Spot on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_R-rated_films

That list isn’t adjusted for inflation, unfortunately, so the rankings aren’t entirely fair. Two things stood out to me, though. The early 00’s were a little sparse on R-rated hits (you have to go all the way down to #20 before they start to become more common). And 1991’s Terminator 2, adjusted for inflation, surpassed Passion of the Christ by $100,000,000, despite only being #18 (after PotC’s #10).

A short list further down the page shows only the timeline of highest grossing R-rated movies at their time of release. PotC is obviously absent from that list.

That’s a surprising number. Especially so since I don’t really recall any blatant product placements (well ok, I think there was one scene that stood out a little bit).

I’d say the number of brand partnerships is less a problem than how prominent those brands are displayed. I can’t think of the exact movies off the top of my head, but the most egregious instances I can think of only had one or two brands. Apple and BMW, for example, have had some seriously obnoxious brand placements in movies.

Cell phones basically ruined horror movies.

This is an oft repeated idea. I don’t really buy into it though.

If you’re in immediate danger, a cellphone isn’t really going to help you. Sure. Call the cops, or whatever. While you’re fumbling with the phone, the killer has a chance to catch up to you. Maybe you drop the phone and have to leave it because the killer is so close. But “dropping the keys” is already an annoying cliche, so let’s avoid that. You manage to call the cops. It’ll take at least a minute to explain your situation to the dispatcher. Assuming they believe you (ie, you aren’t dealing with a supernatural threat, which they’d either assume you’re pranking or having a mental health episode) and immediately request a police response, it’ll still be another 3+ minutes in an urban setting until the police arrive, or 30+ in a more rural setting (add on another minute or so if they don’t believe you and you need to request that they send police anyway). If you’re camping, staying at a cabin in the woods, or in some other remote setting, you’re probably on your own for at least an hour.

So you’ve managed to call the police and know they’re on their way. How long do you have to fend off the threat? It only takes Leatherface a minute or so to hack you into pieces with his chainsaw. Ghostface just slices your stomach open and is gone fifteen seconds later. Maybe you can lock yourself in your bedroom. That’s not going to help if the second or third killer was already hiding in your closet. Or they can just dowse the house in gasoline and hide in an alleyway to see if you try to escape. It’s a horror movie, they’ll be able to evade the initial police response. If you’re a primary target, they can just come for you later. Or just move on to the next target of opportunity.

If the threat is supernatural, walls are meaningless, and police are powerless.

That’s not the only use for a cell phone. It can also be used as a light, but screen time kills battery pretty quickly (not sure about using the camera’s flash as a light source, I’ll assume that also drains the battery pretty quickly). But that light, along with either the ringtone or vibration motor can serve as a beacon if you’re trying to hide from a threat.

The camera could be used for evidence. Well, see Blair Witch Project, et al. Horror already is capable of dealing with character with cameras, nothing new there.

TL;DR:

If your movie takes place after cell phones are commonplace, you need to establish some answers beforehand about “why dont they just call the cops?” and you need to establish those in a way that feels natural to the plot otherwise it will stick out to your viewers.

A decent movie can handle these issues easily (either taking a few seconds to show why the cell phone can’t be used “right now”, or having an opening kill where the character does manage to call the police and dies anyway.)

It was the opposite for me. The first episode was great, 2-3 were fine/good, and then it was just downhill from there. Overall, I didn’t like the first season (iirc, my final score for the season was 4/10).

I’d still check out a season 2, but maybe not 3+ unless 2 really improves things.

I can see where the praise comes from though, I’m just adding my opinion as a reminder that it isn’t universally praised.

Playing this myself in anticipation of the upcoming expansion adding skill customization.

Plays well on the Deck, plus mods are great to help make some of the grind even better (I’m loving the lazy writ crafting mod).

The flashlight is already bound to LB; holding it for a second vs tapping one of the back buttons doesn’t really seem like a worthwhile use to, same for the map (which can be opened directly by long pressing “start”; or “select” if you haven’t reversed their mapping in Steam input to get the correct button prompts).

Honestly, I’ve yet to find a good use for the back buttons in Starfield; I’m considering mapping one of them to F5 for quick save, but that’s generally just a double tap of start and one tap of A, so it’s not inconvenient enough for me to have gone with the button mapping.

At least in regards to the Ultimate controller, a firmware update released recently allows you to connect directly via bluetooth if you want. There may be some caveats involved; I tested it out a bit while ago trying to configure the back buttons (unfortunately, I don’t have a Windows PC and eventually gave up). I haven’t played docked in a couple months, and even then only spent a bit of time setting it all up, so I may misremember certain details.