Comic Book Movies: The day the Batgirl Cried

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Comic Book Movies: The day the Batgirl Cried

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josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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seems unlikely

# ¿ Jan 5, 2021 01:56

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 20:41

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Everyone posted:

Both series at various points did a version of "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton." Sherlock turned "Magnussen" into something like a supervillain, having Lars Mikkelson pissing in a fireplace and lick people. We got to meet Sherlock's parents who were Cumberbatch's parents because... cute, I guess. The only cool bit was Yasmine Akram, who would have vastly improved the fourth season if she'd come back.

Sherlock depicting Magnusson as a Rupert Murdoch/Richard Desmond type and then having the protagonist just shoot them was pretty much the best thing the show ever did.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 10:43

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Right, but we criticise arrogance in actual people, not necessarily in fictional characters - Sherlock in Sherlock is indeed the most important character in Sherlock and much of the series is based around interacting with that - Mycroft isn't just an exaggerated, competent version of Sherlock, he's also literally one of the writers. Moriarty isn't just an intelligent villain, he may as well be the compelling protagonist from a show named Moriarty making a guest appearance.

I'm not saying you have to like or want this kind of meta nonsense, but it's very definitely what the show is doing. Hbomberguy makes the same mistake in his video and ends up asserting that the dull, racist one from the first season is the best episode.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 18:35

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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RBA Starblade posted:

"Best episode" seems like a low bar to clear from what I've seen of it

The show was absolutely huge while it was on, even if in retrospect everyone agrees there was a point past which it went off the rails.

Everyone posted:

Well, sure. Holmes is arrogant in Elementary as well. The difference is that Elementary treated its characters as though they were real people with real lives and real emotions that matter within the world. Sherlock... kind of didn't most of the time. The closest Sherlock really got to genuine consequences was with the character of Janine. There's a nice moment where Sherlock seems to understand that this was a cool person who could have been a good friend and he doesn't get to have her in his life any more because of the lovely way that he treated her.

Bringing this back to the MCU and WandaVision, Sherlock is like the WandaVision sitcom with the various characters acting as living props giving scripted responses to support whatever plot is occurring within the episode. Elementary generally allows its characters to react in some degree the way that real people would respond to situations instead of doing something "because that's what the script says."

They're TV shows about genius super-detectives, neither of them is exactly social realism. Elementary presumably follows the tropes of a TV procedural, where you put together a homely cast of characters over a lengthy run and then you can play them off against each other in entertaining ways, and six seasons in you can do an excellent episode where Quark and Odo have to climb a mountain together. Sherlock is structured like a series of films and has to be much more efficient with how it introduces and moves around characters. There's almost as much screen time in the first season of Elementary as there is in Sherlock's entire run.

Violator posted:

I gotta say I’m super impressed by how in-depth you all know about these Sherlock shows. Any thoughts on the RDJ movies?

Don't mind them, I'd watch another if it gets made. I was pleasantly surprised with Enola Holmes on Netflix recently as well.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 23:48

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Mr. Apollo posted:

Was Elementary the one with Natalie Dormer as Moriarty?

I haven't seen her in it but I'll admit, it's hard to imagine this being bad in any way.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2021 22:13

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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please do not show me the bad tweet

# ¿ Feb 22, 2021 23:24

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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A stunning number of Sherlock Holmes short stories involve people with dark secrets from their time in the colonies.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2021 09:45

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Lt. Danger posted:

This is all good and true, imo.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2021 21:32

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man is the superpredator myth, right? That's the whole point?

# ¿ Mar 7, 2021 01:48

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Colin Telpro presumably passes their intel along to CIA agent Mark Ultra, who gets Black Panther on the case.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2021 01:53

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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ungulateman posted:

it's also unbelievable that the us government wouldn't just be shovelling money at them on account of all the work they do protecting their interests

Captain America haughtily explaining in forum posts how receiving money from the National Endowment for Democracy doesn't mean the Avengers are CIA.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2021 01:32

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2021 15:18

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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screaming at pachelbel from across the music hall, again with the goddamn scales?!

# ¿ Mar 22, 2021 15:22

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Tom King claims to be CIA, in a manner so stupid it may well be true.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2021 15:44

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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I always thought the point of that speech in Hamlet was that Hamlet was being a ridiculous bore who goes about telling the players how to do their own job. Surprised to find this is not the universal interpretation.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2021 01:11

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Bit non-plussed by the trailer as someone who hasn't read the comic. They're a family of superheroes and they're mad about the past, but not in a Watchmen sort of way? And slow-moving Iron Man is the villain at least briefly?

# ¿ Apr 7, 2021 15:26

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Both Mark Millar's persona and Mark Millar's comically distasteful comics are just weird promotional tools for his movie writing career, rather than anything deeply held.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2021 17:45

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Jupiter Ascending is very good and also very not Jupiter's Legacy.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2021 23:00

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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I remain confident that with the construction of either a large enough microscope or a small enough set of calipers, we will be able to perceive the fundamental racism particle.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2021 12:23

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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RBA Starblade posted:

I guess I learned something today

Nah, Miley Cyrus has a whole "classic rock" thing going on now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ir1qkPXPVM

# ¿ Apr 21, 2021 16:04

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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You don't have to be able to enumerate something to refer to it - whether or not you can provide a definite description of 'racist' such that Awkwafina falls into it has no bearing on anyone's ability to look at that act and go "huh, that's racist".

The obstacle to productive discussion here is the train of posters fixated on the idea that the most important thing is to determine whether or not Awkwafina has "done nothing wrong", even though by definition living in a racist society we are all in ways culpable for the racism in that society - in a practical way, not in a self-flaggelating way. Her act can be racist without us agreeing that she has to be struck from the register of the acceptable! First and foremost, someone should be able to say "that's a bit racist" without getting mobbed by an army of miniature Socrates.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2021 16:53

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Please gently caress off.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2021 16:57

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:

I have not been saying "Asians have it worse". My point from the beginning, has been that minorities of all stripes 'have it worse' under white supremacy, and it's not really progressive to pit black men against asian women against trans women (and so-forth) when what you're actually talking about is class: Aquafina and Vin Diesel are both millionaire Hollywood celebrities with 'weird names', while average people are living in poverty and getting shot dead by cops. Again, I agree on that. Inequality is bad. And it can be argued that a rich person 'pretending to be poor' adds insult to that injury. (So why don't we take things to a logical conclusion and forbid actors from playing characters beneath their income level? Why is your criticism limited to the sphere of culture? In other words: why not address inequality within cultures and across cultures, in search of new forms of solidarity?)

In that case, I would say goal is not to drag Vin Diesel down by pressuring him to change his name back to the 'classier' Mark Sinclair (or the opposite? I've seen contradictory claims in the thread), but to simply uplift others so that they can experience a similar level of security. Right?

Otherwise, we're getting into dicey territory where the name Nora Lum and the song WAP are "authentic" but the name Belcalis Alm�nzar and the song My Vag are "inauthentic" or whatever, and it's all but completely divorced progressive struggle. None of it is "authentic". What is "authentic womanhood" or whatever?

The problem isn't that the act is inauthentic; I'm sure you know that any attempt to fix down a notion of authenticity goes to hilarious places very quickly. Similarly, one cannot grade the racisms against each other. The problem isn't inherent at all. It's that right now, in actually-existing US society which is universally acknowledged to be extremely racist, there are a handful of things that are recognised to have a historical context that means exploiting them for entertainment if you are not black (although sometimes even then) is impolite and insulting to black people, and so racist.

The problem is in hearing the word "racism" and immediately wheeling out the big rhetorical guns. We say "that's capitalism!" five times a day on this forum without accosting each person to determine whether they'd be better off joining a worker's council than complaining at CNN. Awkwafina's brain is not necessarily a site of struggle.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2021 17:57

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Yeah, so we're basically on the same page here, except when we get into curious details - like, at the end of your first paragraph, you're unwittingly saying: 'sometimes black entertainers exploit their own history and are therefore an insult their own race'. Like, uh, yikes. So we just need to get a lot more careful and specific about what we mean by "exploitation". A lot of people are using it in the sense of, like, "exploitation film" when crassness is really not the problem.

Like, concrete example: there are white people who are making money from the Black Panther movie. White people will be making money from the Shang-Chi movie. These are neo-exploitation films, but I think you'll be hard-pressed to find any American movie where that isn't the case. So, are we insulted?

And then, let's take a hypothetical Chinese film where literally everyone involved is in the production is Chinese. Is there now no exploitation? Of course not. Obviously, the workers are being exploited, and we could very easily make the argument that they are 'exploiting their own culture' - because, you know, movies are cultural products that are typically sold for money. But that's not some exceptional "insulting" event, but merely the status quo.

And I think that's what we've narrowed it down to: Aquafina's stage name and persona are unusual for an Asian woman, and therefore a disruption of the comfortable norm where we don't have to think about such things. Hence why the main goal is for her to drop the rap thing and apologize instead of, say, treating it as just a basic example of code-switching.

I think it's perfectly fair to say that black entertainers sometimes get criticised by black people for the way their act is received by white audiences! I remain un-'yikes'-ed.

I'm using 'exploited' in the sense of exploitation films, not marxist exploitation, but not to mean 'crass'. I simply mean that everyone knows that a reliable number of white people will pay money to see a minstrel act if one is available. It's akin to the exploitation of a natural resource. And by itself that is not a moral descriptor. As you say, Chinese people making Chinese movies are 'exploiting' the desire of an audience to see those movies, but that's not a problem.

And so it's not that the goal is for her to "drop the rap thing"; even in this thread, I don't think anyone has said that. If anything, the complaints are explicitly sympathetic: "We know that it is disproportionately hard for minorities to climb the ladder in the US, but". The goal is just that recognition, that few things in society are ceded to the history of racism and this is one of them.

And finally, you can say that the disruption caused by Awkwafina's act is what singles it out for criticism, but I would say that the extent to which she is integrated into and pre-apologised for by the liberal establishment and liberal cinema is what causes such a strong response in the thread to the idea that she might be racist. Even here, of all places, people want to believe that The Process will effectively filter out racism from our celebrity class.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2021 19:26

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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I think it's delightful, I'm all in favour. They should bring back Tony Stark, to life.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2021 20:03

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Cry Havoc posted:

call his name and save him from the dark

Stark wake up!
Wake him up in time!
Stark wake up!

# ¿ Apr 22, 2021 22:46

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Collapsing Farts posted:

I am so totally disinterested in "guy has wings"

It is particularly odd in a setting where two of his peers have fully miniaturised individual mechanical flight.

That said, there is obvious story potential for a black Captain America but probably not within MCU ideology.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2021 11:14

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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MiddleOne posted:

lol did you watch the show

I've seen twenty-odd films in the series I think it's fair at this point to paint in broad strokes.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2021 16:22

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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MacheteZombie posted:

Crank that motion smoothing

set noise reduction to "creamy"

# ¿ May 4, 2021 10:45

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Lord_Magmar posted:

Maybe we’ll see the results of Wakanda Outreach in the new Black Panther being a bunch of small Wakandas popping up around the world post-blip.

And hopefully the Avengers will be fighting this outbreak of monarchist revanchism.

# ¿ May 5, 2021 10:27

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Avengers: Age of Principalities

# ¿ May 5, 2021 10:28

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Chairman Capone posted:

Bridgerton and Meghan Markle showed us that monarchies are good as long as they have Black people in them.

Bad news about that second one!

# ¿ May 5, 2021 17:13

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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# ¿ May 7, 2021 01:44

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Come to think of it, the MCU CIA being different would explain that weird scene where Tony Stark flies to the oil-rich Socialist Republic of Iran and trips on their safe, legal LSD.

# ¿ May 7, 2021 13:32

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Woody Harrelson, like Stanley Tucci and Jason Alexander, is an actor in it just for the hairpieces.

Unlike Jason Issacs, who will take a hairpiece but is mostly in it for the uniform coats.

# ¿ May 10, 2021 14:41

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

His ridiculous high elf wig in whatever Harry Potter movie that was certainly qualifies.

The whole outfit rules, unfortunately halfway through Order of the Phoenix he starts wearing this sub-Game-of-Thrones trash that doesn't even fit by the end of Deathly Hallows:

# ¿ May 10, 2021 15:25

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Everyone posted:

Why would they want one of their big MCU movies to feature Chinese Uncle Remus?

Not sure replacing anyone with beloved character "The Mandarin" resolves this issue.

# ¿ May 14, 2021 15:12

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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I'm writing reviews of all eight episodes of Amazon's Invincible series, starting at the end and working backwards. First one's up here and I'll be posting the second tomorrow.

# ¿ May 19, 2021 01:03

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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Kharn_The_Betrayer posted:

lol at the end where you say you arent going to degrade yourself to reading the comic.

I can't help myself sometimes.

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

Kirkman is really a garbage writer. A lot of people confuse the surprise of shock value for good writing.

One reason I would be tempted to read the comic is to find out how much of the Buffy/Justice League pastiche tone the cartoon has is new for the show, because it doesn't feel like either the kind of thing that would get written in 2005 or that would work well in a comic.

# ¿ May 19, 2021 12:20

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 20:41

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"
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fatherboxx posted:

Invincible was initially sold on the promise of being "superhero soap opera", and it was that for the most part, but then the ridiculous violence ramped up and it became nonstop Murderman vs moustached aliens.

Buffy pastiche worked well for A LOT of comics around that time because Buffy was inspired by X-Men in the first place

It's possible given the dates that I've got it completely and Justice League Unlimited was (in part) riffing on Invincible for all the CADMUS stuff.

# ¿ May 19, 2021 14:05

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Comic Book Movies: The day the Batgirl Cried

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