Justice League (DC 2017 film)

("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?

lol 90% of the discourse around “the Snyder cut” has been making fun of the fans

It is also not really a strawman to say that some ppl get embarrassingly defensive whenever someone dares criticise the mcu, and we don’t exactly have to go far to find exhibits A through Z around here

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.

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

it is so totally miscast and misconceived that it could have been sort of amazing, except it's 2.5 hours long and is insanely boring

slurry-like consistency that people most like about it

Yeah, this is the tone that annoys me.

"Formulaic" as a criticism in and of itself is meaningless; the interesting question is "how do you respond to the formula?". Everyone who dislikes pattern A has a pattern B somewhere else that they go absolutely apeshit over.

xp: my favorite WW84 reaction was from a singing colleague who said "why did it turn into the Cats movie at the end"

the Cats movie is better

"Formulaic" as a criticism in and of itself is meaningless; the interesting question is "how do you respond to the formula?". Everyone who dislikes pattern A has a pattern B somewhere else that they go absolutely apeshit over.

― Dana Jel Pey (DJP), Thursday, March 25, 2021 11:32 AM (thirty-five seconds ago)

I agree with this, and I didn't intend "formula" to serve as a criticism in and of itself. It's simply that 23 variations on pattern A might make pattern B look wildly unique in contrast.

ugh stop making ww84 sound amazing xxp

thank you simon for confirming cats is better

Cats is truly deranged. It drove multiple audience members to either walk out early or descend into gibbering madness. Amazing viewing experience.

At one point a very drunk guy stood up and yelled "OK BUT WHAT'S A GENITAL CAT????"

I mean, really, how often watching an MCU movie did you experience shock or surprise? did you even want to?

The first half of WandaVision was filled with surprise, which, yes, I wanted; I think for someone like me the reason the back half was disappointing is that it relaxed into something more like other MCU content, and this disappointment interferes with my ability to judge it by what turned out to be its own standards.

I mean this was the post I was responding to:

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)

This implicitly assumes Marvel's next movie(s) will continue down a well-worn path, doesn't it? Why else assume that criticism of imaginary Marvel movies to come will inevitably be hypocritical compared to praise for Snyder?

My MCU-loving teen was enthusiastic about WW84, agreed it was kind of over the top but basically liked it, has zero interest in watching the long Justice League, not sure what that means

WW84 is amazing in several ways that are very, very terrible

the most is probably how Kristin Wiig's Barbara Minerva was a self-serious reinterpretation of Michelle Pfeiffer's Selena Kyle

It is also not really a strawman to say that some ppl get embarrassingly defensive whenever someone dares criticise the mcu, and we don’t exactly have to go far to find exhibits A through Z around here

The claim that Buffy was not good seems insupportable to me. The claim that the first Avengers movie was not good is more defensible; I liked it at the time but in retrospect it feels like that one movie locked the franchise into a box it has only occasionally peeked out of (e.g. in the excellent Thor: Ragnarok) and maybe that was foreseeable, I dunno.

This implicitly assumes Marvel's next movie(s) will continue down a well-worn path, doesn't it?

No? Not unless that path is "I think they're good"?

Buffy was 100% smoke and mirrors and the whole thing was exactly this "I'm making a visual comic book" thing that Marvel and DC have done with their movies, only more glib. The only storyline I remember feeling actual interest in when I watched it was Dark Willow.

xp
Ok, on second thought, you're right that isn't a fair reading.

lol I’ve definitely found one xps

Buffy had a lot of valuable and creative stuff that a lot of people, not just Whedon, deserve credit for, but I'm not uh exactly in a rush to revisit.

it's no doubt a popular strawman 'round these parts but when/if you come across an ILXor who's all 'you SHALL NOT criticize my beloved MCU!!!' be sure and let me know.

Some guy had a multi-post freakout at the start of the MCU: classic or dud 2 thread at the very idea of anyone answering the thread topic iirc.

to be clear, I didn't mind Buffy all that much even though it was mostly Not My Thing until people started trying to push that fucking terrible musical episode on me

lol yeah, literally the first response to the thread is OL coming in with this exact brand of not-mad zany sarcasm because he was pre-emptively madd that ppl might vote dud