|
Huh, those are some pretty awfully strained looking smiles.
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2021 21:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 19:42 |
|
|
OK, to steer the ship back to more conemporary waters, I just finished WW84 (yes, i watched about an hour last night and the rest now) and have some thoughts. I'm kinda going stream of consciousness here and I haven't gone back to read what y'all have said before, so pardon if I restate stuff. The only thing I knew going in was the body swap controversy so I'm not gonna relitigate that, suffice to say that there were far better things they could've done and achieved the same effect. OK, first things first: I didn't HATE it. It's definitely got problems and is probably the weakest of the last few DC films, but I think The Discourse has resulted in it being declared a disaster when it's just a pretty flawed but OK action movie. Problems it has as a comics and specifically a Wonder Woman fan? Ooooh boy, the biggest one I'd say is the assumption that the investment in the first one was in Diana-and-Steve, not Diana, and therefore we liked Steve because she did. So we can't have a movie focused on Diana, it has to be about her-and-Steve. Honestly, this is a factor that George frickin' Perez figured out 35 years ago, and made sure Steve wasn't a love interest in order to avoid. The problem this compounds is that Diana doesn't get any development outside of 'is sad Steve died' because if you show her having friends and connections and lovers outside of Steve, then the central conceit of the film's OTP doesn't work, and so you have a flat heroine. I'm tempted to say a lot of this is down to Geoff Johns, because there are definite factors in the script I can link to his common tics when writing (I'm not even gonna talk about the Ray Fisher accusations, obviously those are very serious and deserve consequences if true, but this is purely assessing the man's work). I'm almost certain the Kingdom Come armour may not be his idea directly, but the idea of Wonder Birb vs Cat Lady is right out of Geoff "Green Arrow's kinda like Robin Hood, let's make his city a literal forest" Johns book. And I've never really felt he understood the character particularly well when he's written her. And bits like being adamant about the Amazons only being in flashback and about there being ONE Amazon that didn't go to the island, instead of a whole tribe is just very indicative of the odd desire to keep the universe small. (Mini-rant: can we loving stop having EVERYthing Diana does be because her dad is The Best God? In the comics the whole Olympian pantheon hid the island. In the comics, she got her ability to fly from Hermes. The lasso was from Hestia, her bracelets were fragments of Athena's Aegis.... The audience isn't going to be lost because you use deeper cuts than Zeus and Heracles) The score and soundtrack are honestly abysmal. Like even scenes where it's supposed to be fun and goofy, like the Steve getting dressed montage is absolutely smothered by a score that feels like it's on valium. And the editing doesn't help because it's tethered to that same lethargic score. As a result, jokes don't land, and I know that's not due to Chris Pine, cuz the guy knows his way around a punchline. Speaking of... The actors are trying, god love them, they're trying. Pedro Pascal, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig are all trying to make these underwritten characters work. They also tied their own hands with the period. They don't do much that's all that fun with the period, it's not really necessary for the Cold War plot, and it's not like there aren't goofy fashions today that you could slap Steve in. It's a double-ended anchor as well. On the one hand, it's 70 years and she's not over her first boyfriend which is... not a great look for your protagonist. And on the other hand because they're still stuck to this weird notion of the DCEU, she can't be publicly known as Wonder Woman, so you have goofy poo poo like an entire mall seeing her, yet being an 'urban legend' like she's the goddamn Batman. That also backfires, because I THINK they're going for 'she's been active for decades' but the first concrete acknowledgement we get is the TV crew saying she's stopped like 5 robberies. That utterly kills the 'I just want to be selfish one time' part of the plot. If she's been Wonder Woman for years and years and is constantly putting others first, then that's a relatable feeling. But you have to SHOW us. (A minor point but is the 'bang the bracelets togther and a big wave happens' thing supposed to be a thunderclap? Like a Zeus thing? Because if so, good lord is the production design poo poo, because that's very not clear, as evidenced by it taking me about 6 years to figure it out) I also hate the 'two villains but they're unrelated and don't team up until act 3' thing that is very indicative of the Schumacher Batmans and Spider-Man 3. It basically means you have to have 2 plots going on at once and makes it impossible to care about the hero's involvement with either because they're usually thematically disparate. In this case I'd say it's more that the theme is muddy and loose as hell. Truth vs deception is a fair theme to play for a WW story, but they conflate deception with greed in a weird way so it doesn't really scan. Let's talk the villains: Max is probably the most interesting, and I think they tried to split the difference here, probably partly due to the backlash from back during Infinite Crisis and also the Man Of Steel backlash, so they feint at killing him but redeem him instead. I just think the kid is the most transparent way to do that. And just info-dumping his lovely childhood on us at the end isn't really earning it. Pascal is acting his rear end off and chews the scenery beautifully at times, but I just need more of him deceiving himself visibly instead of being consumed by envy and greed. Have him see the consequences of his actions and delude himself into not being responsible. Have him blame others for the ponzi scheme failing. Show me how lying is the cause of his corruption instead of a symptom. Barbara: Wiig, again, does a lot with... more than Lord has, but still not much. I suspect the logic with her was 'she thinks she's not as good as Diana and that's her self-deception' or maybe something about thinking Diana's power is what she needs. But again, this boils down to envy, and there's also some weird tonal choices, like having her push back against a sexual assault as her 'turn to villainy'. Like, is the message in that scene meant to be 'she should've just ignored it and walked away'? I get that murder is not a good response either, but it's such a weird place to take it. I'm not sure if it's the script, the edit or Gadot, but it's also hard not to side with Barbara when she says Diana's patronising. I think it's partly the script or the editing, because it seems to take for granted that Diana knows things that WE do. Like that she knows Barbara gives food to the homeless and is kind to strangers, and so notices that compassion is gone when she's the Cheetah. But we don't see her learn that information, so when she says "where is your warmth and joy" it comes off very false because we only saw her babbling nervously in a way that was blatantly hiding sadness when she was with Diana. This comes back to the fact that they should've picked one villain. Scale is a massive issue for blockbusters and studios, and '4 minutes from nuclear apocalypse' is such an obvious attempt to top the first film, but it also screams the idea that 2 major baddies is better than the first movie's one (Dr Poison being a pretty good way to have a secondary villain, by them being a henchman to the first). The climax is, admittedly, better than the first film's, Diana winning by extolling the virtues she's meant to embody and using the lasso to help the villain see the truth and repent is good. It's just so... I'm not sure Johns and the other writers actually know what the word 'truth' means, which is really scary in 2021, honestly. Also the flying stuff and lightning lasso: Beyond thinking it was cool, I think the latter is coming from the former originating as gliding, like it did in the pre-COIE comics. But the film doesn't ever communicate that and actually does the opposite by having her do the 'Superman' poses. (I would also bet money someone involved in the movie was very smug about her doing that 'before' Superman exists) At the end of the day, a lot of this comes back to them having a weird notion that DC heroes don't have friends or joy in their lives and as such the audience is never asked to relate to them, only to watch in a weird detached awe.... but also feel sad for their pain, but only at THEIR pain, not any other characters. TL;DR Movie not good, is OK action film, makes many mistakes as WW story.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2021 21:55
|
|
|
Lunatic Sledge posted:are you trying to debate what scenes I remember You said it felt out of place because he was smiling, I'm just saying that isn't particularly rare occurrence Aphrodite posted:Did you already have that on hand or did you make it? There's this marvelous thing called Google. Maybe you heard of it? Gaz-L posted:Stuff The soundtrack was apparently rushed, as the beautiful lie theme that played at the end was a placeholder but they said "gently caress it" and went with it anyway. Which is baffling because they had a whole year to polish this and still didn't bother I agree that they should have focused on either cheetah or Max as the antagonist, would have made for a tighter more compelling story I think. Also make the relationship between diana and Barbara explicitly gay instead of implicitly would have helped too.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 00:14
|
|
|
Hell, it would even let you commit to the bodysnatching if you're dead set on doing it, have her be jealous seeing Diana with this random engineer when she'd accepted not hooking up because Diana was still grieving, but Diana sees Steve and thus there's your conflict which can then be resolved via telling the truth. Honestly, a lot of the movie's problems would be solved by actually being direct about the supposed theme instead of feeling like it was glued on afterwards because someone pointed to one of the comics stories that are really leaning on the Goddess of Truth angle. Like, even the opening flashback: Diana cheats to win the decathalon thing and Auntie Robin Wright stops her to teach her a lesson. Which is fine. But then they try and tie that in really tenuously to the idea that she wouldn't have 'truly' won and act like that's the same as making a point about the truth itself. Plus, why the hell not have the Bana-Mighdall show up. Are they scared that the DCEU won't be 'realistic' enough, when they've introduced the loving New Gods and Atlantis? And that's just Saint Snyder, if we include actually good movies, Shazam had Mr Mind in it. No one is gonna get mad if you have fantasy warrior ladies in a secret enclave. Edit: Actually, thinking about it, I wouldn't be shocked if the theme was meant to be love in one of the drafts and then someone pointed out the subtext between WW and Cheetah (or maybe coded it as 'we did that in the last one') and we got a hastily cobbled together voiceover about the OTHER major thing the character is associated with. Because love at least makes sense. Cheetah abandons her compassion for others, Diana lets one past love consume her, Max is saved by the love of his son. Gaz-L fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jan 26, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 00:26
|
|
|
McCloud posted:You said it felt out of place because he was smiling, I'm just saying that isn't particularly rare occurrence smiling at this post like 
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 00:33
|
|
|
Lunatic Sledge posted:smiling at this post like Mfw reading your posts (This is a joke in good humor, please don't take it seriously) Gaz-L posted:Hell, it would even let you commit to the bodysnatching if you're dead set on doing it, have her be jealous seeing Diana with this random engineer when she'd accepted not hooking up because Diana was still grieving, but Diana sees Steve and thus there's your conflict which can then be resolved via telling the truth. Honestly, a lot of the movie's problems would be solved by actually being direct about the supposed theme instead of feeling like it was glued on afterwards because someone pointed to one of the comics stories that are really leaning on the Goddess of Truth angle. No doubt WW84 was sloppy. In the CineD thread people spent a alot of time discussing the decathlon because of how muddy the message was. There's also how the whole bit in the middle east seems mostly pointless, in addition to being slightly racist. There's just a lot of strange decisions involved. I know they wanted to make a WW film that was the equivalent of the 80's Superman films but god bless them, they got Superman 4 instead of Superman 1
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 01:07
|
|
|
I don't even get why heels were the thing they decided needed to be the signifier for 'Cheetah got her powers', when the character in the comics walks with a cane before she gets them. WW Year One even gives a solid way to intro it by making it an injury from a dig site. Honestly, I think the biggest thing is that the 2 major antagonists and the heroine feel like they don't ever actually talk TO each other, just near one another.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 01:19
|
|
|
People in movies hate picking up their dropped books and papers on a level I can't even aspire to. They hate it when they drop their stuff more than I hate anything.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 17:35
|
|
|
who knows how much "shot" means, but it's something. I don't think Disney will make a decision until at least late next month, maybe not until March https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1354121294749396993
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 19:01
|
|
|
I imagine they'd do the Mulan treatment, maybe tweaking the pricing, more than the Soul or HBO Max style.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 19:16
|
|
|
From what Kim Masters was saying on The Business, they're probably going to release it to Disney+ in some form because if they don't the teases within will gently caress with their forthcoming release schedule.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 19:20
|
|
|
Yeah, the serial nature of the MCU makes any delay a logjam.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 19:59
|
|
|
Gaz-L posted:I imagine they'd do the Mulan treatment, maybe tweaking the pricing, more than the Soul or HBO Max style. they're doing a theatrical/Premier Access hybrid release for Raya, which is what I expect them to do for Black Widow and probably Shang-Chi if they stick with the current release dates. I imagine Disney is taking their 2021 theatrical lineup case-by-case going forward, though they did just delay a bunch of 20th Century films, so we'll see
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 20:06
|
|
|
theironjef posted:People in movies hate picking up their dropped books and papers on a level I can't even aspire to. They hate it when they drop their stuff more than I hate anything. Sure, but while I feel that being able to not randomly drop objects onto the ground probably isn’t the number one skill that museum employees need to have, it has got to be in the top five.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2021 04:54
|
|
|
theironjef posted:People in movies hate picking up their dropped books and papers on a level I can't even aspire to. They hate it when they drop their stuff more than I hate anything. Remember that if you see it in the movie, it means the actors did it a dozen or so times during filming.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2021 10:01
|
|
|
otoh, THR has a new article in which "insiders elsewhere say there are no plans to send Marvel’s Black Widow to Disney+." we'll see I guess, I still have a hard time believing that they'd push the whole Marvel Studios slate back yet again when they have the option of a theatrical/Premier Access hybrid release, but maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2021 17:37
|
|
|
Bit surprised to see this announced. https://deadline.com/2021/01/the-witch-boy-netflix-oscar-nominated-minkyu-lee-animated-musical-1234682006/ I read the graphic novel and vaguely liked it, though the plot is fairly straightforward given the premise. In any case, good on Osterag for getting a movie deal.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2021 14:30
|
|
|
Im not paying extra on top op of + sub to watch Black Widow. Get a grip, Walt.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 05:50
|
|
|
The Snyder Cut is releasing on HBO Max on March 18th as a full movie
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 20:17
|
|
|
FlamingLiberal posted:The Snyder Cut is releasing on HBO Max on March 18th as a full movie Does this mean we're going to have to put up with "Release the mini-series cut!"
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 20:43
|
|
|
You didn't mention the best part https://twitter.com/shallowbrigade/status/1355247504770666497?s=19
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 21:24
|
|
|
site posted:You didn't mention the best part https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd5tpFX3_xA
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 21:25
|
|
|
I am officially at the point where I don't know what's parody and what's not.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 21:41
|
|
|
the boxed dinner is super funny
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 21:41
|
|
|
please rename this thread to A Premium Immersive Boxed Posting Experience e: thank you Abroham Lincoln fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jan 29, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 21:54
|
|
|
I like how it costs 100 bucks but you still have to cook it yourself.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 22:35
|
|
|
muscles like this! posted:I like how it costs 100 bucks but you still have to cook it yourself. Unless I'm mistaken, it's not even $100, it's £100. That's, like, $137.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 22:42
|
|
|
muscles like this! posted:I like how it costs 100 bucks but you still have to cook it yourself. its just a tad over what you'd pay for like hello fresh, doesn't really make the price point better or anything tho
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 22:42
|
|
|
lol they’re including coffee from Jitters, the made up coffee house from the CW DC shows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DffynfqqUD4 E: didn’t realize the burgers from Big Belly Burger too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-lC0QjIuWU ruddiger fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jan 29, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 22:52
|
|
|
Release the Snyder steak cut
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 23:04
|
|
|
Codependent Poster posted:Release the Snyder steak cut Lol tempted to steal this for the snyderdome title
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 23:05
|
|
|
ruddiger posted:lol they’re including coffee from Jitters, the made up coffee house from the CW DC shows. Jitters and Big Belly Burger are actually pre-existing chains from the comics!
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 23:10
|
|
|
site posted:You didn't mention the best part Fitting that a service bringing you food while you enjoy your comic book superheroes would be named after a mother.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2021 23:31
|
|
|
site posted:You didn't mention the best part Pre-ordering video games is old hat. Pre-ordering Hungry-Man Dinners is the future.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2021 01:35
|
|
|
Codependent Poster posted:Release the Snyder steak cut The choicest cut
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2021 02:01
|
|
|
Well done. With ketchup.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2021 02:03
|
|
|
Is that box really going to last you all 4 hours though?
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2021 02:56
|
|
|
it's about the immersion it really makes you feel like Superman eating a hamburger out of an expensive box
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2021 03:28
|
|
|
Fangz posted:Is that box really going to last you all 4 hours though? ...how much do you eat in four hours?
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2021 04:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 19:42 |
|
|
The best part is that they are holding a reveal for a menu.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2021 04:36
|
|