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Neurolimal posted:If there's anything that I don't miss reading, it's bizarre audience profiling from people with no psych degree but a lot of sensitivity People pretend to hate Man of Steel because of its color palette or violence or whatever, but as you point out they're perfectly fine with other movies containing those things. The actual objection is political, not aesthetic.
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Feb 15, 2021 00:52
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Man of Steel is absolutely a power fantasy, and the grotesque material and social consequences of Superman exerting his power only heightens and enhances the power fantasy.
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Feb 15, 2021 01:20
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josh04 posted:Flying is cool but the rest of this is instilling a deep, primal apprehension in me? Yeah and it owns.
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Feb 15, 2021 01:33
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The Superman of MoS should be understood as the Man (plural) of Tomorrow. The movie places such an enormous emphasis on Superman's background and upbringing, and all the people who guide and influence him, and the onlookers and bystanders who implicitly give him strength to win the final fight, because the actual question of the movie is if and how the collective power of humanity should be deployed against the various disasters approaching us.
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Feb 15, 2021 06:07
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:That weird period of 2013 - 2017 where clusters of critics just went off the deep end (and I don't necessarily mean about Snyder, they would kook out over all kinds of stuff). Remember when Film Crit Hulk was a thing? HULK GREW UP IN BOSTON.
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Mar 6, 2021 02:07
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It's the most epic thing I've ever seen... SO FAR.
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Mar 10, 2021 21:02
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"I can't be a part of this, Zod." "Then what can you be a part of?"
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Mar 15, 2021 07:13
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"Death math" sounds awesome.
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Mar 20, 2021 23:39
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Neurolimal posted:Taintrunner, guy who obnoxiously attacked anyone he thought was insufficiently leftist, not only turned out to be a sex pest but also crashed at Sady Doyle's place, who wrote the original Bernie Bro article. It's extremely possible that he was the inspiration. The most important thing to remember is that Taintrunner was actually Jefferoo, who wrote that fascist screed in response to SMG in the Pacific Rim thread.
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Mar 24, 2021 18:51
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I actually don't think that Superman makes a visible effort to evacuate Zod from the city in the finale of Man of Steel, and in fact it's Zod who both takes the fight into space and back down to earth. Superman straight up doesn't have the skill and power necessary to relocate the fight at the same time as he fights the fight, so his goal is just to incapacitate Zod as quickly as possible by any means necessary. It's a really interesting progression, because as the fight begins you can see Superman smugly assuming the professional bedside manner he's generally used in his capacity as a superhero, and looking visibly annoyed at several points in his exchanges with a still-grounded Zod because he's pretty sure this should be going differently and yet he's getting fought to a standstill or even forced to give ground for some reason. When Zod achieves his final form, that's when Superman realizes that he was never in control here and just has to give it his all if he's to have any hope of saving the human race. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Mar 28, 2021 03:46
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bushisms.txt posted:This is tongue in cheek right? The fight begins with him slamming zod through silos. Also, this is his literal first time in the suit so I don't get where you're reading all this. Oh, no, I mean at the beginning of the final battle, after Superman's just sliced the colony ship in half and smooched Lois. He's confident and self-assured because he can fly and Zod can't, and because he's just accomplished all his other goals while Zod's got nothing left.
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Mar 28, 2021 04:26
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Arkage posted:Define "desperately" in relation to this scene. A better phrase for how it's presented is "momentarily distracted" IMO. Remember, Superman is confident to the point of smug through the front half of that fight and particularly reliant on his ability to fly. Right before that .gif, Zod's hurled an entire tanker truck at him, but Superman's able to smoothly lift himself a couple meters into the air, twist his torso a bit, and just slide between the two parts of the vehicle, unscathed. Then there's a huge explosion behind him, oh poo poo! He turns to gawk - and immediately, Zod zooms in from stage right to smash him into the pavement. We learn along with Superman that he doesn't even have time to stare desperately at the destruction, because he's up against someone who is as strong and as fast as he is and who refuses to drop the pressure. If you're in an actual, toe-to-toe, life or death fight you don't get to admire the dojo's decor.
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Mar 28, 2021 18:44
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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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I think the weirdest part of that continuity is the fact that Steppenwolf knows for a long while that earth has some motherboxes hidden on it before he realizes it's the same world that once defeated Darkseid in the old stories. Is it normaly for trios of motherboxes to not just be littered but actually guarded on heretofore-unconquered worlds? It's possible to construct a scenario in which this makes sense but the movie doesn't give you a lot of help in that regard. (The fact that Steppenwolf seems to note with interest, but no real surprise, that the first motherbox he comes for has guardians does gesture in this direction.)
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Apr 1, 2021 22:40
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A rewatch of this movie really underscores what an incredibly bad idea resurrecting Superman was. Like, the power trio of Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and Aquaman definitely could have just beaten Steppenwolf toe-to-toe and that would've been the end of it.
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Apr 3, 2021 19:49
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josh04 posted:If they didn't bring Superman back though, they wouldn't have needed to split attention because Steppenwolf wouldn't have had all three boxes. The time pressure was self-inflicted. Yeah. Even if the box eventually woke on its own such that Steppenwolf could lock on and come for it, I think they could have just fought him to a standstill. The Superman-less JL actually did quite well even with the time pressure the Unity presented. This would also be an act of faith of sorts, but it's one that doesn't directly reverse Batman's greatest sin, soo...
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Apr 4, 2021 00:55
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Darko posted:Couldn't break the box apart even going inside without Zeus level power, which even WW doesn't have. Superman is the last one on earth (besides Flash, different story) with old God level power that can be applied directly. They wouldn't need to if they just beat Steppenwolf straight-up when he came for box 3. The reason he got away with it as is is that Superman kicked the poo poo out of the rest of the League right before Steppenwolf showed.
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Apr 4, 2021 03:39
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:The existing league fought Steppenwolf twice making no appreciable progress against his armor, general prowess, and teleportation though. They straight up forced him to retreat beneath Gotham harbor and that was before Aquaman even got involved! It's not clear if the glowing blue eyes in the final scene meant that Steppenwolf was getting some sort of combat buff from the Unity, but even then the combo of Wonder Woman and Aquaman were basically able to match him. He was able to buy himself enough time against them to stop Cyborg but absent time pressure even the Atlantean/Amazon duo might have been enough given time and planning.
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Apr 4, 2021 03:50
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teagone posted:Diana says she's never seen someone as powerful as Steppenwolf before, maybe only one other being (Clark). Them being unable to subdue him is the main reason they even considered bringing Clark back using the motherbox (after learning it was even possible to do so). Yeah, Steppenwolf is stronger than any of them individually, but he and his parademons aren't quiiite a match for the non-Kryptonians working together. We see that across two fight scenes, one in which Steppenwolf is fought to a standstill and retreats and another in which he (almost) wins by running out the clock while Flash and Cyborg largely don't participate in any fighting. For sure, having Superman makes their victory a certainty rather than a struggle. But all they need is a little faith! VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:I'm counting the nuclear reactor fight prior to Supes arrival since we're discussing tactical verisimilitude instead of league decision-making. The converse is also true, though - Steppenwolf gets flung around a lot and batters but doesn't damage the League. Presumably in an alternate timeline Aquaman or Wonder Woman would stab Steppenwolf through the face after a pitched bossfight.
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Apr 4, 2021 04:01
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teagone posted:[edit] ^^^this too Ah, so he didn't retreat, he just... retreated. And Aquaman wasn't even in play at that point! You might recall that, later, AM and WW were nearly a match for him on their own - no Flash at all, Cyborg firing like a couple blaster bolts and then getting preoccupied.
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Apr 4, 2021 04:30
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teagone posted:Are we really arguing the merits of power levels and what constitutes being properly routed in a skirmish? Lol. If Arthur and Diana were a match for Steppenwolf, they would've subdued and/or killed him, instead they themselves were subdued by Steppenwolf. Absolutely we are, yes. Power levels are crucially important to these movies. Like I said, I rewatched this the other day. In the final battle, Aquaman and Wonder Woman are, or are nearly, a match for Steppenwolf. He only "wins" by running out the clock - specifically, Diana and Arthur get buried by rubble for just long enough to allow Steppenwolf to go and ruin Cyborg's day. They break free ready to keep fighting only a few seconds afterward (though at that point Superman has showed up). Cyborg and Flash are almost entirely uninvolved. In the sewers, Steppenwolf could have just bwooped out immediately upon losing the hostages, but he decides he wants to kill the Amazon first. ...the thing is, he fails. He can't quite beat her, even though everyone but Wonder Woman is preoccupied. He retreats shortly after she blasts him down a tunnel and the rest of the League shows up to start throwing heavy ordnance at him. This squares with Steppenwolf telling Diana that she probably could have saved her sisters if she'd actually been on the scene when he came for the first box - she's not actually stronger than him, but strong enough to slow him down and maybe eventually beat him given enough help? Yeah, sure. What I'm saying here is that, ironically, resurrecting Superman represents an abandonment of faith for, like, gamer logic. We want to win, right? So we want to absolutely maximize our odds, right? Okay, what's the strongest thing we can possibly bring to bear, so powerful it practically obviates the rest of us?
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Apr 4, 2021 04:56
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The text IS fairly clear, like, Alfred straight up tells Batman he shouldn't do it, Aquaman tells him he shouldn't do it, the scout ship (controlling the exact same machinery that birthed Doomsday) says not to do it, Cyborg receives a precognitive vision and tells Flash "no" (but, tragically, Flash hears "go"), etc. This isn't conjecture on my part; that deciding to bodily resurrect Christ using forbidden science is not how the community of believers is supposed to behave is a recurring theme. Steppenwolf could certainly kill members of the League one by one and go on to destroy earth... unless they work together. When they do, he is consistently forced onto the back foot. However, this isn't good enough for them, and especially not for the guilt-ridden Batman, so they work together to ensure the Knightmare comes to fruition. There are certainly a lot of unknowns... but faith, Guy A. Person, faith!
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Apr 4, 2021 05:15
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Guy A. Person posted:I mean, Batman is the one who preaches this faith, and it's what he's following when he resurrects Superman (and who that specific line is about) Yeah, it's ironic. But I guess if there's a 1% chance we might lose without Superman, we have to treat it as an absolute certainty.
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Apr 4, 2021 05:58
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The two viewpoints don't even contradict, really. Batman genuinely does have faith in Superman and that faith is concretely rewarded. The question isn't whether that faith is misplaced per se but rather if it was acted on correctly and if it hasn't do much to displace faith he might have had in his fellow believers.
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Apr 4, 2021 15:19
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Darko posted:Neither Wonder Woman nor Aquaman are able to get through Steppenwolfs armor in any of the skirmishes. Thats the important distinction. Thus, hes able to wear them down and end up using the environment against them. It took Superman to break through the armor. If he was Stephen Wolf without the armor, I'd agree that Superman wasn't needed. His face, notably, wasn't armored. I'm not doing an "if I was in a fight, I would simply aim at my enemy's weak spot" thing here, but you can't tell me that you can't imagine a fight scene in which between three to five League members wear Steppenwolf down and the final blow is like, Cyborg is holding down one of his arms, Aquaman is holding down his other arm, Flash has moments ago paralyzed him with an electric shock, and Wonder Woman is doing Link's aerial down-A such that the tip of her sword is coming down directly between Steppenwolf's eyes. The possibility's clearly there!
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Apr 4, 2021 15:57
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Superman didn't so much "make the difference" as "win singlehandedly", just overwhelmingly crush through all opposition. SMG's right in an earlier post - the way it's shot, it looks like the brutal force of Superman's punches is widening the portal to Darkseid with each blow.
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Apr 4, 2021 16:45
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bushisms.txt posted:This is explicitly why Superman is dead when they form the league. You're just pointing out how ridiculous it is that Batman is a human hanging out with Superman of God and somehow the comic books still want them to be on the same level power wise. No, I'm pointing out that the decision to manually engineer the Second Coming came out of the principal characters' psychologies and not a sober tactical assessment of relative combat prowess.
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Apr 4, 2021 16:49
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bushisms.txt posted:That's the text of the movie Yes, exactly, that's why it's a good movie. This discussion began with me being like drat, on a rewatch, ZSJL telegraphs really hard that summoning Superman down from the realms supernal is a bad idea, and half the thread jumps down my throat re: Steppenwolf's armor class rating. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Apr 4, 2021 |
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Apr 4, 2021 17:01
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bushisms.txt posted:It's not telegraphing, it's the literal film. It's why joss had to literally write pet semetary because he felt like it wasn't hammered enough. Maybe he was right. And this tangent is based on you saying they didn't need Superman when the movie never gives us that. You started making up things that have never happened in this universe like flash harnessing electricity just to prove a point. I'm confused, and think you may be confused about what I'm saying. First, I actually think that the Whedon version of JL elides this plot point entirely; even though Whedon Superman is confused and violent when he first wakes up, there's barely any dread or foreshadowing of bad tidings leading up to his resurrection, and no hints of the Knightmare or even particularly scary sequences starring the returned Superman after the resurrection, so the basic plot of Whedon JL is just "ack, we need Superman -> hooray, we got Superman!" Whedon's movie is about the heroes returning the world to where it should be; Snyder's movie is about the heroes trying to do that but creating an even more radical disruption of the status quo in the process. Second, as others are now pointing out, the movie shows us repeatedly that while Steppenwolf is beyond any single member of the League and arguably even beyond any two, he is not actually so incredibly powerful that the League had no hope against him sans Superman. Compare any fight of Steppenwolf vs. a League member to the fight Superman has himself against all four super-powered League members. They're not even close! The power level tier list here is something like: Superman . --------upper layer of atmosphere---- . ~~~ clouds~~~ . Steppenwolf . Wonder Woman/Aquaman/Cyborg Flash (mostly because he doesn't seem to know how to fight) . . Batman (but he has very useful gadgets and vehicles) I also didn't "make up things that have never happened to prove a point". It's true that earlier in thread I offered a suggestion of how a successful fight against Steppenwolf might go down, to make the point that a no-Superman victory was hardly inconceivable. I want to make it clear that I'm not approaching this from some kind of "ugh the characters are so stupid they could have just done _____" direction. I'm just trying to illustrate one of many ways a team victory could have been depicted that would have gelled perfectly with the kind of action and aesthetics we'd seen thus far. Also, Flash does harness massive amounts of electricity several times?? Darko posted:You're saying he's not a Christ figure because he came back after sacrificing himself? On Easter? He was brought back, is the thing. It's like if on day 1 we took a blood sample from the Shroud of Turin and used it to grow a clone that gestated on day 2.
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Apr 4, 2021 21:13
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Kryptonian soldiers seem to be comfortable with, but no dependent on, the "Golden Age" superpowers that yellow sunlight grants them which basically amount to immense strength, speed, and toughness. The transcendent/cosmic powers of perceiving the entire electromagnetic spectrum, firing energy blasts from your eyes, and just summoning forth pure kinetic force to fly around with seem to be related specifically to earth's atmosphere (and also to generally cause great difficulty, like Clark's respiratory problems growing up and the sensory overload that takes out Zod and Faora the first time around) seem to be anathema to orthodox Kryptonians, such that they wear suits specifically to filter them out. Zod actually argues with Jor-El's ghost to this effect; Jor-El tries to persuade him to just restart the birth matrix without terraforming Earth first, and Zod is like, what, and have all our kids die of asthma? gently caress no!
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Apr 5, 2021 22:16
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khwarezm posted:I thought it offered an interesting perspective on how Snyder tends to frame his subjects and how it might relate to his political views. 
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Apr 7, 2021 21:03
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It's particularly funny because, as we just discussed a few pages ago, the Justice League basically sealed the doom of humanity by choosing to found their strategy on the superior qualities of a specific individual rather than trusting in their own teamwork.
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Apr 7, 2021 21:06
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AccountSupervisor posted:Sure, a randian libertarian objectivist would totally publicly endorse Biden and is a registered Democrat who helps raise money for suicide prevention. Snyder's an accelerationist who thinks that only the suffocating grasp of Biden's socialist policies will finally provoke Ragnar Danneskjöld into making his move.
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Apr 7, 2021 21:11
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Why not just take Snyder to task for personally being a pro-capitalism liberal like just about every other famous Hollywood personality? Why invent the salacious extra detail?
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Apr 7, 2021 21:18
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Ayn Rand is funny because if you know anything about Marxism you can very clearly see that she was straight-up, consciously, doing a find-replace on existing communist philosophy in an attempt to really stick it to 'em. "A=A" and "contradictions to not exist" are both attempts to refute dialectical materialism, which of course holds that there are no static ideals but only processes of constant transformation, and that all such processes of transformation are driven by the resolution of internal and external contradictions. Rand holds that we live in a completely material universe that can be empirically studied by the senses and which operates according to discoverable physical laws, that human labor and invention are the source of value, and that the human population is divided into those who generate value by doing gainful work and those who parasitically appropriate that value using trickery and coercion. There's just the small issue of which side of that divide you and your boss each happen to fall on.
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Apr 7, 2021 21:47
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Man of Steel is the only communist superhero movie, and the clue is in the name.
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Apr 7, 2021 22:19
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khwarezm posted:
He has literally indicated the opposite in calling her crazy, but you're also wrong on the basic facts when it comes to the movies. There's one "culmination of human success" in Snyder's DC films, and Batman is decidedly not godlike. In fact, he wrongly kills God! A good faith attempt to subject Superman to human constraints is sabotaged but the evil Lex Luthor, who bombs a government hearing at which Luthor's schemes might otherwise have come to light. You should actually watch these films instead of letting Youtube weirdos with axes to grind watch them for you.
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Apr 7, 2021 22:33
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I think he presents his superheroes as being godlike culminations of human success that operate as torchbearers for the rest of humanity and should not be held down by outside constraints. I think his continued interest in the work of Ayn Rand and his attempts to adapt her probably indicates his genuine interest in her ideas, especially since he hasn't really indicated the opposite when he's actually talking about this stuff.
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Snyder is probably right that Rand would've hated Reagan, because libertarians are generally too stupid to realize that the markets they love need massively brutal state intervention on both the local and international level to function in practice. https://inthesetimes.com/article/floating-utopias quote:None of this is surprising. Libertarianism is not a ruling-class theory. It may be indulged, certainly, for the useful ideas it can throw up, and its prophets have at times influenced dominant ideologies – witness the cack-handed depredations of the “Chicago Boys” in Chile after Allende’s bloody overthrow. But untempered by the realpolitik of Reaganism and Thatcherism, the anti-statism of “pure” libertarianism is worse than useless to the ruling class.
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Apr 7, 2021 23:20
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khwarezm posted:So I think all that ultimately gives me an interpretation that the film is about unfettered super people doing whatever needs to be done for the good of the world, and where they are ultimately the supreme authority due to the their sheer power. I don't know if I have much more to say on this but its how I took it. Putting aside the numerous mistakes you've made in characterization here, you need to explain to us why Ayn Rand would like this but Reagan wouldn't. Objectivism isn't about strong guys deriving authority from their power; it's a very specific philosophy that rejects many of the elements you'd usually find in Western conservatism. For example, objectivism is unabashedly atheistic, dogmatically rejecting the spiritual in favor of the material. For this reason, the repeated references to God, faith, etc. in this movie might well enthuse a classic Reaganite conservative, but would be offensive and puerile to an objectivist.
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Apr 8, 2021 00:17
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khwarezm posted:The thing is that its still basically frames Barry as the prime force in this relationship, he sort of ends up doing it all, he can save the world, he can run faster than light without causing the apocalypse, he can work several jobs effectively and he can successfully go through college and presumably start working to help free his dad. His father on the other hand is extremely passive, locked in prison with no hope, and apathetic about his fate, Barry as the superhuman is the one who makes things happen, regular people are at best along for the ride. Since Barry has magic powers, and Barry's dad doesn't, Barry is naturally able to get a lot more done than his dad. This is pretty obvious. The question is, what is objectivist about the observation that a strong individual can accomplish more and therefore obtain more than a weak individual? Here's famous objectivist philosopher Karl Marx describing a socialist society: quote:But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal. As you can see, nothing you're describing is even unique to the right wing in general, let alone objectivism in specific. You need to actually explain your point rather than just gesturing at the existence of strong guys in a superhero movie.
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Apr 8, 2021 00:34
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