Star Wars: The Force Awakens - spoilers ahead.

The Force Awakens v A New Hope: 18 plot points are the same. EIGHTEEN!  JJ Abrams pulled a Wrath of Khan with the Star Wars franchise. By that I mean, we shouldn't be surprised that JJ Abrams borrowed heavily from A New Hope and the beginning of Empire Strikes Back. He remade Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (and called it Star Trek: Into Darkness) and no one called him on that so why not recast and tweak A New Hope?  

To be clear, I liked Force Awakens OK. It's just startling how much they based the story on the original movie. 

How to reboot the #FantasticFour movie the right way:

When they again reboot the #FantasticFour movie series (which they will) they should set it in the late 50's to early 60's space race era & stay true to the source material. For better or worse Reed is an egotistical, chauvinistic genius Madmen-type super scientist that steals a rocket ship and gets them all (Sue, Johnny and Ben) to go along with him. And they get irradiated by cosmic rays and get their powers. Then they battle Dr. Doom, Reed's old rival, who is a despot ruler of Latveria. Doom was scarred back in college and injured when an experiment he was conducting goes wrong. He blames his classmate Reed for the experiment's failure. At the end of the movie the FF defeat Doom but only by pushing Doom into the Negative Zone. Problem is they get sucked in with him.

End of the movie: Reed figures out how to get them back but time is different in the Negative Zone and they come back to our present day. After credits: Doom figures out how to get back too in the present day. Sequel set up.

What do you think?

TedCruz.com not run by Ted Cruz. If he can't run his own name's website can he be trusted to run the USA?

Yup, pretty much the 1st step towards a Star Trek replicator

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6864636

"I don't think Hillary Clinton is going to run for president." Said every other Democrat thinking about running that is in self denial.

A computer program writing & publishing AP news stories sure sounds a lot like #AI

And what happens when the program decides it doesn't like us anymore?

Bill Gates is worried about AI and he's a smart human, right?

I think my phone was on acid when I took this photo of Congress Ave. in Austin

New comic book idea: "Juke Box Hero"

In the future juke boxes are sentient robots than communicate thru song lyrics. Juke Box Hero (the protagonist) is on a quest to save his fellow juke boxes from the evil human overloads that see juke boxes as obsolete and are attempting to eradicate their kind in favor of digital music that humans control, manipulate and change at their whim. Juke Box Hero "has stars in his eyes" meaning he can shoot laser beams out of his eyes that are as hot as the surface of the sun. 

#HeroesReborn = 2000's show coming back. 90's #X-Files is maybe coming back. How about a dark/creepy reboot of 80's #Alf?

Nancy Grace v. 2 Chainz re marijuana legalization.

Of course Nancy Grace loses, badly.

Anyone else notice that #Cowboys D Coordinator Rod Marinelli looks like the grandfather from #KingOfTheHill ?

Because you know, the Ferguson grand jurors just innately would know that the prosecutor might be presenting false information

via witnesses the prosecution knew were likely lying. Startling Admission By The Ferguson Prosecutor Could Restart The Case Against Darren Wilson

N. Korea suffers massive Internet outages,

One can only wonder what persons, organizations, multinational corporations and/or nation states might have an axe to grind with North Korea. I mean who would do something like disabling a whole country's internet infrastructure?

Texas theater to show Team America in Place of The Interview

I love #GreatBadMovies

For example, my favorite great bad movie is #BigTroubleInLittleChina (though liked now, it was a box office bomb and panned when it 1st came out) starring the great Kurt Russell. Just realized I have not watched many great bad Xmas/holiday movies. That will be remedied posthaste. First up Christmas with the Kranks, then Surviving Christmas.

Happy holidays! Picard #StarTrek The Next Generation style

Remember how geeked you were when you 1st saw the #StarWars Phantom Menace trailer? Just saying, let's see the new one before we decide it's great.

Florida set for close governor election. What could go wrong? In other news Germany to fly Zeppelins & FrancoHathaway to host Oscars again

Pope believes in evolution & Big Bang theory, also that the earth is not flat or the center of the universe

The first 2 (his beliefs regarding evolution and the Big Bang theory) this current Pope just let us know about as reported by Salon.com.  The last 2 (that the earth isn't flat or the center of the universe) one of his predecessors let us know about, I think in the 1950's.

Thanks for all the support for this blog

but it's obviously been some time since I've posted here regularly. I just cannot seem to find the time or the motivation to make it a priority to post here regularly. Just got busy with other stuff (family, other hobbies, work, etc.). I am not going to pull it down though. I still like going back and looking at older posts. And maybe I will get back into it at some point. And any posts here still go to my twitter feed: @JavGonzoTweets. Also, I will still post about the Texas Rangers at TheTexasRangersBlog.com. Hope all is well. Take it easy. - JG