itt: consternation and wailing about Zach Snyder's upcoming SUPERMAN/BATMAN film/sequel to MAN OF STEEL -- official title: BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

Those hardcore Marvel fans are emblematic of why I pay roughly zero attention to the other fans of things that I enjoy. Outside of ILX, of course.

dark superman and psycho batman are legit interpretations for sure but usually when they show up in comics there's an in-story reason for them to be that way, be it an elseworlds or batman being replaced by azrael or whatever - they're stories which benefit from the juxtaposition of, say, the superman of red son with the more convetionally heroic character in the nine other books which feature him that month. although they are corporately-owned characters who have passed through the hands of hundreds but they have core characteristics - it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that 'does not kill' is a critical part of batman any less than 'does not have heat vision or super-ventriloquism'

when the dc cinematic universe is built on what feels like alternate takes on the characters rather than the values which have almost always animated them in the comics it feels like the creative teams are embarrassed to be working on superheroic characters. the marvel movies, on the other hand, have done a mostly excellent job of taking the core appeal of the characters and translating them to the screen, so it's not like dc/warners can't see it being done elsewhere

All very well-put, bizarro. Yes.

i guess another way to put it is that there are some elements of the characters which have kept them popular for more than a quarter of a century and very few, if any, are evident on-screen in man of steel or dawn of justice

on an even more basic level i'd be happier to swallow a dark superman and/or psycho batman movie if there were a single sympathetic or likeable character in the movies but there are literally none. everyone's a total asshole.

I've zero interest in seeing Dawn of Justice, but all this hand-wringing about it betraying the 'true' Superman and Batman is a bit excessive. These are corporately owned characters, written and drawn differently by hundreds of writers and artists over the years, subject to the whims of fashion and the needs of commerce; 'dark' Superman and 'psycho' Batman are entirely legitimate interpretations of these characters, no more or less so than Batmite-era Batman, or Bizarro-era Superman. Perhaps the problem is that the grim and gritty era has gone on too long, and already feels a bit dated - the success of Deadpool seems to suggest that we've now reached the decadent postmodern era of superheroes.
― Chicamaw (Ward Fowler), Thursday, March 31, 2016 2:34 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xpost I agree, but the "not killing" thing is an aspect of both characters that has held true over almost all those different interpretations, it's fairly fundamental.

I think the Batman of the 40s did use a gun to euthanise some mutants in like Batman issue 1, but after that it was decided he wouldn't use guns in the future, which has something that has stuck pretty much ever since.

yeah Batman + guns was in the earliest incarnation, when he was a pulpier comic

superman throwing guys in cars off cliffs and killing spies was his first few issues too. mickey mouse packed a pistol in the '30's!
http://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/27/d0/ba/27d0ba1f89efa23fcd8a27efccf56342.jpg
it's not that this interp isn't unprecedented, it's that it's a shitty way to present them now and that snyder is a fucking hack.

There was that extended sequence in Batman Returns where Batman slowly and graphically disembowled the Penguin but it wasn't made clear whether he actually died from his injuries.

?

i would fucking love a grim'n'gritty mickey mouse reboot - c'mon disney do it for the fans

i guess another way to put it is that there are some elements of the characters which have kept them popular for more than a quarter of a century and very few, if any, are evident on-screen in man of steel or dawn of justice

It seems like Snyder *thinks* he's doing "real" Superman though, rather than an "alternate" take - that's the slightly galling thing. Also WTF is the point of a Superman movie you can't take a 7-year-old to see.

yeah Batman + guns was in the earliest incarnation, when he was a pulpier comic

Batman was certainly not pulpy in the 1950s under the likes of Sprang or 1960s under the likes of Fox or 1970s under the likes of Englehart or Robbins or 1980s under the likes of Newton or Aparo or Grant or Breyfogle or Collins or the 1990s under the likes of Dixon or Loeb or Moench, you're right there

you know, once they'd gotten rid of the gunhappy pulpmeisters Moldoff and Finger in 1942

Suicidal Mickey is pretty good fodder for your grim n' gritty Mickey Mouse reboot.

i would fucking love a grim'n'gritty mickey mouse reboot - c'mon disney do it for the fans

― Upset by racist left wingers calling me an egg (bizarro gazzara), 31. marts 2016 16:50 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This kinda happened in the nineties. Stories about a hardboiled detective Mickey. I remember a sorta adaptation of D.O.A. (though of course I didn't know at the time that was what it was) and a story about a serial pyromaniac. It was pretty cool.

Also this, apparently, which I haven't read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MM_Mickey_Mouse_Mystery_Magazine

Also, this happened very recently and is kinda great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xRCYmbvfEs

EU disney takes chances US almost never would.
i do like the new cartoons tho'.

As pointed out here & elsewhere, having both Bats & Supes be mopey psychopathic hyper violent murderers completely kills the point of having both there for the contrast.

i saw that new Mickey Mouse while visiting family last Christmas, it caught me completely off guard, it's very Ren & Stimpy inspired!

Batman killed people in the Burton movies but it was pretty much always self defense (expand to include the citizenry of Gotham as well as Batman's person). there is the guy in the bell tower he is fighting for a few minutes and it is a really intense fight before he throws him to his death. there are the guards stationed at the Axis Chemical Plant that die but c'mon, Batman is taking out a biological weapon ("Smilex") that is currently being used on Gotham's citizens! same with Batman Returns, he's fighting this gang of circus terrorists who are attacking citizens and elected officials at public events and kidnapping every first born child.

Burton's movies had imaginative themes, often exploring monster movie motifs or freakshow traditions. this new stuff is stylized to be "realistic" and explicitly featuring characters "grappling with moral dilemmas". you're damn right it's going to get more attention if the writers didn't think this shit through.

also i could care less if Batman/Superman was portrayed a certain way in a comic book. im sure over 75+ years Batman and Superman have both been every conceivable version of themselves. the 80s Batman and Superman movies were huge cultural moments and considered the only decent (in fact, brilliant!) superhero movies for decades. most people know the characters from those movies (or the animated series). saying Batman killed a guy in issue XX of Detective Comics doesn't matter to the vast moviegoing public.

is this considered a bomb yet

it's made 500 mil worldwide in a week so probably not

it's the biggest bomb since the 2nd Avengers movie that also made a billion dollars

it ain't gonna bomb but it's not gonna keep up what it did opening weekend last Friday.

Supes apologists were using teh EAster excuse for its record falloff opening from Fri - Sun. cos nobody sees movies on Easter

Plenty of people were in the theater when I saw Zootopia on Easter.

twas bein sarcastic. :)

Easter's the perfect movie-theater goin day, what you gonna egg hunt all day?

little green devil has a decent boot so i'll probably watch it this weekend. good thing about dark movies is it doesn't make a big difference if it's a cam or not.

honestly try for a copy with audience heckling in it, it'll just make it better

xxpost Yeah, I got that. Just sayin', movies that are several weeks old didn't have trouble pulling the crowds, so, yeah, pretty lame excuse.

*I* went to fuckin' Zootopia on Easter, ffs!

yo is it true supes got sonned by a bunny cop after a aol-time warner beef??????

xxp Iron Man was the first step, but actually took its time with establishing the character, not that I'm a big fan. The Avengers is fully centered around weightless CGI action scenes that are impossible to care about and a series of one-liners in place of character development - the movie is an eternal smirk, like that Dreamworks animated character meme, a slick, glossy product that found the 'one weird trick' for fooling critics into doling out praise for "self-awareness" and "not taking itself seriously", and every Marvel film since has copied and pasted it.

Except The Mandarin in Iron Man 3. That was actual fun, but most people disliked it of course.

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20 mins in, good god this movie is aggressively stupid. why are they cutting from this actually interesting Batman man-on-the-street view of the Metropolis destruction to this stupid terrorism subplot? why is the US congress holding a hearing where they sympathetically listen to the pleas of terrorist cells who recently killed CIA operatives? also why is Jimmy Olsen (who wasn't in the last movie at all and is thus being first established) a CIA operative?

already sick of the jesus crap. "he doesn't answer to god" says the lady from a village where dudes just murder CIA operatives in broad daylight.

rmde. this is some shit writing.

thank god Bruce Wayne called the people in his building and told them to evacuate. they appeared to be watching the city fall apart around them thank god their boss told them they could do something they probably would have done the minute a giant spaceship started shooting gravity waves.

MY LEGS ARE CRUSHED

I SAID MY LEGS ARE CRUSHED

YOU ARE THE BOSS, BOSS

did Snyder write this dialog in middle school

oh give me a break guy in a wheelchair is mad at superman. what about his boss who didn't bother calling into the office to until it was too late?

"These bullets are not sold commercial in the world, even black market"

Lois Lane just keeping up on the global weapons black market

Lex is really just a non-fun version of Edward E. Nigma. it is bad. hard to watch.

those recent mickey mouse cartoons are really good!

i do think someone doing a fake "zack synder does (x) beloved character" could be quite entertaining.

COMING THIS SEASON

FROM VISIONARY DIRECTOR ZACK SNYDER

CALVIN & HOBBES: THUNDERDOME

woah wait a minute, so wheelchair guy just got bailed out by Lex.

not by Bruce Wayne. his boss. i was expecting that, with the whole name-dropping "I WORK FOR BRUCE WAYNE!" as he was getting arrested on live tv.

rmde

apparently he works for Wayne Co. yet lives in an unfurnished crackhouse.

this is 18 months after his office blew up. dude should have a new office.

oh goody it's Lex going to redo his VO for the trailer for the 6th time.

now a scene with wheelchair guy and senator lady, two people with stupid and unclear motivations, being manipulated by someone else with stupid and unclear motivations. nobody in this movie is interesting in any way.

this movie dropped 81% on its second Friday. Made 15 million, which seems pretty grim for such a supposedly unassailable pair of properties.

"Bruuuce! Bruucue! Am I too soon? You have to do something! I'm not going to tell you, just trust me, you're going to have to watch the next movie to understand this!"

oh i see why people hate Batman here. it's not because he is killing people, it's because he's George W Bush.

the craziest part is that bats meets the flash is a dream-within-a-dream xp

hope you stole this and aren't texting in a cinema

oh yeah i stole it. you know what they say about thieves stealing from thieves.

nice transponder Batman thankfully Lex's security force is too stupid to notice a batman shaped tracking device with a blinking red light