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Comic book movie news & discussion

Well, I guess this would qualify as comic book movie news:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2018/07/20/for-james-gunn-theres-no-return-to-being-a-major-mainstream-filmmaker/?utm_term=.78525a2f4039

AS A MAINSTREAM director of family entertainment, there’s no coming back from this.

James Gunn, the director of the first two films in Disney/Marvel’s $1.6 billion “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise, was fired Friday from “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” after what Disney called “indefensible” tweets resurfaced this week.

On Thursday, Gunn apologized in several tweets to his nearly half-million Twitter followers, trying to explain that he attempted such social media “jokes” back when he viewed himself as “a provocateur” whose humor and horror movies alike were “outrageous and taboo.”

Joking in a taboo manner about such subjects as rape and pedophilia didn’t hurt Gunn’s filmmaking career back when he was a lesser-known indie director releasing low-budget, industry-admired movies like “Slither.” But now that he is mainstream, there is, of course, no way a major studio creating all-ages entertainment can keep even a beloved franchise director in a leadership role.
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I heard some of the tweets on a youtube video, but suffice it to say, its very disturbing stuff. A fucking sicko.
 
Apparently, as he got involved with Marvel he was up front about just how edgy he used to be on twitter and apologized for it. So Disney was aware of it. It could have taken one mid level executive to go back and do a skim of his account at the time.

So Mike Cernovich was involved in this. He is aligned with Alex Jones and is on his show sometimes. Cernovich has some nasty non-joke tweets of his own - very rapey stuff. He tried to get Sam Seder fired from his contributor position at MSNBC by dredging his twitter for a joke that in the proper context was a sharp jab at people who liked Polanski despite his personal ugliness and violative acts.

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Gunn's tweets go well beyond the standard "dead baby" jokes or the lawyer-priest on a crashing plane joke (lawyer says fuck the children and priest asks "do we have time?"). If he was only at "dad joke" level of offensive humor I don't think he would have been fired.

There was some other stuff that may be real about passing links to creeper shots of adolescent girls. Could be a slanderous fake though. That stuff if real can't be explained away as dark humor. Disney would be in a good position to know, they likely had a tech and a lawyer team involved in this decision.

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So stepping back, if you were addicted to being an edgy boy and needed to post or see jokes that border on the edge of hate speech or would get CPS to visit then stay anonymous. Kind of the like the internet Gunn would have had back in the mid 90s.
 
Goodchild said:
The Titans trailer was released. Looks interesting, but not totally sold on it.

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I think that Robin and Raven look interesting. Robin is, of course, the easiest to do. You just out Batman in a different suit and give him some whiny teenaged angst lines about how he's not Batman. It's like how Supergirl comes with a ready made personality which everybody is familiar with because she's a copy and paste of someone they've known their whole lives. The whole demon possessed kid thing they're doing with Raven seems like it could have legs and I'm intrigued. If the show centres on these two the way the trailer does, it could be worth watching.

That being said, there seems to be a good reason that the others were only shown in brief cutscenes. Starfire looks like absolute trash. Not in a "I'm pissy because I don't like this adaptation of her" kind of way, but in a "Holy shit, that looks like absolute trash" kind of way. They really need to kill her off and have another alien of the same name also crash land on Earth in the next episode because I don't see how this show gets a second season trying to work that in.

I have no opinion on Beast Boy. He didn't look absolutely terrible like Starfire, but there was nothing exciting about his look. I only hope that the reason they didn't show him actually turning into an animal was that they wanted to be able to hold back something cool for later trailers and not because the CGI of that looks as bad as Starfire's hair.

I would not pay $75 for a year long subscription to the DC channel to watch this. I might steal a pirated copy of the first couple episodes to give it a shot, but I'm not sure I'd be willing to make a few clicks in an Internet browser to bother doing so.
 
Is Titans part of "Berlantiverse", or it's own thing?

Agree about Starfire. Never really got into these second-rate X-Men knockoffs, but the tv versions seem even worse.
 
That Titans trailer brings to mind the Inhumans tv series. You could tell right away that they were not going to pull off the effects needed to make it look good. Medusa's hair was a problem, but Starfire looks so much worse. The show ended up being not too bad in the end.

What they are doing with Raven looks good. If Raven/Robin are the main part of the show it might have a chance.
 
Might as well leave this here.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDkg3h8PCVU[/YOUTUBE]
 
repoman said:
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The motive for this is so transparent.

The Republican party ran a known pedophile for Senate.

A Republican sheriff from Alabama was recently found to be sleeping with underage girls.

Jim Jordan.

Oh, and all knew pedophile allegations against His Holiness Grovel McTreasonpants have surfaced recently.

There have been so many stories about pedophilia and Republicans that Republicans are desperate to talk about pedophilia and any Democrat, even if the pedophilia was only tasteless jokes and the Democrat is not actually a politician who is in any elected office. Still, from the point of view of conservolibertarian "logic," this is all they need to pull out yet another one of their whataboutism tu quoque fallacies.

See? Having a known pedophile run as a candidate for our party for the US Senate is not a bad thing becaLET'S TALK ABOUT JAMES GUNN'S PEDOPHILIA JOKES INSTEAD! EVERYONE CHANGE THE TOPIC OF DISCUSSION BECAUSE THE DISCUSSION IS MAKING ME NERVOUS!!!!!

Yawn.
 
Most comic book nerds know nothing about Battle Angel Alita, myself included.



I thought this gives a good discussion of the franchise, explains what fans of the franchise find appealing about it, and also explains why Hollywood will almost certainly get this wrong when they try to adapt it.

I don't read comic books like I used to, and I read even fewer Japanese comic books, but I might have to check this one out.
 
James Brown said:
Might as well leave this here.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDkg3h8PCVU[/YOUTUBE]
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Jason Momoa is a bad actor but charismatic, so this movie could easily go either way depending on the writing and directing.

More than anything, this helps boost my confidence in Walter Hamada (who WB is hoping will be their answer to Kevin Feige). One of the biggest problems I had with the DCEU up until Wonder Woman is that they tried to make everything dark 'n gritty like Batman. With this trailer, I think Hamada has shown that he understands each superhero needs his own tone and themes. Aquaman feels completely different from Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc., and that' s a good thing.

Shazam in turn has a completely different feel to it, and it's a feel that is appropriate for the material.



I really don't care that the supersuit looks goofy. Goofy is fine for the material.

I'm not crazy about making Billy older, but otherwise, the tone feels right.
 
Underseer said:
Most comic book nerds know nothing about Battle Angel Alita, myself included.

I thought this gives a good discussion of the franchise, explains what fans of the franchise find appealing about it, and also explains why Hollywood will almost certainly get this wrong when they try to adapt it.

I don't read comic books like I used to, and I read even fewer Japanese comic books, but I might have to check this one out.
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I read the original series, and some of Last Order too. It really is a great series. The extended trailer showed a lot of elements from the manga, and the action looks pretty good. I'm looking forward to seeing this. It does diverge from the story in a few ways, saying she contains lost technology, finding that extra body mostly. Naa, her bad-assness comes from being a master of Panzer Kunst, a martial arts developed for cyborgs. She has no memories, but her training comes through clear enough.
 
marc said:
Underseer said:
Most comic book nerds know nothing about Battle Angel Alita, myself included.

I thought this gives a good discussion of the franchise, explains what fans of the franchise find appealing about it, and also explains why Hollywood will almost certainly get this wrong when they try to adapt it.

I don't read comic books like I used to, and I read even fewer Japanese comic books, but I might have to check this one out.
Click to expand...

I read the original series, and some of Last Order too. It really is a great series. The extended trailer showed a lot of elements from the manga, and the action looks pretty good. I'm looking forward to seeing this. It does diverge from the story in a few ways, saying she contains lost technology, finding that extra body mostly. Naa, her bad-assness comes from being a master of Panzer Kunst, a martial arts developed for cyborgs. She has no memories, but her training comes through clear enough.
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Honestly, I think an HBO or Showtime series would be a better way to try and adapt something like this. I don't know that a movie could do it justice.
 
I don't get why Battle Angel Alita live-action version is supposed to have those uncanny valley CGI googly eyes. In the manga that's just a stylistic choice. But I suspect it'll just look weird in the movie.
 
Underseer said:
http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/titans...stagram-comments-as-racist-reactions-continue

The free speech warriors kick another woman of color off of Instagram.

Remember, these are the same people who complain that they are the ones being "silenced."

Why the fuck can't Instagram shut down the assholes spewing that racist garbage? Why should she have to be the one to withdraw from the platform entirely?
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It was a bad casting call, but she doesn't deserve that crap. DC/CW shows are mostly garbage anyway so she'd do much better elsewhere I think.

Another problem with starfire is the orange skin. It's going to take a lot of makeup and with tv budgets and schedules that might mean they'll just wing it and forget the whole thing. Blah. Better to get rid of the entire character. "Born sexy yesterday" trope was probably fine in the 80s, but now it's outdated. Make her a male or an androgynous being or something completely different, that'd be much better than just trying to do the old sexist character with a tired old "look she's black now" twist that everybody is doing. Yawn, gag and snore!

EDITED TO ADD: I just watched the trailer again. Like the gritty new take and amount of blood. Hawk and Dove look cool. But also, most of the criticism that could be said about Starfire also applies to Beast Boy, except that they didn't cast a black guy to play him. Both have weird skin color and stupid powers that aren't really needed. Ditch beast boy, ditch starfire, get Cyborg back in the team (depowered from his movie counterpart), and that's a far better team. The plot seems to revolve around Robin and Raven anyway.
 
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MovieBob nails it again. Someone has to start standing up to the Nazi troll army. They are starting to seriously fuck up beloved nerd franchises. Oh, and because they're Nazis.
 
Jayjay said:
I don't get why Battle Angel Alita live-action version is supposed to have those uncanny valley CGI googly eyes. In the manga that's just a stylistic choice. But I suspect it'll just look weird in the movie.
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If you poke around, you can find a YouTube video interview in which either Cameron or Rodriguez explain the googly eyes. The answer did not give me confidence.
 
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