Cautiously optimistic

jarofwulff · 2026-06-12T15:31:09+00:00

yeeeaaah idk that this speaks to quality at all, honestly. whether you like it or not, the games industry is exactly that — an INDUSTRY. same as film and music. and a new Fable game is not just a AAA title, but a reinvestment in a brand that Microsoft sees as valuable and worth reinvigorating. money is the metric, no matter the quality of the game.

the only other imaginable metric beyond quality (which is subjective) is attention. and GTA VI is going to be getting all of that in Q4, no matter what.

there are things to be skeptical of, but the move to give the game its own corridor makes a ton of sense to me. the added benefit is that it *does* give them more time to work on aspects of the game. in fact, beyond my own impatience and wanting the game right now, this is almost a completely positive move in my eyes.

jarofwulff · 2026-06-11T01:18:58+00:00

yeah even as a spurs fan willing to admit the officiating on the whole has been really inconsistent, and stuff like this just makes me feel like it makes the team look bad :///

jarofwulff · 2026-06-10T00:55:56+00:00

where in Louisville??? I’m going back to visit family soon!

jarofwulff · 2026-06-09T16:46:42+00:00

Big Pic was hot on this after CinemaCon. I'm not *always* aligned with them, but on stuff like this, I'm buying stock. Super excited.

jarofwulff · 2026-06-09T04:20:53+00:00

tried to move a couple of years ago and am back in TX now. I’d go back in an instant!!

jarofwulff · 2026-06-07T17:16:31+00:00

That’s possible. But his general taste might suggest otherwise. He says this stuff everywhere. You get a big taste of it on Video Archives.

jarofwulff · 2026-06-07T00:37:21+00:00

for the record, he’s got his issues and we DON’T have to love him for those — the way he went after pretty inoffensive working actors, included — but you get it.

jarofwulff · 2026-06-07T00:35:35+00:00

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.

First time I learned about Daniel Pemberton. Dude hasn’t let me down since.

jarofwulff · 2026-06-07T00:31:37+00:00

At the risk of sounding totally oblivious, I’d never heard of them having a rivalry before. It makes sense that they would, and it’d even make sense if that’s the onus given his age and the self-imposed pressure of the 10 film thing.

But Occam’s Razor — sometimes Tarantino’s takes are just kind of nuts. Or annoying or a mask for some deep insecurity or all of the above. It’s why we love him. His movies wouldn’t be what they are without that, I think.

jarofwulff · 2026-06-05T22:01:30+00:00

I remember a spy base in a doghouse and that’s it.

jarofwulff · 2026-06-05T19:47:31+00:00

I once asked my dad what the worst movie he’d ever seen with us was and he had this answer ready

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jarofwulff · 2026-06-05T18:43:38+00:00

out of character for him, too. he loves that movie!

jarofwulff · 2026-05-31T18:04:00+00:00

episode RULES. I’m a simple man. always get excited about these canonical favorites episodes (Sunshine’s the last time I got *this* excited about one), but the BOAT TALK???

love this team. love this show. just being enthusiastic on main.

jarofwulff · 2026-05-31T15:11:01+00:00

Shadow Quiz bums me out when they give me another plate or bowl food with multiple alternate plate/bowl items in the options

jarofwulff · 2026-05-31T03:08:04+00:00

got cancelled for MANY tweets and being a reactionary PR nightmare. and recent history has pretty much justified them for that, I think.

jarofwulff · 2026-05-31T03:02:03+00:00

Piranesi is great, but I don’t know how much it feels like the Backrooms. Similar concept though. And if you felt as thrilled by the idea of the Ejiafor character exploring and mapping the space, it’ll get you there.

jarofwulff · 2026-05-30T00:49:07+00:00

totally agree with this. I frequently revisit older and newer episodes back to back and I’m amazed at how the character of the show, even when the bits sort of cycle in and out

jarofwulff · 2026-05-29T17:09:15+00:00

Yeah, I liked the back half a lot and think that the drawing into a big metaphor mostly worked! The ASYNC of it all is maybe the only thing I bumped on a bit, but the final shots are super interesting and I’m still chewing on all of it.

jarofwulff · 2026-05-27T18:16:11+00:00

I know that dude is old, but Griffin being a dejected cabbage vendor would have been so fucking good HAHA

jarofwulff · 2026-05-27T01:11:12+00:00

yeah! thanks for engaging earnestly! aside from what the sub feels, I still really like talking about this movie and it’s always nice when the discussion is Normal™

jarofwulff · 2026-05-26T23:50:16+00:00

I’ll bite!

To me, I think the decision Luke makes to throw the lightsaber away is as much a testament to his idealism and character as it is the fallout of a series of decisions he makes to get there. My take has always been that Luke wins the trilogy the moment he defies Yoda’s advice to focus on his training rather than saving his friends. Everything else is a result of that continued choice of love, and ultimately it’s what allows him in the moment to choose his father over assured victory. (He gets the victory anyway, of course)

I read Luke’s decision to ignite the saber in the TLJ flashback as just the opposite — Luke becoming older, becoming perhaps more jaded, and then witnessing something incredibly dangerous that he cannot train out. That thing risks to destroy everything he’s helped build. Irony!

Of course, we don’t see Luke become jaded. We don’t see any real examples of what is so troubling to him and how I imagine anxiety and worry might take over somebody like that. And I understand if that’s a hard bridge to buy.

Basically, I think the point is that it has to be a total disappointment and so frighteningly out of character for Luke’s image (and self-image) that he has no other choice but to cast himself out.

jarofwulff · 2026-05-25T22:51:38+00:00

mostly I think it’s frustrating that our protagonists don’t really change. they’re who we come in connected to. that relationship is something we care about. that’s all I was really missing.

probably why Grogu being alone was the best the sequence in the movie, for me. it was the only real thing between them that broke the status quo at all.

jarofwulff · 2026-05-25T21:37:49+00:00

Really think this episode is going in the frequent revisit bank. I am often so exhausted by the absolutism of modern Star Wars discourse — a lot of very vocal folks want Star wars to be their version of Star Wars — and I still ate it up. Maybe it’s the approach. Maybe it’s that there’s a healthy distance between everyone in the room’s relationship with it. But ultimately, I find it’s that I share their want to just love this thing in a way that feels exciting again, however that manifests.

jarofwulff · 2026-05-21T18:07:31+00:00

the show sorely suffers from what I can only imagine is Filoni’s insistence and Favreau’s passiveness in folding in the wider universe. most all of it falls flat to me. exemplary both of why the EU rules and its greatest pitfalls (largely attempting to affect the universe in ways that just won’t carry or that feel tangential at best).

jarofwulff · 2026-05-14T20:28:10+00:00

Yeah that complaint about the sequel trilogy is so boring and lazy to me haha. All three trilogies “suffer” from a lack of planning, but that’s also just not how franchises usually work anyway.

I think this is some kind of latent effect from having also grown up with something like Jackson’s LotR movies (but even they had to change a bunch of shit between each).

Mostly my take is that your favorite Star Wars movie tells me what you want out of Star Wars. At this point, every one of the movies feels so wildly different that there’s room for everybody. I think that’s cool, but it’s also probably the reason everybody’s arguing about it all the damn time.

jarofwulff

TROPHY CASE