bigdamnhero

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.  This is what the MCU realizes--the story is driven by the inevitable conflicts between the characters, but those conflicts generally don't overcome the basic optimism and goodness that they all share.  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. 

Yesterday a friend passes this tweet on to me with the comment "very interesting":
 
 
My reply back to my friend:
 
 
Later clarified to my friend that "not really" was directed at his "very interesting". 
 
In other words, DC hired the guy who deconstructed the comics genre and used this film a model for the DCEU—Hope, optimism and heroism are replaced with fear, nihilism and pessimism. 

Well, I assume that the folks who witnessed severe tonal inconsistency aren't just making that up. Which means that everyone else is either just tone deaf, so to speak, or don't care about such things. Which review one takes to heart very much depends on which group one falls into, I imagine.

I trust the reviews of other people based on whether they have previously liked stuff that I liked and disliked stuff I disliked. Hence why I asked the question.
 
For professional reviewers, I don't actually care if they like the movie or not; I care if I can tell whether or not I'm going to like the movie based on their review. Ebert was a genius at that; the AV Club is pretty good too.

From Twitter: "if you see suicide squad be sure to stay after the credits. lots of people leave half empty containers of popcorn and you can just have them"https://twitter.com/robwhisman/status/761676958082146304

If there's one thing I've learned it is that I simply can't trust the reviews of others when it comes to these things, especially when they say a movie has "great action scenes." Too many folks have heaped high praise on The Dark Knight for its action scenes, which were often incoherent messes, for me to trust anyone anymore.

For what it’s worth, I put together some background info for Tyri's player on the telenovela that is Viking politics at the end of the 10th Century. I figured I might as well share it here for anyone who's interested. We don't have a lot of historical written records from that period, so this is mostly pulled from various Norse sagas. The last few years have been even more tumultuous than usual, partly because of the conflict between newly-converted Christians and die-hard pagans.
 
Thyri grew up on the borderland of Norway and Sweden, not far from Danish-held territory on the southern coast. It’s a remote, forested area claimed by all three powers, but in practice it’s said that “In the borderlands few men’s authority extends beyond the length of their right arm.” Tax collectors and missionaries alike tend to wind up captured and sold as slaves. It’s a rough place even by Viking standards is what I’m saying.
 
Sweden is currently ruled by King Olof Erickson, sometimes called Olof the Lap-King, because he was crowned King “while still in his nurse’s lap.” He’s now in his late teens and has recently converted to Christianity. His nickname should give you some idea of how much respect his subjects have for him, but overall he's doing okay.
 
Olof’s mother is Queen Sigrud, known as Sigrud the Strong-Minded or Sigrud the Haughty. The widow of Eric the Victorious, the first King of Sweden, she basically ran Sweden while Olof was a child, and still wields enormous influence. The most desirable bachelorette in Scandinavia, she once dealt with two over-zealous suitors by locking them in a barn to fight it out…and then burning the barn to the ground with them both inside. She’s kindof the achetype of Badass Viking Queen, and I’m guessing Tyri is a bit of a fangirl.
 
Until last year Norway was ruled by Olaf Tryvassen, the first Viking king to convert to Christianity. Olaf is another larger-than-life character, who led his first Viking raiding party at the ripe old age of 12 and is generally regarded as the strongest and fiercest warrior in Scandinavia. He’s spent the last several years forcibly converting Norway to Christianity one village at a time.
 
Two years ago (999), Olaf traveled to Sweden to meet with Queen Sigrud, and proposed a marriage that would unite Norway & Sweden. Things reportedly went well at first, but Sigrud pointedly refused to convert to Christianity, and in a rage Olaf slapped her in the face. Sigrud told him “This may well be the death of you” before departing.
 
Shortly thereafter, Sigrud married Olaf’s chief rival, the Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard, and began building a coalition against Olaf.
 
Meanwhile, King Sweyn had tried to marry his sister Thyri Haraldsdotter* off to the Wendish King Burislav. But Thyri wasn’t having any of it, and instead fled to Norway and married Olaf Tryvassen. Sweyn was pissed and refused to pay Thyri’s dowry, so now Olaf is pissed. Thyri is pushing Olaf to fight Sweyn to recover Danish territory she feels are hers by right. And Sigrud is urging Sweyn to attack Olaf to get payback for that slap. You know that’s all gonna end well.
 
Finally in September of 1000, Sweyn Forkbeard and Olof Lap-King put together a fleet of 70 ships, joined by Olaf’s enemies from Norway. They ambushed Olaf off the Oresund Straight when he only had 11 ships with him. Olaf’s men fought fiercely, but they were too badly outnumbered. After many hours of fighting only Olaf’s personal ship the Long Serpent was left – at 34 pairs of oars, the largest longship ever built. In the end, King Olaf stepped overboard before he could be captured, and let his heavy armor bear him down to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. (Tho his body was never recovered, and “Elvis sightings” persist for many years afterwards.)
 
So today Sweyn rules most of Norway – through various local puppets – in addition to Denmark, and is currently plotting his conquest of England. (Which in “real history” he accomplishes in 1013.) Swedish King Olof earned a bit more respect for his part in the battle and people call him Lap-King less often, tho Sweyn got the bulk of the land and the glory. 
 
And Sigrud's honor has been avenged.
 
 
* Not to be confused with the PC Thyri Thorvaldsdottir.

Batman and Superman have decades of former representations on television and film essentially weighing them down, and so there is immense pressure to find a fresh take on the character with each new outing. That tends to lead studios in all kinds of disastrous creative directions. "Staying faithful" to the character looks to studio execs like code for "copy a previously take on the character," which is anathema to them.
 
In contrast, aside from Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, the characters in the MCU are all completely brand new to most viewers, and so Marvel enjoys the luxury of having no audience expectations to meet. I find Spider-Man to be a fascinating case. Despite a very successful, and pretty faithful take on the character not that long ago (i.e., recent enough to be in the CGI era), Marvel is betting that they can do it at least as well, if not better. If it was WB/DC trying that (and with any character other than Batman), that hubris would lead to catastrophe, I'm certain of it.

Something occurred to me today, and I am sure I am not the first one to think of this. When you make a Batman movie, Bruce Wayne is a secondary character and I think that usually works. When you make a Superman movie, what you should be doing is making a Clark Kent, Investigative Journalist movie, with Superman being almost secondary. I know that would be hard to sell, but if you did a real Investigative Journalist movie where Clark is investigating a series of crimes or something bigger (Lexcorp illegal science or Crime Syndicate) and then added Supes into it, you would probably get a much better movie then Superman vs. the huge monster/powerperson you want to use. It's really how he came into conflict with Lex in the beginning, not to mention many others. It's one of the reasons I liked Lois and Clark series - they were reporters first and then Superman. People seem to forget that Clark was at least almost as good as Lois at investigating stuff. They actually have done a decent job of making Lois do the investigating and figuring out stuff in these latest movies, but they seem to dumb down Clark a lot.
I wish that they would try to do this. Course, i wish they would do a detective movie with Batman.

I've noticed that Grace Randolph often has very, um, definite preconceptions about how certain properties should be executed in a movie. Her reviews are sometimes based on how well the film matches those, rather than what the actual movie is.
 
Jeremy Jahns, the reviewer I linked to earlier, at least makes an effort to evaluate how well a film succeeds at whatever it appears to be trying to do, whether or not he personally likes the choices made.

Incidentally, Indiewire's scathing review of Suicide Squad included the following note"
 
And all I could think of was "Well, at least they got one thing faithful to the comics..."

Incidentally, Indiewire's scathing review of Suicide Squad included the following note"
 
And all I could think of was "Well, at least they got one thing faithful to the comics..."

Incidentally, Indiewire's scathing review of Suicide Squad included the following note"
 
And all I could think of was "Well, at least they got one thing faithful to the comics..."

Incidentally, Indiewire's scathing review of Suicide Squad included the following note"
 
And all I could think of was "Well, at least they got one thing faithful to the comics..."

Incidentally, Indiewire's scathing review of Suicide Squad included the following note"
 
And all I could think of was "Well, at least they got one thing faithful to the comics..."

I agree - they snuck in a few of the tropes, which (since it was a success) they can now get away with. Then they were able to add a few more tropes and downplay a few more of the traditional Sci Fi tropes. But I didn't find IM I a lot more comic book Superhero than the original Robocop.
 

This is pretty accurate, I think - not Miller (at least not alone), but looking at the ones that sell, and picking out one or two elements as the "reason they sell". I recall reading an article years back speculating on DC trying to emulate the success of early Marvel. So they look at a few books and decide "HEY - Bad art sells!" Well, of course, Marvel was more grounded in reality, so all the DC Supers start talking like the cool 16 - 24 demographic speaks - except they really start speaking like 45 yo WASPs think that generation speaks.
 
"Iron Man sold" or even "MCU sold" does not equal "Super-heros sell". It equals "a solid movie using real super-hero tropes can sell". Just like Dark Knight Returns does not equal "all edgy, nourish Super stories will sell and nothing else will". It really indicated "this different exploration of the character was well done and sells". We remember DKR and Watchmen 30 years later (God, I'm old...) because they were innovative, and great stories, and we forget the blemishes. We also forget the hundreds of other titles that tried to simulate their success but were not innovative, great stories, just tried to don similar trappings and success would follow even if the actual books were crap.
 

I don't see GL in the same light. Techno-suits, robots and cyborgs have been all over Sci Fi cinema, and Iron Man at first glance doesn't look all that different. What's the precedent for a blockbuster hit starring a guy with a magic ring?

"Classic studio mold" has still made mountains of cash and even some damn good movies now and then. The problem with DC/Warner is not just that they're making bad comic book movies - if they got good reviews and pulled in a broad general audience, it wouldn't matter if fandom complained that they weren't true to the comics. The problem is they're making just plain bad movies. (Or more objectively: movies that have failed to generate much excitement from audiences or critics.)
 
I blame Frank Miller.
 
No really. I know I blame Miller for a lot of things, but hear me out on this one.
 
Warner owns the rights to the biggest, most iconic and recognizable superhero names ever. And yet since Superman II in 1980, the only truly successful superhero films they've put out have been Batman movies. What's the most influential and best-known Batman comic, particularly among non-fans? DKR, no question, will Moore's Killing Joke a distant second. Both Burton's 1989 Batman movie and Nolan's trilogy in the `00s explicitly listed DKR among their biggest influences, and both made tons of money. By contrast, every time they've tried to make a "lighter" superhero movie it's bombed.
 
Unfortunately, rather than concluding "fans will go see superhero movies if they're well made, know what they're about, and hold together reasonably well," the WB Execs have concluded "People love Frank Miller Batman and hate Adam West Batman - no, there's no middle ground here - so everything needs to be Frank Miller-style."
 
Put another way: DC movies went from the Silver Age (West's Batman, Reeves' Superman) straight to the Iron Age, and in their minds, those are the only two options.
 
Meanwhile, Marvel's movies have been much more Bronze Agey, splitting the difference between Silver & Iron. I think in the eyes of the WB Execs, Marvel can get away with it because their heroes are already a little more believable, grounded and relatable - plus, they don't have a lot of Silver Age baggage in the popular consciousness they need to distance themselves from, like WB so obviously feels they need to with the DC characters.
 
So now that the public isn't reacting well to WB's DC movies, they literally don't know what to do to "fix" them without going full on Adam West. So we wind up with Suicide Squad which (from the reviews) can't fully commit to being dark because apparently audiences don't like that anymore, but can't commit to just being a fun action movie because that way lies Adam West and madness. So they try to do both poorly.
 
Help us Geoff Johns. You're our only hope.
 
Edit: To clarify, I'm not actually a big fan of most of Johns' comics. But at least he gets that Adam West and Frank Miller aren't the only two options.

I get the distinction you're making, but while IM wasn't rife with comic-book tropes and imagery, what it did include was very important and fundamental to the genre. We have a less-than-admirable lead character who experiences a traumatic event causing him to re-evaluate his entire life, and dedicate himself to making up for past sins and protecting innocent people. That's a textbook superhero origin. The hero's close ally turns out to be his secret nemesis, who takes on a version of the hero's powers so the two of them have to duke it out in the climax. And IM didn't try to disguise its four-color-comic roots: bright vibrant colors, improbable techno-gimmicks, and larger-than-life action sequences.

To me, it all comes down to making a good movie.  If Pixar can make us care about bugs, cars, robots, etc., then WB can make us care about Green Lantern or any other character in their stable. Write a good story with strongly written characters, make the audience care what happens to them, and then execute well. That's what needs to happen.
 
All the rest is just stuff around the edges, to me.

I forgot this one from a few weeks ago. Historical fantasy game, set in the "real" Europe of 1001 AD. The PCs have been summoned to meet with Pope Sylvester II aka Gerbert of Aurilac, who in real life was also one of Europe's leading scholars and mathematicians of his day. (Granted not a ton of competition for that title in 1001...) They find the Pope has constructed a giant room-sized abacus, with His Holiness up in the choir loft directing monks who are pushing large disks around like a giant game of shuffleboard which is apparently a thing Gerbert actually did. So I'm describing this to the players - mainly just because I thought it made for a cool visual and gives a sense for the guy's character - and I offhandedly remark that I have no idea why a giant abacus would be better at solving mathematical problems that a regular-sized one, when one player explains:
 
"Well you see, Moore's Law tells us that the maximum size of abacus stones doubles every 5 years..."

Just a thought here: if by some mischance (translation: evil GM scheming) His Holiness' supercomputer goes rogue,
the PC group can always introduce some destructive bugs into the system -- all they have to do is find a good-sized
termite nest ( ).
 
 
Major Tom 2009

We're setting up for the Big Campaign Finale. One PC has a 20-something daughter with superpowers, who is following in Daddy's footsteps. (She's a DNPC, but also bought as a Follower.) Daughter wants to join the PCs on the Final Assault. The player is debating whether to bring her along or not; the player thinks it would be fun and they could use the additional firepower, but in-character the PC would be reluctant to expose his daughter to what is practically a suicide mission. Daughter really doesn't want to be left behind, and is wheedling Daddy to let her come.
 
Another player OOC: "As the father of two daughters, can we just skip ahead to the part where she gets her way? Trust me on this one."

I forgot this one from a few weeks ago. Historical fantasy game, set in the "real" Europe of 1001 AD. The PCs have been summoned to meet with Pope Sylvester II aka Gerbert of Aurilac, who in real life was also one of Europe's leading scholars and mathematicians of his day. (Granted not a ton of competition for that title in 1001...) They find the Pope has constructed a giant room-sized abacus, with His Holiness up in the choir loft directing monks who are pushing large disks around like a giant game of shuffleboard which is apparently a thing Gerbert actually did. So I'm describing this to the players - mainly just because I thought it made for a cool visual and gives a sense for the guy's character - and I offhandedly remark that I have no idea why a giant abacus would be better at solving mathematical problems that a regular-sized one, when one player explains:
 
"Well you see, Moore's Law tells us that the maximum size of abacus stones doubles every 5 years..."

Sooo...His Holiness (in the campaign you've described) has basically built an 11th-Century supercomputer, eh?
 
At least they won't have to worry about the thing going Skynet on them ( ).
 
 
Major Tom 2009

I forgot this one from a few weeks ago. Historical fantasy game, set in the "real" Europe of 1001 AD. The PCs have been summoned to meet with Pope Sylvester II aka Gerbert of Aurilac, who in real life was also one of Europe's leading scholars and mathematicians of his day. (Granted not a ton of competition for that title in 1001...) They find the Pope has constructed a giant room-sized abacus, with His Holiness up in the choir loft directing monks who are pushing large disks around like a giant game of shuffleboard which is apparently a thing Gerbert actually did. So I'm describing this to the players - mainly just because I thought it made for a cool visual and gives a sense for the guy's character - and I offhandedly remark that I have no idea why a giant abacus would be better at solving mathematical problems that a regular-sized one, when one player explains:
 
"Well you see, Moore's Law tells us that the maximum size of abacus stones doubles every 5 years..."