ainon

Actually this episode it the ultimate confirmation beyond all the other already solid confirmations that she was making things up for who knows what motive. We have the director's word for it: Robert Rodriguez discusses directing one of the Star Wars show's best episodes yet And Pedro's way too giddy enthusiastic social media posts: *edit to fix tweet links

The rumor was weird to begin with but more importantly, there's a reliable source that completely debunks him not being around till the end of filming season 2: Pedro Pascal even talked frankly about his experience filming as the Mandalorian. Hint: nothing about not being able to show his face, everything about the physical challenges. This is from a podcast he did in May: The entire podcast is nearly an hour and a half long but it's fun and a lot of Pedro's humility comes through - he even tells a story about how when he was initially cast in Game of Thrones, he was too embarrassed to ask if the casting was actually confirmed and spent some time being confused as to whether he was really hired or not! While it's true success can change people, it does seem a stretch to go from that to being an attention-seeking tantrum-throwing diva. Podcast does contain spoilers for his various roles, especially Game of Thrones and Equalizer 2.

Your friend was Singaporean but might not have been a Chinese (the name doesn't sound Chinese). Malaysia and Singapore are multiracial countries, with the different races being very recognisably distinct in terms of appearance, culture, language and food. In fact that's what makes the food so amazing - there's endless variety and fusion possibilities. But when overseas amongst foreigners, Malaysians and Singaporeans would identify by their nationalities. The hotel seen in the movie was probably a stand-in. A lot of the location filming was done in Malaysia: https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2018/08/31/how-msia-became-a-big-part-of-crazy-rich-asians-from-location-to-acting-talent-and-crew-the-country/ Something I loved when watching the movie was the different accents that everybody had depending on where they might have lived or studied, and switching between languages was done just because. There was no attempt to force eveyone to speak with the same tone or 'standard' accent. And apart from Ken Jeung faking his broken English when first meeting Rachel, nobody was speaking the stereotypical Hollywood Chinese stilted English!

JJ Abrams left it very open-ended for the next person to take Luke on to any direction in the next story. A cynical person was certainly welcome to assume Luke was a coward hiding on island ignoring his very own twin sister's angsts and evading responsibilities because Reasons. A hopeful person might imagine Luke was planning something on a larger scale and he wasn't so much hiding as biding his time because Reasons. But characterisation-wise, the latter was presumably more logical than the former because at no point ever did we see a Luke who was a coward in the Original Trilogy. He never abandoned his friends (before he even knew one of them was related by blood). He never gave up on expecting the best out of others (even when that other person was a personal mortal enemy and mass murdering Sith Lord). He even came up with long-term plans that worked (to rescue Han on Tatooine) or didn't really (turned out giving himself up to Darth Vader didn't quite distract the Emporer from the rebels on Endor). The idea that people will change as they grow older is not surprising, if that's what Rian Johnson's view is about growing old. The problem is when the change in someone like Luke is that drastic and is not supported by anything at the core of his personality or even in the plot. To me it absolutely does not help that Logan came out a few months earlier and covered the same ground that I presume Johnson was going for because Logan showed how it could be done so easily. ****Mild spoilers for Logan: We see old Logan hiding away, living in isolation, a shambling shadow of the hero we once knew, but we then learn in quick succession that Logan's circumstance isn't merely him locking the world out and giving up - the isolation is out of necessity and is in fact a selfless act on his part that stems very much from what we've always known about his character. When it's time for Logan to step up and save the day again he's reluctant, but what we learned earlier allows us to understand he's not an uncaring jerk - there are actual challenges standing in the way to him becoming an effective aid to the ones begging for his help./end spoilers****** With Luke in Last Jedi ... he's waiting to die and not going to do anything at all to help even when his very own sister's representative is begging him to because of Reasons that clearly aren't about his health - he's as strong as an ox, looks like!; or any Force-related matters - he's turned off his access to the Force?!; nor any apparent personal conflicts - his own brother-in-law's death at the hands of his nephew wasn't going to snap him out of his daily routine. Then at movie's end Luke suddenly does step up as the full-on ultimate pedestal-deserving legacy-guaranteed Hero for Reasons (because Artoo guilt tripped him?) and exhibits such enormous power it's hard to ignore that he could've chosen to unleash even a smidgeon of that power at any point much, much sooner to save lives. Anyway based on the publicity info now out about the making-of Last Jedi, my 'what could have been' on things is that when Mark Hamill expressed concern about Luke's new Last Jedi characterisation, Johnson should have paused, considered the input, then taken it upon himself to rise up to the challenge to write a stronger story. At the very least consider that maybe, just maybe it wasn't just Hamill being selfish and possessive about Luke Skywalker, but actual input from an actor who's played so many villains of every shade of grey and darkness and dubiousness over the past couple of decades that surely that guy would also know what a hero is expected to look like?

Probably because many of them might be right? These are established characters who already had established character traits. Of course being fictional, those traits can certainly be changed to suit the whim of the storyteller, but this being fiction, there had better be sound reasoning for the character "doing this or that" that no one could've seen coming. I'd compare it to the Superman of 'Man of Steel'. I don't read comics nor do I actually care one way or the other but Superman is a character whose existence and basic characteristics I've always been aware of. So when a certain incident happened at the end of 'Man of Steel', even I as a casual viewer could say, "Ehhh, Superman wouldn't do that?" I didn't feel compelled to comment about it online, but I sure feel for those fans who are still furious about that particular incident. Now, I watched The Last Jedi on opening night and found it entertaining but shallow and riddled with plot issues. I was astounded to discover afterwards that critics were praising it. I watched The Last Jedi a second time. Gorgeous movie, but the second viewing confirmed for me that it was a wasted opportunity. The Last Jedi could have claimed originality if it hadn't started with a title crawl that basically made me think I was in for a retread of 'Empire Strikes Back' and if it actually showed a Jedi Master who didn't fail his student for a change. I still could've rolled with all that though if The Last Jedi weren't so blatantly callous about loss of life and so careless about how the story might be able to move forward. The obvious: so many Resistance lives uselessly lost due to the Admiral Holdo and Canto Bight storyline. The really frustrating: Jedi Master Luke, who by the end of the movie is revealed to possibly be even more powerful in the Force than anyone ever imagined (or maybe not, because he did die, after all), decided to turn the Force off and ignore the millions, possibly billions who died. He clearly didn't live by the "With great power comes great responsibility" credo. Putting aside the idea of how unoriginal yet another hermit Jedi Master is, just what kind of a 'good' character is The Last Jedi trying to portray here? Someone who could do something but for countless years decided to not only do nothing, but to do nothing while at an island where the entirety of Jedi knowledge is? There's no character depth there; just failure to develop a truly interesting storyline that could've taken advantage of the ingredients provided by Force Awakens. Because if I wanted to see a well developed character study of a once great hero now brought low in his old age and the devastation wrought upon others by another character close to him, and who has come so close to giving up and accepting death that he turns his back on the girl who shows up at his door to seek his help only to eventually have events happen leading to his change of heart and stepping up again to be the hero he is ... I'll go rewatch 'Logan'. By the way, Last Jedi must be the only work of fiction I've seen where 'good' characters treat the destruction of books and knowledge with glee. Sure, by the end of the movie we get a blink-and-you-miss-it reveal that Yoda was having fun with a pun, but the message is absolutely bewildering: students don't need teachers because eventually students outgrow their teachers so let's blow this joint, literally? Besides, who needs history, right? Which is just one of what I thought was the movie's extreme careless attitude to staying within an existing fictional universe. In addition to the issues raised by previous posters in this thread, I would also ask what exactly are the rules and limitations within this universe now? Just how absurdly powerful can someone be in the Force? Also, no more teachers around to train anyone who might need the training because ... Luke wanted to be the last Jedi but then realised he won't be so good luck to the newbies out there? And is hyperspace leaping into combatant ships going to be the thing to do, and if no, what possible excuse would there be not to do it? But okay, I can say one nice thing about Canto Bight - look, it gave Mark Hamill a second character to play! He sure had fun!

I think the distinction to me is that none, other than the twins, started off with the intent of causing harm to others. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner are the archetypical inventor/scientist whose creations turn on them - Tony nearly killed by the very weapon he designed, Bruce by apparently having a very poor sense of occupational laboratory safety - but their original intent were positive. Even Tony the weapons designer, since we come to understand he was naively living under the illusion that his weapons would only ever be in the hands of 'good people' and we even see him resist his captors' demands to build weapons for them despite being tortured. Natasha had a very dark past, but she was raised to be an assassin, then chose to switch sides and do the right thing. Wanda and Pietro however started off with revenge on their minds and actively took steps to transform themselves to achieve their revenge. And yet when Wanda had her opportunity to kill Tony Stark at the start of 'Age of Ultron', she chose instead to toy with him for maximum destruction and damage. She basically played a version of Zemo's Civil War game herself, but somehow landed in the company of people who were gracious enough to forgive her for what she'd done and bring her in to their team. So while I agree she's working on her redemption now with the Avengers, I don't see her doing a sincere job of it. I thought she was cocky about her capabilities at the start of Civil War, and later, after the dust had settled, she had the nerve to be sad about people being afraid of her ... well of course! She'd just proven to the world that she doesn't yet have full control of her very frightening powers! That she was merely under house arrest in a friendly compound with Vision for company, instead of in a full-security jail somewhere, was something she should have been humble and grateful for while perhaps thinking of how to improve her control over her powers. Instead she destroyed some more property while sulking that she got grounded. Maybe some day Wanda will honestly understand what redemption is about, but I didn't see it happening yet in Civil War.

Just a lurker usually, but this discussions in this show reminded me of discussions that have come up in this thread: Why we need to take colourism seriously

I don't know what the comics Civil War was, but the movie Civil War had the world pretty much decide they'd had enough of the Avengers and massive damage and civilian casualties and world governments came up with the Accords to regulate superpowered, superhero people. The whole airport showdown happened because the world thought Captain America had gone rogue to aid and abet the Winter Soldier who had bombed and killed a whole lot of people, including the Wakandan King. It wasn't till later in the movie that Tony Stark finally had evidence to suggest that there'd been a frame job. And the final personal showdown between Captain America and Iron Man happened because Tony just found out that the Winter Soldier had killed his mom. There wasn't anything in the Civil War movie or even in Homecoming to suggest Tony Stark himself had any aversion to anyone using their super powers or in controlling any random hero. I just figure Tony saw the potential in Peter, built him a suit to enhance that Spider-Man potential, knew the kid was going to be swinging around helping people anyway but failed to predict how much trouble Peter could get himself into. Tony wouldn't be the first adult to misjudge that about kids and if things had gone wrong Tony would've had to live with the guilt. He even says as much. That's about as far from nonchalant as one can get, to me.

The actual quote from the Coach is, "I’m pretty sure this guy’s a war criminal now, but whatever, I have to show you these videos. It’s required by the state." Which came right after his "Thank you Captain" from the opposite side of where Captain America was gesturing to. Between this scene, and the other teacher's, "Couldn't bear to lose a student on a school trip." Very serious pause, then: "Not again," the teachers offered some of the best laughs in this movie. Thanks for posting the comics pages, VCRTracking. That moment was amazing in the movie, and as a non comics reader, it also gave me a great sense of just how strong Spider-Man is. And because I didn't know how strong he could be, I did think that that was where someone else would need to come in to save Peter and then it would be some kind of team up to fight the villains at the end of the movie. So glad that was not how the movie went! As for giving any of the adults the side eye for what Peter was getting himself into, especially Tony and Happy - I don't think so. I haven't read the article, but the movie very clearly hews to the old formula of kids' adventure stories so the adults are always going to look, well ... not that great. There's May, the loving but quite oblivious parental figure (movie does change that up by having her find out at the end!); Tony, the supportive yet eccentric benefactor who even gets his happy engagement ending scene; and Happy, the grumpy but loyal guy who nonetheless has better things to do than tend to every whim from that kid, who then gets the ending where he realises how wrong he was about the kid. Besides, the movie itself shows us that Spider-Man wasn't actually left alone: there was a redundant amount of tech in that Spider-Man suit that could trigger an Iron Man to show up to save Peter from drowning within moments of the emergency with Tony himself handling that from the opposite side of the world. And Happy may have been grumpy but it turned out he relayed every single thing Peter had told him to Tony. And Tony's interactions with Peter are consistent with the way he interacted with the kid in Iron Man 3, who was even younger. Tony doesn't coddle, but he will go for overkill with handing the kid every piece of technology available. Tony and Happy did underestimate Peter's determination to be a hero, though, despite his age. I think their expectation of him was to study and do well in school, and be Spider-Man as some kind of hobby. Even Tony's farewell line to Peter from India was to keep studying and start thinking about college and getting into MIT. I do agree with what a previous poster said about how Tony should have told Peter about having contacted the FBI, even though I can't actually think of any adult automatically telling a kid such information anyway. But if Peter had known about the FBI, perhaps he wouldn't have tried to pursue Toomes on his own, and the FBI operation would have at least proceeded without major disaster. Still, maybe that was something Tony was planning to tell Peter, considering his surprise phone call to Peter was at about the same time the FBI takedown was going to happen. Tony figured out where Peter was pretty quickly. Even by magic movie time standards, Tony got out there to that ferry really fast.

The show has done dramatic moments before, I thought. Like Jake growing to understand and accept who his parents were last season, complete with Jake's whispered threat in his dad's ear to never break his mom's heart ever again. That line was definitely played for drama, not laughs.

I saw it on regular 2D on opening night, and then again today with another group of friends on IMAX 3D. The latter was gorgeous and took advantage of the format to fill the entire screen. Yondu's flying arrow sequences (and Yondu's victims being felled) definitely worked way better on the IMAX screen. Then there was Ego's planet, with the vast, colorful landscapes and his grand exteriors, and whatever pollen or dust it was floating in the air, and Ego's massive, colorful main chamber, and Ego's dioramas - all great details worth seeing. My favorite was the movie's opening fight sequence. On 2D I think the focus was on the foreground and Baby Groot. Watching on the IMAX screen I realized the blurry background events were actually still visible enough to follow fairly well, which greatly added to the hilarity of the whole sequence.

Steve did nothing, that we saw, to move the investigations along on the ground. Tony obtained the information about the fake psychiatrist via Friday, who presumably culled it from police feeds after the police crashed into the hotel room where the real psychiatrist's body was found. All of which happened after Zemo himself called the hotel from Siberia so that the hotel staff could discover the body. It was Tony who then provided the information to Ross, and I'm actually not too surprised that Ross thought it was BS. From where Ross stood, it probably looked like Tony was jerking him along and letting Steve get loose every time. And it was at the Raft that Sam told Tony to go alone, as a friend, to ... well, I'm not sure what Sam thought Tony could do against five Winter Soldiers. Six, if Bucky were to accidentally get triggered again. As far as Tony knew, there was something afoot, a Sokovian was involved, and Bucky had been framed. I guess it's a fair guessing game whether or not Tony was even thinking of the Accords at that point. I have to admit Wanda annoys me so I'll readily declare that house arrest was a super grand deal for Wanda after what she'd done. Yes, she made a mistake. But it's very true that people are afraid of her and it's also quite apparent to me she overuses her powers: what she did to Vision was surely excessive, and during the airport skirmish, as I recall it, she was the first one to take direct debilitating hits on people. She whammied Natasha because Clint wasn't hitting her hard enough?! And she crashed cars onto Iron Man. Which made for a funny moment, sure, but why exactly was she escalating the fights? So for Steve to take affront on her being held in a 'nice prison' in the USA instead of being deported? She can't even take to being 'grounded'? Nope, I have zero respect for Steve for that. Wanda isn't above the law and shouldn't be any more special than any ordinary person who makes lethal mistakes in the line of duty.

On the bolded part - even if it is a tax write off, Tony Stark would still need to ensure that his company is making a profit, and an incredibly massive one at that, and that his employees and stakeholders are cared for first and foremost. We're probably supposed to assume that after the downfall of SHIELD, Stark Industries is the one paying out billions for damages and lifelong support to all who were maimed. Tony also seems to be the one updating and improving everyone's tech, and presumably will continue to do so as long as he can, using his own money. What's unclear is what would happen if Tony were to die, or to become incapacitated. Would his estate be obliged to continue supporting all the Avengers? The way Steve Rogers was behaving, I highly doubt he would have worked together with the UN to resolve anything. He didn't believe in oversight, and apparently wasn't even willing to sit and talk about governance with his team members. Anyway, why should the UN come begging to Captain America? The UN is representing the nations of the world, the majority of whom neither know nor care who the Avengers are, and to whom a name like 'Captain America' is clearly antagonistic. The UN would just like the Avengers to let them know if they're planning to encroach into nations' capital cities to destroy buildings; Steve meanwhile is representing ... an ideal? Which was dubious to begin with because as we saw, his ideal became tied so closely to loyalty to one friend: Bucky, that it blinded him to practically anything else. In the context of the movie, the way I saw the "He's my friend" "So was I" exchange was a reminder of how far Steve had strayed from being a friend. Tony shouldn't have to demand to be the closest and bestest of friends to assume that he would be told that there's a possibility that his parents had been murdered. I also see that secret that Steve chose to keep from Tony and most of the Avengers as the moment that led them all down the path to that final showdown in Siberia, and the moment when Steve began to betray his own principles and started problems snowballing. By burying the possible truth about Starks' deaths, Steve denied justice to not just Tony Stark but to Howard Stark and Maria Stark. Steve must have heard about how Howard Stark spent time searching for him. He certainly knows that Howard never stopped talking about him. There can't have been any doubt in Steve's mind on how much Howard cared for him. Seems like a betrayal to Howard there. But it's definitely a betrayal to Tony. If Tony had known about the murders earlier, Tony, Bruce Banner and JARVIS could have actually researched into Hydra and the Winter Soldier program - it would have then been the Avengers who would have tracked down the Russian handler in Cleveland and it's not far-fetched to imagine the Avengers as a team would've then been able to handle the five hidden Winter Soldiers in Siberia. Natasha seems to know something too; she had some expectation that Bucky might recognize her. Would she have volunteered information if the Avengers were all on the hunt? We already know that Tony is currently researching the way memories work - it's safe to assume with a little bit of tweaking, Tony might have also come up with a way to overcome mind control triggers, or at the very least, helped Bucky cope with his trauma. As it was, Steve kept his silence, and ironically denied Bucky the help he could have gotten sooner. And while Steve never told Tony, he was still out searching for Bucky for two years? Using Stark Tech, presumably? On Stark's expenses? That's pretty low, morally. And not smart. Steve never found Bucky and yet never asked for help. Then in this movie, after everything went pear-shaped and he realized the UN psychiatrist wasn't a real psychiatrist at all, Steve still kept quiet in the interest of keeping Bucky hidden from the world. It apparently never occurred to Steve to report that Zemo had infiltrated the UN, or to start investigations into how to capture Zemo before he reached Siberia. We know this because we saw Zemo safely taking a regular flight out of the country to go to Moscow, and once in Russia, Zemo was again travelling freely. And yet Zemo could have been stopped at any time, by any local authority - if they'd known to look for him! But really, Captain America was a standard movie hero, acting in noble movie hero ways, right down to the "my way is the only right way", and the admirable unshakeable loyalty to a friend, and forsaking cooperation with others because ultimately movie heroes succeed in their own terms. What I really loved here though, was that in my mind, the Russo brothers had also subverted those tropes by giving us what on the surface is a hero, all while showing how his actions are actually detrimental to others and even harming his own cause. It's not often that a summer movie really forces you think about what happens when a hero makes wrong choices, or about how the people on the ground feel about a James Bond or a Mission Impossible team or the Avengers swooping in, ostensibly to 'save the world' but in the process destroying property and racking up a collateral damage count. And sure, in the long run Captain America will be proven right and true in some spectacular fashion, because, well, he's Captain America. But for a while, at least, the common people here get to feel like they've done something to have some regulation in place with the Accords. For once, actual power to the people!

For many nations around the world, the UN is the one organization they can depend on for arbitration, healthcare, emergency response, education support, and plenty more. Who else were nations going to turn to when it became clear that the Avengers were not respecting their sovereignty? Actually, one could argue if the Avengers had never been there, Crossbones would never have had any cause to detonate that suicide-murder-Captain-America vest, so no threat there. And actually, the Avengers had failed to prevent the biological sample from being stolen in the first place because whatever info they had placed them at the wrong target initially. Did they even have a local handler or contact who might have advised them that the local CIC was just over that way and was thus a very likely target? For that matter, was there any indication at all that the Avengers liaised with the local authorities? Did the Avengers even warn the local authorities that a dangerous criminal was in town, so the authorities might've had a chance to warn the citizenry and heighten security? Why do we assume, after all, that the local authorities couldn't have handled things if provided with sufficient information? Crossbones and his team were elite but weren't super powered - heck, the Avengers seemed confident the four of them were enough to face any eventuality. Sure, countless movies have trained us to accept that only Americans (and/or the occasional Englishman) can swoop in and save the day, and if locals feature at all, they're going to be incompetent or corrupt or both, but has it become so ingrained in us as viewers that we can't even imagine that no one else can handle their own safety and defence? Anyway, I am not American, and I absolutely agree with the very American Air Force Colonel James Rhodes. Steve Rogers was dangerously arrogant. As well as selfishly and foolishly arrogant. So many times in this movie alone where Steve could have made a different decision and either avoided escalating violence or unknowingly thwart Zemo's plan altogether, but Steve had already decided that he was the one who was right and it's other people who had to move. I could sympathise with how circumstances might have made Steve paranoid, but so long as he doesn't realise his own narrow mindedness, he'll remain frustratingly and dangerously arrogant to me.