fantastic_four

Binge. I do the same with comics and stack issues up until a multi-issue arc is done. I rarely "binge" as in watching an entire series in a day or two, but I want the option of watching as many as I can on any particular setting. Remembering plot over the course of a week is too difficult, and for some shows it's virtually impossible. The extreme example of this for me is the show "24" with Kiefer Sutherland--every episode was a cliffhanger. The immediacy of those cliffhanger endings has worn off completely after a week, so I far prefer to watch several episodes of that show at a time and can't imagine doing it any other way. The main reason the other premium networks release week by week is that it keeps people paying their monthly fees longer when they're on the line about whether or not to keep subscribing. I'm surprised Netflix went to this model given the advantages to that in their favor and would like to hear a statement from them as to whey they went that way as opposed to weekly release.

I fell asleep during this episode three times--not due to the quality of the show but because I had a full weekend of babysitting with not enough sleep--so I was in a haze during the scene towards the end between Jeffrey Wright and the farmer's daughter. That scene seems like a highly pivotal moment I want to be clear on. So he lost his son and feels lingering regret because of it and sees her growing sentience as a sorta-replacement for his lost son?

Even Kirkman has consistently said that cutting off Rick's hand was a mistake given that he intended to not off him like most other characters and that we wouldn't be seeing that in the television series. The idea of him continuing to be an effective fighter without his dominant hand is fairly unrealistic.

AWESOME trailer. I had no idea Mads Mikkelsen was in it, very glad to see that. Great actor with a compelling screen presence.

Given that most of the actors on Walking Dead have never done anything significant prior to this show, not having another show lined up is no surprise for most of them.

He could still be an android, but if he is, he's specifically designed so that bullets from the other androids can't kill him. That's the only clue we have through the first episode that he's not an android. I still want to know how this thing with bullets killing androids is supposed to work. I'm guessing that there aren't actually bullets flying through the air and it's some sort of virtual hit that's calculated on the androids coupled with the ability of their bodies to suddenly develop a hole and start bleeding from anywhere. Or maybe they're real bullets and the guests have personal force fields? That explanation sounds much more far-fetched in terms of technology viability.

Ed Harris's character explicitly stated his motivation--he wants to get to the deeper, hidden content in Westworld. Whatever that means. Could be kind of a power-gamer customer, or more likely he could have some cooperative, competitive, or adversarial relationship to Anthony Hopkins's character. But you'd think the park has to be aware of his presence there for everything to be working, so I can't imagine how he'd be there in an adversarial role. Maybe he's working with Hopkins to push the androids into becoming whatever it is Hopkins and "management" want them to become? Not really sure yet, not enough information. How could you tell the androids have real brain material in their heads?

Didn't the original have a similarly-long tail?

I'm enthralled by the motivations of Anthony Hopkins character. He's experimenting with something in introducing unpredictability into the droid's programming, but what, exactly? Is he trying to make them sentient? Or is android sentience already a known possibility in their world? There was a hint about bringing people back from the dead. I think Hopkin's character is motivated to do that in some way regarding a loved one, etc. He also explained in full that civilization has caused human evolution to essentially stop, that the way we are now is as good as we'll ever be. I'm not sure he's right--particularly since we've already begun down the path of genetic engineering--but that comment coupled with the one you just pointed out suggests he's hoping to create some degree of human/android hybrid. However, his direct interest in the development of the older androids and his changes to their programming almost seems to contradict that idea. If you're going to use robotics to improve humanity, why put so much effort into developing autonomous, nearly sentient androids? You'd think his interest in preventing death or advancing human evolution would involve drones with human brains or human/robot cybernetics, not sentient androids.

Didn't DC do the Watchmen sequel series as a prequel? Presumably since Rorshach is so popular and died in the original series. I'd guess any HBO series would also be a prequel for that same reason.

I didn't say they stopped, however, I do believe Marvel, as a publisher, was more proactive to making social change in those decades than they currently are. I think they are a bit more reactive now, rather than being at the forefront. I think this whole issue is just a matter of historical context. It feels like back then Marvel was hitting the social issues harder mainly because comic books hadn't done that much before then (with the notable exception of those morality tales by EC in the 50s). So back then, when racism, drugs, protests etc. initially got "airtime", it was really noticeable.. It was also always isolated back then to minor characters, not major ones. Putting a supporting character in like Black Panther or having Harry Osborn get addicted to drugs and violate the Comics Code in the process isn't the same as risking the popular opinion and financial viability of your most important character as they did by replacing Peter Parker with the black/Hispanic Mike Morales in Ultimate Spider-Man. That was bold enough to draw international media coverage.

I'm enthralled by the motivations of Anthony Hopkins character. He's experimenting with something in introducing unpredictability into the droid's programming, but what, exactly? Is he trying to make them sentient? Or is android sentience already a known possibility in their world?

When did they stop taking on social issues? They've been pushing high-profile female, gay, and minority characters for most of the last two decades.

Good question. I'm pretty sure real; you see people walking up and down stairs, otherwise physically interacting with their surroundings. The layout in the control room is another matter; looks almost like they're looking at an aerial live feed at times. Which brings up a thought: this had to be built in a remote enough area that never or gets airplanes overhead. The possibility of airplanes makes sense, and if I gave it enough thought I could probably come up with a few dozen other reminders of the modern world being inadvertently inserted into that remote area. I haven't seen the 1970s film so I don't know if it was explained there or not, but they definitely didn't explain it in the first episode. I don't know if you'd need airplanes, I assume in the future satellite cameras would be sufficient, but I guess you could have high altitude drones. Huh? Neither of us said anything about "needing" airplanes, he meant that if an airplane passed overhead you'd be taken out of the Old West setting.

Good question. I'm pretty sure real; you see people walking up and down stairs, otherwise physically interacting with their surroundings. The layout in the control room is another matter; looks almost like they're looking at an aerial live feed at times. Which brings up a thought: this had to be built in a remote enough area that never or gets airplanes overhead. The possibility of airplanes makes sense, and if I gave it enough thought I could probably come up with a few dozen other reminders of the modern world being inadvertently inserted into that remote area. I haven't seen the 1970s film so I don't know if it was explained there or not, but they definitely didn't explain it in the first episode.

Why would a 1970s character be an ode to the 1960s?

Enjoyed it enough to keep watching. Still trying to figure out how the technology's supposed to work...are the sets real or are they holograms?

Couldn't agree more with this paragraph. The well spoken, overly articulated dictation that Colter acted with was just all wrong. I thought the same thing about the Cage portrayal in Jessica Jones, and as a result I wasn't looking forward to this show at all. I'll probably still watch a few.

God, 22 episodes is too many...I can see this show piling up on my DVR, particularly if Fish Mooney is in it too much. I'm really starting to prefer the 10 to 16 episode arcs of premium cable shows like Walking Dead or Game of Thrones.

What does this have to do with the Marvel Creative Committee? I'd have to know which "Marvel executives" the article is alluding to before having any opinion at all, but since the article includes Shane Black saying they reduced her role on the basis of toy sales, that tells me it was probably Perlmutter and/or marketing executives and not anyone on the creative committee. On a separate note, why would Rebecca Hall as the villain have affected toy sales? I ask this out of curiosity and know very little about the demographics of toy sales. I'm guessing the implication is that little boys want to play with male villain action figures but not female ones?

Nothing's wrong with younging it up, it's just that was Sony's explicit goal with rebooting in ASM1, so to see it happen again screams Sony's fingerprints on the film. It makes me wonder how much they're actually involved, and that's disconcerting given how much they're responsible for everything that didn't work in all of the previous films. Tom Holland looks much younger than 20. The odds of finding a compelling actor who's actually 14 or 15 were long, so hiring a 19 or 20 year old isn't a surprise. Seems like a fine cast. The original Spidey Flash Thompson is an extreme version of the bully nature of the character given that the actor is 6' 5" and extraordinarily muscular. You can be a bully at any size with the right demeanor, but it's tougher to see Revolori in the role at his size. I'm sure he'll pull it off, he seemed to be fairly intense from his performance in Grand Budapest Hotel.

I've got a hundred times the issue with those Shakespeare modern remolds. Historical drama is far too fascinating to require casting modern setting, language, and themes upon them. We're familiar with the modern world, but rendering the specifics of Shakespeare's England--or whichever venue a particular play from prior to his time is set in--holds far more interest. One or two of those when you're young and can't see the value in Shakespeare is nice, but after I saw the second or third I was done. I got tricked into a performance of Julius Caesar projected into a World War 2 context a few years ago and was furious that the description never mentioned it.

Kevin Feige has to eventually have a big critical bomb of the same order that seemingly every DC movie is these days. If I were betting on which one it will be among the films on slate that we've got much info about, I'd bet this one. That's even assuming Marvel has the type of creative control over this film that we would assume they have over their own films. I haven't heard that they don't, but who knows, maybe there are Sony guys in the production meetings that are playing a major part in the process. Certainly this whole "screw the history, just young this thing up" smells like Sony to me. They tried to do a mini version of this in ASM and ASM2. And we haven't seen major character changes to the other Marvel properties of the order we're seeing here in Spidey.

If this weren't Marvel producing this, I'd assume that the huge change in characters coupled with the ultra-lame Vulture being the villain was headed for an even bigger trainwreck than the past two Spideys were, ending up as something between ASM2 and the way Fantastic Four turned out. Even with Marvel at the helm, I'm still skeptical. I can see changing a character or two, particularly peripheral ones, but Flash Thompson as the little Guatemalan lobby boy from Grand Budapest Hotel (pic below)? Aunt May as a comparatively youngish legendary hottie actress? Mary Jane as biracial and 2-3 inches taller than Peter? Sheesh. I'm not going to be surprised now if Uncle Ben is played by Kevin Hart in flashbacks.

Yes. This film will give fans the back story of how it all happened. I've been guessing that the chick from Rogue One is one of the Bothans than Mon Mothma was referring to at the end of Episode IV. Or maybe she's not a Bothan at all, whatever race the Bothans are that she was referring to.