1. The romance arc in Attack of the Clones becomes a lot more bearable if you think of the Anakin/Padme romance as a stereotypical missionary/homeschool kid who's also a child soldier and that one girl from high school who was really into student government and Model UN falling for each other. That's probably not what George Lucas intended, but it makes the awkward dialogue seem realistic rather than the product of bad writing.
2. Had AotC depicted the slow beginning of Anakin's slide down the slippery slope to the dark side, it would have been good; instead, we got Anakin jumping off of it with his massacre of the entire Tusken village.
3. Have to disagree about Luke, because you're reading ANH and ESB Luke into RotJ Luke. Yes, he's whiny and immature at times, particularly in ANH, but by RotJ he's pretty much grown up, and he conclusively wins his duel with Vader at the end of RotJ, which is why his decision to spare Vader is so powerful.
4. If you've ever wondered if your love for the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies is partially the product of nostalgia, don't--I didn't see them until 2022, and thought they were absolutely fantastic.
5. The multiverse as a storytelling idea is not the product of the comics, although the idea might have been developed independently. The first example I know of is from 1948, when a guy named H. Beam Piper wrote his first Paratime story, which featured a multiverse organized according to how well Martian attempts to colonize Earth went and an organization devoted to making sure that the only people with the capability to travel between them aren't too careless or exploitative. (In their classification, our timeline is on the Fourth Level, in the Hispano-Colombian subsector of the Europo-American sector.)
First of all, I hadn't watched any of the new Star Trek shows when you posted this the first time. I have now, and you are so right about them. And anecdotally, that's independent of any position on the political spectrum. My wife, who is quite progressive said roughly "I'm not sure what this is, but it's not Star Trek" and we moved on to watching Voyager, which I hadn't seen since it aired, and she had never seen. When you make the first couple of seasons of Voyager look good, that's generally a bad sign.
To actually respond to BND: the story choices in it baffle me. I agree that Holland movies are comedies, and they had so many directions they could have taken with that. Instead we get a Peter that is more angsty and less responsible at 22 than he was at 15. I partially forgive Punisher having more presence than Ned and Zendaya in this film just because those were responsible for the majority of the levity in the movie.
Also, my wife saw the same X-men movies as you and also didn't remember Jean Grey. If it helps at all, she was (not?) famous about a decade ago by having her picture replaced by other things in a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wolverine-crush
Hilariously, yes, I know that meme but don't recognize Jean Gray in it. She remains a complete blank in my mind outside BND.
...just like she'd want, I guess.
I've taken the attitude lately that maybe the first couple seasons of Voyager actually ARE good and, at the time, we were just too sinful to see it? Maybe the American television industry of the mid-90s through late-00's was actually a uniquely powerful storytelling machine never before constructed and never again to be replicated, and we were simply spoiled by it?
Shows of that era (which coincidentally I mark as ending with the WGA strike that caused Neil Patrick Harris clip you posted) had a lot more minutes to work with.
I think average quality was, in general worse than what followed, but it also enabled the writers and producers to take more risks. Any episode from the '90s for which you could say "no way this script gets made in a 12 episode season" would not exist today (usually for better, but often for worse).
This trend actually started in the 90s when the death of syndication meant the death of "minimum # of episode" rules, but it accelerated after a lot of shows worked with a strike-shortened 07-08 and decided to keep that format.
For a data-point: A sitcom in the 90s might be 24-26 episodes of 22-24 minutes each. That's roughly 9.5 hours. Season 3 of Stranger Things (which was the last one I watched) is roughly 7.5 hours. Voyager started mid-season, but even that shortened season was 16 (or 15 depending on how you count the pilot) episodes for a total of over 12 hours.
Some thoughts and quibbles:
1. The romance arc in Attack of the Clones becomes a lot more bearable if you think of the Anakin/Padme romance as a stereotypical missionary/homeschool kid who's also a child soldier and that one girl from high school who was really into student government and Model UN falling for each other. That's probably not what George Lucas intended, but it makes the awkward dialogue seem realistic rather than the product of bad writing.
2. Had AotC depicted the slow beginning of Anakin's slide down the slippery slope to the dark side, it would have been good; instead, we got Anakin jumping off of it with his massacre of the entire Tusken village.
3. Have to disagree about Luke, because you're reading ANH and ESB Luke into RotJ Luke. Yes, he's whiny and immature at times, particularly in ANH, but by RotJ he's pretty much grown up, and he conclusively wins his duel with Vader at the end of RotJ, which is why his decision to spare Vader is so powerful.
4. If you've ever wondered if your love for the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies is partially the product of nostalgia, don't--I didn't see them until 2022, and thought they were absolutely fantastic.
5. The multiverse as a storytelling idea is not the product of the comics, although the idea might have been developed independently. The first example I know of is from 1948, when a guy named H. Beam Piper wrote his first Paratime story, which featured a multiverse organized according to how well Martian attempts to colonize Earth went and an organization devoted to making sure that the only people with the capability to travel between them aren't too careless or exploitative. (In their classification, our timeline is on the Fourth Level, in the Hispano-Colombian subsector of the Europo-American sector.)
The complete evisceration of No Way Home was my favorite post of yours, so happy to see more Spider Man talk!
First of all, I hadn't watched any of the new Star Trek shows when you posted this the first time. I have now, and you are so right about them. And anecdotally, that's independent of any position on the political spectrum. My wife, who is quite progressive said roughly "I'm not sure what this is, but it's not Star Trek" and we moved on to watching Voyager, which I hadn't seen since it aired, and she had never seen. When you make the first couple of seasons of Voyager look good, that's generally a bad sign.
To actually respond to BND: the story choices in it baffle me. I agree that Holland movies are comedies, and they had so many directions they could have taken with that. Instead we get a Peter that is more angsty and less responsible at 22 than he was at 15. I partially forgive Punisher having more presence than Ned and Zendaya in this film just because those were responsible for the majority of the levity in the movie.
Also, my wife saw the same X-men movies as you and also didn't remember Jean Grey. If it helps at all, she was (not?) famous about a decade ago by having her picture replaced by other things in a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wolverine-crush
Hilariously, yes, I know that meme but don't recognize Jean Gray in it. She remains a complete blank in my mind outside BND.
...just like she'd want, I guess.
I've taken the attitude lately that maybe the first couple seasons of Voyager actually ARE good and, at the time, we were just too sinful to see it? Maybe the American television industry of the mid-90s through late-00's was actually a uniquely powerful storytelling machine never before constructed and never again to be replicated, and we were simply spoiled by it?
Shows of that era (which coincidentally I mark as ending with the WGA strike that caused Neil Patrick Harris clip you posted) had a lot more minutes to work with.
I think average quality was, in general worse than what followed, but it also enabled the writers and producers to take more risks. Any episode from the '90s for which you could say "no way this script gets made in a 12 episode season" would not exist today (usually for better, but often for worse).
This trend actually started in the 90s when the death of syndication meant the death of "minimum # of episode" rules, but it accelerated after a lot of shows worked with a strike-shortened 07-08 and decided to keep that format.
For a data-point: A sitcom in the 90s might be 24-26 episodes of 22-24 minutes each. That's roughly 9.5 hours. Season 3 of Stranger Things (which was the last one I watched) is roughly 7.5 hours. Voyager started mid-season, but even that shortened season was 16 (or 15 depending on how you count the pilot) episodes for a total of over 12 hours.