"Look!:"

http://collider.com/the-flash-movie-dir ... goldstein/

Flash movie has new directors. Weirdly, it seems like they're best known for writing the Horrible Bosses movies. Looks like they also wrote Spider-Man: Homecoming and Game Night, the latter of which I have no seen. The Flash is definitely a lighter character in his origins and personality and Ezra made great comic relief in JL. The Cyborg and Flash scenes were some of my favorite parts of the movie. Homecoming wasn't my favorite comic book movie or even my favorite Spider-Man movie, but I'm eager to see what they do with this.

This is what DC needs right now.

They need to dump the Flashpoint idea, make a movie nothing like the ensemble films, and put Flash up against Grodd. Also maybe King Shark. Does he have any other animal themed villains that could form a super team?

They need a clean slate before they can move forward with Solo films. They want a cinematic universe as cohesive as Marvels is. To get that they need to start over fresh, and they've already invested too much cash into it to recast everyone. Besides. Do you really want to go through the slog of ANOTHER Superman origin movie with a new actor? ANOTHER Batman origin movie? Another wonder woman movie after we just got her first one? If they pull this off? They can move forward and maybe win back a fraction of audience goodwill.

I'm not 100% happy about this either (I wanted my dark apocalyptic Flashpoint movie not a comedy Flashpoint). But if this means DC can move forward without having to always ignore the elephant in the room of the as you put it 'sequels to versions of movies that don't exist?' FINE.

and Snyder ruins it in an adrenaline-haulting slow-motion shot that objectively hides all of the action and seriously looks disgusting.

WE. FUCKING. GET. IT. You hate Zack Snyder. Stop scratching the scab and let it heal.

I think, actually, that the smartest thing that WB could do with the DC Universe is give up on movies entirely and focus on developing big budget, premium channel prestige style television shows for their characters with self contained story arcs and big name acting, directing, and writing talent. There's a lot more interest and goodwill on the TV side with these characters (which have already introduced crossovers and multiversal vibrations and such shenaningans). They could straight up do a Crisis and put it all in the same continuity and the fans would enjoy it. If they recast Supes and Bats they could probably keep Gadot for Wonder Woman. They'd really only need to reboot Superman and Batman.

I could write up a story but I'm not in the mood, I'll tl:dr it: Movie Flash and TV Flash have to team up to fix the universe, some shit happens, the parts of Batman and Superman and Lois Lane will now be played by these less expensive actors, and oh hai Supergirl. Boom.

Disney-Marvel has pretty much dropped the ball on TV and DC could pick it up. Marvel is like football and DC is like baseball. No matter how hard baseball tries it ain't going to be football but there's still a place for baseball in this world.

That's unlikely, so the best plan for the brand going forward recognizes reality: People are willing to give solo DC movies a shot. The big ensemble cast prestige movies have met with critical and financial failure. People aren't interested in movies written like BvS and JL. Nobody wants to watch two hour long TV episodes that are released years apart. If they really want to differentiate themselves from Marvel they need to abandon the "CU" part of the equation and just make good solo movies that showcase the characters. Maybe have an occasional crossover but no big ensemble pieces. After JL ended I had absolutely zero interest in a lackluster uninteresting Lex Luthor meeting with grumpy deadpool to set up another nearly three hour long trailer that's all edging with no finish.

Trying to make DC the dark and edgy Mature answer to Marvel is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The only thing that the DCCU has been about so far is itself. Marvel has touched on domestic spying, the war on terror, the military-industrial complex, and other contemporary issues because Marvel established themselves in the sixties with social relevant metaphors for civil rights while the DC characters were languishing creatively. The DC characters are more mythic and it's a mistake to try to drag them down into a realistic setting. As I've already explained at length, the only character that fits a realistic setting is Batman and putting him in one fundamentally changes the character and makes him much more gray than he really should be.

I fundamentally disagree that they need a clean slate. They just need to make standalone movies. Audiences respond to good movies. They really don't care about continuity, at all. Comic book style continuity is geek masturbation and geeks get pissy over it because they want to use it to gatekeep and establish a sense of ownership over a corporate product and it is, frankly, ridiculous. Marvel knows how to work continuity as a brand management and marketing tool. The DCCU puts it above everything else which just illustrates my point. People don't give a shit. Nobody really gives a shit about all the damage in Man of Steel, either. Nobody but nerds cares and two ponderous overlong movies trying to justify it only to turn around and go all cartoony to try to overwrite it just pissed the audiences off.

I haven't regularly read cape books in years, but I quit reading them for a reason. When I put down superhero comics they had gone to shit. Everything was swinging to dark and edgy again (which is to say, overwrought and shitty) and wild ideas from talented and enthusiastic creators were being ignored and top talent screwed over by meddling executives, and at the time where wasn't anything interesting or creative going on. The inmates were running the asylum and all the editorial staff and writers were second and third generation comic book fans who are invested in continuity and top-down enforcement of their particular views of the characters with an emphasis on their own person politics, prejudices, and sense of how the characters should be because of the way they were when the creators were kids. They were completely removed from the first and second generation creators, who were more concerned with art and storytelling than continuity until the early 90's distributor collapse forced comics into a niche market and compelled the big two to pander to the kind of completely worthless person that writes letters to comic books demanding an explanation for how Spider-Man was in Alaska with Wolverine when he was in Queens going curtain shopping with Mary Jane or some shit. The DCCU embraced all the shit that drowned the fun out of comic books.

I'm not going to dignify everything here with a response because I've gone on length about how Marvel ISN'T about war on terror etc. or nearly as deep as you say it is.

They DO need a clean slate. They bad vibes from the past movies are going to carry over unless they signal 100% 'hey we're doing things differently now and what happened before doesn't'.

If they really want to differentiate themselves from Marvel they need to abandon the "CU" part of the equation and just make good solo movies that showcase the characters.

and they are doing what you're saying. They're going to focus on Standalones for the next few years (two solo movies before and nothing but solo movies for the forseeable future after Flashpoint), and then try to make a Cohesive Universe with crossovers again once they've got enough solo movies out. They've learned they can't go any direction except Marvels direction.

But the fact is you only get ONE first BVS and Justice League movie, and when you mess up the FIRST justice league movie, nobody is going to go see the follow ups. That's gonna be a mark held against them by audiences forever.

Trying to make DC the dark and edgy Mature answer to Marvel is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Because Imitating the competition 100% right down to tone and goofiness doesn't make you seem desperate at all or condemn you to being trapped in their shadow FOREVER. They were trying to market to a different audience who wanted more mature Superhero material, it didnt pan out. So now they're just going to be diet-Marvel forever. You got what you wanted Chuck. I also fundamentally disagree that making a darker story with a non-batman character instantly compromises that character. But that's something we're never going to come to an accord over.

and yes. Audiences DO care about continuity between movies because it's all that's keeping them coming back to the theater.

compelled the big two to pander to the kind of completely worthless person that writes letters to comic books demanding an explanation for how Spider-Man was in Alaska with Wolverine when he was in Queens going curtain shopping with Mary Jane or some shit. The DCCU embraced all the shit that drowned the fun out of comic books.

AND THERE IT IS!

Because God forbid we care about what the people who buy the books think right? We should totally make everything samey and generic and not try to make stories for fans. God forbid stories try to be ABOUT something deeper right?

Also. Things aren't like that at DC anymore. Rebirth has pretty much managed to find the balance between the dark/gritty and silver age idealism.

Marvel Comics and DC Comics only exist because of the market value of their IP. Comic book fans alone aren't enough to keep the lights on a the big two. You know why Marvel's intellectual property was a mess, cut up between multiple studios and distributors to the point that it took Disney becoming a monopoly to even start bringing them under one roof? Because Marvel was so close to completely going under that they had to desperately sell off the film and television rights to their iconic characters. The MCU exists because they managed to scrape up enough capital to try making movies with second tier properties like Iron Man, who until the MCU came along was less familiar to the general public than the Black Sabbath song of the same name. DC and Marvel are IP farms for the respective corporate overlords.

Comic book movies appeal to mass audiences or they fail. Period. So you take these characters and you make niche movies that appeal to comic book readers, the kind of hardcore fans that make "No one hates Star Trek as much as Star Trek fans" geekdom look mild and forgiving, and guarantee they flop, or you rediscover what made the characters iconic in the first place and work it.

I actually typed a much longer reply but went back and deleted it. I'm done having the same circular argument with you that has killed any interest in actual discussion of movies in this thread. That problem is as much me as it is you and I've perpetuated it by responding. Everything I could say about this has been said except this:

I can't judge your actual attitude about this from text and I am extremely hesitant to project because I may be wrong, but you sound really upset and strained about an imaginary battle between multinational conglomerates that don't give a fuck about you. The constant strum and drang posts about how DC is doomed or whatever, as if it actually matters, has gotten really repetitive and unhealthy. If you feel as stridently about this as you seem to, I really think you need to take a step back and take some deep breaths and just go focus on something else for a while. Get thee to a weedery and go chill with some real humans. Then grab a Wattpad or FF.net account and write your ideas into fiction or something. Go create, procreate, and recreate.

I'm going to follow my own advice. This thread has degenerated into you and me going back and forth with me writing long detailed essays that no one reads and you repeating the same points over and over and over, with the occasional driveby comment from someone stopping by to let us know how sophisticated they are because they watch Real Movies™ and are thus above the fray. Any actual discussion has been killed by the toxicity in this thread. There's a comic book movie in theaters right now that's on pace to beat Avengers at the box office with a majority black cast and there's maybe five posts about it in the whole thread while we go on and on and on perpetually disagreeing about a movie that came out in 2016 or some shit, not to mention the other half dozen superhero flicks coming out this year.

Fucking let it go.

You know what my favorite moments are with the DC and Marvel comics? Not the big, grand stories, but the little, focused ones. Things that gives us images like this:



Or remind us that the characters, for all of their 'godliness,' are humans:



These days, I find myself turning more and more to fan-art for those moments:



I wish we had more moments like these. That doesn't mean eliminating the high stakes, or even the darkness of the stories (I love a dark Gotham, with evil things scratching beneath the surface), but a story becomes more effective when we have something to connect to in it. They kind of realized that for Justice League, but it was implemented poorly. I think that's one of the things the Marvel movies do well, which is to add in the silly moments with the serious moments. That's real life: for every picture of a Soldier guarding a street corner, serious and scared, I can find you a picture of the same Soldier getting duct taped to the pipes for his birthday.

The comics do that well. I think the films will realize that you can do that, too. It may take some time and another franchise attempt, but we'll see what we get.

Ray wrote:You hate Zack Snyder. Stop scratching the scab and let it heal.

Actually, I've always seen Snyder as being one more movie away from finally making it as a coherent auteur. Maybe he would have finally gotten there if it wasn't for WB dragging him down with a franchise he wasn't ever really interested in to begin with.

Like... all of the elements needed to be a truly great filmmaker are all present in the entire collection of his current filmography, but they just aren't ever present in the same movie. He'll get one thing really right in movie movie, but drop the ball with another thing, and then vise versa for the next film he does. He's really good with fight scenes in The Watchmen, but fails at story progression and pacing. Sucker Punch is really good at pacing and story progression, but sucks at making fight scenes feel impactful. 300 doesn't have anything to write home about within terms of action and its pacing it just terrible, but the visuals are stunningly iconic. (And relatable human drama was never his strong suit by any stretch of the imagination, but I think very few of his works need it to begin with. So, you know... no harm, no foul for the most part, I guess.) You get the idea. That greatness is all there within that man, he just can't seem to muster it all together to work for a single film.

He's basically Michael Bay, with talent.

He needs to pair up with a decent screenwriter, and an editor and producer that can reel him in, and he'll make some amazing stuff.

Gob Hobblin wrote:He's basically Michael Bay, with talent.

Bay has talent, he just lets it go to waste with those Transformers films.

The Rock is a great action film and Armageddon is dumb as hell, but it's extremely watchable.

Gob Hobblin wrote:He's basically Michael Bay, with talent.

He needs to pair up with a decent screenwriter, and an editor and producer that can reel him in, and he'll make some amazing stuff.

I agree with that as when Synder has a good script he can make it work but when he goes off on one we get things like Sucker Punch and I still cringe at that film to this very day though I am one of those people who likes Watchman but I heard the Watchman script was good because it had written over a number of years and had been really polished before it fell in to Synders hands.

Snyder is a skilled director, but he’s only good at making things that are gritty and violent.

Watchmen? Great movie, fits the tone of the comic. Batman VS Superman? Butchers the title characters and the villains.

Speaking of Snyder, I wonder if he would have filmed the sex scene in 300 if he knew it was incest? Or maybe he’s into that. I won’t judge him.

Cybermat47 wrote:Speaking of Snyder, I wonder if he would have filmed the sex scene in 300 if he knew it was incest? Or maybe he’s into that. I won’t judge him.

The 300 film is based on a Graphic novel by Frank Miller so if your referring to the Oracle of Delphi and the inbred priests having sex with her that is historically inaccurate but Miller is not known for his historical accuracy as he has the Spartans throwing around weird jarred comments about Greeks being boy lovers when Spartans were very in to homosexuality from what I've heard.I think the thing to take from 300 is a fun violent movie and pure popcorn fun but is very much in the realm of fantasy and based really, really loosely on real history.

I just got back from Infinity War.

They did it. The crazy sons of bitches, they did it. A true epic of scale and scope not seen in Hollywood for a long time. Easily dethrones any of the other entries for best Marvel movie, and the best post-credits scene too.

Every member of the cast absolutely killed it.

IW was the first superhero movie to really capture the feel of comic books. No toning down powers, no walking back wild melodramatic plots, no fear of silliness and bright colors and a full range of drama, humor, and emotion. It’s a big movie with big characters and it goes balls to the wall in a way that’s utterly refreshing in an era when producing ~art~ apparently requires crawling up your own ass wrapped in fourteen layers of irony and self awareness to prove how aloof you are.

I know it won’t happen because it’s not a movie about a cobbler struggling with he sex addiction he developed to deal with the ennui following the death of his beloved poodle, but this movie seriously deserves a Besf Picture nod and nominations for the cast, as much or more than *Logan* did.

Marvel has had a lot of ups and downs in quality but the post-Perlmutter era is proving to be an exciting time when they’re ready to take some risks and let the sheer joy that is the madness of comic books shine, unbound and wild as it should be.

Infinity War. Thanos was a cool villain; got a good dose of the Guardians, though I do wish the joking around was dialed back a little; action scenes where I could see what was going on were good (I hate nighttime action scenes); I had to chuckle at the ending. "Wow, they really went there!"

Thought it was rather lame how they got the Giant-Dwarf's forge burning again; a tiny spacecraft (or "Pod" as they called it) is all it takes to re-ignite a star? Why couldn't Thor use his zappy-powers to kick-start it?

When the King says "Get this man a shield", you should get the man a cool-looking, shiny new shield; not a pair of crappy wrist-guards.

Did anybody notice Hawkeye was missing? Me neither.

chazthesilencer wrote:Infinity War. Thanos was a cool villain; got a good dose of the Guardians, though I do wish the joking around was dialed back a little; action scenes where I could see what was going on were good (I hate nighttime action scenes); I had to chuckle at the ending. "Wow, they really went there!"

Thought it was rather lame how they got the Giant-Dwarf's forge burning again; a tiny spacecraft (or "Pod" as they called it) is all it takes to re-ignite a star? Why couldn't Thor use his zappy-powers to kick-start it?

When the King says "Get this man a shield", you should get the man a cool-looking, shiny new shield; not a pair of crappy wrist-guards.

Did anybody notice Hawkeye was missing? Me neither.

This movie prompted me to do something I've never done before: See it in theaters twice. Part of the reason, I admit, is that I had a terrible seat near the screen at the IMAX and 3D movies, if you're not sitting in a narrow band of the middle of the theater, can be painful to watch. The combination of bad angle that kept separating the 3D images and the enormous screen being so close made this a tough one. Plus, the audience reactions drowned out a bunch of dialogue after the jokes/big reveals.

Even so I'd normally wait for it to be on home video before seeing it again. Actually, since I have MoviePass and this movie will be in theaters as long or longer than Black Panther, it's entirely likely I will see it several times. The only other time I've been even tempted was Godzilla in 2014, when a shitty theater with a washed out projection and bad sound hampered my experience.

I actually didn't mind all the noise, etc. at the opening night showing. I went to an opening night showing for that very reason. There's something magical about seeing a movie with a bunch of sassy black ladies (Made Rampage more fun than it had any right to be) and the raw energy of a crowd that's as invested in the happenings on screen as I am. A really invested, emotional crowd that laughs and claps and cheers and cries turns a movie into a kind of communal performance art.

A second viewing in a quieter theater made me like it even more.

Most of all, this movie has made Dr. Strange my favorite MCU character.

Wow, that movie was a lot to take in. I will say that I was very impressed by Thanos. My biggest fear going in to this movie was that they could not possibly deliver on the 6 years of build up he's had, and I am very happy to say I was completely wrong. Brolin absolutely nailed it with his performance. It's not a very high bar to clear, but I think he is far and away the best villain from the MCU. I won't get into details but the change in his motivation from page to screen really helped to make him a more compelling character, I thought.

Maybe someone more familiar with the comics can answer this for me, because it left me scratching my head.

As for the rest: