Zach Levi (Chuck, Tangled) is playing Shazam.

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— twitter-user (@username) date

He'll have to buff up a LOT but there are worse choices. He's certainly funny, as I was a big fan of Chuck, I have no problem believing he'll be able to pull off the "Kid in an Adults body" tone they want to go for.

Chuckman wrote:Rogue One is neither dark nor a tragedy. Dying a heroic death to deal a massive blow to the Empire is bittersweet but not tragic.

I think that the problem with R1's tragedy is that it feels very Old Testament. Like cruel merciless God sends people to die 'cause they have to, sins of fathers so great and irreversible that you can't both make a change and stay alive. Can't say that it doesn't work or doesn't belong here (I guess I would've even liked it anywhere else), but with Star Wars you're always conscious about all the same things and triggers: "child", "play", "toy", "fans" and etc. At some point all of it becomes eerily resemblant of a child playing with his favorite SW toys, making up a story, and an hour or two later deciding to land a finishing blow on every character he made up and bring total death to his universe. Maybe because it suits his own story, but also maybe because he feels an empowered pleasure in doing so, and who can stop him really? When we finally see the scene where two Star Destroyers collide above Scarif it looks just as that - a child playing with expensive LEGO kits 800$ or so for each just because he can. Not a very comfortable feeling.

Or maybe I just reek of envy since I never had a LEGO Star Destroyer myself.

For you DC fans, Justice League held its first critic screening tonight at the WB lot. Critics aren't allowed to express their opinions in any form whether positive or negative until review embargo lifts - when that is is unknown - but there's usually a dingus who drops a hint early through their social media. So it's finally done. They can't reshoot anymore.

God -DAMN- I’m just realizing how bad MoS and BvS fucked me up. I’m watching Chris Reeve Superman movies, and every time the title character shows up I weep uncontrollably. Hell, I started crying at the opening title sequence. It felt so to finally see the actual Superman again.

Gendo'sPapa wrote:review embargo

Every time I see these two words, I always think to myself that the studios might as well just say they expect their movie to be hot garbage. It's Alan Smithee levels of confidence in your product.

I wish I understood Warner Brothers logic behind their rather strict review embargos. I mean yeah, I'm positive Justice League will be a disaster so they want to silence that as long as they can but they have a weird relationship with the embargo rules. For example, they wouldn't allow critics to express their opinions on Blade Runner 2049 until the week it came out. Presumably in that case they didn't want critics spoiling things which kinda makes sense. They also didn't allow any reviews/opinions to be shared on Wonder Woman until the Monday of it's release week. For a hot minute there even up to the end of May everyone was positive THAT movie was going to be a complete disaster.

And for the life of me I'll never fathom why they said no reviews for Mad Max: Fury Road could be released until the day before George Miller's masterpiece hit theaters. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD! Without question the best Hollywood studio release of probably the past decade. You'd think with a film THAT STRONG they'd want to put the word out weeks before release to build up some real excitement.

What I'm saying is while Warner Brothers does make the BEST movies (Mad Max: Fury Road, Blade Runner 2049, Dunkirk) and the WORST (most attempts at franchises now, i.e. most of these new DC movies & whatever the hell that non-movie Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them was) they weirdly play it overly safe when it comes to critics regardless of quality. Their logic seems to always be "Whether the movie is gold or shit, there are no reviews until the week of release." It's just odd (Dunkirk - their bid for Best Picture - also had no reviews until the Monday before it's release) So those first Justice League reviews will probably drop Monday November 13th.

Ray wrote:Because a modern day audience would TOTALLY accept that level of cheese and camp in a 21st Century movie.

Remember Superman Returns?

Why do I even come to this thread if people are just going to crap all over something I happen to like?

Yes they would accept such, they seem to be actively clamoring for such, Guardians is basically just as lighthearted and people accept them and Thor 3 looks to be about the same.
Only difference is they have vastly better sets/effects so the cheesiness seems awesome instead of cheap like the Reeves films.
And with Guardians, they extremely briefly are allowed to go super dark (peter's face peeling off in 1, what peter's dad revealed he did in 2) while the 1st 2 Reeves films were basically consequence-less fluff.

Superman Returns has been criticized for aping the Reeves films a bit too much but it was more criticized for being kinda dour at times.

Just ignore the hate man, thread is still viable just share news that you want to and your opinions on such and drown out the rest.

Ray wrote:Because a modern day audience would TOTALLY accept that level of cheese and camp in a 21st Century movie.

First of all, the 1978 movie Superman wasn't really all that campy. The filmmakers knew that, in order for late-70's audiences to accept Superman, that they had to write the character of Louis Lane as a worldly, skeptical, and cynical adult in order to act as a buffer between Superman and the audiences. By winning Louis over to Superman's "boy-scout" personality, the filmmakers figured they would also win over the equally worldly, skeptical, and cynical adults sitting in the theaters watching the movie. And it worked! Audiences love it!

Secondly, audiences of the late 70's aren't really that different from modern audiences. They are just as philosophically and ideologically "modern" as one another. (One decade simply lacks the smartphones and microchips of the other. That's all.) Audiences of the late 70's also enjoyed Star Wars (1977) and Alien (1979), which are two franchises that are still alive and well today without there being any real changes to the narrative approach to the basic stories being told in their respective franchises. The only franchise from the late 70's that changed in more recent films was Superman, and that's because, for whatever reason, contemporary filmmakers thought that audiences that were "modern" enough to enjoy Star Wars were somehow "too old-fashioned" to be relied upon for their enjoyment of Superman. It's a form of thinking that has multiple internal contradictions and doesn't survive logical scrutiny of any kind. Simple as that. If Superman is too old-fashioned for contemporary audiences, then the Star Wars movie that came out before Superman is also too old-fashioned for contemporary audiences.

And finally, it's not like those darker and more grim Superman movies are doing very well with audiences that enjoyed other late-70's film franchises, such as Star Wars. Maybe somebody should fix that.

In conclusion, saying that modern audiences wouldn't appreciate a real Superman movie isn't logically sound with the rest of the filmmaking landscape in which we currently live. Audiences claiming that they don't like Superman come off as Andy Samberg screaming "I'M AN ADULT" while throwing cake and candy to the ground. It's one of the reason why we can't have nice things anymore. (To be fair, Star Wars probably isn't marketed to those kinds of people either.)

Agree, and I like your analysis of Lois’ role in the film.

I think that’s ideal modern Superman movie would be structured around Lois’ perspective even more. No attempts to deceive the audience, since everyone on Earth knows Superman’s secret identity, but it would be fun to play around with a worldly cynical character coming to embrace him.

What I’d do is give Clark screen focus but only ever show Superman through the eyes of other people, mainly Lois.

That’s the problem. You don’t bring Superman down to the audience, you bring the audience up to him.

“Modern audiences won’t connect with the Boy Scout” is bullshit, not to put too fine a point on it. A filmmaker’s (or any artist’s) job is to evoke feelings and emotions, to challenge people’s perceptions and show them fresh perspectives. A good film goes beyond enjoyment or exploitative manipulation to make the audience walk out of the theater changed, renewed, open to new thoughts.

Unfortunately all filmmaking of the 21st century seems to be gripped by the twin humbugs of “optimism is immature” and “art must be deliberately obtuse or it isn’t art”. The defining quality of the post-postmodernist era is a grating sense of irony, a high value placed on detachment and dissociation from experience or unthinking hedonism. Everyone wants to “cherish” nostalgia by making an absurdist vulgar parody of it, or flit off to live in an Airbnb in Southeast Asia and eat $2 lobsters while deliberately ignoring the neocolonialist undertones of their exploitative expat bohemian lifestyle.

The generation that came to adulthood in the Go Go eighties -the “me generation” lived their lives with the conviction that the world would end in their lifetimes and all that came with it.

Our generation acts like we’re disappointed it didn’t.

The superhero genre is basically the new western and as westerns needed a turn towards the darker aspects of the era they romanticized the superhero genre needs a great work that is optimistic without being lighthearted, serious without being grim, and mature without being up it’s own ass screaming IM AN ADULT so the sentiment trumpets through its own nostrils. It needs a Superman who is political, who grapples with real life problems, and who is received both positively and negatively by our culture, with the results of that acceptance fully explored rather than chopped up into two scenes of “let me prove I’ve never watched c span” and “everyone who hated him loves him because he died to kill a monster that wouldn’t exist if he wasn’t here in the first place”

MoS/BvS deserves some credit for trying this, but Snyder was never the director to lead it. He’s not a storyteller. He’s a visual stylist. Watchmen was somewhat acceptable in spite of what he brought to its production (Ozy’s costume coming across as a parody of bat nipples, etc; the problem with Watchmen is that it needs like fifteen years and dozens of films worth of a superhero genre to build off of the way Watchmen the comic worked with the structure of comics etc) and 300 was the same (did you know that in Miller’s book, Leonidas speaks softly until his “mighty roar” which loses its impact on screen because (a) we don’t hear it, it’s in a soundless slow motion shot with the narrator talking over it and (b) he shouts more than half his damn lines, especially ones that are meant to be whispered and evoke the famous Laconic wit, I.e. “this is Sparta”) and Sucker Punch is gibberish and fetish costumes.

Hopefully Patty Jenkins brings the next Wonder Woman together and makes something special out of it and fills that void, but I want a Superman movie that isn’t an essay on why Superman is unrealistic or Batman is way cooler.

JL Clip Steppenwolf's facial CGI looks a good deal better then feared when a lesser quality version of this clip was released a few days ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBzRV9Tk1VU

Ray wrote:I don't want ANYONES opinion but my own affecting this movie.

Good for you man.

Chuckman wrote:MoS/BvS deserves some credit for trying this

Thank you for giving it that much.

At this point I'm mainly curious to see if every member of the Justice League is going to have a Martha for a mom.

The Crisis of Infinite Marthas

Word on the street is the Justice League embargo lifts in the middle of the night (like 2am) Wednesday November 15th. Critics are forbidden from expressing their opinions until then & any who do would lose future privileges. Apparently WB put the word of Lord Warner into the critics who have seen screenings so lips will be kept tight. There's gonna be a lot of "OMG, critics said JUSTICE LEAGUE is better than the Avengers son!" & "Haha, I heard JL is a worse Ben Affleck movie than Gigli!" being spread around on social media in the next few days but that's all gonna be ... well... fake news.

Although, I wouldn't put it past WB to do another "superfans" only screening of the movie the week it gets released so social media can be inundated with "This is the best movie of all time!" social media buzz a few days before release. They did it Batman V. Superman last year & for a hot minute social media was awash with fan reviews of "The best Batman movie of all time!". Sony did it with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014 as well. Fans get overly excited when given a chance to be "FIRST" and studios count on that.

http://comicbook.com/marvel/2017/11/06/ ... ntury-fox/

Disney reportedly in talks to buy 21st Century Fox.

This would bring the Fantastic Four, and all associated with them, and the X-Men, and all associated with them, back to Marvel. The only thing outside of Marvel control then would be Spider-Man and his ancillary characters and villains.

Additionally, this would clear up some outstanding rights issues relating to the original Star Wars trilogy, and probably pave the way for a fully restored/remastered Blu-Ray release of the unedited films without the Special Edition fuckery.

On the one hand, I'd love to see Marvel introduce the X-Men into the MCU- IMO it'd be great if they just added them as a newly publicly revealed team of mutants who are all teenagers rather than fucking about with the continuity. I don't know how they'd restore the Fantastic Four to Marvel continuity without retcons, but I'm sure it's doable.

Edit: Marvel Studios I think is bold enough to introduce something like Earth (number) where the FF have been active for years and merge the universes of have them permanently cross over or something. It can be done.

Plus, one of the top five comic book villains of all time would come to the MCU and finally give Loki some competition for carrying antagonist roles.

On the other hand, this is yet another massive media conglomerate merger of the kind I find profoundly troubling for our culture itself.

Edit 2: Hugh Jackman has apparently said he'd be interested in returning to Wolverine for crossovers etc.

Edit: Welp.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -cnbc-says

Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. . . RIP Fantastic Four.

Then again, I'm not exactly happy with the Mouse having a Monopoly on the ENTIRE Superhero genre either. . . .

Please just let JL get a passable RT rating. . . I'd take a 50% at this point. . . I'm sick and tired of all the hate

Ray wrote:Please just let JL get a passable RT rating. . . I'd take a 50% at this point. . . I'm sick and tired of all the hate

Attack of the Clones got a 65%

Revenge of the Sith got a 79%

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has a 77%

Spider Man 3 got a 63%

Paranormal Activity has an 83%


Just sayin'.

I'm one of the ten people on planet earth who actually liked Indy 4. Furthermore, the internet wasn't this giant slaying hype-killing machine ten or even five years ago like it is today.