I’m not sure why it was decided that Wonder Woman 1984 was the optimal title for the sequel to the fantastic 2017 rebirth of Wonder Woman. WW84, as it is called in shorthand, has no shortage of reminding its audience that the film is set in the year 1984. There are glimpses of children at the mall playing arcade games while Chris Pine engages in a pointless “let’s laugh at the 80s fashion” scene.

I hated this movie and I really didn’t want to which makes the disappointment sting more than it should. Patty Jenkins has shown to be a promising director again joins Gal Gadot who is the most alluring and captivating superhero lead since Downey Jr. got in the Iron Man suit. …

Two major Christmas features were released straight to streaming and I indulged in both. Each film had its own take on human wants and desires, and how selfishness and greed cause great internal and external peril.

The first was Disney Pixar’s Soul. Just when you think Pixar is done surprising its audience with clever moral and emotional innuendo, the story writers and thinkers at Pixar do it again.

Pete Docter is an OG of the Disney Pixar franchise with story credits on Toy Story, Monsters Inc. which was his directorial debut, and continuing with Up and Inside Out. Docter is most concerned with what makes humans… human. …

The Last of Us 2 at last night’s The Game Awards won:

• Game of the Year
• Best Game Direction
• Best Narrative (LOL!)
• Best Audio Design
• Best Performance
• Best Action/Adventure Game

The knee-jerk reaction would be that the gaming media wanted to sympathetically award a game that received a massive amount of vitriol for its story which had been leaked prior to release. Add on that TLOU2 had two female leads and a trans supporting character, TLOU2 was basically The Green Book of video games in terms of awards bait.

What also has to be factored in is the gaming industry’s lack of compelling narrative focused AAA games. I haven’t found a game’s story to be engaging since Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018. So while I may see TLOU2’s narrative as self-contradictory and in desperate need of an editor, it was one of a few heavily story-focused games this year. …

The sports gaming industry is layered and multi-faceted in terms of what the public wants and expects versus what the game companies and designers publish. I’ve written at length about how NBA 2K and MLB The Show are miles ahead of what EA Sports has put out for a full decade at this point.

Now I would maintain that FIFA is a decent soccer game and that the level of detail that goes into building an entire world database of players and teams is an accomplishment that shouldn’t go unnoticed. …

Jacob Haren from Twitter asked Twitter:

Now go into these answers expecting childhood ruining results. That’s what this exercise is all about! Considering what we’ve been through in 2020, haphazardly politically identifying some harmless Disney characters can’t hurt right?

Carl Fredricksen from Up

These trades are sponsored by ESPN’s ‘highly reliable and definitely always updated and never wrong’ trade machine to make some very possible and real NBA trades. Who is Hollinger anyway?

That’s your above warning in case anyone blames me for not researching player contracts or cap rules. This is a hypothetical exercise in trying to make trades that have value for each team. So let’s get started.

Jrue Holiday for Kristaps Porzingis

For the first time, I wondered, “Is there a secret to racing?”

Just like Bill Simmons explored the idea of the secret to winning basketball and the realization that it had nothing to do with basketball, I fathom that maybe there’s a similar philosophy to racing.

What is the secret to being the racecar driver that dominates your sport at the highest level?

Part of me hopes that one day a legendary driver tells us what that secret may be. What was the driving factor behind Jeff Gordon’s late-90s dominance? Johnson’s over a decade-long run of being NASCAR’s dominant force even as the sport tried to even out the competition? …

I went to sleep last night, November 2nd, 2020, probably around 2 in the morning. There was some tossing and some turning, but eventually, I fell into a deep dream state where the nightmares began.

You ever have those dreams where some of your teeth fall out? Google told me that’s related to anxiety. Fitting.

The point is its Election Day 2020 and I’m in a foul mood so I’m going to clairvoyantly predict America’s collapse this decade. The future of America is so uncertain that I’m not sure Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson can save us.

Here are the scenarios to the end of America as we know it. Foolproof. No matter if Biden or Trump wins. …