Fun commentary.

One of the reasons having two conflicting versions of events in the Bible wasn't an issue, I think, is that Hebrew poetry focused on saying the same thing twice in different ways. Thus, you'd have a line about a future King entering entering riding a donkey, followed by another saying he rode on an ass. The point wasn't what he rode on, but that he'd enter like a common person and not royalty. Later you had early Christians, not familiar with poetic forms, try to have Jesus fulfill this prophesy by having him ride TWO animals into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Then they had huge crowds cheer him on, completely missing the point

The original version of Abraham sacrificing his son actually has him do it. If you look at the current story, the passage where he's told to stop is clearly inserted later. The next passage has God praising Abraham for not staying his hand, and Abraham walks down from the hill alone with his son never mentioned again in stories from that source. When child sacrifice was finally abandoned, they did the best they could to clean most of it from the texts.

I think it may be a case of ALLOWING, not releasing. There were two things which Lucas, personally, wanted to never see the light of day again: the original cuts of the first movies, and the Holiday Special. So, what did we see released by Rifftrax within months, if not weeks, of Disney buying Lucasfilm? The video on demand version of their Star Wars Holiday Special riff. Now, Disney did not provide a good copy, as we're seeing the same taped from TV version the original mp3 version was synced to (and which they sort of illegally pointed you to when you bought it), but still. Disney let it come out.

So, what has to happen for us to get the original trilogy? Disney just has to say "yes" when FOX asks. That's it. They need do no work, spend no money. They give FOX whatever assets they need, perhaps, yes, negotiating a fee, and then step aside. Maybe Fox pays them to do the restoration, who knows.

It's not about quality, it's about what is interesting to talk about. Failures can offer more topics for them to cover.

I think this may be the first time you've done a remake where the original was never mentioned. Well, apart from explaining the Hulk bits were a sort of tribute to Bill Bixby.

That sounds a bit like the anime Tenchi Muyo, where a tree forms the heart of space ships. I put a tree in a ship in my Bells Across the Universe books, but just because the designer was a bit too nature loving.

Basically, don't worry about if an idea has been used before. All art is borrowing, be it intentional or accidental. It's all in how you combine the parts with your own style and imagination.

Good Morning Vietnam was the only live action movie of his I really liked, I think. Certainly no others come to mind. Usually I just avoided his stuff as they didn't look like something I was interested in. Always liked him, though. His old standup concerts are on Youtube.

The Alien/Predator thing started with a rather good comic, when Dark Horse realized they had the rights to both movies and crossed them over. That was a year before Predator 2, which was probably just an injoke reference to the comic.

I was just amused at how Disney got the rights to Oswald back. They traded the Football Announcer Al Michaels for him, letting Michaels go to NBC's Sunday Night Football now that ABC had lost its NFL contract. So, Universal gave up something they weren't using in return for Disney letting an employee get the job he wanted. Win-win.

I'm familiar with the guy Eddie interviewed about the comic strip doc. He was on a podcast with three other web comic artists for awhile, promoting a book they were doing about how to make a go of it doing web comics, "Webcomics Weekly". A fun listen, as it dealt with both the artistic and business side, and how to make a living giving your art away.