zslane

But why? I fail to see the need you refer to.

Another perfectly "natural organic way" to do it is to produce a team movie first, and then if it is successful, spin off solo movies for each of the other heroes after that. Let's not make the mistake of thinking that just because the Marvel approach has been successful that it is the only way to go about it. The X-Men movies were pretty successful before they spun off Wolverine (and by extension, Deadpool), for instance.

DC didn't have to copy Marvel's approach of giving each signature character his/her own movie before putting them together in the team movie, and I'm not convinced that any of the DCEU movies would have been any better off had they done so. As I see it, the core problem isn't a lack of architectural patience, but that DC is creatively misguided (in terms of tone and characterization), and that infects everything they've done so far. Maybe Wonder Woman will be the turning point, but my sneaking suspicion is that Justice League will return to the same joyless, grimdark mode of storytelling as the other films, and the WW film will be the lone beacon of light in the DCEU.

I agree that the DCEU films feel rushed, but only in terms of overall vision. I mean, the movies themselves take just as long as any Marvel movie to make.
 
Now, just because Batgirl has "Bat" in front of her name doesn't mean DC has to wait for three Batman solo films and the JLA movie to come out before giving that character her own film. I can easily see them as being quite separable, especially since she's not a member of the Justice League. The key is to do it well, regardless of how tied (or not tied) it is to the rest of the JLA or Bat-franchise.

Wasn't Doc Oc always hitting on poor old Aunt May? He didn't strike me as that old either.
 
Regardless of the exact shape of the Parker family tree, I think the original idea was for Peter to be raised by the equivalent of grandparents. Aunt May and Uncle Ben were meant to be seen as kind, elderly caretakers, which we typically decode as grandparents in our culture. Marisa Tomei may be my age in real life, but they are not coding her as a grandparent, but as an actual aunt, which by the (statistical) norms of our society would put her in her 40s if Peter Parker is in his teens.
 
I don't have any problem with either approach. Peter Parker can be raised by grandparents or he can be raised by a MILFy aunt. As long as the characters are engaging and the stories are well told, a little bit of reimagining here and there isn't so bad in my book. At least they let Spidey keep his iconic blue-and-red spandex-y costume. Gritty reality can suck it!

Another perfectly "natural organic way" to do it is to produce a team movie first, and then if it is successful, spin off solo movies for each of the other heroes after that. Let's not make the mistake of thinking that just because the Marvel approach has been successful that it is the only way to go about it. The X-Men movies were pretty successful before they spun off Wolverine (and by extension, Deadpool), for instance.

DC didn't have to copy Marvel's approach of giving each signature character his/her own movie before putting them together in the team movie, and I'm not convinced that any of the DCEU movies would have been any better off had they done so. As I see it, the core problem isn't a lack of architectural patience, but that DC is creatively misguided (in terms of tone and characterization), and that infects everything they've done so far. Maybe Wonder Woman will be the turning point, but my sneaking suspicion is that Justice League will return to the same joyless, grimdark mode of storytelling as the other films, and the WW film will be the lone beacon of light in the DCEU.

This is something that has bothered me about this version of Danny Rand. I haven't seen the entire season yet, but I still can't shake the belief that after fifteen years of intense training with mystical monks, learning to focus his chi to the point where he can do the things he does with it, culminating in a one-on-one fight with a friggin' dragon, Danny should have mourned and processed the loss of his parents already. The fact that it leads him to do any of the things he does in this show makes zero sense to me based on what I expect from this character.
 
And this made me realize just how obsessed superhero creators/writers seem to be with orphaned kids becoming heroes and being driven, as adults, by their childhood trauma. It has gone way beyond cliché at this point. Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Barry Allen[*], Superman and Supergirl, Peter Parker, Tony Stark[**], Matt Murdock, Elektra, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Danny Rand, and probably Romanov and Wanda/Piotr. We make fun of how much mileage Batman's writers have gotten out of the motivating effect of witnessing his parent's murder as a child, but the truth is there is quite the parade of characters who have had this overused background element (being orphaned) dumped on them, and after the fourth of fifth such character, it just doesn't ring with dramatic authenticity anymore.
 
[*] In the CW version, at least, he lost his mom as a child and proceeded to do a lot of really dumb things simply because he simply never processed it as he grew up. [**] Tony was in college when his parents were murdered, but it was clearly sufficiently traumatizing that Zemo was able to use it, and it alone, as the lynchpin for his gambit to irreparably divide the Avengers.

This is something that has bothered me about this version of Danny Rand. I haven't seen the entire season yet, but I still can't shake the belief that after fifteen years of intense training with mystical monks, learning to focus his chi to the point where he can do the things he does with it, culminating in a one-on-one fight with a friggin' dragon, Danny should have mourned and processed the loss of his parents already. The fact that it leads him to do any of the things he does in this show makes zero sense to me based on what I expect from this character.
 
And this made me realize just how obsessed superhero creators/writers seem to be with orphaned kids becoming heroes and being driven, as adults, by their childhood trauma. It has gone way beyond cliché at this point. Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Barry Allen[*], Superman and Supergirl, Peter Parker, Tony Stark[**], Matt Murdock, Elektra, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Danny Rand, and probably Romanov and Wanda/Piotr. We make fun of how much mileage Batman's writers have gotten out of the motivating effect of witnessing his parent's murder as a child, but the truth is there is quite the parade of characters who have had this overused background element (being orphaned) dumped on them, and after the fourth of fifth such character, it just doesn't ring with dramatic authenticity anymore.
 
[*] In the CW version, at least, he lost his mom as a child and proceeded to do a lot of really dumb things simply because he simply never processed it as he grew up. [**] Tony was in college when his parents were murdered, but it was clearly sufficiently traumatizing that Zemo was able to use it, and it alone, as the lynchpin for his gambit to irreparably divide the Avengers.

This is something that has bothered me about this version of Danny Rand. I haven't seen the entire season yet, but I still can't shake the belief that after fifteen years of intense training with mystical monks, learning to focus his chi to the point where he can do the things he does with it, culminating in a one-on-one fight with a friggin' dragon, Danny should have mourned and processed the loss of his parents already. The fact that it leads him to do any of the things he does in this show makes zero sense to me based on what I expect from this character.
 
And this made me realize just how obsessed superhero creators/writers seem to be with orphaned kids becoming heroes and being driven, as adults, by their childhood trauma. It has gone way beyond cliché at this point. Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Barry Allen[*], Superman and Supergirl, Peter Parker, Tony Stark[**], Matt Murdock, Elektra, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Danny Rand, and probably Romanov and Wanda/Piotr. We make fun of how much mileage Batman's writers have gotten out of the motivating effect of witnessing his parent's murder as a child, but the truth is there is quite the parade of characters who have had this overused background element (being orphaned) dumped on them, and after the fourth of fifth such character, it just doesn't ring with dramatic authenticity anymore.
 
[*] In the CW version, at least, he lost his mom as a child and proceeded to do a lot of really dumb things simply because he simply never processed it as he grew up. [**] Tony was in college when his parents were murdered, but it was clearly sufficiently traumatizing that Zemo was able to use it, and it alone, as the lynchpin for his gambit to irreparably divide the Avengers.

Wasn't Doc Oc always hitting on poor old Aunt May? He didn't strike me as that old either.
 
Regardless of the exact shape of the Parker family tree, I think the original idea was for Peter to be raised by the equivalent of grandparents. Aunt May and Uncle Ben were meant to be seen as kind, elderly caretakers, which we typically decode as grandparents in our culture. Marisa Tomei may be my age in real life, but they are not coding her as a grandparent, but as an actual aunt, which by the (statistical) norms of our society would put her in her 40s if Peter Parker is in his teens.
 
I don't have any problem with either approach. Peter Parker can be raised by grandparents or he can be raised by a MILFy aunt. As long as the characters are engaging and the stories are well told, a little bit of reimagining here and there isn't so bad in my book. At least they let Spidey keep his iconic blue-and-red spandex-y costume. Gritty reality can suck it!

Wasn't Doc Oc always hitting on poor old Aunt May? He didn't strike me as that old either.
 
Regardless of the exact shape of the Parker family tree, I think the original idea was for Peter to be raised by the equivalent of grandparents. Aunt May and Uncle Ben were meant to be seen as kind, elderly caretakers, which we typically decode as grandparents in our culture. Marisa Tomei may be my age in real life, but they are not coding her as a grandparent, but as an actual aunt, which by the (statistical) norms of our society would put her in her 40s if Peter Parker is in his teens.
 
I don't have any problem with either approach. Peter Parker can be raised by grandparents or he can be raised by a MILFy aunt. As long as the characters are engaging and the stories are well told, a little bit of reimagining here and there isn't so bad in my book. At least they let Spidey keep his iconic blue-and-red spandex-y costume. Gritty reality can suck it!

Oh man, I wish Lovecraft had written about giant albino penguins!

The Ark was also supposed to be a divine weapon of antiquity. I'm not familiar with any works by Lovecraft in which an Elder God was carried around in a vessel and used by kings and generals to lay waste to armies on the battlefield. Moreover, I don't believe that the final scene with the Ark was intended to be interpreted as the unleashing of a Nameless Cosmic Horror From Beyond. If anything it was the Vengeance of Yaweh unleashed upon evil Men (the virtuous "heroes" at the scene, like Indy and Marian, were simply collateral damage).
 
But more important than any of that, the tone of the Indiana Jones series is utterly non-Lovecraftian.

Dollhouse also got really dark by the end of its run. I think you'll find a degree of tragedy in anything Whedon does, simply because he understands classical drama and how it works. Of course, not everyone likes Shakespeare's tragedies as much as his comedies, but that doesn't mean his tragedies aren't just as important to our culture.
 
If they're going to hand over the reins of a Batgirl movie to someone, I'd rather it be Whedon than Snyder.

But even non-fans know who Superman is and will be wondering when he'll finally get around to flying in his supersuit. It's one thing to say, "No, we'll never show his Super Ventriloquism power," but something else entirely to make "No flight, no tights" the show's inane mantra.

There were significant, season-defining consequences that came out of the Buffy musical episode:
Buffy reveals that she was yanked out of heaven by her friends, sending her best friend into a guilt-driven spiral of self-destruction. Buffy trades one big secret in for another as she takes the first steps in a torrid (horrid?) sex tryst with her arch-nemesis. Buffy's father-figure essentially abandons her in the belief that his presence is preventing her from fully maturing. Tara discovers she's been the victim of a mind manipulation spell cast by her lover, ultimately leading to tragedy. When she sings the song I'm Under Your Spell, the dramatic irony of its dual meaning is heartbreaking. Xander and Anya's engagement unravels from the FUD revealed/expressed during their I'll Never Tell number. Once More, With Feeling was not merely a fun little episode with a few songs thrown in, it was a major pivot point of the season's narrative, and a life-altering moment for nearly every main character. Every word of every song was a vital part of the engine that propelling those events forward. Joss Whedon was a huge fan of Sondheim and devoutly studied the form for many, many years. He may have been a first-time composer, but he was no amateur.

There were significant, season-defining consequences that came out of the Buffy musical episode:
Buffy reveals that she was yanked out of heaven by her friends, sending her best friend into a guilt-driven spiral of self-destruction. Buffy trades one big secret in for another as she takes the first steps in a torrid (horrid?) sex tryst with her arch-nemesis. Buffy's father-figure essentially abandons her in the belief that his presence is preventing her from fully maturing. Tara discovers she's been the victim of a mind manipulation spell cast by her lover, ultimately leading to tragedy. When she sings the song I'm Under Your Spell, the dramatic irony of its dual meaning is heartbreaking. Xander and Anya's engagement unravels from the FUD revealed/expressed during their I'll Never Tell number. Once More, With Feeling was not merely a fun little episode with a few songs thrown in, it was a major pivot point of the season's narrative, and a life-altering moment for nearly every main character. Every word of every song was a vital part of the engine that propelling those events forward. Joss Whedon was a huge fan of Sondheim and devoutly studied the form for many, many years. He may have been a first-time composer, but he was no amateur.

I saw Suicide Squad on bluray two weekends ago and I feel the best thing about that movie is its soundtrack, followed by Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. She's pretty much the only reason to watch that movie. I also thought that Jared Leto's Joker was an interesting take on the character. I kinda wanted to see more of him. I think a movie about Joker, Harley, and the death of Robin would make for a far more compelling movie than Suicide Squad.

This is the Iron Fist we should be seeing (costume notwithstanding):

There were significant, season-defining consequences that came out of the Buffy musical episode:
Buffy reveals that she was yanked out of heaven by her friends, sending her best friend into a guilt-driven spiral of self-destruction. Buffy trades one big secret in for another as she takes the first steps in a torrid (horrid?) sex tryst with her arch-nemesis. Buffy's father-figure essentially abandons her in the belief that his presence is preventing her from fully maturing. Tara discovers she's been the victim of a mind manipulation spell cast by her lover, ultimately leading to tragedy. When she sings the song I'm Under Your Spell, the dramatic irony of its dual meaning is heartbreaking. Xander and Anya's engagement unravels from the FUD revealed/expressed during their I'll Never Tell number. Once More, With Feeling was not merely a fun little episode with a few songs thrown in, it was a major pivot point of the season's narrative, and a life-altering moment for nearly every main character. Every word of every song was a vital part of the engine that propelling those events forward. Joss Whedon was a huge fan of Sondheim and devoutly studied the form for many, many years. He may have been a first-time composer, but he was no amateur.

This is the Iron Fist we should be seeing (costume notwithstanding):

There were significant, season-defining consequences that came out of the Buffy musical episode:
Buffy reveals that she was yanked out of heaven by her friends, sending her best friend into a guilt-driven spiral of self-destruction. Buffy trades one big secret in for another as she takes the first steps in a torrid (horrid?) sex tryst with her arch-nemesis. Buffy's father-figure essentially abandons her in the belief that his presence is preventing her from fully maturing. Tara discovers she's been the victim of a mind manipulation spell cast by her lover, ultimately leading to tragedy. When she sings the song I'm Under Your Spell, the dramatic irony of its dual meaning is heartbreaking. Xander and Anya's engagement unravels from the FUD revealed/expressed during their I'll Never Tell number. Once More, With Feeling was not merely a fun little episode with a few songs thrown in, it was a major pivot point of the season's narrative, and a life-altering moment for nearly every main character. Every word of every song was a vital part of the engine that propelling those events forward. Joss Whedon was a huge fan of Sondheim and devoutly studied the form for many, many years. He may have been a first-time composer, but he was no amateur.

Madame Gao was okay, as background characters go, on Daredevil, but nothing special. I haven't yet seen enough of Iron Fist for my opinion to have changed on that score.

Danny trained rigorously for 15 years (monks beating him with bamboo staves when he was still a child stands testament to their harsh methods). That training was then put to the test, and one hell of a test at that, when he had to defeat Shou-Lao in order to become the Immortal Iron Fist. I would say he gained one hell of a chunk of valuable combat experience in that one, arguably epic (though we don't get to see it) fight. Enough, in my view, to be able to effortlessly lay waste to any "non-enhanced" human opponent, or even a dozen of them, and look like a majestic master while doing it.