Kal-El814

I misread this as Deathlok and was very confused.

Yeah agreed. If I was going to pick any nits it would be that it felt a little strange for Grogu to... do nothing while Din was strung up? I think they barely showed him reacting to it. I assume they're saving some chicanery for the finale, given that they've showed off his paintball skills, reminded us that he has armor, and he's riding a robot. And that they didn't wanna steal thunder from Paz.

I don't get why you'd scrap the HBO part of HBO Max when HBO is associated with some of the best prestige TV ever, including some very recent content, and Cinemax / Max is associated with either nothing or softcore porn if you're of a certain age. Just wild shit.

Yeah, I really think they were firing on all cylinders this week.

This show fucking rules.

Rulebook has been posted.

I saw someone online refer to Bud Light as the Dalai Lama of beers and had no idea what it meant until I saw this thread, yikes.

Yeah it’s not the earth the meek will inherit, it’s the dirt.

Yeah. I mean I get it... some of the timing aligns with pop culture deciding that the best way to show how fucking hard your work went was to put your characters through a meat grinder. But it's Star Wars, there's a ton of real estate between that and everything being saccharine.

This is what gets me about a lot of the contemporary complaints about Star Wars. Motherfuckers love to bitch about Rey that had no fucking problem with Jacen Solo making the air glow when he was five years old. It's all Super Saiyan eugenic bullshit of the highest degree and it fucking sucks.

Yeah I like HBP too, it's quite good. I think it does a good job of giving insight into how Voldy is evil without trying to "why" it away or equivocating about it. It sets up how Harry has the insight to hunt the Hallows in the final book. I don't mind the movie being PG-13 horny, I DO mind the fact that Harry learns very little about Voldemort which means the next 2 movies are about him lucking his way to the Hallows. I think the whole Elder Wand finale in the books really robs us of the whole "the greatest magic is love" thing that was set up from jump in favor of a, "Draco disarmed Albus (even though Albus wanted that to happen) so he was the master of the Elder Wand, and even though Draco was ABSOLUTELY TAKING L's FROM VOLDEMORT THE ENTIRETY OF THE DEAHTLY HALLOWS BOOK, The Elder Wand DIDN'T care about any that, but it DID care that Harry got one over on Draco even though the Elder Wand was in another part of the country at the time, and NOTHING AT ALL in the previous 6 books suggested that wands worked like this EVEN A LITTLE BIT," trick. Regardless of this I think the books make it really clear that Harry just cannot hang with Voldemort at all, but the movie sort of lets him get his own licks in. I get WHY but I think all of that sort of misses the point. The Battle of Hogwarts was pretty cool, you're right about that.

I've thought about this a bunch, and my thoughts on it are kinda squishy. I generally don't mind if some things take a a very long time, but if certain other things take too long it drives me absolutely insane. Some stuff in God of War Ragnarok is like this... not having instant fast travel is fine since the downtime in the boat or sled lets the characters gab and that's some of the more fun stuff to experience in the game. But spending a bunch of time on foot to get to a gizmo to change the day / night cycle to move a puzzle incrementally forward? Or having a plant shoot spitballs at me that will never kill me but will slow me down? Relentlessly annoying even if spent less than 5 minutes being slowed down by that shit over a 24 hour game. I Red Dead 2 was like this as well. I held onto an enormous amount of treasure before I brought it back to the camp; I wanted everyone to love me and think I was cool for showing up with the equivalent of a jewelry store while other people are donating half smoked cigars. I spent hours and hours and hours of IRL time before making the deposit. I do it, and Dutch walks by and wants to talk... then he chews me out for not donating cash, telling me how much everyone looks up to me and I was letting them down. I stopped playing for a couple days after that, I hated it so fucking much. Long winded way of saying it really comes down to execution and vibes.

Oh yeah for sure. I would say that some of the movies aren't great adaptations of their respective books, but they work fine as supplemental material. One of the things that I appreciate about how the books are written is the extent to which you feel that the Wizarding World sort of deliberately doesn't make sense. Arthur loves muggles and isn't a moron, but seems to not understand basic subtraction when he has to handle muggle money. In print this comes off as sort of charming, fish out of water sort of thing, in the movies he often seems stupid. A lot of the earlier books are sillier and goofier than the movies leaned into, and the later books are more angsty than the movies became. That said, I think the last three movies are just... not good in general. I don't think Half Blood Prince works even a little bit at all as a movie, and the book is quite good. Anyway. I think they caught lightning in a bottle with the cast of the movies AND with how long they ended up being able to hang onto them. I dunno they can stick that landing twice? It would be interesting to see how they did it. I don't think there's enough meat in the first three books to justify anywhere close to a season each, but who knows.

Finally getting around to this, just finished episode 6. This is where I'm at right this second. Long, Long Time is easily the best episode for me so far. I can't tell if that's because it feels freshest, or in general that it's just great, or some combo of that with other stuff. Conversely I think MOST of what happened in Kansas City with everyone other than Henry & Sam was easily the least interesting that the show has been. I don't mind a "filler" episode, clearly, but we spend most of our time with Joel so we know the negative and compromising effects that the apocalypse can have on people. The shit with Bill & Frank hits different because it showed how the same events can bring people together. Kathleen and Perry? They're just not interesting and given the fact that they brought a small army to get eaten by infected in the world's most foolish attempt to get revenge on one fucking dude... they're also very stupid. I feel this too, especially some of the stuff around Boston since the geography around the State House simply does not exist like that IRL, but... as a local I get that they need to make the show make sense visually and Boston very much does not. The show is very well cast, Pedro and Bella are great in this. Most of the supporting cast has been awesome as well, Henry & Sam are highlights, as were Frank & Bill. I still don't know if the sweet spot of this franchise was to do a fairly straight adaptation of the game? My wife doesn't play video games and she's really liked this, but other than the stuff that's brand new for the show, for me it's felt like watching a rerun of something I've seen and enjoyed. It feels different than something like the Lord of the Rings movies, for example. Even in the scenes / lines that are more or less lifted right from the books, the shift from a written medium to a written one still felt novel. Naughty Dog's games are so cinematic that this show ends up feeling a lot more familiar. And for the most part this works really well. I thought the bloater came off kinda goofy though. Looking forward to finishing the show and letting my thoughts congeal.

It's worse.

Some of the Legends stuff got DEEPLY stupid.

I don't think I've painted Maul in Imperial Assault... or Legion... and soon to be this also

South Asians? In England? Wizards I can accept, along with hooknosed, shekel obsessed Je... I mean goblins. More than 3 brown people? No.

Yeah I got S, S+, and S on the Village, Castle, and Island on my first try, which apparently unlocks the Handcannon now.

My first, derp ass attempt at the Village level of Mercs netted me an S rank, lolwut

You don’t need to build to the history of anything in Star Wars, the cheesy gordita crunch has been on the menu at Taco Bell longer than the Empire existed. That said I am always in favor of the movies being better or, dare I say, good.

Yes.

Big if true.