DC Movies- if at first you don't succeed...

[Lord Liaden]

True enough. Thanks to an application of patience, I haven't had to buy popcorn in a movie theater in years.

[Hermit]

 

The plot is well setup and flows smoothly. Any critic who couldn't follow it is just straight out dumb or was doing something else while watching. The action is well done and fits the characters;

 

 

 

That is one complaint I heard that surprised me. I figured "Maybe I just have read too many comic books and they're not familiar with the genre" but I just did not understand all the complaints of confusion about the pacing. I was thinking if this movie's plot confused them, a Leverage Episode would make their brains explode

Then I thought "Maybe it's just me?" So I'm very glad to see I'm not alone

[Old Man]

Managed to see SS this afternoon.  Theater was packed.  Movie exceeded expectations a bit, though it wasn't on the level of a Winter Soldier or Civil War.  Random thoughts:

 

 

 

- The cast was too big.  3-4 of the named members of the Squad could have been dropped.

- This would have reduced the need for so much voiceover in the beginning.

- Someone hates helicopters.

- This was exactly a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle film, down to the plot and the color scheme.

- I don't mean that in a bad way.

- I liked Leto's Joker portrayal.  Not as impressive as Nicholson or Ledger, but that's probably impossible. 

 

 

[Doc Democracy]

Just to clarify: did those of you who liked SS also like MoS and BvS? Not saying you're right or wrong in either case - just establishing how well your tastes align with mine.

I liked Suicide Squad. Went with my wife - the first superhero movie she has actually wanted to see in a decade - and she liked it.

 

I have avoided BvS simply because I know how I want the film to play out and I know the versions of Batman and Superman I need to make that happen. I know it will not. The Superman I know and love is bright, optimistic and intrinsically good. So good that other people dont even need to ask if he is a hero. The Batman I know and love inhabits a dark world without participating in that world. He is dark and grim to the denizens of the underworld which makes others question his position in society but, at the core, he is just as much a hero as Superman. For them to fight there has to be some kind of mismatch of their world views. Batman is not stupid, he can see Superman is a hero just as much as anyone else, he can see that he would never do harm intentionally to anyone else and would try to avoid that harm even at his own expense but he knows that even that kind of hero draws risks. He would not go after Superman because Superman 'might' turn bad but because he represented a threat that Superman was unaware of and incapable of mitigating. Superman would only fight Batman in self-defence and be the one constantly looking to find a way to convince him they were on the same side.

 

The difference between BvS and SS is that in the former you have two heroes. In the latter you have a squad of villains with, at best, a couple of anti-heroes. They need a different approach.

 

I fear that Marvel may take Captain America to the same dark place DC took Superman. Both of them should be the shining lights of hope and optimism in their universes.

 

Doc

 

PS: sorry - didn't mean to write so much - obviously this means more to me than I thought!!

[bigdamnhero]

I fear that Marvel may take Captain America to the same dark place DC took Superman. Both of them should be the shining lights of hope and optimism in their universes.

Yeah, while I enjoyed Civil War I'm hoping that is the emotional nadir of the MCU and now they can start rebuilding from that back up to something more optimistic and (dare I say it?) heroic.

[Doc Shadow]

Not if Fat F*%&ing Joey has anything to say about it.

 

And unfortunately he does. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I fear that Marvel may take Captain America to the same dark place DC took Superman. Both of them should be the shining lights of hope and optimism in their universes.

 

Yeah, that's my problem too.  For two movies, Captain America has been in grim, awful circumstances where everything is bad and dreadful.  While I agree a good number of Americans feel that way about their nation's future, Cap is supposed to be a hopeful, optimistic, and leading figure, not a harbinger of doom and misery.

[Starlord]

I'm hoping that part of the Thanos story involves the themes previously mentioned...the angst, divisiveness and bickering is over and they all come together because of the threat of the Darkseid-ripoff.

[megaplayboy]

Darkseid-ripoff.

Hey, if you're going to steal, steal from the King.

[Lawnmower Boy]

So I bought Ultimate Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Too Many Semi-colons the other day. 

 

Like Fan4Stick, it had a pretty dour (I think they say "somber") tone: people suck, colours muted, heroes . . . 

 

Wait, no, that comparison does neither movie justice. Fan4Stick has no heroes in sight, except possibly Doctor von Doom, who is pretty much on the money with his plan to suck the movie through a black hole. Too bad he wasn't the first to think of it. (Thanks, Josh!) Also, I didn't have to restart U:BvS: four times to get through it. It was actually pretty engaging all the way through.

 

Fan4Stick had four very good actors, and still did very bad things with them. Following the source material, and by that I mean the Ultimate series that no-one read or cared about, the writers got rid of the whole, boring, "family" thing, and recast them as horrible teenage science Goths. This solved many problems.

 

For example, people are often upset that Reed Richards is some old, uptight science guy with questionable decision-making skills and a horrific lack of concern for his alleged team mates, up to and including his wife. Making him a teenager sure solved the problem of him being old! Also, when he makes hopelessly irresponsible and reckless decisions while drunk, at least we can remember that he's supposed to be acting like a teenager, because he is a teenager. (Good idea involving him in a trillion dollar project, by the way.)

 

Many people worry that Sue Richards tends to be  eye candy, a problem that raised its head again when they decided to cast an attractive person as the new Sue. Making her an anomied Goth who can barely be moved to like her brother, never mind Reed, sure solved whatever problem that actually existed. Meanwhile, making her the team seamstress who doesn't even get to go to the Negative Zone was a great tribute to the original Sue, always shopping and getting taken hostage. Heh. Chicks. You know what I mean?

 

An interracial Storm family gets you your diversity. (Not like making Reed black.That's just too much diversity. Like, it's a 7.28 on the diversity scale, where we're aiming for a 6.37.) The racists will complain, and that's why Johnny becomes a truculent street racer who gets to be included in the project because he can weld or something. I'm pretty sure he uses food stamps to buy steak and lobster in the original, long cut. Balance! 

 

Ben Grimm, I vaguely recall, was once a test pilot who had a reason to be involved in the project. Making him a glum, silent, child abuse victim  who basically waits by the phone in Oyster Bay waiting to be summoned by Reed to do more heavy lifting is definitely a choice that a writer could make. At least the parts where the Grimms beat each other up is super-excellent for tone-setting, plus also closest this movie gets in any way to being "super." Plus I love the way he silently endures Johnny's verbal abuse. A great call back to the "everybody sucks" tone-setting we got with his brother beating him up to the ringing declaration that it is "Clobbering time." Also, it really brings out the fact that this is just Johnny's horrible personality venting in naked verbal aggression --probably displaced from his sister-- and not, you know, "banter." Then he kills 42 people on a single mission for the US government (which sucks --did I mention that this was a theme?). This is the kind of awesome stuff that I like seeing superheroes do, and really comes back to bit the sucky US government in the butt in the end when the Fan4Stick threaten to unleash him against the nation unless they're given their own private science city to do science in. I really liked the last part, where the group is shown the science city and told by the people who work there that they are . . .

 

Actually, I'm pretty sure that what comes next in my memory is a super-pervy, kinky dream, and not something that was actually screened, but ever since the disappointment of the Gor movies, I've been ---I'm sorry. Too much information?

 

Moving right along, Fan4Stick had four great actors who really sold the tone that the movie was trying to present. Or maybe there were all drugged. Either way. Also, can I say how totally immersive it was to see Reed towering over a diminutive Ben Grimm in the adult scenes?Super-excellent casting, guys!

 

U:BvS: was a lot less concerned with getting great young actors. Instead, it had old, established great actors, who did pretty solid work. For example, Jesse Eisenberg was told "Give us Lex Luthor if Lex was Zuckerberg, only psychotic," and he delivered! Now, as for who the person was who decided that what he delivered needed to be shared with the world, I think from internal clues in the movie that it was probably Darkseid? Aside from that, though, good work on Ben Affleck's part, good work from Jeremy Irons, good. . . 

 

Henry Cavill. That's what I'm saying now, instead of "Good God." "Good Henry Cavill." 'Cuz I'm an irony guy. Also, and I don't know if anyone else caught this subtle subtext, I think they might have been reaching for some kind of Jesus imagery in their casting. (Except that Superman dies in the end, unlike Jesus. Well, okay, Jesus dies and then comes back in the sequel books, but . . Wait. Do you think they might bring Superman back in the next movie? Because that would be awesome!) The irony part of saying "Good Henry Cavill" is that I'm not sure that he is good. Either he was told to play Superman as pretty glum chum, or  he was doing a hilarious Kate-Mara-as-Sue-Storm impersonation through the whole movie. Only with better hair. 

 

Like every normal person who saw the movie, I thought Gail Gadot was an excellent Wonder Woman who managed to breathe life and personality into a role that is more iconic than character-driven. Quite a contrast from Cavill, who seems petrified of putting anything into Superman, at least in this movie, unlike when he gets to play Clark Kent. (By the way, having Clark and Lois in a relationship isn't a bad choice, but I wish some serious writer would take on the Clark(-who might be Supereman)-Lois-Superman(-who might be Clark)-Superman (who isn't Clark)-Clark (who isn't Superman) relationship pentagon and give it the heat it deserves.) 

 

Finally, a point about plot coherence. Fan4Stick notoriously went off the rails, and the results show, painfully. :BvS:U isn't the best place to start with a comparison, since it is the "Snyder cut," and not the "incoherent mess that was shown in the theatres," but you can definitely see the latter in the former. The story is composed of a lot of discrete chapters, and following along smoothly from one to the next is a bit of a challenge. There was kryptonite in the Indian Ocean? And Lex needs to get it into the United States? And so he needs an import license, because he is all about the law? Only he is only doing this so that Batman Wayne will steal it? Because Lex is manipulating Bruce Batman into stealing it? So that he'll kill Superman with it, without being aware that it was actually Lex's plot? Because if Bruce Man knows that it was Lex who wanted him to kill Superman it would change his mind? Only instead of saying, "Oh, I am getting an import license to bring kryptonite into the country, and it is a big secret, and totally don't come to my headquarters dressed as a giant bat and steal it," he leaks the information through his criminal associate, KGBeast? Who, because of Lex's limited budget, is also the guy who is in charge of, uhm, framing Superman for the murder of Jimmy Olsen, would be the best way of summarising it? (Great tone-setting, Zack!) 

 

I'm sorry, that's a bit hypercritical. I just wanted to work the killing of Jimmy Olsen into my rant, in much the same way that I wanted to work the Ben Grimm-as-victim-of-child-abuse bit in, earlier. Just strange, strange choices. In an interesting way, that goes to the plot coherence. Given the amount of story that Snyder wants to cram in, the fact that you have to follow the kryptonite along through chapter after chapter is hardly fatal. The fact that you have four(!) this-is-actually-a-dream-sequence revelations isn't fatal, even if it is a bit repetitive. The problem is that by the time all is said and done, your changes of missing a key point are, like, a million percent. I guess Lex sends aides to their death is to ensure silence about an earlier episode in which he lets Bruce Wayne get away with some vital information? Maybe? Because otherwise it seems like a pretty, casually, awful move. Which is in character for this Lex, but makes it hard to understand why the Goverment is letting him indulge his kink with General Zod's dead body, as opposed to arranging for him to be bought out of Lexcorp.

 

Seriously: there's a scene relatively early in the movie where Eisenberg's Lex has a well-sold, public psychotic breakdown at a charity function. The consequences of this sort of thing in a movie are the consequences the writer needs to move the story forward, and since I kept watching, I guess I have no grounds for complaining that "This isn't realistic." But still. 

 

That's a bit choppy, but I will defend myself on the grounds that that's my point. It is very hard to say anything coherent about the long succession of events-that-happen that set up the not-climax, followed by the more-not-climax, followed by the climax, followed by the sad ending with the funerals. The critics who went to see the movie in the theatres probably sound exasperated because they were distracted by something, at some point. Having lost the thread of the story, they were just waiting for easter eggs, which dropped in a spectacularly unsubtle way, and for the pretty lights to stop.

 

So I guess that the studio should have trusted Snyder more in terms of putting a story together out of all those chapters? Wow. That sounded like a defence of Zack Snyder. And an interesting comparison with the complete sidelining of Josh Trank at Fan4Stick, the difference being that I think that Trank probably lost the actors. Whereas Zack's indulgence of Eisenberg came close to ruining his movie. Given the consequences flowing from the two approaches, I am left defending Zach again.

 

Now there's just the question of tone to be resolved. The word is that Warner has dictated the somber tone of the DC universe, and maybe Zach was just complying with corporate? Fox, on the other hand, pretty much went out shopping for the tone they wanted, and got it. Marvel Studios makes it look easier than it actually is, maybe?

[Starlord]

I don't know why everybody is complaining about Eisenberg...I thought he was an awesome Joker.

[massey]

I think the problem is that Warner/DC went out and said "we need a Batman/Superman script to set up the new JLA movie!  Somebody go get us a Batman/Superman script, and it better have Wonder Woman in it too!"  Then they said "who is that guy who made the Frank Miller movie with the Spartans, that was cool looking, go get him!"  And they said "we better make this dark and moody so that modern audiences will think it's cool.  And we need some plot twists, because people dig that, right?"

 

And that is what gives you Batman v. Superman.  It's too bad, really, because I think Affleck actually did a really good job with his DKR impression.  And Cavill did a good job with what he was given.  I mean, they told him to stand there and look constipated a lot, and he did that well.  There are the bones of a good movie here.  I was not bored while I was watching it.  I even saw it twice in theaters, once with some buddies and once with my nephew.  But there were a lot of weird choices that were made with that film.  The dream sequences obviously were intended to set up JLA.  Except the one with Pa Kent, where he talks about saving the farm, and accidentally flooding somebody else's place.  I think that was supposed to make him a better role model than the first movie, where he was all about letting people die.  And the weird Renfield/Zuckerberg Luthor was... something.

 

The Marvel cinematic universe seems to have been a happy accident.  They threw in an easter egg or two in Iron Man.  And then they had that crappy Incredible Hulk movie with Edward Norton.  But then Thor and Captain America were successful.  And all the while, they had started crafting this big picture idea that these movies would all connect.  But Warner has been trying to push through the DCFU without getting the formula right first.

[Lord Liaden]

Yeah, that's my problem too.  For two movies, Captain America has been in grim, awful circumstances where everything is bad and dreadful.  While I agree a good number of Americans feel that way about their nation's future, Cap is supposed to be a hopeful, optimistic, and leading figure, not a harbinger of doom and misery.

 

While the circumstances have been grim, Cap has remained true to his classic comic-book persona: idealistic, selfless, inspirational, a man who does what he believes is right no matter how hard it is. A lot of people complain that characters like him and Superman are boring because they are so "good." I believe Marvel has found a formula to counter that perception. They put Cap in situations that challenge his values, where it isn't immediately apparent what the right thing to do is. In his past two movies Cap has initially struggled with deciding what course of action he needs to take, which has led to interesting dramatic conflict; but once he has decided, there's no more doubt or hesitation. He projects a quiet certainty of purpose that other people are naturally drawn to. The airport scene in Civil War highlighted that for me. In his confrontation with Cap, Tony Stark is almost breaking under the emotional stress of what he's doing, while Steve Rogers is calm and firm.

 

What I'm hoping is that Superman's next movie appearance will use his experience of, essentially, dying, as the excuse and basis to bring him back with heightened clarity of identity and purpose, so he can be more like the the movie Captain America we've gotten recently, and thus more like the Superman we all know.

[Old Man]

The Marvel cinematic universe seems to have been a happy accident.  They threw in an easter egg or two in Iron Man.  And then they had that crappy Incredible Hulk movie with Edward Norton.  But then Thor and Captain America were successful.  And all the while, they had started crafting this big picture idea that these movies would all connect.  But Warner has been trying to push through the DCFU without getting the formula right first.

Exactly. I firmly believe that the MCU is the outlier here. A virtually impossible outlier. The way corporate Hollywood works, it's astonishing any good movies get made, ever. Let alone comic book ones. Even the MCU has had its share of corporate interference; so far it's mainly just driven away good directors without imploding the whole franchise.

[Lord Liaden]

 

The Marvel cinematic universe seems to have been a happy accident.  They threw in an easter egg or two in Iron Man.  And then they had that crappy Incredible Hulk movie with Edward Norton.  But then Thor and Captain America were successful.  And all the while, they had started crafting this big picture idea that these movies would all connect.  But Warner has been trying to push through the DCFU without getting the formula right first.

 

Just saying that The Incredible Hulk remains one of my favorite Marvel movies, and made decent box office. So crap is in the eye of... actually, I think I'll leave that one right there.

[aylwin13]

After the Ang Lee Hulk... something, I really enjoyed the The Incredible Hulk. I thought that it worked. I often wonder how it would have turned out if Ruffalo had played the lead.

[zslane]

I liked The Incredible Hulk as well. I thought Ed Norton did a decent job playing a variant of the Ultimates version of Banner. I think Ruffalo is doing a bang up job too, but I would not have been upset had Norton stayed on.

[Starlord]

Ditto, Norton Hulk was decent.

[slikmar]

I also liked Incredible Hulk. I think Norton was good and would have been good continuing. I also think if Ruffalo had stepped into the role in IH, it still would have been good. And as far as I can tell, it was a Hulk movie. I even liked their setup of Abomination.

[Grailknight]

Yeah the DCU is still making their Ang Lee Hulk versions of their characters. Someday, hopefully, they'll realize the should be making Jurassic World with superheroes instead of art house versions.

[Nolgroth]

As promised threatened, went and saw Suicide Squad today. While not the best movie or comic book movie, I had a lot of fun watching it. Margot Robbie nailed the Harley Quinn role perfectly, IMO. The poor guy playing Killer Croc didn't get much story time. He's a big brute that lives in a sewer. Well duh. Will Smith did a fine job with being Deadeye. Not sure why the boomerang guy was there. The rest did a workman job at making the movie entertaining. Certainly not the scandalous orgy of fetishism all those reviewers were droning on about.

 

If I had one complaint about the movie it was that the Enchantress was sort of weirdly inconsistent, appearance wise. I think it was simply to give the actress recognizable "face" time. Oh well.

 

I also expected Viola Davis to break out into a lecture about how to get away with murder. Luckily there were no trophies or chalkboards within reach.

[Lord Liaden]

I also liked Incredible Hulk. I think Norton was good and would have been good continuing. I also think if Ruffalo had stepped into the role in IH, it still would have been good. And as far as I can tell, it was a Hulk movie. I even liked their setup of Abomination.

 

I'm really hoping Thanos breaks out and recruits Abomination for Infinity War. He needs more lieutenants with the muscle to take on Avengers, and as far as muscle goes Emil Blonsky is top of the line.

[Lawnmower Boy]

I don't know why everybody is complaining about Eisenberg...I thought he was an awesome Joker.

 

Oh, I see your problem. Actually, he was going for Ambush Bug.

[assault]

Saw Suicide Squad. Enjoyed the heck out of it.

 

If I was going to be snarky, I would compare it with Ghostbusters.

 

I kind of want to play through "To Serve and Protect" now.

[slikmar]

One thing that struck me, and not sure hasnt happened, but after her role in The Wolf of Wall Street, Focus, the recent Tarzan movie and this - she should be headed for a big pay day. That girl can get into a role.

Speaking of which -

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/suicide-squad-margot-robbie-lobbying-918390

I would rather see Harley and Ivy together, but I could live with this.