Justice League (DC 2017 film)

I truly still do not give af about Aquaman though. I thought the cartoon was dumb even as a kid.

vg i predict you will have no use for the epilogue but otherwise this movie seemed like your kind of thing to me

i don't know anything about aquaman other than jason momoa is hot, it's enough for me lol

I made it to the halfway mark. This was clearly never designed to be a single movie. It has more lore and prophecy bullshit that I'm glad Wheadon tore out, but also a more consistent tone.

i got to see a clip of a "joke" whedon inserted into the superman freakout and he should be given no credit whatsoever for what he did to this film

superman: "do you bleed?"

batman, in an obvious reshoot that has no connection to the feeling of the rest of the scene: "oh yeah something's definitely bleeding"

barf

I made it to the halfway mark. This was clearly never designed to be a single movie.

yeah, there was a long period when this was announced as a miniseries for HBO Max, but someone realised it would have required renegotiating contracts for the actors, so it suddenly became a four-hour movie with chapter headings

i think it’s better as a singular thing

the chapters are nice as natural break points but i found myself just rolling through it. the pacing.... is good

The pace stops dead to introduce a new character at least twice, with the Flash and Cyborg.

Doing this in sections is far more tolerable. Plenty of stuff early on is gloriously overdone

You all are masochists!

:D

Man, debating the relative merits of Whedon and Snyder is like debating the relative merits of shit and pus.

pretty much

but having never liked any of Snyders superhero movies its def a new thing for me to a) want to keep watching and b) not fall asleep

one for the box copy there

b) not fall asleep

Gah. I have to stay up until 2am tonight and I am at least vaguely considering filling some time with this. Or is this just not sleep inducing compared to his others?

Santa's making a list of all you 'hey, turns out Snyder's got the sauce!' folks for the next time y'all start pulling knives out for Marvel's flicks. I'm just sayin'.

i could have lived without the epilogue (or hearing leto’s strangled joker laugh ever again) but otherwise this was an ok way to kill time and i was not mad at it at all

but i want to go on record saying *snyder does not have the sauce* so that i am not lumped into some snyder-stan pogrom later on

if you went to the dentist for a long procedure & they have movies to watch on tv this would be a good choice for that.
see also: bored in a hotel / on a six hour flight / sick in bed with the flu / etc

Outlaw Vern's review:

https://outlawvern.com/2021/03/24/zack-snyders-justice-league/

And since who gives a fuck anymore they let him pretty much do what he wanted this time, and what he wanted was to make it 4 hours long (about 14 minutes longer than LAWRENCE OF ARABIA) and in a 4:3 aspect ratio as an homage to MID90S and MEEK’S CUTOFF.

Santa's making a list of all you 'hey, turns out Snyder's got the sauce!' folks for the next time y'all start pulling knives out for Marvel's flicks. I'm just sayin'.

― You Can't Have the Woogie Without a Little Boogie (Old Lunch), Wednesday, March 24, 2021 8:11 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

feel like this is literally just me

I didn't end up watching (any) of this, but I did come across this bit of clarification on the aspect ratio:

However, prior to the Snyder Cut, the intent was always to present the film in a square frame in IMAX while cropping the upper and lower portions of the image for regular movie theaters (and presumably home media), creating a 1.78:1 aspect ratio.

I *did* watch the Red Letter Media review (which is mostly positive), and in fact they noticed, when comparing shots in both versions, that the 4:3 framing often leaves a lot of extra headroom in the shot, so that were it to be cropped (which it was, for the theatrical version) it wouldn't be chopping anyone's head off or anything. Which is kind of odd, shooting square while simultaneously framing for something closer to 1.78. The RLM guys were a little perplexed, because the framing looked fine wide, and didn't seem to gain anything particularly special by being square aside from a bit of pretension, especially for a film that, while made with IMAX in mind, was ultimately designed for home viewing, where most people will be watching it on a widescreen TV. They figured it was just (apparently like this movie's messy multiple tacked on epilogues) Snyder pushing his indulgences just a little too far, because he could.

What exactly do any of these movies gain in IMAX that they lack in 'Scope or any other wide format? I've never seen one of these IMAX blockbusters, but I know at home Nolan's bounce between aspect ratios, depending on what was shot for IMAX. When you see them in IMAX, do their aspect ratios bounce around there, too? What shape is an IMAX screen for blockbusters and not, like, nature films?

the aspect ratio looks good

the movie has one epilogue

I haven't seen an IMAX flick since Avatar (I know, I know, seemed like a good idea at the time) but I can't remember the screen dimensions. I feel like it was more square than I expected, but who knows.

xpost

From what I understand, isn't there an apocalyptic dream sequence set in the future? But also that awkward Martian Manhunter/Bruce meeting bit? (Looks at HBO) Oh, I see, there's only one epilogue, but it's 30 minutes long and contains all sorts of stuff, I guess. If I've encountered one common complaint it's that all the clutter at the end comes of unnecessary, but I suppose ymmv.

I'm sure it looks good, but does it actually gain anything from being 4:3? I don't mind the format myself, but does it seem intentionally shot with the format in mind? RLM guys seemed to think it (literally and figuratively) left room to be cropped.

("off, unnecessary" not "of")

the epilogue does feel a little tacked on, like a preview for a movie that's not gonna happen! but the dream sequence is rad still imo

Santa's making a list of all you 'hey, turns out Snyder's got the sauce!' folks for the next time y'all start pulling knives out for Marvel's flicks. I'm just sayin'.

― You Can't Have the Woogie Without a Little Boogie (Old Lunch), Wednesday, March 24, 2021 8:11 PM (yesterday)

I wasn't planning on watching a single minute of this thing, but the opportunity to needle needlessly defensive MCU fans is tempting. Anyway, the MCU only has itself to blame for normalizing the cinema of endurance—I can't imagine JL could be any worse than the combined yawnsome bloat of the last two Avengers.

Obvs there are a few contextual reasons some people are grading JL on a curve—though I'm not talking about Brad who has an obviously genuine and coherent aesthetic appreciation for this movie—but one of them has to be that the extremely successful MCU formula is tired after two dozen installments. So if this movie has a whiff of wtf-auteurism to it, I'm not surprised it's catching on.

also shout out to Ned for putting the year in the thread title, which now makes me laugh whenever I see it

IMAX film negative (65/70mm) has an aspect ratio of 1.43, but most IMAX digital presentation is at 1.90.

More confusingly (for me, professionally) is that some scope-AR (2.39) releases get an IMAX screening with letterboxing (2.39-for-1.90), and some...don't. I'm not entirely sure what's happening in the latter case, I just know that we're told to provide SMPTE 428.7 subtitle streams which exactly match the Interop for DCP release, no compensation for matte.

Burnout after their being so many MCU movies is an entirely understandable thing, but of all the complaints you can lodge against the MCU flicks, formulaic isn't one of them, imho.

uh

they literally have a dedicated in-house shop to make sure all their action sequences look identical

What exactly do any of these movies gain in IMAX that they lack in 'Scope or any other wide format?

xpost - Similar looking action sequences does not mean the films themselves are formulaic. But, fuck it, I should have known better than to mount any defense of the MCU on this board.

rob otm, I said elsewhere that I am far more likely to watch this thing someday than I am the avengers film that is also 7hr long & looks like dogshit but isn’t even the centre of a funny internet meme. The angle of toxic fandom bros bullying the studio into giving this guy a retroactive blank cheque just makes it inherently more interesting than the other toxic fandom of permanently aggrieved Disney stans fantasising that anyone saying anything critical ever about their favoured culture-swallowing megafranchise somehow makes the latter a scrappy, bullied underdog

Still highly doubt I’ll ever get round to it obv

I should have known better than to mount any defense of the MCU on this board.

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, March 25, 2021 8:07 AM (thirty-nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

i would characterize the mcu slant of this board as "pro"

I haven't seen an IMAX flick since Avatar
I feel like it was more square than I expected

Rogue One for me, and it did indeed feel too square for these times

I feel like the MCU movies hit a very good sweet spot of recreating the experience of following a comic book serial in movie format, complete with crossovers, with enough nods to/reinterpretations of the source material to feel familiar while building their own distinct stories in their own distinct universe. I'm definitely more entertained and invested in this point in these iterations of the characters than I am their comic book counterparts.

The DC movies suffered somewhat from self-consciously trying to be Different in tone rather than relying on the characters to make their movies distinct; the movies that work the best lean much more heavily into a core interpretation of the lead hero than they do into marking out a distinct style (Shazam, Aquaman, Wonder Woman) and the style ends up following on from the characters. I liked Man of Steel and BvS but they certainly felt self-serious in a way that didn't work in their favor, like they were trying to ape the Nolan films. I'm interested in this expanded Justice League because it seems ridiculous but I don't know if I can justify making my partner sit through those other two movies for context.

I mean there are so many valid criticisms of the MCU - the military shilling, the sometimes incomprehensible action sequences, the overreliance on lazy "I know that reference!" easter egg zings, shoehorning in continuity in ways that slow down the films, etc etc. I just think the "all MCU movies are the same" is a lazy dismissal from people that have no intention of granting them any credit at all, and it grates.

I want to like the DCEU more than I do, but I despise Snyder's approach and it has really soured me. I thought the first WW was a sign that things might be headed in a better direction, but WW84 was a letdown and I haven't tackled this thread's behemoth just yet, though I plan to.

DJP very much otm, at least with my experience as well. Great post.

Man, debating the relative merits of Whedon and Snyder is like debating the relative merits of shit and pus.

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Wednesday, March 24, 2021 7:09 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

wanted to return to this, because:

1. joss whedon is a mediocre TV director and an abysmal film director
2. zack snyder, whatever you want to say about him, has like.... a visual identity and a sense of what makes a good image, and can film action

WW84 is one of the worst movies I've ever seen

It's like someone took all of the misogynistic imaginary complaints about Captain Marvel and said "this would make a good movie in and of itself"

Rest assured if I ever watch either this or the avenger gutbuster I will emphatically not be watching any of the other films for context, that is the way to go imo

Re: Joss Whedon, I liked his Avengers work but I kind of want to go back to all of the Buffy threads and yell "SEE I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG"

The adolescent indier-than-thou attitude with excessive focus on the fans (or, rather, some extreme strawman conception of the fans' mentality) is the #1 dumbest + most annoying + most boring critical approach wrt the MCU, and I'm always disappointed when it rears its head 'round here. Who past the age of let's be generous and say 23 gives one literal fuck about 'the fans' when forming their opinion about a thing.

I'm sorry but I have to push back on that. There are absolutely bands/genres I will not mess with because of their racist fans, mostly because I do not like putting myself in harm's way for the chance to hear a sweet riff.

I was excited about this, but I couldn't watch the whole thing. I made me feel too impatient, like sitting through an interminably slow JRPG cutscene. The visual excess combined with the complete lack of any single grace note just did me in.

Similar looking action sequences does not mean the films themselves are formulaic

you're right, it's that in conjunction with the many, many other identical aspects re tone, production and development that make them formulaic

it seems weird to argue there's not a strict formula at work there. arguably it's their slurry-like consistency that people most like about it! they find it a reliable entertainment for this reason! I mean, really, how often watching an MCU movie did you experience shock or surprise? did you even want to?