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


Cassandra

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I find wish fulfillment to often become ugly without the need for deconstruction. That said, the darkness of Watchmen(the comic) was extremely well done and had a point. In the end, the grimdark of many comic book movies is more akin to Spawn(the comic or the movie), more about the style of the darkness, but empty of anything else.

 

I believe that the move to deconstruct comic books, beginning in the 1990s, was a necessary and ultimately beneficial trend for the genre. (Once you strip away most of the supers from that era with "death," "dark," or "blood" in their names.) ;)  Examining who those characters are as people, why the storytelling conventions exist, and what the genre really says about society, led thoughtful writers like Peter David and Kurt Busiek to craft fresh stories which added depth to iconic superheroes without trashing everything that made them appealing in the first place.

 

But too many writers never moved past the instinct to tear the heroes down.

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The DCEU is in the tradition of every super/natural/hero movie or tv show in recent years (and there are many) that stuffs the hero into the narrative box of "you must hide yourself and your powers because the government (and the world) will hunt you down, imprison you, experiment on you, and then turn you into a mindless weapon under their control, and will kill everyone you love if you don't comply." Our heroes aren't allowed to be heroes without fear, paranoia, and cynical pessimism hovering over them their entire lives.

Trust of authority - governmental, corporate, or otherwise - is at an all time low. So we can't be too surprised that is reflected in our entertainment. I thought the Avengers struck a great chord with the Man On The Street interview clips at the end, where some people are clearly grateful to have heroes looking out for them, while others are more suspicious or outright dismissive. In reality, both reactions would certainly exist. The Fear reaction seems to have the upper hand in the MCU at the moment, but the Hope is still there. I'm still hoping CW is the low point as far as that goes, and future movies will focus on how our Heroes overcome that fear to build a brighter world.

 

In general I agree, but I really think it's a bit more specific to the character in question.  Batman is unusually well suited to grimdark, though it's not a requirement.  Indeed you'd have to dial it back a notch if he was working with Superman.  Supes, of course, is (or ought to be) almost exactly the opposite, a superior godlike being constrained only by American values and occasional Kryptonite.  He has to be a goody two shoes or his character doesn't work. 

Well said. Dark Knight Returns was a great Batman story, but it was a lousy Superman story. (Unless you have nothing but contempt for the character, like Miller and Snyder clearly do, and like seeing him portrayed as a clueless tool.) Using it as the inspirational basis for Nolan's Batman trilogy was brilliant. Using it as inspiration for the broader DCU defeats the point. If they really committed to making a film franchise where most of the heroes are idiots and Batman's the only one who knows what he's doing, you could maybe get away with that. But they want to have it both ways and expect us to cheer for their fundamentally-unlikable characters.

 

Similarly, Watchmen was brilliant as a limited-run deconstruction of the genre. Using it as inspiration for a one-shot art film deconstructing the genre could work. Using it as inspiration for a franchise of summer blockbuster action movies defeats the point.

 

The DCU's fundamental problem is that they're getting the characters' personalities wrong, and the personalities are what's supposed to drive the plot, so the plot is all wrong too. 

Agreed. Tho again, I could handle it if they got the characters' personalities "wrong" from the standpoint of differing from the source material if they had gotten them right in terms of working well against each other and making sense in the context of the movies. MCU Hawkeye is completely different from comics Hawkeye, but it works because he's a great, well-written and well-acted character who plays well off the other characters. But DCUs characters have been not only unfaithful to the source material, but just plain awful in their own right.

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Trust of authority - governmental, corporate, or otherwise - is at an all time low. So we can't be too surprised that is reflected in our entertainment. I thought the Avengers struck a great chord with the Man On The Street interview clips at the end, where some people are clearly grateful to have heroes looking out for them, while others are more suspicious or outright dismissive. In reality, both reactions would certainly exist. 

 

No, you're right, it isn't surprising that it is reflected in our entertainment. But "entertainment" is a very broad canvas. Superhero stories are just one small corner of it. I sort of feel that there are plenty of other very large areas of that canvas where all our dark, nightmarish fears of government and corporate malfeasance can be played out: spy thrillers, political thrillers, crime thrillers, even horror movies. But just like Pixar and Disney animated features provide a place to go for a certain kind of storytelling, so too I think the superhero genre is best utilized to tell brighter, more hopeful and aspirational stories. If you start turning superhero movies into just another dark thriller genre, then where do I go to get my classic superhero fix? The kind where the villain is Dr. Doom and his armies of robots, not a corrupt senator in cahoots with the corrupt Secretary of State, or the tech billionaire in cahoots with a foreign terrorist organization? Wolverine, for all his anti-hero posturing is not Jason Bourne, and I don't feel that his stories belong in a Bourne-like world.

 

Experimentation is fine, but when the genre's most antithetical elements start to become the new norm, something has gone horribly wrong in my view. That's where the DCEU has taken itself.

 

"In reality, both reactions would exist."

 

Yes, but there's that word again (reality). The kind of reality I want from my superhero movies is the kind where both reactions exist, but the reaction that comes from a place of nobility and compassion and understanding not only wins out, but is regarded as the underlying, and expected, standard for the fictive society, even (and maybe especially) within the walls of government and big business. The battle between good and evil is supposed to take place between proxies: the superheroes and supervillains. Making the subtext into text strikes me as a profound failure of understanding of the genre.

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Batman is unusually well suited to grimdark, though it's not a requirement.

Is he though? I mean, conceptually speaking, Batman is supposed to strike fear in the hearts of criminals, not the general public (or the audience). We are meant to understand that he is fighting for justice and the well-being of the citizenry, against villainous forces the conventional police forces, constrained by beauracracy and protocol, are insufficient remedy. Just because he works in the shadows, in an almost noir-like atmosphere, doesn't mean Batman is a noir character in tone or temperment. He was turned into such as a reaction to the 60s tv show and its overly campy send-up, but reactionary change is rarely where you find positive change.

 

Nolan is praised for The Dark Knight, but let's not forget that at the end of that movie, Batman was perceived as a villain of sorts, and he had to resort to becoming "the hero Gotham needs" rather than "the hero Gotham wants". I remember almost vomiting in my mouth a little at the ethical trajectory being plotted for Batman in that film.

 

In the real world of murky gray morality and blurred ethical lines, that kind of ends-justifies-the-means only works (for most folks) in the name of national security. But Batman doesn't operate in the real world; he operates in an abstraction of the real world, and we as readers/viewers get to enjoy an escape from the cruel realities of our world and take comfort in imagining a simpler one where our problems are handled with righteous fisticuffs and the honorable application of god-like power.

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"They are a good people, Kal-El. They wish to be."

 

"They only lack the light to show the way."

 

That's what Zack Snyder and crew forgot. Superman is supposed to be that light. He doesn't act for public acceptance or ego gratification, but because it's the right thing to do. He demonstrates that power doesn't have to corrupt; that hope and compassion are stronger than fear and hatred; that the strong have a moral responsibility to protect the weak, not exploit them; that being more powerful than everyone else doesn't make you better than everyone else.

 

The irony is, Jor-El in Man of Steel tells his son practically the same thing as Jor-El in Superman, but along the way that message was lost. (I sometimes feel that Jor-El was the real Superman in MoS.)

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Is he though? I mean, conceptually speaking, Batman is supposed to strike fear in the hearts of criminals, not the general public (or the audience). We are meant to understand that he is fighting for justice and the well-being of the citizenry, against villainous forces the conventional police forces, constrained by beauracracy and protocol, are insufficient remedy. Just because he works in the shadows, in an almost noir-like atmosphere, doesn't mean Batman is a noir character in tone or temperment. He was turned into such as a reaction to the 60s tv show and its overly campy send-up, but reactionary change is rarely where you find positive change.

 

Nolan is praised for The Dark Knight, but let's not forget that at the end of that movie, Batman was perceived as a villain of sorts, and he had to resort to becoming "the hero Gotham needs" rather than "the hero Gotham wants". I remember almost vomiting in my mouth a little at the ethical trajectory being plotted for Batman in that film.

 

In the real world of murky gray morality and blurred ethical lines, that kind of ends-justifies-the-means only works (for most folks) in the name of national security. But Batman doesn't operate in the real world; he operates in an abstraction of the real world, and we as readers/viewers get to enjoy an escape from the cruel realities of our world and take comfort in imagining a simpler one where our problems are handled with righteous fisticuffs and the honorable application of god-like power.

 

Batman has all the trappings of grim-and-gritty, but in most of his incarnations his moral core is unshakeable. He refuses to kill the criminals he hunts, even when many would say he's a fool for not doing so. He works outside the system, but submits law-breakers to the justice of that system. He's very much in the vein of all the other long-standing, classic comic heroes, in that he firmly believes the law has to be above any one person, and that no individual has the right to take a life based only on their own judgement.

 

But to be fair, by the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Batman's reputation has not only been redeemed, but he's become the very public, inspirational symbol of heroism to the people of Gotham City.

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Part of the problem is that if, decade after decade of comics, Superman is always what he is, it becomes a bit stale for most.

 

Only if you've been reading or watching films for those decades.  Long term fans of Superman have no problem with this nature, and they're the only ones that have stuck with him that long.  This is a common flaw in people writing, they think heroes are boring, good guys are stupid and weak, and grim angst is the only true emotion.  Since the last time we had a really good guy Superman it was the Lois Lane movie with a retarded bad guy plot (really?  Barren rock platforms in the ocean is your whole scheme?) and it did badly with critics and fans, they think good guys is the problem.

 

And uplifting, mature, responsible, heroic Superman who protects people and property is heroic, classic, and good.  But destroying city blocks is EPIC DOOOD!

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Yeah, one of the great moments in the Donner Superman movies in my opinion was:

 

General Zod: He cares. He actually cares for these Earth people.

Ursa: Like pets?

General Zod: I suppose.

Ursa: Sentimental idiot!

 

Followed by "No! The people!"

 

That was both faithful to the core character concept and damn entertaining as a moral dilemma (if you battle them in the city, Clark, thousands will die... run away?).

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Which is the core persona: Kal-El or Clark Kent? The later, definitely.

If Clark lost his Kryptonite heritage (ie superpowers) he would still do the right thing.

If Clark was forced to turn evil for a spell, he wouldn't be Superman.

 

Thus it is Clark's morality that makes him Superman not his demigod superpowers.

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Yeah, one of the great moments in the Donner Superman movies in my opinion was:

 

General Zod: He cares. He actually cares for these Earth people.

Ursa: Like pets?

General Zod: I suppose.

Ursa: Sentimental idiot!

 

Followed by "No! The people!"

 

That was both faithful to the core character concept and damn entertaining as a moral dilemma (if you battle them in the city, Clark, thousands will die... run away?).

 

That's one of the moments that stayed with me from Superman II: Supes climbing to the top of the bus, surveying the devastation the other Kryptonians were causing, and clearly thinking: "If I keep fighting them here, people will die... if I leave, people will think I'm a coward... that's no choice at all."

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I saw Suicide Squad last night.

 

It's not the train wreck I've heard it was, but a lot of the criticisms I've read were on the money. The introductory scenes and voice over were a troublesome. They're trying to cram the backstories/origins of too many characters into a few minutes at the beginning of the story. The movie is tonally inconsistent; there's Zach Snyder's GrimDark worldview, of course, and the lighter, funnier scenes (some of them reshoots, I gather) to match the original trailer everyone liked so much. I liked Will Smith's Deadshot. I loved Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. I liked Fire Guy , though I don't recall his name. He was the most conflicted and interesting character, in my opinion (but hot and crazy Harley Quinn was my favorite to watch). Killer Croc didn't get enough lines or screen time to know much about him. Captain Boomerang was a not terribly interesting stereotype. Katana didn't even rate an official flashback intro, we were just TOLD her story for the most part, and she too was mostly a cipher.

 

Amanda Waller...not Viola Davis's best work, though I wouldn't agree with reviews saying it was her worst performance every.

 

The plot didn't make a great deal of sense, and seemed more like rushing through a video game (choose your characters, choose their skins, equip them, get intro cutscene, fight!, another cutscene, fight!, cutscene, BOSS FIGHT).

 

Jared Leto's Joker did nothing for me. Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger were far, far better. I understand that a lot of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor, and good riddance.

 

Overall, I enjoyed it enough that I don't regret paying to see it, and would even watch it again on cable. (Which is a step up from BvS, which I have no desire to see again, even for free).

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I saw Suicide Squad last night.

 

It's not the train wreck I've heard it was, but a lot of the criticisms I've read were on the money. The introductory scenes and voice over were a troublesome. They're trying to cram the backstories/origins of too many characters into a few minutes at the beginning of the story. The movie is tonally inconsistent; there's Zach Snyder's GrimDark worldview, of course, and the lighter, funnier scenes (some of them reshoots, I gather) to match the original trailer everyone liked so much. I liked Will Smith's Deadshot. I loved Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. I liked Fire Guy , though I don't recall his name. He was the most conflicted and interesting character, in my opinion (but hot and crazy Harley Quinn was my favorite to watch). Killer Croc didn't get enough lines or screen time to know much about him. Captain Boomerang was a not terribly interesting stereotype. Katana didn't even rate an official flashback intro, we were just TOLD her story for the most part, and she too was mostly a cipher.

 

Amanda Waller...not Viola Davis's best work, though I wouldn't agree with reviews saying it was her worst performance every.

 

The plot didn't make a great deal of sense, and seemed more like rushing through a video game (choose your characters, choose their skins, equip them, get intro cutscene, fight!, another cutscene, fight!, cutscene, BOSS FIGHT).

 

Jared Leto's Joker did nothing for me. Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger were far, far better. I understand that a lot of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor, and good riddance.

 

Overall, I enjoyed it enough that I don't regret paying to see it, and would even watch it again on cable. (Which is a step up from BvS, which I have no desire to see again, even for free).

 

This was pretty close to my thoughts, although you seemed to like it a bit more.  Dialogue was below average and the first 45 minutes were VERY choppy.  I didn't even understand what happened at a few points.  It seemed like in less than 1 minute, she speaks to her brother, he appears and then Midway City is half destroyed and has been taken over.  Enchantresses powers and power levels fluctuated wildly.

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The irony of this article is how the author is, while decrying how outrage journalism has taken over movie reviews, makes his case through invective and hyperbole.  It's kind of sad.

Edited by Ranxerox
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Me too, LL. But there were some good stories into the 80s as well. Walt Simonson's magnificent run on Thor for example. Basically, for me at least, the Bronze Age was the best age. You can take this Iron Age Grim/Dark crap and throw it in the trash for all I care. I really wish they'd bring back Bronze Age stories, but I know they never will. It's why I stopped buying comics.

 

Well, that and the price tag. I've got too many expenses these days to support a 10 to 15 title a month habit.

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If you start turning superhero movies into just another dark thriller genre, then where do I go to get my classic superhero fix? The kind where the villain is Dr. Doom and his armies of robots, not a corrupt senator in cahoots with the corrupt Secretary of State, or the tech billionaire in cahoots with a foreign terrorist organization? Wolverine, for all his anti-hero posturing is not Jason Bourne, and I don't feel that his stories belong in a Bourne-like world.

I absolutely agree. But then we must occasionally remind ourselves that superhero movies are not made for comic book fans. They're trying to pull in a broader general audience, and they obviously think that lighthearted "unrealistic" Silver Age stuff won't bring in $1B in ticket sales. [shrug] The studios spend more money on marketing research than I'll ever see in a lifetime, so I'm not in a position to tell them they're wrong.

 

The kind of reality I want from my superhero movies is the kind where both reactions exist, but the reaction that comes from a place of nobility and compassion and understanding not only wins out, but is regarded as the underlying, and expected, standard for the fictive society, even (and maybe especially) within the walls of government and big business. The battle between good and evil is supposed to take place between proxies: the superheroes and supervillains. Making the subtext into text strikes me as a profound failure of understanding of the genre.

Again. I personally agree. But subtext doesn't always sell as well, especially when subtitled for foreign markets.

 

I still have hope for the MCU. The fact that they made the very deliberate choice to tell Civil War primarily from Cap's perspective in Cap's movie speaks volumes. I think at the end of the saga, the moral is going to be something like "If you stick to your guns and do what's right, people will eventually come around." I can live with that.

 

Nolan is praised for The Dark Knight, but let's not forget that at the end of that movie, Batman was perceived as a villain of sorts, and he had to resort to becoming "the hero Gotham needs" rather than "the hero Gotham wants". I remember almost vomiting in my mouth a little at the ethical trajectory being plotted for Batman in that film.

Don't even get me started on that ending... [tl;dr - I agree with you]

 

I think Batman works well as grimdark. But he also works well as the slightly-darker contrast character in lighter stories like the animated Justice League. Heck, I even loved him as the straight man/adult supervision in the old Giffen Dematteis Justice League comics. ("One punch! One punch!!") Even Wonder Woman can occasionally get a little dark, as happens when you're fighting literal gods and so forth.

 

But Superman should never go dark. Even if the world around him goes dark - hell, especially then - that just makes him shine all the more brightly in contrast. Of course, that would require a filmmaker who isn't a Randian douchebag who thinks helping other people is for suckers.

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Me too, LL. But there were some good stories into the 80s as well. Walt Simonson's magnificent run on Thor for example. Basically, for me at least, the Bronze Age was the best age. You can take this Iron Age Grim/Dark crap and throw it in the trash for all I care. I really wish they'd bring back Bronze Age stories, but I know they never will. It's why I stopped buying comics.

 

Well, that and the price tag. I've got too many expenses these days to support a 10 to 15 title a month habit.

 

This ^^.

 

Don't forget The Judas Contract and Days of Future Past.

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Well, I've tried to write this post about 3 times a few days ago, but the hotel Wi-Fi kept eating it....

 

I watched BvS on the plane ride up to Maine. Lots of stuff happened, many a sequel was set up, key comic book panels were shown to apparently give deep meaningful moments, and almost no one looked like they were having any fun doing it. I found myself frequently checking the progress bar on the video, wondering when they'd get to the point, or whether I'd be better off doing something else for the remainder of the flight. Simply said, they managed to make superheroes boring.

 

I did enjoy some of it. I'm firmly convinced that there's the seed of a really great detective/spy movie hiding in there with Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince that I'd have paid money to see, but it was sadly over too soon. The banter between Alfred and Batman was enjoyable, and I'm still looking forward to more Wonder Woman.

 

I'm probably not going to see Suicide Squad until it hits video/Netflix. I'm not really invested with the characters, but I understand if others like it.

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I kind of feel that the success of the MCU demonstrates a palpable hunger for superhero stories that are bright, vivid, and full of interesting characters trying to do the right thing, and succeeding. The MCU is about heroes who are constantly getting pulled into the darkness by one force or another, resisting, and ultimately triumphing over that darkness. Agents of SHIELD went to some pretty dark places in its three seasons, but its core of optimism was never extinguished in the name of broader appeal to a non-comics-reading audience. The same could be said, I think, of both Daredevil and Jessica Jones.

 

Over the course of five decades, I've seen Batman go from a campy technicolor tv in-joke to a relentlessly grim, monochrome avatar of ruthless vengeance. If that represents some sort of inevitable evolution of the superhero as a cultural archetype then I am ready to let the millenials have the genre and I'll go somewhere else for my entertainment (can I have more Stranger Things, please?). Honestly, Superman is not the only character who wears the grimdark mantle poorly; Batman does too, it's just that the character has been too long left in the hands of writers who, in my view, just don't get it.

 

Wonder Woman is shaping up to be DC's opportunity to right the ship. It remains to be seen whether or not it succeeds at the box office as well as with critics, and if it does, whether or not DC/WB learns the right lessons from that success. I hold out hope, but not much optimism.

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