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

[Spence]

1 hour ago, dmjalund said:

this started before Disney+. Superhero movies in the cinema kind of have to be epic. Some people don;t go to the cinema for anything less. Disney+ (and before them Netflix) had superhero movies that were more down to earth. This is where we will find the more low-key superhero stories (like Hawkeye)

 

Well yes.  Not just before D+, but from the very beginning of supers movies.  Heck the X-Men movies pushed it to ridicules with Last Stand a couple years before the MCU kickoff. 

I just noted the MCU because people tend to just focus on what they did right and simply ignore the hole they dug.

 

But for me the movies about the heroes before they overpowered are better.  Of the MCU movies I liked IM1, CAP1 and Thor1 far better than the part 2's.  

And even though Batman is NOT a Hero (still one of my favorite characters)  I liked the first in each movie incarnation far better than the follow on movies. 

 

The sequels seem to be just trying to shovel more cr*p into the sack rather than try to tell a compelling story. 

The movies that just try to increase the number of villains are really bad.

 

Back in the 80's I liked Marvel better than DC because their characters were lower in power and their stories had more risk and grittiness than DC.  DC heroes were all godlike and invulnerable and seemed to lean gimmicky.  Superman had some enemies that were just sad like Mister Mxyzptlk. 

 

I pretty much stopped reading comics in the early 90's because they got so bad they made me embarrassing to myself to read. 

 

I'd love for them to make some of the 80's storylines.  They had some great arcs that could be three or four movies, all without dead ending the title.

[zslane]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer carried this problem into the tv space in the late 1990s. Every season had to have a bigger bad with the whole world in jeopardy again. It became a joke between the characters that they actually had to use the plural of apocalypse. It probably helped that the show was part comedy and that you weren't expected to take it all that seriously in the first place. Agents of SHIELD followed in these footsteps for sure. But the Netflix Marvel shows did not, and I think there was something really refreshing about that.

 

As for Peacemaker, well, I couldn't get past the first 20 or so minutes of Gunn's Suicide Squad movie, so Cena's show will pretty much sit at the bottom of my tv watching priority list. Somewhere below catching up on the third seasons of Titans and Doom Patrol, neither of which I intend to watch at all, so there you go.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I hear Doom Patrol is pretty good, but I never was into the comic so I dunno.  Gunn is a screwed up, disturbing individual personally so I don't care for promoting his movies or paying him for them to begin with and his new Suicide Squad is probably entertaining but it does not sound like the kind of thing I like to watch.

[zslane]

12 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I hear Doom Patrol is pretty good

 

I'm sure it is to those who enjoy its style of storytelling. I am not among them, however.

[Spence]

4 hours ago, zslane said:

But the Netflix Marvel shows did not, and I think there was something really refreshing about that.

 

As for Peacemaker, well, I couldn't get past the first 20 or so minutes of Gunn's Suicide Squad movie, so Cena's show will pretty much sit at the bottom of my tv watching priority list.

 

I liked the Netflix shows, even the so called "bad" ones. 

 

The first Suicide Squad was so bad it didn't rise to the level of utter garbage.

Surprisingly, Suicide Squad 2 was actually entertaining and fun.  

After the first one I almost didn't watch the second.  I only did because it was free to me (borrowed BluRay) and I was bored. 

 

 

[zslane]

The first Suicide Squad movie was, at least in my view, an exercise in lazy, uninspired, amateurish writing. The second one was outright unpleasant to sit through; I was so utterly put off by the beach landing and subsequent jungle infiltration scenes that I hated myself for watching even that much.

[Spence]

2 hours ago, zslane said:

The first Suicide Squad movie was, at least in my view, an exercise in lazy, uninspired, amateurish writing. The second one was outright unpleasant to sit through; I was so utterly put off by the beach landing and subsequent jungle infiltration scenes that I hated myself for watching even that much.

I was laughing my ass off.  They were obviously an expendable distraction and none of them were expected to survive. 

 

It was like a British comedy along the line of Black Adder or Mr. Bean.  Over the top stupidity somehow surviving.

 

The big starfish sealed the deal.  Stupid enough to be hilarious. 

 

No.   I liked SS2.  It wasn't high cinema, but it was entertaining.

[zslane]

Well, it probably doesn't help that I think the whole idea behind the Suicide Squad is retarded to begin with. I can't help but feel that the movies are making fun of themselves, and I just don't get the joke. Bear in mind that I'm not a fan of superhero parody, so the Suicide Squad movies were never destined to be my cup of tea. (And before anyone points out that the SS movies aren't actually parody, I'll reiterate that they come across that way to me just the same, hence my underlying disdain.)

[Christopher R Taylor]

Suicide Squad is a GREAT idea, if its used well.  Don't treat them as reluctant heroes, treat them as a special task force used by the government to deal with stuff that the government doesn't want the heroes to know about or don't expect them to make it out of.  Its the Dirty Dozen, the series.  These are expendable people sent to do something stupidly dangerous, as a sort of street level Dark Champions commando mission.  Don't send them after Starro or... whatever the hell it was the first movie was against.  Enchantress' big beam in the sky?  Send them after a drug cartel in a fictitious South American country.  Send them after a terrorist camp in Southeast Asia. 

 

DC has so many lame low-end Villains that they have an endless supply of losers and weirdos to use for these missions.  You know, all those one-off freaks that should never possibly give the hero the slightest challenge, but because the writer needs them to, somehow do, like 90% of The Flash's rogues gallery.

[Pariah]

I trust DC to make a good superhero movie much like Corwin of Amber trusts his family.

 

Which is to say, not at all.

 

[zslane]

2 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

DC has so many lame low-end Villains that they have an endless supply of losers and weirdos to use for these missions.

 

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I have no interest in watching movies about lame, low-end villains, losers, and weirdos who go on covert suicide missions that some off-the-books, morally murky government agency wants carried out in the name of, what? U.S. "national security"? Any mission where you fully expect your operatives to die in the effort is a poorly planned mission. The very idea is bone stupid on the face of it.

[Lord Liaden]

Well then, I'm in the minority with you. No execution of the concept, in comics or movies, has appealed to me so far. But I've never been a fan of the silly supers sub-genre, so this latest iteration was never going to reach me.

[csyphrett]

I didn't see the second Squad movie. A friend told me about it and team 1's deaths. I was like you know Mongal is invulnerable and Javelin is basically a Green Arrow with spears. He was like I didn't know that, but it goes with the fact that one of the Squad could call the enemy and let them know what was happening from inside the prison

CES  

[Spence]

5 hours ago, csyphrett said:

I didn't see the second Squad movie. A friend told me about it and team 1's deaths. I was like you know Mongal is invulnerable and Javelin is basically a Green Arrow with spears. He was like I didn't know that, but it goes with the fact that one of the Squad could call the enemy and let them know what was happening from inside the prison

CES  

 

Well SS2 wasn't supposed to be a well plotted movie.  It was more like a Rowan Atkinson skit extended into a movie length. 

 

Plot holes a mile wide and a lot of "just because" logic. 

 

Spoiler

But you don't get to see Harley swimming around in a giant starfishes eyeball making a hole so that thousands of rats and swim in and eat the starfish from the inside out in a movie everyday. 

 

Nope, SS2 was not a movie to be watched in anything resembling a serious manner and arguing it wasn't serious enough is kind of like arguing that not all the costumes and armor used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail were period accurate. Why???

[BoloOfEarth]

2 hours ago, Spence said:

Nope, SS2 was not a movie to be watched in anything resembling a serious manner and arguing it wasn't serious enough is kind of like arguing that not all the costumes and armor used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail were period accurate. Why???

 

Wait... they weren't?!

[death tribble]

In the original comic story a squad was formed that included The Weasel, The Thinker, Mr 104, Rick Flagg and PSI.  As I recall there were other people possibly Nightshade involved. However of the ones named beforehand only Rick Flagg survives. The Weasel goes nuts and kills The Thinker. Flagg retrieves the helmet that The Thinker wore. When The Weasel runs into the team again, the Thinker's last thought is that The Weasel must die and the helmet blasts hi to death. PSI was a Supergirl opponent and 'died' as Crisis On Infinite Earths changed the past. I don't recall Mr 104's demise. 

[unclevlad]

On 1/17/2022 at 7:24 PM, Spence said:

It was like a British comedy along the line of Black Adder or Mr. Bean.  Over the top stupidity somehow surviving.

 

I only caught a few Black Adder episodes here and there.  I find...yeah, it can work, but it's also easy to go overboard.  And that's when it's done *well*.  I don't trust anyone to do it now;  the fundamental style of comedy has changed.  I also don't trust a modern American cast to do it right.

 

And the scene that Spence has hidden?  OK, so the target market is 10-12 year old boys...physical or mental age, mind.  

[Lord Liaden]

8 hours ago, Spence said:

 

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But you don't get to see Harley swimming around in a giant starfishes eyeball making a hole so that thousands of rats and swim in and eat the starfish from the inside out in a movie everyday. 

 

 

Spoiler

Bloodsport's bally artillery can't make a dent in Starro, including an eye that's a target as big as a baseball diamond; but Harley's little spear tears right through the eye?

I'm willing to suspend my disbelief, but not hang it by the neck until dead.

 

[Ranxerox]

17 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

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Bloodsport's bally artillery can't make a dent in Starro, including an eye that's a target as big as a baseball diamond; but Harley's little spear tears right through the eye?

I'm willing to suspend my disbelief, but not hang it by the neck until dead.

 

Javelin seemed to think that the spear was a big deal, and just because we never really got to see him us it does not mean that he was wrong.

[Christopher R Taylor]

 

Quote

And the scene that Spence has hidden?  OK, so the target market is 10-12 year old boys...physical or mental age, mind.  

 

I think Gunn was trying to do something really different and make Harley the star, but yeah.  The whole world has turned into Beavis and Butthead.

[Ranxerox]

15 hours ago, csyphrett said:

I didn't see the second Squad movie. A friend told me about it and team 1's deaths. I was like you know Mongal is invulnerable and Javelin is basically a Green Arrow with spears. He was like I didn't know that, but it goes with the fact that one of the Squad could call the enemy and let them know what was happening from inside the prison

CES  

 

Well, yes, they nerfed Mongal considerably from the comic version of her.  However, since the DCU is explicitly a different universe than Prime Earth, I don't see that as cheating.  The same goes for Javelin thought I am not sure that Green Arrow would have made it through that if you stripped away his plot armor.

 

Actually, there is a thriving market in burner phones in American prisons.  They are small, easy to smuggle and there is always some guard who is willing to accept bribes.  Heck, at a place like Belle Reve, probably most of the guards would be open to accepting bribes.  Though in this case that doesn't really matter, since Amanda Waller obviously wanted to create a distraction for team #2 and to do some house cleaning while she was at it by getting rid of all the members of the team who disobeyed her in the last movie.  So, even if Belle Reve was normally good about keeping its prisoners from have cell phones, an exception would have been made in this case.

[csyphrett]

6 hours ago, Ranxerox said:

 

Well, yes, they nerfed Mongal considerably from the comic version of her.  However, since the DCU is explicitly a different universe than Prime Earth, I don't see that as cheating.  The same goes for Javelin thought I am not sure that Green Arrow would have made it through that if you stripped away his plot armor.

 

Actually, there is a thriving market in burner phones in American prisons.  They are small, easy to smuggle and there is always some guard who is willing to accept bribes.  Heck, at a place like Belle Reve, probably most of the guards would be open to accepting bribes.  Though in this case that doesn't really matter, since Amanda Waller obviously wanted to create a distraction for team #2 and to do some house cleaning while she was at it by getting rid of all the members of the team who disobeyed her in the last movie.  So, even if Belle Reve was normally good about keeping its prisoners from have cell phones, an exception would have been made in this case.

From my friend's description of what was going on, Waller sent them in without telling them about Starro and tried to kill Team 2 when they were succeeding. Essentially it's like M killing Bond by remote control when he doesn't flee the scene in the opening minutes of Tomorrow Never Dies. 

 

CES 

[mattingly]

7 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

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Bloodsport's bally artillery can't make a dent in Starro, including an eye that's a target as big as a baseball diamond; but Harley's little spear tears right through the eye?

I'm willing to suspend my disbelief, but not hang it by the neck until dead.

 

It was a magic spear, and she was on a mission from God...

 

[Spence]

12 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

 

I think Gunn was trying to do something really different and make Harley the star, but yeah.  The whole world has turned into Beavis and Butthead.

Ran out of "likes".

So 💙

[Starlord]

6 hours ago, mattingly said:

 

It was a magic spear, and she was on a mission from God...

 

 

Heh, heh, heh, heh...he said spear...heh, heh, heh heh.