Wibbly-Wobbly, Speedy-Weedy (Plot Contrivnces and You)

[Something Amyss]

Is it weird I got this far in my own thread without noticing a typo in the title? Whoops.

Avengers has a similar problem, but I think the Avengers films pull this off slightly better than JL. In that:

-As you point out, Supes being OP is an actual plot point in JL. The closest thing to 'god mode' the Avengers has is the Hulk, and using him comes with his own set of risks.

-The Avengers are a bit more vulnerable than JL, least in the films. Stark's a guy in a suit, and otherwise mortal. Cap has significant mobility issues, and still has limits. They've got Thor, sure, but the JL has Wonder Woman and Aquaman, the former of which is the daughter of a god, the latter of which is a metahuman.

And while it's arguably silly that Cap is on the same battlefield with Thor, they give him something to do with fits with his power level usually and they don't draw attention to it.

On top of them making Supes being necessary a plot point, they have multiple instances where they demonstrate the redundancy of other characters. Like when Flash is rescuing that family. It's easier to accept when the movie doesn't rub your face in it repeatedly.

I mean, the "slowpoke" scene is funny, but funny at the expense of the movie itself, because it renders a character pretty much completely redundant. And not a Batman or a Captain America, but a man who is too fast for the naked eye...SONIC THE HED...sorry, got carried away.

I saw complaints about inconsistent power levels in Infinity Wars, like the guy who survived being cooked by a star being on the same battlefield as Steve and T?halla, but even then, the momentum of the fight changes when he gets involved. Or even Iron Man vs Hulk when it comes to fighting Thanos...one is fighting smarter, and that seems to be the big differencer.. Is it strictly balanced? I don't know, someone's probably calculated the strongest feats of both characters, but...because they don't go "this is stupid!" I'm willing to accept it.

"Why didn't Thor do X" is another one which is interesting, because it fits with what Seth said in terms of meta knowledge. After Ragnarok, Thor took a serious level increase, and so him not being a megabadass in prior movies makes sense.

I got the sense that in Day of the Doctor, it was iffy as to whether the Doctor had changed history, or whether this was what always happened - that Gallifrey had never been destroyed at all.

I prefer the second interpretation, at least if it's a must that Gallifrey return to the setting. Much as I like the episode in question, I'm far more iffy about Gallifrey and the Time Lords. Like, the daleks are still around, the Time Lords are still around, so what effect does the war have on the setting now apart from early references to species like the gelth?

That's why I said "ostebsibly", because there's definitely wiggle room. So Ten says he's seen it burn, nd it's ambiguous because they establish that Time Lord memory gets fuzzy when it comes to recalling them crossing their own timeline. Did he see Gallifrey burn, or does he remember it from John Hurt's perspective? We don't know.

One ting that bugs the crap out of me, though, is that they do draw attention too the fact that they're in the time war and it shouldn't be possible. It's kind of like the Superman example to me, except...I guess they were damned if they said anything and damned if they didn't, because someone would be instead mad they didn't explain why the Doctor could suddenly interact with time-locked events.

The whole special makes me wonder if Moffat had planned this the entire time, and given how things turn out, it could have been so. that would mean that the Time Lords had always been there in his run, and none of this is a flaw in the timeline anyway.

Which, I suppose, is another reason I'll cut it some slack. But it's mostly Hurt, Tennant and Smith together. Granddad and sand shoes.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Yeah, that bugged me as well. I've stated that JL would have worked much better without Supes at all - that's not to say that Supes can't return, but the movie feels undermined by his presence. From a character standpoint, the other JL members are marginalized because resurrecting Supes becomes an objective in of itself. From an action standpoint, the final battle is undermined because Supes can just wipe the floor with Steppenwoolf.

This does strike to me as a poor writing choice more than the inclusion of Superman.

Steppenwolf has been trounced [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppenwolf_(comics)#In_other_media] in other media prior (Including getting owned by Dan Turpin). But that's not even the issue. These group-up movies usually fall into the same gambit. Mega-baddie, hordes of duplicated minions, and a group of heroes that smacks around said minions so hard that it's really just a group up against one.

That's why I like movies like Spider-Man enter the Spider-verse. Mini-boss after Mini Boss after Mini Boss into one on one encounter. And through it, everyone had a special part to play.

The writers made Superman apart of everything. Recusing people, beating up Steppenwolf, pulling the Motherboxes apart.

It would have been a simple thing to write up a script that had Steppenwolf pull Superman into a World controlled by Darkseid with the machinery still there. Superman has to fight Lovecraftian horrors while Wonder Woman and Aquaman deal with and eventually get the upper hand on SteppenWolf. Flash and Batman have to fight off some Mini-Bosses who are trying to leading them away from Cyborg who needs to interface with the Motherbox still, who needs to consult with his father who is one of Earth's foremost authorities on it while protecting himself.

Cyborg gets over himself, trying to fight what happened to him with the original Motherbox and gives it in what he views as a sacrifice to save his planet. But from that, he finds out he still is him, just amplified.

Batman constantly encourages the Flash to be more than his fears. That whether he likes it or not, Fate chose Flash to be a hero of the Earth. Flash gets a little more serious and starts using more of the Speed Force, running short distances away to come back and build more momentum in his strikes. While that happens, Batman subdues the Mini Boss and makes him tell Batman where is Superman and how to get him back. Batman radios Cyborg to give him the update but Cyborg tells them they have bigger problems.

Steppenwolf, embarrassed that he is falling Darkseid, makes a bigger Boomtube that allows a Cthulhu-like creature step out on the earth. Steppenwolf boasts that the world is doomed and Wonder woman knocks him literally into the ground. Cyborg at this point gets a bead on Superman and boomtubes him back. Aquaman is calling down all types of lightning trying to get this thing's attention with Wonder woman jumping in his face and doing that Wrist explosion move. It's registering, but it's no where near enough.

Superman comes rocketing in as Flash runs Batman into the scene. Batman fills Supes in, and Supes flies to the monster. Batman turns to Flash to tell him something, but the Flash is gone.

Supes joins into laying into DCthulhu via his heat vision until he stops and he listens. Aquaman and Wonder Woman asks what's wrong, but Superman flies behind the monster and starts to keep him in place. Once again, the team asks him what he's doing, and Superman yells at them to trust him. He calls to Batman to see if Cyborg can open another boomtube back to the place this thing came from. Batman asks, but Cyborg tells him he can do even better. Supes then yells to punch it and they create a Boomtube that is sucking a lot of the debris in.

Everyone is straining to stay in place, but DCthulhu is starting to move away from the Boomtube of his own accord. Superman strains against the monster and finally yells "NOW, BARRY".

Infinite Mass Punch [https://youtu.be/_a0pwb9NvFE?t=107]. Straight into DCthulhu's face. The blowback is immense. buildings are shattered, it literally knocks DCthulhu off of it's feet. To which Superman rolls with the momentum and tosses the thing into the Boom Tube. Where it finds itself on the planet of Apokolips, courtesy of Cyborg.

This is a bullshit treatment I typed out. I gave it two minutes thought after I said that the most boring thing about these movies is that they all just team up on the Big Bad. Everyone had a role to play. Everyone DID something all their own. There are ton of real writers out there that could have easily wrote something better than what I just spat out. Added more characters for the JL to fight against that weren't faceless jobbers, make more scenarios other than "Big bad over there, punch him hard". And they didn't do it. They made Superman into a literal Deus Ex Machina and the rest of the JL the chorus. And that's what makes the movie so bad.

It wasn't the inclusion of Superman that made everything so pointless. It's that they came up with a pointless scenario that Wonder Woman could have took care of herself, Aquaman, or possibly the Flash. This was a trifle that was made to be a big deal. I say this should have been the last fight of Wonder Woman, because it would have been just enough scale to show how Powerful she really is. And then we could have receivedn a real Invasion Force made up of any number of Darkseid's elite [https://comicvine.gamespot.com/darkseids-elite/4060-49088/characters/].

 

[Xprimentyl]

Overall point. Flash is really fast. But how fast he is tends to depends on how fast he needs to be for the plot.

The Flash is nothing if not a huge pile of contrivance, so much so that it basically became unwatchable for me. It?s one thing to try and offer a lighter counterpoint to the mountains of modern superhero grittiness, but it?s something else when you shoot so far in that opposing direction that the tether by which your audience is expected to hang on is stretched to its snapping point.

It's like the writers established that Barry is the ?fastest man alive,? but did so too soon, and have since been trying to sell us credibly that he?s not fast enough. He can run fast enough to travel through time on a whim?. through TIME; he?s fast enough, Jesus. Rather than writing interesting scenarios within which to apply his abilities, they hamstring the plot with ?he needs to go faster.? C?mon, fucker could probably stop four bullets fired in each of the cardinal directions at the same time; can?t we just take that and do something more interesting with it than another montage of him trying to go faster by running laps in the large hadron collider thing-y in the lab?s basement?? Or stop pitting him against/with speedsters who, according to the half-assed ?canon? they?ve established, couldn?t possibly be on his level, i.e.: you expect me to believe Kid Flash, a kid who got his super speed 12 minutes ago, is actually on par with a guy who just ran into the future for milk and eggs because the store closed an hour ago?

Give him a weakness that cripples his speed or the use thereof; didn?t the Flash series from late ?80?s/early ?90s stipulate that Barry had to eat exorbitant amounts to counteract his caloric burn? Or more situations that require his being in multiple places at nearly the same time, ANYTHING other than ?faster.? Their pseudoscience has already allowed for speeds impossible within our atmosphere much less reality; ?more impossible? isn?t better. I stopped watching after the first episode of the latest season (I think) when he had to ?chase down? the jet-propelled samurai robot guy when it?s already been established that Barry is more than capable of speeds far in excess of any physical thing man could create. Short of killing him during the deepest moment of a solid REM sleep, nothing should pose a physical threat to Barry, but DRAMA and REASONS!

 

[Something Amyss]

It's like the writers established that Barry is the ?fastest man alive,? but did so too soon, and have since been trying to sell us credibly that he?s not fast enough. He can run fast enough to travel through time on a whim?

\
To be fair, he was able to travel through time in season one at barely supersonic speed. I think part of this is that the writers have no concept of speed, though. Recently, he and Supergirl slowed ti e by raveling around the world in opposite directions...at just over mach 7.

I...uhhh...that makes sense..somehow.

The "gotta get faster" thing sort of makes sense against speedsters, but it does get annoying when Flash goes up against some regular shmoe and can't handle it.

Also, against later season big bads, speed should no longer be an issue.

Mosly what's kept me watching the show is I like the characters and don't so much care if the plots make sense. It's the reason I didn't like 3 so much,. Everything became bleak and almost all the characters were angsting constantly

 

[Comic Sans]

The thing that bugged me most in The Flash was when regular people could just run away on foot. You know the deal. He has the villain, stands a small distance away talking, villlain does dastardly thing to distract the hero for a few seconds or knock down the hero, villain gets away. This works on Arrow when he?s just a regular guy on foot. But the Flash is so fast he can break the sound barrier. He?s so fast he can tear through reality. This should not work. There have been episodes where he has covered the entire city in, like, seconds. We have seen that time basically freezes when he goes super speed. There is no excuse that anyone without crazy super mobility can get away yet it always seemed to happen cause drama. The breaking point for me was in Season 3. The villain was a teenage girl who was telekinetic. It was the usual. He learns she exists, catches up to her in an alley, she distracts him by I believe throwing a car at some people. He saves the people, turns around and she?s gone, goes DARN SHE ESCAPED, commercial break.

Fucking WHAT.

She?s a teenage girl on foot with a very distinctive appearance. Yeah she threw a car but if Flash was moving fast that means at most only seconds have passed. She should be right around the corner. He?s not hurt or disabled in any way, there?s no reason he can?t chase. But no, he just gives up. That felt like it happened all the time. This didn?t bother me so much in the early seasons but as the writing quality degraded it felt less tolerable. The longer a show goes the more annoying the tropes get, and Flash is incredibly annoying if you?re looking for any sort of power consistency.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I think part of this is that the writers have no concept of speed

? the writing quality degraded it felt less tolerable. The longer a show goes the more annoying the tropes get, and Flash is incredibly annoying if you?re looking for any sort of power consistency.

^Both of these. You?d like to watch a show and legitimately wonder what the hero?s going to do next, but in the Flash?s case, you spend most of the time in-the-know that whatever the situation, whether a back alley hostage situation or supernatural, catastrophic event threatening the lives of millions, he?s gonna fall just short, then spend the next half hour getting faster and/or travelling through time to fix it all at the last second. He?s like rubberbanded AI in a shitty racing game: always ?right behind? despite an assured victory. It?s boring and stupid. The characters were interesting at first, agreed there, but as you suggested, their density and apparent willful ignorance got tiresome really quickly.