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Darko posted:People have jumped on you. I'm not trying to. Heres a simple question. I'm probably going to revisit them all in the lead up to this snyder cut coming out, so I'll let you know.
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Feb 15, 2021 07:53
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The Man of Steel series takes place in a setting where superheroes don't previously exist, just a handful of powerful beings who aren't quite sure what to do with themselves as they go around living in a society. The DC Cinematic Universe does contain a film where the existence of superheroes is taken as normal in this way, however: Shazam.
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Feb 15, 2021 09:02
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Watch the first 5 minutes of Batman V Superman and pretend you don't know what a Superman is. Bruce Wayne looks up as he clutches that kid and sees two kryptonians. Not Superman fighting Zod. Just two aliens making the city into scrap. How could he know that Superman was a benevolent force?
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Feb 15, 2021 09:14
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well why not posted:Watch the first 5 minutes of Batman V Superman and pretend you don't know what a Superman is. Bruce Wayne looks up as he clutches that kid and sees two kryptonians. Not Superman fighting Zod. Just two aliens making the city into scrap. How could he know that Superman was a benevolent force? Isn't Batman's thing being super prepared/the world's greatest detective? Seems like he could've looked into Superman at some point between the attack on Metropolis and trying to kill him.
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Feb 15, 2021 10:47
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RBA Starblade posted:Everyone's already said the myriad ways that these films are absolutely power fantasies but on top of that, consider also you get to bang Amy Adams and live in a cool studio apartment Don't wanna get dragged too much into "is it/isn't it a power fantasy" because I don't know how much that alone tells you about the films, but Man of Steel is very different to BvS in this regard: In MoS Clark has neither an apartment nor a budding relationship with Amy Adams, in BvS he gets to cook his cool reporter gf some obviously fake eggs in an apartment outside the reach of any news intern. In MoS Clark has the power but using it is ineffectual and is ruining his life, in BvS he has the power and a cool life but everyone's mad at him on the TV news and these billionaire are trying to kill him. live with fruit posted:Isn't Batman's thing being super prepared/the world's greatest detective? Seems like he could've looked into Superman at some point between the attack on Metropolis and trying to kill him. He does, and has the Dick Cheney response.
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Feb 15, 2021 10:57
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live with fruit posted:Isn't Batman's thing being super prepared/the world's greatest detective? Seems like he could've looked into Superman at some point between the attack on Metropolis and trying to kill him. It wasn't a question of being unprepared/a bad detective, because he does completely succeed in his mission to never let that happen again. He just needed to see supes in a different light. You can't really deduce your way into empathy, and Bruce basically locked his away in his mother's tomb.
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Feb 15, 2021 11:06
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Shanty posted:It wasn't a question of being unprepared/a bad detective, because he does completely succeed in his mission to never let that happen again. He just needed to see supes in a different light. You can't really deduce your way into empathy, and Bruce basically locked his away in his mother's tomb. But the idea is that Bruce just sees "sees two kryptonians, not Superman fighting Zod." The military was aware of what was going on. That Superman was benevolent was known.
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Feb 15, 2021 11:19
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Batman is very well-researched and well-prepared for the kind of threat that he thinks Superman is: an all-powerful space tyrant who considers humanity beneath him. Lex Luthor, on the other hand, is happy to let the whole world fear Superman's power so that they come and buy Kryptonite weapons from him, but he knows from the beginning that the "man" part of "Superman" is the vulnerable part, which is why that's the part he attacks. These respective conclusions reflect the two men's biases and traumas. Bruce thinks of someone disguising himself as a human the way he himself wears a human disguise in order to do his real work of dressing up as a demon and passing judgment on the wicked - to him, that's what a secret identity is for, and anything else is irrelevant. Lex keeps tabs on extraordinary people of all kinds because of his own preoccupation with the nature of divinity: he knows they're not gods, so they must be mortals - and no man is an island, not even Superman, so he knows there's someone to find.
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Feb 15, 2021 11:30
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live with fruit posted:But the idea is that Bruce just sees "sees two kryptonians, not Superman fighting Zod." The military was aware of what was going on. That Superman was benevolent was known. That was brought up and accounted for, "if there is even a 1% chance he could become a threat we have to treat it as an absolute certainty". Bruce is jaded as hell after spending 20 years fighting crime in Gotham with nothing to show for it, most of his enemies were good people turned bad by terrible circumstances and corruption is rife at every level. He simply doesn't believe that someone with Superman's power will remain good and not become a civilization-ending threat some day.
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Feb 15, 2021 11:37
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McSpanky posted:That was brought up and accounted for, "if there is even a 1% chance he could become a threat we have to treat it as an absolute certainty". Bruce is jaded as hell after spending 20 years fighting crime in Gotham with nothing to show for it, most of his enemies were good people turned bad by terrible circumstances and corruption is rife at every level. He simply doesn't believe that someone with Superman's power will remain good and not become a civilization-ending threat some day. I guess this is my problem with BvS. I think it would've gone a lot further if, instead of seeing the Waynes get murdered yet again, the opening was an actual scene of Robin getting murdered. Every Batman loses his parents but not every Batman starts branding people so they can get murdered in prison and it feels like the audience is just expected to go along with this interpretation.
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Feb 15, 2021 11:46
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ImpAtom posted:It is how the characters are presented. Huh? You’re just talking about how Marvel presents their characters as celebrity billionaire philanthropists/techno-feudal kings, but who are approachable/relateable or whatever. Thor didn’t lose his abilities just because he’s gained a bunch of weight, he just wasn’t cover of the swimsuit edition hot. And who gives a poo poo about about WB/DC films? They’re not into Snyder’s interpretation of the characters, how do we know this? Well this thread isn’t about the loving theatrical cut. The difference between that and the Snyder cut in terms of how it handles these characters will be pretty significant. Though something like Clark’s memory of having a stupid argument with his dad just before he loses him, are incredibly human moments. You can’t compartmentalize these scenes of characterization away without losing track of the narrative because they’re part and parcel of who Clark is and like more generally, what the movie is. Hell, Snyder's interpretation of Bruce Wayne was trying to find a way to step back from the brink with this character, through the link of his mother. Where Stark just straight up escalated his war on terror - him eating a big mac doesn't change that. brawleh fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 14:26
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live with fruit posted:I guess this is my problem with BvS. I think it would've gone a lot further if, instead of seeing the Waynes get murdered yet again, the opening was an actual scene of Robin getting murdered. Every Batman loses his parents but not every Batman starts branding people so they can get murdered in prison and it feels like the audience is just expected to go along with this interpretation. I didn't have an issue with this because we saw the dead Robin suit in BvS (a Robin suit spraypainted with Joker stuff all over it basically meant that) and no new Robin with him, and we know every single Batman goes bad without a Robin in every continuity anyway.
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Feb 15, 2021 15:57
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Superrodan posted:There was also very little fun in that movie. The mall scene was like that sitcom trope of someone that doesn't know how to have fun doing something they think is fun and then turning to everyone and saying "See? I'm fun!". and it just got worse from there. Still really funny that literally everything Chris Pine was supposed to be impressed by was stuff he already would have seen having been in WW1 London. live with fruit posted:I guess this is my problem with BvS. I think it would've gone a lot further if, instead of seeing the Waynes get murdered yet again, the opening was an actual scene of Robin getting murdered. Every Batman loses his parents but not every Batman starts branding people so they can get murdered in prison and it feels like the audience is just expected to go along with this interpretation. A big theme of the BvS version of Batman seems to be focus on his mother rather than his father for once; Martha Wayne usually is barely an entity compared to Thomas.
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Feb 15, 2021 17:45
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ImpAtom posted:… Comic-book superheroes are largely structured to be a certain way, that is - extremely insular (Detached from history/culture), and petrified of taking risks/tackling big ideas, which results in deeply conservative works, both creatively and politically. But this extends far beyond just superhero fiction, to what I think is the reason for a lot of bad genre fiction as well as contemporary U.S. literature (U.S. authors even say they’re proud that their fiction is about nothing, as a way to proudly emphasize their dedication to pure craft and the aesthetics of language). But as you’ve said, Watchmen & The Dark Knight Returns were watershed moments for the comic book genre, because it presented genuine new possibilities for the form by shedding the insularity of its past in a turning to the world. The problem is that the comic book industry used the new spotlight to exploit the ‘serious’ and ‘adult’ aspects purged entirely of their social/political content, and so the traumatic opening created by Moore and Miller was closed up and the extant history is used to justify its own continuance: superhero fiction has always been this way, so it can’t be any other way and compelling stories can’t be told otherwise. But there’s no such thing as inevitable forward progress. Superman previously destroyed slums to force the U.S. government to improve the material conditions of the underclass. Where did this guy go? Sure, it's kind of dumb, but when was the last time a superhero did anything as interesting as this?  Brawleh is right that the real contention about Snyder is politics & ideology, since the typical complaints about his DC work is beloved in other superhero films and even the most ardent critics admit that his films are well designed. Nerds cheered TDK Joker killing a bunch of people in really dark ways, but are committed to Batman not killing - All of this is political. People deride his films for being CGI-fests, but the Avengers films, particularly the latter ones, are far more egregious. As a genre filmmaker, Snyder not only isn’t afraid to touch sacred cows, but often finds that that’s the most creatively interesting thing to do (Hence Zod’s snapped neck). What makes him not simply a contrarian or nihilist, in the vein of Brightburn (2019) or Super (2010), is his commitment to following through as honestly as he can. Post-Watchmen, he doesn’t think there is a ‘going back’ to a world where Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 is considered the platonic ideal of comic book filmmaking, and in the process wants to redeem the mistake of the comic book industry in the realm of studio blockbuster filmmaking. Of course, you can say that Snyder is failing to do it well, but I disagree that it’s not worth trying in the first place because of tradition. live with fruit posted:I guess this is my problem with BvS. I think it would've gone a lot further if, instead of seeing the Waynes get murdered yet again, the opening was an actual scene of Robin getting murdered. Every Batman loses his parents but not every Batman starts branding people so they can get murdered in prison and it feels like the audience is just expected to go along with this interpretation. Certainly, the death of Batman’s parents has been a staple of every Batman film, but we should recognize how Snyder does it differently and how dependent the entire structure of the film is on that opening. “Martha” memes aside, the theme of parental figures permeates the film. While Batman is having nightmares about his parents and his mother being a monstrous vampire, Superman is able to turn to his mother and (The idea of) his father to find a calm island in times of crisis. The film makes Lex Luthor into a Jr., and although Luthor Sr. is long gone, his presence remains an ominous specter over the film. Robin’s murder is an important event, but far more crucial to Batman’s descent is Snyder’s critique of Batman’s entire vigilante career. Clark investigates Batman and is deeply troubled that he’s mostly targeting the underclass with the consent of the police (An investigation that his boss doesn’t want him to do in lieu of puff pieces, the film’s critique of private news media under contemporary capitalism). Batman reflects on the fact that he hasn’t been able to cause real change, that “Criminals are like weeds” - the trauma of losing his parents to street level crime has him blinded to a structural analysis, which he comes face to face with at the end of BvS when the justice system lets Lex Luthor off free. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 18:22
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Lex Luthor having extreme daddy issues strikes me as building on his Smallville characterisation, where Lionel Luthor is basically his prototype.
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Feb 15, 2021 18:39
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KVeezy3 posted:Comic-book superheroes are largely structured to be a certain way, that is - extremely insular (Detached from history/culture), and petrified of taking risks/tackling big ideas, which results in deeply conservative works, both creatively and politically. But this extends far beyond just superhero fiction, to what I think is the reason for a lot of bad genre fiction as well as contemporary U.S. literature (U.S. authors even say they’re proud that their fiction is about nothing, as a way to proudly emphasize their dedication to pure craft and the aesthetics of language). This is great stuff. Thank you.
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Feb 15, 2021 18:39
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KVeezy3 posted:Certainly, the death of Batman’s parents has been a staple of every Batman film, but we should recognize how Snyder does it differently and how dependent the entire structure of the film is on that opening. “Martha” memes aside, the theme of parental figures permeates the film. While Batman is having nightmares about his parents and his mother being a monstrous vampire, Superman is able to turn to his mother and (The idea of) his father to find a calm island in times of crisis. The film makes Lex Luthor into a Jr., and although Luthor Sr. is long gone, his presence remains an ominous specter over the film. Batman is both the point of view character who has understandable reasons to distrust Superman, even though the audience knows he's good because he was the hero of this first film, but also a vicious vigilante who's deeply troubled and condemns any criminal he comes in contact with to death. It's like Snyder wanted to have his cake and eat it too. At least the death of Robin would have given Batman a concrete breaking point that he could eventually work back towards.
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Feb 15, 2021 19:26
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Gatts posted:This is great stuff. Thank you. Cheers! Thanks for reading. Ghost Leviathan posted:Lex Luthor having extreme daddy issues strikes me as building on his Smallville characterisation, where Lionel Luthor is basically his prototype. I’m not too familiar with Smallville, but an interesting thing BvS notes is that Lex Sr. grew up in East Germany under tyrannical rule, and Lex Jr. inherits his father’s disdain for communism by going full anarcho-capitalist and directly linking Superman to a communist tyrant. Maybe comic-book heads can confirm – was this historical connection invented for this film? live with fruit posted:Batman is both the point of view character who has understandable reasons to distrust Superman, even though the audience knows he's good because he was the hero of this first film, but also a vicious vigilante who's deeply troubled and condemns any criminal he comes in contact with to death. It's like Snyder wanted to have his cake and eat it too. At least the death of Robin would have given Batman a concrete breaking point that he could eventually work back towards. I'm not sure I follow - How is that having your cake and eating it too? Batman explicitly says at the end of BvS that he failed Superman.
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Feb 15, 2021 19:35
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KVeezy3 posted:I’m not too familiar with Smallville, but an interesting thing BvS notes is that Lex Sr. grew up in East Germany under tyrannical rule, and Lex Jr. inherits his father’s disdain for communism by going full anarcho-capitalist and directly linking Superman to a communist tyrant. This is probably drawn from Ayn Rand's biography. She lived through the Russian Revolution and early Soviet Union, came to the US and became a capitalist zealot.
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Feb 15, 2021 20:10
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Blasphemy. Why would the preeminent uber-objectivist filmmaker of our time use Ayn Rand's history to inform the origin story of a supervillain?
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Feb 15, 2021 20:19
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Oh, you didn't know? Lex is the good guy. 
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Feb 15, 2021 20:37
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Ayn Rand's life story would make for the best and most entertaining mockumenery ever conceived. Her entire life is just a big dose of dramatic irony. She lived off the welfare state while claiming it was supreme evil and got super pissy when her boytoy started sleeping around, following the tenants of her broken, toxic philosophy. It's glorious. It's no wonder why failsons and daughers love her philosophy so much because she was like the ur-faildaughter, except she didn't quite fail upwards as much as they did.
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Feb 15, 2021 20:38
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwlT2mblEFg drat I am so hyped for this new (original?) score
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Feb 15, 2021 20:40
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It was fun explaining to my non-comic book movie watching wife the joke of Leto's Joker putting on Ledger's Joker makeup and doing a Joker meme. Several layers going on there that relies on way too much context for people who aren't seriously online. I do think that Leto's Joker would have a Twitter account though.
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Feb 15, 2021 21:23
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live with fruit posted:But the idea is that Bruce just sees "sees two kryptonians, not Superman fighting Zod." The military was aware of what was going on. That Superman was benevolent was known. Bruce clutching the child in the ruins in one arm, while his other hand fishes out his iPhone and keeps hitting refresh on col Hardy's blog
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Feb 15, 2021 22:00
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Feb 15, 2021 22:03
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I don’t get the complains on the CG. I think it looks good and projects power and character.
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Feb 15, 2021 22:07
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"Bruce, revive me!"
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Feb 15, 2021 22:08
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This doesn't work because his design is better than anything in that franchise.
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Feb 15, 2021 22:08
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This is incredible and I say that as someone who genuinely thinks this Darkseid looks awesome.
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Feb 15, 2021 22:10
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hiddenriverninja posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwlT2mblEFg gently caress me.
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Feb 15, 2021 22:16
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Blood Boils posted:Bruce clutching the child in the ruins in one arm, while his other hand fishes out his iPhone and keeps hitting refresh on col Hardy's blog feeling cute might die a good death later
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Feb 15, 2021 22:22
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RBA Starblade posted:"Bruce, revive me!" Lol I can hear the gow voice acting in this post
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Feb 15, 2021 22:53
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https://mobile.twitter.com/valaval_/status/1361121652629716998
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Feb 15, 2021 23:29
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hiddenriverninja posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwlT2mblEFg this is loving incredible
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Feb 15, 2021 23:34
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It slaps for sure
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Feb 15, 2021 23:36
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Jimbot posted:This doesn't work because his design is better than anything in that franchise. He’s another black and grey CGI monstrosity that’s lost all the Neo-fantasy esque touches of his original design to do a big angry guy in space armor.
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Feb 16, 2021 00:08
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Darkseid, very famously, is not grey
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Feb 16, 2021 00:12
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Nodosaur posted:He’s another black and grey CGI monstrosity that’s lost all the Neo-fantasy esque touches of his original design to do a big angry guy in space armor. Theres really only so much you can do with naturally lighting Darkseid grey and blue design in making him live action.
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Feb 16, 2021 00:14
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KVeezy3 posted:I’m not too familiar with Smallville, Smallville is fascinating but it's also unbelievably bad and it runs for 10 seasons of 20+ episodes each, which means that much as I'd love to hear more people's takes on it I can't really ask them to suffer through it.
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Feb 16, 2021 00:16
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