Walking around Spirit Halloween and a couple ran up to see my patch and shirt. Never met other MSTies in the wild! We were all so excited lol
What's everyone else's experience with this sort of thing? Love you guys, keep circulating the tapes
This one is from 30 ROCK
Pic from a 1986 newspaper article. Shows Stephen King sitting atop the infamous steamroller during filming of Maximum Overdrive in 1985.
As established in the previous post, we don't know the plane size. It looks like an unconvincing model from the outside, and the scale is inconsistent between shots. The string holding it up goes around a pulley to a big Japanese guy off to the side.
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Choose wisely!
This was prompted by a post over on r/alignmentcharts. Reading the discourse and comments ranking the MCU movies has got me frustrated.
None of the MCU has been that bad.
After 14 years of being a pop culture juggernaut, it has had disappointments, sure. But people seem to forget or not know what it used to be like. Not to be old-man-yells-at-cloud, but I'm annoyed.
Back when phase 1 was new, everyone was hesitant at the very least. Comic book fans had come off years of cheap budgets, leather costumes, dancing maguire, ice puns, and other endless embarrassments and oddities.
Comic book movie fans were a... mistreated (?) demographic. After decades, we had maybe 8 or 9 objectively good movies out of dozens and dozens.
The Iron Man stinger teasing the MCU was met with excitement, but also apprehension, caution, nervous laughter, and cynicism.
After that, nobody even noticed the 2008 Hulk movie came out. There was an article on Cracked (circa 09) raging that a Thor movie would be the worst thing ever, and that it "must be stopped." Discussion about the first Cap movie prior to release seemed to revolve around it being misconstrued as jingoistic. Then The Avengers was jokingly referred to as “Iron Man 3” when the trailer dropped.
Phase 1 was such a breath of fresh air, and people seem to have forgotten that it really, genuinely surprised us when The Avengers was GOOD.
Prior to the MCU, comic book movies mostly filed off the bar codes (X-men), leaned into camp (Raimi), were heavily stylized (every version of Batman), were straight trash (Catwoman), or changed everything (The Mask).
(The only exception is perhaps The Dark Knight which was contemporary to Iron Man, and greatly overshadowed it at the time.)
They did not cross over. Rights issues, branding, and fear of being “comic booky” quashed that outside of the toy-selling, get-more-characters-on-screen cartoons.
Before 1998, the biggest live-action tv show or movie for Marvel was the 1970s Hulk show. A show about a nomadic sad guy beating up small town criminals by kind of hurling them into walls and tables for 5 seasons.
For DC, they had the 70s Superman and the 89 Batman, which both quickly devolved into self-parody and chaos with each sequel. Also, of course, there was the Adam “why-doesn't-batman-dance-anymore” West Batman of the 60s. It can't be overstated how much that show affected the general audience expectations of comic book movies. Bam! Pow!
Since the 89 Batman, studios have not stopped making comic book movies, which arguably led to Blade, then eventually cascaded into Iron Man.
Marvel's only theatrical movie prior to Blade (that wasn't a serial or filmed for television first) was the career ending Howard the Duck. A movie that was such a disaster that freaking Lucasfilm, fresh off the original Star Wars trilogy, had to sell their CGI division.
(Meanwhile, over at DC, Michael Uslan had to fight to keep the studio from making Batman into a 60s throwback spoof starring Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy.)
I know things change, but gotdamn, guys. I feel like I waded through rivers and years of crap, only to find the far shore filled with underwhelming conversations about rushed cgi and corporate conglomerates due to ... mediocrity.
The Eternals was a mess, yeah?
But have you seen the 1977 disco-infused Spider-man TV movie that makes you smell like cigarettes when you watch it?
Brave New World was disappointing, though?
Okay, have you seen the Captain America movie with his plastic shield and rubber ears? The one where he pretends to be sick to steal a car twice?
Quatumania had bad special effects, its trash!
My brother, there is a 2005 Syfy channel Man-Thing movie that even Avi Arad called a mistake.
Secret Invasion was a poorly written mess, yeah?
Umm, pass.
Ah, they really miscast Clint Barton, you know?
Shaquille O'Neil was Steel, man. I know that's not Marvel, but come on. Part of the finale hinged on him making a free throw, ffs.
Uh, the nano suits are annoying!
Yeah, let helmets be helmets. But also, have you seen--are you aware--do you know of ... The Bat Nipples??
Well, Disney is an evil nightmare company that strips creativity down into a cookie-cutter mcnugget paste of “content”
Dude, I know. But at least its collaborative and centralized, and not plagued with weird rights imbroglios like Doctor Mordrid (look it up) and the Corman Fantastic Four.
I dunno.
I'm sick of everything being a cynical knee jerk of feeding social media algorithms with negativity until we're all blind and def to the reality of media sometimes being only “alright, I guess.” Either it has to blow your tits off or it's a crime against art.
Am I the only one that feels this way? The jaded cynicism of popular media has become exhausting. Why can't people relax and enjoy things more?
Anyway, how's your day going?
Edit: Formatting
After re-reading Insomnia, it occurred to me that the entire reason it is inconsistent with Dark Tower 7 is meta.
In real life, King was prompted to write Dark Tower 5-7 in rapid succession after his near death experience of being hit by the van. This event was then incorporated into the meta narrative of Part 7.
In Insomnia, the little bald doctors say that Patrick Danville is destined to save "two men." However, he only saves one, Roland. At the time it was written in the early 90s, perhaps that was the plan that King had.
But clearly he changed things by incorporating the 1999 van accident into DT7 (at the very least). The result of which is ultimately the death of Jake.
When Roland regards his copy of Insomnia as misleading, this isn't because its a thinny or a trick or a lie, but because of ka. Their current ka is no longer in line with the earlier version of their story that King never wrote.
Point being, without the van accident in the story, presumably Jake would have survived, possibly to the Tower itself. Thus, Patrick could have saved both Jake and Roland, fulfilling the predictions of Clotho and Lachesis.
The second man was going to be Jake.
Perhaps Eddie still dies, Susannah still leaves in grief, and Oy still dies fighting Modred*. Would Jake's presence have stopped Susannah or saved Oy? Would Modred have had a different fate?
Would it have changed Roland's fate at the Tower? Would Roland, facing losing Jake again, have turned away at the very last moment?
*A Billy-bumbler is shown impaled in DT4 in 1997, pre-van-accident, so that was probably the plan regardless.