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

trailers seem more routinized these days than they used to be, although i haven't done a close analysis

by routinized i guess i mean they adhere to really strict conventions, such that you can almost time when the "sonic drop-out followed by sudden 'swoosh'" will occur

or instead of drop-out there's like a reduction of sounds to a bass throb.

honestly 'the dark knight' felt like one big trailer in that respect, in that nearly the entire thing seemed engineered to generate the same sort of cheap tension and startle response that i associated with trailers.

without making any great claims for it, i think you are overly harsh on TDK. the escalating tension of that movie was one of the better things about it. not sure i've seen another big blockbuster with such an air of menace present through the entire film. i suppose this is a kind of "trailer" aesthetic but it's perhaps more generous to say that trailers try to create the effect of something like TDK rather than the other way around.

nobody is seriously accusing batman vs. superman of being hard to figure out

well, i'm seriously saying that i don't get what superghazi, which apparently (?) causes the world to turn against superman, is all about. are people in the movie genuinely wondering whether superman picked up a machine gun and fatally shot a bunch of terrorists and undercover CIA operatives?

wouldn't it make more sense plotwise to have lex make doomsday earlier in the film, then have him use doomsday's kryptonian superpowers to commit murders that only superman would be capable of, thus putting superman in the frame for the murders?

not sure i've seen another big blockbuster with such an air of menace present through the entire film

yeah, watching tdk in the cinema and being swept along by its sinister momentum was a really memorable experience for me - it was only once the ride was over that i started thinking 'wait, what?'

haha yeah that was totally my reaction to TDK as well

it's not a movie that offers anything extra on repeat viewing, that's for sure

xposts bet you a dollar at some point there was a script treatment for a movie where lex does that with bizarro, here reinvented as lex's mad scientist clone of superman, and that was floating around and got grafted into this movie as this "frame superman" story even as they punted bizarro for doomsday and decided to hold him in reserve til the end. in the process of course causing it to not make sense and hence the machine gun thing. i have not seen this movie mind you but this makes sense to me.

I would watch a big budget Bizarro comedy, pref with Michael Shannon as Bizarro

shame ben gazzara is dead

it's not a movie that offers anything extra on repeat viewing, that's for sure

― a lad of balls (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, April 5, 2016 10:43 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Permission to use this blurb in the advertising for all of Christopher Nolan's past and future films, plz.

it is kinda his trademark, innit?

xposts to doctor c - given that affleck and his pet screenwriter punched up the script before he agreed to be batman i wonder how much of the weird patchwork plot is affleck's doing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VrFV5r8cs0

wouldn't it make more sense plotwise to have lex make doomsday earlier in the film, then have him use doomsday's kryptonian superpowers to commit murders that only superman would be capable of, thus putting superman in the frame for the murders?

anyone who has seen some of snyders earlier films, like sucker punch for example, would not expect there to be much in the way of obvious narrative sense. also, i just dont expect that from modern blockbusters.

but this at least had style (which TDK did not). and theres some gravitas in its bigger ideas. also, for everyone saying its overstuffed, against something like TDK, which seemed to get out of hand as nolan got desperate to prove he was making More Than Just a Superhero Movie, etc, its virtually pared down, and snyder at least understands that the basic appeal of superhero movies is rooted in a child's sense of the world.

i uh don't wanna overstep the mark here but your childhood must have been significantly different to mine if there seemed anything childlike about bvs other than abject immaturity

xpost I kinda do expect narrative cohesion from modern blockbusters. Big action movies aren't just orgasms of stupidity anymore. It's nice that we're able these days to occasionally see a big, fun movie that doesn't require a complete override of one's critical faculties.

StillAdvance's childhood:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fcL_MS6LR_E/TlQ1i-5sChI/AAAAAAAAAJg/WS0ECsaFlQM/s1600/WareSuperman.jpg

xp

guilty lol

xpost - i must have missed the deep mine of adult maturity that was there in avengers assemble, thor, etc etc.

maybe childs sense of the world is the wrong phrasing, i suppose i just mean a child like, or simpler (?) idea of justice, good vs evil, right vs wrong, etc etc. a simpler, deeply felt idea of morality maybe is what i mean.

"xpost I kinda do expect narrative cohesion from modern blockbusters. Big action movies aren't just orgasms of stupidity anymore. It's nice that we're able these days to occasionally see a big, fun movie that doesn't require a complete override of one's critical faculties."

BVS isnt incoherent though. its basically earth loves superman, batman gets jealous, lex luger capitalises on this, batman and superman fight to the death.

"Big action movies aren't just orgasms of stupidity anymore."

erm mad max wasnt that long ago.

a child like, or simpler (?) idea of justice, good vs evil, right vs wrong, etc etc. a simpler, deeply felt idea of morality maybe is what i mean.

lol idk if you missed it but Snyder thinks this is the MATURE/GROWNUP version of morality that he's presenting

xpost Dude. a) "Big action movies aren't just orgasms of stupidity anymore." Indicating that, yes, orgasms of stupidity still exist. b) If you genuinely think Batman v Superman was grate and Fury Road was an orgasm of stupidity, well...

Defending this movie (or any movie, or whatever) is defensible, but when you're David fighting the Goliath of critical/public opinion, you really need to bring your A game, and this is like a C- at best.

Also ragging on Mad Max is some "point rock towards enemy"-level shit.

yeah, watching tdk in the cinema and being swept along by its sinister momentum was a really memorable experience for me - it was only once the ride was over that i started thinking 'wait, what?'

well, yeah, it worked for me the first time, too. but i later accompanied a friend to see it, and that second time, the effectiveness completely dissipated. which is why i called its approach "cheap."

what mainly still works for me is Ledger's performance. i think even if you stripped away his make up and scars, just the way he moves communicates *danger* in the sense of the kind of person you'd change subway cars to avoid.

eh, everything about that film--esp. ledger--is empty and overpraised.

as a manic, mannered performance it's not even that entertaining.

the idea of a "realistic" "serious" batman just seems to me to be such a corrupt, risible "idea" for a film and pretty much everything about the film proceeds from that.

but, you know, worse films have been made.

I'm with Ryan - the thing about the Joker is that every time he enters a room anyone in it could die, and Heath Ledger got that just right.

I enjoyed the film a lot on my second view - couldn't even countenance watching TDKR again.

i've seen TDK three times, i really enjoyed it without too many reservations up til the final stretch, which is unfortunately the stretch which is closest in tone and dullness to TDKR

the idea of a "realistic" "serious" batman just seems to me to be such a corrupt, risible "idea" for a film and pretty much everything about the film proceeds from that.

well the saving grace here is that "seriousness" isnt an aesthetic quality so much as a reader-response. i dont take TDK "seriously"--if that makes sense. anyway: wrong thread for this.

i know what you mean. but i do think a lumbering "seriousness" and "heaviness" is very much an /aesthetic/ quality of nolan's work.

https://twitter.com/nickpinkerton/status/690347619302928384

^^ok that's funny

but, you know, worse films have been made.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Tuesday, April 5, 2016 11:42 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, I keep seeing/hearing this argument as a defense of BvS. I overheard my coworker give a half-hearted "eh, it could've been worse". Yeah, Jonestown could've been worse, too.

to defer to nick pinkerton again:

The overarching theme of the Batman films is the moral problem of vigilantism, as played out by name-tagged figures of virtue and vice. "The idea was to be a symbol," Wayne says of his anonymous alter ego in The Dark Knight Rises—and so this most solemn of superhero franchises duly marches ahead with the process of ominous signification, having established itself among those who accept its self-regard at face value as not just another blockbuster but the multiplex State of the Nation for the 21st century. If The Dark Knight openly invited interpretation as the War on Terror Batman, then The Dark Knight Rises, whose creators obviously scented the class discontent in the air, is the Occupy Wall Street installment. "You think all this can last?" down-and-out survivor Selina says upon meeting Wayne at a fancy-dress masquerade ball. "There's a storm coming."

so many of the more fine-grained aesthetic choices in those films seems to proceed from this basic, self-important conception.

(sorry for all the grammatical infelicities in that sentence)

the solemnity of the series is overstated (though TDKR tips over into that a bit too much), what i remember about the first pair is that they're pretty fun rides and the seriousness (while a big element of the proceedings) isn't particularly overwhelming.

so many of the more fine-grained aesthetic choices in those films seems to proceed from this basic, self-important conception.

self-regard or self-importance is not necessarily (imo) a negative quality. it doesn't have an aesthetic value either way for me. to stop there as if a critical point was made is .... bad criticism.

but it's quite possible that when we are talking about self-regard in a commercial entertainment we're dancing around something harder to describe.

nolan's operatic ambition is one of his better qualities! like if he wants to make a space-time-travel movie about the infinity of love or a super hero movie about the paradox of justice i say go for it, whether it succeeds or not is a different conversation.

'Seriuousness' is in the eye of the beholder, no? I enjoy Inception as a deeply cynical/ironic work about the emptiness of marketing.

well sure i'm making this "argument" in little spurts in between meetings so i'm not putting forward the most sophisticated observations. just a kind of thumbnail soundbite version. sorry!

hey it's cool we're all just talking here.

I think 'ambition' is more apt than 'seriousness'. There's always thrice as many twists as needed, two times as many references to the real world, and 50% more plot. Unfortunately that doesn't leave much place for personality, perhaps, even though his films are 150 min long. I do really like him, though.

1) The Prestige
2) Interstellar
3) Inception
4) The Dark Knight
5) The Following

ambition and self-seriousness are two different things! i mean, they can go together, but they aren't necessarily conjoined.

all these talk about snyder and nolan just makes me want to cleanse my palate and watch Fury Road again tbqh

*this