Justice League (DC 2017 film)

But Is He Mighty Where It Counts

Dear Mr. Feige,
Surely Iron Man's suit would come equipped with...eh never mind

lol

George Miller was listed along with the Hong Kong directors from the start tbf, it’s a consistent argument if you can read

I mean, thanks for the condescending insult wins, but I am well aware of George Miller's oeuvre. I guess I just completely blanked on the stunningly choreographed fight scenes from Happy Feet.

fight choreo =/= action direction

(though the former could be construed as a subset of the latter)

“Creator of happy feet” a specific counter to the argument that these are niche filmmakers & separate to the consistent argument that directors across the world make big films w good action sequences. Even if you disagree because you think you shouldn’t be able to compare good things with bad things, it is not a trolly argument & didn’t really warrant an outburst?

obv wins was talking about the legit stunning action sequences from babe 2

or sic

too much crosstalk

Yeah I actually haven’t seen babe 2 (I know I know) but guessed that was the animals storming the hotel thing

“Creator of happy feet” a specific counter to the argument that these are niche filmmakers & separate to the consistent argument that directors across the world make big films w good action sequences. Even if you disagree because you think you shouldn’t be able to compare good things with bad things, it is not a trolly argument & didn’t really warrant an outburst?

For one, sic is notable for bad faith arguments in these threads, so I'll admit to being quick to lose my patience. But I still think that was a little disingenuous. Pointing out that a successful director of action sequences also directed a blockbuster in an entirely unrelated genre, without any action scenes at all, does not at all contradict my point that action sequences in modern superhero movies are not, and should not be considered, on equal footing with films that are specifically designed as showcases for intricate fight scenes.

this is not relevant to the current discussion but i haven't even gotten into how i think this movie is a beautiful tribute to his daughter, just through the telling of cyborg's story and, once again, the flash sequence at the end

i am hopeful that black widow will be a nice opportunity for some solid fight choreo/action direction that isn't disposable.
it would be fun if they would ditch all the continuity bullshit for at least one film and just, i dunno, remake The Raid but put scarjo in the lead.

I'm hoping that by jumping back in time to be set after Civil War there won't be much emphasis on larger continuity at all, which would definitely suit it better.

I'll be the first (or, I dunno, like the eight millionth) to say that I wish Marvel would slough off the relatively homogeneous house style and let distinctive filmmakers get personal and/or properly weird with the material. It doesn't seem like it would affect the narrative throughline much.

Wrt to the topic of this thread in particular (what was it again?), I will once more out myself as someone who a) has yet to see any of the Snyder films that I love to clown on and b) watches the CW DC shows, which I feel almost certain are at least equally infused with hot garbage.

BVS (extended cut) is the only Snyder movie I've seen that I actually think works back to front as a movie, and has enough weird shit in it to be genuinely compelling to watch, despite the length. I might like Man of Steel better on revisit now that Snyder's vision of the character is clearer, but I found it a slog at the time.

You could not pay me to try again with Sucker Punch, though.

Problem with Bats v Supes was that I found the dream sequence stuff infinitely more compelling than the main plot, I would have loved to see that post-apocalyptic world fleshed out more, and the "Martha" thing was so stupid that it really ruined a lot of the goodwill.

I never really understood the griping about that element tbh

Leslie Jones livetweeted the whole film and presents maybe the only way I will see this.
start here

I have 3 hours 56 minutes and 13 seconds left long night ahead!! #longassmovie pic.twitter.com/eRnOTBwdUR

— Leslie Jones 🦋 (@Lesdoggg) March 22, 2021

I never really understood the griping about that element tbh

The "Martha" thing? I just think there were far less clumsy ways for Bruce to empathize with Supes' common humanity.

i looove the "martha" scene, lol

just amazed he was able to hold back on dropping in the tom waits song afterwards

jvc you are correct that the dream sequence rocks. which is why revisiting it in the justice league epilogue doesn't bother me at all, tacked on as it may seem

i really love that each movie tends to improve the experience of watching the previous ones, like bvs's "how do gods figure into geopolitics/how can unchecked power be controlled" question is a direct follow-up to what man of steel lays down. i would encourage anyone curious/masochistic enough to watch man of steel/batman vs superman/justice league in a row like i did. lol

just amazed he was able to hold back on dropping in the tom waits song afterwards

― intern at pepe le pew research (Simon H.), Thursday, March 25, 2021 11:53 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

there are no needledrops in bvs iirc, so like... in a way... it's his most restrained movie....... j/k

jvc you are correct that the dream sequence rocks. which is why revisiting it in the justice league epilogue doesn't bother me at all, tacked on as it may seem

Not going to lie, it was hearing that the dream sequence stuff was back in this was what finally convinced me that I would watch this after all. Also curious to see the Flash and Cyborg stuff.

the father/parent stuff in the movie is really good, i had somehow forgotten abt Snyder’s daughter until the “For Autumn” at the end & it hit me

the Martha thing in BvS was so bad it made everyone forget about Batman giving Clark the ol' Jesus spear, just stop with SuperChrist dammit

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

As someone who has only seen maybe 5 or 6 of them, they seemed VERY formulaic in that every single one was MISUNDERSTOOD HERO FIGHTS EVIL DUDE WHO HAS BASICALLY THE SAME POWERS ONLY MORE SO; having been bored by this I haven't seen any since, so they way well have broadened their approach in the 300 movies since.

There's a long minute in the Snyder cut where revived Supes floats above Earth, frontlit, in JC pose. Audible groan.

Were u staring at him like u needed 2 b saved

that scene is so awesome!!! i did not think he was in a jc pose but y'all seem to notice the christlike figure stuff more than me

https://i.imgur.com/QdJL7XX.png

ok yeah pretty christ-y

beautiful image tho

Christ pose or no, that is where I give Snyder a little credit, that is a very comic book image. He’s good at those, just not so much the consistent storytelling surrounding those evocative images.

supes is just really soakin' up that earth's sun radiation

wasn't there similar imagery in superman returns?

Yup, and that wasn't even Snyder

i'm watching the scene that is supposedly similar in superman returns rn and nah

https://wallpaperesque.com/wp-content/uploads/plixpapers1506/superman_floating_in_the_air_wallpaper_background_20388-320x240.jpg

As someone who has only seen maybe 5 or 6 of them

So, between a third to a quarter

every single one was MISUNDERSTOOD HERO FIGHTS EVIL DUDE WHO HAS BASICALLY THE SAME POWERS ONLY MORE SO

This could be Iron Man? I mean, he's not very misunderstood, but he totally fights Jeff Bridges in one of his (old) suits.

The Norton Hulk movie, sure yeah, that's basically the MO of the Hulk right there.

After that you've kind of lost me until Ant-Man?

I also thought Dan was talking about conceiving and abandoning an essay of his own btw

But Is He Mighty Where It Counts

You'll Be So Thor You Can't Walk Right

tldr 4 jvc only, and then only if he's rly bored

(hide-tag test first)

'sic is notable for bad faith arguments in these threads'
-- since wins and Simon and Brad were all able to follow what I was saying exactly, might I kindly submit that you may be reading me in bad faith?

no pars or quotes, to try and avoid breaking tags

'You said that Marvel movie fight scenes are bad because they don't match up to Hong Kong action movies, a genre specifically known for very excellent fight choreography. I agreed with this premise, but noted that I don't think the two genres are really comparable, yet you keep moving the goalposts'
-- This did not happen at all. I said that some, and not all, of the MCU movies I've seen have generic, incoherent animated final boss fights. Incoherent is fine to dismiss as opinion, but the rest is demonstrably factual: someone posted a How We Make 'Em video in the MCU thread, and multiple directors have talked of turning down offers to direct Marvel films when they asked about the action scenes and were told those would be done in-house / not part of their remit. I specifically named one director of Marvel movies who makes clear, coherent, thrilling, funny action scenes that enhance & are integrated with the character development in the rest of the script. I ~quoted that citation~ further in the conversation as a reminder tbc that I was speaking of a select plurality, not an inevitable universality.
-- Dan, in a comical style of unreasonable rhetorical hyperbole that is familiar from his two decades here, suggested that no MCU films can contain incoherent action, by proposing a binary consisting solely of 'all MCU films' and 'two far more incoherent films by one director.'
-- In another familiar rhetorical style, I proposed that a wide spectrum of perspectives exist instead of a binary, and illustrated this with a list of directors from a variety of countries who direct a wide type of visual action. All have fight scenes within their repertoire, but deploy them in different rhythms, different stagings, for different narrative effects, with the intent of creating different emotional reactions in an audience. (Sammo and Jackie aside - Jackie surpassed his mentor in skill and art and variety of action types, but they m/l write h2h fights for the same narrative ends.) (nb I wanted to include France to rep another continent, but afaik Transporter 2 is sadly an outlier in Leterrier's career)
-- You decided that Prachya Pinkaew and Park Chan-wook and Chad Stahelski are Hong Kong directors for some reason (and that eg Chan doesn't direct chase scenes, nor Chow direct dance scenes) and set up your own smaller set of goalposts there, and insisted that we now consider this the sole binary, not the Michael Bay one, AND BUT ALSO that it was an invalid binary. You then got mad at me for still standing by the enormous open goalposts going "everyone can have a kick over here, plenty of room," and ~stayed~ mad when multiple ppl pointed out that I was still in the same place wanting everyone to have fun kicking a goal.
(fwiw I literally fell asleep in JumanjIII when it switched to animated action scenes credited as being directed by a talented stunt coordinator, rather than the headline director, and performed without the name cast in their own roles. those can derail a non-MCU movie too!)
'by insisting they are the same by bringing.... fucking Happy Feet into it somehow?'
-- this was already covered by wins? but also fwiw Happy Feet has loads of dance scenes with dozens & dozens of li'l pengies all moving around at once, honest it does
'You have no consistent argument other than to prove, yet again, your superior film knowledge and better tastes than us other mere mortals.'
-- I'm saying that filmmakers who are interested in showing you 900 dudes in a row getting their faces kicked out the back of their heads, or Jack Nicholson fucking three women so hard that he turns into a devil baby puppet, can also be very good at visual storytelling. As far as historical expressions of snobbery on the I Love Music message board and its offshoots go, this hardly moves the needle, m'lud.
-- It is clear that you genuinely believe that I was disingenuously trolling in bad faith! (also that you are extremely stressed out in general terms this month!) But since you reached that conclusion by (in your own account) ~starting from the assumption that I was~, and quod erat demonstrandum by wins and Simon and Brad, misreading what I typed, mb next time ~don't~ assume that I am trolling, or that I hate you, or that I am trying to shame you, and thus yell at me for doing one of those? I assure that as far as I know you as a person here I wish you well, and sincerely hope that you get a timeline for vaccination soon.

I mean, BASICALLY THE SAME POWERS ONLY MORE SO is a solid complaint about the Norton Hulk, I don't dig "wellll the Abomination has a Might rating of 9 and the Hulk is an 8.5 but because he Means It More he's upgraded to a 9.5".

I think a lot of MCU films avoid this, more clever fights and endings like Doctor Strange please.

(I mean, arguably the ending of Doctor Strange is "I'm jammed in here with you and my Asshole rating is 10")

BASICALLY THE SAME POWERS ONLY MORE SO fits most of the origin stories, as the villain's coming from the same place. Tt's organic to the story. Iron Man 1 (Stane steals prototype suit, backwards engineers a megasize suit) & 2 (Whiplash & Tony's dads developed the arc reactor, Hammer Industries' patriot force mimics the Stark IM design), GotG 2 (Peter Quill & Ego, Peter's dad), Doctor Strange (they're all magicians), Ant-Man (both coming from Pym particles), Black Panther (Wakanda royalty in-fighting), Captain America 1 (Red Skull as early formula proto-Cap), Norton Hulk (military wants their own gamma ray soldier), maybe a few others I'm not reading that way.

Focusing on the powers misses out on seeing the various relationships grow over the movies, as the actors sink into the characters. Watching Endgame's scene with Natasha and Steve, before Scott appears, picturing their evolution together added extra depth to the scene. Same with the Steve / Bucky relationship over the years, and Steve / Tony. Seeing Iron Man's sacrifice is weighty enough in Endgame, but if you've been watching from the beginning, it resonates even more. Etc. You shouldn't have to have seen every Falcon/Winter Soldier appearance to enjoy the new series, but if it deepens the experience, why not? I wouldn't read the last Harry Potter book and think I wasn't missing something if I hadn't read the first six.

The DCU movies have left me mostly cold, but I think the MCU has been nailing character as well as the bombast.

the marvel movies make me feel nothing but contempt for tony starks and this contempt builds upon itself with each successive marvel movie i watch

v effective storytelling and characterization

No interest in his move from orphan / self-absorbed playboy / warmonger to team player / surrogate dad / family man? He's a well-adjusted Bruce Wayne.