#also i have to point out how chris performs this as like a statement of fact with statistics and figures

[radiojamming]

Sometimes I think about the Punch Brothers' live cover of Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It's the first cover I've heard that isn't a eulogy and isn't mournful. It's angry. It's a demand. Does anyone know where the love of God goes?

And then the furious stomp that comes with the listing of the Lakes. You can't blame them because it's their nature, but this cover is just so full of rage at what they've taken away.

Anyway, it's good. I like it.

[tiggymalvern]

Burn Noticed 4x18 Last Stand

The disagreements start early in this one!

Bri: There were some really nice character moments that we don’t always get in season finales, and they usually seem forced and they didn’t this time.

Chris: Oh, I totally thought they did 🤪

Chris: Michael decides they need to give the list to someone powerful enough to do something with it, which is what they should have done in the first place instead of messing around with Marv.

Bri: Marv was a respected figure in the community and they trusted him. Cowley’s a loose cannon who’s only it for himself. I understand why they did it the way that they did.

Chris: But they should have expected that the thing that happened would happen.

Bri: I guess if the only CIA agent you ever talk to is this one guy, somebody’s going to buy him off.

Chris: And also the lower you put it into the chain of command, the more options it has to get stopped.

Bri: I love that they consider Cowley to be Madeline’s source. He saw the other guys, he’ll recognise any of them, but no, Madeline’s the one who’ll get through to him. I love the way she Karens her way in – she’s very effective at that. (❤️❤️ Madeline)

On Michael and Fi:

Chris: Fi feels like she’s in an alien vs predator situation – whoever wins she loses. I’m sick and tired of this fight and I hope this is the end of it.

Bri: This is the best terms that they’ve parted on at the end of this episode and I think that we’re finally over it. I think the end of this episode is meant to imply that even if Michael doesn’t turn the CIA down, she wins no matter what.

Chris: I like Fi better in this episode when she’s worried about Jesse. That’s a more immediate concern than rehashing an old fight. They’re busy!

Bri: Yeah, it feels very un-Fi-like. It’s not that she wouldn’t hi-jack a situation to have an emotional conversation – she’s done that and that’s always fun – but it does feel weird when they’re actively strapping Jesse’s leg up.

Michael throws himself off a building.

Bri: It feels very Mission Impossible.

Chris. It did! I like when this show does Mission Impossible.

Bri: Me too! It also felt kind of Die Hard with the siege and I like Die Hard too.

Chris: When I realised they were going to get into this building and stay there for the rest of the episode, I was disappointed.

Bri: Oh, I was excited. I like when they’re forced to improvise from a point of weakness. It’s the Bad Breaks formula.

Madeline and Sam have a parting scene when he says Michael will be mad at him if she stays, and she tells him to stay away from bullets.

Chris: It’s a really cute scene, I like this a lot.

Bri: Anything Madeline’s in is perfect, but also Madeline and Bruce Campbell are fantastic together. I’m still sad that we were robbed of Sam and Madeline’s room-mate adventures.

Chris: Remember when we didn’t like Madeline?

Bri: Well, the show didn’t like Madeline.

Chris: We took our cues from the show, and the show made Madeline suck.

Bri: Even when she was infuriating, she was an excellent performer. (Yes, yes, Sharon Gless ❤️❤️❤️)

But then Madeline gets snatched.

Bri: They should have expected this and had a better plan than, ‘Drive the car that you own and everybody in the intelligence knows that you own.’

I think that’s fair, but Sam was trying to get the Congressman out of there. He didn’t have chance to steal a car for her, and she doesn’t know how. There doesn’t seem to be a great choice here. She could have tried staying in the venue where the fundraiser was being held and being very publicly in a crowd like she did at the end of season two, but I don’t think that would have helped. When the FBI are actively looking for them, she could have been arrested and dragged off from the middle of a crowd just as easily and nobody would have interfered.

Fi and Michael in the pool shack.

Bri: Whatever he might have chosen, she has chosen. This is her statement of, ‘I need to stop pretending that Michael Westen isn’t Michael Westen and I need to decide if I’m okay with that, and I am.’

Chris: Gabrielle Anwar in this scene is really good.

Bri: She fucking kills it.

Chris: He’s good too. He’s really good at playing this character that seems completely unable to show emotion and when he does it looks awkward as hell.

Bri: I like when Sam gets to come in all commando-like and just punch a guy in the face 😁

There’s a discussion about poor story-telling construction at the episode end. Michael gets into the car with the suits, then in the next scene he’s in the car with suits, and suddenly it’s a week later? There’s not even a fade or anything to make it more clear. There’s a voice-over talking about how to deal with being interrogated, but that could equally be an interrogation he’s expecting, not one that he’s just been living through. (There’s a suggestion that on airing it would have cut to commercial between, which might have helped, but not necessarily? You’re still just going from car scene under arrest to car scene under arrest with an assumption that takes a while to be broken.)

And then we see that Michael’s in Washington D.C.

Chris: Season end cliffhangers are a thing that this show does very well.

This is easily a great episode of Burn Notice for the podcasters - it passes every one of their metrics. It does not, however, rate being a great episode of television. They say it’s very solid, but not quite making the bar.

Season overview: 10 great episodes of Burn Notice and 5 great episodes of television. Per the podcasters, the strongest season of BN so far.

Chris: Jesse forced them to do more with the plot plot.

Bri: We actually got to sit with people – every conflict felt earned. We got to know Vaughn and it was vindicating that he was taken down. We got Larry and Brennen – we know all these people, and the show got to capitalize on its own history. Jesse forced them to do a lot more interesting things too – having to see Michael and team make morally questionable decisions made the plot more interesting.

Chris: Vaughn didn’t have that much more screen time than like Carla, but it was more satisfying.

Bri: Carla only talked to Michael, but Vaughn interfaced with Fi and had opinions on what they should do about Jesse. (Hard agree, and also I still wish we’d kept that cut scene with Sam and Vaughn outside the hospital.)

Chris: I feel like this was the first season of Burn Notice that was competently executed as a season.

Bri: I agree. It had an equally strong first and second half in terms of what their goal was. It felt cohesive even as they were separate little macro-plots. By the end of the season, our gang of four feel like a really well-oiled machine.

However the yoghurt count this season was low 🤪🤪🤪

The podcast episode concludes with a discussion of how they're going to have to change their metrics for rating a great episode of Burn Notice again next season - and Madeline getting a good role is going to be included, yay! Because Madeline really is a fully active team member now 😁😁😁

[shayshaybiscuit25]

Goodness me, my original ask started some mess I see. 😅

Shay this is a bit long, but I think I make decent points & dropped some truth bombs that everyone can agree with regardless of how they feel. Thank you all for reading and ……..here we go……… 🫣😮‍💨

Let’s begin……..for those who really believe Chris is racist or ain’t shit for associating with these fools……why be here at all?

As mentioned before, many of us believe this is PR and understand we do NOT know details. On the outside looking in it’s very easy to go “omg why didn’t he just end this, he’s just like them”, yet we also understand Hollywoood is a business, yes?

We understand complex things go on behind the scenes that look so simplistic and easy to us from our limited perspective.

Yes, I understand things look awful, but I need people to understand we don’t know what the hell is truly going on and I say that because it’s clear as day that something is off.

Look if Chris were selling this and acting like nothing was wrong then everyone would be losing their minds, and she would have ammo, but enough stuff has happened where you can see he doesn’t like her, he’s performing and that’s probably why he’s acting has switched up (having to horribly act in real life is affecting his actual craft) there are numerous holes in the cheese 🧀 of course the question stems…..then why marry the girl especially knowing she has racist friends…….please go back and refer to the previous and third red paragraphs.

We might not know details but we know Chris isn’t comfortable in this arrangement, of course many reading will roll their eyes at this statement, okay fair. 🙄

I’ll do you all one better, karma is real and for those that aren’t aware. Yesterday Justin (the wife’s soulmate) stood up for one of his racist friends in a post. He has some female friend on a Big Brother type show in Europe and the girl has been recorded on camera doing the damn Nazi Salute and people are pissed…..Justin’s dumbass makes a post basically saying the girl (his friend) doing the Nazi salute is ��misunderstood” and a good person or some crap……. The entire time I’m like…..let me sit back and see how this plays out…..and if it gets tied back to Evans, I doubt it but let’s see. 👀 🧋 (this emoji represents me sipping my boba “tea”) 🤭

Chris does need to be called out and if this shitshow goes public public to the point the general population learns what fans know and it becomes a big deal, you’d better believe we’d end up getting a BUA and then some within mere hours or days (remember his response to the bomb pic)……do i believe any of that will happen…..nope. And if that went down like that, I’d question his ass even more.

No one here has issue with people calling Chris out, it’s those who act like they know more than they do, who take their own opinions as facts and are 100% sure he’s racist and calling him pedo or whatever else that has me like……well damn if you think that’s true and hate him that much…….then leave. I would not waste my time on a person I truly thought was evil and vile.

See, I care about this man and as time goes by we see truth and some of us see what we want while ignoring the rest, apply that as you will, come next month, I think people will finally end up determining their final thoughts on things and if it ends with “fuck Chris Evans”, then so be it. He made his bed and now he’s laying in it.

Eventually we’ll all find out the truth if it’s real or if this is all bs and the pr eventually ends…..well just know they’ve parted ways and many will still claim it was real.

I say don’t get overly invested in this emotionally, but TOO LATE! 😬 This could be the situation Chris needs to be and do better and finally own his awful choices or to take and not run from accountability (remember how we’d always use to get Dodger pics when he did something stupid publicly) or it could be a situation he’s initiated that went out of control and he has to FINALLY reap the consequences of his actions/inactions. I don’t know what is going to happen next, but if him and Mrs. Shower scrubber do anything else other than breakup next month, it’s a wrap on my end.

Yeah I think it’s pr, but I have limits and he’s on his 73892929 strike. Keeping it honest, most of us should have left once he claimed to be “married”, yet we’re still here, so yeah can’t no one point any fingers. We’re all still here hoping something ends up making sense and to hope our fav actor really isn’t out here playing in our faces.

It’s very easy to go well Chris is this and that due to this situation, but once one starts remembering in detail everything that’s happened, part of you goes…….something is 110% off here. @anneslibrary is a great reference because it’s so easy to forget how much things don’t make sense and that blog helps people see the big picture and go……yeah…..I’m not falling for this bs. 😂 So to sum it up, yes many of us are pissed at Chris, but his saving grace is that there are so many holes in this mess that it’s easy to jump and attack him without knowing details and so we’re hoping more details arise to the point we can go……yeah this 100% is fake and was never real, he got looped in some mess and only discovered things once the fandom did but it was too late and I’m glad it’s finally over. Okay….yes I’m reaching like crazy, but you’re still here reading my long as diary entry, right. 😉 For me September 2024 will be thee month I decide if I’ll permanently walk away. If they do any more crap, I’m done, point blank.

Enough is enough. I do understand those pissed and wondering why we’re still here…..I’ve been a fan of this man for years and it’s not so easy to walk away, call it excuses, but I just don’t think this situation is a grand total of who he is but if I’m proven wrong then it is what it is, but I don’t think I’m wrong.

Chris needs to take accountability and ending this bs would be the first step and then we can all judge in grand detail how he handles the aftermath of shit, would he give clues to show it wasn’t real, will he do a grand gesture that is a lowkey apology to the fandom…..doubt it, but I refuse to believe this mess is legit, unless he’s proven with legit detail (other than he publicly claims to be married, yet there’s no evidence he’s actually gotten married other then a oversized ring and orchestrated bs) that he’s just a shitty racist husband who can’t keep his eyes to himself and really married her and if so then I’ll GLADLY FINALLY move on with my life. Noted. And yes those snarky few of you still reading, I’m in the denial phase of the grieving process. 😂

Either way ya look at it Chris doesn’t get of Scotch free and even if this does end next month……too much damage has been done. Part of me is here because I’m watching a train that already crashed multiple times and I’m wondering if it’s going to keep going with limited damage or will it eventually blow up into pieces.

I hope I was able to make you guys laugh, piss you off and in the end make you go, yep you summed up my multiple thoughts. 🤗🫠 or you’ve probably read all of this and went, this bitch is crazy, I’ll take it because you still sat here and read to the end so,….. Hi crazy! 😝

I’m done now. 😆 thanks!

Oh Sweetheart this was beautiful and longggggggggggggggg but so beautiful.

Thank you.

[denimbex1986]

"..I had kind of like a Wikipedia level knowledge of the, of the events I guess."

"I fancy myself a bit of a student of this period in time; I thought it was great the way that Chris chose expertly to cast this guy, it's a - it's literally a generation defining performance, and it's crazy too that you took all those swings at doing other projects with him and they all kind of come together in this one big partnership."

"...I think, you know, what happened in 45 completely changed history, completely changed the world, and we live in the shadow of what happened in 45 now; and people choose to think about it or not. So I think in those terms, for sure - for sure."

"...Chris talked Mozart and Salieri, and I think that was just a great shorthand, and even just by the time I was on set seeing how Cillian had embodied this character to the point where you go like: 'I feel like I'm practically with the guy', you can't help but feel a little bit iced out by it. Now Cillian is so warm and nice and inviting, but then we'd roll, and I'd feel like he was looking through me like I didn't exist. And I was like: 'That sucks', and I can only imagine there was a lot of people who felt that way. Lewis Strauss was in a position to so something about it; I don't know how culpable he was for that, but it is a story of how small, imagined slights between important people can have big impacts."

"Yeah, and that's the, the beauty of the story. It's you know, these, these - this tiny story in one way between these two men, out of this ginormous story about, about you know, life and death really."

"...I do think it may provoke people to go and read about this if they so wish, you know what I mean? But no, it's, it's, it's - it's entertaining and thrilling, but I do think it will be very thought-provoking as well."

"...If a piece of art can like, alter your emotions and kind of mess you up, I mean that's - that's something profound."

"I think part of it too is - and I think Chris is obviously just a master storyteller, but to achieve what Oppenheimer did and to be that conflicted about it, but to be so praised for it - that's why there's themes in this film about being held up in this rarified air for something that you're so conflicted about, and I think we can, I think we can feel that about - I mean, we'll just say it - the way your life is changing now, you're going to be in front of this huge film and we always have two sets of feelings. One is: 'That's great, and maybe I'll have even more opportunities for roles', the other is: 'What about my privacy and this and that?' Writ large as it affected the planet, I think every time they were giving him a round of applause and stomping their feet, he felt a little bit awful."

"Yeah, yeah., absolutely."

"Well, like I said earlier, I think it asks the biggest, hugest, most complex kind of questions, the most profound kind of ethical and moral, and moral questions, but at the same time, it is SO thrilling."

"...it kind of grabs you by the neck from the, from the first frame and you're kind of in it, you know? And I, and it also kind of sometimes has a kind of horror element to it; do you feel that?"

"Big time."

"It has so many different components to it; and it's entertaining in so many different ways - and again, challenging. What I love about these films, the sorts of films that Chris makes is he presupposes that the audiences are smart - which they are - you know? And he's done that all the way through with his films."

"I would say too that, look, we've been in this really odd thousand days of wondering even what the future of entertainment was going to be - and this is a definitive statement that cinema is moving forward while staying connected to its roots, and there's a purist element to this, but it is also every bit as cool and fun a ride as any genre movie you're going to see this summer for sure."

"...I'm always down for getting spartan and stripping things away; it's not easy because I'm a little bit of a Mexican jumping bean by nature, but it was a gift, being able to do all these scenes with you as you carried this film as exceptionally as you did was just an honor dude."

"Well likewise, man."

"...it scared me, I mean nowhere near as much as I'm sure when you first read this thing and go: 'Oh my God, I have to do this whole thing because Chris just called'. But anyway I got to, I got to experience it; it was also nice to have the pressure off, I was like: 'Let this guy do the heavy lifting.'...I'd come in: "Hey I had like four days off I was just kind of, you know, antiquing around Santa Fe, what have you been up to?" and he'd be like: "Are we running the lines?""

"...by the way, Santa Fe, fantastic. Now, he was also at all the locations where there was like, you know, 60 mile an hour winds and all that stuff, I - I hung out for the kind of pleasant, the pleasant fare, weather-wise."

"I didn't antique; I didn't do antiquing. I didn't even know it was a verb, actually."

[artist-issues]

@magicmumu2 thank you for actually taking something from the original movie as evidence for the actual conversation we’re having, genuinely. That’s what I’m asking people to do, and so far, you’re the only one who’s done it (not the second person responding to me.)

To your point:

The manager who made the decision to fire Nani is just as Hawaiian as Nani is, and he fired her because her dog attacked a guest. Nani calls it a “stupid, fakey luau” because she’s mad that she’s getting fired, with no indication that she dislikes the job because it’s an insult to her culture anywhere in the rest of the scene.

They had an opportunity to show “the kid at Table 3” who was throwing poi, and show him to be a little gremlin of a tourist, and imply that white colonists or tourists are part of what makes Nani’s life hard. But they didn’t show that. Because it’s not the focus of any of the scenes.

The only shot that reveals any of the rest of the patrons of this Luau is one while David is fire dancing (which, by the way, there’s an entire shot devoted to him smiling around a mouthful of incendiary liquid, enjoying the show he’s about to wow them with. Not insulted that they paid to watch a display of a traditional fire dance, probably Siva Afi or something like it from the way the artists drew the type of knife/torch he’s holding.) and the tourists were not drawn carefully—you can see that the large bald white guy is duplicated and flipped with a different shirt pattern, and so is the woman seated behind him, on either side of the shot. If the artists wanted to make a statement about the kind of awful patrons that come to a “fakey luau,” they would’ve taken more care drawing them. They wouldn’t have slightly blurred out the only shot where the design of the luau is seen in full, and the kind of people who make such a luau possible, the touristy-patrons, were visible. Right?

Whereas when Disney wants to draw a crowd that is awful, and exploits others because they’re different, they do it with establishing shots like this:

This is from Hunchback of Notre Dame. In the first screenshot you can see the character’s faces close enough to read expressions, which are laughing and cruel. In Lilo & Stitch, no time is taken to create an environment of offense or hostility in the luau.

In the second screenshot, you can’t tell because it’s a screenshot, but it’s a Dutch Angle, where the camera is tilting to convey that something is terribly wrong like they do in horror films, and again, you can actually read the faces of the cruel crowd in an environment that is hostile to Quasimodo. And then obviously in the second screenshot the two guys tormenting Quasimodo have enough camera-focus on them to show their evil expressions, but I also thought it was a nice touch that they gave them hats and backlit them so that their eyes were in dark shadow, making them look more ominous.

None of that time and care was put into creating an environment or backdrop of racism, hostility, or fakeness in the luau scene. Nothing looks cheaply made. David doesn’t look unhappy performing. Nani doesn’t look like she hates the job (just a regular dislike of a rowdy customer who’s throwing a traditional Hawaiian dish, by the way) until she’s fired, and then she responds that way to communicate she’s an 18 year-old who just lost her job in an already-tense situation, and that’s how any young distraught woman would try to save-face in that situation.

Also, the two guys sitting in the front row to the left of David are an Easter egg of the directors, Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders.

If the directors of the movie wanted to portray the luau as fake, exploitative, and despised by the main characters, why would they draw themselves in the front row happily applauding David’s performance?

Thank you gain for making n actual point. I appreciate it. Just because it didn’t convince me doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it or it wasn’t a good point to bring up; when I mull the idea of “is Lilo & Stitch about racism” over, it is true that that was the only line in the movie that presented itself to my brain (outside of the deleted scenes) as a possibility.

That’s It.

I’m tired of seeing everyone repeat the same four points: “1) Nani gives Lilo to the state! 2) Hawaii has a better marine biology program than San Fransisco! 3) Jumba doesn’t get redeemed! 4) Pleakley’s not wearing a dress!”

Those are not the only things that were bad about this remake. You could easily tell it was going to be all that and more beforehand, but most people’s reaction to the trailer was “it’s surprisingly good!” and now they’re acting all surprised. If you didn’t see this coming, enough to purchase a ticket, you’re part of the problem and you don’t get the original movie any more than the people who made this remake did.

So I’m done being quiet, this is the Lilo & Stitch 2025 Takedown Post.

And as usual the only good thing about an attempted-remake is that it gives people a reason to think about what made the original so good.

Let’s go in order. But just scroll down to the Heading you Care About if you don’t want to read all this.

1. Cobra Bubbles

In this movie, Cobra Bubbles is a secret agent hunting for aliens and they have a new character take his place as the state social worker.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With this Change: “We shouldn’t have a black man or a government worker feel like an insensitive antagonist to Lilo’s family.”

That’s a stupid surface-level one-dimensional misread of the character from the original…and it wouldn’t have been hard, at all, for a child to explain to the 2025 filmmakers that Cobra is not an insensitive antagonist in the original.

Cobra Bubbles is not insensitive and he is not in any way portrayed as a bad guy in the original. Nani sees him that way, Nani sees him as antagonistic, because he’s the representation of Lilo being taken away.

But Nani is wrong about him and learns that she is wrong about him by the end of the movie.

Can we please make a list?

Cobra’s first interaction with the caretaker of the child he was being sent to protect was that she ran out into the road, yelled at a complete stranger, and dented his car.

Then he found her locked out of the home and threatening the child inside with a hammer in her hand.

Then he found out the stove was on while she was out, and she’d left a 7 year-old alone.

The 7 year-old made comments about being disciplined with bricks and a pillow case.

The 7 year-old looks like she might be more than a little emotionally unbalanced because she’s figuring out how to put voodoo spells on her friends to punish them.

He still gave that pair of sisters three days to straighten the ship. When in actuality, in 2002, under HRS §587-73, (don’t play with me) the social worker would’ve been well within his rights to remove the child from the home right then. But instead he gives her three days to fix it. THEN

The 18 year-old loses her job.

The family gets a “dog” who he is implied to know is an alien, right off the bat.

The alien is violent and wreaks havoc across town.

The 7 year-old almost drowns while they surf instead of find a job.

He lets the child and caretaker have one more night together to say goodbye, but when he’s on the way to get her he gets a call that she’s being attacked by aliens, hears a chainsaw, and finds the house on fire.

Do you understand what I’m saying.

Cobra Bubbles had NO BUSINESS being as BIG A SOFTIE AS HE WAS for all of the original movie. He was not only well within his legal rights to take Lilo away from Nani immediately, but he was actually required by law, it was his DUTY, to remove her immediately. But he didn’t do that. Why?

Now listen to me very carefully.

Lilo and Stitch is a movie about how “Family chooses to love and commit to one another selflessly, no matter what the other person can do for them or how hard they make it.” The fancy way they say it is just “Ohana means family: family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”

Did you catch that? “No matter how hard they make it.”

Cobra Bubbles was a CIA agent before this. A CIA agent who saved the planet, by doing what? Convincing an alien race to leave them alone. Oh, he didn’t fight them off? No. How? He “convinced” them? He talked it out? Sounds like a pretty compassionate guy, for all his tough exterior. How did he do that?

He could’ve picked any animal that’s actually endangered. The filmmakers chose to make him the guy who convinced aliens to value mosquitos.

MOSQUITOS. Creatures that give nothing, only take. Ugly little bloodsucking monsters. That’s the creature he convinced them to care about enough to save the planet.

NOW do you have any trouble understanding why this is the specific social worker who would give an alien-infested dumpster fire of a dangerous home a chance when two sisters are about to be torn apart?

Do you see that Cobra is just another example of the grace that the movie is always talking about? The love that transforms someone from bad to good simply because it refuses to give up even when it gets nothing out of it? I’m repeating myself because I want you to see why he was a well-done character who NEEDED NO CHANGE.

Cobra Bubbles’ character is not an insensitive monster who doesn’t care who his actions hurt as long as he gets the job done. But you know who that does sound like?

2. Gantu

Gantu is not in the remake at all.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “It’s going to cost us upwards of 1.5 millions of dollars to design, sculpt, rig, animate, and render a character this big in addition to finding a suitable voice actor to play the part.”

This is a really dumb choice for several reasons. A. Without Gantu, there is no “stakes-raiser” to Lilo and Nani’s story. The movie has no climax without him. For the first and second acts of the movie, it’s about a grieving pair of girls trying to prove themselves to a social worker while the story-equivalent of Beethoven the Destructive St. Bernard wacky Jumba & Pleakley antics get in their way. But when a 40-foot tall alien stomps into their lives and abducts Lilo & Stitch in a spaceship that careens around the island during an explosive sky-chase scene, now you have a high-octane, somebody-could-die climax.

B. Without Gantu, Stitch looks weaker. The climax gave Stitch a reason to come out of the wackadoo puppy he’s been posing as and suddenly remind everybody that he’s a lethal weapon who can survive thousand-foot drops, lava, and astronomic explosions—and a giant alien’s Thanos-dwarfing fist. Take him out and who do we have as a match for Stitch to go up against, even for a moment, and prove how much he’s changed to be willing to risk his freedom and fight?

C. Without Gantu you have no villain to reflect that STITCH is no longer a villain. (So they substituted Jumba.)

But the reason this character is really worth millions is, again, the theme.

I told you Cobra Bubbles was a character who did not put “duty” or even “convenience” or “position” over the real lives of Lilo and Nani. He saw that there was love there, and in his own way, he gave it a chance. And even when he chose to take Lilo away, he did it carefully; he gave them time to say goodbye.

GANTU IS THE OPPOSITE OF COBRA BUBBLES.

Gantu is the insensitive, uncaring, unyielding Captain whose commitment to duty turns into rage and cruelty. Not Cobra.

Nani thinks Cobra is walking in a threatening to tear apart their family in a display of government judgement. But that’s what Gantu literally does.

His first reaction to Stitch is to call for his destruction. Without even waiting to see if “it can be reasoned with” like the Grand Councilwoman suggests. He’s merciless. He mocks Stitch when Stitch is captive. And he knows that he caught Lilo, a human, along with him. He doesn’t care. He even suggests that Stitch eat her as a snack.

There are only two other characters who laugh at others’ misfortune in the movie. One is Stitch, the original villain. Then love changes him. The other is Jumba, who made Stitch. Then love changes him. But Gantu never gets changed. He’s only concerned with his job, and with personally annihilating the flaws he sees in Stitch.

Gantu is unyielding, ungracious, and cruel. And he’s big and powerful enough to be a test for Stitch to prove he’s changed. For the benefits he brings to the story, he’s worth 1.5 million and more. But they cut him anyway.

3. Jumba

In the new movie, Jumba is a villain through-and-through with designs on overthrowing the Galactic Council using Stitch, and instead of being redeemed, he’s sentenced to prison.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “We can’t spend money on our real villain so we’ll just keep Jumba evil.”

The reason this is dumb is obvious. They created their own problem, and the ‘fix’ makes the movie weaker, not stronger. But here’s how.

In the original, Jumba is introduced as trying to self-protect. He’s on trial, and he lies. But when Stitch is revealed, he’s genuinely passionate about the thing he’s created. And he cares about image. He prefers to be called “evil genius,” and he hates the headlines labelling him “idiot scientist.”

You have to remember he’s part of “Galaxy Defense Industries.” They had him making weapons of destruction anyway. He just got too into it with his genetic Experiments, went a little insane.

I’m not downplaying the fact that Jumba is evil at the start of the movie. He is. It is evil to be outcasted from society and then respond to that with, “well, if they’re going to treat me like an idiot, I’LL SHOW THEM, I won’t care about anything except my passion for mad science!” That’s evil.

But it also explains a lot.

I said it in another post. Jumba’s whole utility as a character is that he knows who and what Stitch really is, better than anyone. He made him to be a monster who can’t belong and wreaks havoc on everybody else’s ‘place of belonging.’ Jumba is the audience’s insider’s perspective on what is going on in Stitch’s head, at first.

But when he’s redeemed, it happens fast. And why? Because that’s how plain and simple Stitch is, as a character. Jumba knows Stitch is a disgusting little monster with nothing inherently loveable about him, and no “greater purpose.” So when his disgusting monster is loved by someone? When his disgusting monster is willing to ask him, Jumba, for help? Something totally outside his programming, totally not what Jumba thought he’d ever be capable of?

That proves to Jumba, in an instant, that there’s love out there that transforms. And creates a place of belonging.

There were already germs of that, a desire to belong, a compassion, in Jumba after he reached earth.

He doesn’t try to get Nani fired, he offers an explanation for Pleakley’s swollen head.

He claims he won’t hit Lilo (why would he care about collateral damage?)

He sounds sorry for Nani when she’s upset about losing Lilo, and tries to keep Stitch from bothering her.

My point is, Jumba’s redemption isn’t important because it’s cute or because we need to set up the big happy found-family trope everybody loves.

Jumba’s redemption is important because it is just one more PROOF that what’s happened to Stitch is so incredible. The love Jumba finds transforming his monster is enough to transform Jumba, too.

But sure, fine, whatever, make him a soulless one-dimensional talking head. Whatever.

4. Stitch’s Design

In this movie, Stitch is cuter than he is ugly, and he’s half Lilo’s size.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “Ugly-cute doesn’t come across as well in ‘live action’ animation. And all the Wal-Mart moms remember Stitch as ‘cute.’ Plus we’ll save about 15% in rendering the animation.”

This is crippling to the characterization of Stitch.

Stitch is supposed to be an echo of who Lilo could become now that she’s lost her parents and may be losing Nani. This scene:

Where Jumba points out that Stitch has nothing, and destruction is his only purpose, is the evidence for that. But Chris Sanders, who made this whole story, also point-blank said it. Stitch is a future Lilo, if she loses her family.

So that’s reason number 1 that he should be her same height. But also, practically, no iconic pair of best friends, yin and yang, have visuals where one is smaller than the other. Especially not if one of them is supposed to be disguised as a pet.

The point is, Stitch is not LILO’s pet. He is her best friend, her other half. But between the muzzle-muscles they worked into his upper lip and the darkened dog nose and the butt-scooting across the floor, the remake is trying to make him more pet-like in relation to Lilo.

That’s not what he is.

I said this in another post. But Stitch is supposed to throw food to the back of his head like a gator—his lips are not designed for forming words. His gums and teeth are supposed to look like a shark’s. His nose is supposed to be too big, stamped into his face. His ears are supposed to be like bat ears, not bunny ears. He hunches forward, instead of bending at the waist like a toddler. His eyes can narrow to lizard slits.

He has to look like he can believably be a disgusting monster. Yes, he can also be cute. But he has to first look like a monster. Because that’s what he really is, in the story. If he isn’t, then LILO’s love for him doesn’t look as powerful.

It is easy to love a cat even if it scratches you, because it’s cute. It’s harder to love a life-sized spider that keeps knocking you down and eating your prized possessions and laughing when you get hurt. Stitch is supposed to be closer to the second one, so that Lilo’s love shines brighter.

But also, practically:

She can’t look him in the eye for emotional shots when he’s that short. He’ll always have to awkwardly be standing on a box or a chair or a bed.

How is he going to scoop her up, hero-style, and leap off of an exploding spaceship with her in his arms, when he’s half her size? He could do it: it’ll look stupid, though. So they just don’t have that part in the movie.

She can pick him up. That alone is demeaning and again, the visuals are silly. Not what we’re going for.

5. Lilo’s Personality

In this movie, Lilo doesn’t like weird stuff, and she screams when she first meets Stitch. There’s no problem that this solves. It’s just laziness and a lack of care about the characters.

I would like to remind you that the original Lilo:

Made her own doll that looks like a shrunken head and pretended a bug laid eggs in her ears.

Makes up stories about a fish that controls the weather and actively deep-sea dives to bring it peanut butter sandwiches.

Has a knee-jerk reaction of using practical voodoo spells on friends who wrong her.

Listens exclusively to Elvis Presley.

Fills baby bottles with coffee.

Believes Nani’s manager is a vampire.

Has fishing nets and seashells in her room for decoration.

takes safari pictures of overweight bleached tourists.

meets a social worker and her first impulse is to ask if he’s killed someone.

Nails the door shut when she’s mad at her big sister.

She’s not friends with pound dogs in that original movie; when they first get there she acts like she’s never been in the kennel before, and originally wants a pet lobster.

I know that we all love that little girl they got to play Lilo, but if you were really being objective, you’d acknowledge that she’s a little girl. She’s not Lilo. She’s a cute little girl.

They did not write Lilo into the 2025 movie. They wrote any old little girl.

You should have known, from the moment she first sees Stitch and her reaction is to scream in the trailer, that THAT IS NOT LILO.

Lilo had a very specific set of characterizations. She was a character with a personality that exploded out of the screen. Every other character in the movie meets Stitch and reacts with disgust.

But not. LILO. She’s the only one to react to him like THIS:

She is literally not like anyone else. She’s doesn’t care that he’s ugly. Or weird. Or blue. Or even bat an eye when he can talk with all those shark teeth.

From Moment One, Lilo chooses Stitch. She chooses to love him. Regardless of what he can do for her. Regardless of how many times he pushes her over or rips up her house or makes her relationship with Nani harder. That is the number one thing about Lilo.

She is desperate for people to stay, but she chooses to love Stitch even though he’s a monster. And she tries to make him better. And her love succeeds in transforming him when nothing else could.

Lilo’s personality traits all mean something in the story. (I.e. she likes Elvis because she’s clinging to the past, she snaps pictures of tourists like they’re safari animals because they’re inherently people who LEAVE and she has issues with LEAVING, etc.) But the thing I think that was so obvious that the moviemakers missed for 2025 is she has to be weird. If she’s not weird, there’s no reason for her not to have friends. And if she has friends, what does she need Stitch for?

But also, Lilo’s personality in the new movie is just boring. Cute. But boring. Cute’s not that great of an accomplishment; any 7 year-old is cute.

6. Nani

I don’t think you guys need to know this. It’s not just that Nani leaves. It’s that “take care of yourself” is the exact opposite of the selfless message of the movie.

In the beginning, Lilo literally argues with Nani after being told she’s “such a pain,” and goes, “why don’t you SELL ME and buy a RABBIT INSTEAD?”

And then breaks down and cries at the thought of Nani wishing she had a rabbit instead of Lilo, later.

Because Lilo is afraid of people leaving. But Nani won’t leave her. Nani loses her job, her own life, because of Lilo. But she’s desperate to keep Lilo anyway, because she loves her. Don’t you understand? The message of the movie was about self-sacrificial love. A love that doesn't care what I get out of the relationship.

Nani starts it. But you know what, David loves her like that, too. And then Lilo transfers it to Stitch, who shows it off to Jumba. It’s a chain reaction, but Nani is spearheading it.

You realize that when their parents died, Nani already would’ve been in high school? With a whole life of her own? Her own friends, her own potential boyfriend, a job she went to, surf competitions (the trophies are in her room.) Lilo would’ve been well aware that that was the status-quo: Nani has her own life. And even a seven year-old can see that that life is being put on hold, but maybe the big sister wants to go back to it, at every turn.

The fact that Nani never does that, never expresses a desire for that, only ever expresses a desire to keep Lilo with her, is huge. It’s the core of the movie.

I don’t think that needs any more explaining.

We could talk more. Like about how Lilo needs to see that Stitch is an alien, because that’s the ultimate test: he’s one of the monsters who destroyed her house, he’s been lying to her and using her as a human shield, he’s a criminal—but she still winds up giving everything up to protect him.

Anyway. My neck hurts and I don’t want to type anymore. But we could talk about the music, the social worker, the grand councilwoman—it just doesn’t matter.

Ya’ll had more than enough details in the trailer to be able to not go see this movie because it was obviously going to ruin everything. But instead you chose to make this twisted corpse “the highest-grossing movie of any Memorial Day.” You bought tickets because they ruined a perfect movie and slapped together an uglier package for you.

Whatever. It was my favorite movie today, it’ll be your Treasure Planet or Tangled tomorrow. Keep riiiight on giving them your money, and keep letting influencers regurgitate the same four obvious facts to you over and over, because they paid Disney to make a talking-point for their content benefit. Whatever.

[whyshouldelisabesad]

I could’ve died right there, ‘cause he was right beside me | Chapter VI

yes i somehow managed to finish this fic before wednesday :-) the extent of my research was a healthline and verywell health article so yay for accuracy! and i did see the brain scans in the operating room in the surgery scene, which makes me infer the armitage’s also had an mri machine

Disclaimer: I do not claim to own any characters here, except my original ones

Synopsis: You married Jeremy Armitage on whim, but you had no clue what you were in for. Now, all you want is to get out — or die trying

TWs: Emotional Abuse, Imprisonment, Implied Surgery

AO3 link

< Previous Chapter | Current Chapter: VI | Next Chapter >

Stay calm.

Stay calm.

You try repeating that to yourself. 

No. You’re fucked.

You’re fucked. 

You look at your restraints and breathe in. Maybe you could wiggle a hand out? No. It’s too tight. You move your head down to bite them off, but it still doesn't work. Your back hurts. 

You continued trying to wiggle a hand out when, all of a sudden, Rose walked in, wearing a pair of scrubs. You didn’t have an inkling of what was going on, since you were still delirious, so you called to her, 

“Rose!”

She turned over, absentmindedly, “Oh, you’re awake,”

“How long have I been out?”

“An hour. Or two.”

“Look, I know you hate Jeremy. I know you’ve always hated him. Please. Help me get out, I’ll get him out of the picture, and you get the Armitage’s inheritance. Deal?”

“Now, why on earth would you ever do that?”

“Oh, right. You need someone to perform the surgery. But my point still stands. Please, let me out, and we can-”

Rose broke your sentence with a bitter laugh. “You immature, spoiled, bitch. You still think money can solve everything? You know, I thought you’d grow up, but you just had to prove me wrong?”

“What?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I do hate Jeremy, but nothing he did was as bad as going to Chris fucking Washington!”

“Oh, so you’re mad about that.”

“No, stop talking. You know what I’ve been seeing for the past few months? My baby brother, he hasn’t been sleeping whenever you were drunk or high, he tolerated your bitch-ass insulting him, and he’s working his ass off to keep you alive. And you thank him by trying to fucking kill him?! If I had a choice, I’d tell him to just kill you and hide your body, your dad doesn’t mind, but noooo, he’d rather try and help you and shit.”

“I didn’t ask for it!”

“Well, you’d be dead without it.”

“What the actual fuck?!”

Rose smiled coldly. “I’ll go tell your surgeon you’re awake.”

If you were more alert, you would’ve called Rose’s bullshit in her statement, and you would’ve spotted the manipulation, but you didn’t. Instead, a part of you wondered if she might be right. Jeremy was working his ass off for you, as much as you wanted to brush it off as him being possessive. And despite everything, despite the all-consuming hatred you held for him, he still appeared to love you. Hell, he actually still loved you. Maybe Rose was right. Maybe you were wrong for trying to kill him…

No! 

Don’t think like that!

You snapped back into alertness. If everything was correct, you were probably about to get lobotomized, and that was not happening to you. You made a plan. Get out of your restraints, grab that bocce ball and/or deer head, and make a run for it. You began pulling your arms and legs out of the restraints. They didn’t budge. You were getting more desperate now, and you felt a panic attack about to set in when the door opened. Jeremy walked in, in a pair of light blue scrubs and that light grey undershirt. His hair, which he appeared to just wash and dry, was tied up into a neat bun.

He seemed unusually calm. Unlike himself earlier. That scared you. It either meant you were fine, or he was about to beat the living shit out of you. 

“Hey, baby, are you ok?”

“No. I’m not ok at all.”

He grabbed a chair from outside and sat down next to you. “That’s ok. I understand that.”

“What the fuck are you people going to do to me?”

Jeremy had a long sigh, then touched your face, gently, “You’re having brain surgery.”

You froze. You’d suspected it, yes, but it seemed like a crazy conspiracy theory at first. Hearing him say that made it real for you. You began to hysterically scream, hoping that Rose’s boyfriend upstairs might hear you. Jeremy just wiped his face and sighed. Confused, you asked,

“Is there even an auction tomorrow?”

“No.”

“What the actual fuck?

“Me and your dad planned this from the night of the fight. We agreed to hide it from you because you’d panic and try to run away, and we had to get you out here with the excuse of the party.”

“So this isn’t retaliation for Chris?”

“No. You would’ve still gotten the surgery either way. I planned it for yesterday. And forget about Chris. You don’t have to worry about him again.”

“What are you going to do to me?” you asked him, your voice shaky.

Jeremy took a deep breath. “First of all, it’s called a cingulotomy. It essentially burns away some of your brain tissue. You won’t feel anything, but you won’t be unconscious since it makes it riskier, and me and Rose aren’t anesthesiologists. So you’ll be in the sunken place. I’ll have to keep you here for observation for 4 days, so we’ll go back to New York Wednesday morning, or Tuesday night.”

“I shouldn’t be having this,” you stammered.

“Yes, you should. I accessed your psychiatrist’s records, it says you were diagnosed as bipolar at 13. And cingulotomies can help those with bipolar.”

“Shouldn’t this shit be planned?”

“Yes, it was. Remember those MRIs I made you do a few weeks back? They showed me where to perform the procedure. And when you were out, me and Rose put you in the machine down the hall to confirm things again. You’ll be ok. Trust me.”

“Why? I’m about to get lobotomized by some sadistic freak in his basement”

Jeremy sighed for a while, looked down at his sneakers, stomped them, then told you, “Yes, I’m sadistic. I know I enjoy doing the Coagula far too much, that’s for sure. But I’m your husband. You’re part of my family. And I don’t enjoy seeing my family hurt.” Sensing your continued distrust, he smiled and told you, “And besides, I’ve been in on brain surgeries for what? 20 years? Let’s see, 3 years watching my dad do the Coagula, 4 years of pre-med, 4 years of med school, 7 years of residency and 2 years practicing. You’re in good hands.”

You didn’t hear any of that. You were still finding any method of escaping, be that manipulating him, fighting him, or just sneaking out. But it finally dawned on you.

You weren’t getting out of this.

And you began to sob.

Brutal, shaking sobs.

Jeremy noticed, went over to you, and wrapped his arms around you. You thought it was smothering. He held you, letting you cry for a few minutes, then picked up your chin and told you,

“Hey. Hey. Look at me. Look at me, please. You’re not going to die, ok? You’ll still be the same you. I won’t hurt you, ever, alright? Just relax. It’ll be ok.”

He pressed a kiss to your forehead. You finally asked him,

“I’m not getting out of this, am I?”

“No.”

Jeremy kissed you on your temple one more time and turned on the TV. A video of a teacup being stirred began to play. You felt your whole world beginning to sink.

And for the first time in your marriage, hell, your life, you felt truly helpless.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

How is brand Harry & Meghan faring in the US? Not good | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian

Is America finally getting bored of Harry and Meghan? It’s starting to look that way. Only a few months ago the pair were media darlings in the US; now they have become a bit of a joke. The animated sitcom South Park gave the first big blow to their stateside brand a couple of weeks ago with an episode featuring a couple bearing an uncanny similarity to the Sussexes. In the episode, titled The Worldwide Privacy Tour, the pair travel the globe with placards saying: “Stop looking at us!” and chanting: “We want privacy!” Harry’s memoir, Spare, is parodied as “Waaaagh”. The couple also get advice from a PR expert who tells them to portray themselves as victims. Not terribly flattering stuff.

Now the comedian Chris Rock has taken aim at the couple in his new Netflix special, Selective Outrage. He dismissed Meghan’s claims about racism in the royal family, saying: “Some of that shit she went through was not racism”, but “in-law” behaviour. He also joked about how it was odd Meghan seemed surprised by the fact the royal family might harbour archaic views. “It’s the royal family! They’re the original racists. They invented colonialism,” Rock said.

Polls also reflect a shift in US-based attitudes towards the pair: their approval ratings have plummeted since the South Park episode. According to polling commissioned for Newsweek, Harry’s popularity has dropped 48 points since December and Meghan’s is down 40. Now Prince Andrew, the guy who palled around with a convicted sex offender, has higher US approval ratings than the Sussexes. Though, to be fair, that seems to be because fewer people in the US know about Andrew’s tawdry dealings than they do in the UK. Because Andrew isn’t parading himself on the US media 24/7 like Harry and Meghan, it’s easier for someone stateside to forget who he is. If only we all had that luxury.

How are Harry and Meghan responding to this seeming shift in attitudes? Well, let’s just say they haven’t exactly put out a statement saying they think Rock and South Park are hilarious and they love nothing more than laughing at themselves, ha ha ha. On the contrary, there were rumours that they were so upset by the South Park episode that they were considering legal action. While they’re certainly fans of calling their lawyers, a representative for the couple told the Guardian that reports the pair might sue were “baseless” and “boring”.

I’ll tell you what’s really boring: the neverending pity-me-please performance the two are foisting upon us. As a staunch anti-royalist I was sympathetic to the couple to begin with – my enemy’s enemy is my friend and all that – but the constant oversharing has jumped the shark. Particularly since it becomes more obvious by the day that their grievances are less to do with systemic inequality and more to do with feeling they didn’t get a big enough slice of the born-with-privilege pie. I mean, come on, you can’t go around complaining about how backwards the royals are while insisting that we plebs refer to you as Duke and Duchess. You want some credibility? 

Give up your stupid titles.

Another unsolicited piece of advice for Duke and Duchess: read the socioeconomic room! You may have noticed that “eat the rich” storylines are a big theme on TV at the moment. From the latest season of Netflix’s You to the White Lotus to Succession, there are more rich-people-are-awful-sociopaths storylines on the telly than you can shake a silver spoon at. This isn’t a weird coincidence. It’s been noted that storylines about rich people tend to vary depending on the economic climate: in good times onscreen obscene wealth can be enjoyable escapism; in bad times it’s more of a hate-watch. And, I don’t need to tell you, the world is currently going through “you need to take out a second mortgage to buy eggs” sort of times.

Finally, Harry: I know you weren’t exactly the most committed student, but maybe pick up a history book. The US has something of a reputation for losing patience with British aristocrats.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

​

[matan4il]

One of the reasons I'm still 95% confident in Buddie Canon is Ryan's acting choices. And I don't think they are just gonna be surprised one day like by the way here's next week's script you guys become a couple. I think since at least S3 they were given a heads up at least a bit. Also as someone who knows of shows where actors intentionally tried to get another LI by switching up the chemistry with other characters--- if Ryan didn't want to go that way he definitely could have sold Anna better. Not sure if that makes sense??

But we constantly for 3 seasons have gotten his subtle nods and sometimes I think we just don't appreciate it as much as we should. Ryan's portrayal of Eddie has definitely morphed into how petty he can be in the funnest way possible. With Buck its in the cute way he teases him, it reminds me of a boy pulling a girl's pony tale. With Taylor it's that subtle cattiness he adds to it and I love it.

I just really don't think Ryan would lean into it much if he wasn't given direction and wasn't aware where it was going.

Hi Nonnie! Thank you for the ask!

Oh, for sure there’s no other satisfying outcome for either Buck, Eddie OR Chris. That kid also deserves to have these morons working it out and getting together. Without a doubt, the possibility of canon Buddie has been talked about. I think Ryan mentioned back in s2 that he and Oliver talked about this and showed each other Buddie edits, Tim also mentioned discussing this in the writers room, JLH also came out strongly for Buddie during s3, so if it happens, it will hardly be a surprise to anyone.

TBH, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out Ryan and Oli have always been making acting choices with Buddie in mind. They indicated early on that they’d be on board with it, which is the most any actors can say in those cases where the execs hadn’t come out and stated anything concrete. I get what you’re saying about switching up the chemistry and it def happens on some shows. IDK about Ana, because if Ryan was explicitly told to sell awkwardness with her, I don’t think he would have gone against orders, but I do believe that between those early statements and also that one interview in s3 ahead of the finale where Ryan was basically, “Abby who? Abby’s been replaced with Eddie!” that this is exactly what Ryan would prefer as long as it’s up to him.

I think Ryan and Oliver both give performances where it’s evident that their characters couldn’t be more in love with each other. Every facial expression, every glance, every show of fondness and joy and contentment just to be together, even the way they’re physically so in sync on calls, but only with each other, we haven’t seen them portraying their characters being that in tune, that comfortable, that teasing, that happy around anyone else on or off the job... 

IDK if that means they were given directions on this, though I do think in s2 the show def deliberately wanted to set things up for canon Buddie being an option at some point, and I am as sure as I can be without any confirmation that if it were up to Ryan and Oliver, Buddie would be canon. Did I mention they freaking named our ship?

Thank you again, lovely! I hope you have a great day! xoxox

(I got an influx of asks, I WILL answer all of them, but it might take a sec. If anyone wants to check whether I've already answered theirs or to read my replies, here's my ask tag. Thank you! xoxox)

[jelloandbeer]

bewitchingbaker·:

The young flour faced baker offered a nod at Cj’s statement, used to her straight forward statements. Chris was known around the school for always offering a listening ear to others, often offering a nod and a calming presence. Helped by the fact he often had sweets of some sort on him from his family’s business.

“Life’s hands really are rated e for everyone,” he chuckles as he looks up from the kneaded dough.

As he listens to his friend’s story, he slowly begins to put two and two together. Doe eyes widened once he hears she was suspended in the air. While his family all held some degree of magic, his Abuela told him to never reveal his power to others. 

‘You never know if they’ll alienate you, mijo…’

He stops his kneading, turning to CJ.

“So you floated? Like for a whole minute? Holy shit…” Chris replies. “…Ok, I don’t wanna freak you out but you might not be alone…like ability wise?”

“I’ll have you know I ain’t never freaked out about nothin’ a day in my life.” Was it a lie? Yes. That just wasn’t her point. His words hadn’t quite registered by the time she started pacing, a hand coming down her face. What was she going to tell her family? None of them had stuff that weird going on as far as she knew. How would they even react? 

The internet prepared her for other people’s problems, not her own. 

“What if I forreal get kicked off the team? This is how I get dates.” maybe it was a fluke. If it wasn’t, though, would they see it as a performance enhancer? Not like she could help it. She’d been playing football since she was a child and now, in adulthood, this happened. Sure, she was barely into adulthood but here she stood, old enough to get rent her own apartment and thi- wait. “Hell you mean? Whatchu know?” she faced him quickly. If he knew somebody who could also levitate several feet over a young man, she needed to know.

@bewitchingbaker

"Life got me fucked up," normal people would have started with a greeting, an acknowledgement that the other person didn't want to hear her mouth. CJ wasn't that kind of person, especially when she could feel panic welling up inside of her. "I'm at football practice and I finally, finally get the hurdle just right except I don't come down, Chris." her eyes widen a fraction with every word that spills from her lips. "I was just in the air, suspended and everybody stopped and coach called practice and sent me home but I haven't been yet."

[vague-humanoid]

On Friday, The Atlantic published a massive profile of Chris Licht, the man who took over as the CEO of CNN about a year ago, written by Tim Alberta. The author tries really hard to be fair, and Alberta is not particularly unsympathetic towards Licht and the challenges he has faced at CNN. And yet, the profile amounts to a devastating indictment of Licht – and of a worldview that is widely held among those who dominate the civic institutions of American life.

I have already written two long pieces on how justifications for CNN’s disastrous Trump town hall reveal the deeper pathologies and fallacies that have characterized the Trump discourse since 2016. The Atlantic profile provides plenty more evidence of how much Licht’s political diagnosis is shaped by myths of liberal “echo chambers” and the idea that Trump speaks for an “authentic” America that is rightfully aggrieved – how much he wants all of us to buy into those chimeras.

It's really worth digging into Licht’s case one more time, however, because what stands out from this profile is the combination of naivety and arrogance – all coming on top of an ideological status-quo fundamentalism that stands in marked contrast to Licht’s self-perception as a reasonable actor untarnished by the “irrationalities” that supposedly plague everyone who disagrees with him. This peculiar mindset is pervasive among not just the highest ranks of media executives, but also among the country’s elite echelons in politics, society, and culture more generally.

Chris Licht has it all figured out. Or so he believes. The profile opens with Licht telling us he doesn’t spend much time thinking about how the media should adequately cover Donald Trump, because “It’s very simple.” Simplistic is a better word to characterize the answer CNN’s new-ish boss has to offer: “You cover him like any other candidate.” To be fair, those statements were made before the Trump town hall proved yet again how foolish such an approach is. But Licht is unlikely to learn the appropriate lessons from the debacle for which he is chiefly responsible.

In Licht, we encounter a particular kind of arrogance. He seems obsessed with the “truth” – “there’s only one truth,” he solemnly declares, and under his leadership, Licht vows, CNN will have “no agenda other than the truth,” it will be “a source of absolute truth” via “sober, fact-driven coverage” unaffected by ideology and subjective beliefs. Unfortunately, this kind of (willfully?) naïve performative neutrality is very characteristic of a media system that incentivizes constant demonstrations of “nonpartisanship.”

We would be in a much better place if the people in positions of influence and power were to let go of such simplistic notions of objectivity. At some point, Alberta asks Licht if he is a conservative. Licht’s answer is revealing: “I would never put myself into a category.” He has no problem putting his critics into ideological categories, however, of accusing them to be incapable of acting as anything but “members of their tribe”; but such categories are not for him, for he operates on facts and reason alone.

The political discourse is significantly shaped by a whole industry of people – most of them white men – who believe themselves to be beyond ideology, whose self-perception and claim to relevance is built around the idea that they are arbiters of pure reason. We find them as prominent members of the pundit class, as leading “objective” data journalism gurus, as media executives with an outsized influence on the public conversation. These self-proclaimed Arbiters of Reason operate from the conviction that they are capable of superior judgment across a wide variety of fields. They owe much of their prominent status to the idea that they are unbiased, dispassionate truthtellers, all about data and facts, brave enough to give us the unvarnished truth in a heroic effort against conventional wisdom and the dark forces of subjectivity. They feel capable and entitled to offer a firm assessment of *anything* – yet all too often just end up judging the world by whether or not it’s in line with their sensibilities.

Licht is adamant he’s just “asking the tough questions” – that’s the framework he and his “reasonable” brethren like to employ in order to present their endeavor as a brave mission of fact-finding and truth-telling: “Just asking questions.” It’s remarkable how reliably that gets them to accept rightwing grievances and perpetuate the language of reactionary moral panics. All he wants, Licht assures us, is “to have difficult conversations without being demonized” – but instead, he’s being “shouted down for having the temerity to even ask.” Even the CEO of CNN has to live in fear of being canceled – is there no more free speech in this country? In general, Licht reveals a disposition to welcome all the usual rightwing talking points: He rails against “virtue signaling” and laments to be living in a world where “some people” (but who?) are forced (by whom?) to “tune out” (from what?) because they have to hear things like “person capable of giving birth” all the time (citation very much needed).

It’s quite striking how much of their energy self-proclaimed centrist/moderate/reasonable people focus on the threat from the Left – and how seamlessly that concern degenerates fully into anti-“wokeism.” To nobody’s surprise, Licht has a problem with the emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Not simply the way DEI is being implemented in potentially unhelpful ways or co-opted by corporate interests; his skepticism is more profound. In the profile, Licht rather proudly explains how in his opinion, “A Black person, a brown person, and an Asian woman that all graduated the same year from Harvard is not diversity.” It’s important to grapple with the role of elite institutions of higher education in the constant reproduction of inequality; but here, that is weaponized to obscure and deny race as a central organizing principle in American life. Acknowledging the centrality of racial and gender identities, of how intersecting identities shape the individual’s status in society and perspective on the world, would undermine the core claim on which Licht’s self-perception of non-ideological reason is predicated. As the most fundamental critique of white male “objectivity” comes from leftwing identity politics, from exactly those “woke” radicals who are supposedly unserious and irrational, this is where the Arbiters of Reason tend to direct their ire.

It’s a recurring theme in how the “centrist” white male elites describe the world: an obsession with pointing out the supposed fallacies of leftwing “activism” or “advocacy,” a term Licht seems to use a lot. Their entire mystique is built on offering better judgment than those “biased” activists. This puts them on a steady rightward trajectory. The fact that their own supposedly superior political judgment is being questioned so vehemently by current events – by a town hall that eviscerates the “just the facts” approach to Trumpism, perhaps – does not change that.

Instead of engaging in critical introspection, they double down: Keep ridiculing the leftwing critique as irrational identity politics, keep downplaying the warnings about the dangers of rightwing extremism as hysterical, keep playing up the threat of “woke” radicalism and the “illiberal Left.” In his own tale, Licht, the powerful executive who was installed by mighty corporate interests, is David; his Goliath the “certain segment of society (the “woke” Libs) that has had an unfettered megaphone” from which he is bravely trying to regain control. And what does he get in return? He’s being called “a fascist right-winger” when all he wants to be is “an unbiased source of truth.” How unfair.

Isn’t the answer here that Chris Licht simply is a conservative? I believe the story is a little more interesting than that. Remember, he would never put himself into that category – and while we shouldn’t just take that at face value, it still matters. The fact that he has always considered himself to be if not liberal, then moderate, is important because it informs his assessment of what is happening on the “Left.” This is a dynamic that characterizes much of the self-proclaimed “reasonable centrist” industrial complex: If you are convinced to be just the right kind of reasonable/liberal/moderate, then experiencing reactionary impulses creates a kind of intellectual and emotional dissonance that is often resolved by declaring that which makes you uncomfortable “radical” and “extreme.” “I’m a true liberal – these people are radical, woke activists” feels a lot better than “I always thought I was pretty liberal, but I must say I’m feeling uncomfortable about these calls for equality and respect, especially when they question my superior judgment and societal status.” It’s a combination of performative and reactionary centrism, and no matter the exact mix between strategic, ideological, and psychological elements, the result is the same: An increasingly aggressive stance against the “woke” Left, ever more in line with reactionary politics.

It might be impossible to discern the exact extent to which someone like Licht realizes how much he is furthering the interests of the corporate overlords who tower over him, and how much his actions are in line with the interests of traditional elites more broadly. Licht’s perspective on the world always naturalizes existing power relations and only accepts the status quo as reasonable. To be fair, from an elite perspective – and that of a white male elite, in particular – this kind of status-quo fundamentalism is indeed rational and it makes sense to regard the “Left” as the bigger immediate status threat. It is true that an agenda seeking to move America from being a restricted, white men’s democracy that left existing hierarchies largely intact to a functioning multiracial, pluralistic, social democracy is a losing proposition for people who have traditionally been at the top.

For many of the status-quo moderates, this change has already gone too far. They want to turn the clock back a little bit, to a time before what they see as the current excesses of “wokeism” – to when the privileged position of wealthy elites was a little more secure. So, while I don’t think Chris Licht is a MAGA Republican, his perspective on American politics is shaped by an underlying ideology that makes it just much more plausible to see the Right as not that big of a threat – and the Left as radical, unreasonable, and acutely dangerous. We could have a much more fruitful political discussion if Licht and others like him could just acknowledge that – and spare us all the grandiose nonsense about “saving journalism” and defending “the truth” itself.

[falcqns]

Mute

Pairing: Chris Evans x Mute!Reader

Summary: You meet Chris for the first time and he doesn’t know you’re mute. All hell breaks loose.

Warnings: angst, chris being an accidental asshole, fluff, sebastian stan being protective

A/N: I based this on a dream I had, as well as my experience with being a selective mute from 2017-2020, and how I communicated and who I spoke verbally to. Hope you enjoy!

Sebastian was shocked when he met you in pre-production for the first post-endgame Marvel movie, and you didn’t speak, instead nodding and using hand gestures that he later deciphered to be sign language. He knew that you were fairly new to the industry, and so approached Joe Russo.

“Hey, Joe. I just had a question about the new girl, Y/N?” He asked, while watching you walk of with your PA next to you. “Sure, what’s up?” Joe responded.

Sebastian cleared his throat before continuing. “I tried talking to her a little bit, but she didn’t speak, instead she used sign language, and I just was wondering if you knew why? Just so I can be better prepared and know how to help her,”

Joe smiled at Sebastian’s request. Being the insanely caring person that Seb was, his question didn’t surprise him. “She’s a selective mute. She does talk, but it is only when she is acting, and she’s an amazing actor. She mentioned to me that she doesn’t speak verbally unless she is very close to the person and trusts them wholeheartedly, such as her family and best friends. Her PA is her best friend, and can help you communicate with her. But, other than that, just get to know her. She’ll probably open up to you.” Joe finished, before patting Seb on the back, and walking off to talk to some production people.

Sebastian looked in the direction that you had gone, and decided to talk to you. You may not communicate verbally with him, but he wanted to get to know you.

Over the next few weeks of pre-production, both Sebastian and Anthony got to know you, and both were insanely shocked when you performed your first scene with them. You delivered your lines like you had been talking all your life, and with the gravity of an experienced actor. They both congratulated you, and you signed “thank you” in response. If any one had any doubts about your skills as an actor before, they had fully dissipated.

When it had been announced that production would be moving to the UK, Seb approached you and Mackie with the idea of renting a place together. You had agreed instantly, glad that you wouldn’t be living on your own in a foreign country all alone, especially since Y/B/F/N couldn’t come along. Living with both boys was chaotic to say the least, but you wouldn’t trade it for the world. They gave you the biggest bedroom in the house, and began learning sign language so you wouldn’t have to carry your ipad everywhere for your text-to-speech app.

A few weeks in, you began to speak verbally to both boys. They were shocked when you spoke to them for the first time, but were insanely happy. Seb was almost in tears, recalling that you only spoke to those who you trusted whole heartedly. He had become insanely protective of you, and treated you like a sister, which you absolutely loved.

Everything was going great. That was, until Chris Evans showed up.

He had just finished filming his latest project, and decided to come and visit his two closest friends that he hadn’t seen in a few months. Mackie had mentioned that he was coming, and would be staying in the spare bedroom, and you foolishly assumed that he would tell Chris about your mutism.

But Mackie being Mackie, he didn’t. And neither did Seb, who also thought Mackie had told him.

You hid in your room when Chris arrived, not ready to face him at that point. You ventured out just after dinner time, and grabbed a plate of food before retreating back into your safe haven with the cover of working on an assignment that you had told to Seb. They bought it, and you and Chris made eye contact and shared a wave before you disappeared from sight.

A few days later is when all hell broke loose.

Chris seemed to have a habit of searching you and Seb out. It started off with him walking into our bedroom while Seb was talking to you, and admiring how you’d decorated the place. Yo gave him a small shy smile, which he returned, although there was a hint of confusion written all over his face. Then, you were asking Sebastian for clarification on the Romanian lines that you were supposed to speak the next day, when Chris wandered in to the kitchen. He noticed how you instantly fell silent, and whispered a thank you to Sebastian before you scurried past him. How watched your back retreat, and sighed, but grabbed his the beer he came for before walking into the living room.

It was later that night that you had decided that you wanted to talk to Chris. You hadn’t known him very long, but you felt very safe around him, and everyone had told you how trustworthy he was. You had spent the last 30 minutes hyping yourself up in the mirror before walking out on a journey to find him. You heard his voice floating from the kitchen, and as you got closer, your heart instantly broke.

“I just don’t get what her problem is with me.” You heard Chris say. Another voice, Seb, responded.

“Chris, I don’t think she has a problem with you,”

Chris scoffed. “Yes she does. Why else would she not talk to me, and rush out of a room quicker than she entered when I walk in? She has a huge problem with me. I don’t know why she thinks that just because she got a part in a movie that she can walk around all high and mighty, but I’ve done nothing to her. She’s being a bitch,”

You heard Seb exclaim and start to defend you, but you didn’t stay to listen to what he said, instead running back to your room in tears, your confidence shattered. You grabbed your iPad and apple pencil, and began to draw, an activity that let you communicate your feelings. You wanted to show Chris that you didn’t hate him, and that you didn’t think more of yourself just because you got a part in a movie.

You finished it right before dinner, and kept it in your grip tightly when Mackie called you down for dinner. Your heart fluttered in your chest as you made your way down the stairs, but your face fell, and eyes welled up with tears when you saw Chris wasn’t there.

“Is Chris coming to dinner?” You asked Seb, and he shook his head no sadly.

“No. He’s not in the best mood, but dont worry, he’ll be fine.” He said, as he grabbed his plate.

“Oh, okay.” You said, your voice coming out shaky. You looked down at the ipad in your hands, before walking out the kitchen. Seb followed behind you. Just before you reached the stairs, he gripped your arm, causing you to turn around.

“What’s wrong?” He asked sincerely, and you couldn’t hold back the tears.

“I-I heard h-him talking about m-me earlier,” You whispered, and Seb cursed before pulling you into a hug.

“You heard him,” He said. You nodded before speaking again.

“I drew him a picture and I wanted to give it to him to show that what h-he said wasn’t t-true, and that I’m actually a huge fan of his,” You sobbed into his chest. Seb didn’t move, but waited for your tears to subside, before walking with you upstairs.

“He’ll come around. He had a rough night, although that doesn’t excuse his behaviour. I’ll talk to him, okay?”

You nodded, and curled up in bed. “Do you want me to bring you up some dinner?” Seb asked, and you nodded again, before telling him what you wanted.

He left the room, and came down the stairs. he plated the food that you wanted, and grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge.

“What happened?” Anthony asked from the dining room as Seb passed.

“She heard what Evans said, and she’s heartbroken. I’m bringing her dinner, and then I’m gonna talk some sense into that motherfucker.”

“Good, he needs it.” Anthony agreed, watching as Seb walked away.

Seb dropped the food off to you, before walking across the hall to Chris’s room. He answered after the first knock.

“What’s up?”

“First of all, you’re a grade A asshole, and second of all, you need to go apologize to Y/N.” Seb said, anger bubbling in his voice.

“Why? She hates me, I’ve done nothing to her to-“ Chris began before Seb interrupted him.

“SHE DOESN’T HATE YOU!” He exclaimed. “She’s selectively mute, that’s why she doesn’t speak to you! She’s a huge fan of you. She’s in her bedroom, right now, heartbroken, because she heard you talking about her.” Seb finished, his hand pointing at your bedroom door.

Chris felt his heart sink. “Why does she talk to you, but not me?”

Seb sighed. “She only talks to people she trusts a lot, and you met her yesterday. Of course she’s not gonna talk to you right away, and now I’m afraid she never will because you talked bad about her. She drew you a picture in hopes that you would understand that she didn’t hate you, but you broke her heart even more by not showing up at dinner. Now, go and fix it or will not hesitate to call your mother.” Seb finished, before walking away.

Chris sat back down on his bed in disbelief. He’d fucked up, and he didn’t know how to fix it. He thought back to Seb’s threat, before picking up his phone and calling his mom.

You had just finished another episode of Criminal Minds, when a knock came to your bedroom door. You dragged yourself out of bed, and opened the door to reveal Chris. You felt tears welling up in your eyes, and kept them locked on the floor, in fear that he was going to yell at you, and repeat his earlier statements to your face.

“I’m sorry,” Chris breathed out. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

You slowly moved your eyes up to meet his, and he sucked in a breath when he saw your puffy eyes. “It’s ok.” You signed, and Chris shook his head no, before enveloping you into his arms.

He moved the two of your further into your bedroom, and shut the door behind him.

“It is NOT okay. In any way. I broke your fucking heart, Y/N. I have no excuse for what I said, and I want to make it up to you. Will you let me do that?” He asked, his face buried into the hair atop your head. You nodded and he pulled away from you. You grabbed your ipad, opened up your text to speech app, and typed in a sentence.

“Do you want to watch a movie with me?”

Chris nodded, and smiled, his thumb brushing over your cheek. “Of course. You pick.”

You led him over to the bed, and got in, and he climbed in the opposite side. You picked up the remote, and chose the movie “Swat: Under Siege”. Chris wrapped an arm around your shoulders, and pulled you close to him. You cuddled into his chest as the movies opening scene began to play.

About halfway through the movie, Chris tilted your chin up to look at him.

“I really am sorry. I hate that I said what I did. I just- Seb had told me all about you, and I had seen some of the leaked pictures from set, and all I wanted to do was impress you. When I thought you hated me, I couldn’t handle it, and I lashed out. I’m so so sorry about that.” He said, his thumb teaching over your cheekbone once more. “Also, Seb told me that you drew me a picture? Can I see it?” And you nodded.

You unlocked your ipad and opened the drawing app, clicking on the most recent one, before handing the device over to Chris.

His breath caught in his throat while he looked down at the picture you had drawn of him.

“T-that is amazing,” He said, tears coming to his eyes at the picture that you worked so hard to make of him. “You’re even more amazing than I thought.” He finished. “Thank you,” You signed, before thinking of a question.

You grabbed your iPad once more, and typed into your app.

“Why did you want to impress me?” Chris smiled at the sound of the robotic voice coming from the device.

“I was drawn to you. I dont know what is was, but I couldn’t get you off my mind. I had searched and searched to find another tv or movie you had been in, but nothing came up, and I was so shocked that you got such a big part right off the bat. But I was also insanely excited to see you perform. And when Seb and Mackie told me I could come and stay for a while, I was ecstatic to be able to get to know you, and that’s when I realized that I liked you.”

Your breath caught in your throat at his words. Did Chris Evans really just admit to having a crush on you?

“Now, I understand if you dont like me back, but I had to get that off my chest, especially since I just broke your heart.” Chris said, his eyes focused on the tv to not meet your gaze. You gave him a small smile, but grasped his chin into your hand, and drew his lips into a soft and tender kiss.

He let out a breathy moan, and pulled you closer. His lips travelled from your lips, and all over your face, amking you let out a giggle. He started laughing too, and pulled away. “I’m guessing this means that you like me too?” He asked, and you nodded immediately.

He smiled, and grasped your hand in his. “Well then, can I take you on a date?”

You took a deep breath, and opened your mouth. “Yes.”

Chris’s eyes immediately welled up with tears and he pulled you in for another kiss.

“You spoke to me,” He whispered when he pulled apart, a few tears rolling down his face.

You shrugged and gave him a smile.

“I trust you wholeheartedly.”

[letterboxd]

In Focus: The Mummy

Dominic Corry responds on behalf of Letterboxd to an impassioned plea to bump up the average rating of the 1999 version of The Mummy—and asks: where is the next great action adventure coming from?

We recently received the following email regarding the Stephen Sommers blockbuster The Mummy:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you on behalf of the nation, if not the entire globe, who frankly deserve better than this after months of suffering with the Covid pandemic.

I was recently made aware that the rating of The Mummy on your platform only stands at 3.3 stars out of five. … This, as I’m sure you’re aware, is simply unacceptable. The Mummy is, as a statement of fact, the greatest film ever made. It is simply fallacious that anyone should claim otherwise, or that the rating should fail to reflect this. This oversight cannot be allowed to stand.

I have my suspicions that this rating has been falsely allocated due to people with personal axes to grind against The Mummy, most likely other directors who are simply jealous that their own artistic oeuvres will never attain the zenith of perfection, nor indeed come close to approaching the quality or the cultural influence of The Mummy. There is, quite frankly, no other explanation. The Mummy is, objectively speaking, a five-star film (… I would argue that it in fact transcends the rating sytem used by us mere mortals). It would only be proper, as a matter of urgency, to remove all fake ratings (i.e. any ratings [below] five stars) and allow The Mummy’s rating to stand, as it should, at five stars, or perhaps to replace the rating altogether with a simple banner which reads “the greatest film of all time, objectively speaking”. I look forward to this grievous error being remedied.

Best, Anwen

Which of course: no, we would never do that. But the vigor Anwen expresses in her letter impressed us (we checked: she’s real, though is mostly a Letterboxd lurker due to a busy day-job in television production, “so finding time to watch anything that isn’t The Mummy is, frankly, impossible… not that there’s ever any need to watch anything else, of course.”).

So Letterboxd put me, Stephen Sommers fan, on the job of paying homage to the last great old-school action-adventure blockbuster, a film that straddles the end of one cinematic era and the beginning of the next one. And also to ask: where’s the next great action adventure coming from?

Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah in ‘The Mummy’ (1999).

When you delve into the Letterboxd reviews of The Mummy, it quickly becomes clear how widely beloved the film is, 3.3 average notwithstanding. Of more concern to the less youthful among us is how quaintly it is perceived, as if it harkens back to the dawn of cinema or something. “God, I miss good old-fashioned adventure movies,” bemoans Holly-Beth. “I have so many fond memories of watching this on TV with my family countless times growing up,” recalls Jess. “A childhood classic,” notes Simon.

As alarming as it is to see such wistful nostalgia for what was a cutting-edge, special-effects-laden contemporary popcorn hit, it has been twenty-one years since the film was released, so anyone currently in their early 30s would’ve encountered the film at just the right age for it to imprint deeply in their hearts. This has helped make it a Raiders of the Lost Ark for a specific Letterboxd demographic.

Sommers took plenty of inspiration from the Indiana Jones series for his take on The Mummy (the original 1932 film, also with a 3.3 average, is famously sedate), but for ten-year-olds in 1999, it may have been their only exposure to such pulpy derring-do. And when you consider that popcorn cinema would soon be taken over by interconnected on-screen universes populated by spandex-clad superheroes, the idea that The Mummy is an old-fashioned movie is easier to comprehend.

However, for all its throwbackiness, beholding The Mummy from the perspective of 2020 reveals it to have more to say about the future of cinema than the past. 1999 was a big year for movies, often considered one of the all-time best, but the legacy of The Mummy ties it most directly to two of that year’s other biggest hits: Star Wars: Episode One—The Phantom Menace and The Matrix. These three blockbusters represented a turning point for the biggest technological advancement to hit the cinematic art-form since the introduction of sound: computer-generated imagery, aka CGI. The technique had been widely used from 1989’s The Abyss onwards, and took significant leaps forward with movies such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Jurassic Park (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997), but the three 1999 films mentioned above signified a move into the era when blockbusters began to be defined by their CGI.

A year before The Mummy, Sommers had creatively utilised CGI in his criminally underrated sci-fi action thriller Deep Rising (another film that deserves a higher average Letterboxd rating, just sayin’), and he took this approach to the next level with The Mummy. While some of the CGI in The Mummy doesn’t hold up as well as the technopunk visuals presented in The Matrix, The Mummy showed how effective the technique could be in an historical setting—the expansiveness of ancient Egypt depicted in the movie is magnificent, and the iconic rendering of Imhotep’s face in the sand storm proved to be an enduringly creepy image. Not to mention those scuttling scarab beetles.

George Lucas wanted to test the boundaries of the technique with his insanely anticipated new Star Wars film after dipping his toe in the digital water with the special editions of the original trilogy. Beyond set expansions and environments, a bunch of big creatures and cool spaceships, his biggest gambit was Jar Jar Binks, a major character rendered entirely through CGI. And we all know how that turned out.

A CGI-enhanced Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep.

Sommers arguably presented a much more effective CGI character in the slowly regenerating resurrected Imhotep. Jar Jar’s design was “bigger” than the actor playing him on set, Ahmed Best. Which is to say, Jar Jar took up more space on screen than Best. But with the zombie-ish Imhotep, Sommers (ably assisted by Industrial Light & Magic, who also worked on the Star Wars films) used CGI to create negative space, an effect impossible to achieve with practical make-up—large parts of the character were missing. It was an indelible visual concept that has been recreated many times since, but Sommers pioneered its usage here, and it contributed greatly to the popcorn horror threat posed by the character.

Sommers, generally an unfairly overlooked master of fun popcorn spectacle (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is good, guys), deserves more credit for how he creatively utilized CGI to elevate the storytelling in The Mummy. But CGI isn’t the main reason the film works—it’s a spry, light-on-its-feet adventure that presents an iconic horror property in an entertaining and adventurous new light. And it happens to feature a ridiculously attractive cast all captured just as their pulchritudinous powers were peaking.

Meme-worthy: “My sexual orientation is the cast of ‘The Mummy’ (1999).”

A rising star at the time, Brendan Fraser was mostly known for comedic performances, and although he’d proven himself very capable with his shirt off in George of the Jungle (1997), he wasn’t necessarily at the top of anyone’s list for action-hero roles. But he is superlatively charming as dashing American adventurer Rick O’Connell. His fizzy chemistry with Weisz, playing the brilliant-but-clumsy Egyptologist Evie Carnahan, makes the film a legitimate romantic caper. The role proved to be a breakout for Weisz, then perhaps best known for playing opposite Keanu Reeves in the trouble-plagued action flop Chain Reaction, or for her supporting role in the Liv Tyler vehicle Stealing Beauty.

“90s Brendan Fraser is what Chris Pratt wishes he was,” argues Holly-Beth. “Please come back to us, Brendaddy. We need you.” begs Joshhh. “I’d like to thank Rachel Weisz for playing an integral role in my sexual awakening,” offers Sree.

Then there’s Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bey, a member of the Medjai, a sect dedicated to preventing Imhotep’s tomb from being discovered, and Patricia Velásquez as Anck-su-namun, Imhotep’s cursed lover. Both stupidly good-looking. Heck, Imhotep himself (South African Arnold Vosloo, coming across as Billy Zane’s more rugged brother), is one of the hottest horror villains in the history of cinema.

“Remember when studio movies were sexy?” laments Colin McLaughlin. We do Colin, we do.

Sommers directed a somewhat bloated sequel, The Mummy Returns, in 2001, which featured the cinematic debut of one Dwayne Johnson. His character got a spin-off movie the following year (The Scorpion King), which generated a bunch of DTV sequels of its own, and is now the subject of a Johnson-produced reboot. Brendan Fraser came back for a third film in 2008, the Rob Cohen-directed The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Weisz declined to participate, and was replaced by Maria Bello.

Despite all the follow-ups, and the enduring love for the first Sommers film, there has been a sadly significant dearth of movies along these lines in the two decades since it was released. The less said about 2017 reboot The Mummy (which was supposed to kick-off a new Universal Monster shared cinematic universe, and took a contemporary, action-heavy approach to the property), the better.

The Rock in ‘The Mummy Returns’ (2001).

For a long time, adventure films were Hollywood’s bread and butter, but they’re surprisingly thin on the ground these days. So it makes a certain amount of sense that nostalgia for the 1999 The Mummy continues to grow. You could argue that many of the superhero films that dominate multiplexes count as adventure movies, but nobody really sees them that way—they are their own genre.

There are, however, a couple of films on the horizon that could help bring back old-school cinematic adventure. One is the long-planned—and finally actually shot—adaptation of the Uncharted video-game franchise, starring Tom Holland. The games borrow a lot from the Indiana Jones films, and it’ll be interesting to see how much that manifests in the adaptation.

Then there’s Letterboxd favorite David Lowery’s forever-upcoming medieval adventure drama The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander (who herself recently rebooted another video-game icon, Lara Croft). Plus they are still threatening to make another Indiana Jones movie, even if it no longer looks like Steven Spielberg will direct it.

While these are all exciting projects—and notwithstanding the current crisis in the multiplexes—it can’t help but feel like we may never again get a movie quite like The Mummy, with its unlikely combination of eye-popping CGI, old-fashioned adventure tropes and a once-in-a-lifetime ensemble of overflowing hotness. Long may love for it reign on Letterboxd—let’s see if we can’t get that average rating up, the old fashioned way. For Anwen.

Related content

How I Letterboxd with The Mummy fan Eve (“The first film I went out and bought memorabilia for… it was a Mummy action figure that included canopic jars”)

The Mummy (Universal) Collection

Every film featuring the Mummy (not mummies in general)

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[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

CHRIS DAUGHTRY And LZZY HALE Drop Video For Cover Of JOURNEY's 'Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)'

Multi-platinum rock act DAUGHTRY has released the official music video for its cover song, "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)", a tribute to legendary rock band JOURNEY featuring vocals from Lzzy Hale, lead singer of HALESTORM.

The hit cover, which was originally made available in January, exactly 40 years to the day that the original song was released, is currently sitting at No. 6 on Mediabase's Active Rock chart. The track debuted at No. 1 on iTunes' All Genres chart. True to its roots with an updated grit, the single has racked up millions of streams on YouTube and Spotify, earning praise from heavy-hitters like Variety, Billboard, Consequence and American Songwriter, among others.

"This was an unexpected video in a lot of ways," Chris Daughtry admits. "I don't think either of us, Lzzy or myself, were actually 'dressed' for a video shoot. We were basically just trying to get some b-roll to capture the studio experience of recording this track. But when we got the footage back, it was like, 'Well… This looks way cooler than I expected, so… I guess we have a music video now?' Haha. It was the most low-key, low-pressure video I've ever done."

“There's a magic that happens when you decide to do a project with people you've adored for years," Hale adds. "We cultivated that chemistry into such a beautiful launch point, and 'Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)' is the result of that friendship. Thank you to everyone for giving this song wings, and thank you to the incredible Daughtry for inviting me to fly alongside!"

The visual comes hot on the heels of DAUGHTRY's sold-out show at London's Royal Albert Hall last week, where the band surprised fans with a performance of the duet, bringing Hale onstage as a musical guest.

When DAUGHTRY's cover of "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" was first released, Lzzy said in a statement: "Chris Daughtry and I have been threatening to unleash a duet for years. What better way to do that than by paying tribute to one of our mutual influences…. JOURNEY!" said Lzzy. "This song is not only part of the 'Stranger Things' soundtrack, but has been my go-to for karaoke for as long as I can remember! I'm so honored to have been a part of this and I hope it makes you smile as big as I did while recording it!"

Chris added: "I've always loved the song and I was wanting to do a classic cover and my wife and I were watching the 'Stranger Things' season finale and there's this incredibly intense scene and 'Separate Ways' was a big part of this scene. It was so moving just the way it was used, it felt so cool and epic and I was immediately like 'THIS is the one! We have to cover this song.' Then I was, like, 'How can we make this extra special? What if it was a duet? What if we got Lzzy on it!!??" Needless to say I was pumped she said yes and I absolutely love how it turned out."

DAUGHTRY, one of the most visible and best-selling rock bands of the 21st Century, has sold out concerts across the globe. Their debut album, the self-titled "Daughtry", was the top-selling album of 2007, and was the fastest-selling rock debut album in SoundScan history. It was also nominated for four Grammy Awards and won four American Music Awards and seven Billboard Music Awards, including "Album Of The Year". The subsequent albums, "Leave This Town" (2009),"Break The Spell" (2011) and "Baptized" (2013) have all gone platinum, with "Cage To Rattle" (2018) certified gold. In 2020, DAUGHTRY released its first single from the album "World On Fire", which marked a return to the band's rock roots and the top of the charts.

[destinyc1020]

Anon, please.

I've thought since the Cherry interviews came out that Tom had no desire to act forever. Multiple times he's said that acting was something he sort of stumbled into. One of the things that really caught my attention was him saying that he was proudest and most fulfilled by his charity work; given how the question was posed, it was quite a statement. There was his adorable middle-of-the-night NYE appearance on Chris Pratt's IG live when he said, more or less, that there were far more important things in the world than being a "fucking actor." It looked like CP didn't even know how to respond to that. Destiny, you mentioned Tom's golf aspirations; I don't think it should be overlooked that he said in that one clip that he actually thought to himself, "Maybe I could be a golfer." Was it in the moment? Yes. But he sounded almost wistful when he said it, like there may, in fact, be a yearning there for something else. He's talked about directing, he and Harry have been (or were at one point) working on that script together, and he's talked about liking creative collaboration. And now he said the thing about being a carpenter for a couple years... I mean, who knows. I remember him saying in his Hoco puppy interview that his family was full of carpenters, that if he didn't act maybe he'd do that (we know he was in a carpentry program (in Wales, I think) for a bit, and we know he made his mom's kitchen or dining room table). There's just a lot there.

I feel like something broke in him with the first break-up. During a Cherry interview, he said how much happier he was than he had been a year before and that he had been sort of succumbing to some Hollywood traps. We know how much of a homebody Z is, and I've thought there was some possibility that maybe added fuel to their moving toward a break-up. During a FFH interview, Jacob talks about Z not wanting to go out, and Z said she was getting a little better, and Tom just looked very uncomfortable. It just seemed like it was a source of tension. Hiding + jealousy + not going out and "enjoying" their celebrity... I feel like Tom just woke up, horrified, once Z was gone. This is all to say that I easily could see Tom bowing out of the industry, particularly acting, for his own sanity and, truly, for the sake of his and Z's family (I'm not equivocating anymore about them having babies and grandbabies)). If they only have her schedule to work around, etc, the family can always be in the same place, the kids can grow up without nannies... I don't see Tom or Z liking the idea of a nanny at all. Anyway, Z's career is the one that's been more intentional: she wanted to act, etc. She's also the one who doesn't mind red carpets, as she says she just sees it as an extension of her performance. I don't think Tom can put up that wall when he's not acting -- he's just too emotional and thus openly vulnerable of a person. (That's not good or bad about either of them -- just an observation). Z's also said that if she's no longer likes what she's doing, then she's gone. They're both so family-oriented. I can see them thinking about all of that now and making plans about what they will/would do.

I'm so happy Tom felt free enough to say he's in love with Z. And I do think they're easing people into them being engaged:) Whatever they do moving forward, I feel like they'll make decisions together and have a happy life, which is all we could really want for them <33

That was seriously long.  Pardon the dissertation.

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Wow....That was a lot to unpack lol.  NO worries about the dissertation though!  I don’t mind them lol. 😅 

Anyway, I do feel that Tom is maybe somewhat thinking about his future and what he really wants in life?  Maybe he’s going through a quarter-life crisis hahaha.  Basically, that just means that you sometimes reach an age where you do some deep soul-searching, and you contemplate what you want for your future and what you want it to look like.  

Maybe he’s also realizing that perhaps he doesn’t want to be doing acting for the rest of his life?    I sometimes get the impression that if Tom could act WITHOUT having to worry about the fame aspect of it all, he would probably much rather prefer that tbh lol.   I get the feeling that sometimes he would rather like to just be a “nobody” who isn’t stopped all the time in public.  Like, he just wants a quiet life.   IDk why, but sometimes that’s the impression that I get from him.  Tom is super sweet, and makes friends everywhere he goes, but Spider-Man really changed his life forever tbh.  And while he probably has seen the perks of fame, he’s also seen the not-so-great side of fame and notoriety as well.  I”m glad that he’s been taking breaks from social media, and just keeping his life private as he can.  

I’m sure that at first fame and money can be super thrilling and exciting at first, but then I think sometimes it gets to a certain point where you just want to be left alone, and want anonymity. I try to put myself in these celebrity’s shoes sometimes, and I can’t even imagine how crazy it would feel to be recognized EVERY single time I leave my house.  It’s nuts!  I think it would be anxiety-inducing for me after a while.  Not being able to just go and do simple things w/out it being on blast all the time....Eesh.... Idk... That would wear on my nerves after a while as well...esp someone like me, who’s prone to anxiety.  I will say though that both Tom and Zendaya have both handled fame VERY VERY well, especially for two individuals were were CHILD actors and basically grew up in this industry as tweens.  They have still continued to be two of some of the nicest, most down-to-earth celebrities in their “bracket”.  I really appreciate that, even though I know it’s not easy for them sometimes.  

BOTTOM LINE:  I’m all for people doing whatever they feel they need to do for their own mental and emotional health and sanity in the long run. IF that means taking breaks here and there from acting or from social media, then so bet it!   

[taylorsage22]

Massage(Chris LaSalle x reader)

A/n-Wow My FIRST LASALLE SMUT NCIS NOLA !!!!!💙

You’d had a long, stressful day at work. You woke up late and therefore hadn’t had time for breakfast, so on your way to work you grabbed a quick coffee. However, leaving the coffee shop, someone bumped into you causing you to spill the coffee down your top - having nothing spare to change into - having to go back in to use the toilets to try and clean up your top as much as possible. Then, you ended up being more late and got a knowing look from your boyfriend LaSalle. Your rough morning had evidently put you into a sour mood for the rest of the day, you felt so horrible you even lost your appetite and kept getting simple tasks wrong, in the end your Pride saw that you were having a rough day and told you and Chris to leave early. All you could think of on the drive home was how tired you were and how much you just wanted your bed and your boyfriend to just hold you.

When you arrived at the apartment you shared with your boyfriend. you immediately stripped out of your coffee stained clothes and slipped into your favourite of Chris’s shirts and some pyjama shorts and flopped onto the bed. He was just laying in bed waiting for you.

You look up to him cause of the warm feeling of Chris’s large hands on your lower back, digging the heels of his hands into your back and rubbing in circular motions. The tense feeling you’d had all day slowly disappearing with Chris’s magic touch, you let out a contented sigh and let him run his hands higher on your back.

“Hey, sugar belle. I know you’ve had a rough day.” Chris says, still rubbing circles into your mid back. You let out another sigh as his fingers worked a knot, easing the tension.

“Mhm. Had a bad day.” You speak into the bedsheets, your voice muffled by the thick duvet.

Chris’s hands are working further up your back now, he unhooks your bra, gaining access to the broad space of your upper back and shoulders, massaging the area, the warmth of his hands mixed with the skill of his fingers felt incredible on your tense back.

“wanna talk 'bout it, sweetheart?” Chris asks while his fingers worked all the tough knots.

You explain to him how your morning went, while his fingers worked deeper into the tense knots, rubbing your back up and down with the heels of his hands, squeezing your shoulders when he comes to them. You pause every so often to let out small moans and sighs of contentment and pleasure.

Chris repositions so he’s straddling your legs, the denim of his jeans against your soft, bare legs only adding to the pleasurable feeling of his movements, causing you to moan again slightly louder this time. Chris chuckles to himself, loving how he makes you feel and the way he makes you squirm beneath his touch.

“Here, darlin'?” he whispers, while his fingers work a particularly tough knot on your lower back. Your back arches into his touch as you let out another sigh, shifting your position beneath Chris.

“Yes, Chris, please.” You sound needy at this point, your voice hoarse. Chris’s hands never falter, his knuckles work into the knots of tension on your back now, the digging sensation easing the pain of your stressful day.

Chris concentrates on massaging your back, relaxing you further. You feel as though you’re in heaven, Chris’s hands are warm against your cold skin, his fingers performing magic as the tension on your back gradually disappears. Your senses heighten slightly, you can feel Chris on top of you, you hear how his breath hitches each time you let out a small moan of pleasure - obviously this makes you moan more, just to tease him - you feel his hot breathe on you as he leans down. Chris’s hands lower down your back, he goes back to massaging your lower back, squeezing around your hips causing you to moan louder - he's also a huge tease - his hands travel lower until he reaches your ass. He begins to massage the area, his warm hands squeezing and rubbing your bum making you moan louder now. He breathes heavier against the back of your neck as he lowers his head to whisper in your ear; “I think I know of a way we can relieve your stress completely, darlin'.”

You whimper at this statement and squeeze your thighs slightly to try and ease the throbbing of your core. He really knows how to tease you, his hands still squeezing your ass whilst his lips ghost down your neck and shoulders. You move one of your hands from beside you under Chris’s legs, bringing it around to grab onto his hair, pulling his head closer to your neck - unable to take anymore teasing. He takes the hint and presses his lips against your neck, kissing from just below your ear to where your neck meets your shoulder, his hands now pulling on the pyjama shorts you’re wearing.

“Fuck, you’re so wet for me already, sugar'.” He gasps as he feels you through your underwear, kissing across your shoulders now. You whine from the teasing telling him “just fuck me already.”

Chris continues rubbing you through your underwear, feeling your arousal. You can feel his bulge against your thighs, the rough denim only adding to the pleasure of his fingers on your pussy as well as his lips kissing and sucking at your neck.

“So demandin', sweetheart.” He chuckles as he pushes your underwear to the side, able to access your cunt. He starts circling your clit, your body arching upwards, your free hand grabbing onto the duvet underneath you, your moans being muffled due to your face being buried in the covers. Chris loves seeing you like this, his t-shirt on, bra unhooked baring your back to him, shorts just under your beautiful ass and your underwear pushed to the side, giving him a lovely view of your wetness and his fingers which slide so easily against your pretty pussy. Your moans get louder as he rubs circles on your clit, eager to get you to orgasm soon. Your hand reaches behind you once again, pulling Chris’s arm as he continues his movements on your clit, he brings his other hand to you, inserting a single finger into you with ease due to your evident arousal. You whine his name as he watches his finger disappear into your pussy, hardening in his jeans even more, if that were possible.

“You like it when I touch you here, don’t you babygirl?” He asks while changing his position so that your legs are now on the outside of his, bringing your hips up, he pulls your ass towards him, causing his finger to deepen inside you; “do you like it when I fuck you like this?” he growls into your ear, you can feel your legs begin to shake from his fingers both stimulating your clit and fucking you.

“Yes, baby, fuck right there.” You whimper, grabbing the duvet with your now free hand whilst the other remains in Chris’s arm, your grip tightening as you feel the coil in your stomach beginning to tighten and your legs shake even more.

“Fuck, Chris, ‘m gonna come,” you pant as he continues fucking you with his fingers, rubbing your clit harder and inserting a second finger into you. He watches your ass bounce back whilst he fucks you with his long fingers, hitting the right spot each time.

“Don’t hold back, darlin', come for me.” His voice more delicate than before, but still holding a dominant tone. Chris’s encouragement of your orgasm along with his talented fingers inside you are enough to bring you to the edge. Your legs shake and you let out a strangled moan of “Chris!” along with a string of curse words while you come on his fingers. Chris groans at the sight of you coming on his fingers, he slips them out easily due to the wetness, after you come down from your first high. Red in the face and hair messed up everywhere, he loves you post-orgasm, he finds you absolutely incredible. Chris pulls your body up to his, your back on his torso and says, “open”, inserting his fingers into your mouth you lick them, tasting yourself.

“Fuck, darlin' , you’re so sexy. Can’t wait to be inside you.” and you’d moan because you can’t wait to feel him inside you either.

Like the gentleman he is, Chris waits until you’re fully recovered from your previous orgasm before he pulls off your pyjama shorts and underwear, discarding his own clothes shortly afterwards. He reaches into your bedside drawer for a condom, rolling it down his hard cock while you turn your head to watch, biting your lip.

“Like what you see, sugar belle?” He asks, cockily, smirking.

“I’d like it better if it were inside me.” You reply, just as cockily smirking at the way he licks his lips and roughly grips at your hips, pulling you back to him, legs on either side of his. He loves fucking you from behind, watching your sweet ass bounce back on him, watching his cock disappear into your tight entrance, he has access to your back and your hair, sometimes pushing your back down so your arms drop, giving him the perfect position to hit just the right spot inside you. Sometimes he pulls on your hair to bring you up against him, your back pressed firmly against his sweating torso, giving him the ability to fuck you deeper and harder.

He grabs your hip with one hand while lines the tip of his hard cock up to your wet pussy, sliding his dick through your folds, teasing you.

“Christopher, baby, please just fuck me. I need you now” you moan, fed up of his teasing.

“As you asked so nicely, darlin' .” He replies, slowly pushing his thick cock into your aching pussy, sliding in easily due to the wetness of your previous mind blowing orgasm.

“Shit, babygirl, you’re so tight.” He’d growl through gritted teeth, wanting nothing more than to fuck your brains out while relentlessly gripping your hips. He pushes further into you, causing you to moan and wiggle further onto him.

“You’ll be the death of me, angel.” He’d tell you whilst bottoming out, his cock filling you perfectly. You whimper as he pulls back, only to push all the way back in again. You let out an embarrassingly loud moan, but Chris loves hearing you - loves knowing how good he makes you feel. He grips your hips firmly, pulling you back against him each time he thrusts into you. One of his hands comes back to your ass, squeezing and rubbing one of your cheeks while he brings you back onto his cock, hitting you deeper each time. Your moans and whimpers get louder and louder as Chris fucks you harder and harder, hands tightening on your hips, grunts and groans becoming hoarse and croaky while his thrusts become sporadic. The sound of skin slapping skin, along with the grunts and groans from you two, can be heard in the room. Chris’s panting “so tight” and “shit” under his breath, the lack of rhythm in his thrusts signifying he’s close to finishing. Chris’s pants become louder as he nears his orgasm. He brings a hand around you to rub your clit again, set on you coming before him.

“CH-ris, shit,” you cry out as he rubs fast circles on your clit while fucking you fast but deep from behind, the feeling of his cock brushing your walls almost too much to handle. He keeps rubbing your clit while fucking you, chasing your high as well as his own. You collapse, your arms no longer being able to hold up your body while Chris thrusts into you watching your ass bounce against him.

“Baby, gonna come soon, fuck,” you whimper out, legs shaking from your fast approaching orgasm.

“Shit, sugar , I’m not gonna last much longer,” Chris announces, rubbing your clit harder and thrusting into you faster. You are both moaning messes at this point, sweat forming on both your bodies, your face turning bright red from the hot, sweaty atmosphere.

Your moans get louder, your breaths get heavier, Chris’s movements become sloppier and your legs get shakier with your orgasms approaching quickly and intensely.

“Chris, baby, I’m gonna - fuck!”

“Come on' , sweetheart. I’m not far behind,” he says, still thrusting his cock deep inside you. Moments later you come for the second time that night, gripping the sheets beneath you and clenching your wet pussy around his thick cock, legs shaking as he still thrusts into you. You let out a moan verging on a scream, Chris fucking you through your orgasm, his approaching fast.

“Shit, I’m comin' ” he announces, hips bucking wildly into you, he tightens his grip on your hips, his fingers digging in deep, he slams his hips into you a final time with a loud grunt, releasing his load into the condom. After you both come down, he slowly removes himself from you, you immediately miss his warmth. You roll onto your back, bra still on but unhooked, legs still quaking from your orgasms. Chris discards of the condom and goes into the bathroom, returning with a damp towel, cleaning you up before he cleans himself. He climbs onto the bed with you and pulls the covers over the two of you.

“You should give me massages more often,” you say to Chris as you snuggle up to him and rest your head on his bare chest. He chuckles, “Agreed'.”

[waitimcomingtoo]

Plank All Over Me - Friendship Test Edition

Pairing: Tom Holland x Reader

Plank All Over Me Masterlist

Regular Masterlist

“I’m Chris Pine.” Tom waved to the camera.

“And I’m Nick Cage.” You threw your hands up.

“And we have surprisingly both played a version of Spider-Man.” Tom jeered.

“I personally am not surprised Mr. Nicholas Cage played Spider-Man and I don’t know why you are.” You joked.

“Because he’s Nicholas Cage.” Tom pointed out.

“And he was born to play this role? Jealously is a disease, honey.” You waves your hand in Toms face.

“Don’t say it.” He groaned.

“Get well soon.” You blew him a kiss which he swatted away.

“She said it.” He looked at the camera and sighed.

“I feel like we need to start warning brands that we’ll do a video with them, but the intro is gonna be ten minutes of us fighting and there’s nothing they can do to stop that.” You laughed as you realized you were doing it again.

“We’re doing the Friendship Test with Glamour by the way.” Tom said. “Sorry Glamour for not warning you how difficult we are to work with.”

“We’re also not friends.” You said sarcastically.

“We’re going to be man and wife in a few months.” Tom reminded you.

“That doesn’t mean we’re friends.” You replied. “I also never understood the phrase “man and wife.” Like, you’re still a man but I unlock the secret third gender of “wife”? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Darling, the only two genders are Coke and Pepsi.” Tom said as if it were obvious.

“Oh, right. My bad.” You laughed.

“Lets start the video.” Tom suggest and clasped his hands together.

“Yea, I think this has been our worst intro yet.” You said apologetically.

“We’re gonna have you guys talk a little about each other in separate rooms first.” A crew member behind the camera told you.

“Oh, okay.” You said as you were lead into the adjacent room.

“Talk to us about Y/n.” Tom was asked in his room.

“Tell us about Tom.” They asked you.

“My favorite thing to talk about.” Tom grinned shyly and looked at his feet.

“Where do I even start?” You shrugged.

“I always say this, not necessarily to her, but she is not a girl you date. She is a girl you marry.” Tom began. “I cannot even imagine dating her and not ending up with her. That’d just be torture and it’d be unfair to all the other girls I came across because I’d always compare them to Y/n.”

“Sometimes, I put his phone on top of the refrigerator when we’re fighting.” You told the camera.

“There is no one in this world who’s more generous.” Tom gushed.

“He’s too short to reach it.” You laughed a little.

“More caring.” He continued.

“It’s really entertaining to watch him try and get it down.” You stated.

“More beautiful.” He listed off.

“He never does.” You shook your head.

“Or more giving than Y/n.” He finished.

“I always have to get it for him.” You chuckled.

“If I didn’t have her, I’d be searching in vain for the rest of my life for something that can give to me what she does.” Tom said sincerely.

“God, he’s also such a bad driver.” You sighed.

“But nothing compares to her.” He professed.

“He runs red lights like it’s his job.” You called him out.

“She completes me and it’s been the greatest joy of my life to love her.” Tom said, getting a little emotional.

“I’m always like “slow down, sonic!” and I honestly don’t even think he can hear me.” You shrugged.

“And to be loved by her.” He smiled.

“He’s crazy.” You said.

“She’s a blessing.” Tom said.

“Thanks guys. We’re gonna return to the first room now for the test.” The crew told you. You were brought back into the room where Tom was ready waiting with a small stack of black cards.

“Exercise one in the friendship test, we have to stare into each other’s eyes for three minutes.” Tom read off a little card. You turned to face each other and instantly smiled.

“Your eyes are so brown.” You commented as you studied them.

“Is that a good thing?” He asked.

“It’s the best thing.” You promised.

“Babydoll. My heart.” He pouted at your complement.

“I never loved brown eyes until I loved you.” You said softly.

“I never loved until I loved you.” He replied.

“Woah. Calm down there, Hamlet. This is Glamour, not our wedding vows.” You laughed shyly at his profession.

“Did you call me Hamlet?” His eyebrows knit together.

“Yeah.” You said as you continued to hold eye contact.

“And not Romeo?” He inquired.

“Why would I call you Romeo?” You asked.

“You’re calling me a famous Shakespearean lover boy and you chose Hamlet over Romeo?” He asked in confusion.

“Romeo was dumb. Oh, then actually yeah, you are Romeo.” You teased.

“If you’re being like this to my face, I can’t wait to hear what sweet things you said about me in the other room.” Tom joked.

“We were supposed to say sweet things?” You asked in a panic.

“She’s kidding.” Tom apologized for you, but you weren’t actually kidding.

“Yes. Kidding.” You lied.

“Has it been three minutes yet? My eyes are so dry.” Tom rubbed around his eyes.

“That makes me think of our plank video.” You smiled when he asked about the time.

“It’s been four.” A crew member told you and your and Tom finally broke eye contact.

“God, I can’t look at this hideous creature any longer.” You joked and Tom pressed a kiss to your forehead.

“Exercise two, compliment each other.” You read off the next card.

“We have to write them down first?” Tom asked the crew.

“He’s asking because he can’t read.” You kidded.

“I know you’re joking, but I genuinely can’t read.” He laughed as he began to write down some compliments.

“It’s okay, baby. Do you best.” You laughed back.

“Okay. I’ll go first.” You opened your notepad. “You’re incredibly hard working. You always show appreciation to each and every person you come into contact with. You dedicate everything you have to your work and it really shows with your outstanding performances. You constantly give and never expect anything in return. You’re a great person to have on my team. And your ass is fat.” You read off what you wrote on the notepad.

“Baby, I’m gonna cry. You really think that about my butt?” Tom held a hand over his heart as he played into your joke.

“Yes. And I love your ears. I forgot to put that in there.” You remembered.

“I’ve always been insecure about my ears. You really like them?” He touched one as he looked at you.

“Yes, My Dumbo looking king.” You wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed his cheek several times.

“My turn.” Tom laughed at your statement. “I said you’re really good at making tea.” He read off the notepad and stared at you blankly.

“Babe, you didn’t.” You out your hands over your mouth as if you were about to cry.

“I did.” He nodded.

“Stop. You gas me up too much.” You pretended to wipe away tears.

“I have too, baby. No one makes tea the way you do.” He continued his joke.

“My secret is hot water.” You winked at the camera.

“Exercise three, ask anything.” Tom read off another card.

“There’s so much I want to know.” Tom gushed, as if he didn’t already know everything about his fiancé.

“Ask away.” You smiled.

“Who is your favorite actor?” Tom started his questions off.

“Oh, that’s a good question.” You pretended to think about it. “It’s gotta be Ryan Reynolds.”

“Oh, okay.” He nodded curtly. “Well what about your favorite actor named Tom? Preferably Tom H?”

“Easy. Tom Hanks.” You replied with a shrug.

“Let’s try this, favorite British Tom H?” He tried again.

“Tom Hiddleston, duh.” You laughed.

“Okay. Okay. That’s fine. Who’s your favorite actor who has portrayed Spider-Man?” He narrowed the pool.

“Another easy one. It’s obviously John Mulaney.” You said and looked at the crew for their agreement.

“He didn’t play Spiderman.” Tom stated.

“He played Spider-Ham in Into The Spiderverse. You didn’t specify if he had to have portrayed human Spider-Man.” You told Tom.

“Well then who’s your favorite British actor who has played Spider-Man?” Tom asked.

“Oh. I see. This was all a set up to the obvious. My favorite British actor who had played Spider-Man,” you shrugged and Tom smiled, “Andrew Garfield. Is he here? Was this a setup to surprise me with my favorite British actor who’s played Spider-Man?”

“He’s not here.” Tom pretended to be hurt.

“No? Then I have to leave early.” You joked.

“Lucky for you, we’ve completed all the exercises.” Tom said when he realized there were no more cards.

“So they took the fight to the death part out of the test?” You asked in faux sadness.

“I guess they did.” Tom laughed.

“Darn.” You shook your head as Tom wrapped his arms around your waist from behind.

“We can still fight to the death when we get home.” He said as he rested his head on your shoulder.

“Promise?” You asked.

“Yes, babygirl. I promise.” Tom pulled you into a hug and rolled his eyes at the camera. “Thank you for watching our Friendship Test.”

“And thank you Glamour for having us.” You said once you pulled out of the hug.

“Who knows? Maybe next time you see us, we’ll be married.” Tom winked at the camera.

“Or divorced.” You deadpanned. “Bye!”

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