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DrVenkman
Dec 28, 2005

I think he can hear you, Ray.
Man...Z Nation. That's a thing. I have time for entertaining trash, when it knows that it's entertaining trash. But my biggest issue with it, oddly enough, is that it's so overwritten. It has that thing where people love to explain their motivations, as if their actions aren't doing it for them. It zips along like no ones business though and whereas Walking Dead would probably spend two episodes deciding if they should kill a baby, they ice that thing as soon as they can.

It also has this weird thing where it expects you to not be sympathetic towards the guy who was strapped into a table against his will, injected with god knows what and then is eaten alive. "A lot of good people died because of you!" Yeah and you let the guy get strapped down and wouldn't do him the courtesy of putting him out of his misery. rear end in a top hat.

Still, at least I get to see a dude get eaten by a zombie baby.

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Irish Joe
Jul 23, 2007

by Lowtax
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4qIyrTGnM0

Taxi Brooklyn as it was meant to be seen: with a laugh track. Courtesy of The Soup.

Shageletic
Jul 25, 2007

Sir Kodiak posted:

Yeah, losing someone as inventive and interesting as Edgar Wright really shows that drawback. Meanwhile, DC has been able to let loose Christopher Nolan, Zack Snyder, and are rumored to be bringing David Ayer onboard for a Suicide Squad movie. Joss Whedon, Shane Black, and James Gunn are interesting writers, but they vary from solid (Gunn and Black) to poor (Whedon) as directors.

You think that DC doesn't have a thumb on what their movies look like or end up being? The fact that you have a corporation wide mandate to have "no jokes", and now a steady effort to ape the Nolan brand of grit and grim tells you different. Marvel had GotG and Cap America 2 this year, both movies showing creators pushing the boundaries of main stream movie making ("limited" by a need for a good ending, interesting characters, and sharp dialogue).

What's the last good DC movie? The Dark Knight. It feels like DC is suffocating itself. And the CW shows (I guess, really only the one) has its own formula as well, which I personally can't stand watching.

Maybe this is a better convo to have in a movie thread?

raditts
Feb 21, 2001

The Kwanzaa Bot is here to protect me.


JohnSherman posted:

I can't even begin to describe how goony it is to look at DC's TV properties — a fairly successful Green Arrow show about to start its third season, a Flash show with a promising pilot, and a vaguely Batman-ish show with great leads — and call that a failure because they aren't going to be dropping references to each other. I think DC has rightly concluded that the only people who care about whether Batman's favorite ice cream flavor is consistent across all of their properties are turbonerds.

Flash has an Arrow cameo in the pilot so I'm not sure what you're going for there, and I haven't seen or heard anything about Gotham that makes me confident it won't be garbage but we'll just have to wait and see on that one. Considering almost all of their previous live-action TV properties and most of their movies, I'd say it's totally justified to expect the worst and hope for the best when it comes to anything new.

Lycus
Aug 5, 2008

Half the posters in this forum have been made up. This website is a goddamn ghost town.

Irish Joe posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4qIyrTGnM0

Taxi Brooklyn as it was meant to be seen: with a laugh track. Courtesy of The Soup.

That dude on the roof was the crackest of crack shots.

Baronash
Feb 29, 2012

So what do you want to be called?

raditts posted:

Flash has an Arrow cameo in the pilot so I'm not sure what you're going for there, and I haven't seen or heard anything about Gotham that makes me confident it won't be garbage but we'll just have to wait and see on that one. Considering almost all of their previous live-action TV properties and most of their movies, I'd say it's totally justified to expect the worst and hope for the best when it comes to anything new.

Yeah, but Robert Queen isn't going to be stopping by Gotham to have drinks with Gordon.

I'm not going to argue about the quality of the shows, especially when we're comparing them to Agents of SHIELD, because that isn't my point. People here seem to be of the opinion that Marvel's interconnected universe is right, and DC's loose association is inherently wrong, which is dumb. They are both valid methods, and both companies are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars.

DivisionPost
Jun 28, 2006

Nobody likes you.
Everybody hates you.
You're gonna lose.

Smile, you fuck.
The Blacklist would be a lot more fun if it wasn't trying to be an edgier Criminal Minds.

Fateo McMurray
Mar 22, 2003

JohnSherman posted:

Yeah, but Robert Queen isn't going to be stopping by Gotham to have drinks with Gordon.

I'm not going to argue about the quality of the shows, especially when we're comparing them to Agents of SHIELD, because that isn't my point. People here seem to be of the opinion that Marvel's interconnected universe is right, and DC's loose association is inherently wrong, which is dumb. They are both valid methods, and both companies are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars.

I like Marvel's approach better so I'm gonna say that's the right one

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

I think Marvel's approach is a spectacle onto itself. Its ambitious, unique, unprecedented, and from what I've seen well done. I enjoy that interconnected universes almost as much as the invidual properties themselves because I'm a nerd and was a comic nerd when I was a kid and this is just something cool I never thought would ever happen but probably dreamed of as a kid.

I have no major problem with DC just doing individual stuff. Its just slightly confusing when some shows or films are in the same universe and some aren't. Or that they're starting a Justice League series of films but none of the other Justice League hero properties I see have anything to do with it. Or that they're pushing so hard to do so much at the same time and I needed a slight road map to make sense of it. Its just kind of jumbled.

That doesn't make it bad. I intend to give Gotham and Constantine a try when they debut, I'm hoping the second season of Arrow pops up on Netflix soon so I can give it and Flash a try for the new season, and now that I know Man of Steel is the start of a Justice League movie franchise I might finally watch that DVD that's been sitting on my shelf since my birthday. I was just trying to make it clear what was going on.

Besides, its not like Marvel doesn't have its own seperate movie continuities with the Spider-Men films and the X-Men universe. I know that's due to studio rights so its different but I get it that everything doesn't have to be in the same net. Even if I'd really like Marvel to get back the Fantastic Four since that was a childhood favorite of mine and the movies suck.

Mu Zeta
Oct 17, 2002

Me crush ass to dust

The new one is being directed by the guy that did Chronicle and it has Michael B Jordan so i'm pretty stoked.

CaptainHollywood
Feb 29, 2008


I am an awesome guy and I love to make out during shitty Hollywood horror movies. I am a trendwhore!
Buzzfeed has the exclusive scene for the deleted scene from How I Met Your Mother.

The origin of the pineapple!!!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyorley/how-i-met-your-mother-pineapple-mystery-solved?utm_term=4ldqpia#1n8yhu0

:what:

Spatula City
Oct 21, 2010

LET ME EXPLAIN TO YOU WHY YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING
I don't care about the cohesion of the Marvel universe versus the DC universe or any bullshit like that, I just want good movies and good TV shows. Agents of SHIELD is a bad TV show. Arrow is a very good one. So, as far as I'm concerned, DC might be losing on the movie front, but they're winning on the TV front.

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


Shageletic posted:

You think that DC doesn't have a thumb on what their movies look like or end up being? The fact that you have a corporation wide mandate to have "no jokes", and now a steady effort to ape the Nolan brand of grit and grim tells you different. Marvel had GotG and Cap America 2 this year, both movies showing creators pushing the boundaries of main stream movie making ("limited" by a need for a good ending, interesting characters, and sharp dialogue).

What's the last good DC movie? The Dark Knight. It feels like DC is suffocating itself. And the CW shows (I guess, really only the one) has its own formula as well, which I personally can't stand watching.

WB/DC of course influence how the movies they make end up being, that's in the nature of being a production company. But there hasn't been anything comparable to Disney/Marvel driving away Jon Favreau and Edgar Wright. All reports are that Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder are being allowed to tell the stories they want to tell.

Nolan's Batman movies have a bunch of jokes in them, they just don't have a comic tone. Man of Steel, while more serious, ends on Clark Kent grinning goofily after Lois Lane delivers a pun. What WB/DC is talking about there, if that rumor is even real at all, is clearly that they aren't going to try to duplicate Marvel's comedic/ironic take on the material, as they tried to do with Green Lantern.

The last good DC movie is Man of Steel, which is better than anything in the MCU, as was The Dark Knight. Even if you don't care for the tone, they're visually impeccable movies. Arrow is, admittedly, trash, which is part of why it's nice that DC is going to be making completely independent TV shows that have a chance of being better. There's also no risk of what happened with Agents of SHIELD, where a show only has a chance to rise to the level of mediocrity when one of the films lets them react to an event in the metaplot.

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


Sir Kodiak posted:


The last good DC movie is Man of Steel, which is better than anything in the MCU, as was The Dark Knight. Even if you don't care for the tone, they're visually impeccable movies. Arrow is, admittedly, trash,

What the gently caress.

Yoshifan823
Feb 19, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

Shageletic posted:

You think that DC doesn't have a thumb on what their movies look like or end up being? The fact that you have a corporation wide mandate to have "no jokes", and now a steady effort to ape the Nolan brand of grit and grim tells you different. Marvel had GotG and Cap America 2 this year, both movies showing creators pushing the boundaries of main stream movie making ("limited" by a need for a good ending, interesting characters, and sharp dialogue).

What's the last good DC movie? The Dark Knight. It feels like DC is suffocating itself. And the CW shows (I guess, really only the one) has its own formula as well, which I personally can't stand watching.

Maybe this is a better convo to have in a movie thread?

Nerds poo poo themselves over this whole "no jokes" thing, but completely missed the point. Marvel's whole schtick is keeping a distance from treating superheroes as more than human, instead treating them as real people. This is how it has worked since The Fantastic Four #1 back in the early sixties, and this has made them a lot of money at times, and arguably, the times when they were least successful (cough early nineties cough) were when they got away from it. Their movies work in the same way, but because movies and comics are very different beasts, it means that, tonally, Marvel's movies are going to be similar. Iron Man, Thor, Cap, Guardians, all of them have roughly the same vaguely serious but there's still time for plenty of of snappy Whedon-esque one-liners tone, to varying degrees (obviously Cap 2 is more serious than Guardians, but the difference isn't all that stark compared to, say, Man of Steel).

DC, on the other hand, has in their hands the closest thing American culture has to mythological characters in Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the like. And Man of Steel and Dark Knight, for their flaws (and they do have some, neither movie is perfect), really nails "mature" in a way that DC Comics has never been able to do, because DC Comics equates "mature" with "a poo poo load of blood, tits, and rape". Man of Steel and Dark Knight are much more "mature" superhero movies, but not in the way that comic readers want, which is a turnoff for them. Man of Steel is a good movie, but got a shitload of backlash because it was decidedly not the movie that the people who didn't like it wanted. They want Superman seen through the same lens as Iron Man, Thor, Cap, and that just doesn't work, because Superman is a character who has so much more weight to him, and any movie with him has to have that proper weight. That doesn't necessarily mean entirely serious like Man of Steel was, because I don't think you'll find too many people arguing that Richard Donner's Superman isn't a great Superman movie as well.

So basically, "no jokes" doesn't mean "not a single moment of funny in the entire movie", especially considering Man of Steel ends with a few pretty funny lines, but it's not the same sort of "wit" that permeates the MCU.

Spatula City posted:

I don't care about the cohesion of the Marvel universe versus the DC universe or any bullshit like that, I just want good movies and good TV shows. Agents of SHIELD is a bad TV show. Arrow is a very good one. So, as far as I'm concerned, DC might be losing on the movie front, but they're winning on the TV front.

Yes. "cohesion" and "canon" are, when you're talking about the quality of a work, largely bullshit. That's less the case here in TV-land, where canon is much more important, but I don't care if you have a show that connects to five different movies and adds new dimensions to my favorite movies or whatever, if that show isn't enjoyable to watch, it's not enjoyable to watch, period.

edit: Man of Steel is not better than all of the MCU movies, but it is better than pretty much all of them, probably save Iron Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. And it's definitely a much better movie visually, because Zack Snyder is a loving phenomenal visual director.

NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

MrAristocrates posted:

What the gently caress.

lol, man of steel "good"

Mu Zeta
Oct 17, 2002

Me crush ass to dust

MrAristocrates posted:

What the gently caress.

Man of Steel has my favorite "first flight" scene and while the rest of the movie has some iffy stuff it's still way more interesting than anything from Marvel.

Ravane
Oct 23, 2010

by LadyAmbien

Toxxupation posted:

lol, man of steel "good"

I preferred the Bollywood version myself. Ra-One was one of the most intense things I've ever seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utcxHimW4UA

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


Man of Steel isn't a bad movie because it's dour, it's bad because it fundamentally misunderstands what it needs to do in terms of its own thematic and character work. The flashbacks are totally irrelevant to Supes, and while it's okay for him not to have an arc, the movie thinks he does. The movie never gives us a reason to care about this guy besides "he's the hero!" It's all just informed empathy.

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
I love the first flight scene too but otherwise MoS really is an insanely bad piece of crap.

NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

also the main character's dad recommends he kill a bus full of kids and the movie treats both this development and his dad in general as wise and someone to aspire to be over an insane sociopath

lol man of steel fuckin sucks

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


The exception to my post is yeah, that fight scene, because it was pretty great.

E:flight god dammit

Arist fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Sep 20, 2014

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


Toxxupation posted:

also the main character's dad recommends he kill a bus full of kids and the movie treats both this development and his dad in general as wise and someone to aspire to be over an insane sociopath

Superman's primary arc is deciding that he's not going to be what either of his fathers want him to be. You can't seriously think that the movie is arguing that he should have let a bus full of children die. You're supposed to empathize with his concern over how to raise his son, not want a bunch of kids to be dead.

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


Sir Kodiak posted:

Superman's primary arc is deciding that he's not going to be what either of his fathers want him to be. You can't seriously think that the movie is arguing that he should have let a bus full of children die.

Except that's supported by nothing in the movie.

NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

Sir Kodiak posted:

Superman's primary arc is deciding that he's not going to be what either of his fathers want him to be. You can't seriously think that the movie is arguing that he should have let a bus full of children die.

the whole movie is clark kent ineffectually trying to live up to his dead dad's memory in a lovely batman knockoff, except he's also superman so he's supposed to be some sort of paragon of virtue and justice

the one part of the movie that works is when he kills zod and only because its a final moment of darkness that finally makes superman not lovely and boring

beyond that it's an incoherent mess that attempts to build up superman as he always is except all of his development is stilted, awkward, and mostly consists of him wishing he were more like his insane sociopath dead dad

Spatula City
Oct 21, 2010

LET ME EXPLAIN TO YOU WHY YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING
I really need to revisit Man of Steel, but even though on the whole I didn't love it due to getting fatigued by the third act's symphony of destruction, I still consider it better than half of the Marvel movies. Only better movies are Iron Man 3, Cap 1&2, and Guardians.
The Avengers is hot garbage, in part because it is so obviously influenced by TV more than film, but also because the characters are cardboard quip machines. also it has the most corporate, cynical aesthetic.
Also, to tie this back into TV, it's the same world as Agents of SHIELD, and I'm not sure how anyone could like The Avengers and then turn around and say Agents of SHIELD is terrible. They're of a piece. They have similar levels of character depth, with the only separation being slightly higher production values and better actors. SHIELD gets far better when it transforms into a show operating in Captain America 2's world instead, and it also has a good episode where it's playing around in the Thor series' world (also apparently a bad one, too, but I didn't see that one).

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


MrAristocrates posted:

Except that's supported by nothing in the movie.

He has a speech about how his father was worried that if he revealed who he was, people would reject him. Shortly thereafter, he reveals himself, putting his faith in humanity. This is him rejecting what Jonathan Kent wanted him to be.

He rejects what Jor El wants him to be when he kills the last Kryptonian and destroys the machinery that could be used to make more Kryptonians.

NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

basically man of steel is lovely and awful not just because it's overlong and fuckin boring as hell, not just because of its awkward pacing, not just because it wastes michael shannon, the best character in that movie, by reducing him to a bit role, not just because a lot of it doesn't really make any real sense, but because it tries and presents superman as he always is- a boring hodgepodge of all of the most generic of generic Greatest American Qualities -while also making his backstory into a generic, lovely batman knockoff tonally and then really ineptly trying to make him dark and morally compromised that undercuts the last two hours of making him into the Best American Hero of All Time

The point is that the bus scene is the most important scene of the movie because it sets up the zod murder, by impressing upon clark that he can't save everyone nor should he

except it's done in the most grimdark and morally ridiculous way wherein we have the "moral center" of the movie recommending to his son that he kills kids

man of steel fuckin sucks

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


If someone suggests that perhaps a bus load of children should have been allowed to die, they're not the moral center of a movie. Superman is the moral center of the movie, because, among other things, he doesn't let a bus load of children die.

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


The problem with that reading is that Superman has no morals. He's totally blank in that regard. His killing of Zod has no impact because not only did he just cause billions in property damage, killing who knows how many people in the process (don't give me that "evacuated" crap, the movie goes out of its way to show namless extras getting brutally killed earlier), we have no idea who this guy is. He never forms an identity of his own.

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


Oh no, "property damage."

He saved as many people as he could. He wasn't able to save everybody. It's not like he wanted to wreck Metropolis, but he was up against a better-trained opponent who had all his same powers. You see his morals when he repeatedly risks his life or being outed on behalf of other people.

GreenNight
Feb 19, 2006
Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

I've read that the sequel deals with the aftermath of all that destruction.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
To me Man of Steel is an okay-to-good movie, not a great one. I like it more than any of the Chris Reeves Superman films for example.

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


He saved like four people. I don't actually care, it's just emblematic of the larger issue of the movie just asking us to assume traits of its protagonist.

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


GreenNight posted:

I've read that the sequel deals with the aftermath of all that destruction.

This is a terrible way to approach storytelling by the way.

E: gently caress, double post, sorry

GreenNight
Feb 19, 2006
Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

It beats just forgetting about what happened, and pretending that all the characters did too.

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


MrAristocrates posted:

He saved like four people. I don't actually care, it's just emblematic of the larger issue of the movie just asking us to assume traits of its protagonist.

He saved every human on the planet. He saves people throughout the movie. It's not asking us to "assume traits" if the movie repeatedly demonstrates it.

Yoshifan823
Feb 19, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

MrAristocrates posted:

The problem with that reading is that Superman has no morals. He's totally blank in that regard. His killing of Zod has no impact because not only did he just cause billions in property damage, killing who knows how many people in the process (don't give me that "evacuated" crap, the movie goes out of its way to show namless extras getting brutally killed earlier), we have no idea who this guy is. He never forms an identity of his own.

Superman didn't kill those people. They died, but Zod was the one responsible.

raditts
Feb 21, 2001

The Kwanzaa Bot is here to protect me.


Humbug Scoolbus posted:

To me Man of Steel is an okay-to-good movie, not a great one. I like it more than any of the Chris Reeves Superman films for example.

That's not setting the bar terribly high.

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precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames
Man of Steel, like Superman Returns, commits the greatest sin a film possibly can; it's boring.

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