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Is there a betting pool on who dies in Suicide Squad yet? Just from the trailers, so far I've got these: Sean Gunn weasel guy Michael Rooker Captain Boomerang (bummer) Nathan Fillion Pete Davidson (good) Mongal Javelin With strong "maybe" vibes for Rick Flagg and King Shark, and for the polka dot guy too just on general principle.
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Mar 29, 2021 22:08
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Blood Boils posted:All the minorities except maybe bloodsport. I'm glad Croc isn't in this for that reason Yeah, I'm a bit hesitant about the politics myself. Recasting Idris Elba as Deadshot, then changing the character to a different Male Black Lead with a near-identical backstory, is not the most promising sign. Also: the movie is about a CIA death squad invading evil not-Bolivia to hunt WMDs. Which is kinda sus. But there's also the potential to be subversive with that kind of material, and I like everyone in it, even if the writing is already looking shaky, so I'll give it a shot.
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Mar 30, 2021 00:45
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kustomkarkommando posted:It's a CIA death squad made up of psychopathic murderers and man-eating sharks, not exactly sure that's projecting a pro CIA angle Yeah, but they're also lovable goofballs, and the trailer gives the vibe that they (and Waller) are being positioned as the Necessary Evil to fight the greater threat of not-Fidel Castro's pet C'thulhu WMD in a vague banana republic. As far as the premise goes, I don't think it's unreasonable to be a bit cynical going in.
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Mar 30, 2021 01:20
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I hate Pete Davidson because 1) I envy his sexual partners and success, 2) he's a moron with absolutely trash politics, 3) he's by every report a prick and 4) he's not funny, in that order. Envy is the bedrock of my entire personality and I will never hide or be ashamed of this fact. I'm watching Godzilla vs. Kong at a friend's place tonight, and I've already warned them in advance that if Godzilla loses I'm going to throw a temper tantrum like a little pissbaby and destroy all of their possessions. Who is with me in this
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Mar 31, 2021 16:17
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Neurolimal posted:Millar's always struck me as the poor man's Garth Ennis, and a lot of people already have issues with Ennis at his best That's always been my take, with the added note that Millar shouldn't be legally permitted within 1000 feet of a school.
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Apr 8, 2021 20:52
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Bautista has that John Cena-energy where he reliably cracks me the gently caress up every time, but he also clearly has the talent and the drive to be a ~Real Actor~ with more to offer than just leaning into a persona. I'd be stoked to see him get more work of pretty much any variety.
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Apr 23, 2021 21:28
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Yeah, the ~marvel's black panther cultural phenomena~ isn't hard to read. It's the platonic cinema ideal of that Malcolm X quote: "The white man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and justice." Since actual political/racial progress in this country has been, uh, let's tactfully say somewhat mitigated by the powers that be, a DoD/Marvel blockbuster about a CIA-backed African coup fills that niche. My primary objection to the whole thing, even moreso than the fact that it's a remarkably perverse act of psychological warfare, is that it apparently made everybody forget about classic 1998 Wesley Snipes vehicle Blade. Be pretty cool to see Winston Duke get a bigger role, though. I've liked him since Us. The MSJ posted:The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker TV show are this year. Could not possibly overstate my excitement for the Douchebag Captain America TV Series, starring John Cena. Hell yeah. POWELL CURES KIDS fucked around with this message at 17:51 on May 4, 2021 |
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May 4, 2021 16:59
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Timeless Appeal posted:Alternatively, enslaved people literally told folktales of their African ancestors having Superpowers. The whole base fantasy of a superhero is the idea of hidden greatness. That nebbish reporter is really the greatest hero in the world. That skinny kid from Brooklyn is really the bravest man you'll meet. Black Panther is appealing to the audience in the same way The People Could Fly. It is an aspirational story of Black greatness being obscured, but gone. Also, beyond being a movie that is the first blockbuster Afro-Futurism film, Black Panther presents an alternate history Hollywood. It is at times spy thriller and sword and sandals epic. It makes motions to Nolan's Batman's movies and Lord of the Rings. It is presenting the audience an alternate timeline of what Hollywood could be. What rankles me so much about it is that they use those precise virtues--evoking African tribal folklore, promoting black representation in mainstream film--in service of an actively regressive narrative. They're defanging and villainizing very real struggles for liberation across the world, and through history, as products of some kind of bullshit, naive, pathological misguided anger. Killmonger is trying to redress literal centuries of the most brutal, systematically-enacted horror you can imagine, and he's the bad guy, and Black Panther's morally righteous alternative is...what? Return some poo poo from a museum, open a community center? The film seems to paint colonialism primarily as Something That Used To Happen, instead of an actively ongoing oppression, fueled by cartoonish bigots and systems that are "merely flawed" instead of precisely engineered for the suffering they continue to inflict. Watching some racist South African prick get his head blown off is thirst-quenching, but this movie is ultimately saying that we should be looking for answers from literally the same institutions that annihilated millions of people. The CIA are the good guys? In a movie set in Africa? Are you loving kidding me? But don't worry, it's chill; they're all dorky Bilbo Baggins-looking nerd motherfuckers now. No hard feelings. Apart from the movie's own qualities, the cultural function it serves is infuriating. It's a C+ Marvel paint-by-numbers, feeding off manufactured hype stolen (and I stress on nearly every level) from a 20 year-old vampire movie, packaged and sold as ~progressive~ by the same set of aforesaid MIC ghouls, in an era where people are being savagely beaten and murdered in the streets by their own government because they dared to ask for actual progress. Asking us to pat ourselves on the back is rubbing some serious salt in the wound. As a projection of the American cultural context, it's perverse; as some kind of fantasy image of this country's role in the world, holy poo poo, now we're talking downright capital-e Evil. Aspirational is not the word. Anyways, that's why I didn't like Black Panther.
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May 5, 2021 01:05
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:It's kind of weird that the major plot point of the movie is that Killmonger was trained by the CIA, explicitly wants to mimic their actions, and cloaks his anger and desire for domination in the language redressing centuries of systematic oppression in order to deceive people and then so many people in the real world are actually tricked by the fictional character. ...oh, poo poo.
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May 5, 2021 01:44
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Connecting some dots on Killmonger and the CIA changes my read on the character a bit, but the overall criticism of the film remains exactly the same, and concluding that there's some comparable moral deficit between the wanton global cruelty of the entrenched, nigh-omnipotent "post"-colonial order and the struggles of the marginalized to overthrow it falls pretty short analytically. "Truly, are you not also monsters" is a bad equivocation, and it still serves to bury the relentless and structural violence directed against the oppressed. Killmonger might be a Bad Guy--the name tips it off a bit--but the ideological universe of the film within which he exists is still a false one, and the overall effect is still to conceal the (truly unfathomable) sins of the system. Also, really can't overstate how much the Blade thing irks me. Marvel is skating way uphill on this one, morally, and as history has repeatedly shown, this is a bad thing for motherfuckers to attempt. POWELL CURES KIDS fucked around with this message at 03:06 on May 5, 2021 |
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May 5, 2021 03:00
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Neurolimal posted:"This character defined entirely by this struggle doesnt actually care about the struggle and is just an evil monster man" is honestly the lamest characterization, in any movie or game or comic it gets used in. It's backpedaling at the 11th hour because you aren't confident in your heroes' motives. Yeah, lovely Blade jokes aside, the general assertion of moral superiority about this one is incredibly insulting, and calling this apologetic milquetoast bullshit Black loving Panther is just a breathtaking "gently caress you".
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May 5, 2021 03:09
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Everyone posted:Because this particular character is a bad-faith actor who is clearly using revolutionary rhetoric without giving any real shits about the oppressed people he theoretically champions. Note that in almost every scene in the "Spirit World" Erik Stevens appears as the little boy instead of as a man. That's showing that in his heart he's still the angry little boy whose father was murdered. He's essentially playing a gambit similar to what Zemo used in Civil War, trying to get Wakanda and the White Patriarchy to destroy each in a war he provoked. "Killmonger is a disingenuous prick using revolutionary struggle as a cover for self-glorification" isn't a particularly compelling argument on behalf of the film even if (probably) true, because the political framing the movie creates is still repellent--it's effectively erasing the reality of modern colonialism/capitalist exploitation, conflating resistance against this horrifying, blithely normalized "post-historical" status quo with both bloodthirsty tyranny and some truly contemptible "but they would do it to US too if they could" bullshit, and then presenting insulting near-comically thin reformism as the way forward. We just gotta make some minor tweaks on the system, guys! And maybe they don't even fully reach the level of "tweaks". The CIA will help us figure that out. Killmonger Was Right even if Snidely Whiplash-tier evil, and collapsing opposition to violent global hegemony under the banner of personal grudge-seeking is *picks nose, eats bug* pure ideology. A read of his character copying the CIA playbook can probably open some interesting conversations about revolutionary praxis, but, also, we then need to consider Black Panther's use of that same playbook and literal cooperation with the CIA. POWELL CURES KIDS fucked around with this message at 12:50 on May 5, 2021 |
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May 5, 2021 12:48
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The American government agency that I find gets the weirdest treatment in the MCU is the FBI. Leaving the FBI and CIA out of the Disney-industrial circlejerk of the MCU was one of it's few mitigating virtues, and then they hosed it all up by introducing (in order) Randall Park and Martin Freeman as emissaries of Good Fascism. There should be laws against using actors that likeable to front for the government. LesterGroans posted:This was something that was really annoying when Wonder Woman and even Captain Marvel came out. Patting themselves on their backs for having a black or female lead for the first time in the specific universe the studio made up is such low-stakes nonsense that it's insulting. A happy byproduct is that they also, in effect, denied the existence of all hitherto minority representation in film. From a certain standpoint, Black Panther actually set back civil rights in Hollywood 20+ years. Nice work, guys! And the flames of my rage at them memory-holing Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight will never cool.
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May 5, 2021 13:27
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The weird thing is that the FBI in the MCU doesn't appear to do anything except act as Ant-Man's parole officer for a year or two and act as a random employee of a different agency. I can't even see why they bothered to make him FBI other than to just not have to explain a different fictional agency. There also appears to only be one FBI agent in the entire country. Yeah, there's definitely some uncanny valley poo poo going on there, I'm not sure what the thought process was. Also: The MSJ posted:"We're a small band of reactionary terrorists" Goddrat.
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May 5, 2021 14:11
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Lord_Magmar posted:Killmonger doesn't care about the Wakandan people or their culture (hence destroying the super-drugs of their cultural super hero who they believe to be their great protector). Which means he doesn't particularly intend for Wakanda to win the war, because he doesn't care about the liberation of black people he cares about destroying Wakanda. It's the same thing as Baron Zemo, he presents one thing whilst planning another to hurt the people he holds responsible for the destruction of his family and life (as his entire motivation is the death of his father at the hands of T'chaka). Would he have won? The movie is presenting it, at the very least, as a real possibility--he's treated as a credible threat, enough so that I think a comparison to Baron Zemo's gotcha scheme is on shaky ground. More importantly: The dubious (internal) motivations of this one dude are wholly inconsequential compared to the vast system of cruelty he correctly identifies and declares to be his enemy, and his analysis, even if briefly sketched and even if just a public cover for more selfish ends, is more or less accurate. Which is a problem that the movie is unable to solve, if not in fact just flatly opposed to solving. The fictional character "Killmonger" was deliberately written this way, and making him the villain, for the reasons that he was made the villain, is a conscious strategy of the film. They're stacking the deck, clumsily. Marvel has Killmongered you, and this entire cultural conversation, because it's stolen the trappings of progressive politics to use as a shroud around its personal and ideological agenda. This film is coming, perversely so, from the direct lineage of "I think this MLK fellow just goes too far." It's actively counter-productive "civil rights" pageantry for people who've never heard of Fred Hampton, boxed and sold at grotesque profit by the people that assassinated Fred Hampton, with a title bordering on sadistic in that light. It's sinister and evil to the degree that you almost have to admire the craftsmanship, the same way you'd admire Hannibal Lecter, or one of those spiders that lays eggs in people. How do we think the deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party would react to marvel's black panther? Which is the hate-name I've decided to use for this movie going forward. My one concern is that it's almost too mean. Getting back to Killmonger: Let's say he's utterly wrong, both in intent and execution, everybody would die, so on like that. The movie still presents the only plausible, moral alternative as cooperating with and supporting the literal unreformed institutions that obliterated Africa, with a warm but paternal admonition not to shake the boat too much. And they made everyone forget about Blade. Goddamn, I hate this movie.
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May 5, 2021 17:14
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RBA Starblade posted:Your hate name for the movie is just literally the name of the movie. That seems fundamentally accurate, yes.
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May 5, 2021 17:37
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RBA Starblade posted:I don't think you have to worry about how mean that is I mean, I was hoping that insisting on the marvel attachment and the deliberate lower-case would be, uh, stinging somehow. Like, as a point of comparison to the historical Black Panthers? Given how bad a desecration I feel the film is? Does that not read well? Now I kinda feel like I'm attached to it, too. poo poo. I guess I'll ride this, a bit, see how it feels. They can't all be winners. marvel's black panther
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May 5, 2021 17:47
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RBA Starblade posted:Maybe I'm just a way bigger rear end in a top hat than you lmao Not overly likely, so let's chalk this one up to me being unfunny. Martin Luther Killmonger blows any joke I've ever made out of the water. Something about this goddamn movie just really makes my skin crawl. It feels insidious, in a calculated way, meant to cause actual harm. Michael B. Jordan is a loving Tom Clancy hero now, y'know? At least poo poo like the Transformers movies has the decency to say "gently caress you" straight to my face.
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May 5, 2021 18:03
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Timeless Appeal posted:1) That's an oversimplification of The People Could Fly. Like I implied, the story is also about being robbed of culture and greatness. Flying means a lot of things. The issue with BP is precisely that it's using positive, aspirational black characters, and doing so to apologize for and support a system that actively exploits and murders actual black people by the millions--is responsible for doing so to pretty much every marginalized group in the world. I hate to keep saying "perverse". If you don't see something off about this particular film including a key secondary protagonist that's a relatable (white) CIA agent, well, uh, sure. But you acknowledge the criticism. So: I think it's fair to say, someone correct me if I'm wrong, that the CIA is just about the most destructive force in Africa since Leopold II. Movies of this type and scale don't get made without the DoD, and I'll speculate wildly that this isn't an exception. Which means that either any objections to the material and ideological presence of the CIA were quashed, or, actually worse, nobody thought to make them, because outside the Fantasy Kingdom of Wakanda, Africa's suffering has been just that normalized as "the way it's always been". Blockbusters this big typically pretend Africa doesn't exist, or treat it as some kind of blank, violent, ~mysteriously ahistorical~ backdrop. marvel's black panther makes it both setting and subject, and uses this to argue...what? The Atlantic slave trade wasn't as bad as that Killmonger dude says? Colonialism Is Over? And we do it much more humanely, now, anyways. Any leftover problems can be solved with the occasional community center. Don't overthink! I'm not trying to, like, attack you personally, for the record. Sorry if it feels that way. I get a little hot. It's fine to like a movie. But everything about this one, from conception to production to release, has served interests which have historically been Not Real Good for the marginalized. It's been merchandised and marketed as some kind of "empowerment narrative", to the tune of billions, and that's wildly disingenuous, and absolutely deserves to be called out. I'm not a comics guy, but I have to imagine you could open any given issue of Black Panther and have at least a 50/50 chance of finding a story to adapt that isn't this insulting and horrible. The bow on top is that they tied the very real issue of black depiction and participation in "the mainstream" to this bullshit, which is why this conversation keeps happening.
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May 5, 2021 20:21
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Timeless Appeal posted:Yeah, I get the critique, agree with the basic issue of the movie and don't take it personally. I think if anything annoys me, I think within this post there is a tendency to retreat to a position you're comfortable arguing with (IE How bad the CIA or MIC is which I get). Yeah, my tendency to beat dead horses has been frequently noted through my life, and I'm sorry, seriously, for the tedium. I can certainly understand, and respect, that the film is a product of contradictions. They're what I'm objecting to, after all, and the fact is that if I'd enjoyed it on at least some other level, I probably wouldn't be (over)reacting the way that I am. Tossing problematic media would mean tossing most media, and being able to enjoy something despite finding it objectionable is basic self-care in 2021. My own estimation of the film's content and cultural impact going forward is different than yours, but stepping back, I think why it sticks with me so much is that the narrative surrounding it, at least the narrative that's received any airtime, is all in the vein of fawning admiration for the progressive elements, with no acknowledgment of what's damaging or cynical. I wanted to like it, I wanted to like its politics, I wanted to feel like it would have a legitimately positive legacy, even if marginal, even if I was skeptical going in--so when I didn't end up feeling that way, and when the hype train never stopped, I went all pissbaby. It's filling a necessary and deeply neglected role in American media. Something like it, and something much, much better than it, should've hit this kind of critical mass forever ago. But it only seems to exist to betray the values we've been told that it champions. And, dead horse, I feel it does so to an almost...obscene extent. Pernicious! There's another good one. Still just as mad about the Blade erasure, for the record.
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May 5, 2021 22:20
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The big question, honestly, is finding ways to critique any given element of the MCU without overlooking two dozen other hosed up things from the films. Your fingers would go raw typing. That's like a two, maybe three adderall job right there.
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May 6, 2021 02:52
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Is the direction you've chosen to take here really "Killmonger Hitler, Wakanda Weimar Germany"? Because that's a spicy one, dude, and I'd love to watch it play out.
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May 6, 2021 03:00
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The barista that refuses to smile at me. A person taking too long at the drive-thru. Dogs with really bad farts. Sometimes, in the darker moments, he becomes me, sneering from the mirror.
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May 6, 2021 03:13
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https://twitter.com/allisonkilkenny/status/1385597080857681921?s=19 Still the MVP tweet on the subject.
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May 6, 2021 17:32
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I'm sensing some divides in the conversation here, maybe, which might account for the sense that some of us seem to be talking past each other? Some people seem to be discussing Killmonger as a literal person in the literal reality of the MCU, and some people seem to be discussing him as a fictional character in a film, whose personal qualities and motivations are an artifact of the ideologies of the filmmakers and just one element of the moral narrative they create with the film. I don't think anybody is arguing that Killmonger, a former CIA assassin that carves marks in his body to commemorate every time he kills someone, is personally a good guy. But the people arguing against Killmonger seem to be doing so in the context of the Literal Reality of the MCU, whereas the people (like me) arguing for "Killmonger" are doing so in the context of filmmaking choices that reflect on the actual real world--it's the gap between "what are Killmonger's moral and political qualities" and "what does the Killmonger puppet represent in the unified, deliberate narrative of this puppet show." To repeat the MVP tweet on the subject: https://twitter.com/allisonkilkenny/status/1385597080857681921?s=19 Killmonger is not a Person, Killmonger is a Film Character. Are we talking about the literal place Wakanda, or are we talking about a film's reflection of the real world?
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May 7, 2021 17:23
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I'm struggling with how to express this, because I'm dumb and bad at writing/thinking, so I'm gonna step back for a second on how this is being discussed. It feels like there's a difference in how we're approaching film on a basic level. Specifically talking here about marvels black panther, there's a movie conversation using political tools, and there's a political conversation using movie tools. We've got two dudes, Literal T'Challa and Literal Killmonger. Literal T'Challa puts on a puppet show, marvels black panther, starring Puppet T'Challa and Puppet Killmonger. (Literal Killmonger is off somewhere else.) We all just watched that puppet show, in which Puppet Killmonger eats babies. Some of us seem to be saying "why would Literal Killmonger eat those babies," and some of us seem to be saying "why is Literal T'Challa using Puppet Killmonger to imply Literal Killmonger eats babies". A film speaks with one voice. It discusses things using different viewpoints, but ultimately, it's just one voice speaking, We need to consider the ideology of that singular voice, and filter our understanding of what it says through our understanding of its ideology. or maybe not, or this isn't relevant, gently caress my brain hurt
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May 7, 2021 18:04
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Everyone posted:For my part I'm okay with the Ross character. Even if we decide that the CIA as a whole is a bad organization, does that mean that everyone from the Director down to the dude who cleans the toilets is an utter sociopath? No. Ross seems to be a decent enough person and it's telling that at the end his personal loyalty seems to have shifted from the CIA to T'Challa and Wakanda. I mean, on a basic level, the "if" part on the CIA being a bad organization is already a problem--I don't think any informed, humane person could conclude anything else but that it's evil. And if there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, then anyone with the luxury of posting on this film forum is complicit and involved to some extent. Sure. But there's a world of difference between merely "born in the First World" and "works for the CIA". You could be a ~good person~ as an individual, but where you've found/placed yourself in the systems that comprise our society has a profound impact on your moral worth, and petting dogs, or not being personally racist, doesn't quite equal out to working for the global minority genocide company. Timeless Appeal posted:V Yeah, but the issue is that it's a choice. Why give the CIA redemption at all? Why not use Nick Fury? V Nick Fury and SHIELD would run into just about this same problem, though, if in a marginally different way. They've been coded from the outset of the MCU as "superhero CIA", and you could treat them more or less as identical without losing too much in any ideological critique. (I do agree the conversation has overall been polite and productive, I'm just admittedly somewhat donkey-brained and posting on my phone. I've enjoyed the discussion.)
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May 7, 2021 19:00
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Yeah that makes it like five times worse. gently caress, I really gotta watch that show sometime, it sounds incredible.
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May 25, 2021 01:47
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Neo Rasa posted:I saw the Wachowski movie a couple of months ago for the first time and it was incredibly focused and fun and awesome, I can't believe how badly rated it was by folks at the time. Speed Racer was unspeakably good, and the revelation that the bad guy was doing Christopher Hitchens is loving top-notch. The fact that Speed Racer bombed the same year Iron Man kicked off the MCU is proof that God hates us.
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May 28, 2022 03:50
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