• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Comic book movie news & discussion

Goodchild said:
The new trailer for Deadpool 2 looks great :)

Click to expand...


Terry *pant* Crews! Wheeeeee!

The test screenings indicate that audiences really liked Cable and Domino, but Terry seems like a perfect fit for a Deadpool movie, and if they ever make an X-Force movie, he'd be an amazing badass in a "straight" action movie.
 
Thank god. It's about time they got around to ruining Spielberg the same way they have Superman. That guy's been getting a little too full of himself lately.
 
I'm not sure Blackhawks will be a DCEU movie, given that the Blackhawks aren't actually super powered superheroes. As long as Spielberg just does it as any other Spielberg movie, he should walk away untarnished from the nearly consistent failures of the DCEU.
 
A movie is a bit like a football team. Yes, the director is important, however, there are other roles on the team that are very important as well, such as who writes the screenplay. After all, Superman Returns was a well directed film, however, it was also a cure to insomnia.
 
Jayjay said:
Underseer said:
https://techaeris.com/2018/04/18/steven-spielberg-produce-dc-comics-movie/

Spielberg to direct DC movie based on WW2 comic.

Warner Brothers hired some Japanese-American producer that they hope will be their answer to Kevin Feige and who they hope will save the DCEU. I'd say this is his first major victory. The Blackhawks are right down Spielberg's alley.
Click to expand...

Right...

View attachment 15437
Click to expand...

Yep, there's an Asian character that is more than problematic than Wong from Dr. Strange. I'm sure they'll fix that.
 
Another move by Walter Hamada:

Cathy Yan to direct Birds of Prey, which will include Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn:

http://deadline.com/2018/04/harley-...ainment-bat-girl-christina-hodson-1202365866/

It sounds like his plan is to back away from the major big name heroes and capitalize on the fact that female/minority heroes seem to be doing well right now. It remains to be seen if Hamada is steering the ship in the right direction, but any change in course has to be an improvement, however slight, right?
 
Underseer said:
Another move by Walter Hamada:

Cathy Yan to direct Birds of Prey, which will include Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn:

http://deadline.com/2018/04/harley-...ainment-bat-girl-christina-hodson-1202365866/

It sounds like his plan is to back away from the major big name heroes and capitalize on the fact that female/minority heroes seem to be doing well right now. It remains to be seen if Hamada is steering the ship in the right direction, but any change in course has to be an improvement, however slight, right?
Click to expand...
The problem is that Birds of Prey doesn't have any good storylines to base a movie on. Best comic book movies are usually those that adapt some iconic storyline from the comics, or at least are inspired by it. (Wonder Woman being an exception though, and of course there are a bunch of movies that fail even if they are adaptations.)
 
Jayjay said:
Underseer said:
Another move by Walter Hamada:

Cathy Yan to direct Birds of Prey, which will include Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn:

http://deadline.com/2018/04/harley-...ainment-bat-girl-christina-hodson-1202365866/

It sounds like his plan is to back away from the major big name heroes and capitalize on the fact that female/minority heroes seem to be doing well right now. It remains to be seen if Hamada is steering the ship in the right direction, but any change in course has to be an improvement, however slight, right?
Click to expand...
The problem is that Birds of Prey doesn't have any good storylines to base a movie on. Best comic book movies are usually those that adapt some iconic storyline from the comics, or at least are inspired by it. (Wonder Woman being an exception though, and of course there are a bunch of movies that fail even if they are adaptations.)
Click to expand...

BvS merged two of the most iconic stories DC has and it sucked big, sweaty donkey balls. As you pointed out, the most successful post-Nolan DC movie thus far was not based on any iconic stories from the comic books at all.

This still has every chance to suck balls, and I'm not yet convinced that Hamada is an answer to Feige, but I'm not sure the presence or absence of iconic stories from the comic books tells us much.
 
Doing adaptations of iconic storylines is great for the fan boys. I love the fact that they did a movie version of Civil War and that there's a movie version of the Infinity Gauntlet coming up, despite the fact that they're only loosely based on the source material. I have cool memories from my youth of reading those and it's nice to see them on the big screen.

For the vast majority of fans, however, it's not a big deal if they draw from an iconic storyline or they just make up a completely new story. What's important is that they make a good story. Now, iconic storylines have a leg up in that regard because what made them iconic in the first place was that they were a good story, so the screenwriters just need to adapt something which has already proven to be successful and it makes their job easier.

Given DC's track record with iconic storylines lately, I'm glad to see that they're moving in a different direction.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Doing adaptations of iconic storylines is great for the fan boys. I love the fact that they did a movie version of Civil War and that there's a movie version of the Infinity Gauntlet coming up, despite the fact that they're only loosely based on the source material. I have cool memories from my youth of reading those and it's nice to see them on the big screen.

For the vast majority of fans, however, it's not a big deal if they draw from an iconic storyline or they just make up a completely new story. What's important is that they make a good story. Now, iconic storylines have a leg up in that regard because what made them iconic in the first place was that they were a good story, so the screenwriters just need to adapt something which has already proven to be successful and it makes their job easier.

Given DC's track record with iconic storylines lately, I'm glad to see that they're moving in a different direction.
Click to expand...

I would argue that what is most important is the theme.

The X-Men movies are hit or miss, but to the extent that those movies work, it's because they preserved the theme of discrimination/prejudice.

The DCEU version of Superman fails because it's just Batman with superpowers. The dark and gritty thing is thematically consistent with Batman because Batman is about the anxiety people's felt about the rise of organized crime during prohibition, but for Superman?

The newest version of Spider-Man works because it's still about guilt and growing up.

The Wonder Woman movie worked because it's still about female empowerment.

Daredevil on Netflix worked because it's still about a guy who desperately wants to see (pun intended) the world as black and white being tormented by the greys of the real world.

Iron Fist failed because, well, I don't even know what the theme of the comic book is, but I couldn't discern any theme in the TV show. Other than a few comments about the privilege of the 1%, what was it trying to say?

Speaking of that, what was Suicide Squad trying to say?
 
I don't know about that. Dark and brooding Superman could have worked quite well if they'd had a good story to go along with dark and brooding Superman. For instance, the Injustice storyline is basically about two dark and brooding malcontents brooding to each other about the proper way to be a malcontent and it's pretty damn good and they could have made a Batman v Superman matchup based off of that. The problem with the DCEU Superman wasn't that he was dark, but that they didn't commit to anything with him and he was just kind of a whiny emo bitch who wasn't really much of anything except for a bore. The whole "That's not the Superman I'm looking for" issue wouldn't have been an issue if it had been "That's not the Superman I was looking for, but they did something interesting with the character".

If you have a good storyline with interesting characters, it doesn't really matter if they get the standard tone of the characters correct. For instance, if you ask someone to describe Thor, "comedic goofball" won't be near the top of the list and the character in the first two Thor movies was much closer to the character in the comic books, but Ragnarok was by far the best of them because it was a good story and the new character they gave Thor worked well in it.

Similarly, you can do a very good story about what would happen if Superman started acting like Batman and then Batman needed to jump in and shut that shit down. Superman is well known enough that you don't even need to take time to set him up as the symbol of hope and goodness and all that, you just take that as a given and start with him freaking out over Lois Lane dying and go from there. When you have a bad story with boring characters, however, the fact that you missed the tone one expects from the characters is just one of the glaringly noticeable things.

The X-Men movies which were misses were misses because the stories sucked. The new Spider-Man is just well written. Iron Fist and Suicide Squad didn't know what they wanted to do with the characters and if they'd decided that and implemented it, they both could have worked quite well with whatever tone they had amidst good scripts.
 
Another Deadpool trailer:



"So dark... are you sure you are not from the DC Universe?"
 
Tom Sawyer said:
I don't know about that. Dark and brooding Superman could have worked quite well if they'd had a good story to go along with dark and brooding Superman. For instance, the Injustice storyline is basically about two dark and brooding malcontents brooding to each other about the proper way to be a malcontent and it's pretty damn good and they could have made a Batman v Superman matchup based off of that. The problem with the DCEU Superman wasn't that he was dark, but that they didn't commit to anything with him and he was just kind of a whiny emo bitch who wasn't really much of anything except for a bore. The whole "That's not the Superman I'm looking for" issue wouldn't have been an issue if it had been "That's not the Superman I was looking for, but they did something interesting with the character".

If you have a good storyline with interesting characters, it doesn't really matter if they get the standard tone of the characters correct. For instance, if you ask someone to describe Thor, "comedic goofball" won't be near the top of the list and the character in the first two Thor movies was much closer to the character in the comic books, but Ragnarok was by far the best of them because it was a good story and the new character they gave Thor worked well in it.

Similarly, you can do a very good story about what would happen if Superman started acting like Batman and then Batman needed to jump in and shut that shit down. Superman is well known enough that you don't even need to take time to set him up as the symbol of hope and goodness and all that, you just take that as a given and start with him freaking out over Lois Lane dying and go from there. When you have a bad story with boring characters, however, the fact that you missed the tone one expects from the characters is just one of the glaringly noticeable things.

The X-Men movies which were misses were misses because the stories sucked. The new Spider-Man is just well written. Iron Fist and Suicide Squad didn't know what they wanted to do with the characters and if they'd decided that and implemented it, they both could have worked quite well with whatever tone they had amidst good scripts.
Click to expand...

Sure, dark and bedding could have worked as long as they preserved the theme, say, the immigrant fantasy or the truth and justice thing.

The Injustice thing works because it subverts the theme, which in turn works if you have a point for doing so.

A good story can only carry you so far if you wreck the point of telling the story. An X-Men story that isn't about prejudice is just another superhero story. If you're just going to do that, why not use other heroes or just make up new ones?
 
Underseer said:
A good story can only carry you so far if you wreck the point of telling the story. An X-Men story that isn't about prejudice is just another superhero story. If you're just going to do that, why not use other heroes or just make up new ones?
Click to expand...

Because using established characters puts bodies in movie theatre seats. It's like asking if you want to do a comedic buddy comedy in space, why not just make a new hero instead of using Thor? Frank Smith: Space Gladiator could have been a cool cult hit that maybe netted $100 million, but you take the same script and put Thor and the Hulk into it, you get eight times that.
 
Underseer said:
Tom Sawyer said:
I don't know about that. Dark and brooding Superman could have worked quite well if they'd had a good story to go along with dark and brooding Superman. For instance, the Injustice storyline is basically about two dark and brooding malcontents brooding to each other about the proper way to be a malcontent and it's pretty damn good and they could have made a Batman v Superman matchup based off of that. The problem with the DCEU Superman wasn't that he was dark, but that they didn't commit to anything with him and he was just kind of a whiny emo bitch who wasn't really much of anything except for a bore. The whole "That's not the Superman I'm looking for" issue wouldn't have been an issue if it had been "That's not the Superman I was looking for, but they did something interesting with the character".

If you have a good storyline with interesting characters, it doesn't really matter if they get the standard tone of the characters correct. For instance, if you ask someone to describe Thor, "comedic goofball" won't be near the top of the list and the character in the first two Thor movies was much closer to the character in the comic books, but Ragnarok was by far the best of them because it was a good story and the new character they gave Thor worked well in it.

Similarly, you can do a very good story about what would happen if Superman started acting like Batman and then Batman needed to jump in and shut that shit down. Superman is well known enough that you don't even need to take time to set him up as the symbol of hope and goodness and all that, you just take that as a given and start with him freaking out over Lois Lane dying and go from there. When you have a bad story with boring characters, however, the fact that you missed the tone one expects from the characters is just one of the glaringly noticeable things.

The X-Men movies which were misses were misses because the stories sucked. The new Spider-Man is just well written. Iron Fist and Suicide Squad didn't know what they wanted to do with the characters and if they'd decided that and implemented it, they both could have worked quite well with whatever tone they had amidst good scripts.
Click to expand...

Sure, dark and bedding could have worked as long as they preserved the theme, say, the immigrant fantasy or the truth and justice thing.

The Injustice thing works because it subverts the theme, which in turn works if you have a point for doing so.

A good story can only carry you so far if you wreck the point of telling the story. An X-Men story that isn't about prejudice is just another superhero story. If you're just going to do that, why not use other heroes or just make up new ones?
Click to expand...

I never found X-Men stories where mutants are a metaphor for racism to be very interesting. For one thing, it's a little bit different to be prejudiced against some group of people based on their skin color, than it is to be prejudiced against them because they shoot lasers from their eyes. I'd be the first one to demand mandatory registration and training camps for mutants if I lived in the X-Men universe.
 
Jayjay said:
I never found X-Men stories where mutants are a metaphor for racism to be very interesting. For one thing, it's a little bit different to be prejudiced against some group of people based on their skin color, than it is to be prejudiced against them because they shoot lasers from their eyes. I'd be the first one to demand mandatory registration and training camps for mutants if I lived in the X-Men universe.
Click to expand...

I remember that there was a Heroes episode where they went to the future when all the mutants had to be registered and they talked about one kid who got angry in school and accidentally killed his entire class by sucking all the air out of the room. When that's the potential downside to be dealt with, it is appropriate to identify and segregate them. There's a reason that you keep deadly weapons out of the hands of teenagers and those reasons don't change when the teenager is the deadly weapon himself.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Jayjay said:
I never found X-Men stories where mutants are a metaphor for racism to be very interesting. For one thing, it's a little bit different to be prejudiced against some group of people based on their skin color, than it is to be prejudiced against them because they shoot lasers from their eyes. I'd be the first one to demand mandatory registration and training camps for mutants if I lived in the X-Men universe.
Click to expand...

I remember that there was a Heroes episode where they went to the future when all the mutants had to be registered and they talked about one kid who got angry in school and accidentally killed his entire class by sucking all the air out of the room. When that's the potential downside to be dealt with, it is appropriate to identify and segregate them. There's a reason that you keep deadly weapons out of the hands of teenagers and those reasons don't change when the teenager is the deadly weapon himself.
Click to expand...

The metaphor holds, though.

Anti-black bigots really believe that people of African descent represent a real physical threat.

Nazis believed that Jews represented a real physical threat.

Christians and Muslims believe that LGBT people represent a real physical threat.

Sure, you can try to explain to bigots that transgender people don't represent a threat to children in bathrooms, but you know what happens when you try to reason with them on that point, don't you?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom