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Fart City posted:Absolutely sincere question: what could be done to inject life into the X-Men franchise at this point? It’s already had a prequel, soft reboot, and four spin-offs, three that even popped up to an R rating (not to mention New Mutants - still a rather largely unknown quantity with its reshoots). I’m not even sure what new angle could be approached with an introduction to the MCU outside of the initial novelty. Genuinely? Approach it from different angles. The concept lends itself well to trying something besides a straight superhero story with it. Things like Logan and (the trailer for) New Mutants are kind of scratching the surface. You can say you don't *need* X-Men for this and it's true but working from the baseline of audience knowledge could theoretically allow for stories that wouldn't necessarily have the same resonance. (Logan is again an example of this.) The interesting thing about mutants as a concept is that the superheroics are usually the least interesting part of any given X-Man story in comparison to the soap opera interpersonal drama elements. The most well-regarded X-Men stories tend to use superpowers as a way to amplify existing concepts and go wild with them. A director who basically is given a lot of free reign to do something like The Brood as a pure horror story could do something helluva interesting. (Even if you'd probably end up treading super fuckin' close to Aliens as a franchise for obvious reasons.) Of course this is based on the idea that you'd use mutants as the basis for exploring different genres and settings instead of "Wolverine totally cut off Thanos's cock."
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# ¿ May 18, 2024 18:45 |
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Harlock posted:Hey, the lady next to me gasped at this revelation. Although I will say having some comics knowledge: To be honest I'm pretty glad they didn't make the group of refugees fleeing dictators into secret villains considering the current climate.
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Gonz posted:I should also add that Disney has perfected the de-aging CGI process. There were a few times I noticed particularly after he lost his eye, the way they shaded/hide it really drew it out but yeah, it was largely disturbingly good.
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Waffles Inc. posted:I mean is the goal here for you to demand sworn testimony from peoples' IRL friends and family about their Infinity War opinions or something? I think trying to pretend like IW was generally considered an incoherent mess outside of relatively small circles of conversation is being willfully dense. It's fine to criticize it for being a weird overstuffed action movie but it was a weird overstuffed action movie which did very well in pretty much every metric you can think of. People liked Thanos regardless of how dumb his motivation was and a lot of portions of the film hit emotionally for people regardless of how hamhanded and forced they were. I'm not exactly super hyped for Endgame which I think is going to also being a weird overstuffed action movie but my primary reason for watching Marvel movies these days is that my little sister loves them and it's a nice thing for us to do together. My little sister was one of the (many) people in the theater devastated by the ending of IW because she's young and seeing her favorite characters die onscreen was very significant to her regardless of any logic pointing out that no the dude who made 1 billion dollars in his solo movie isn't staying dead. Does that mean it's a good film? No, but it also doesn't particularly matter because a lot of films that are important to people are not the same as good films. gently caress, how many people on this forum alone won't shut up about Optimus Prime dying or whatever. It's fine to discuss IW's many flaws or how it's basically action figures smashing together or whatever, but acting like it's shocking that people are excited to see action figures smashing together on something awful of all places is goofy and does show a really really narrow view of the forum as a whole, let alone outside of the forum. Regardless of how much people enjoy discussing the craft of film in this subforum, it's still the same place where comic book movie threads get a hundred times the post of anything that doesn't involve brightly colored heroes smashing into each other. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Mar 15, 2019 |
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:well i mean the difference there is that they did intend to kill optimus prime off for good and only brought him back because it affected so many people. infinity war was dumb because none of the deaths were going to stick. the tf animated movie was dumb because it killed off the old cast (of toys) to sell the new cast (of toys). A fictional death can impact people even if they know logically it isn't going to remain, especially in the actual heat of the moment where it occurs. Not everyone who watches films is approaching it from the perspective of "Oh I recognize THIS trope" or whatever, especially younger audiences. People can even get emotional over deaths that are quickly undone if they are executed properly. This is true for a lot of movie deaths. Star Trek 2 ends with about as blatant a "and Spock will probably come back" hint as you can get but Spock's death is still a significant scene to a lot of people even long after he came back from the dead. The Other Film Series ends with a character dying and the last shot being "and here is a really blatant and obvious hint he is coming back", not to mention a sequel announced, that didn't mean it didn't impact people who cared about it. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Mar 15, 2019 |
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I said come in! posted:Gunn is a gross piece of poo poo. He made lovely offensive jokes a decade ago which he apologized for *before* it was a contovercy. Wanting to crucify someone for that on SA of all places is odd.
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If there is a version of Batman who dominates I would argue it is TAS not Nolan. It influences or is the comparison for so many things. Even so I think most most audiences can accept the change easy enough. Hell we are in an era of partial reboots where a sequel ignores other sequels like Halloween or Terminator
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I said come in! posted:I'll do it for you! They are all gross and poo poo! Genuine question. Do you think every comedian who told The Aristocrats is an objectively bad person who doesn't deserve to be hired? Again this is S A and though it has toned down as we aged there are plenty of similar jokes made on these forums. Are you going to say everyone who donated to Noted Offensive Joke Maker Lowtax is wrong for doing so? Noted popular TV shows make similar jokes all the time. Family Guy is on what it's 15th season and it's cast includes (or included I haven't watched it) a pedophile and rapist both of which are played for humor. Transgressive humor exists. Pretending it doesn't and these jokes are unheard of is silly. You can say they are lovely and I agree. Using them as a blanket judgement on some one for the rest of their life is excessive. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Mar 15, 2019 |
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Intel&Sebastian posted:I mostly agree but jesus christ please find a better argument than "every single SA poster is somehow partially responsible for every single post ever made on this 20 year old web forum". Nobody said the former. As far as the latter goes: If you genuinely have never made a joke you regretted when you were older or a joke that looks super bad to other people then yeah, I think you're in the minority. That doesn't mean it was necessarily about the same subject matter or that the joke is in good taste but acting like it's an irreparable tarnish on someone's character is confusing.
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Intel&Sebastian posted:Yeah exactly, it's subjective, which is why it's ridiculous for anyone here to be calling out of bounds on someone else for saying "nah I still think James Gunn sucks". I've been here for almost 18 years and I certainly don't recall making any hilarious jokes about raping kids, I think that's pretty hosed up and a really dumb thing for anyone at any age to be posting in a public place. I also think he's genuinely contrite, this his apology was thoughtful and honest, and have no problem with him directing another Guardians. Then I don't know where you've posted because those jokes are depressingly common. Hell we had a subforum which was/is called Anime Death Tentacle Rape and spoiler, the characters in anime are not usually adults and that joke didn't come from thin air. I have no problem with disliking those kind of jokes. I dislike them myself no matter the form. I think it's 100% fine to say they're lovely jokes, but I think focusing on James Gunn and ignoring the overall culture when it is convenient for you is weird.
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Intel&Sebastian posted:Yeah, that's a bad dumb thing to name a forum and I'd expect to not have a fun time if I had to explain my like 50 posts in the Eva thread that would have that name attached to them to some prospective employer. I'd probably be able to, seeing as I didn't name the subforum and don't own this place, and think I could reasonably explain that it's a reprehensible joke name for what's actually a pretty tame anime discussion forum. Because I'm not responsible for what other people do on SA, or the "culture" of SA, no matter how bad it is. I think we're probably miscommunicating and I apologize for that. I'll try to rephase. I think James Gunn is absolutely at fault for the jokes he made. I also think the jokes he made are, while really gross, being hugely overplayed in a way that other similar jokes wouldn't be. Offensive jokes are a minefield because yes, they can be genuinely hurtful or uncomfortable. They also can be a relief of pressure or an attempt to find comfort with uncomfortable situations. Every single person has their own metric for this and no metric is wrong. If a joke makes you uncomfortable then you are absolutely free to voice that feeling and any non-lovely person should at least respect that and shift their behavior. What I don't agree with is the idea that making a lovely joke makes you a lovely person who deserves to be fired no matter how long ago it was and the reason I'm discussing the culture around it is because there's a weird disconnect with how Gunn's tweets are treated versus... well, the massive massive amount of jokes of that subject matter and how seriously it is treated. I brought up the Aristocrats because it's a time-honored comedian joke and there is documented footage of everyone from Hank Azaria to the staff of the Onion telling it. Trey Parker and Matt Stone literally made a career out of jokes about children being murdered and molested. In an era where South Park is aired on TV every loving week it's genuinely hard to see James Gunn's shitposts as being abnormally awful.
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SpiderHyphenMan posted:James Gunn got focused on because he's an outspoken critic of Trump and the alt-right wanted a scalp after Roseanne got axed. To be honest this is kind of the elephant in the room when discussing this too. It's genuinely very hard to figure out how much discussion of Gunn's lovely jokes is genuine and how much of it is manufactured. This goes for both directions, I know plenty of people who are cheering him back because it is a Screw You to the alt-right crowd but probably would be less forgiving if it was Roseanne coming back on TV with a genuine apology. (I'm also not really counting Gunn and Roseanne's things in the same category but one was a response to the other so enjoy my lovely comparison.)
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Intel&Sebastian posted:Oh well yeah, the whole campaign and how it was brought up was disingenuous as all out and faked outrage. We're mostly in agreement. Hm. I'm not sure. I think you'd genuinely have a hard time with that. I mean they've cast more significantly offensive people in roles. George Carlin was in Cars after all and I don't think anyone said anything about that despite the guy making jokes about Porky Pig getting raped. I also think it's a bad idea for any studio to treat being in something offensive or shocking as a reason not to hire them. I think it's within their rights but it's a thin line between being in an offensive comedy and making an offensive tweet at least to me. I absolutely agree with you that Disney's response is the absolute stupidest method though.
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teagone posted:Shazam! review embargo lifts tomorrow at 6PM eastern. I grabbed early tickets so I suppose I'll see. Captain Marvel (the uh, DC one) is probably my literal favorite superhero ever so I've got hopes.
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Just got back from Shazam myself. I liked it but it does a lot of things I'm predisposed to like and having a superhero movie set in Philadelphia (and very informed by Philadelphia as a city) predisposed me to liking it. It's rather slow and the action is kinda bland but I appreciate some of the things it does. If you're expecting something Snydery or even Aquamanny though you're in for a disappointment. It's blatantly set in the DCEU down to Superman literally showing up at the end and a Batarang being used against the villain but it doesn't have any of the same ethos. It's Big as a Superhero movie and it wears that on its sleeve. (Yes, there is a piano-on-the-floor scene.) The cast of kids is really charming and easily the strong point of the film and honestly the superheroics are pretty bland. Freddy bouncing off Billy and Captain Marvel is the selling point of the film more than anything so it makes sense that they'd focus on that for the advertisements.
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teagone posted:Cavill as Superman? He have any lines? The face is hidden but it's the suit. No lines.
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teagone posted:I wonder how many reviewers will be able to not mention Marvel in their write-ups for Shazam. I mean that would be hard considering for the vast majority of the character's life his name was Captain Marvel and the film even has a reoccurring joke over the fact they can't say his real name.
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Almost Blue posted:I hear this a lot from people who are into the movies and I always wonder how Marvel pulled that off. I think it's the fact the actor changed. Marvel has leaned pretty hard onto actors being 'the same' and while there have been changes to some of the side characters the main ones have been consistent since Incredible Hulk. A lot of casual viewers have actually internalized the "it's a new actor so it's a new universe" thing for superhero movies because that's usually the case and there was even a different Hulk film before that. It also was before the MCU REALLY got into swing so a lot of people just genuinely forget it exists.
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teagone posted:I've recently been saying that Stark and Pym have held back the human race in the MCU by not sharing their tech with the rest of the world. Their hubris is what makes Earth defenseless and vulnerable against greater threats. If they pooled and shared their knowledge with the greatest minds on the Earth, poo poo would probably be loving Stark Trek levels by now. Sadly the major issue there is that A) Stark and probably Pym would give it to the US government first and B) Even if you did trust the US government, this is a US government where they have more Literal Nazis than the current US government. In a vacuum the shared technology would probably be great, in the MCU it probably would end up with a very tiny Crossbone stabbing almost everyone the brain.
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Burkion posted:That's not even why it's stupid Of all the complaints I never thought this one made a ton of sense. From what the film shows the snap alone wrecked the Infinity Gauntlet's poo poo. It's entirely possible that Thanos himself would not have had the ability to do that much within the restraints of the Gauntlet. (As opposed to the comic where he is a Capital G God.) It's still a dumb plan but movie Thanos isn't really shown to have the literal omnipotence of the comic version.
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Spacebump posted:Why would the make the Eternals? The deal is done. They still have good Marvel characters they haven't used. I grew up a diehard Marvel comics fan and just don't get this move. It's almost as bad as when they were trying to force the Inhumans. I mean it's worth remembering that prior to its success you could say the exact same thing about Guardians of the Galaxy. Edit: Also, to a lesser extent, Big Hero 6.
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Daddy Thanos posted:Ant Man can't go up Thanos' rear end because Thanos is a top Did you register just to make this post?
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Well, the GotG in the movie only barely resemble the comic versions. They drew only the barest minimum and mostly used the basic concept. They could do that here too.
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teagone posted:You will likely never see a film like a Deadpool or a Logan ever again is basically what I'm saying, in addition to the other points I made, but this one is more relevant to you I guess. Enjoy your generic white rice vanilla slop! Why do you think that?
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teagone posted:Look at the MCU. Look at Star Wars. Disney really only does "safe" and are adept at risk aversion when it comes to producing content for mass media consumption. Okay. What do you mean by 'safe' and how does it not apply to Logan and Deadpool? For Deadpool I guess you can say the R-Rating but Logan was an extremely safe film, which is not the same as saying it's a bad one. I Before E posted:Assuming that they mean that X-men films like that would not be made under Disney, I think the fact that after approximately 20 MCU films compared to the 13 X-Men films under Fox, there are no MCU movies comparable to Deadpool in terms of the creative risk taken on an R-rated blockbuster would be some evidence. I don't think I would agree with this. They haven't taken a risk on an R-Rated film but they've tried poo poo which people openly mocked them for until it worked. Guardians of the Galaxy is a primary example there of a film everyone was saying would fail until it didn't. Is it ever going to be SUPER GENUINELY risky? No, but I don't think any superhero film based off an established character will. At best they will be well-directed or unique visually. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Apr 5, 2019 |
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teagone posted:Look at Logan with regards to other X-Men films that came before it. It didn't get a gently caress about continuity, and likely had no corporate mandates to hold it back from telling its story. Mangold went hog wild with the violence and made the Wolverine movie deserving of the character, not a franchise. Logan absolutely cared about continuity, or at least as much as any modern X-Men film does. Which is to say it cared about it when it was useful and discarded it when it wasn't. The use of Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman and a lot of specific callbacks to the Wolverine/X-Men movies which are relevant to the main story for example. A lot of Logan's emotional beats are specifically born from it being a part of the X-Men franchise and while it is a fine film on its own, it was designed intentionally to have payoff to the old films. ("I see you dying, holding your heart in your hand" for example.) Snowman_McK posted:They made Star Wars without the logo, and added a talking animal. There was nothing risky about that movie. And of course you can comfortably say this because it was a large success and therefore you can say you knew all along. ![]()
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Snowman_McK posted:It was also true before the film came out. No they don't? Like you can literally google for arguments people were making at the time. It was a risk because it features a largely unknown cast of characters without even the casual name recognition of Iron Man, Captain American and the Hulk. It was a space movie but space movies are not always successes and it's pretty easy to point to the plenty of corpses that tried and failed to be Star Wars. People were, even at the time, wondering if Marvel was heading towards burnout or oversaturation. We know now that they had years ahead of them but nobody was quite sure at the time. Chris Pratt was, at the time, liked but considered a risky choice for an action movie lead. (2014-15 gave us Jurassic World, GotG and Lego Movie which pumped his star way higher.) Marvel was also *significantly* less silly at the time. They've always been quippy but GotG ratcheted it up enough that it ended up coloring films that came after. (Things like Thor Ragnarok were born from the unexpected success of GotG.) Obviously all these assumptions were wrong but at the time it was very much one of the first "and THIS will be the first Marvel movie to bomb" attitude (that, as always, ignores Hulk existing.)
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Snowman_McK posted:None of those actually represent real risks, though. I mean, movies are successful quite often with no characters with any name recognition. That this counts as a risk, again, is something that tells you how risk averse Disney is So basically your argument is "Well, they don't COUNT because I say so." I'm curious, what superhero movie do you feel was risky and succeeded? (I can say the recent FF was Risky but I'm not going to say it succeeded.) Like genuinely risky, not "It has cursing and violence but also stars one of the most popular comic book heroes ever played by one of the most popular actors on the planet in an adaptation of one of the most popular comic storylines ever" Like Deadpool I guess is 'risky' in that it went for an R-Rating but the film itself is incredibly safe outside of that and the violence wasn't actually that critical to the film's major success points. (I mean it didn't HURT but they tried a PG-13 version of DP2 for a reason.)
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ThisIsACoolGuy posted:I saw Shazam and all I knew going in was there was a kid named Billy who turns into not-superman and is a dumbass. The original Captain Marvel had a sister named Mary who became Mary Marvel, and Freddy became Captain Marvel Jr but they had the same powers more or less. The "Super Squad" thing is from a recent comic reboot. They don't even have names, not even in the credits of the film.
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Snowman_McK posted:Well, yeah. I mean, if any that constitutes a risk...what the gently caress isn't risky at that point? Well, that is why I was asking you. What do you consider a risky superhero film that succeeds?
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teagone posted:Logan. And Deadpool.They're R-Rated, unconventional takes on comic book movies and just lol if you think Disney would ever produce content like that within the genre. I guess my thing is that I don't think R-rating is as important as you do. I think it's possible to do unconventional without needing extreme violence. Even if you want to do something about the consequences of superheroic violence or whatever, the R-rating isn't necessary. (And we have more than one example of that.)
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Jimbot posted:As someone on twitter posted, Disney will own about 40% of the total box office with the Fox merger yet a shitload of people are losing their jobs due to it. It's very possible that the top five grossing movies this year will all be Disney making over a billion dollars and that is terrifying.
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Fart City posted:Once Upon A Deadpool brought in $300 mil against Deadpool 2's $700. You can attribute some of the discrepancy to it being a re-release to a certain extent, but to imply that the rating wasn't a critical factor seems odd when there's a clear correlation to be made. There are audiences for Rated-R comic book films. More importantly, in the case of Logan, the subject matter just wouldn't fly in a Disney brand PG-13 superhero film, where the consequences of superheroics takes the form of an entire innocent family the audience spends time knowing getting massacred as opposed to a faceless tally on a computer monitor. I feel like saying "Disney would never do that" feels weird. I mean outside of Superhero movies, people love to point to Star Wars and they put out Rogue One (where the entire cast is butchered) and The Last Jedi (where the heroic protagonist of the last series becomes a broken old man who sacrifices his life to stop the power-hungry son of Han Solo and Leia who had already murdered his fan-favorite father.) Logan I feel is better executed in a lot of ways but that doesn't mean that Disney is entirely unwilling to kill characters or whatever.
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Snowman_McK posted:The cast of Rogue One dying in no way affected their ability to put out another Star Wars movie a year later. Nor did the ending of Logan prevent them from putting out another X-Men movie. Edit: It didn't even prevent them from bringing back Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart if either wanted to come back.
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CelticPredator posted:People die in Disney movies all the time. Even mothers and fathers. But like, they’re not graphic and violent. Like Logan was. Then we're coming back to overt violence, which I don't think is the same thing. It's absolutely possible for graphic deaths to occur in even the kiddiest of Disney films. They are rarely to never bloody but that isn't the same thing. To use a Disney animated feature for example, Clayton's death in Tarzan is pretty violent without showing anything. The implication and brief shots make it stand out even among Disney deaths and a visual of his neck breaking would probably be less effective than ![]()
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Snowman_McK posted:It would, though. Since the character, as played by him, is dead. In the future and possibly an alternate timeline future. If they wanted Logan to show up in Dark Phoenix they wouldn't even have to explain it. Hugh Jackman is done with the role but that is literally the only reason they couldn't bring him back. They could even do it without 'changing' Logan because it's intentionally set in the future. Edit: Hell, Patrick Stewart as Professor X died in The Last Stand and that didn't stop him from being in an identical Patrick Stewarty body for Logan.
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Snowman_McK posted:I think you're now making a comment on comic book movies, not the relative approaches of the two companies. No I'm not? Even WITHOUT that they still could have made a sequel. The character Laura is an existing comic character (X-23) who had even taken over as Wolverine. A sequel starring her would be easy and expected.
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teagone posted:Let's be realistic here. There's I guess this comes down to the fact that I fundamentally disagree with you that the only movie with 'balls' is an R-rated violent movie. I think the idea that superhero violence need explicit gore to be unconventional is inherently wrong and that isn't just Disney. DC's cinematic universe contains some serious violence while maintaining PG-13 ratings (and TBH I'd argue as effective and/or impactful as Logan's in certain cases.) The idea that to be risky you have to show someone being eviscerated is not something I can agree with.
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LesterGroans posted:How the gently caress is making it look the same as the other movies DE-Marvelizing it? I think this isn't something that comes up here overly often but I see it on other forums where the DCEU is considered the 'mature' of the two universes not because of themes or how it tackles subject matter but because it is (for lack of a better term) 'realistic' and 'gritty.' I think a lot of the negativity towards discussing Snyder stuff is impacted by that because the group who is basically like "Snyder is good because BATMAN SHOOTS A DUDE and SUPERMAN DIES" are a noticeable part of the mix, especially on forums that skew younger than SA.
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# ¿ May 18, 2024 18:45 |
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Burkion posted:Best theater experience I ever had was Pacific Rim Uprising. This is like one of those stories that keeps getting sadder.
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