An ongoing exploration of the dark and gritty reboot
Madness descended upon the internet earlier this week when the Westworld showrunners stormed into a the /r/westworld subreddit for what proved to be one of the larger online pranks in recent history. The gist of the prank was simple: the Westworld team announced that they would be spoiling the entirety of the show for the …
Continue reading Why Your Westworld Fan Theory is Not a Fan Theory
The end of 2017 is nigh. And with it, the top ten lists, the retrospectives, the predictions. Rather than the Top Books Published in 2017 or the Best Films of the Year or anything like this, here's my list of opinions, ideas, and arguments that I have not already written about in 2017 and would …
Matthew McConaughey recently stirred up some folks by saying that yes, he misses playing Rust Cohle and, yes, he would consider reprising that character, if given the right opportunity. “Would you ever consider going back,” his interviewer asked him. “Yeah, I would," McConaughey answered. This fueled some speculation and some argument. Questions like what would …
The critically-acclaimed, award-winning cable series Mr. Robot is notable for a number of reasons, with a big twist: in the final two episodes, you realize you've been watching a ten hour unlicensed Fight Club reboot. One could say that the twist is "Elliot was Mr. Robot all along!" just like the twist in Fight Club is …
Continue reading What Should Mr. Robot Pay Homage to in Season Two?
If you haven't heard, the latest complete failure at the box office was the flaccid reboot Pan, an attempt to create a franchise out of the Peter Pan story by starting with Mr. Pan's origin as a young boy on an adventure to Neverland. In which the villain is Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard and Peter's best …
There is at least one major question about the new Star Wars film that goes unanswered: will there be Force Ghosts? At least, this is what I'm wondering. Obi Wan's Force Ghost really kicked up the original trilogy a notch, and I doubt I'm the only one who thinks Liam Neeson should have made a few …
Continue reading Five Films That Would Benefit From Force Ghosts
During the last presidential election, Rick Santorum famously told the media that he felt like "this campaign is like an episode of ‘Survivor.’ It’s just a matter of staying in there and doing well." It's hard to disagree with Santorum, especially when the field is this crowded and complicated, stuffed with minor characters and distractions. …
People love pretending that there is a new novel by Harper Lee, available in stores now. But we all know there isn't. I'm not going to go into all the details of it, because there are enough articles that already do, but basically: it's likely that Harper Lee is being exploited, her supposed new novel is really …
Continue reading Why Harper Lee’s “New Novel” is the Literary Equivalent of Greedo Shooting First
We all know what the Bechdel Test is. Or, if you don't, it's that rule, invented by Alison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, about fiction which describes whether or not a work approaches gender in an appropriate way. Among the many works that fail the test are Star Wars (not a …
Continue reading Why Silicon Valley’s Approach to the Bechdel Test is Brilliant