DC MOVIE THREAD

[Niners Fan in CT]

Just now, Casey said:

I would bet you money that Marvel is smarter than that and knows their fanbase doesn't need to be reminded the origin story of their most popular superhero. Real fuckin' talk.

He's getting bit by that spider whether it's opening credits or whatever and Uncle Ben is getting shot as well.

Let's move on to the next one. I'd have to go back and watch Man of Steel again but a lot of what they show here is shot for shot exactly what happened in Man of Steel only from Bruce's point of view. What lousy heroics?  Zod is a warrior.  Superman had never even been in a proper fight.  Were a lot of lives lost?  No question. But you forget that if not for Superman the death toll wouldn't have been a few hundred or a thousand, it would have been the ENTIRE planet.  Superman saved the planet. That's why he has a statue. Some, like Bruce, didn't think it was enough and didn't trust him or placed blame on him but others accepted Superman as a savior of humanity. There's a lot of back and forth in the movie, which side do you fall..  does Superman need to be checked or not.  It's similar to what happened in Manhattan with the Avengers.  Very similar. Only a crazy person would say it's not similar.

[Casey]

My man. They've already confirmed they're skipping the origin story because everyone knows it. Nobody needs a refresher. You're grasping at straws to defend DC now because you're defending the need for another retelling of Batman's origins. 4 minutes is still 4 minutes they could have spent fleshing out other stories in the movie.

[EVA]

It was the opening credits, man.  The credits.

 

And, really, if a key sequence in your movie revolves around the utterance of a mother's name (It shouldn't!  But in the event that it does...), then I really don't think it's a crime to spend 5 minutes to refresh the audience on the signifcance of the name and it's meaning to one of the characters.  In fact, I'd say it's imperative to do so.  For multiple reasons, not the least of which being that, while everyone knows how Bruce Wayne's parents died, not that many who aren't comic readers could tell you their names were Thomas and Martha.

[Niners Fan in CT]

Dude, I am aware they are not doing an entire origin story. I'm saying that I would bet they show a scene or flashback to it...

[_MJ_]

1 hour ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

$15M on a Monday is pretty good. The movie is still on par with Iron Man 3 domestically in that little "showdown" thing that BOM does but we'll see what happens with the weekend.

It doesn't have a lot of competition this weekend so the drop off numbers could go either way.  Ugh...at Meet the Blacks and God's Not Dead 2.  Yes, these are actual movies opening this weekend.

Random comments related to previous pages:  Sucker Punch was not interesting, and Zack Snyder recovering from it is actually quite inspiring since it bombed and it was pretty much all him.  Dawn of the Dead was interesting, and I did actually like The Watchmen more than most although I can never get over the weird kung-fu action scenes in it.

[Niners Fan in CT]

The only thing I know about Meet the Blacks is there is a commercial where a lady I think says  "isn't it weird that you're last name is Black and..."    "Don't say it!"

Is that a real thing?

[Brian Fowler]

Funny thing about Hulk's origin: I don't think his proper comic book origin has ever been put on screen.

[Jingus]

5 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

Funny thing about Hulk's origin: I don't think his proper comic book origin has ever been put on screen.

Even funnier: NO ORIGIN FOOTAGE WHATSOEVER was shown in the Norton and Ruffalo movies.  The Eric Bana one was literally the only time the Hulk's origin has been shown in a theatrical release.  So that's a really terrible example to use as an argument of why it's okay to keep reenacting the Wayne murders over and over again.  

[odessasteps]

4 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

Funny thing about Hulk's origin: I don't think his proper comic book origin has ever been put on screen.

Well, you would need to do set it during the Cold War, presumably. One problem with most of the big Marvel origins (FF, Hulk, Iron Man) is being grounded in the 60s. Of course, moving them forward can be easily done (as with Tony and even as we saw on tv, the Punisher).

my rule of thumb is comic book sequels should always just do the retelling of the origin in the opening credits, for the % of people new to the character.

[Casey]

so Iron Man 2 should have had a refresher at the beginning of the movie? What???

[Buy Me a Burrito]

Scored a free pass to see it on Monday with the wife. 

 

Zack Snyder is to filmmaking as Davy Richards is to pro wrestling.

[Brian Fowler]

9 minutes ago, Jingus said:

Even funnier: NO ORIGIN FOOTAGE WHATSOEVER was shown in the Norton and Ruffalo movies.  The Eric Bana one was literally the only time the Hulk's origin has been shown in a theatrical release.  So that's a really terrible example to use as an argument of why it's okay to keep reenacting the Wayne murders over and over again.  

They aped the TV show origin in the opening credits of the Norton film.

[Niners Fan in CT]

I have no idea what Jingus is talking about. This isn't going well..  2 down, 70 more to go and you're telling me they didn't show any of Hulk's origin?  Did you watch the movie?

[Jingus]

Okay, looking at it again, I forgot the opening credits featured a lil' montage of backstory.  But that's like one minute of footage.  That's not the same as restaging the entire "the Waynes go into Crime Alley and both get shot, with Martha's pearls scattering everywhere" scene again, beat by beat.  Also: no origin reruns in the Ruffalo movies, so I'm 2.25 out of 3 on that one.  

1 hour ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

What lousy heroics?  Zod is a warrior.  Superman had never even been in a proper fight.  Were a lot of lives lost?  No question. But you forget that if not for Superman the death toll wouldn't have been a few hundred or a thousand, it would have been the ENTIRE planet.  Superman saved the planet. That's why he has a statue. Some, like Bruce, didn't think it was enough and didn't trust him or placed blame on him but others accepted Superman as a savior of humanity. There's a lot of back and forth in the movie, which side do you fall..  does Superman need to be checked or not.  It's similar to what happened in Manhattan with the Avengers.  Very similar. Only a crazy person would say it's not similar.

He couldn't have figured out a way to fight Zod WITHOUT causing a whole bunch of 9/11s simultaneously?  

 

And fuck no, you're crazy for saying it IS similar to what happened in Manhattan with the Avengers.  They specifically sent some of their team members on missions to get the civilians out of the area.  No tall buildings were utterly demolished.  The level of carnage in the two different incidents isn't even close.  

[Niners Fan in CT]

Superman could have been a point man like Captain America you know if he had a team or if he had ever even fought someone before..  let alone a Kryptonian army.  Zod even causes 90% of the destruction by spearing Superman through the buildings. Your post doesn't address that you know Superman actually saved billions of lives that day. 

2.5 out of 3?  I didn't know that the Ruffalo movies were Hulk movies. So the Norton shows one minute and BvS shows four minutes.  And you said this wasn't about being nitpicky lol.

[Jingus]

If the Ruffalo movies aren't Hulk movies, then this Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman movie doesn't count as being an individual project for any of them either.  Come on.  

 

And precisely when did I say I was above nitpicking?  Of course some of those items are nitpicks.  But not all seventy-two of them.  

[tigertooth]

I ended up liking this more than I thought I would, though there were plenty of things I didn't like.

I enjoyed the Wayne murder sequence, though to be fair I was marking out that it was filmed right at a bus stop I often wait at.  But then the bats levitated young Bruce out of the bat cave in a hokey dream, and I stopped liking it.

I agree that the Washington DC subplot should have been cut.  Superman standing there like an idiot after the bomb went off kinda made me hate him. 

The music was awful.  So ham-fisted.  Tons of times I was distracted by it.

My main criticism is that both Bruce and Clark come off as entirely unlikeable.  Clark just sulks whenever he's criticized and Bruce got manipulated way too easily (and unmanipulated way too cheesily).  They both come off as childish.  And it's hard to get into their battle when you know it could be avoided with a 30 second discussion -- and then they fight, then they have the 30 second discussion, then they're best friends. 

My guess of why Joker is alive in a world where Batman is a killer: Batman had Joker, took him in, but then Joker escaped and killed again (possibly killing Robin). Now Batman feels guilty and doesn't want to make that mistake again.  So now he's a killer.  That strikes me as a decent character arc, and not way outside the template (I know some will disagree with that).  But as noted earlier, "your mom is named Martha, too?" is terrible way to get Bruce back on the right side of things again.

Why did they do the bit with the nuke?  I guess so Snyder could say "See!  He's trying to take the fight away from the people!", but then you have a nuke which is a retread of Avengers, you have Superman get fake-killed right before he gets fake-killed again at the end, and you have a bunch of nuclear fallout that we'll just ignore.  Seems like they should have gone another route.

[The Natural]

On 3/23/2016 at 3:52 PM, WholeFnMachine said:

I'm really interested in reading your take as I feel your Batfandom is similar to me. The talk of Batman using guns and killing is extremely off-putting to me. I like my Batman grim, but not murderous, and I'm not a fan of them blowing off two of his major rules. I'm going to see it in theaters no matter what, but this is seriously going to effect my opinion on their portrayal of one of my favorite characters of all time. Also, a question that begs answering is, how is the Joker still alive?

Here’s my Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice review. There were things I liked, the performances by Ben Affleck (not the material), Jeremy Irons and Gal Gadot. Michael Wilkinson deserves praise again for his costumes of the Trinity. That’s the positives I’ve come up with. I really didn’t like the writing of a Batman who kills and brands, not for me. Dream sequences were a negative. The film is too long.

[The Natural]

Additions:

I really enjoyed the Suicide Squad trailer set to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, the first Captain America: Civil War trailer and X-Men: Apocalypse trailer #1 watching them on the big screen for the first time.

Grand seeing Bill Finger get his first film credit on the creation of Batman. Did you pick up on it?

[tigertooth]

4 hours ago, Jingus said:

-Why did the appearance of Bruce Wayne, Billionaire Philanthropist Goody-Two-Shoes at an illegal underground boxing match somehow not attract any attention?

Well, you see, the first rule of Fight Club....

 

 

4 hours ago, Jingus said:

 

-Batman's brilliant plan when he sees Superman for the first time: "Ram him with my car!"  Because obviously that will do so much damage to a guy he's personally witnessed crash through entire buildings.  

I don't think he was trying to ram him. Seemed like Supes got the drop on him. Why Supes was more interested in stopping Batman than stopping the guys Bats was chasing? No idea.

 

 

4 hours ago, Jingus said:

 

-Why does every covert tracking device in this universe have a big obvious blinking red light on it, just screaming "LOOK AT ME!"?  

It's taken me a while to accept that not everything you see in a movie should be taken literally.  Sometimes stuff is there as a visual cue to the audience that, yeah, wouldn't literally be there.  As long as it doesn't affect the plot, I can deal with it.  Like, when someone is walking down a scary hallway, there's creepy music playing on the soundtrack.  The audience can hear it and it helps set the scene, but the people in the movie don't hear it.  The blinking red light is for the audience, not for the people in the movie.

 

 

4 hours ago, Jingus said:

-Why did the legless guy suddenly decide to start hating Bruce, the guy who saved his life and pulled him out of the rubble at great personal risk?  

-This movie's night scenes have an awfully heavy portion of Orange-&-Blue lighting, where you cast warm orange on one side of a person's face and cold blue on the other side, making them look all conflicted 'n shit in the most heavyhanded manner possible.  It's a common sin of modern filmmaking, like overuse of handheld cameras, but that still doesn't excuse every individual movie that abuses it.  

-Why are Clark and Lois the only people who get along in this entire movie?  Everybody else are all aggressively hostile towards each other, snapping and snarling and just generally being unlikable assholes.  

I agree with these criticisms. For some reason, the last remark reminded me that shortly after Batman kryptogassed Supes, one of them said something about fear, and it made me think that Batman was turning into the Scarecrow.  I kinda dug that, even if it was unintentional.  Seemed to fit the theme they were going for on Batman's character.

 

4 hours ago, Jingus said:

-The Kryptonian Archive apparently has even less security than Lex's computer room.  "Hello, not-a-Kryptonian, allow me to immediately reveal all my people's deepest secrets!".  

Yeah, he had Zod's fingerprints, but the computer didn't seem to think he was Zod, so...?

 

4 hours ago, Jingus said:

-Why, exactly, is stately Wayne Manor now a hollowed-out ruin?  

Seems pretty clear that's a question we're supposed to be asking.  There's a lot that led to this version of Batman that we can only guess at.  They purposely put stuff in -- like this and the Robin costume and some of the comments between Bruce and Alfred -- to raise those questions.

 

 

4 hours ago, Jingus said:

-Exactly how far apart are Metropolis and Gotham supposed to be, geographically speaking?  This movie makes it feel like they're Dallas and Fort Worth, right next door to each other.  Everybody seems to be able to travel from one to another within a few minutes.  Even worse, half the time, I can't tell which city we're supposed to be in right now.  There's not much effort spent in differentiating the two.  

I agree about the lack of effort in differentiating, but they said and showed that the two cities are across the harbor from each other.

 

4 hours ago, Jingus said:

-Why doesn't Superman just kill Luthor?  We know he's willing to take lives.  And even if he decides not to kill Lex, why doesn't he just use his heat vision to vaporize Lex's penis, to give Luthor a lil' reminder of what happens when you spit in God's face?  And since when does he negotiate for hostages?  This is a guy who can literally see and hear the whole world.  His mother wouldn't stay hidden for long, he can find anyone anywhere.  And we have direct proof of that, he can hear Lois screaming for her life even when she's on a different continent.  

I don't know about torturing Lex, but it just added to my Superman hate when he just kinda mopily says oooo-kayyyy and runs off to do the evil mastermind's bidding.

 

 

4 hours ago, Jingus said:

-I guess it's a good thing that this long, chaotic fight JUST SO HAPPENED to wind down in the exact spot where Batman had planted his kryptonite spear.  Woulda been a real shame if they'd wandered away to a different location.  

Between the fact that (as with Doomsday) Batman can lure an opponent where he wants him combined with the fact that we saw Batman pick up and carry Superman to the spear, I don't have a problem with this.

 

 

4 hours ago, Jingus said:

-Earlier in the movie they established that this version of Superman needs to breathe, when Batman shot him twice with kryptonite gas.  But now he can just hang around in the vacuum of space and be just fine?  

-Rather than "I'll go get the spear, then come back and kill this monster while it's still in an uninhabited wasteland", Batman's genius plan is "I'll get the laser-spitting monster to follow me back to my densely-populated city, and just hope I can grab the spear before it kills me and everyone else"?  It's immediately proved to be a bad idea, when Doomsday promptly shoots down the batplane and then proceeds to flatten seemingly every single building within a one-mile radius, slaughtering God only knows how many innocent people.  

The breathing point is good, but maybe it can have an effect by just getting on his skin?  And I'm assuming Batman intentionally set his trap for Superman in an unpopulated area.  How you have a huge unpopulated area on the harbor between two huge cities...?  Well, that's hard to explain.

 

4 hours ago, Jingus said:

-Exactly how did they manage to have Superman AND Clark die separately?  It seems like the body went back to Martha Kent, so isn't the rest of the world all like "hey, if Superman's really dead, where the hell is his corpse"?  What the hell was in that coffin which the military was burying?  

I assumed the Kansas coffin was empty until the final shot.  It would make sense, since it would be harder to keep the empty Superman coffin a secret, plus it would potentially make sense that they didn't retrieve Clark Kent's body if the cover story is that he died in massive destruction (not entirely sure what the headline said).  Granted, either way there have to be a ton of people that know something is up. 

 

 

[The Unholy Dragon]

On the 'Martha' thing:

 

I liked it. I read it as Batman having spent the whole film trying to dehumanize Superman so that he can feel justified in killing him. Then he hears his mom's name and he thinks back to his own mom and that connects him to Clark's humanity. Especially since instead of trying to save his own life, Clark is powerless and begging for his mother's, just like Bruce was as a kid. For the first time he sees him as a person instead of a weapon and that makes all the difference. 

 

I dunno. It was a really good bit of humanity in there to me. I don't hate the clowning on it because on a literal level it's fucking hilarious but I do think it works well for what they're going for.

 

Also, to take some heat off Niners, I was the one making the Daredevil argument. And honestly it wasn't meant to be pedantic. It's because I had the same response to what looked like fatal violence against thugs in both on back to back nights. I laughed at how ridiculous it was that they thought it wouldn't kill anyone and then I went back to my suspension of disbelief. I suppose I can't really fault anyone for not being able to do the same, but it struck me as weird that we can do it here and not in Daredevil or the insane murder festival that is Arkham Knight. 

 

I mean, Batman has always kinda been that CollegeHumour sketch where he doesn't get how murder works when he's doing it. I just kind of roll with it unless the narrative blatantly says "Boy howdy Batman, you sure are murdering people today."

[Niners Fan in CT]

Jingus, if you had to guess, how many people did Batman "kill" in Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and TDKR?  I'm just going to lump the whole kill thing together since that makes up about 10-15 of your 72 complaints.  Some of these aren't even complaints, they are questions like why is Wayne Manor burned down lol.  Is there are reason why that should be explained in this movie? Given that it's at the start of an ongoing thing..

[Jingus]

"But other movies made the same mistakes before" and "I'm sure they'll get around to explaining that... eventually..." aren't real answers.  

[Jingus]

And just to further illustrate the point that we've seen the Waynes get killed lots and lots of times:

 

 

[(BP)]

Has anyone addressed that one of the biggest plot points in the movie is that Superman is framed for murdering a bunch of terrorists by Lex's version of Blackwater, but that no one seems concerned  that they were shot with automatic weapons and not laserd to death or ripped in half or killed in any way that would make sense for Superman to kill them?