I've seen many of his films, and other of those directors you mentioned, more than once for sure. I am a massive fan of most of those movies you ranted about, and naturally disagree 100% with your entire premise that this nostalgia is empty and hollow.

When did I say nostalgia is empty and hollow?

So I just discovered the sci-fi drama Humans, with Neil Maskell, Gemma Chan and William Hurt's least-stoned performance to date (he's always good, but he seems especially... cogent here). Damn good serial sci-fi tv, chauffed I stumbled over it. While it's popular and I'd heard about it a few times already, I just assumed it was "CW sci-fi", like a Maze Runner tv show or something. I couldn't have been more wrong. It feels like a longform PK Dick miniseries or what Caprica could've been if it had actually been good (don't worry, no religious bullshit in sight), or a massive (and frankly, superior) extension of that Black Mirror episode where the wife downloads her dead husband's consciousness into a robot.

Highly recommended. And Gemma Chan might just be the sexiest robot alive. Eat your synthetic heart out, Ms. Vikander.

re: Abrams/Bay/"missing the point"
Yes and no. The directors you've listed, Bay and Snyder especially, have their own distinct style and view that fill their work from page to screen. Abrams, too, but his style is clearly taken from Spielberg.

You know a Bay movie is going to be full of homo-eroticism and bickering characters, women will be objects and not people, and everything explodes. You know a Snyder movie will have a bleak color palette, have random slow motion that ruins the tempo but is very well done, and is going to have the worldview of a teenage "nihilist."

Abrams is the one that's harder to pinpoint because he's basically "those movies you loved as a kid...but, like, a little grittier sometimes." He's creatively devoid but has a solid grasp of what works for the project, I would even say on a deeper level than Bay or Snyder, but he's too streamlined and focused on four-quadrant entertainment to truly hone his vision. At least with Bay and Snyder you know that they believe in their work, whereas I get the impreasion that Abrams would focus group his journal entries.

It's McHollywood, and it sucks, but the era of Spielberg-like blockbusters where quality was more important than ticket sales ended with Lost World.

Finished S3 of The Expanse...man, this show is completely amazing. I liked S1 a lot, S2 I fell in love, S3 is just...whole new frontiers. I haven't been this excited to see where a TV show goes next in a long time. Hopefully production doesn't get borked because of the change from Syfy to Amazon.

I binged the whole first season of Final Space. Watch it! It's a good mix of silly humour and darkness that gets darker as the season progresses but it's super addictive and absolutely worth watching. For fans of Futurama and Rick and Morty.

I'm halfway through Season 2 and I agree with the love for this show.

Just keep watching!

Eh, just at first I thought it might be trying to get a bit of Rick and Morty vibe, but overall I don't think it so. The humour was kind of flat for me, a bit juvenile (Kevin is good for a chuckle though), but I've liked the story and character development. I think I'm at EP 5 or 6, not loving it or anything but it definitely has potential.

I tried to watch the first episode of Final Space but the humor was just.. lame? I'm a big fan of Rick & Morty, is it worth it to power through and see if it gets better (= crazier and darker)? I want crazy humor, really over the top stuff like Mr Pickles or King Star King, or plots that just keep accelerating and getting worse and worse like Jeff And Some Aliens..

My girlfriend and I binged the first four episodes of Castle Rock yesterday. Great show so far, even though I'm not the biggest Stephen King fan.

And to whoever recommended Utopia a couple pages back - thank you!! We watched the first season and I'm in love.

Yeah, I watched the first two episodes of Final Space and while it got a few chuckles from me, a lot of the humour was just kind of stupid and didn't work. I don't know, I'll check out a few more episodes, let's see.

Patrick Stewart is back as Jean-Luc Picard. You heard it here first, never forget. John_Sunlight isn't as big of a Star Trek fan as me.

Great news! That is what Star Trek fans want. To explore strange new worlds, but if possible, with the comfort of familiar characters

If the perplexingly negative reaction trekkies had for Star Trek: Discovery (even new converts like our own not-batman) is any sign, "strange and new" is exactly the opposite of anything they want. Because apparently ~800 episodes of exactly the same thing just isn't enough!

Wonder if they're gonna put Brent Spiner on a mandatory diet or just shell out for lipo and plastic surgery.

Here's my expectations for the new Picard show.

Fat Brent Spiner: "Captain, I'm detecting a warp signature...the closest match in our archives is only 0.467% similar in design and telemetry."

Old Picard: "RIGHT, SHOOT THOSE FUCKING CUNTS IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE I'VE SECRETLY BEEN KHAN THIS WHOLE TIME, MOTHERFUCKERS!" *incomprehensible lasers shooting*

phasers

So after watching 11 episodes of Westworld, I can honestly say it's one of the least compelling tv shows I've seen in awhile. Every individual element is good-to-great, but its total is considerably less than the sum of its parts. In HBO's desperation to keep the audience on their toes by shrouding almost all of the show's Big Questions in mystery, they completely forgot to put in even remotely interesting characters or compelling drama of any kind. It came as no surprise that JJ Abrams was one of the architects of the series, as it proudly displays his "a confused audience is a captivated audience" philosophy that's been his calling card for decades now.

What a shame they put all of this art into something so artistically bankrupt.

I 100%, completely disagree on that Westworld assessment. It has more substance than many shows I've ever seen. Love the characters and the drama and the writing in general.

Despite the 80F temperatures in northern England I have had to spend the day indoors. However I have spent the time wisely and watched my Father Ted boxset. This won't mean much to people outside of Britain and Ireland but it is the best comedy of all time. It's about three priests exiled to a backwards island just off the mainland due to previous misdemeanours. It's absolute genius. Some of the jokes about the Catholic Church might work in the US but probably not.

Here's a few clips:-

https://youtu.be/beN7FftWNCM

https://youtu.be/9uHAbpm0lLk

Another Tedhead here, and I'm working my way through that same box set myself! On one hand, I want to just laugh my arse off and watch the whole series altogether; but then I also see the value of stretching them out a bit and making it last.

Man, I'm literally excited and horrified at the same time for this. Couldn't bring myself to give a fuck about Discovery, and now I'm afraid it'll just be the same thing but with a beloved character at the helm. But maybe it'll be good? Maybe??? More likely it'll be a bad show made tolerable by Patrick Stewart. I just don't think the modern television landscape can support good Trek.

Dude it could be 60 minutes of Pat Stew in a tea daze and I would still watch it. Fucking Picard, man.

Star Trek: Discovery was still the best first season of Star Trek since TAS, easily.

I'd be fine with Picard ordering tea and saying "make it so" 100 times/40 minutes, honestly.

I erred when I said Rick and Morty because it's definitely a very different show. I think I like it more than you do, but I at least agree about the story - very addictive.


That's fair. I didn't watch it to get a huge amount of laughs. I don't think it's a full-on comedy, anyway, despite Gary's character. The story itself I found captivating.

I'm actually really liking these modern adult animations such as Final Space, Rick and Morty, Bojack Horseman, F is For Family, etc. - cartoons that blend crazy humour and grimdark scenes (particularly true for Bojack). I want more.

I like Bojack and enjoy some Rick and Morty, but F is for Family is terrible IMO.

Data was killed in the last movie.

I am... Should I say cautiously optimistic? I think it feels like Trek is reeling again and this is a way to pull people back with a popular character. Kinda the way the half-assed final episode of Enterprise was all just a TNG episode of fat Riker trying to Holodeck his way through some situation. "C'mon boys! Let's get them ratings up high for the last episode! Frakes isn't working on anything right now but a pan of brownies!"

I love TNG (*cough*notthosefirsttwoseasons*cough*) and Patrick Steward, but the fucking show ended solidly on a high point. I don't see a good reason to fuck that up, although I can completely see a bad reason which is easy money. Like the last two forced seasons of The X-Files. Good, not great, and leaves the franchise with a bit of a stink in the end.

For what it's worth, I actually enjoyed the change in the original (8 and 9) final seasons of the X-Files. Doggett was a great character in his own right, and it's not just my fandom for Robert Patrick, either. But TV shows never really survive a change like that, regardless of the strengths of the writing or characters.

I can't argue with any of this. That is actually a solid descriptor of Abrams. I actually didn't hate Super 8, I thought it had some good stuff going for it, but it's exactly your descriptor: "those movies you loved as a kid...but, like, a little grittier sometimes."

You missed one director I usually throw into this mix, though: Roland Emmerich, who's only worthwhile movie, in my opinion, is Stargate, and only for two reasons: Kurt Russell and it spawned one of my favorite TV franchises.


When talking game design (I went to school for it and have a dev team), one thing I came to learn is that, discussions on the merit or reality of "talent" aside, you can teach technical know-how, but you cannot teach that core understanding of gaming as a creative form or art. You can't teach good ideas beyond a flat technical outline. I realized this with a guy I knew who was a programmer and pretty decent at it. Except that beyond that, nearly every single idea he ever had was god-awful, irritating, or counter-productive. We were making a puzzle game where success or failure was dependent on the skills and abilities of the player. He wanted to incorporate ideas that would ignore player skills and just cause failure to happen sometimes because he "thought that would be funny." No, that would be fucking aggravating.

But some people cannot be taught this. It's an understanding of what you're doing, what you're trying to communicate, and how your audience will experience the end product that some people simply do not grasp. In effect, some people have the technical ability to make something big, flashy, and lowest-common-denominator, but that doesn't mean they understand the core, art, or dare I say, soul of the project.

This is how I view these four directors. They know how to splash the screen with spectacle. They know how to technically succeed. But they do not seem to understand the deeper art that makes the product long-lasting, memorable, or moving art. Nuance, subtlety, and emotion do not exist here.

Spectacle is fun and sells tickets. But spectacle doesn't create future nostalgia.

Bojack is my favorite cartoon right now. It's out of this world and so much better than just another "cynical edgy" type of show. It's got a lot of heart and genuine character development, and the creators cared about what they were doing. It's really a unique show and I've never seen anything like it.

Bojack is good, but I can't get into the emotion of the characters as much as I can in, say, Futurama or Rick & Morty. I'm not entirely sure why.

From what little information has been released about the upcoming show, it doesn't seem to me like it will be a reboot of Next Generation. Hopefully the good memory and legacy of that show will not be buggered up!

So, how about that Better Call Saul premiere guys?



Mike continues to be a badass <3

It was a brutal episode really. Not the best they ever did, but it was all focused on one thing and it did exactly what it needed to. What I love about BCS is that it really doesn't talk down to the audience and takes its time to tell the story in a mature, interesting way at every curve. It's exquisite TV.

I wouldn't expect a reboot. Despite Patrick Stewart being immune to aging, he's still over 20 years older than he was when the show ended. I'm expecting something more like "The New Adventures of Old Picard." Gallivanting around the galaxy with his own ragtag band of retirees as they are intergalactic Indiana Jonesing from planet to planet.

That... I would watch that.

I've always liked the idea of a 3rd Generation in the Trek universe--something that takes place far enough ahead so that travel is no longer just limited to the Alpha and Beta quadrants, but spread out across the Gamma and Delta quadrants. At the end of DS9, the Dominion was largely held to a treaty with the Alpha quadrant, and by the end of Voyager, the Borg had been weakened, but not crippled. I think the obvious next steps would be a larger Federation including Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians who then have to face a galaxy-spanning war between the Borg and Dominion. Something like that would keep the Federation far enough removed to still spend a lot of time on exploring while having a background on-going arc where Federations ships have to deal with accidentally getting caught between the Dominion and Borg, both of whom are largely indifferent to the Federation at this point, despite the added strength of the other three major races.

A set-up like this gives so much room for writing and drama. There's the obvious "meet new aliens, reach the new limits of the galaxy" stuff. There's a war arc. And there's plenty of room for shaky Federation in-fighting about "should we or shouldn't we" get involved in the war between the Dominion and Borg. It also puts two popular, ultra-powerful Trek factions directly face to face with new possibilities. Both the Borg and Dominion worked by largely just throwing more fighters at the problem, because individuals didn't matter. The Borg could be made to easily detect the shape-shifting Founders, and both sides could be desperately trying to curry some kind of alliance with the Federation to figure out a better way to fight than just throwing massive numbers at each other over and over.

This all just seems like the obvious way for the franchise to have gone. Enough with all the prequels already.

I'm sure it'll be a new crew and a new ship (possibly not even an Enterprise), with maybe one or two other veterens joining the cast later in the pilot. Expect literally everyone who ever had a speaking role on Star Trek who isn't either dead or prohibited from entering the US to make at least a minor cameo somewhere.

What I'm most exited about is finally picking up the prime (official canon) timeline again, hopefully. Nemesis from 2002 was the latest entry in the official timeline. I wanna learn WTF Starfleet did with that ablative armor tech jaded Janeway bestowed upon non-jaded Janeway.

So in summary:

But also:

Spiner as B-4, I meant, not Data. He'll just have all of Data's memories from the engram download, and will act almost exactly like him!

I think Old Picard would be too old to hook up with Vash again.



As long as they title such a series, "Star Trek - The Order of Things", I'm down for that!

And no love for prequels? I liked that Enterprise was far enough removed from the time period of any other series, that it wasn't constrained by contemporary events. I'm also a fan of the comparatively primitive tech. The Grappler was awesome, as were the early stumbles with the transporter. I wish they'd made an episode about the disappearance of Cyrus Ramsay.

I'd even be intrigued by sort of super-prequel: centered around the end of the Atomic War, Zephram Cochrane's warp flight and first contact with the Vulcans.

Better Call Saul was flawless as usual. I feel more confident with each episode that I am right in placing it above BB. And yeah, I think that final scene was the birth of Saul. I am not sure about the reason why he snapped out of it with that dialogue though.



Terrific episode.

Regarding your question about Jimmy/Saul

Re: Better Call Saul

Wow, the second season of Westworld managed to be much worse than the first, which was already terrible! The storytelling is so fractured and convoluted at this point I'd be astonished if anyone gave a shit about anything that happened to its dreary, contrived characters. I guess lame and borderline-racist cliches like pancake-faced geishas performing pantomime, dualing samurais (and literal black-clad ninjas!) who dismember their enemies and comitt seppuku, and warpainted injuns slamming stone hatchets into suspendered white settlers will always find an audience, as long as it's cloaked in politically correct metacommentary (it's about how TV shapes the viewer more than it reflects what we like, a totally radical idea) and dressed up in HBO production values with lots of extreme violence.

Seriously, how can someone like this. Seriously.