Mars477

I think the best word for this show is uneven. Cold, Heatwave, and Sara are pretty awesome together. Jax and the Hawks are the worst of the bunch. Actually, Hawkbro needs to go stat, but at the very least the Hawks need to be separated. And pilots being pilots, some of the exposition dialogue was absolutely cringeworthy. I don't have any problem with Dr. Stein drugging Jax. Dude's an amoral jackass and that is A-okay. I'm glad they didn't show Laurel defeat Sara in their sparring match. That's something I was a little worried about seeing the trailers. And damn, that bar fight was pretty awesome.

Wait, what?

Kylo Ren is not Darth Vader. KYLO REN IS NOT DARTH VADER. This is the entire foundation of his character. How do you miss that?The guy is basically a trumped up Padawan, and even Snoke says that Kylo's training is not complete. His status comes from being a one eyed man in the land of the blind. He is not the implacable faceless badass that Vader is (because, among other things, Abrams and company realize that audiences don't root against implacable faceless badasses anymore).

A few hours after Luke learned about the Force, he hopped into a fighter aircraft that he'd never been in before, flew it into combat (which he'd never been in before), dodged ground fire and attacks from enemy fighters (I somehow doubt that the womp rats had Triple A or an air force), managed to not get killed with the deadliest fighter ace in the galaxy firmly locked on his 6, and made an impossible shot that highly experienced combat pilots missed. Meanwhile, Kylo Ren had been shot by the in-universe equivalent of a .50 BMG round, and unlike a certain whiny farmboy, Rey actually had some melee fighting experience. The TLDR for Watcher0363's post seems to basically be "The main character is a girl now, it must be YA!"

I just found that out. That really fucking annoys me, because I liked Shara. I think I would have much preferred finding out that she taught fighter cadets at the Republic Naval Acadmy at Kuat or something.

You see, Emperor Palpatine and Jabba the Hutt are not attractive pale skinned white boys. That's the difference. Rey speaks Wookie not out of some genetic predisposition for languages but because she's interacted with Wookies on Jakku. (Alternatively, it's because somebody needs to be able to communicate with Chewie, and Finn obviously can't be it.)

We don't need another male Skywalker hero. Never mind some asshole who killed his own father and wonders why he can't be evil enough.ESPECIALLY at the expense of an interesting heroine.

Stealinghome, the geopolitics are basically "New Republic is too war weary to continue fighting the war against imperial remnants, so instead they reluctantly support a homegrown insurgency to do their fighting for them." So, the NR is the US/Europe/Sunni "coalition", the Resistance fighters are analogous to the Kurds, and the First Order is ISIS. Switching topics here, but every time someone says that "Rey friendzoned Finn" I want to punch something.

It's insane. I've seen people cite Jaimie Lannister for how Kylo can totally become a really good guy.

Jesus, Kylo/Rey fan girls are insane.

I've actually seen people say that Finn is the movie's Jar Jar Binks. Which, considering that Jar Jar is basically a Minstrel show character, certainly is something.

And in today's edition of "Completely Missing the Goddamn Point"...

Not a perfect movie, but still damn good. Abrams and co. Actually over corrected from the prequels by not showing nearly enough of the geopolitics. That said, the new cast are strong. Rey, particularly, is all kinds of awesome. I hate that we have to wait until 2017 to see more of her. Also one thing that I thought was a standout was the lightsaber combat. Gone is the anemic Flynning of the Original trilogy, where combatants are more interested in hitting the other's blade in a circle pattern, or the flippy bullshit of the Prequel trilogy. No, the lightsaber combat here is brutal, violent, and visceral. Combatants in TFA actually act like they are trying to kill each other with goddamn swords.

Johanssen is described as "that hot chick who went to Mars", not "devastatingly beautiful".

Watching the real Renzendes in interviews and what not, he doesn't have anything resembling the mannerisms Ruffalo had.

Do you mean Montrose? Johannsen is a hot geek girl, and Kate Mara fits that to a tee. She's the "hot girl" of the crew in the book because Commander Lewis is supposed to be 10 years or so older and not look like Jessica Chastain. Annie Montrose is the stunningly gorgeous media personality (who is also an incredibly foul mouthed snarker) which didn't really come out in the movie.

If nothing else, that opening shot of the police vehicles in formation in the foggy night was beautiful. Now kill Theo.

She has a sword!

Was he married? I know the other guy (Matt Carroll) was married. For some reason Carroll wasn't the guy who got the blow up scene, despite being the one with kids who lives a few blocks from a bunch of pedophile priests. He may have gotten absolutely no characterization or even a clear name, but I liked how Sacha's husband took one look at Renzendes at the door and he's like "Tough day at work, huh?"

People always seem to forget the second half of the proverb of the bad apples: that failing to remove the bad apples spreads the rot throughout all of the good ones.

"Hard chargers"?

For a two hour movie that consists of solely of people sitting, talking, and running from place to place to talk some more, this movie was pretty damn propulsive. I had to laugh at the computer monitors. It was indeed 2001. It felt especially noticeable that pretty much nobody was Hollywood attractive in this movie, except for Rachel McAdams. And even then, she's not that far off from the real (10+ years older now) Sacha Pfeiffer. I thought Michael Ruffalo was overacting a bit with regards to his character's tics, although much of the rest of the cast was great. Watching the abuse victims as they broke down reliving their abuse was heartbreaking. Stanley Tucci was the clear MVP, though.

Skyfall was an absolute dumpster fire of a movie, but somehow Sam Mendes managed to top his failure with Spectre. Daddy issues. Fucking Daddy issues. The villain spends millions of dollars and hundreds of henchmen to develop insanely intricate plots within plots and bring the global intelligence community to its knees because of fucking daddy issues. Also, the Surveillance is Bad Because Evil People can Covertly Usurp It angle was stupid in Winter Soldier, and that was still a vastly superior movie. The crazy thing is: we've already had this movie. This year, even! It's called Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and it is so much better.

After the opening to the latest episode I want to see Atwater hanging out more with Lindsay.

I despise Burzek. Ruzek is such an awful character.