[Macros]

The books were very YA, but fun. This disappoints me that they fudged the adaptation

[Aptorian]

I just tuned in on a channel playing Jurrasic World: Fallen Kingdom.

This is not a good film from what I can tell but more interestingly, is this a children's movie?

People are getting eaten by dinos but there's no blood. They keep changing camera perspectives when people are getting eaten. I saw a guy getting his arm bitten off by the super Dino and there wasn't even a squirt of blood. Just a bit of red on its teeth.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 20 June 2020 - 11:43 AM

[Malankazooie]

RIP Ian Holm. https://www.facebook...58439252151558/

Also, a reminder of how brilliant he was:

:

[QuickTidal]

Aptorian, on 20 June 2020 - 11:42 AM, said:

I just tuned in on a channel playing Jurrasic World: Fallen Kingdom.

This is not a good film from what I can tell but more interestingly, is this a children's movie?

People are getting eaten by dinos but there's no blood. They keep changing camera perspectives when people are getting eaten. I saw a guy getting his arm bitten off by the super Dino and there wasn't even a squirt of blood. Just a bit of red on its teeth.

What blows my mind about this is that the director is NO stranger to blood and gore in his films. Hell, he put one of THE MOST harrowing sequences I've ever seen put to film in front of me (The initial wave hitting shore in THE IMPOSSIBLE), so that fact that JW: FK is so bloodless FEELS like it's studio mandated and not what Bayona would have desired. Especially when Trevorrow's and Connelly's script was so weak.

[Malankazooie]

Do you of you guys know what this is about? Seems like it could be epic or something.

[Tiste Simeon]

^

I am so hyped by this. The live show was utterly sublime but I always wanted to see it with the original Broadway cast.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 22 June 2020 - 08:36 PM, said:

Aptorian, on 20 June 2020 - 11:42 AM, said:

I just tuned in on a channel playing Jurrasic World: Fallen Kingdom.

This is not a good film from what I can tell but more interestingly, is this a children's movie?

People are getting eaten by dinos but there's no blood. They keep changing camera perspectives when people are getting eaten. I saw a guy getting his arm bitten off by the super Dino and there wasn't even a squirt of blood. Just a bit of red on its teeth.

What blows my mind about this is that the director is NO stranger to blood and gore in his films. Hell, he put one of THE MOST harrowing sequences I've ever seen put to film in front of me (The initial wave hitting shore in THE IMPOSSIBLE), so that fact that JW: FK is so bloodless FEELS like it's studio mandated and not what Bayona would have desired. Especially when Trevorrow's and Connelly's script was so weak.

Astoundingly bad movie.

[QuickTidal]

Watched BIRDS OF PREY: THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN...and it was, not great.

It felt like they were trying to make her into female DEADPOOL, which she isn't, nor has she ever been. The whole movie just felt like it didn't belong in the DCEU of movies/stories.

I never bought into Ewan as Black Mask. He just can't pull off villain...not to say he didn't go for it, he totally did...I just never bought it.

I hate what they did with Cassy Cain AND Huntress...both characters are not remotely what those two characters are supposed tp be in the comics. To the point where I wonder why bother to have named them those names if they weren't going to be the people that those names represent.

Black Canary was fine, but the fact that she doesn't use her powers until the very end made he Deus Ex Machina, instead of having her use it earlier in a few instances that would have benefitted from it.

The action was fine, and the story was generic, if also fine...but those things could have happened in any movie, it didn't have to be Harley's movie.

Anyways, it's probably my second least favourite DC movie after SUICIDE SQUAD.

[Tiste Simeon]

I feel like you might have a few thoughts on this, QT: why have DC been on the whole pretty rubbish (WW and Shazam are brilliant but otherwise...) while Marvel have mostly gone from strength to strength? I know these are generalisations but it's mostly true.

ETA it's not as though DC doesn't have a roster of awesome characters to use. There are so many great stories but they just seem to flop quite a bit imo.

This post has been edited by Tiste Simeon: 23 June 2020 - 05:51 PM

[QuickTidal]

Tiste Simeon, on 23 June 2020 - 05:46 PM, said:

I feel like you might have a few thoughts on this, QT: why have DC been on the whole pretty rubbish (WW and Shazam are brilliant but otherwise...) while Marvel have mostly gone from strength to strength? I know these are generalisations but it's mostly true.

ETA it's not as though DC doesn't have a roster of awesome characters to use. There are so many great stories but they just seem to flop quite a bit imo.

There's a few unpackable things here.

For starters, MCU, as utterly awesome and fun as it is has not taken any broad chances outside of the mandated MCU formula for the whole thing. Patty Jenkins leaving THOR 2 and Edgar Wright leaving ANT-MAN are evidence that if you stepped outside the Disney-Marvel mandated formula, you were turfed for trying to do your own thing as a creative. As such, the films are great, but until James Gunn showed them that weird and creative stories could still exist within the MCU with GOTG 1, you followed the formula, or you got sent packing. After GOTG 1, this mandate eased somewhat, which is why we got stuff like THOR 3, and even to an extent BLACK PANTHER...but the main standalone movies still followed a formulaic mandate. CAPTAIN MARVEL is proof of that, as it's a good film, but it's REALLY formulaic. Yes, we got IW and ENDGAME and that's an amazing place to get to for a movie franchise like this...but pretending it got there by taking any risks storytelling wise in it's earlier days would be a lie.

So keep that factor in the back of your head as we discuss the DCEU. Marvel movies aren't being overtly creative or blazing any new trails with these stories. They are basically setting superhero movies in existing tropes (GOTG is a space opera, Winter soldier is a Spy Thriller, Captain American 1 was Indiana Jones) and that's why they succeed. They also don't delve too deeply into trauma or causality. Take for example, Scarlet Witch losing her brother (A: AoU) and then not ever mentioning him again AND losing her Sokovian accent to boot. IT's a tiny detail, but it's important to note that Marvel only focuses on trauma if it concerns the big three (Tony, Thor, and Cap)...because doing so would drag the formula down. It's not a bad thing, it just serves to make them more palatable to broad audiences.

Now, I should note up front, the BEST DCEU films to me to date are MAN OF STEEL, BATMAN V SUPERMAN, and AQUAMAN. I think WONDER WOMAN was great, but not especially memorable, and I thought SHAZAM was a dumpster fire, and I hated what Whedon turned out for JL theatrical after he reshot it.

But really the first mistake was further back. GREEN LANTERN (2011) was supposed to be the IRON MAN 1 of the DCEU. Now, Warner Brothers are/were WELL-known in Hollywood for letting writers and directors have a massive freedom to make whatever movie they think is best. This is why Nolan was able to make really realistic Batman movies with pretty much carte blanche to change the source material as he saw fit. Which he often did. So GREEN LANTERN had as its initial writer, Greg Berlanti...the main guy behind the entire Arrowverse of DC TV shows. From what I understand he wrote a screenplay that essentially followed Geoff Johns GREEN LANTERN: SECRET ORIGIN, a recentish reboot of the character that had much acclaim (seriously read it, it's GREAT). Hammond was meant to be a FUTURE nemesis and only set up nebulously in the film. The majority of the story of SECRET ORIGNS actually happens in and around OA and in space on random planets with Sinestro teaching Hal for a large bunch of the runtime. It was going to be basically a space cops version of what GOTG ended up being. Then things get murky, Berlanti and his co-writers all swear that what ended up in the final cut was NOT their script and most of the beats of that script had been turfed. The comedy was amped up. The storyline stayed earthbound, Hammond became the main baddie and he even mutates into an even bigger baddie would should have been used WAY down the road. No space training. Berlanti has disowned the script. But there are not other writers who got credited, so no one knows what happened.

Anyways, GL flopped...because it was fucking terrible. So DC needed a new IRON MAN film to launch the DCEU.

Enter Zack Snyder with WATCHMEN...which is essentially a 2.5hour audition tape to make a DC Superhero movie. And DC found their guy.

MAN OF STEEL seems to impress most...with a bunch of people gatekeeping Superman and trying to hold him to the source material (or getting pissy about collateral damage or Zod Neck snap) instead of what WB is known for, ....letting writers and directors do their own thing. Snyder's plan for Superman and the rest o the films was NOT to show the white-hatted, perfect bastion, boy scout Superman that everyone spent 75 years reading/watching, but adapt him to modern day politics and social constructs AND set him on a path where he hasn't learned everything he needs to know to handle his powers by the time he's a teenager. In fact even in his 20's and travelling around doing good things, he's still unsure of himself. Pa Kent goes from being this dude who knew everything and molded Clark into the person he needs to be as Superman front he comics, into something else... Kent in MoS is wary of the entirety of 21st century society, and especially how they would react to an alien with nigh omnipotent powers...so he's actually not on board for Clark to do any of what he ends up doing. So in MoS Superman who fights Zod is untested, unsure, and generally just at the beginning of his arc.

A LOT of people didn't like that. Could not accept a Superman who was not reared by the Kents to be the perfect, unfailing boy scout. Refused to accept a story featuring this character who was cutting his teeth as he went, and dealing with a society that looks nothing like the one that Superman was born into in the 1940s. So there was division.

Then BvS comes along. And what Snyder did/was doing to Superman (giving him a growth arc for his early life as a superhero) already...he then reverses to do to Batman. He takes the altruistic "no kill" Batman...kills his apprentice offscreen (Robin) and turns him from a needed, but dark vigilante with a code of ethics...into a paranoid, older costumed hero who has become cruel (taking obvious cues from Miller's Batman story)...and uses Lex Luthor to manufacture a conflict between that cruel vigilante and the ultimate threat, Superman. The alien that had a fight that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, many of them in his own building...And then he works that Batman BACK through paces to return him to the avatar of hero that he set out to be years prior and had lost his way.

A LOT of people didn't like that either. Even more people I think.

So now you have two beloved comic heroes that have not just been presented to the audience as they always have been, but the creative force behind them chose to challenge them as characters, put them through HORRIFIC and DIFFICULT paces...one on a heroes journey made of fire and societal mistrust....and the other who had lost his way needs to be put through similar fire to find his way back.

And as the Joker once said, "Everyone loses their minds"

Ignoring entirely the fact that Snyder's DC output challenged the status quo and refused to follow the formula that worked in the MCU (becuase that formula makes those films easy to digest and don't ask anything much of the viewer). Snyder literally killed Batman's parents in the opening scene again so that the film could come back around to his mothers name and allow an old cruel Batman...to resurrect his humanity and save someones mother...who happens to also be named Martha..somehting he was not able to do for his own. So many people were like "Why did he have the Wayne's getting gunned down AGAIN?"...becuase the denouement of Bruce's turn back towards the light...needed that touchstone. He also made Lex Luthor the machine through which all of this conflict occurs, and people didn't like that either. Meanwhile I think that Eisenbergs Lex-by-way-of-Silicon-Valley-Tech-bro is the best Lex I've ever seen on screen.

So now we have a movie series that through trying to do different things with legacy characters, or at least approach them differently than they had been for 75 years of media...which pisses off a lot of old time fans, and for everyone else they are too niche in what they are trying to do. Not enough "Rah Rah, Marvel wins the day!" to them. Even Superman's win in MoS is couched in the brutal death of the villain. Ask yourself what happened to Red Skull in Cap 1? Disappeared in the tesseract. Same thing with Iron Man, bad guy falls into the reactor. Not Tony's fault. So both MoS and BvS chalnegd the audience with non-sewn up endings.

Everything after BvS is WB basically retreating from their initial and long held stance of letting creatives do what they want...in favour of becoming a meddling studio who doesn't let anyone do that without strict guidelines. So David Ayer's SUICIDE SQUAD is taken to a trailer company to have the first Trailer cut...the trailer is received SO warmly that WB literally takes the film away from Ayer in post-production, and GIVES it to the Trailer production company to RECUT. So that's one of the reasons that SS seems to weirdly disjointed and overall has a tone of messy...becuase it's a film by a creative that was given away by a scared studio to re-edit.

You then get WW and because it was in production while SS was being screened, Patty Jenkins was still allowed to do what she felt she needed to. A good, if not great movie, is the result. It will be the last non-meddled with movies.

JL comes next, and since this was ALSO in production while SS was happening, Snyder was allowed to do his thing again...but then tragedy, his daughter commits suicide when he's already 7 months into POST-production. So WB takes this opportunity to get scared again, and gives a film that was done principle photography, partially edited, partially CGI'ed, and fully scored....to Joss Whedon. Who proceeded to bring in Danny Elfman to entirely rescore it, and Whedon rewrote 80 pages of script, and shot for 2 months with the actors again. Resulting in a film with tiny snippets of what Zack Snyder did, none of the subtlety of the story and characters, and largely how own film. As a result it's frankensteins monster. This includes the Superman Mustcahe fiasco because Whedon required Cavill for the reshoots while he was on MI.

Then you get AQUAMAN, and James Wan is given a canvas in which he IS allowed to do what he wants...BUT he's still mandated by WB who are now frightened of the audience. Thankfully, what Wan does in AQUAMAN succeeds and it's a wonderful and enjoyable film that is very close to what you might see in DC's animated content. And funnily enough, it ALMOST follows a MCU'esque formula.

AQUAMAN gives WB the good feeling they needed so they let SHAZAM be whatever they want too, and it was received well for the most part too.


But the lack of success with Justice League (ENTIRELY WB and Whedon's fault) has made them weary of the whole big interconnected franchise thing...so they back off, and start focusing on standalones. BIRDS OF PREY, WW84 are both standalone.

I think that the problem really comes down to the fact that Marvel follows a tried and true formula, doesn't deviate, and makes crowd pleasing superhero films as a result...while DC was trying to make superhero movies that had a darker bent and palette, a more challenging milieu of story, and just generally attempting to be different...and then WB rushed it and tried to do JUSTICE LEAGUE as an all-in ENDGAME WAY too fast. JUSTICE LEAGUE as Snyder had planned it was film ONE of THREE. It was supposed to be the first chapter on the way to ENDGAME...but when Snyder's daughter died, WB took their chance to bring in the ringer (Whedon) who made AVENGERS and have him give them an immediate one-film ENDGAME.

Now WB has been bought by AT&T, and the AT&T overlords want to see what Snyder had planned and are wiling to pay for it, and funnily enough regardless of what the pundits think of Snyder's DC output...the actors in the film ALL want to see it come to fruition.

And if the FLASH movie really does do a variation of FLASHPOINT, then you can have the multiverse be the reset the whole things needs to move forward in a new way. I'm convinced that this is why DCEU Barry showed up and met ARROWVERSE Barry in the CRISIS crossover. Here:



Anyways, that's how I see it...bu then I'm a Snyder fan, so I'm probably biased.

I LOVE the MCU, but I love DC stuff for different reasons.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 23 June 2020 - 08:07 PM

[Abyss]

Short version:


DC owners tried to do in three years what Marvel's corporate masters had done in ten, only darker. Failed.

[Macros]

I'm intrigued by the in depth, it's interesting how they got it so wrong on some fronts after getting some parts right.

Spot on about the formulaic for MCU. Very few risks taken

It abyss' take was just a tad more succinct

[Tiste Simeon]

I read the whole thing QT thanks. Disagreed with a lot (I WANTED to love BvS so much and I'm very much in favour of people doing their own thing, despite also enjoying the MCU formula, it was just boring! Maybe I should watch the directors cut...)

Also Shazam is wonderful and I won't hear another word

[QuickTidal]

Tiste Simeon, on 23 June 2020 - 11:11 PM, said:

I read the whole thing QT thanks. Disagreed with a lot (I WANTED to love BvS so much and I'm very much in favour of people doing their own thing, despite also enjoying the MCU formula, it was just boring! Maybe I should watch the directors cut...)

Also Shazam is wonderful and I won't hear another word

Wait, You haven’t watched the Ultimate Cut of BvS? Oh man, yeah do that. The theatrical was fine...but so much seemed disjointed In it. The ultimate cut makes all the plot points work, and really makes the story work.

SHAZAM was just so pedestrian...it’s BIG with superheros. Meh, okay,

[QuickTidal]

On topic for DC.


I don't know if anyone had heard this. Rumour has it that Michael Keaton is in talks to Reprise his Batman/Bruce Wayne in the FLASH(point) movie with Ezra Miller.

I love a few things about this.

1. With Affleck clearly out, they need a bridge from his Batman to Robert Pattinson's young Batman.
2. Flashpoint/the multiverse is a great opportunity to rectify some things about the DCEU and set it on the straight and narrow again.
3. Having fan favourite, original movie Batman Michael Keaton as the character in Flash with Ezra Miller, is basically pulling a Spiderman: Homecoming where Iron Man helps shepherd Spiderman as a hero leading the movie. It's good business sense and will get butts in seats.
4. You can then have Flashpoint act as the catalyst for the transition between Keaton's older Batman, to Pattison's young Batman....so that Pattison's Batman can go forward in the DCEU on the JL team.

And Flash director Andy Muschietti made a blithe reference to this change/casting back on the press tour for BIRDS OF PREY.



Anyways, considering Keaton's Batman was the original, and really kickstarted my love of the character, this is greta news to me and makes Flash a movie I'm REALLY loving forward to.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 24 June 2020 - 01:32 PM

[Primateus]

QuickTidal, on 24 June 2020 - 01:31 PM, said:

On topic for DC.


I don't know if anyone had heard this. Rumour has it that Michael Keaton is in talks to Reprise his Batman/Bruce Wayne in the FLASH(point) movie with Ezra Miller.

I love a few things about this.

1. With Affleck clearly out, they need a bridge from his Batman to Robert Pattinson's young Batman.
2. Flashpoint/the multiverse is a great opportunity to rectify some things about the DCEU and set it on the straight and narrow again.
3. Having fan favourite, original movie Batman Michael Keaton as the character in Flash with Ezra Miller, is basically pulling a Spiderman: Homecoming where Iron Man helps shepherd Spiderman as a hero leading the movie. It's good business sense and will get butts in seats.
4. You can then have Flashpoint act as the catalyst for the transition between Keaton's older Batman, to Pattison's young Batman....so that Pattison's Batman can go forward in the DCEU on the JL team.

And Flash director Andy Muschietti made a blithe reference to this change/casting back on the press tour for BIRDS OF PREY.



Anyways, considering Keaton's Batman was the original, and really kickstarted my love of the character, this is greta news to me and makes Flash a movie I'm REALLY loving forward to.

Goddamn I would love some Michael "Old Man Batman" Keaton in a movie! That would be so awesome.

[Malankazooie]

psssst... a secret. They are just going to repackage the movie Birdman.

You should really watch Birdman if you haven't seen it. One of the best movies of the twenty-teens.

[Macros]

Keaton was the best batman

[Morgoth]

That's a solid write up, QT, but I have to disagree with your theory that people didn't like the Snyder movies because he chose to take the characters in a controversial direction. Nolan already did that with his trilogy, and people loved those (at least the first two). Rather, I suspect most of the dislike comes from the same place as my own, namely that Snyder's BvS and JL were in themselves mediocre to outright bad films. Which I think you can see in that the best received of the new DC movies are the ones Snyder did not make himself. Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam. Although I thought Man of Steel was perfectly serviceable, and a decent take on Superman. Unfortunately, Snyder lacks the ability to do subtlety, no surprise considering he's an Objectivist, and as such is unable to tell a story that -at least to my mind- needs to be fundamentally human. His complete inability to comprehend Watchmen is a good example of that.

[polishgenius]

Yeah, I liked Man of Steel a lot despite disliking what it did to Pa Kent immensely, and I thought the first 45 minutes or so of BvS had potential, but after the dream/time travel moment it just fell apart completely. And Justice League is utter nonsense though it is fair to say that that isn't entirely Snyder's doing and we'll see how the Snyder cut unfolds.

I think it definitely is fair to say that WB took chances Marvel didn't and they deserve credit for that, but for me it didn't work, not because I didn't like what Snyder was trying to do but because I thought he did it badly. The constant panicking and reactionism is definitely a fair call though.



Man of Steel, Birds of Prey and Shazam are the best DCEU movies btw. Feel like the whole mess around its release and the taint of Suicide Squad means it's never gonna get the respect it deserves as the best actual action film in the franchise thus far and a fun, funny, Snatch-ish take on Harley Quinn.

It is fairly notable though that pretty much every movie so far except for Wonder Woman and maybe Aquaman has seriously botched some character or facet of the mythos, even the good ones. Man of Steel roughed Pa Kent up, BvS ruined Doomsday, Justice League was just fucking disrespectful of the entire DCU, Shazam botched the Wizard and needed to show more of the Rock of Eternity (but I understand the budget did that), BoP fucked up Cassandra Cain.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 25 June 2020 - 09:41 AM