fantastic_four

The operators are tracking them constantly, so the only time they would clean up is when no visitors are anywhere nearby or have left the park entirely.

If there were too many visitors it would break the fiction. They'd probably recognize each other from modern language, and they'd certainly recognize each other if they tried to do to each other what the guests do to the hosts. Having said that, they've shown them a few times. When that girl with the snake tattoo and her male cohort first showed up, a guest shot them earlier than the narrator wanted them to be shot.

We also saw the old Dolores in the same clothes she wore in the William/Logan timeline walk past a young Anthony Hopkins in the hallway and then go talk to Arnold, so we now know for sure that happened in the far past.

How do we know that? We have no motive for her killing him.

Yes, he approved the request. Nevermind...that just means Luke Hemsworth is in the Man in Black's time. Doesn't mean he's in William's time if they are indeed different times.

Break the trend and watch it a different day. This is what I do...I just watched the episode on my phone during lunch today.

When the man in black blew that cell door lock with a cigar, they switched away to the control building and showed employees approving the request to set off the explosive. Wasn't Luke Hemsworth in that scene? If so they're all in the same timeline, but I can't remember for sure that Hemsworth was in it.

I heard the first season cost $100 million. Why would that be? Is it all actor salaries for Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, and James Marsden? The show doesn't have much in the way of special effects to spend on, and even the sets don't seem like they should be expensive...how much can glass walls or shooting on location in Arizona or New Mexico cost? I normally wouldn't care, but one of my favorite historical drama series ever was "Rome" on HBO, and that only lasted two seasons entirely because the production costs went insane on it. The first season of that cost over $100 million and at the time in 2005 was the most expensive television show ever, and the reason for the cost was that HBO built a replica of ancient Rome on location somewhere in Italy. Maintenance on the replica city ended up costing an insane amount during the course of the production.

The last quarter of the film feels very rushed compared to the slowly-paced first three-quarters. Felt very summed-up, and it was fairly complex, so it wasn't surprising to me that everyone was silent at the end when I saw it too. I'm guessing 80% of the audience was thinking "it's ending NOW? WTF?" without understanding what happened--I was certainly in that camp. I didn't get a lot of the rapid, not-explicitly-explained events (how Renner was her kid's father and why did he leave her, how did she get General Shang's phone number or know what his wife told him, how did she jump from "we sort of understand their language" to "I now understand everything they say," why did they leave, what's happening in 3000 years, etc) at the end until about an hour or two later. My major problem is that the simple statement that they needed our help in 3000 years was nowhere near enough detail to serve as a payoff for the question they spent the entire film trying to answer. I needed a BIT more than that for it to feel like a satisfyingly good explanation for why these guys were here. But I liked it a LOT. I was mesmerized by the Terrence Malick-style cinematography. I found that to be an improvement on Malick himself who I find to be far too abstract to be enjoyable for an entire film. You can barely call what Malick does to be plot at all, and that's extremely difficult to follow, but the time-hopping sequences in Arrival were fantastic and didn't bulldoze the plot.

FYI it isn't anything to do with time-hopping or traveling, it's just access to memories. Just as when you are trying to figure out a problem you might suddenly remember a moment from your past that can help you. But yes, not everyone learns it fully enough (or tries to) to get to that level of perception. "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards" - The Queen of Hearts Except that her "memory" was working forwards, too, so it wasn't memory and therefore had everything to do with time-hopping.

So they can reboot it again? Maybe, maybe not. Either way Marvel has proven they can take a long view on the stories that doesn't involve reboots once they've got the characters in a good place.

They already rebooted it once with "First Class." Once was bad enough even though that film was the best of all of them, but twice means they're bankrupt on ideas. Time to hand the reigns to Marvel.

It was all part of breaking Rick...driving the rebellious streak from him. Negan wanted to demonstrate that even without his army around him, he was a formidable opponent...like when he instructed Rick to grab the hatchet and attack him. He further demonstrated this when he casually dispatched a few Walkers upon opening the door and again when he cleared the group that Rick was about to fall into. It was a demonstration to Rick that instill that everything Rick had now belongs to Negan. It was a spirit-breaking demonstration of power. But Negan's power in that instance was that he had a gun and Rick didn't. Rick has guns too, just not at that moment because Negan's men disarmed him. What long-term effect would that really have? To illustrate to Rick that in the hatchet vs. gun battle, gun wins? He already knew that. Seemed mostly pointless to me as well. Killing Abraham and Glenn clearly would have a lasting effect, and the vivid threat to force Rick to cut his son's arm off would have an even longer-lasting effect. But I don't really get the hatchet sequence's effect.

A passionate Star Trek fan leaving a new Star Trek show screams of a toxic environment of some sort.

My surprise is that it took this long. They significantly toned down what the Governor and Michonne did to each other from the comic which contained explicitly-shown brutal rape on his end and extreme torture on hers, so much so that I don't feel that I can even post panels from the relevant early issues from the series without getting reported. Had this show been picked up by HBO--which obviously they now know was a mistake to pass on--the viewers who have a problem with Glenn would have given up after season 3, possibly during season 1.

That's the exact response Kirkman has been going for since the first issue. He and Martin on "Game of Thrones" prefer the build 'em up, knock 'em down style of character progression and death in direct opposition to the historical preference that television producers have for not killing off characters for fear of losing their audience. I'm neutral on the violence end since I've seen so much of the same stuff in plenty of other mainstream works, but I prefer their approach to offing main characters. Kirkman says he'd like to off Rick in the same way but he doesn't think it's interesting to do so. He prefers to make the show about Rick's progression and can't do that if he kills him off. He has also explicitly said this in several interviews (this is a mild and somewhat obvious spoiler from Kirkman about the future of the comic and show, but perhaps some would prefer not to read it): But he has also explicitly lied about who he's planning to kill off to throw fans a curveball, so don't take it as gospel since he may be shining us on. If you weren't aware of his intent after a dozen primary characters have died in variably horrible ways, you've now been warned. Don't be surprised to see Michonne get hung from a tree by her hands while walkers slowly chew her legs off or something similarly horrible. That's the type of thing Kirkman has been going for from the start.

Weirder still is that we've known for six months it was coming. Plus the moment everyone's complaining about was already the most infamous and widely known moment from the comics, so much so that Steven Yeun said this on Talking Dead after the show:

There are plenty of examples of it going both ways. The Roman empire mostly did what you're describing, whereas Genghis Khan frequently left conquered emperors in place while establishing the Mongolian Empire to avoid having to manage the territories he conquered. Rick in the television show went much further by wiping out Negan's entire compound full of guys while they slept; the comic Rick never did that. But Negan also went much farther in breaking him than the comic Rick by spending the entire episode doing it. In the comic killing Glenn was enough, but in that premiere he killed the two guys, illustrated his physical prowess while in the trailer alone with Rick while going through the whole "go fetch my axe" thing, and still felt the need to threaten to cut off Carl's arm. Seems clear that Rick isn't going to be thinking revenge for at least a few episodes. All of it is consistent with Negan as he has always been shown in the comic--supremely arrogant. I tend to agree that he's making a mistake in leaving Rick alive, but that's mostly because I know that Kirkman has always said Rick is the only character he won't kill in the story. So you know he'll likely find some way to get out of this. Negan's still the strongest villain character in the Walking Dead despite the Kirkman-required mistake of leaving Rick alive.

They played the clip of her getting clubbed from that longer sequence in the premiere episode when Rick had flashes of seeing them all get clubbed by Negan one by one.

He's maintaining power the way all dictators throughout history have--fear of violence. He keeps the leaders of the communities he subjugates in place because a disorganized community is of no use to him. He was doing it to Hilltop as we learned last season--remember, the only reason Rick and his friends were there was to hunt down Negan so that the Hilltop didn't have to keep giving him tribute--and he's doing it to the community we'll see next week, too. He's not afraid of Rick because he has no reason to be. Rick's group is far smaller, less fierce, and less organized than his is. He thinks he's better off with Rick alive and staying in place as leader of Alexandria until Rick gives him reason to believe otherwise.

Do you mean Luke Hemsworth? For anyone who didn't realize it he's the older brother of Chris (i.e. Thor) and Liam Hemsworth pictured at right below.

It was their job to clean up the scalped android so they know about the map since they put it there to begin with. The idea that they're unaware of his full agenda is a possibility. I doubt it though, it appears he's got more access than the average guest as demonstrated by his non-verbal request to have that jail lock blown in the last episode and the camera showing the Westworld operators receiving that request and approving the blowing of the lock.

But the people running Westworld know he's in there and are assisting him with what he's doing. Why would they do that if your hypothesis were true? They wouldn't even let him enter.

The dialogue and visual imagery with that was word-for-word, event-for-event straight out of the comic minus an f-bomb.

Why would Ed Harris be a part of an android character's loop doing the same thing an android character is doing when he's supposedly a human?