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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I wish people would stop acting like there's some sort of magical runtime that every movie needs to be or that certain plots only require a certain amount of time. I just watched a movie called Underwater that's a tight 90 minutes and literally kicks off with near-zero character development and it was perfectly acceptable. It actually could have been cut down even harder or alternatively they could have added 15 minutes at the front to get to know the characters and each of those decisions would have changed the overall movie, it's fine. Yeah it's for sure going to vary wildly from movie to movie, approach to approach, viewer to viewer. LotR get's a lot of mileage off the archetypes and setting (a lot of which it helped to establish in book form), so like, when all you know about Gimli and Legolas is "elves are kind of aloof and arrogant and dwarves are curmudgeons who hate elves" you're basically already on board. It also helps that basically all of the first movie is repeated calls to adventure: first Frodo and Sam, then the Fellowship, then the split parts of the Fellowship deciding what to do.
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Mar 31, 2021 19:50
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:As it should be, Justice League is about the struggle against ANTI-LIFE. That's comic books, baby. , I would simply add "2(LIFE)" to both sides of the equation.
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Mar 31, 2021 20:13
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Zack Snyder's Justice League: Pro-life
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Mar 31, 2021 20:20
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Maybe its just me but all I need from an ensemble movie is like maybe 2 well written scenes or one good long backstory scene for characters. Support or reinforce them with various smaller moments or exchanges throughout a film while progresssing the arc and I am on board and invested. When it comes down to solo MCU films Id wager theres maybe an hour each across the totality of each characters solo films of "information actually needed for the team up film" as far as dynamics, larger arc and motivations. The rest is only relevant to that solo film, it has no bearing on the actual character as they are presented in an ensemble. Part of the issue I have with the overall structure of the MCU is they had to constantly repeat and waste time on the same god drat character beats and information because there were literal years and full movies inbetween each one so you had to constantly restablish the characters. Unless you were watching them over and over again, script wise they were absolutely simultaneously geared towards people whod never seen a previous characters film and fans. It often led to what felt like stagnation or just watching a character develop in slow motion, without any added dramatic weight as an affect. I absolutely hated how much they constantly repeated and were always stuck on using "Tony has PTSD from Avengers 1!" as a driving motivation for him. Over and over and over again and they didnt do jack poo poo with it that justified it as running thread across how many god drat movies? It never gets resolved in a satisfying way. Its just there. Give me big sweeping dramatic arcs, not tedious development disgusied as complexity.
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Mar 31, 2021 20:23
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AccountSupervisor posted:When it comes down to solo MCU films Id wager theres maybe an hour each across the totality of each characters solo films of "information actually needed for the team up film" as far as dynamics, larger arc and motivations. The rest is only relevant to that solo film, it has no bearing on the actual character as they are presented in an ensemble. Actually probably the best example of a maxi-arc done well is Cap 1 + Iron Man 1&2 -> Avengers 1 where there is a very basic character dynamic of "Cap is the original but maybe outdated super hero, he worked with and respected Howard Stark; Tony is the more modern hero who is Howard's son but had a fraught (at least at that time) relationship" that is communicated pretty succinctly, but you can obviously go back and see those angles fleshed out more in the solo films. And to a lesser extent Thor, which like I said I never saw Thor 1 but if I had been intrigued enough by how much Thor hated Loki in Avengers I might want to go check out that solo film to see that. I see two main problems tho: One is that you can't fully offload those entire arcs, like you still need it restated in Avengers 1 that this is the dynamic between those two main guys, and it works specifically I think because this is their first meeting, and the solo films if anything are just fleshing out their individual personalities and motivations beyond the byline version the ensemble gets. So yeah like AccountSupervisor said, past that first meeting you get a lot of restating of a characters motivations, out loud, so the audience is aware of what the stakes are. Two is that beyond that very simple initial co-character arc, things either have to stay stagnant (Tony is caught in an endless loop of rejecting the fascist applications of his technology until off-screen Tony takes control and doubles down between movies) or else whatever character kind of goes off on their own tangent and becomes somewhat vestigial to the greater team (Thor is basically just a guy who occasionally shows up to assist the Avengers, the one outlier there being AoU, since otherwise he's absent for a lot of big events and when questioned they're just like "oh he's off in space or whatever")
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Mar 31, 2021 20:50
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stratdax posted:This might be the problem. Other ensembles movies have the benefit of each character already having their own movies to flesh them out. Snyder was basically forced to give a quick highlight reel of the backstory of Vic and Barry because DC doesn't have their poo poo together. It may help to be more specific in your criticisms. Flash isn’t given any backstory at all. He’s just given a story about trying to cheer up his dad (which simply happens to involve teaming up with Batsman to save the planet). On the other side of things, the Cyborg origin story is probably a quarter of the film’s runtime and the closest thing to a traditional story arc.
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Mar 31, 2021 22:11
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The MCU team up movies throw most of the characters’ standalone movie characterization in the garbage can so I don’t know why people are so obsessed with having standalone movies before team up movies
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Mar 31, 2021 22:36
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AdmiralViscen posted:The MCU team up movies throw most of the characters’ standalone movie characterization in the garbage can so I don’t know why people are so obsessed with having standalone movies before team up movies Look they recast the Hulk, totally threw out the fact that Tony Stark recruited Thunderbolt Ross for something to do with the Avengers, didn't have movies for 3 of the ensemble, and put Cap in a totally dorky and worse costume than his solo movie. But uhhhh. I don't know where I was going with this.
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Mar 31, 2021 22:42
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AdmiralViscen posted:The MCU team up movies throw most of the characters’ standalone movie characterization in the garbage can so I don’t know why people are so obsessed with having standalone movies before team up movies It's imperative that I know what Dash was doing before he joined the Incredibles
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Mar 31, 2021 22:43
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It is also just untrue that the decisions in regards to skipping solo films was "because DC didnt have their poo poo together". This was a deliberate choice by Snyder and co. because they simply could never play catch up to Marvel and it was a pointless endeavor to emulate their formula. They have said this in interviews. They were extremely wise to know that no matter what, they would always be a step behind because the MCU was already 7 movies deep. This led to the conception of establishing these characters in a more traditional ensemble epic structure, allowing DC to not only get to the same logical story beats the MCU was leading towards, but to infact beat them to the punch on a lot. Seeing as though this was supposed to come out in 2017...they were right. IW and Endgame would have been looked at as derivative of the DCEU, not the opposite as it is now. It was also from a budgetary standpoint, pretty smart. Excluding marketing and the nuances of product placement, physical sales and other merchandising, lets look at the simple budgetary math from what we have available. DCEU first 4 films(MoS, BvS, SS, WW) Total budget: 795mil Total box office. 3.1bil Profit: 2.3bil MCU first 4 films(Iron Man, Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor) Total budget: 640mil Total box office: 1.8bil Profit: 1.1bil The math doesnt lie, DC panicked over BvS because of the 69% drop on the second weekend, the SS poor critical reception and thought that would be the pattern for everything going forward. The fact stands that the DCEU was more profitable under Snyders vision than the MCU was at the same point in their universe. The difference between the two? "Faith, Alfred. Faith!"
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Mar 31, 2021 22:49
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This is why Seven Samurai is such a bad movie, there weren't seven movies before it explaining who all the characters were. Same with the Three Musketeers, Dumas should have had three prequel novels explaining the backstory of each musketeer.
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Mar 31, 2021 22:50
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The idea of characters needing to have solo movies before the ensemble film only seems to apply to these superhero films. It doesn't come up with other narratives because the idea stems from seeing them more as individual trademarked IPs than, you know, characters.
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Mar 31, 2021 23:12
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Beeez posted:This is why Seven Samurai is such a bad movie, there weren't seven movies before it explaining who all the characters were. Same with the Three Musketeers, Dumas should have had three prequel novels explaining the backstory of each musketeer. At least they didn't do this joke seven times
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Mar 31, 2021 23:18
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The first 4 Marvel films thing doesn't really make sense to me to be perfectly honest. Iron Man and Thor might as well have been entirely new properties for a lot of people. And while I like Ang Lee Hulk, it was not very fondly remembered. The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises both did over a billion dollars. WB is a mess in general, but I think that specific point is kind of apples and oranges.
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Mar 31, 2021 23:22
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Nroo posted:The idea of characters needing to have solo movies before the ensemble film only seems to apply to these superhero films. It doesn't come up with other narratives because the idea stems from seeing them more as individual trademarked IPs than, you know, characters. The notion that superhero team-up fiction needs origin films to be viable is more-so a repudiation of what usually constitutes 'team-up' work as such. Like most of it is just really bad and unimaginative - the worst excesses of genre crap, even for comic book standards. No one thinks Watchmen needed to introduce their characters with solo runs prior to its own run.
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Mar 31, 2021 23:24
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I wish more superhero films would throw us in part-way through their superhero careers. It's kind of refreshing that Barry Allen was already doing his superheroing without us having to see his childhood trauma or getting zapped by lightning. His introduction in JL was near perfect.
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Mar 31, 2021 23:37
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Timeless Appeal posted:The first 4 Marvel films thing doesn't really make sense to me to be perfectly honest. Iron Man and Thor might as well have been entirely new properties for a lot of people. And while I like Ang Lee Hulk, it was not very fondly remembered. The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises both did over a billion dollars. WB is a mess in general, but I think that specific point is kind of apples and oranges. This is totally true but it was also unfair to compare the Avengers movies, which had several years of buildup films and marketing touting this as the biggest crossover ever before breaking the billion dollar barrier...to BvS, which was the second film in its respective series. And yet people did that even well before BvS was released, and called its 900 million box office a failure for not matching the Avengers. And sure you have the whole idea of "well it's Superman and Batman, of course they should sell tickets!" but both of those IPs had failed in the past, Superman Returns being a flop just a decade earlier (immediately before the MCU started up). Like realistically no matter what the DCEU did they would be negatively compared to the MCU by a sub-set of fans of the latter series. There's no way you're going to convince me that if they did the slow burn build-up like everyone says is the "right" way that people wouldn't just say "wow they are copying Marvel directly" and if Wonder Woman or Flash did Cap 1 or god forbid Incredible Hulk numbers, people wouldn't be deeming it an immediate failed experiment.
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Mar 31, 2021 23:40
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So this was definitely better than the theatrical, but it's still pretty eh. The cinematography is an obvious upgrade, getting Steppenwolf instead of Stephen Wolf (I stole that) is nice, everybody's characterization is a little less cringey and more consistent, not to mention better suited to the tone of the film as a whole, Superman not being such a prick is a relief, Cyborg is actually a character instead of an angsty macguffin. But there's also a bunch of repetitive or pointless beats (Steppenwolf and Desaad's conversations, Steppenwolf/Darkseid smashing up the ground, Iris West, Aquaman doing Aquaman poo poo), the dialogue is still stiff, the Mother Boxes/Anti-Life Equation/Earth invasion history is somehow more jumbled up and confusing, and the Martian Manhunter scenes are just wheel-spinning and the boring kind of sequel-baiting, which is especially egregious since we already know there's no sequel coming. I'm still not sure everybody's various "daddy issues" subplots add anything. I'm usually down for the Snyder Slo-Mo, but it's used here to an obnoxious and distracting extent, and none of the action sequences match up to what we got in BvS. Ending on a neato Knightmare sequence to establish that everything's still hosed was a nice touch, but the scene itself was kind of masturbatory and clumsily written. Joker and Batman need to gently caress or something, because that toothless pissing contest they've got going on isn't real engaging. I'm fine with a 4-hour movie, but this is a bloated 4 hours. They wanted to stuff everything in there that got chopped out, or that they knew they weren't gonna get another chance to explore, and as a result there's a lot of poo poo that doesn't go anywhere. The finished product just feels a lot like a well-filmed MCU flick. There's nothing all that interesting here.
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Mar 31, 2021 23:51
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Darkseid and Steppenwolf hitting the ground is good visual storytelling 
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Apr 1, 2021 00:06
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YaQrH5Ai5k
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Apr 1, 2021 00:34
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Enzo passed away this morning. 
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Apr 1, 2021 00:38
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ungulateman posted:Darkseid and Steppenwolf hitting the ground is good visual storytelling I think they even recycle the exact same shot both times, right?
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Apr 1, 2021 00:40
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Mr. Apollo posted:Enzo passed away this morning. Oh noooooooo. 
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Apr 1, 2021 00:46
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POWELL CURES KIDS posted:I think they even recycle the exact same shot both times, right? they show a shot of steppenwolf grasping at the ground in exactly the same way as darkseid, but i believe he uses the opposite hand (though steppenwolf's weird alien hands might just be confusing me)
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Apr 1, 2021 00:49
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All the track titles on this soundtrack are cool as poo poo.
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Apr 1, 2021 01:02
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https://twitter.com/brxcewaynes/status/1376967945226743808 It's perfect.
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Apr 1, 2021 01:31
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Is there a compromise between "having intro movies helps a general audience acclimate to some of the goofier comic ideas" and "every character in every ensemble movie needs a movie" I don't think it's necessary, but it certainly frees up a lot of time. Guy A. Person posted:Like realistically no matter what the DCEU did they would be negatively compared to the MCU by a sub-set of fans of the latter series. There's no way you're going to convince me that if they did the slow burn build-up like everyone says is the "right" way that people wouldn't just say "wow they are copying Marvel directly" and if Wonder Woman or Flash did Cap 1 or god forbid Incredible Hulk numbers, people wouldn't be deeming it an immediate failed experiment. I don't know, I feel like the reception to Wonder Woman and SCJL puts that into question. There's still dorks that want to keep the Snyder hate flowing, but a lot (if not most) nerd critics seem to genuinely like the Snyder Cut (just not the epilogue).
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Apr 1, 2021 01:44
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Timeless Appeal posted:The first 4 Marvel films thing doesn't really make sense to me to be perfectly honest. Iron Man and Thor might as well have been entirely new properties for a lot of people. And while I like Ang Lee Hulk, it was not very fondly remembered. The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises both did over a billion dollars. WB is a mess in general, but I think that specific point is kind of apples and oranges. Yeah and the executives had all of these exact same assumptions of baked in brand success as you do here which led them to wildly overpromising to investors and them muddying up a solid plan so they could protect their jobs and egos. What they failed to do was realize if they wanted to commit to the "director driven" approach that was established from the outset, they needed to accept that these IPs would not be guaranteed automatic box office blowouts if they wanted to go in that direction. They wanted the reward but didnt actually in the end want the risk, which was an illusion anyways when you look at the actual hard numbers. They made a gently caress load of money, nobody was hurting here except the executives jobs and egos hanging on board room promises of easy money. It was never that the movies were not profitable, it was always that they were not effortlessly wildly profitable. WB made the same no faith mistake with Joker and it cost them a lot of those profits. Nolan, Snyder, Emma and Deborah had a plan that was by all business sense going well, but WB wanted to print Avengers money and that was never going to happen the way they wanted it to. AccountSupervisor fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Apr 1, 2021 |
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Apr 1, 2021 02:08
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Abrams then moves on to examples of properly unsolvable mysteries, which are just basic stuff like Spielberg keeping the shark offscreen in Jaws. "What exactly is the shark doing when it's not visible?" is a mystery box. And again, it's nothing like the meme. The audience isn't desperate for more shark footage, to know that the shark is busy swimming around or taking a poo poo or whatever. If the digestive system described by Hooper was correct, then in the timeline of the movie, about during the "Indianapolis" speech, the shark would have been making GBS threads out the little Kitner boy. :-D
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Apr 1, 2021 03:20
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ungulateman posted:Darkseid and Steppenwolf hitting the ground is good visual storytelling That part's good visual storytelling, but removing the "discovery of the anti-life equation" subplot would add more emphasis to the part at the end where Darkside is summoned by the strength of Superman's punches. It's one of those examples of how direct explanation actually gets in the way of those more intuitive associations.
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Apr 1, 2021 04:01
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The kryptonian codex is the Anti-Life formula
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Apr 1, 2021 04:05
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I figure they'll go with that, yeah.
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Apr 1, 2021 04:15
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I wondered if the Codex might end up being used as the basis for a "pro-life" equation (would need a better name) which Superman would beam out all over the world, converting the parademons to his cause. The tone of these movies makes me think they'd have to end up rejecting the whole concept of "proof that life is meaningless"
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Apr 1, 2021 04:18
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Well it was on earth 5000 years ago so it can't be. But it would be really clean if not for that.
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Apr 1, 2021 04:19
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John Wick of Dogs posted:The kryptonian codex is the Anti-Life formula It's a nice touch, the continuity helped win me over.
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Apr 1, 2021 04:24
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The Codex isn't on the scout ship, it's in Superman's cells
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Apr 1, 2021 04:25
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The kryptonians were so overwhelmed by the pro-life equation that they just started designing everything like dicks
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Apr 1, 2021 04:45
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Thanks for this. Flash's bit in the score is definitely my favorite, and as a professional music person myself, I'm always interested the creative process of other musicians.
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Apr 1, 2021 05:54
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Neurolimal posted:The kryptonians were so overwhelmed by the pro-life equation that they just started designing everything like dicks a race that cannot / won't gently caress being reduced to the high-tech version of drawing dicks everywhere makes sense. It's very funny that Zod's people travel the stars and terraform worlds rather than just have sex.
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Apr 1, 2021 06:19
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FilthyImp posted:I'm wondering if there was any thought about having Cyborg's costume change to be more of the robocop armor through the series. Kind of an external reflection of his increasing acceptance of himself. They do this in doom patrol but for the opposite breading and it's dope as hell and eventually leads to the same place
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Apr 1, 2021 06:23
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