Viewing parties have become a big deal on Twitter since quarantining became a thing, and it was only a matter of time until one was thrown for the fifth highest grossing film in screen history (not adjusted for inflation, of course): Avengers: Infinity War. Sunday saw the one-year anniversary of Avengers: Endgame, and ComicBook.com celebrated by throwing its predecessor an online party. Joining them were screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, and one of the tidbits they shared was that Captain America almost had a very different arc.

To be exact, he was almost not in it till the third act. One fan asked them about a rumor to that effect, to which the two, sharing the same Twitter account, replied, “Yep. Then we came to our senses.”

They didn’t expand upon that, but it’s hard to imagine an Infinity War that was short on Cap. Did they change that in part because actor Chris Evans wanted to part ways with his most iconic screen character, and they wanted to give him sufficient screentime so his Endgame arc would hit harder? Who knows! Perhaps they’ll elaborate at another juncture. After all, we have plenty of time to talk about Marvel movies, and other films as well.

(Via ComicBook.com)

If time heals all wounds, then Michael Jordan needs a little bit more to get past his feelings on the Detroit Pistons squad that served as a thorn in his side for years. Episodes three and four of The Last Dance spend a bunch of time on Jordan and the Chicago Bulls’ quest for a first championship, and as such, a ton of time is spent on the Bad Boys-era Detroit Pistons, which relished the chance to bully Jordan’s teams physically and mentally.

“We knew how important to the NBA it was to get Michael to go to the next level,” former Pistons big man John Salley said during the doc. “The blueprint was Larry [Bird], Magic [Johnson], now Michael. And all of a sudden, there was this little team in Detroit who just messed up the whole story. We loved that.”

“We knew Michael Jordan was the greatest player, and we tried to use it as a rallying cry to come together,” Isiah Thomas said. “We had to do everything from a physicality standpoint to stop him.”

Naturally, a main focus in all of this were the legendary Jordan Rules. Salley and Thomas gave the most basic definition: Detroit tried its hardest to keep Jordan on the ground, with Thomas saying that “when he was in the air, we had no shot.” Former Pistons assistant Brendan Malone dove in a little deeper.

“This is what the Jordan Rules were,” Malone said. “On the wings, we’re going to push him to the elbow and we’re not gonna let him drive to the baseline. Number two, when he’s on top, we’re gonna influence him to his left. When he got the ball in the low post, we’re gonna trap him from the top. That’s the Jordan Rules, and it was that simple.”

Of course, there were times when Jordan was going to beat these rules, because he was simply that good. Malone was asked what happened when Jordan was able to drive baseline, which for Jordan usually meant he was going to score.

“That’s when [Bill] Laimbeer and [Rick] Mahorn would go up and knock him down to the ground,” Malone said.

“I compare Michael Jordan to nobody, because for him to survive that and still maintain that greatness, it’s unparalleled,” then-Pistons enforcer Dennis Rodman said.

Jordan still had his big games, but for years, they were never enough to get past Detroit. Chicago fell to the Pistons in the 1988 Eastern Conference Semifinals, then lost to them in the conference finals each of the next two years. The team eventually cleared the hurdle in 1991, sweeping Detroit in the conference finals en route to their first championship.

Still, everything that occurred between the two sides still sits poorly with Jordan, who gave an incredibly Michael Jordan response to a question about the Bad Boys.

“Oh, I hated them,” Jordan said. “That hate carries even to this day. They made it personal, they physically beat the sh*t out of us.”

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Episode three of The Last Dance put the spotlight on perhaps the most fascinating member of the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, Dennis Rodman. While Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were the team’s superstars, Rodman epitomized being a star in your own role, as his ability to defend and rebound were crucial to the team’s second three-peat.

Rodman’s episode began with a deep dive into his past, which involved getting kicked out of his home when he was 18. He bounced around, eventually getting a chance to play basketball at Southeastern Oklahoma State, where he said he would “go balls out every time” he took the floor. It led to him going to the Detroit Pistons in the second round of the 1986 NBA Draft, where he eventually pieced together how he could become an impact player in the league.

“I think my second or third year in the league, I actually figured out what I can do best: rebound and play defense,” Rodman said. “Basically, I just started learning how to perfect that. I just used to have my friends, late at night — sh*t, 3, 4 in the morning — go to the gym, I’d say, ‘Shoot the ball. Just shoot it over here, shoot it over here, shoot it over there, shoot it over there. I just sit there and react, react. I just practiced a lot about the angle of the ball and the trajectory of it. You got a Larry Bird, it’s gonna spin. You got a Magic [Johnson], major spin. When Michael shoot over here, I position myself right there.”

Rodman then explained how he got to the point where he internalized what the ball would do whenever it would hit the rim, figuring out the best way to position himself so that he could be the first to corral it.

“So basically, I just started learning how to put myself in a position to get the ball,” Rodman said. “I was pretty much like that rash you can’t ever get rid of, right?”

This mentality made Rodman perhaps the most revered rebounder in the history of the league, as well as one of the most tenacious and versatile defenders that basketball has ever seen. Add in that he embraced this role — willingly deferring to the Bulls’ superstar duo to be the team’s stars — and Rodman’s importance cannot be overstated. In fact, Gary Payton lovingly calling him a “pest” and the team’s “f*ck up person.”

Obviously the most compelling stuff about Rodman occurs off the court, where he is as complex of a human as the league has ever seen. But the look into Dennis Rodman: All-Time Great Basketball Player is tremendous, too.

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What is happening?

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Just because you can’t be present doesn’t mean you can’t *send* presents.

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It’s claimed that William Shakespeare wrote King Lear while quarantining from the bubonic plague. Perhaps the most lasting work conceived during the COVID-19 outbreak will be the sequel to Mallrats. On Friday, Kevin Smith revealed that he’d completed the screenplay for Twilight of the Mallrats, the sequel to his second feature — and that’s on top of his Mooby’s-based charity work. Meanwhile all you were doing was bingeing trash television or even the Columbia Noir section of the Criterion Channel, accomplishing nothing.

Smith broke the news on Instagram, writing that it was only “thanks in part” to the nationwide lockdown that he “finally” finished the first draft. The image was a view of the title page alongside an extensive, excitable caption:

25 years after the original, Brodie Bruce will be back for an unnecessary sequel set against the Mallpocalypse! Rene, Willam, Gwen, Brandy, T.S., Trish, Mr. Svenning, LaFours and the rebooted @jayandsilentbob are the returning ‘Rats in an Askewniverse imagining about what happens when the sidewalk sales end, and “happily ever after” is easier to say than live! The #jayandsilentbob stuff is some of my favorite conceptual comedy I’ve ever written but the whole script is silly, sentimental and sweet. And at 98 pages, the story moves like a brakeless bullet train! It’ll be months before we can actually shoot it, but if you wanna know the backstory, I recorded an entire episode about “Twilight of the Mallrats” for my new podcast, “Silent Bob Speaks” – available at That Kevin Smith Club (link in my bio)! And now that *this* script is done, it’s on to a new draft of #moosejaws and then the first draft of the new version of #Clerks3.

So there you go! Again, it’s only a first draft, and he has to yet to wrangle up the cast. Will Shannen Doherty return? What about Three’s Company alum Priscilla Barnes? When it materializes it will join the recent Jay and Silent Bob Reboot of View Askew revivals. Perhaps if this pandemic lasts much longer we’ll wind up with Dogma 2 as well.

(Via EW)

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