Rate the latest movie you've seen.

[Blackleaf]

I'm totally unfamiliar with the comics, so it's probably what you get used to.  What was the source of the mechanized suit in the comics?  Same as the movie?  And with that much high tech power available to him, how much of his organic spider power comes into play in the comics?  I don't want emphasize the suit issue that much.  It was just a minor issue that surprised me.

There are actually multiple versions of Spider-Man in the comics. There's Ultimate Spider-Man, which I believe the original trilogy was based on, and there's Amazing Spider-Man. The latter is what the two reboots were based on. Ultimate Spider-Man's web is organic, but Amazing Spider-Man's web comes from a cartridge in his wrist that he made for himself. His relationship with Iron Man was in the comics, and I believe Stark did give him a suit, but Spider-Man had his iconic look before then. The 90's Spider-Man cartoon was also based on Amazing Spider-Man, and he would occasionally run out of webbing in his cartridges and have to swap them out.

[Hydra009]

I wonder about that too.  Everyone is going to disagree with the critics, or in the case of Rotten Tomatoes, the average of the critics from time to time, but it's not just about critics having personal reactions to films.  It's about predicting audience reactions correctly too.  Otherwise, viewers will start to disregard you, and in the worst case, stop reading your column.

I didn't think about that.  Straying too far from the crowd opinion can hurt the critic's reputation.  But isn't the crowd's opinion shaped by early critical reviews?  I think my brain just pulled a muscle.

Another thing I think I notice critics doing is reviewing each film with the demographic in mind that will likely see the film, although I understand the actual merit in that.  Try to get it right for the demographic involved.

That makes sense.  You don't rate a barbacue competition by the standards of 5-star hotel cuisine.  If you're reviewing a sci-fi film, you're trying to see how it stacks up compared to its peers.  The problem can be when you get too narrow and you're doing silly stuff like saying that the Transformers movies are great...if you're a 12-year-old boy who already loves the other Transformers films.

[Shiranu]

France chose the opposite ... and betrayed their ally.  And got 4 years of brutal occupation.  I think it was because, in spite of WW I .. that the French hated the British even more than they hated the Germans.

Only about half the French state surrendered officially (Free France made up about half of France proper, as well as the colonies), and the Resistance was a huge part of the occupied territories population. The Régime de Vichy was not remotely popular or accepted by the French people, but it was necessary due to the overwhelming wins of the Germans.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Really want to kick up the conspiracy theory ideas watch Everything is a rich man's trick. Everything from the JFK assassination to modern day " terrorism" according to the writer is a trick by the filthy rich to get richer and control the entire planet.  It's really not far fetched as it may seem.
In the least it's very interesting.  Look it up on YouTube.
It is very true that the very rich in WWII funded both sides and became fabulously wealthy as a result. Only the very sick minded get to become heads of state and so on. It's painfully obvious that human life and suffering means absolutely nothing to these people and if 10 million or billion even have to die to protect their wealth then so be it .. In the film the current wave of immigration,  Muslim and other brown people is a scheme of the rich to create a boogie man and a reason for every country to have paid armies to protect their wealth and power and for absolutely no other reason. All of the terrorist acts are cooked up to keep us all scared of each other.
After all, if you had a trillion dollars and were worried about poor people taking it wouldn't you want a professional army to protect it from them?

[SGOS]

Straying too far from the crowd opinion can hurt the critic's reputation.  But isn't the crowd's opinion shaped by early critical reviews?

I don't see how it could be otherwise.  Human society thrives on people being told what to think, and with a fairly high degree of success.  It's the foundation of politics, religion, and advertising.  We are immersed in it from birth.  Movie critics may or may not strive to shape public opinion intentionally, but they do.  And they also shape each other's views.

I was a Siskel and Ebert fan back in the day.  I was captivated by the format of two critics often disagreeing and sometimes agreeing that a movie was either bad or good.  It seemed innovative at the time.  When they disagreed, I didn't know what to think, which is not very comforting.  So was the movie good or bad?  I didn't know.  If they agreed, I was relieved because then I thought the movie must be good or bad depending on the agreement.  But then I started to notice that they would often give a movie two thumbs up (essentially that's a 100 percent), and it would turn out later that I thought that movie was bad, sometimes even egg sucking bad.  I would question my judgment because I didn't know what to think.  It wasn't a good feeling.  It might have been better just to decide the movie blew chunks and be done with it, but if others disagreed with that, then I would feel bad again, not because people disagreed as much as that I wasn't sure what to think.  The confusion would upset me. 

It would be easier if you had someone tell you what to think.  We see this in teenage peer groups.  People think what the peer group tells them.  Parents hate the peer group influence even though as adults they are molded by their own peer groups.  But being told what to think and wanting to be told seems to be part of our social nature.

[Baruch]

Only about half the French state surrendered officially (Free France made up about half of France proper, as well as the colonies), and the Resistance was a huge part of the occupied territories population. The Régime de Vichy was not remotely popular or accepted by the French people, but it was necessary due to the overwhelming wins of the Germans.

Sorry you accept the French Vichy POV.  The French fought honorably if incompetently until they surrendered.  Their fathers would never have done that.  All the Resistance were Communists (a minority) and they only fought when Uncle Joe told them to.  But I am glad they did.  Most of the French who made it to England after Dunkirk chose to repatriate to occupied France, rather than stay in England and fight.  My grandfather had to fight the Vichy French (as did Churchill earlier) in order to land in N Africa .. or do you support Admiral Darlan too?  Marshal Petain was a hero of WW I ... at Verdun.  He was popular.  The French originated the predecessor to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion ... they were fierce Catholic anti-semites ... and didn't miss their Jewish neighbors, or mind their political opponents being sent to forced labor in Germany.

The French who stood up in WW I ... weren't cowards (that is how non-French excuse their betrayal) ... and neither were their sons.  The politics differed.  The alliance between the British and French Empires against Germany in WW I ... was an unnatural creation of President Teddy Roosevelt.  Had the British Empire been allied to the Kaiser (he was family) then WW I would have ended quickly with French defeat (fighting on two fronts) and millions of lives would have been saved.  And WW II ... wouldn't have happened.

[Blackleaf]

I didn't think about that.  Straying too far from the crowd opinion can hurt the critic's reputation.  But isn't the crowd's opinion shaped by early critical reviews?  I think my brain just pulled a muscle.

Mutual influence is common in relationships of all kinds. Parents teach their children, but even parents learn from their children. Pets increase the life expectancy of their owners, and pets live longer with an owner.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

When he says "One of ours" in the trailer, was that a Beaufighter?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"King Kong vs. Godzilla". 11/10 for the ham fest. Seriously fun without trying to be, which just makes it better!

[Cavebear]

There are actually multiple versions of Spider-Man in the comics. There's Ultimate Spider-Man, which I believe the original trilogy was based on, and there's Amazing Spider-Man. The latter is what the two reboots were based on. Ultimate Spider-Man's web is organic, but Amazing Spider-Man's web comes from a cartridge in his wrist that he made for himself. His relationship with Iron Man was in the comics, and I believe Stark did give him a suit, but Spider-Man had his iconic look before then. The 90's Spider-Man cartoon was also based on Amazing Spider-Man, and he would occasionally run out of webbing in his cartridges and have to swap them out.

The original Spiderman was a puny loser teenage boy on his own, good at chemistry in school.  After being bitten by a radioactive spider, he gained his powers.  He didn't even know he had them until he was surprised by a wayward car and jumped out of the way, sticking to a building. 

He spent some time earning small money as a freak wrestler until he ignored a thief running past him who later killed his Uncle Bill.  After that, he took his abilities seriously.  He built cartridges strapped to his wrists to spurt a synthetic web he could hang on and sewed his suit himself how he made cloth with a needle and thread is beyond me, but I remember the panel well.

Stark had nothing to do with any of it.  Who, BTW, was wearing metal armor like an 8 year old would draw a robot and about all he had at the start was a heavy punch and roller skates.

Yes, Spiderman has changed (and not usually for the better), but I was there at the beginning.   And Fantastic Four and Hulk and Thor.  Did you know that Thor was originally the lame Dr Blake who found a staff in a cave and when he hit it against a wall became Thor?  And changed back routinely?  Jane Foster was just his nurse back then.  ;)

[SGOS]

The original Spiderman was a puny loser teenage boy on his own, good at chemistry in school.  After being bitten by a radioactive spider, he gained his powers.  He didn't even know he had them until he was surprised by a wayward car and jumped out of the way, sticking to a building. 

He spent some time earning small money as a freak wrestler until he ignored a thief running past him who later killed his Uncle Bill.  After that, he took his abilities seriously.  He built cartridges strapped to his wrists to spurt a synthetic web he could hang on and sewed his suit himself how he made cloth with a needle and thread is beyond me, but I remember the panel well.

Stark had nothing to do with any of it.  Who, BTW, was wearing metal armor like an 8 year old would draw a robot and about all he had at the start was a heavy punch and roller skates.

Yes, Spiderman has changed (and not usually for the better), but I was there at the beginning.   And Fantastic Four and Hulk and Thor.  Did you know that Thor was originally the lame Dr Blake who found a staff in a cave and when he hit it against a wall became Thor?  And changed back routinely?  Jane Foster was just his nurse back then.  ;)

So many interpretations and levels of knowledge and expertise about super heroes.  It seems to be driven by the same mechanics that drive the creation of various concepts of god, and the descriptions of what those gods think, and how they behave and what they want.  In the world of make believe, things can get out of hand pretty fast.  When I was a boy, I don't remember such a huge knowledge base surrounding zombies.  Our understanding of zombie lore has quadrupled during my lifetime.  Zombies are now well understood across the many cultures of the Earth.  Knowledge is power; We now know that we can kill them.  We know that they are capable of great speed, and have acute sensory abilities, and are not a all like we thought during my youth where everyone believed that zombies would move about in a dull witted trance.

Just think how this knowledge base can grow and refine in 4000 years.  We now have universities dedicated to mythical gods, and supported by "true" believers.  What was just a band of migrating outcasts has become a major industry and life force on Earth, with books written by real experts that can explain the finer points of god lore that are unknown to the less diligent.

[Cavebear]

So many interpretations and levels of knowledge and expertise about super heroes.  It seems to be driven by the same mechanics that drive the creation of various concepts of god, and the descriptions of what those gods think, and how they behave and what they want.  In the world of make believe, things can get out of hand pretty fast.  When I was a boy, I don't remember such a huge knowledge base surrounding zombies.  Our understanding of zombie lore has quadrupled during my lifetime.  Zombies are now well understood across the many cultures of the Earth.  Knowledge is power; We now know that we can kill them.  We know that they are capable of great speed, and have acute sensory abilities, and are not a all like we thought during my youth where everyone believed that zombies would move about in a dull witted trance.

Just think how this knowledge base can grow and refine in 4000 years.  We now have universities dedicated to mythical gods, and supported by "true" believers.  What was just a band of migrating outcasts has become a major industry and life force on Earth, with books written by real experts that can explain the finer points of god lore that are unknown to the less diligent.

The difference is that some of us can distinguish between fantasy and reality.  And that really is important.  Make-believe can be fun.  But some people slip on the ice.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

I'm thinking that if you need someone else to watch and rate a movie for you ahead of time you probably ought to just skip movie watching altogether. It's like deciding which sports team to follow based on the number of fans that team has as opposed to just following your hometown team.
When a movie has lots and lots of reviews I generally decide ahead of time it's probably gonna suck. I have little to zero interest in what the great unwashed masses think about,  well, much of anything..

[caseagainstfaith]

I'm thinking that if you need someone else to watch and rate a movie for you ahead of time you probably ought to just skip movie watching altogether. It's like deciding which sports team to follow based on the number of fans that team has as opposed to just following your hometown team.

Eh, I'd say it is more like deciding which team to follow based on which team experts say has the best chance of being a championship team.  Besides, I doubt many people decide whether to watch a movie purely based on reviews, as a general rule.  But, I for one don't have the time to watch every movie to decide for myself if it is worth watching. So, I do use reviews as a tool to help filter which ones I might see.  I'm totally aware that I sometimes miss movies that I would have liked if I had seen them.  And I sometimes see a movie that reviewers said was great and I didn't care for.  I've survived...

[Blackleaf]

The original Spiderman was a puny loser teenage boy on his own, good at chemistry in school.  After being bitten by a radioactive spider, he gained his powers.  He didn't even know he had them until he was surprised by a wayward car and jumped out of the way, sticking to a building. 

He spent some time earning small money as a freak wrestler until he ignored a thief running past him who later killed his Uncle Bill.  After that, he took his abilities seriously.  He built cartridges strapped to his wrists to spurt a synthetic web he could hang on and sewed his suit himself how he made cloth with a needle and thread is beyond me, but I remember the panel well.

Stark had nothing to do with any of it.  Who, BTW, was wearing metal armor like an 8 year old would draw a robot and about all he had at the start was a heavy punch and roller skates.

Yes, Spiderman has changed (and not usually for the better), but I was there at the beginning.   And Fantastic Four and Hulk and Thor.  Did you know that Thor was originally the lame Dr Blake who found a staff in a cave and when he hit it against a wall became Thor?  And changed back routinely?  Jane Foster was just his nurse back then.  ;)

I thought Dr. Blake was the name Thor took when Odin sent him to Earth to learn humility.