I saw all three of these, and I liked them all actually. I think some of the variations in reception are probably due to different levels of franchise fatigue, plus different expectations for each of these franchises in general.

There hasn't been a new Mad Max movie since 1985, so people weren't sick of the franchise. For many, it probably felt like a new series. The fact that it was made sort of as a reboot anyways (bye Mel Gibson, hello Tom Hardy) helped that perception. But the franchise as a whole has never really been rooted in continuity. The shift between the first and second movies is pretty big in my opinion. So I think that even though this one is probably in continuity with the first three, it feels like a new start anyways as the first new Mad Max in 30 years. It doesn't have to be in continuity if it doesn't want to, it can just exist on its own. The stories of this particular series have never needed continuity if they don’t want it.

Similarly, Jurassic World does exist in continuity with the other three also, but the second and third movies don’t really matter for its story. That says something more about those entries being disposable instead of anything about this one. It’s been a while since the last movie, so people were ready for another one, and the premise of World was a realization of an unfulfilled promise from the first movie: an operational dinosaur theme park. People who saw the first Jurassic Park twenty something years ago were getting the sequel they always wanted, and it was awesome.

The Terminator franchise... is completely different. It started with two great movies (T1, T2) and devolved into two meh movies (T3, Salvation) that are all within the same continuity. There was also a good, but complicated and prematurely cancelled TV show (Sarah Conner Chronicles). So before Genisys, there was a whole lot of Terminator to digest; people weren't exactly starving for a new entry in the series, and there was definitely an element of franchise fatigue in play. Given the complicated stories and the success of some of the earlier entries, a soft reboot (like Days of Future Past) was probably the best play going forward. And this story did work to reset the continuity, update the franchise, and honestly end the overall plot of humans vs Skynet if need be. Yay they finally stopped Judgment Day permanently forever! (If you ignore the post credits stinger.) I don’t think the film was unsuccessful because of how it approached continuity; I think it was because there just wasn’t a demand for a Terminator reboot yet, and because some of the story decisions in the third act didn’t make sense. It was still an enjoyable movie, but it wasn’t the right time for it.

Mass Effect 3! I listened to that soundtrack a lot during finals one year to focus, it's just so epic, somber, and inspiring. The entire album is on Spotify I think, but these are a few of my favorite tracks:

Leaving Earth and its coda later in the album An End Once And For All

Mars - sort of the traditional mass effect song.

Credits

But the whole things is definitely worth a listen.

It gets really really annoying. Some songs that I've manually added from my mac won't play on my phone, and some songs I try to play are actually other tracks, despite being added from apple's servers directly. I would love it if it worked - I was excited about the prospect of switching from Spotify because I could upload my own songs (i.e. The Beatles library). But I think I have to switch back because Spotify, despite its limitations, at least consistently works.

It had a sort of ending but they left too many plot points up in the air, and it was a rushed conclusion since they thought they had more time. The movie, Extinction, was going to be basically Atlantis going back to Pegasus and had some sort of plot involving ending the Wraith for good. It just felt like there was so much more they could have done. There's a series of post Atlantis novels that are still being released, but I haven't made the jump yet to reading EU stuff for any franchises really. It's on my to do list though.

Haha I'm guessing that you didn't like the end of BSG. I didn't mind it, but I did think ghost Starbuck made no sense.

My video game ones really aren't that great, plus I do them for collections. For example I'll have a 6 disc case that has a bunch of random games and the cover is a mismash of stuff just designed to tell me what's in it. But I recommend you check out the customcovers subreddit, they have some cool stuff you might like looking at.

Sort of a hobby/compulsion: designing movie, tv, and game posters in photoshop. I have a very large digital media collection, organized through Plex. But a lot of the time I hate the posters that it automatically assigns to the movies and TV shows so I find myself making my own artwork for my collection in photoshop a lot. This also led me to start designing and printing my own game covers for some of my favorites. Since those are one of the last forms of physical media I still frequently use I actually end up printing those and using it in place of the art in the box sleeve. I wouldnt call any of the custom covers phenomenal, but I just find it really calming and fun to make them, and I really like seeing my own artwork for something I love. Small thing but I enjoy doing it.

Start watching twin peaks.

phone rings, life calls, pause netflix.

No coffee or pie.

I downloaded it, tried it for a little while, realized I had no idea what the hell I was doing or how to play, uninstalled it. A three and a half day saga.

Martian was a lot of fun to read, its the first book in a while I just got completely engrossed in. I think the movie is gonna be good though, Ridley Scott can do great stuff (Blade Runner) when its not his material (Prometheus).

I'm trying to read Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson but I keep getting distracted. Ive heard hes a great author though.

I forget where I read it but supposedly the end of My Name is Earl was going to be Earl realizing he could never finish his list, but his goal had inspired other people to make their own lists. So he walks off into the sunset finally having put out more good karma into the world than bad.

Haha I remember seeing that too! If I'm ever fighting alongside Master Chief battling Thomas the Tank Engine with a lightsaber, I'll know I'm playing Skyrim the way it was meant to be played.

yeah definitely closer but there's still gonna be hardware limitations. Some of the super intense mods require very high end PCs to operate, so while youll be able to mod on consoles to a degree the options on PC are probably always going to be better. Plus for now I'm on PS4 not Xbox One, and I don't think Sony has agreed to mods yet.

Yeah I started adopting a similar rule. I was going to watch Constantine but I'm kind of glad I waited because it's not going to get a chance to end.

Yeah Firefly was such a promising universe. They did a sequel comic series to the movie last year called Leaves on the Wind but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I dunno if the vibe would be the same without Wash.

I'm enjoying being on Hubski a lot more than I ever was on reddit, so I think I'll skip out on voat. The community seems much friendlier and like people I actually want to talk to. But I think I'll still frequent the smaller communities on reddit that I liked - a few tv show subreddits were great for post episode discussion, some game ones always had news or announcements I didn't know about. In general there are areas of interest that hubski seems too small right now to accommodate, but I hope it keeps growing. It's a very nice site.

It's one of my gaming dreams to buy a pc and mod the hell out of skyrim. I've only played on console, but I bought the legendary edition on a steam sale a few years ago for this purpose. Seeing the graphics updates, additional content, new areas online all really seem like they improve on an already fantastic experience, sort of like an expansion but more involved. But I feel like one of the main things mods do is add a reason to replay your favorite games, and I don't think I would want to mod something like Fallout 4 or Elder Scrolls 6 without really experiencing the base game vanilla first.

I don't think I've read anything else by him but I've heard he's had some really good runs. As far as I understand the plots of the ongoing are going to be separate from the movies, but who knows. Plus I'm really excited for Spectre and I do hope they throw the organization into the story in some way.

I started getting into Neko because The New Pornographers are one of my favorite bands, but she's a really great solo artist too. In fact they pretty much all are, what a fantastic bunch of musicians. Great song!

The view from the top of the El Castillo Mayan ruins at Xunantunich in Belize, about 130 ft. tall. Pretty fun climb:

I've been keeping one pretty regularly for about two years now. I write whatever I feel like, but my main goal is to sort of organize my thoughts and get my worries out on the page so they don't infiltrate my real life. I started out writing on Microsoft Word, then a physical journal, and now I'm sometimes writing in a physical journal and sometimes in Evernote. No organizational method, just the day and date and then writing whatever comes to mind. It really helps, and I find that on days that I don't write I tend to feel worse now.

Graduated with a biology of global health degree last year, starting med school at the end of the month. Did a thesis on infectious disease during my junior and senior year of college, did clinical research this past year on asthma and another project on schizophrenia, and I'm hoping to do clinical work studying the microbiome and gut-brain interaction. I'm thinking that's where I might like to focus my career, but I'm honestly not sure yet.

I am very tempted to get one of these. The thought of seeing that as I have my morning coffee makes me smile.

I liked it, but it was definitely over simplified from a psychological standpoint. This article with the scientific consultants for the movie says they had to limit it to 5 emotions just for narrative sake, but they wanted to include a broader range initially.

It was an entertaining read but I ended up not liking it as much. The ending of In the Woods was pretty unsatisfying, but more than that each book she writes focuses on a different protagonist. The lead from The Likeness is a side character in the first one, and the lead from the first one doesn't show up in the second one except for a small cameo. I say read them in whatever order you want, but I found reading The Likeness first a good entry point and a better book overall.

I go to lectures and take some notes, but don't obsess over getting everything down on the page. This is more just important for being the first exposure to the content. In a few days I go to read the pertinent material that was covered in the lecture and take detailed notes. This is the second exposure, and material is already starting to cement in my mind from the lecture now. Then make some flash cards and repeat the notes to myself aloud until I remember the bits that I didn't initially.

In general there are a lot. One that's sticking out in my mind right now though is The Likeness by Tana French. On its surface it sort of seems like a run of the mill murder mystery novel - a girl is killed in a small town in Dublin, and an investigator with an uncanny resemblance to her pretends to be her for a short time to try to find out who killed her. But the psychological depths it gets to were intense. The investigator starts liking this girl's life more than her own, things like that.

But what made it impact me is that the detective ingrains herself into this close knit community of friends who are post grads at the local university. And its an amazing group of friends, like a very close family. And throughout the course of the novel she starts to realize one of them killed the girl and then it becomes about the psychological damage of unravelling this group, both for the members of it and for this detective.

It hit very close to home for me because I had just graduated from college a month before I read this. I had a very close knit group of friends like the group in the book, and I was feeling really down about the loss of that. It really felt like I had lost something irreplaceable. My dad recommended I read it because he saw how bummed out I was getting. And it did help, it sort of made me realize that yeah things are always going to change, but nothing takes away the memories and positivity I have from that time in my life. Good book.

It's a lot of fun. The open world is gigantic, much bigger than Skyrim I think. And the side quests are amazing and almost always fully developed stories in their own right. It's definitely worth playing, but the world and story is much darker than Skyrim so just keep that in mind. Bad things routinely happen, and there are some seriously messed up creatures rolling around the continent. I highly recommend it.

Bees by Caribou. Very chill electronic.

Back of the Car by RAC ft. Nate Hendricks. Newish RAC track, similar vibe to one of my favorites by them - Cheap Sunglasses. Good summer song.

I just started getting into Sufjan last week, haven't done a full listen through of Carrie and Lowell yet though. Gonna give that a shot soon.

what I did was watch episodes that were important for the main story in Season 1. I basically followed what people said on here (http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/6370/what-1st-season-episodes-in-babylon-5-are-required-to-follow-the-main-arc) initially and I liked the main episodes so much I ended up going back and watching most of the rest of Season 1. So having someone watch 9 or 10 episodes to get a feel for the show is a good way to do it I think.