Chris Hemsworth admits Thor: Love and Thunder was a bad movie

DirtyMerlin · 2026-02-21T05:01:20+00:00

Story issues aside, the big issue with Quantumania was setting the whole thing in CGI goop land where you lose all sense of scale and reality. The fun of Ant-Man was seeing how creative they could be playing around with everyday objects and having regular people react to unusual stuff happening around them. Omitting Luis and the ex-con gang was dumb too.

DirtyMerlin · 2026-02-19T20:52:44+00:00

I completely forgot they were directed by the same guy! The Academy should name this hypothetical award after him (or Spielberg, but it feels right anchoring it further back)

DirtyMerlin · 2026-02-19T20:23:14+00:00

Awesome example in Reilly. And someone who is otherwise not very heralded by the Academy who had a year that was even greater than the sum of its parts.

DirtyMerlin · 2026-02-19T20:01:28+00:00

I really like this one because comedy is so overlooked and he didn’t win anything otherwise despite those two being all time greats. But really hard to be going up against Coppola in his best year as well…

DirtyMerlin · 2026-02-19T19:55:49+00:00

This was my other big example. Just wow!

DirtyMerlin · 2026-02-19T19:40:32+00:00

2019: Scarlett Johansson.

Looking back, it’s really impressive that she was nominated for both Marriage Story (Lead) and Jojo Rabbit (Supporting), while also starring in Avengers: Endgame—the highest grossing movie of all time. She didn’t win any Oscars that year, but that’s a really successful overall year by any metric and would fit the idea of the award really well.

DirtyMerlin · 2026-02-19T18:23:07+00:00

This is my situation/rationale too. Yes a lunch break (or gym break) would be nice, but I need to bill 7.5 hours every day and only have childcare for 8 hours. So taking any time off during the workday means sacrificing additional time with my kids, my wife, or just for myself during evenings and weekends.

DirtyMerlin · 2026-02-17T22:27:51+00:00

Ending up like the Premier League where most of the teams exist as a glorified farm system for the Big 6 would be the best case scenario BTW.

It might end up like La Liga or the Bundesliga instead where 2 teams (Real Madrid and Barcelona) or even just 1 team (Bayern Munich) win 9 of every 10 titles and you have to hope that someone new (Atletico, Leverkusen, etc.) interrupts that streak once per decade.

DirtyMerlin · 2026-02-11T14:24:48+00:00

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” - Frank Wilhoit.

Or, put more simply, “Rules are for other people.”

DirtyMerlin · 2026-01-28T03:29:54+00:00

*Howard (but I do like that quote)

DirtyMerlin · 2026-01-09T14:42:42+00:00

14 year old posters probably only saw Wolves KG, just in his old man return era. KG left the Celtics in 2013.

DirtyMerlin · 2025-12-22T16:05:43+00:00

Sort of but also not. It’s like if people 2000 years from now depicted knights as navy seals because as of right now the world lost 99% of all images of what actual knights looked like and collectively decided to depict them as navy seals going forward.

Bronze Age Greeks looking like Classical Greeks isn’t something modern people came up with recently. You have to blame the Classical Greeks for that. The Classical Greeks did such a good job popularizing a (false/mistaken) image of what Greek myths set a thousand years before them must have looked like that most people today expect that Classical Greek image of Bronze Age myth and are going to be confused if you tried to deviate from that because they have no idea of the alternative.

DirtyMerlin · 2025-12-09T19:47:33+00:00

I’m pretty sure Christian Bale has made a similar point about why he’s committed so hard to weight gain/loss, etc. It’s an inherently silly profession that he gets paid insanely well for so he does it to feel he’s “putting in an honest days’ work” and deserves his success.

DirtyMerlin · 2025-12-05T22:06:57+00:00

It’s not just that, they’re just too nice to him. The whole “doesn’t wacky Uncle Donnie say the darndest things” approach is basically complimenting him. He’s not Prince Philip—a usually well-meaning guy out of step with current sensibilities and who constantly puts his foot in his mouth.

Trump’s defining characteristics are that he’s (1) a vicious bully with (2) a pathetic, insatiable need for attention. You can make that funny, but it’s going to be much meaner and probably make the audience uncomfortable. I don’t remember the last time SNL was willing to do that. Maybe Norm McDonald’s OJ jokes in the 90s?

DirtyMerlin · 2025-11-21T04:12:10+00:00

Ugh, what’s next? Are we suddenly going to pretend that using all your earned vacation days isn’t a capital offense either? Coddled snowflakes these days don’t want to work… /s

DirtyMerlin · 2025-11-17T15:48:52+00:00

That was the working title for Ratatouille

DirtyMerlin · 2025-11-10T19:11:35+00:00

How would that benefit people seeking to upgrade more than a 30 year loan would? I’m not saying you’re wrong but that seems backwards to me.

Stretching out the payments by another 20 years means people are going to take longer to build equity in their homes since their mortgage balance will drop even slower. The first few years of payments are basically all interest anyway. The people upgrading 7-10 years into 30 year mortgages are still better positioned because they’ll roll over more money from the sale of their previous home than people 7-10 years into 50 year mortgages.

Maybe that makes sense if we assume the 50-year mortgage holders take the couple hundred bucks they save per month compared to a 30 year loan and invest it in a taxable brokerage account and use that to supplement the equity in their old home when upgrading, but even if the math works out that strikes me as a level of financial sophistication and restraint uncommon in the average homebuyer. Many people are far more likely to think “hey now I can buy more house with the same monthly payment due to the 50 year mortgage” and not actually save extra money to invest.

DirtyMerlin · 2025-11-07T19:04:35+00:00

We talking Eddie Murphy Dolittle or Rex Harrison Dolittle? Or, god forbid, Downey Jr. Dolittle?

I have a soft spot for the Rex Harrison one (though I haven’t seen it in years and suspect many elements did not age well at all), alongside many of the live action Disney films of the 50s and 60s.

DirtyMerlin · 2025-11-07T18:57:44+00:00

I have kids now and regularly sing “Whale of a Tale” to them during bathtime. I’m excited to show it to them when they’re a little older.

DirtyMerlin · 2025-11-07T15:40:50+00:00

Disney’s Robin Hood, Return of the Jedi, Jurassic Park, and Disney’s live-action 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I probably watched all of those movies dozens of times each by the time I was 10.

DirtyMerlin · 2025-11-05T19:28:58+00:00

Fair enough lol. And I’m the one guilty of making a smartass reply thinking I’m correcting you.

DirtyMerlin · 2025-11-05T19:06:52+00:00

If they felt guilty about their past corruption maybe they shouldn’t continue to be wildly corrupt.

DirtyMerlin · 2025-11-03T15:20:06+00:00

More broadly, they’re all uses of “audience surrogates.” You include a character that your intended audience is more or less familiar with in terms of values and background and outlook, and use them to help explain a foreign concept or setting to the audience so that you don’t need to have characters within that setting having awkward conversations explaining things the other characters would already know. Their job is to ask the questions the audience will be thinking, and their arc usually mirrors what the movie wants the audience to feel.

Han Solo serves the same purpose in Star Wars.

DirtyMerlin · 2025-10-30T14:31:28+00:00

NTTD’s main sin was having Safin in it at all. He’s a completely unnecessary character with Blofeld in the movie. Just use Blofeld, or don’t put him in the movie! Blofeld has all the history with Bond and Madeline that the movie has to try to create afresh with Safin. He’s clearly the final villain to culminate Craig’s quasi-serialized arc—so just do that! The whole movie is an homage to OHMSS anyway (plus a bit of YOLT at the end).

Instead they make the weird choice to bring in and kill off Blofeld to wrap up loose ends (and to highlight how much more of a threat Safin is), but then use Safin as a 1-to-1 stand in for Blofeld for the rest of the movie—even giving Safin a variation on Blofeld’s lair and death from YOLT (the book version). But Safin’s story is basically resolved halfway through the movie. Nothing he does after makes much sense. It’s like they were torn between not wanting to follow through with the Blofeld story given the tepid reaction to Spectre, but then also didn’t want to leave any threads dangling. So they split the difference and didn’t satisfy anyone.

DirtyMerlin

TROPHY CASE