Agent_Z said:
When did I say anything about athletic figures in action roles are bad? I simply pointed out a reoccurring trend in Whedon?s works.
No, you pointed out a recurring trend/norm
in populist entertainment and society, so to try to claim it is essentially distinct to Whedon as a creator is disingenuous.
The man has never been a picture of compassion and mental stability no matter how much his fans try to sugar coat him. Aside from not being a killer (which isn?t even consistent), the guy doesn?t have much going for him morality wise. He?s a manipulative, abusive and self-destructive jerk with no respect for laws, civil rights, and even the friggin' Geneva Convention given his treatment of minors under his care. There's a reason none of the cinematic iterations would touch that little bundle of joy with a fifteen-foot pole.
I'd say The Dark Knight addressed the moral and philosophical ambiguity and turmoil well enough, but it did so whilst mostly retaining Wayne's logical faculties and sense of [albeit damaged] humanity. The conflict between wanting to do what's just and still being drawn over the line to vigilantism was well realised, and Nolan's broader moral framework is established in the short but brilliant scene between Bruce and Rachel in the first film, where he sheepishly reveals his initial plan of vengeance against Joe Chill.
Then there's the line at the end of Begins regarding escalation, which sets up TDK and the idea that he and the Joker are simply equal and opposite reactions as a consequence of transgressing against all laws and order, and imposing one's own order/disorder upon the world by force.
Nolan's films portray his dark side well enough without needing to make him behave like a violent, unthinking, insecurely macho halfbrain.
Also, in BvS we have no real context as to how this psychotic Batman came to be, nor do we have time or space to explore the world's morality (and for the most part Alfred just goes along with his killing sprees - a few snarky comments aren't enough of a challenge). There is no time, of course, but it isn't a work of art or a cohesive story; it is a corporate byproduct of one studio fumbling to ape another's business model without understanding why it succeeded (any critic or admirer of the MCU could've told 'em, for free, I'd guess).
Feck knows how Batman will come across in Justice League, although Affleck's already said he'll be more "traditional". If so it won't be because of a character arc - it will simply be because people didn't like BvS's bleakly stupid iteration. Again; a corporate reaction as opposed to anything creative.
What Snyder has done with Batman has shown just how crazy you?d have to be to think dressing up in a fetish suit and beating the hell out of people is a good way to combat crime and poverty.
Right, and he did that by presenting it through his own fetish; violence... Kinda takes the edge off the 'message' or theme, doesn't it? When the audience is sitting there cooing at Batman murdering people? Nothing says 'isn't he a nutjob' like 'Hey, watch him smash a car into other cars and kill people in this really nifty stunt!'.
Who knows, maybe Snyder's trying to be subversive...
You know it really does not do to whine about masculinist power fantasies when your complaints boil down to Superman not curb stomping every obstacle he comes across with ease.
Incorrect, I was specifically objecting to Superman being perhaps dumber than Batman in their fight.
Seriously, not only is this the first time he?s encountered Kryptonite...
Is he so dim he can't learn? Even children and animals tend to learn 'fire bad' by touching it once.
He?s done more to make Superman feel like a person than any other person who?s written or directed him. Brian Singer more aptly fits your description.
Yikes, you really are on of The Few with regards to MoS and BvS, aren't you (or perhaps just Snyder?).
The original MoS teaser pointed towards a more traditional expression of the icon, and that was a film I wanted to see. However, it was a lie, given the actual film - in tone and plotting - absolutely contradicts the potential of hope and vibrancy. Instead we got a morose, sullen Supes' bullying random civvies, a [suicidal] Pa Kent who wondered whether someone with power and the means to save lives should instead let lives be snuffed out for the sake of self-interest, and of course an orgy of carnage to give everyone headaches at the end.
This was a surly Superman film reveling in violence and destruction. Not every retelling of a character should be rigidly orthodox, but there is such a thing as simply going against the grain to such an extent that you fail to grasp why a character is cherished and valued.
They do have a way. It?s one you dislike because it slaughters sacred cows.
Well, yeah, we can agree Snyder, Terrio, and Goyer certainly butchered icons.
If you know anything about franchises like this, you?d know just how little control directors have over this stuff. Just ask Whedon or Favreau.
Directors still work with their editors and have input, so to try to assert Snyder had "zero input" over his own film's editing is patently ridiculous.
Jeese, we're not talking about giving a director say over the final cut or anything.
Um, I was talking about Jimmy Olsen.
Hah, fair enough, though it's amusing I could be talking about BvS's use of Olsen or Supes and the text barely changes.
Still, it shows how unthinkingly callous or selfish Snyder is in terms of just offing such a character with no regard as to who might want to use him later. Now they can't. Just as Doomsday's ruined, the death arc is ruined, 'Lex' Luthor's ruined (though I suppose there's a tradition on the bigscreen in making Luthor an incompetent buffoon), and so on.
Incorruptible? Is this what we?re calling a man who recruits terrorists, lies to his team mates and continually ignores the sovereign rights of foreign lands even when confronted with the damage his reckless actions have wrought all the while hypocritically railing against ?people with agendas??
You are aware it's not real, right? That comicbook universes operate by their own rules?
If you have issue with
all power fantasies in any comicbook property, then sure, go ahead and fault that entire need in human culture going back through our history.
The MCU operates within its own internal rules, and so their actions are to be judged against that - not our own. As I said: in
reality Team Stark is correct, but
on the page (or on the screen) given all we know of the universe and the potential threats - and that we know Cap always has the best of intentions - Team Cap is a valid path.
Yeah, interesting how his idea of helping people always seems to involve fists and guns.
Again, newsflash! It ain't real. If you want action films with no action, then--- well, go right ahead, I guess.
His Legend of the Guardians movie suggests otherwise.
Are you a Snyder completionist then? I can't comment on its tone as it looked dreadful and its reputation is less than stellar.
The only film that could remotely be accused of this is 300 and that should be blamed more on Miller the guy who wrote the comic it was based on.
I've only seen it once and a half, and not recently so I couldn't go into detail, but Watchmen is another nasty masculinist film from Snyder, where I always felt wary of his sympathies and put off by the depictions of violence.
Again he's clearly not the author, but you can tell a lot from the execution of an idea.
I can accept the internality of a fictional world provided the writers don?t try to wring drama out of tropes they know cannot deconstruct for the sake of the status quo.
Most constructed worlds try to have their cake and eat it - it's a given as far as internal creative tension goes, frankly.
Is it ideal? Perhaps not. Is it almost always inevitable? Yes.
As I said, had the MCU just stuck to mindless superhero fun, I?d have forgiven them. But then we started talks about accountability as far back as Iron Man 2 and the cracks began to show.
For me IM2's probably the outright worse film in the MCU, but its thematic narrative focus was - by and large - still inspired by the Demon In A Bottle plot beat, ergo it was heavily entrenched in iconic elements of the entire character.
If nodding to late '70's era arcs counts as deconstruction of a "mindless superhero" world, then so be it... but I think you'll find most people just see that as coherent to the medium's way of telling stories for characters that span decades or even generations. Part of a continuum. There aren't many stories you can tell if you rigidly restrict yourself to the box marked "mindless", funnily enough.
Honestly, I don?t have any faith future movies will portray Thanos as the cosmic nightmare he is given this franchise?s treatment of any villain not named Loki. Instead, I fully expect that he?ll be a foot note in a story that is more concerned with seeing if the Avengers will kiss and make up.
You seem confused as to why people want to see stories about
people...
It's paraphrased as it was maybe about a decade ago, but I remember a good line Michael Caine had in a short interview with Channel 4 News. The question was about him being becoming a 'star', I think, and the reply was along the lines of 'When people come to the cinema they don't come to see
me - they come to see themselves reflected up there on the screen'.
That's an essential element of storytelling, frankly, so it's no wonder the MCU's struck a global chord by engaging normal punters with these larger than life avatars of all kinds of themes and ideas. The Silver Age thankfully presented characters who were flawed, who we could identify with and relate to. That's kinda
the point of art as a whole... To explore who and what we are, and art externalises and then collectivises that ongoing process.
Something like the MCU plays a very modest populist part in that, sure, but it's still a relevant part of the whole, just like The Dark Knight and The Bourne Identity were in terms of a post-9/11 reaction to a world which suddenly felt far more hostile and, crucially, far less certain in terms of 'us and them' and right and wrong (obviously that mood continued, and that same mistrust of our own supposedly moral power structures is found in The Avengers and most brazenly The Winter Soldier, with Cap providing a moral conduit of wish fulfilling empowerment when in reality we have no such power, and the solutions aren't as simple as blowing up some helicarriers).
As for Thanos? I'm kinda disappointed in his MCU depiction already, just as I was in Ultron (I loved his eventual characterisation, and Spader was perfect for the voice, but I felt it was a waste to have that potent a threat on the page depicted as barely more than a localised Big Bad. Ultron's origins should've been subtly spread across at least another film [or two] before AoU. and for a character who's had such a great visual design over the decades, the MCU's was incredibly bland). Thanos' full reveal as a character was pitiful, for starters.
Apparently the leaked Infinity War teaser hints they could be doing him some justice, though, so we'll see.
Look at it like this; starting out darker but going lighter in the future (whether they pull it off is honestly a matter of opinion) means the DCEU largely avoids the problems the MCU has.
I see tonal contradiction as a result of Warner's corporate flipflopping, wanting to adjust to what sells better as established by Marvel. They swung and partly missed with MoS, and swung and missed hard on BvS (and Suicide Squad, though I've not seen that clusterfuck yet).
Moving from grimdark to something more conventional - and popular - clearly isn't an artistic choice for them. It's creative cowardice (they might've made even worse films had they kept doubling down on the grimdark, but I'd have respected their desire to be distinct).
If Warner wanted to learn how to do gritty and genuinely mature and not chicken out, then perhaps they could've just first looked to their own The Dark Knight, or to Netflix's Daredevil and Jessica Jones.
Then maybe they shouldn?t have called it ?Civil War? and gone for something more appropriate like ?When Adults Fight Like School Children?.
Maybe they called it Civil War because the essential idea is the same as the comic arc
Civil War and the same leaders represented the same sides in an inter-superhero conflict? I know, I know, I'm going out on a limb with that one...
You?ll be the first Batman fan I know who thinks Johns can elevate Batman. He?s become to Batman fans what Frank Miller has become to Superman fans.
I said "...so I
hope he elevates this Batman", not "think" he will, and I'm comparing him against the incompetent baseline of Terrio and Goyer so he has a low benchmark to beat.
The truth is merely knowing stuff about the characters isn?t enough as Brian Singer showed us.
In this scenario it clearly can't hurt. I find it hard to believe they could mangle these characters any more than they already have.
Whether or not you think MoS delivered on its promise depends on what you want out of Superman.
Maybe I mostly just wanted what
the teaser teased?
In case you've forgotten:
If you want the lionization of a guy who has never known an ounce of suffering and is treated as morally superior due to him benefiting from contrivances provided by his writers (like time warping powers that reverse deaths he doesn?t like) you?ll be disappointed. If you prefer a guy who isn?t perfect, something both he and the script and acknowledge but at the end of the day does the best he can and strives to do better which is much more relatable, I?d say you?ll be satisfied. Alas, far too many Superman fans are enamored of his status as an untouchable paragon as opposed to his duty.
He sparked imaginations in children across the globe by representing
a hopeful ideal. That was the point of the character. Snyder, Goyer, and Chris Nolan (never was there a man better suited to the Dark Knight as opposed to the big blue boy scout) betrayed that in Man Of Steel, and then Goyer and Terrio doubled down on that in BvS.
Superman Returns isn't a great film, but it's certainly a superior Superman film to anything Snyder's put his hand to so far.