After reading the article, I’m not surprised First Class was my favorite of the X-Men franchise; it really seems like Matthew Vaughn understands what was needed. Putting DoFP right after instead of letting the younger cast stand on their own for a while always felt like a mistake to me, and I missed the lighter tone from First Class as well.

I also found it interesting he was thinking of Tom Hardy for a young Wolverine, since I’ve seen that thrown around as a fan-casting for a while.

It’s a bit of a long read, but I thought it was interesting what a mess the Marvel production was.

Marvel Studios has always had a tough relationship with TV cough Inhumans cough. I think Agents of SHEILD being their only successful non-Netflix show before launching a plethora of shows on Disney+ (and even that one was a little rough around the edges).

Since launching Disney+, I have personally found the Marvel TV quality to consistently hit C+/B- quality, with occasional highlights (the first half of Wandavision, most of Loki); which surprised me since I felt the movies hit higher quality more consistently.

It makes sense the TV landscape has been hard with Marvel after reading this article, though. Committing to a whole season/ series with no pilot seems risky enough, but combine that with no show-runner and a fix-it-in-post attitude, and it’s a shock the shows came out as passable as they did.

It sounds like Disney is planning to change that, but I’m not sure how much I believe that to be honest. It’s also worth noting that I only think it’s happening because of the recent negotiation with the WGA.

a movie where Iron Man enters a mini-golf tournament with Genghis Khan and the 1927 New York Yankees

Don’t give them any ideas LOL.

Overall, I think you’re completely correct. So far consumer LLMs cannot come close to anything a human writer can create, but I’m concerned that Hollywood would gladly take the hit on quality to save on writers. I hope the strikes succeed in preventing AI from entering the writing and acting space, but hopefully they don’t need to make concessions to prevent it.

As an aside, if everyone could create their own movies with AI, I wonder if studios would simply become IP holding companies (more than they already are). Anyone could make Lethal Weapon 5, but only the studio with the likeness rights (and training data) of Rob McElhenney would be able to have it look like the original actors are present.

The amount the studios are losing from the strike could have paid for the WGA/ SAG requests easily, which makes the studios holding out feel even more ridiculous; but I think it’s not about the money for them.

I think they want to send the message that they hold the power, not the workers, to disincentivize/demoralize future strikers. On top of that, I think they are salivating at the thought of never paying a “creative” again; and AI writers rooms and owning the likeness rights of every extra they ever use would certainly make it easy for them.

The studios are dreaming of the day they can ask a computer to generate Iron Man 7, and it’ll spit out the script, generate CGI acting (including a rubbery PS3 looking RDJ), and it won’t ever need to touch human hands.

The studios want to frame the strike about money (and that is certainly a big issue), but this could very well be a strike for the future of Hollywood’s “soul”; which is why I think the studio heads are willing to take such a bath to keep it going

Overall, I thought it was a cute enough movie.

The CGI and costume looked rough to my eyes, but I gave it more slack afterwards when I found out this was originally slated to be an HBOmax release. The superhero aspects also felt a little played out and dragged a little, but nothing that was an active detriment to the movie

Where the movie really shines, though, is the family. They are the heart of the movie and have phenomenal chemistry. I’m glad they’re carrying over to the James Gunn universe, as it would have been a waste of elephantine proportion to lose this cast. As a quick aside, I wish we got a little more of the dad and a little less of a George Lopez, but their overall dynamic was still great.

My biggest issue with the movie, though: not enough Harvey Guillén! He’s great in What We Do in the Shadows and when I saw him on screen, I was anticipating him to steal the show in Blue Beetle. Unfortunately, he did not get nearly as much attention as I’d hoped; but I pray he’ll somehow return for the next one (though I doubt it).

I think it should be OK. The movie was rated PG, though it feels like it rides the line with PG-13 a little. I saw the movie almost a week ago so I don’t remember exactly what made me think that at the time, but I was a little surprised by some of the musical cues (though my understanding is some of them are in the trailers). When I said it was adult, I just meant that it didn’t talk down to the audience in a way that would annoy adults

I personally didn’t find any of it particularly objectionable, but I might not be the right person to ask. This website seems to think 11+, but this is the first time I’ve looked at the site so I’m not sure how accurate their rating system is.

I recently saw the new TMNT movie and I have to say I really liked it a lot. I didn’t grow up with the TMNT, so it’s hard for me to say how accurate it is to the originals, but I thought the animation was phenomenal and the story itself was very solid too.

I’ve seen a lot of people praising the animation, so I’m not going to include too much detail on why I liked it (to avoid retreading too much ground), but I really liked how grounded and relatable everyone’s motivations were. Wanting to fit in and be a part of a community is such a quintessential human experience; and lashing out from fear of rejection is extremely relatable as well.

The humor seems aimed pretty solidly at millennials (based on the references made throughout the movie), and I was surprised how adult this kids’ movie was.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this movie; and after Barbenheimer last week, it’s been a good week for movies for me

For the users who run custom ROMs: do you typically run them on your device fresh out of the box, or do you typically wait until OS updates are no longer supported and swap then?