What's at stake for the Batman/Wayne character? []Quoting number8 (view post)
What's at stake for the Batman/Wayne character? []Quoting number8 (view post)
[+] closer to next rating / [-] closer to previous rating
- Dark (S3) ✦✦✦½ [-]
- Fall (Mann, 2022) ✦✦✦½ [-]
- Ms. Marvel (S1) ✦½ [+]
- Dark (S2) ✦✦✦✦
- Moon Knight (S1) ✦✦½ [-]
- Get Carter (Hodges, 1971) ✦✦✦½ [+]
- Prey (Trachtenberg, 2022) ✦✦✦ [-]
- Black Bird (S1) ✦✦✦✦
- Better Call Saul (S6) ✦✦✦½ [+]
- Halo (S1) ✦✦✦ [-]
- Slow Horses (S1) ✦✦✦½ [+]
- H4Z4RD (Govaerts, 2022/BE) ✦✦½ [-]
- Gangs of London (S1) ✦✦✦½ [+]
- We Own This City (S1) ✦✦✦½ [+]
- Thor: Love and Thunder (Waititi, 2022) ✦✦ [+]
Great question. I have no idea.[]Quoting Morris Schæffer (view post)
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
I'm sure some Ted Cruz supporters will be up for this, as well.Quoting Skitch (view post)
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
Ha. I started re-reading The Dark Knight Returns late last night because so many BvS reviews mentioned it. I didn't remember this scene at all and was gonna ask what you thought of it today.Quoting number8 (view post)
At the very least, it seems clear to me that the panels depict Batman picking up a gun and firing it, which contravenes much of what he says and does in the canon.
It isn't just that-- less than 10 pages later, he's debating whether to face off against the Mutant Leader mano e mano. Batman considers that he could kill the guy from inside the Batmobile by firing a weapon at him and then thinks, "But that would be crossing a line I set for myself years ago."Quoting Melville (view post)
It makes the panels 8 posted even more incomprehensible. Miller seems to show Batman killing someone with a gun, but then almost immediately reinforces the idea that he doesn't kill.
There are a number of things like that in TDKR. There's that scene where he yells at his followers that guns are the weapons of the enemy and that they should never use it, and that batarangs are the best weapons. But like in the previous chapter he runs around with a rifle he brought himself, shooting at a helicopter. There's also that cheeky "Rubber bullets. Honest." quip.
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
This is even worse than anything I was expecting. My group of about 50 people had already purchased the tickets earlier, so we were seeing the movie even though we knew it was terrible beforehand.
And wow, was there laughter throughout what seemed four hours of torture... I mean, the lines, the Snyder-moments of slo-mo closeups, the insanely bad action sequences (especially chases), the overbearing and self-important score, the haphazard editing, the "wtf, you can't be that stupid!?" moments... JL cameos got the biggest laughs of them all.
I am definitely totally done as far as DC movies are concerned, at least on the big screen. I'm not funding more shit like this.
This is kind of weird to me, my not just be done with Snyder?Quoting [ETM] (view post)
I was never much of a DC fan at all. They're going the way of Marvel, and failing, so it's ruining everything for me even further.Quoting Skitch (view post)
I mean, I have zero interest in Suicide Squad, for example. I'm just either incredibly tired of or disinterested in any of these characters, and Superman and Batman are quickly joining them.
I'd consider seeing Wonder Woman in something, if the story had any real stakes. She was pretty much invincible in BVS.
Sure, it's messy in places, but fuck it, I liked it!
I could not drive home fast enough to NAY this.
Baffled it's this bad actually.
The stuff they shoehorned in:
[]
The way Batman and Superman stop fighting and become best friends.
The Luther references at the very end (like he even knows wtf he's talking about)
Why is Batman suggesting they find the rest of the JL? Batman is like, the one member that doesn't like working with others. That should be the last thing on his mind.
Jesus Christ... were they referencing...
[]
Last edited by Dukefrukem; 03-25-2016 at 05:07 AM.
... What the fuck? Really?! :\Quoting Watashi (view post)
[]Quoting number8 (view post)
Reading through the thread, I honestly don't even disagree with a lot of the points being brought up. The movie is a mess, a lot of the cameos are gratuitous, the movie is overly-complicated and doesn't really make a whole lotta sense. But despite all of that, none of its flaws stood out as nearly so glaring as those in Man of Steel, and didn't hinder my experience any [].
The thing is, I don't really have a defense for this movie, either. It's not like some of Snyder's other films, most notably Sucker Punch, where I can go to bat and actually debate why they're really a good movie. No, the thing is with this one is that it really is a very flawed and all over the place sorta movie. It's just that I happened to really enjoy myself with it is all. I didn't find it boring, and it didn't even feel its length at all to me really. This was just a very dumb yet very fun experience for me to just sorta turn off my brain and not take too seriously. And I had fun with it. But while I can see where others wouldn't find this nearly so enjoyable, I also think a lot of the hate its receiving is possibly far more volatile than it probably deserves.
My screening finished about four hours ago but there's still so much to wrap my head around with this and I'm still so genuinely befuddled that I'm basically just going to respond to all of your posts as they most lined up with my swirling thoughts here.
Going in very hopeful but slightly more worried, this was the reaction I most wanted to have. 'Twas not meant to be.Quoting TGM (view post)
I think Eisenberg is weirdly compelling, if in an obviously very surface level way. I kinda love his final moment, cross dissolving into that call-back, but otherwise, he had no choice but to play him dumb, irrational, and perfunctorily evil, since that's all the script has him as.Quoting number8 (view post)
But I also have no way of knowing if what you spoilered actually happened, because this movie is general is just a big download of confusion for me right now.
I agree with some of this positivity! The first 10-15 minutes almost made me think I'd be in the minority oddly defending this, since the Bruce Wayne to the rescue in Metropolis' 9/11 stuff works much better than it should (even if it really does seem to lock the movie into his perspective and villainize Supes early on) and paints him as a heroic version of the character we don't really see again. And, dare I say it, the parents' death scene might be one the most elegantly shot pieces of superhero filmmaking I can think of(??) and maybe an even more haunting version of it than Nolan's(??!!!!) [] It's super weird that they set the opening titles to all of it, but boy is that and the cave bit afterwards gorgeous stuff. If you're going to show mythology we've already seen done so recently (The ol' Webb's Spider-Man conundrum) that's pretty much how you do it. Make it dreamier and weirder and largely wordless.Quoting Peng (view post)
Speaking of dreams! What the hell is the post-apocalyptic sequence even supposed to function as? If that had been pushed to the beginning of the movie, I can imagine it being a foreboding, metaphoric melting pot of Wayne subconscious fears, and dropping it before a larger chronological context might make us think twice of what world we're walking into with the film. But where it's actually placed? It slows everything down horrifically and barely functions as anything compelling. Then the Flash thing happens and it tries to look like a dream-within-a-dream? But it's clearly not since he doesn't know Flash otherwise, and the papers are still flying after he wakes up, making it awkwardly seem like the Darkseid desert dream was brought upon by The Flash as a vision of sorts? Oof.
Quoting Irish (view post)I mean, there you have Coulson over his shoulder (as he was in the first, just more), Fury visiting him a couple of times, and Natasha working for Tony and showing her stuff towards the end, and two quick bits of Coulson being sent to the hammer (payed off in the post-credits) and seeing Hulk on a screen, all taking up chunks of the runtime that is usually still involved in moving other elements of the plot forward (with debatable sacrificing of momentum).Quoting number8 (view post)
HERE: Bruce Wayne opening fucking files on his computer for what feels like five minutes. And then AGAIN with Wonder Woman. Absolutely atrocious. It's just the actors giving reactions to videos that feel like 2nd unit or reshoots (or in WW's case, just inserting a pic from the set of her movie whenever it existed later) that just overtly give us the origins of them and what they can do without any other context. Basically the antithesis of everything Marvel has done at their best in trying to leave intriguing seeds, later engaging audiences in those characters on screen, and then having them become a part of bigger interconnected teams and stories.
This universe's Justice League roster was essentially created by Lex Luthor by putting some files in a confidential subfolder. Why.
Last 11 things I really enjoyed:
Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
Safe (Haynes, 1995)
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
Diva (Beineix, 1981)
Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)
More thoughts:
- Does this movie actually think it makes for a meaningful revelation to have the titular heroes discover both of their Mom's had the same first name? And to have it carry that coincidental weight to do what it does between them. Flabbergasting.
- Did they seriously think the best way to reveal something was going deeply awry in the senate hearing with Superman was to be tipped off with a callback to a piss joke? Because it garnered some big laughs in the theatre when Holly Hunter first saw it, and then after [] one of those same people simply went "Oh."
- If you're going to do a version of something as big as [] storyline, at least fucking commit to it before your credits roll. Why not make that final shot/scene the first teaser for Justice League? Something else. Anything else.
- The amount of news reel cameos in this is just next-level. By the time we see Nancy Grace on the diner TV I just laughed out of defeat and went, "Oh we're still doing this? Alright, why not!"
- I don't think Wonder Woman should've necessarily been in this more because it's all already convoluted enough as is, but man, if her in full costume with abilities on display isn't the most compelling presence in the movie, I don't know who or what is. (But again, her theme lololol.. Norm Wilner described the riff as "something straight out of Bill & Ted movie" and I cannot say he is wrong.)
- The movie looked amazing in the 70mm presentation I saw, especially the IMAX-shot sequences (mainly noticed parts of the flashback opening, the whole desert dream, the big one-on-one battle, some of the stuff towards the end). Larry Fong's cinematography might get pegged as looking too "dark" and "dingy" from those watching the footage on their laptops or even DCP's in theatres, but for me it absolutely sang in rich detail, vibrant textures and colours abound through that celluloid.
But that's also a way to see a movie I'm not exactly fond of that 99% of people will not even have as an option anyway, so what am I even recommending?
- Don't forget this movie is going to have a 30-minute longer, R-rated cut to look forward to later this year! So not only was this movie massively disappointing and sluggish, but it also now fulfilled my worst fear right out of the gate by having this Director's Cut being something I was interested in even more of a chore since I barely enjoyed the original experience! Yay!
Last 11 things I really enjoyed:
Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
Safe (Haynes, 1995)
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
Diva (Beineix, 1981)
Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)
Wow, even with all the bad reviews to prep, I'm still surprised by the bad choices in this movie. The overemphasis on universe-building (at one point during the film's action climax), thinking that characters learning information is story, the constant Plot Stuff, the daydreaming and nightmaring that grinds what story there is to a halt, and the film making the crucial, crucial error of thinking that Doomsday is interesting to watch.
Along the way, Snyder demonstrates, as always, that he has a painterly attention to crafting monumental images. There's a shot of Superman and Doomsday laser-eye-ing each other that, taken purely as a color-soaked tableau, actually earns a previous scene that dwelled on a fresco of angels and demons.
But goddamnit, he's not a natural storyteller at all, and - absent of strong material to work off of - he turns this movie into a self-obsessed punchathon, the same way he did with Man of Steel. And boy oh boy does he not believe in Superman as a character. That kind of person doesn't fit in his worldview, which is identical to the warden from Shutter Island:
I seriously want to know...
[]
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
[]Quoting Dukefrukem (view post)
Midnight Run (1988) - 9
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
Sisters (1973) - 6.5
Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5
Lol. So true.Quoting Henry Gale (view post)
That's not the half of it but I wish it were because then at least []Quoting megladon8 (view post)
[]
I will say, the "Arkham Knight" fight scene was my favorite part of the movie and the only time during the movie where I wasn't bored out of my skull.
This reminds me... Were there any of the major dialogue and moments from the story that was not shown in the trailers, aside from []?Quoting Dukefrukem (view post)
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
The only thing i can think of, is the stealing of Luther's files scene. Which btw, my company had major product placement which made me giggle.Quoting number8 (view post)
Incidentally, product placement in the movie was among the most jarring I've seen lately, awkward long camera hovers over logos and all.
I didn't think it was as bad as Man of Steel. I was half expecting Bats and Supes to be duking it out inside a Pizza Hut.
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover