Justice League (DC 2017 film)

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.

All I know is that the Junkie XL song with Gary Numan still bangs

suddenly we're watching the superhero version of a symphonically grand, late-period silent epic in the vein of "Intolerance," "Sunrise," or "Metropolis"

lol I don't even need to see this movie to know this is BS.

Though I am I guess intrigued it's 1.66. I had no idea (even though that info has been out there all along).

1.66, the number of the League

Or is it Academy ratio? Either way, the devil must be very pleased.

it's 1.33 from what I'm seeing

here's a dissenting review: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2021-03-15/justice-league-zack-snyder-cut-review-hbo-max

You mean a dissenting review that doesn't invoke Murnau, Lang and Tarr in the context of a glum Super Friends movie?

I confess I wrote off the MZS review after he called Speed Racer a "non-comic book" movie

I like MZS cause he's one of the few major ish critics who still talks in specific terms about technical aspects of filmmaking and doesn't just tell me Themes Good or Themes Bad

Any critic w/ MZS’s knowledge base can cite Tarr or Murnau to polish any old turd

I want a timestamp for the fun-sounding Flash scene MZS talks about, will check those three minutes out

So is anyone going to hatewatch and liveblog on this thread?

would rather go to a 6 hour theatrical production of Garbage Pail Kids as directed by Julie Taymor