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Cythereal posted:He's still Batman so he's still overplayed, but this at least is an interesting and different version of the character who you won't mistake for any of the earlier film versions. Basically the only early version of cinematic Batman with a no-kill code was Nolan and Nolan did the "aging Batman coming out of retirement who eventually gives up his code" thing in Rises already. I mean I liked Affleck's Batman but I wouldn't say he was fresh and new.
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May 13, 2016 02:56
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ImpAtom posted:Civil War was basically the Avengers 3 and consisted of a bunch of superheroes arguing over laws and Baron Zemo. Civil War was a story 5 or 6 years, at a bare minimum, and at least 8 movies in the making (ever since, at a bare minimum, Captain America 1). It's the twelfth movie in a franchise spanning almost a decade. It's an earned plot and comes across when the MCU is comfortable enough that Ant-Man and Avengers 2, two movies that are complete opposites in terms of stakes, came out in the same year. And realistically speaking, virtually nothing outside of extreme examples (Crisis, Secret Wars 2015, arguably Infinity War) there is nothing audiences care about more than "heroes fighting each other". Civil War and Annihilation were both running at the same time in the MU, and on any empirical level one points to the latter as the "bigger" story with the higher and more dangerous stakes, but everyone bought- and subsequently cared about - the former way more. It's a more investing story, because "Annihilation wave is trying to wipe out all sentient life in the universe" is on some level too big to grasp. Iron Man and Captain America in that "Iron Man blasting Cap's shield" pose is powerful due to its sheer iconography. The DCEU has established itself as a franchise that's been trying to top itself every time. They just haven't done the groundwork unlike Marvel to build to its more powerful sequences or establish a baseline to its universe besides sheer, unending, cosmic chaos, investing in spectacle over any sort of ground-level stability. Maybe Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman'll be able to reverse this issue (and I hope in SS's case it's successful, because Suicide Squad is a cool-as-hell concept), but as it stands we're dealing with a franchise that just doesn't know when to stop. If CW had that airport scene transition into Annihilus popping up and crowing about the Negative Zone destroying Earth and eventually the known universe it would've...well, it could've possibly been cool anyways because Annihilus is an awesome villain and the Negative Zone is a sick concept, but it would've been an unnecessary addition to a movie that already understood the cinematic power of its inherent premise. DC just doesn't.
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May 13, 2016 03:18
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Toxxupation posted:Civil War was a story 5 or 6 years, at a bare minimum, and at least 8 movies in the making It really wasn't. There is no particular reason they couldn't have made it prior to this. Movies don't need twelve different movies of buildup. It doesn't hurt to have them but Civil War isn't the first film about two groups fighting and many of those films don't need buildup. Civil War uses the context of the previous films well, don't get me wrong, but the core idea isn't something that needed those films. It took advantage of it but it wasn't necessary. The idea that films need twelve movies of buildup to have powerful imagery or connect with audiences is something opposed by literally the entire history of film. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:33 on May 13, 2016 |
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May 13, 2016 03:25
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But it's loving rad that Marvel is doing this though.
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May 13, 2016 03:29
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ImpAtom posted:It really wasn't. There is no particular reason they couldn't have made it prior to this. Movies don't need twelve different movies of buildup. No, it doesn't, but if you don't establish a baseline - a status quo for a movie like CW to invert - to your shared universe then it's inherently less effective. It doesn't need the buildup, but because it has the buildup it doesn't come across as a gimmick made to sell movie tickets (even though on some level it was) but as just one of many stories within a really broad palette of possible ones. In contrast BvS' title conflict comes across as a really heavily orchestrated and awkward scene that the movie contorts itself extremely badly to engineer and resolves itself just as unsatisfyingly (because it was, but that's neither here nor there). It's why I said CW felt like an earned plot, and why the DCEU's mandate so far has been just more and bigger, and it comes across in unfocused messes that are just displays of spectacle.
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May 13, 2016 03:55
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Toxxupation posted:No, it doesn't, but if you don't establish a baseline - a status quo for a movie like CW to invert - to your shared universe then it's inherently less effective. Yeah, but you can do that without needing buildup in other films. The Incredibles for example sets up the stakes quite well within the confines of a single film. I do get what you're saying, I guess I'm just more thinking that the DCU doesn't really need to set up a status quo to invert as long as they do so within the film itself. Suicide Squad looks like it MAY do that, starting off with established villains being already established and playing the villain-turned-hero card but we'll have to see if they actually pull it off. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 04:12 on May 13, 2016 |
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May 13, 2016 04:10
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BvS did have "set up" - Man of Steel.
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May 13, 2016 04:12
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Gaz-L posted:I can't wait for all the industry thinkpieces on Deadline and Variety.com that are titled poo poo like: "Did Marvel Succeed By Diversifying Their Audience?" and "Black People Have Money?! Who Knew?" Also can't wait for racist white people to tell each other to not go to the movies that night while police closely monitor the night of the opening just like they did with Straight Outta Compton out of fear of "riots".
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May 13, 2016 04:18
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ImpAtom posted:Yeah, but you can do that without needing buildup in other films. The Incredibles for example sets up the stakes quite well within the confines of a single film. I mean, that's one opinion, but if you look at the amount of money these respective movies are making you will see a clear difference in how effectively each approach entertains and satisfies the public.
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May 13, 2016 04:21
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ImpAtom posted:The Incredibles for example sets up the stakes quite well within the confines of a single film. The Incredibles had no legacy. DC is a company that is built entirely on and around the concept of legacy, both as a plot device and as a selling point. I don't think they're comparable, and either way Incredibles is an incredibly tightly-written film with relatively tiny stakes. You got the villain pretending to be the hero who wants to orchestrate a scenario where he's the only one in existence. In comparison to BvS' muddled mess of plots and characters and stakes and villains, Incredibles has the not-Fantastic Four, Syndrome, and Frozone. That's it.
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May 13, 2016 04:27
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After finally seeing Civil War tonight, it was nice of them to fix most of the problems with the comic arc. Tony has actual good motivations compared to what we got in the comics.
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May 13, 2016 04:28
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The absolute best part of the mutants/MCU universal split was that there was no necessity to justify why the hell the mutants wouldn't participate either way, because boy oh boy was "eh we're neutral" a line of thinking that made no goddamn sense.
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May 13, 2016 04:30
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Well, to be fair, the mutants were like "See how you like it now, assholes." I think Civil War as a concept is something which could work fine as a standalone film or story, but the previous films help give certain plot beats their impact. Like, you could set up Steve and Tony as friends in the beginning, but the audience is sort of taking that at face value, whereas with having seen Avengers and Age of Ultron, the whole "Tony, he's my friend"/"So was I" moment has a much bigger impact.
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May 13, 2016 11:07
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irlZaphod posted:Well, to be fair, the mutants were like "See how you like it now, assholes." I love the bit in the MightyGodKing edit where Bishop approaches Tony Stark as he's leaving the X-Mansion and says, "Mr Stark? I'm from an alternate future where superpowered beings were horribly repressed by a tyrannical government... and this time, I wanna be on the winning side!"
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May 13, 2016 11:28
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When Spidey was crawling on the walls of the airport while chasing after Bucky and Falcon, there was this music playing that reminded me a lot of the 2000s movie theme, I quite liked it
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May 13, 2016 15:48
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Ignite Memories posted:I mean, that's one opinion, but if you look at the amount of money these respective movies are making you will see a clear difference in how effectively each approach entertains and satisfies the public. That doesn't have anything to do with needing films to set it up and more to do with the tone and context of the film. If you're going to compare box office success then you just have to look at Star Wars (eventually got but didn't NEED films of setup) or Avatar (Original The Story Do Not Steal) or whatnot. It's hard to say what specifically makes a film successful because each one is different and while the MCU is obviously a selling point for those films it doesn't mean that every film from now on needs to do 12 movies of setup before they can have meaningful scenes. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 16:03 on May 13, 2016 |
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May 13, 2016 15:59
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ImpAtom posted:In terms of big threats you still haven't seen Braniac, Eclipse, Trigon, Amazo, they could dig up dumbasses like ~IMPERIEX-PRIME~ and of course there's the Injustice League It's completely insane that we still haven't had a film Brainiac, but we've had Luthor 4 separate times.
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May 13, 2016 16:08
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No one said every film needed 12 films of setup. You're comparing self-contained stories about the hero's journey to big crossover events where established independent characters butt heads. Marvel's approach gets you plenty of character development for both sides without overcrowding the movie into a bloated, discontiguous mess. DC is just blowing their wad without enough foreplay because they're scrambling to get right to the ensemble phase. I mean, hell, if you're going to compare the films to something compare them to something in the same genre. The DCAU Justice League was more fun and interesting to watch than marvel's Avengers Assemble because they were the same characters we had been watching in the DCAU for years. We were already attached to Kevin Conroy's batman, and didn't need a bunch of time spent establishing how this particular batman is in a different emotional place than the other batmen. They got to jump right into the good part without sacrificing the familiarity and emotional connection we felt for the characters. But you're certainly right that the tone is a big factor. Some people like their comic books to be dour and brooding, but that's always going to be a smaller audience than people who want to enjoy themselves and forget about their problems for an hour and a half. Ignite Memories fucked around with this message at 16:20 on May 13, 2016 |
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May 13, 2016 16:09
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theflyingorc posted:It's completely insane that we still haven't had a film Brainiac, but we've had Luthor 4 separate times. Do both; make Luthoriac the villain of Justice League 2: Batman Boogaloo
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May 13, 2016 16:21
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Yeah, BvS didn't need Doomsday, it didn't need Wonder Woman, it certainly didn't need any of the other loving members of the Justice League. It arguably didn't even need Lex; just have TDKR Batman watching the events of MoS on TV and deciding to Do Something About It, and there you loving go. If BvS paired itself down to its very essentials - Batman versus Superman - the movie would've been just as powerful as it was, because you have the two biggest superheroes of all time fighting each other, one of whom already exists in the universe as established. It probably would've still sucked because Zack Snyder is a bad director and worse writer, who has a weird brokebrain version of the stories he thinks he's adapting, but there you go.
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May 13, 2016 16:22
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Ignite Memories posted:You're comparing self-contained stories about the hero's journey to big crossover events where established independent characters butt heads. I'm really not. Films have been doing those kinds of stories for years. There's no actually a big difference between Civil War and any films about two theoretically-sympathetic sides butting heads. They're smart in that they use previously established personality traits to define the character's motivations but a film (especially a film that wasn't spending time on introducing Spider-Man as an ad for Spider-Man or whatever) would have more than enough time to establish characters and motivations. The fact that there's an 'ensemble phase' now is silly. Ensemble films existed for years without needing buildup to them. George Miller was at one point working on a Justice League film and while it may have been flawed it wouldn't have been because he didn't have three films of setup.
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May 13, 2016 16:26
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I just think it's especially funny that Zack Snyder kept on defending BvS as being "faithful" to TDKR when it absolutely wasn't, when Watchmen - which was basically a shot-for-shot translation of the comic book with a better ending and awful sex scenes - is probably his best comic book movie. I mean I think TDKR is both overrated and very much a product of its time, so I'm fine with the idea of adapting and changing it to a more modern era, I just have total issues with how Zack Snyder did it.
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May 13, 2016 16:27
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You can say 'the Incredibles didn't need setup', but that's generally because the setup is very formulaic so that the viewer has the impression of having seen these same characters in a million films and tv shows already. The Incredibles themselves are basically the Fantastic Four crossed with the Spielbergian family dynamic. Syndrome is standard Bond villain. Edna Mode is Q. Evil Robot is Standard Evil Robot. And so on.
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May 13, 2016 16:29
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Ignite Memories posted:But you're certainly right that the tone is a big factor. Some people like their comic books to be dour and brooding, but that's always going to be a smaller audience than people who want to enjoy themselves and forget about their problems for an hour and a half. I feel as though they're both forms of escapism, but for my own tastes, the former doesn't really evoke a world I'm especially interested in escaping to.
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May 13, 2016 16:35
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ImpAtom posted:
I think it would be hard to argue that as a collected body of work, the MCU films aren't the best versions of superhero films. And it's much the same way that if you were to ask any cartoon fan what the best version of the animated series is, they would point to the DCAU. The irony is that DC ended up doing what Marvel's doing now, just two decades prior, and it ended up influencing a whole generation of comic book readers. And again, the MCU ends up inverting their own preconceptions with Guardians, the best or second-best movie they've put out. They just realized that 1) the Guardians are a very low-profile group of characters and 2) they don't have a legacy, so they can be introduced and dimensionalized within the bounds of a single film. They're low-profile enough to warrant it. In contrast the DNA of DC is Legacy. It's part of their entire collected body of work and defines who they are, in much the same way Marvel's defined by The Superhero With Human Problems. Like...the fact that Wonder Woman ends up an also-ran introduction in BvS infuriates me, she's DC's most important female superhero, not some name on a call sheet who doesn't even get title credit in her first movie.
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May 13, 2016 16:39
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Toxxupation posted:It probably would've still sucked because Zack Snyder is a bad director and worse writer, who has a weird brokebrain version of the stories he thinks he's adapting, but there you go. You realize he didn't write BvS right?
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May 13, 2016 16:45
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MacheteZombie posted:You realize he didn't write BvS right? Whoops, yeah, that was Goyer wasn't it? Apologies.
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May 13, 2016 16:46
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Toxxupation posted:Whoops, yeah, that was Goyer wasn't it? Apologies. Goyer and Terrio
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May 13, 2016 16:47
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Well put, Toxx. I am a complete Marvel fanboy at this point, but all it takes is a glance leftward to see that it wasn't always that way. DCAU is some of the best serialized young adult animation that's ever been made, batman especially. It was years before I realized that I don't actually like Batman the character, just Batman the Animated Series. A lot of it is just the douche chill factor. When someone works hard to convince you that they're being mature, you either buy it or get completely offput by it. I don't need to read Spawn comics or watch the Spawn movie to know that I don't like Spawn.
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May 13, 2016 16:50
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Toxxupation posted:In contrast the DNA of DC is Legacy. It's part of their entire collected body of work and defines who they are, in much the same way Marvel's defined by The Superhero With Human Problems. Like...the fact that Wonder Woman ends up an also-ran introduction in BvS infuriates me, she's DC's most important female superhero, not some name on a call sheet who doesn't even get title credit in her first movie. It would have worked if it was just her scenes at the party - an introduction to the character - without having her participate in the end battle. An end battle which was entirely superfluous, anyway - If they wanted to kill Superman, just have Batman do it. If the point was that Batman feels sorry for what he did, have him learn of Superman's "true intentions" after he's killed, and then when Superman comes back to life, he forgives Batman, because he's loving Superman.
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May 13, 2016 16:51
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ashpanash posted:It would have worked if it was just her scenes at the party - an introduction to the character - without having her participate in the end battle. An end battle which was entirely superfluous, anyway - If they wanted to kill Superman, just have Batman do it. If the point was that Batman feels sorry for what he did, have him learn of Superman's "true intentions" after he's killed, and then when Superman comes back to life, he forgives Batman, because he's loving Superman. This is terrible fanfiction level rewriting. Ignite Memories posted:A lot of it is just the douche chill factor. lol
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May 13, 2016 16:54
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MacheteZombie posted:This is terrible fanfiction level rewriting. To be fair I did it in less than a minute with no considerations or rewrites so yeah, I would expect so.
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May 13, 2016 16:55
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ashpanash posted:To be fair I did it in less than a minute with no considerations or rewrites so yeah, I would expect so. Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!
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May 13, 2016 16:58
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MacheteZombie posted:Tell that to Zod's snapped neck! Technically.
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May 13, 2016 17:00
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redbackground posted:Well, he did get better. Haha, nice.
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May 13, 2016 17:02
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Toxxupation posted:I think it would be hard to argue that as a collected body of work, the MCU films aren't the best versions of superhero films. I'd argue they're the most successful. The best? Eh. Even in terms of success they have to compete with the Nolan Batman films.
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May 13, 2016 17:03
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redbackground posted:Well, he did get better. Your avatar reminds me of the one thing I want to see more than anything else in a superhero movie - Cassaday style cyclops beams. ImpAtom posted:I'd argue they're the most successful. The best? Eh. Even in terms of success they have to compete with the Nolan Batman films. Ehh, I still think the quality of these films is an optical illusion caused by looking at joel schumacher batman too long. Ignite Memories fucked around with this message at 17:07 on May 13, 2016 |
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May 13, 2016 17:05
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MacheteZombie posted:Tell that to Zod's snapped neck! Not any worse than what was on screen. "WHY DID YOU SAYY THAT NAAAAAMEEEE?"
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May 13, 2016 17:05
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ashpanash posted:Not any worse than what was on screen. It was actually pretty good.
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May 13, 2016 17:07
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ImpAtom posted:I'd argue they're the most successful. The best? Eh. Even in terms of success they have to compete with the Nolan Batman films. I mean, Dark Knight was excellent and all but most of the MCU is fairly 'better' than Begins and Rises.
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May 13, 2016 17:08
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