Michael*

@PinkCouture @Clauds Harrison Ford admitted a while ago that he was wrong to want Solo killed off in 'Return Of The Jedi', but he probably wasn't taking no for an answer this time. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he only agreed to reprise the role on that condition.

Ah thanks, I didn't know that. I suppose it's possible that Obi-Wan could potentially have fathered a child with Satine and also remained a Jedi, as long as he was detached enough from the situation. Obviously, there's no option but to settle for conjecture at this point, but I do think it would be quite cool to have a sort of Kenobi/Skywalker duality stretching through the whole saga, with the Kenobis essentially serving as guardians of the Skywalkers' rogue traits, and that role being reprised whenever the potentially dangerous Skywalker genes start misbehaving. As they did with Kylo Ren.

So, this is now officially the highest-earning R-rated movie of all time, grossing $745m worldwide and beating the previous record holder 'The Matrix Reloaded'. Which I actually had no clue was an R-rated movie.

High five.

Here's another of Gunn's sketches, which apparently has just been shot as a scene for the movie. He doesn't think anyone will ever correctly guess what's happening in it, which sounds a lot like a challenge to me. Any thoughts?

A few reasons, really, but mostly because their apparent commitment to stay true to the tone and feel of the original trilogy makes me think that we can expect a couple of twists from one or both of episodes VIII and IX. Based on that premise, Rey being Luke's daughter, or even Han and Leia's daughter (and to be fair, Abrams did seem to be trying to lead us in the direction of the former) just seems too obvious. Personally, I'd lean towards Rey not being a Skywalker at all, or, if Luke is her father, then her mother being a Kenobi, which would be pretty interesting too. I'm not certain that 'Clone Wars' is considered canon now, but even if it is, the timelines have never been what you'd call concrete. Obi-Wan's child could still have been born at any point prior to Satine's death.

Saw it this afternoon. There were a lot of reasons why it didn't work for me, but by far and away the biggest was the characterisation, with Snyder's interpretation of his two leads just way, way off base. As much as Affleck’s embittered version of Bruce Wayne impressed, which was a lot more than I expected, his callousness about killing flew in the face of Batman's core essence. It's no secret that there have been exceptions to his 'no killing' rule in the books, but the deaths in the movie weren't that, they were Snyder going "wouldn’t this be badass?". For me, if the story had focused more on Wayne's undoubted guilt and his descent into antihero territory, it would have been a lot easier to buy into. Unfortunately, I thought Cavill's Superman was just as lost in his own way. Usually, in a huge ensemble piece, the differing ideologies of characters is where the fun comes from, but Clark wasn't a contrast to Batman, just an ever-so-slightly different shade of grey. Luthor was annoying, thinly-sketched, and really only there to push the plot along. Elsewhere, I did see elements of a much stronger film that fails mostly because it tries to do far too much. It strings you along with promises of getting good soon, and to be fair, it shows signs of doing exactly that. Next thing you know, just when it feels like it's winding up, it takes a left turn and either goes off in a pointless direction, or starts moving towards some other interesting subplot that is again dropped far too quickly. So overall, although I wouldn’t say it was an unmitigated disaster by any means, it fell well short of its potential. It's really just frustrating to have heard Snyder proclaim this his dream project for years, only to demonstrate that he doesn't have a clue what three of DC's real a-listers are meant to be about. Characters need to be more than recognisable names having a scrap. They need, well, character.

If nothing else, it's good that people aren't just blindly going by what the reviews are saying. Critics can be pretty hive-minded at the best of times and let's face it, they've whiffed en masse on many occasions in the past. It's probably safe to assume that most of us have something in our media collections that we really enjoy, that was far from acclaimed when it first came out.

Yeah, the impression I get when I read Superman stuff is that the writers work under an assumption of the audience already knowing what he's about, when in actual fact there's plenty of room to explore his values. There's the crusader/protector thing, the paragon of virtue and also the alien from another world, which are all very potent aspects of the character, but they somehow feel strangely under-developed when they're not presented to you as a package. I usually find that the main problem with Snyder is that storytelling just isn't one of his strong suits. He seems to have trouble getting the most out of a script, even when it's a script of his own creation. To avoid having something like the Justice League come across as silly, the story would have to be handled carefully and very delicately, and I'd question whether that's really in his wheelhouse.

I'm inclined to agree with Cavill on that, at least to a point. Despite the critics being, well, critical, it's the people paying to see it who will be the ultimate arbiters. And of course, films like this are relatively bulletproof in the sense that most of the folks queuing at the local cineplex won't have even read the reviews. Whether it'll yield really monstrous numbers though, will depend more on the subsequent word of mouth, the comments on social media and repeated viewings by the diehards. My curiosity about stuff like this is such that I'll still be giving it a look. Plus, I always enjoy spotting Stan Lee's cameo.

I suppose to be fair, the role Henry Cavill played in 'Man Of Steel' was a pretty tough gig. He was basically a transient worker figuring out the extent of his alien heritage, then a confused rookie hero launched into becoming the world's saviour, all within a matter of hours. In terms of the physical design of the character, he probably isn't as ideal a Superman as Reeve or maybe even Brandon Routh were, but I thought he embodied everything an actor should to play the part. We've seen all of Clark's conflicts now though, and we should be in a different place at this point, so it'll be interesting to see what they do with him.

Do let us know how it goes.

Having seen Elodie in 'Banlieue 13: Ultimatum', I knew to expect very good things.

To sum up the current page, only one emoticon will do...

RIP Johan Cruyff.

The box office targets will probably be similar to those of 'Force Awakens' so I'm guessing about a billion, although whether it makes that much of course remains to be seen. A lot will depend on the fans and if they're prepared to come back two or three times. If not, I could perhaps see the overall takings totaling about 800-850m worldwide, which, when you consider that the 'Amazing Spider-Man' series was discontinued after the second installment made 750m off a budget of 260m, would be a bit of a disappointment for a movie being billed as a launching point for the Justice League franchise.

Yeah, the reviews I've read so far didn't seem to think much of the movie overall, but almost all say that Affleck acquitted himself pretty well. That being said, he supposedly had input on the script too, so if the film as a whole doesn't impress, then I suppose at least some of that could still reasonably be laid at his door.

I was a bit concerned about the movie connection at first, but Charlie Cox is so inherently charismatic that he really banishes all memory of Affleck's take on the character. I hope to see him fight alongside the Avengers eventually. The show might test your tolerance for binge-watching though, because the seasons are structured more like very long movies than TV. None of the episodes really work as standalone pieces, and have a habit of just ending rather than steering you towards a pay-off. It never felt like a slog to me because I loved S1 as a whole, but I think it's one of those shows where, if you got out of sync with it, you'd have to push yourself a bit to keep watching.

If nothing else, I'm looking forward to the episode where Cage and Iron Fist co-found the Heroes for Hire, and the two characters spend the 70s together wearing cool headbands.

Done.

James Gunn took to Facebook the other day to post one of his production sketches, with new images being promised every Wednesday until the movie's release date. No idea what's going on in it, though.

Hello, good evening and welcome!

What browser do you use?

As will I. The final trailer for S2 was just released by Netflix, looks like they're going to delve even deeper into the grey areas of vigilantism. Daredevil stories always seem to be at their best when Matt is struggling with those moral questions, so that should prove to be a very good thing.

So what was the verdict?