Justice League (DC 2017 film)

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

at this point, I'm in this thread mostly to trick Brad into watching WW84

Criticizing any of these movies is fine and necessary, it's the bad faith that people put behind them that grates.

Like the "slurry-like consistency" comment rubs me wrong, because the insinuation with that choice of words is, "yup, those rubes will slurp up anything the MCU slops down in front of them".

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.

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.

I think of “slurry-like consistency” as applying to the incoherent pixelated look of the animated final-boss battles in half+ of the ones I’ve seen

(not u Peyton bb)

Somehow the consistency of the MCU has been twisted into a sort of strange criticism. "Yeah, the casting and acting and effects and stories are pretty reliably good, and they're mostly very entertaining, but ... they're all the same! Why don't they coat everything in digital charcoal and throw in more erratic storytelling and a bunch of slo-mo and ramping for a change? Sure, it may be indulgent and tough to endure, but at least it has personality." Which, tbf, is indeed probably preferable to dreck like WW84, which is like the worst traits of the MCU and DCU combined but otherwise completely bereft of *any* real distinction.

Fwiw, for comparison's sake "Endgame" (minus credits) runs I think a little more than a full hour shorter than this one does. But apparently this one breaks things up into chapters, so suck it, Scorsese, Snyder Cut is all but *designed* to be paused at home while you go off to make popcorn and check your email.

I don't think the fight scenes in the MCU movies are at all incoherent, not in a world that also contains a successful Transformers franchise.

Seriously. Those movies are like watching a lunatic try to solve the world's biggest CGI Rubik's cube.

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

yes

I don't find MCU action direction incoherent, just perfunctory and unmemorable

(action direction not Snyder's strong suit either tbh)

I only saw the first Transformers and the scene from whichever later one they destroyed Chicago, those definitely set the standard for completely incomprehensible action sequences. Just blurs of terrible CGI color. Still mystified by how successful that franchise became.

(action direction not Snyder's strong suit either tbh)

― intern at pepe le pew research (Simon H.), Thursday, March 25, 2021 9:20 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

by direct comparison it's leagues better imo

i mean as with massive cgi superhero battles u gotta love ur grays and oranges

as with all*

prob my favorite snyder action sequence is the climax of man of steel, which everyone hates, but which i thought was amazing

I'm sure I'll be alone in this one, but one of the reasons I enjoyed Endgame as much as I did was that I was genuinely surprised by how well they handled the epic, every character ever super fight. It was way more comprehensible and structured than I'd been dreading.

(action direction not Snyder's strong suit either tbh)

― intern at pepe le pew research (Simon H.), Thursday, March 25, 2021 9:20 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

by direct comparison it's leagues better imo

Yeah "incoherent" isn't right. Someone on the MCU thread (maybe?) posted a video breaking down how unreal the physics of the CGI fight between Black Panther and Killmonger were and how that undercuts the drama of it, and I thought that was otm

don't think the fight scenes in the MCU movies are at all incoherent, not in a world that also contains a successful Transformers franchise.

the thing is that we live in a world that also contains successful films by Corey Yuen and Sammo Hung and Stephen Chow and Jackie Chan and Prachya Pinkaew and Gareth Evans and Park Chan-wook and Chad Stahelski and George Miller and Brian Trenchard-Smith