If an entire town gets thrown into prehistoric Earth, the town should probably matter.

This week on Beware of Spoilers, Adam breaks down The End of Oak Street, a new Bad Robot dinosaur movie with an excellent premise but too many competing ideas. From an underdeveloped suburban community to a marriage subplot that keeps interrupting the survival story, the movie repeatedly hints at more interesting versions of itself without fully committing to any of them.

There is plenty to like, but not enough to make this one memorable.

Full spoilers ahead. Adam saw Spider-Man: Brand New Day and calls it the first time he's felt confident in the MCU in years. A complete breakdown of who Sadie Sink is playing, why the Peter/*REDACTED* symmetry is the smartest thing in the movie, and how a self-contained, street-level Spider-Man story quietly lays every piece of groundwork the *REDACTED* saga needs. Plus the Tom Holland and Jon Bernthal double act, the best Hulk scene in years, a *REDACTED* hiding in plain sight, and the one narrative thread the film ties up a little too neatly. A full 5 out of 5, and the reason to believe in Marvel again.

The first new Avatar project in nearly a decade is here, and Adam has thoughts. A full-spoilers review of Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, why it's one of the best-looking things the franchise has ever produced, and why it should never have been dumped onto streaming. Plus the central problem: scale. From wrecking Republic City, to unlocking a beast-mode Avatar State, to granting airbending to non-benders, the events feel to large for an interquel.

Adam finally caught Obsession, the sub-million-dollar Blumhouse phenomenon that became the horror hit of the year, and he's got reservations the hype train left behind. A full-spoilers breakdown of why Inde Navarrette's multi-layered performance is genuinely Oscar-worthy, how the monkey's-paw premise nails its unsettling middle stretch, and why the blood-soaked third act breaks the film's own fantasy rules, and its moral center, by making Nikki's suffering suddenly, unbearably real. Plus the Lisa Frankenstein problem, the case for Bear as an unreliable narrator, and the Blumhouse model working exactly as designed.

Christopher Nolan is back, and Adam is ready to call it: The Odyssey is the best film of the year so far and a full five stars. Join in for a spoiler-inclusive breakdown (though the book is 3000 years old so the statute of limitations has well passed) of why Nolan has quietly become the best deconstructionist in film, taking a story you half-remember from high school and rebuilding it around its emotional core, the way he did with Oppenheimer. Plus the law of Zeus as the movie's moral engine, why withholding the glory of Troy is the whole point, and why the manufactured casting controversy misreads an avowedly mythological film.

My Adventures with Superman is back after nearly two years, and Adam digs into the first three episodes of season three. Is this secretly Kara's season, how the Reign of the Supermen arc reframes Cyborg Superman as a Lex Luthor story, and why the show's refusal to hit the reset button on Clark and Lois makes it the most emotionally honest Superman on screen. Plus the Seto Kaiba take on Lex, the dating-app fish epidemic, and the one Jimmy subplot that's already wearing thin. Weekly coverage starts here.

DC's second swing lands, mostly. Adam caught an early screening of Supergirl and makes the case that Milly Alcock's jaded, Woman of Tomorrow-flavored Kara is strong enough to carry a film with real structural cracks. Full spoilers on the Kara-and-Ruthye dynamic that anchors the whole thing, the grungy visual design that makes the action hard to follow, the third-act green-screen problem, and why a cartoonishly evil villain keeps Kara's arc from fully landing. Plus: is the DCU actually in trouble, or is this just the Iron Man 2 phase? A solid 4 out of 5, maybe a 3 on a worse day.

Succession Planning is out August 28th. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H671H3GX

The toys are back, and Adam has thoughts about whether they needed to be. A full-spoilers breakdown of Toy Story 5, the Lilypad tablet villain, a tech-and-childhood theme the movie raises and then refuses to actually wrestle with, why this is fundamentally Jessie's story and all the better for it, how the film gets caught serving two masters, the conspicuous absence of anything Lightyear-related, and the recasting problem Pixar can't put off forever. Bring tissues if "When Somebody Loved Me" still gets you. A conflicted but fair 4 out of 5.

Adam caught the world premiere of the first two episodes of X-Men '97 season 2 at the Tribeca Festival, and this one's deliberately spoiler-free ahead of the show's July 1 return. The team is scattered across time, Apocalypse steps up as the season's central threat, and the second episode delivers a piece of character work that earns a Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 comparison in the best way. A look at the MCU visual nods, the expanding mutant roster, and why Marvel's best work this year might be animated. A preview 5 out of 5, with a full spoiler breakdown to come when the season drops.

Steven Spielberg is back in theaters for the first time since The Fabelmans, and he's returned to the aliens that made him. Adam digs into Disclosure Day, Spielberg's coldest, most institutional take on first contact, built on a sharp premise: the government can't keep a secret this big, but a tech company could. Full spoilers ahead on Emily Blunt's award-worthy performance, the two-person math-translator conceit, a deus-ex-machina problem with the alien tech, and a third act that doesn't quite stick the landing. A 5 out of 5 all the same.

Succession Planning is out August 28th. https://books2read.com/u/bzE9g9