Justice League (DC 2017 film)

Bride of Chucky was "A.D.I.D.A.S."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFibI_1ZPV4

OK, so I have a modest familiarity with the Marvel stuff, but only a passing familiarity with the DC stuff. That is, I've seen the first four or five Superman movies, both Wonder Woman movies, the Burton and Nolan Batmans. I've read the major Batman graphic novels, and while I've never otherwise read any DC comics outside of some hardcover book of first issues my dad had, I did watch the Justice League cartoon on occasion as a little kid, and I know who Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Flash are. I've not seen any of the Snyder films, nor have I wanted to, but I have followed this train wreck and in particular the Ray Fisher saga, and can I just confess: I have literally never heard of Cyborg (the character) before these films.

Cyborg wasn't created by Snyder, but god forbid any of these franchises actually dare to invent something new

JIC, he’s been around for 41 years and was the reason why Teen Titans was the only DC book I halfway paid attention to when I was a kid: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg_(DC_Comics)

The Teen Titans comic was super-popular in the '80s, and the cartoon seems to have been pretty popular in the 2000s, but yeah, DC hasn't done a whole lot to popularize the individual characters with general audiences. I guess the Marvel equivalent is like Nightcrawler or Colossus. Yeah, they've shown up in movies and stuff but yr average person on the street probably isn't going to be familiar with them on the level of a Wolverine.

cyborg definitely initially benefited from coming out of wolfman/perez's megahit; i think not much was done with him after as white DC writers weren't quite sure what to do with a black supergenius post-human character that didn't involve him yelling CHRISTMAS and busting drug dealers
i'm kinda surprised you're not familiar with him via the Teen Titans cartoon though; that's been around and extremely popular on the web and irl for years, which is also why your average 15 year old might know who Raven is.

The Teen Titans Go! lineup is basically all of the Titans I actually have a shit about, maybe swapping out Robin with Wonder Girl

As someone who's read a good number of DC comics, I don't think I've ever read a non-Titans comic that had Cyborg (or any of the other Wolfman-created Titans) in it.

I can totally believe he's been around, and I've googled to see who he is, but that doesn't change that I hadn't heard of him before. But then, I don't know what the Teen Titans are, either. Are they like the Muppet babies?

Thinking about it now, it's kinda weird how underutilized they've been in the comics for such popular characters (and yes, I know Cyborg has been a Justice Leaguer for a number of years now but DC has been m/l dead to me since Flashpoint).

xpost lol, well I get that you may not know the individual characters but the Teen Titans as a team (originally a team of sidekicks, with Robin and Speedy et al) have been around since the '60s so the ground beneath you is getting a little thin now.

xxxp As of just under a decade ago, he's a Justice League founder!

damn even I know who Cyborg is, but I did see Justice League to kill time and watch Teen Titans Go.

both teen titans and teen titans go! were/are great shows, it's wild

i mean actually dc animation has a lot of quality shows, but teen titans' particular style and execution was totally distinct from their other stuff and it works so well

lol, I literally said I have only a passing familiarity with just the biggest name DC characters. Oh, I knew Shazam, too, from my dad's book. Shazam was DC, right? Never heard of Speedy (though I can imagine), or Raven (no clue), or Flashpoint or Wolfman.

Remember when Wolfman was implied to be a dangerous, world-warping villain within the DC universe for his actions - “Did the Wolfman send you?”

- at the same time that he was being stripped of his powers and forced to carry out a shadowy, unaccountable over-figure’s schemes?

Jump forward a few decades and I get to read something like this on ILX once a year -

As of just under a decade ago, he's a Justice League founder!

- and grit my teeth, shake my fist at the sky and yell “JOHNNNNNSS!”

Speedy = Green Arrow sidekick who eventually took his name too literally and dove headlong into teh drugs
Raven = member of popular '80s Teen Titans lineup who, if you aren't familiar with the Titans, you probably wouldn't know anything about
Flashpoint = that time ten years ago when DC was all 'hey, remember all of those comics stories we made that you loved? yeah, those never happened'
Wolfman = c'mon, man, Marv Wolfman, writer of the popular '80s Teen Titans title, also a prolific Marvel writer and one-time editor-in-chief

Way to step on my 100% accurate yes-and-ing re Wolfman

There is very little chance that Josh knows who Green Arrow is.

Correct

lol, well just for one example he's the dude whose show just ended after airing for the better part of a decade and spawning spin-off shows that comprise the bulk of the CW's prime time line-up. Celebrating his 80th anniversary this year alongside Captain America.

Also OL may have given the wrong impression of what sort of drugs Speedy got into.

https://i.imgur.com/9zzYcgD.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/axwJCxx.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/5VMwuuB.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/mfsJU4g.jpg

Shoulda renamed himself Dopey imo

Josh, I would suggest that there's no less obscure mainstream comics character than Green Arrow that you could possibly be unaware of but now I'm motivated to ferret one out.

Martian Manhunter?

Ohh, good one. Black Canary, too, obvs. Kinda thinking along the lines of old school and/or long-term JLA-ers that haven't been emblazoned on bedsheets for decades. Dr. Fate, probably.

Hawkman? Atom? Spectre? Thinking of ones that have been around as long as an average human lifespan.

Oh, I knew Shazam, too, from my dad's book.

also xp Phantom Stranger. Or Vixen!

xpost Josh mentioned upthread that he was largely familiar with DC heroes via a collection of first issues his dad had.

oh okay, that make more sense. I was wondering if your dad was CC Beck!

Oh: Nightwing

Green Arrow just finished its eighth consecutive year as a primetime television show!

Lol, yeah, I had a book of DC origins or something like that, which had a lot of the most obvious subjects in it. But no, Green Arrow, Atom, Spectre, Black Canary, Dr. Fate, Martian Manhunter ... never heard of them. If you told me those were made up characters in some contemporary superhero satire like "The Boys" I'd believe you. Oh, wait, I know Hawkman! But Hawkman might have been in that DC coffee table book.

DC as a comics company has been very bad at promoting any character individually aside from a handful of Batverse main characters for a while now.

Green Arrow's origin is "bought a bow and arrow," tbf, not hard to catch up

xpost It's true. It says something that all of these characters have been around long enough to have great grandchildren, are still utilized in the comics as well as other media, and hardly anyone outside of the nerdlinger elite has any idea they exist.

xp

also once he was super-rich but got radicalised when he lost it, and turned into Whatabout Man. which his simp white wealthy-middle-class pals would roll their eyes endlessly at, waiting for him to stfu so they could go back to brutalizing the poor

Must-read thread of old: THE FINGER: or, how I stopped worrying and learned to love Green Arrow

lol @ THE FINGER

I expected that to be a much longer recap: THE FINGER must have been an ILC meme for a while before Huk threaded

Yeah, it must've been. I recall many more instances of Oliver jamming THE FINGER in everyone's face.

MZS in praise of the Snyder Cut:

Let's take a moment and talk about the look of the movie, because it's key to what makes the project feel unified. "Zack Snyder's Justice League" is shot in the squarish, roughly 4x3 "academy" ratio, rather than the narrow-and-wide format preferred by most epics. Snyder chose it because the IMAX frame happens to be that shape, and then he decided to frame non-IMAX shots that way for consistency's sake. The result has the subtle psychological effect of making this new-ish work feel mysteriously "old." This perception is amplified by Fabian Wagner's cinematography, which emphasizes the vertical over the horizontal, leaves lots of negative space around the actors' faces and bodies, and isn't afraid to put gauzy filters over closeups and create smeary or halo-like lighting effects that make things feel dreamy or metaphorical rather than "real."

When Junkie XL's score is blasting and the members of the Justice League are doing heroic things and not blabbing amongst themselves, suddenly we're watching the superhero version of a symphonically grand, late-period silent epic in the vein of "Intolerance," "Sunrise," or "Metropolis"—just scene after scene of impeccably composed panoramas, like those mammoth oil paintings that depict tiny figures in the foreground dwarfed by mountains and sky. Except in this case, it's sometimes the heroes and villains who are dwarfed by landscapes and/or the cosmos, and other times mortals look up in awe at superheroes looming overhead (often silhouetted against sunlight, clouds, fire, or atmospheric haze).

Uncharacteristically for Snyder, the camera doesn't move unless it needs to, and the scene doesn't cut away until it has wrung out the last drop of whatever vibe it was cultivating. Throughout, the direction seems not merely unhurried, but meditative, to the point of pokiness. This the "Satantango" of superhero flicks: an arthouse tailbone-killer. The point is not to shovel plot information at the viewer. The point is to create a fantastic world where metaphors are real, and to give you time to roam around in it and savor all the details. Scenes often start before long before screenwriting manuals tell you they should (with characters approaching and/or entering regions, cities, or facilities) and continue way past the point when significant exposition has been communicated. This is a feature, not a bug. And it results in a good number of the scenes and sequences that make the film feel special, even as they eliminate any possibility that "Zack Snyder's Justice League" will tell a propulsive, coherent, orderly tale.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/zack-snyders-justice-league-movie-review-2021

interesting review for sure

even as they eliminate any possibility that "Zack Snyder's Justice League" will tell a propulsive, coherent, orderly tale

How to bury a lede.

sounds good imo

https://slate.com/culture/2021/03/justice-league-review-snyder-cut-excessive-ridiculous-great.html

I'm a littttle tempted

Any critic w/ MZS’s knowledge base can cite Tarr or Murnau to polish any old turd. The Junkie XL paragraphs in particular reads like Armond White-like trolling.