If there was any prequel movie that could be fan-edited into being decent, it would be this one. Just cut out every non-action scene with Anakin, follow Obi-Wan the whole movie, and you have a fun space action movie

While I would NEVER go that far, I will say that of the prequels, Attack of the Clones is the most close to being watchable and enjoyable for me. This is especially weird, because it's also simultaneously one of the worst, certainly visually (goddamn does that early digital cinematography look like ass). The thing is, if you're able to survive the torture-fest that is the 2nd act, I think the last hour is the best continuous chunk of action-adventure from any of the prequels. Phantom Menace I find completely unwatchable, full-stop. ROTS opens strong but gets progressively more terrible, and does the thing I HATE where it will start a cool action sequence and then cut away from it 30 seconds later to some boring political shit only to cut back into it like 20 minutes later when you've already lost all the momentum. The end of AOTC stays in one location, and just builds and builds as it gets crazier and more large scale, and follows the same set of characters throughout all the action. It hews closest to the space adventure kick that I want from that kind of movie. If that section is on cable, I'll usually sit through it cause it's genuinely fun.

You just know they'll end up making that Expendables-style team-up action movie starring digital versions of dead classic-era Hollywood actors, the one George Lucas was threatening to do for awhile. Orson Welles IS Batman, Cary Grant IS Superman, and....introducing Robert Downey Sr as Iron Man

I hope it all burns down, and we get a 70s style resurgence of low-budget creative projects.

Also, I call bullshit on a lot of that article. She talks about DVD sell-through as the holy-grail, except that Hollywood was doing just fine for 60 years before home-media was even a thing to be thinking about, so it seems weird as a crux for the collapse of everything. I suppose that combined with dropping theatrical attendance would do the trick, but she does a poor job of making that clear if that's her point. Also, I think the studios could absolutely get a good chunk of those revenues back via internet distribution if they got their act together and offered proper online distribution world-wide (instead of just the US) at reasonable prices.

It just blows my mind, EVERYTHING about making and distributing movies is easier and cheaper than it has been at any other point in history, yet the studios are terrified, and somehow spending and losing hundreds of millions of dollars on overblown tent-poles. If Shane Carruth can make a movie for 50 grand, do practically same-day self-distribution theatrically and online, and make a pretty big profit, there's no reason others can't follow.
What this tells me really, is that the studios are horribly mis-managed, with people who don't know what they're doing that are pissing the money away, and that deserve to collapse.

Prophecies, Chosen one, characters coming back to life for no reason, fucking with canon for no good reason,
a villain with a secret identity that is revealed half-way through and makes no sense, sounds like a J.J script alright

I agree, loved Small Soldiers as a kid, and it holds up quite well. It's unusually dark and messed up for a kids film, people getting shot with nail-guns, psychotic killer Barbie dolls who try to cut your throat with scissors, wish Pixar was doing stuff like this

Boo, I love most of the Broken arrow score, as well as The Rock, Peacemaker, and Crimson Tide.
Man of Steel was just forgettable as hell. Outside of the theme from the trailer, the music in this could've been done by any throwaway action composer. I am SO sick of the rising strings with banging percussion for 2 hours, there is no reason to settle for this kind of blandness (and hell I liked the Dark Knight Rises score more than most). Alexander Desplat, John Powell, or Jeremy Soule could've nailed this score and done amazing things with it. I've defended Zimmer a lot in the past, but I kinda think he dropped the ball here, and he's really been coasting since Sherlock Holmes and Rango.

Just got out of it. Will have more thoughts later, but as someone who doesn't give a fuck about Superman, I kinda appreciate this movie's massive FUCK YOU attitude. It's like, I know you hate origin stories, so we'll do the origin as quickly as possible in little flashbacks so we can get back to the action. And the action is so ludicrously crazy, it puts the Transformers movies to shame. I don't think its anything more than a watchabley good movie, but at least for me, I don't think you can make a great Superman movie, because he's a totally uninteresting protagonist. At least here, we get to see what a real superhero fight might look like at that scale, so I got my money's worth. Also Hans Zimmer needs to have an intervention so he writes good music again, I miss 90s zimmer

I think he did his best running a state that's pretty much un-runnable. He's got 2 parties that won't compromise,  which means he can't really cut spending, and he can't raise taxes on anything without it going to a public vote, so he can't really raise taxes, hence, the state is screwed with debt. I always saw him as one of the good guys, he was pro-environment, he was pretty liberal on social issues.

Now at an even 60% on RT....yikes, might even end up being rotten, I though this would be in the upper 80s-90s for sure. Did Snyder/Goyer drop the ball? Guess I'll find out this weekend

Great, great episode guys. Perhaps I'll give the movie another shot when it drops below $10. I still maintain its much more admirable of an achievement than it is an actually successful one. And I don't think its a case of the movie being too smart or highbrow, as you guys suggest. I think it has the opposite problem of being waaay too on the nose dialogue-wise. In fact, a lot of my problems with V for Vendetta are mirrored here, I think I just really dislike the way the Wachowski's write dialogue, and I think having to compress these stories as much as they do does their writing no favors. Speed Racer is a similar thing too come to think of it, great editing and story structure choices, but way over-indulgent and too long for its own good. If they had someone to rein them in a bit and polish their work, they could be the visionary's you say they are, but for me they're more miss than hit.

Ultimately, I absolutely see the brilliant editing and mirroring they're doing throughout, but I can't get on board because I keep rolling my eyes every 5 minutes at each of these stories. Its interesting academically, its an impressive accomplishment, I'm glad it got made, but I think the movie deserves a lot of the criticism it's gotten, and I doubt it'll end up being a cult classic in the long run.

You're right though, LOTR has a gritty look that helps ground it, and the way it was shot was a definite part of it. The digital look of these Hobbit films really does them no favors