those teenage girls fleeing to join up and be warrior brides aren't doing it because of faith. Their giney tickles for those guys.

     

    Honest to God, that 'hero' image is a massive part of the reason they recruit so well.

     

    Bond showing that you can get laid by means other than forcing captives to marry you or that maybe dancing and drinking and gambling are fun too is an amazing alternative to steer the kid looking for a hero into a less dangerous direction.

  8. Time for a young Oxford educated muslim to step into the role.

     

    I'm cool with Elba except I think his age works against him as a franchise player.

     

    But London's got a muslim mayor now. Time for a muslim Bond. And he should fight muslim terrorists. Not vaguely dark terrorists, but MUSLIM terrorists.

     

    I think showing a modern muslim man with a strong love for Britain and a way with the ladies and liquor is perfect for breaking the cycle of recruitment into Islamist culture.

     

    The Islamist culture is essentially an anti-modern culture so showing the western world as fun and roguish is the best weapon to counteract it. That's how American Cowboys and Rockstars made America the aspiration of so many oppressed people before.

  9. I get the throwback thing. But the thin line around the lettering means no focus on a central point. The blue bullet one from 76 that everyone likes is basically the same but with a thick blue line so the white space in the middle is more of a central spot.

  10. This is the new DC logo.

     

    UJ4CMpa.jpg

     

    Oh god it makes my eyes hurt. Literally.

     

    I don't have a problem with the logo itself too much but it actually is painful to look at. I think it lacks a central focus plus it has two elements pulling your eyes in two different directions. I've tried looking at it in different sizes and it still hurts. Is it just me that gets eye strain?

     

    Also, am I the only one seeing a blue deadpool face?

  11. Thanos will need underlings in his movie besides just having some kind of stormtrooper/alien army like in Avengers 1. People with personality.

     

    I suspect Zemo and others will get promotions and augmentations so there can be preliminary fight scenes, dialogue with witty banter etc Maybe Red Skull will come back. Loki too, depending on how they choose to close out the Thor movies

  12. Sam Jackson costs money per minute like crazy and they already shelled out the bank for RDJ. Tom Holland came cheap.

     

    (Like your mom.) *

     

    I forgot about the Wakandans. But that brings me back to an issue I had after the fact because of something I was expecting and didn't get. After we realized Zemo was manipulating events, I expected that the first two things to drive Tony away from Cap would be revealed as Zemo's doing too (Nigeria and Alfre Woodard at the elevator)

     

    But Zemo didn't have a hand in those.

     

    So on the minus side that means we have a heavy coincidence that Zemo's plan went into action just after the accident that causes the accords and then the other incident that makes Tony support the accords. When you think about it, Zemo's whole plan only worked because of the accords, didn't it?

     

    (I suppose he might have been intending his plan to work without even knowing about the accords i.e.

    frame Bucky and pretend to interrogate him while really planting bait for Cap and Iron Man to go to his party in Siberia... but without the accords, all the Avengers would have shown up and Tony vs Cap wouldn't have been on the cards)

     

     

    On the PLUS side, it's good to see that Zemo isn't manipulating everything in the conflict over methodology because it shows the casualty issue is real. Having it all be a villain's manipulations like in Batman/Superman makes it seem like collateral damage was never a valid concern to begin with.

     

    In the end, I can't forgive that coincidence, however, and I hold it against them because I know they could have written the Woodard/Nigeria stuff as non-Zemo without having it be critical to Zemo's scheme's success.

     

    *Happy Mother's Day!

  13. So, I got to see this and liked it a lot. Not as much as a lot of people did though. Not as much as I liked Captain America: Winter Soldier even.

     

    Civil War did all the things Marvel movies do well so I won't go into specifics, but the characters were on point with everyone pretty much having a motivation that made sense and interactions that made sense. The tone, which is the HUGE strength of all Marvel movies is excellent and especially with the way it changes in the different segments.

     

    Things I didn't like (but these are light medium complaints):

     

    --Action fatigue. I'm starting to tune out these long superhero fights. The last fight, thankfully was short and to the point, but the tunnel sequence and a few others felt too long and stunt-y.

     

    --In the big fight, where was Vision? Up til he and Antman have their encounter, I kept thinking, 'Everyone's paired up, this is cool. Widow and Hawkeye, Spiderman and Cap, wait, who's got Vision?" and then that distracted me.

     

    --Too crowded. Not a good sign for Infinite Thanos parts 1 and 2. I got a headache following all the characters. It's less of a problem in comics,since crossovers are spread out, but in a movie, everything flies by fast. I hope they figure this formula balance soon. It seems like they may have done so, given how they wrote out a few characters already and added potential for others to go out kinda easy too.

     

    Things I liked:

     

    --Villain. Kurt Loder complained in his review of the movie that Bruhl didn't do enough villainous scene stealing, but given how things turned out at the end, it was a) the best choice and b) a good change from the previous villains starting to be too similar in villainy. Besides, everyone knows Tony was the real villain of this movie...

     

    --Plot twist.

    I figured it out from the third time the car crash came up in the movie, which was pretty early, but then I forgot all about it when I got caught up in the 'Tony's gonna go help them kick some ass' and forgot, so I ended up being surprised anyway.

     

     

    --Spiderman. I hear some fans have complained that he's portrayed TOO young. But I bought it. With a lot of these guys like Thor, Widow, Iron Man, Cap, Hawkeye, Falcon etc there was a veteran vibe from the start or it was established very quickly.

     

    I want more of that insecure-but-powerful goofball trying to fit in on a team of veteran soldiers vibe like when Kyle Rayner was on the JLA back when.

     

    - - - - -

     

    Aside from good parts and bad parts, most of the talk about this movie is probably over the argument about right and wrong. And there was even less gray area in the movie than the comics.

     

    Captain America sees how dumb the accords are:

     

    "What if they send us someplace we don't want to go? What if we need to be somewhere and they don't let us?"

     

    I know they don't want to get too real world here, especially with the international box office being so important, but this would have been a perfect spot to mention that China has a UN security council veto. As does Russia.

     

    Also that the UN human rights council has been headed by Iran and Ghadaffi's Libya and a lot of other people the Avengers would find themselves in conflict with under normal circumstances.

     

    On top of that, the Nigeria incident didn't seem like it was big enough to warrant the accords. I mean, Sakovia (!) wasn't. And on top of that the incident wasn't the kind of thing where the Avengers could be seen to blame. Criminals stole a bio weapon. Anything that happens after that is pretty much the fault of the criminal, not the person trying to stop them.

     

    The writers could have saved this so easily by having Cap learn that the bio weapon was secure and then continue his fight with Crossbones in the middle of the city and then when the bomb blows he shares responsibility for not ending the fight near the civilians with the threat of the bioweapon element removed. Then they could personalize it on him so that he would feel some guilt over it and then his standing like a tree or whatever stance would be more heroic because going to principle would hurt him more.

    • Upvote 1
  14. Disney Vault is something Disney did back in the 80s and 90s for home video. They'd only release old movies for limited runs on VHS to panic people into buying copies before it went back 'in the vault'. There used to be all these ads for the movies talking about it going back into the vault.

     

    Pretty sure they don't pull that crap now since the home vid market has changed so much.

  15. I think a lot of what gets put into a movie costume has to do with what the cameras can pick up on a technical level and I've heard that pale skin is a very hard thing to work with, so who knows?

     

    Got to keep the red diamond though at any rate. Trademark.

     

    The goofy tendril cape might actually work too if it's animated right.

  16. The thing about the Sparrow's personal army had bothered me too. Social upheaval isn't so clean and balanced. Either they get co-opted by the ruling class or they upturn the applecart.

     

    The assassination in Dorne makes more sense given the access of the sandsnakes and their skills.

     

    Ramsay's hit squad I can buy a bit because Stannis was already seeing his men desert and they were not ahem winter soldiers. But a bit problematic.

     

    For me, I think it's just budgetary. Like when I see the 'big' battle at the end of Season 5 or the battle of the Blackwater, I think, wow, that looks very meager, but I shrug it off because I know they have limited resources. I figure it's the same for showing the Sparrow's army or Ramsay's special forces or the machinations of the Sons of the Harpy.

     

    (The Sons of the Harpy one still bothers me the most though, because she has the Second Sons AND the most badass army on the planet and they ain't doing crap...)

     

    I bet it all makes sense in the book, but I don't read the books.

  17. That was an imaginary story, Nick. Imaginary!

     

    Stick to what happened in the real world.

     

    - - - -

     

    Well to be honest, Apocalypse has been said to rule in many places over the millennia even in the 616 timeline, so he has actually accomplished being a king in the 'real' world too. But he keeps coming back to be king, not to be some kind of weird curator/shepherd/scientist type. So he's a perpetual wannabe king.

     

    Sinister on the other hand, he's the real deal.

     

    Speaking of which, anybody check if Sinister is in this new movie in some form, maybe hinted at? They want to do Cable/X-force as a movie and they finally have a Scott and Jean pair again...

  18. I dig the more ornate look of the design they went with.

     

    For all his talk of helping the species through survival of the fittest etc, Apocalypse has only ever been a wannabe king and this suits him more than the astronaut suit looking version.

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