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Batman v. Superman RT Thread: like standing ovations in rain

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Flavius

Member
The reason I said what I said to the other poster was because I feel this revisionism about Miller's importance to the Bat legacy (or indeed comics in general) is somewhat unfair. It's entirely rooted in the lack of quality in his post-TDKR work and generally disgusting political commentary of late. That doesn't change anything though. His origin story in Year One became the quintessential take on it. TDKR is one of the three books that kick-started mainstream acceptance of comics and reshaped the public's perception of the character. Regardless of his faults, he's an important figure.

Let's stay on track here. The guy made a flippant remark about Miller being thanked in the post-credits as yet one more reason the movie isn't up to snuff, and you responded by bringing up Miller's comic efforts.

It's a non sequitur on your part. Aside from the IPs, the two do not overlap. Nothing revisionist about it. Think less DKR/Year One and more Robocop 2/The Spirit.

Saying Kobe is shit on the court these days doesn't retroactively diminish his prior excellence.
 

Harmen

Member
Funny thing about the whole 'Super hero movies will go the way of westerns' idea is that we are no where near the over saturation that we were at with the peak of westerns.

We have more and more films released than ever and people complain about having 6 Super Hero movies in a year yet at its lowest point (during the western era) we had at least 15 westerns in a year (Maximum was over 30).

So this idea that we are over saturated with comic book films is quite silly really.

In addition to that, many of the superhero films can belong to different genres. For example, Thor is more of a fantasy film, whereas Ant-Man was a heist film and Guardians of the Galaxy a scifi adventure. That, and I have been watching frequent major superhero films ever since the late 90's now. We are at a peak, probably (though the TV series are only adding more to that), but I can't see them suddenly dissapearing, as the superhero thing can be done in an infinite number of ways.
 

Drahcir

Member
Been waiting 3 years for this, and had IMAX/3D tickets pre-purchased. It just doesn't justify the time/cost given the general consensus in the majority of reviews. I'll see it down the line, probably as a matinee or on HV but to me it clearly isn't worth my initial hype. There are other options for entertainment and they all seem better than spending ~3 hours on opening night watching this.

Agreed. The reviews have swayed me as well and I was as hyped as anyone to see this. I'll rent it as soon as it's available, but with the reviews going from bad to worse it's not worth my time. In fact, this is potentially strike three for me regarding Snyder. I am about done with that guy. And if he still ends up doing JL, I don't even care anymore. :(
 

B33

Banned
Don't expect one. Rumor is after Fant4stic ALL studios made their actors/directors sign new NDAs. They are TERRIFIED of another Josh Tank affair.

Even without a ironclad NDAs, releasing a screed on social media is tantamount to career suicide. The studio has a marketing department for a reason.
 

Cyan

Banned
Can we please add a rule to NeoGAF?
No Rotten Tomatoes review percentages in titles????

I wanted to see this film with no tampered expectations, this is obviously impossible now.
:(

This thread keeps delivering.
 

duckroll

Member
IIRC, the reason GL got greenlit in the first place was because the script was fantastic. It then got butchered by WB.

It wasn't just the script that got butchered. Nothing about the movie felt complete by the time it hit the screens. It was a really confused film, and it was clear there were subplots and character arcs which were being built at the start which got excised, only for the pay offs to appear at the end without any impact.
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
The problem is that Superman is not a good character. Doing a good film with the character is like trying to make a good Dragon Ball movie.
 

B33

Banned
The problem is that Superman is not a good character. Doing a good film with the character is like trying to make a good Dragon Ball movie.

Bullshit.

Don't blame the character, blame the storytellers and studio execs who can't get him right.
 
The problem is that Superman is not a good character. Doing a good film with the character is like trying to make a good Dragon Ball movie.

Not-This-Shit-Again-anime-28533251-604-340.jpg
 

Garlador

Member
This is absolutely maddening. I'm partially entertained and partially destroyed, but the film currently has a lower critical reception than Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-men: The Last Stand, Daredevil, Batman Forever, and is hovering at just above X-men Origins: Wolverine levels.

How do you DO that? It's Batman and Superman. You have to actively TRY and get it wrong.
 

PBY

Banned
This is absolutely maddening. I'm partially entertained and partially destroyed, but the film currently has a lower critical reception than Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-men: The Last Stand, Daredevil, Batman Forever, and is hovering at just above X-men Origins: Wolverine levels.

How do you DO that? It's Batman and Superman. You have to actively TRY and get it wrong.

Hiring Zach Snyder?
 
Here's my review that I just posted in the DCCU thread :

Just saw it...
Here's where I stand with superhero movies : I like Snyder most of the time, I LOVED Man of Steel, I'm not really into the MCU (but I do like Marvel) and I really want the DCU to succeed. My favorites in no particular order : Superman / Man of Steel / Spider-Man 2 / X-Men 2 / Blade 2 / Dark Knight Trilogy / Batman Returns.

This movie was a gigantic mess, the kind that I haven't seen in long time. The first 10 minutes were incredibly strong but the more the setup for the fight kept going and going and the less I cared about anyone in the film. When the fight started, I was past the point of no-return and had no emotional connection to the movie at all. My favorite superheroes are Batman and Superman but I did not give a shit about what was happening to them. The two big fights in the film are not particularly good and don't compare well to what was in Man of Steel. The confrontation that gives its title to the movie is brief and barely resolved. Dawn of Justice, yes maybe, Batman v Superman, not at all.

The theatre was half full and there were audible laughs during the "emotional ending". I was just bored.

The hints toward the greater DCU are completely shoehorned into the story and serve no purpose. Wonder Woman looked cool but there is absolutely no reason for her presence in the film. Anybody who doesn't know who she is (and that's a lot of people outside of America) will be baffled as to why there is a third superhero all of a sudden. Gal Gadot doesn't speak much but when she did, I wasn't convinced. Affleck is good as the
serial killer
dressed as Batman, hopefully he gets to play the actual character in the future. Eisenberg is yet again a reinterpretation of Jim Carrey's Riddler, as was Jamie Fox in Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Nothing makes sense dramatically in this movie. Snyder forced a lot of scenes from comics he likes without trying to justify them. Batman has a lot of scenes where he repeats some of the dialogs from the Dark Knight Returns, except he has no reason to, I guess it just sounded cool to Snyder.

I had no problems with the tone of Man of Steel but this movie is bleak and completely joyless. The DCU is in serious trouble, I absolutely do not want a Justice League movie in this style.

As a DC fan and a Man of Steel fan, I feel really bad. If I had to rate it, I would give it 3.5/10. Some parts of it are great (the cinematography, the score, Affleck), but absolutely none of it actually works as a film.

Now, I'm going to pour myself a drink and play some Injustice.

I went in there wanting to like this movie but I was incredibly let down. If think it doesn't matter if you liked Man of Steel or not, I just don't see many people liking this movie. The audience I was with was really impatient during the end of the film, everyone was talking and laughing...
 

Rooster12

Member
The problem isn't getting Superman, it's DC actually letting you tell your damn story. The amount of editorial obstruction on the Superman titles is obscene. The bosses at DC don't want good Superman stories that's why they never put top tier talent on the title long term. They want Superman seen just enough to keep him a viable license but not to make any lasting impact.

Why? They don't want to make money? lol

Makes no sense.

The problem is that Superman is not a good character. Doing a good film with the character is like trying to make a good Dragon Ball movie.

He's a much better character than fucking Ant-Man lol....and Ant-Man just had a good movie.
 

Screaming Meat

Unconfirmed Member
Sure, Denny O'Neil's work may now not be as well known as Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, but it lead the charge and made an impact before Miller.

The paradigm that was Adam West's Batman shifted with O'Neil, then was taken further by Miller, but it wasn't until Tim Burton's Batman and Bruce Timm's Batman: The Animated Series that the character's mainstream image truly changed.

Disagree. Denny absolutely changed comic book readers perception of the character, I couldn't argue that.

I can't reiterate this enough: TDKR broke through into the mainstream where people's only connection to the character was from the 60s series. It was, as a TPB, bought by people who had never picked up a comic book in their life. It's importance at the time can't be understated and, as I said, arguably led to Burton's Batman, which was a huge game changer.

Anyway, we're going around in circles. :)
 

PBY

Banned
Here's my review that I just posted in the DCCU thread :



I went in there wanting to like this movie but I was incredibly let down. If think it doesn't matter if you liked Man of Steel or not, I just don't see many people liking this movie. The audience I was with was really impatient during the end of the film, everyone was talking and laughing...

Yikes. Are the fights really not better than MoS?
 

Screaming Meat

Unconfirmed Member
Let's stay on track here. The guy made a flippant remark about Miller being thanked in the post-credits as yet one more reason the movie isn't up to snuff, and you responded by bringing up Miller's comic efforts.

It's a non sequitur on your part. Aside from the IPs, the two do not overlap. Nothing revisionist about it. Think less DKR/Year One and more Robocop 2/The Spirit.

Saying Kobe is shit on the court these days doesn't retroactively diminish his prior excellence.

Wha...? Miller being thanked having anything to do with the quality of the movie is the non-sequitur here, surely?
 

kswiston

Member
No one is going to step in to stop a monopoly in an industry that pulls less revenue in its entirety than some F2P phone games do. I doubt anyone would care if Disney bought DC from Time Warner. Also, Image and others still control a third of that market.

Why would Disney want DC though?
 

longdi

Banned
MOS was not a bad show, it was like watching a 2 hour live action anime.
If BvS fails to capture MOS anime-ness, that is terrible.
Synder OUT.
 
Yikes. Are the fights really not better than MoS?

The Batman vs Superman fight is not particularly long. Superman gets punched a lot and Batman is an absolute brute except he's so completely misguided while Superman is just trying to save lives that you end up rooting against Batman because of his stupidity. The fight choreography is vastly inferior to the Smallville fight.
The Doomsday fight... It might be good if you just watch that scene but at that point in the movie I just didn't care anymore.
 
Let's stay on track here. The guy made a flippant remark about Miller being thanked in the post-credits as yet one more reason the movie isn't up to snuff, and you responded by bringing up Miller's comic efforts.

I actually didn't mean that at all, I meant it as a hint about what to expect ie grimdark extreme Batman, borderline impotent Superman, women without power are nothing more than damsels in distress. Stuff like that.
 
This is absolutely maddening. I'm partially entertained and partially destroyed, but the film currently has a lower critical reception than Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-men: The Last Stand, Daredevil, Batman Forever, and is hovering at just above X-men Origins: Wolverine levels.

How do you DO that? It's Batman and Superman. You have to actively TRY and get it wrong.

Doing a straight superhero genre-piece really shouldn't be a big challenge. I mean, the genre had become so defined by the 80s that writers like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison could come in and start playing with the formula in more interesting ways. But they could only do that because the form itself had become so established.

And all this movie really needed to do was use the established form. It would have made people happy if it was just a straight-up enjoyable superhero story, told with all the flashy tools that the movies now have at their disposal.
 
I'm not sure I could agree with this, entirely. Iron Man 1, Winter Soldier, and Guardians of the Galaxy feel like three fairly different movies to me. I feel like a bunch of them follow a similar checklist to Iron Man 1 but are tonally more like Iron Man 2. The original Iron Man, at least to me, still feels a bit different from the rest of the MCU.
Guardians is set in space so some changes will be there. But lack of care on overall plot and focus on protagonists which is always a strength for Marvel, useless underdeveloped villain, ending arc being bad, & quips all fall in line with Ironman, Guardians and the rest of them sans WS.
Those beats are totally there even if you didn't notice them or if the execution was clumsy. They're easily overshadowed by the movie's other problems but like I said, they're there.

I'm not saying Marvel is perfect or they fix all their problems, I'm saying they seem to at least recognize they have weaknesses and try to remedy them.
Those beats were thrown in there with some awful execution. You also had to add something to it since it's the entire reason Stark makes Ultron in the movie, and they added the bare minimum in terms of reasoning. They all have the exact same flaws that they had in earlier movies, so I don't see how they try to remedy them unless they're the biggest failures in cinema at fixing mistakes (which isn't the case).
 

Slayven

Member
No one is going to step in to stop a monopoly in an industry that pulls less revenue in its entirety than some F2P phone games do. I doubt anyone would care if Disney bought DC from Time Warner. Also, Image and others still control a third of that market.

Why would Disney want DC though?
Marvel could buy Darkhorse, Image, and IDW and it would get a 3 paragraph blurb in the back of most business mags
 
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