Agent_Z said:
They do have an inner life. What they don?t have is writers who feel their petty problems should overshadow plots with more interesting debates. An example would be how the Civil War movie promised an interesting examination of the consequences of superheroes? actions and whether one?s individual freedom should trump the needs of society. Instead what we got was the equivalent of a bunch of teenagers whining about how the adult don?t let them have any fun. We spend more time on the destruction of Steve and Tony?s non-existent friendship than we do actually looking at the effects of the Avengers? actions. Probably because if we did, we?d realize these guys are more harm than good.
The DCEU movies have decided to put the focus on how the heroes? actions affect the world around them without making them seem unsympathetic. Even in BvS, the fear of the danger Superman posed wasn?t simply dismissed as a villain?s agenda but a legitimate worry by the common man.
Yes, it's true that
Civil War didn't do everything it could. It might also be noted that "the adult" in question was responsible for "The Abomination" being released on a city full of civilians. And after the Hydra-inside-SHIELD incident, Captain America had perfectly valid reasons for feeling that a bureaucratic authority dictating his activities was a bad idea. What I found harder to believe was that Tony Stark, the man who once told a Congressional committee that he had "privatized world peace" and spent multiple movies trying to keep his work under his own control, was now perfectly willing to submit to oversight.
...But at least there was that much there to wonder about.
BvS couldn't decide
what the "common man" thought, or why, in any given scene. Like so much else in the DC movies, they were one more character twisting in the wind to the dictates of an under-thought plot, revering him as a god one moment, protesting outside a hearing in another. Not even a character- a contrivance, a background detail. That much less to worry about when a thousand are killed by a bomb, or ten thousand killed in a battle between super-beings, or ninety percent of the world's population is eradicated off-camera in an alternate future dystopia.
The "petty" problems of some of Marvel's heroes are part of what make it credible that they actually
do care when their actions have consequences for the non-super-powered- they actually interact with them, relate with them.
Talk with them.
To make a subject in a movie worthy of debate requires putting credible characters with compelling arguments behind different sides. General Ross may have been a poor choice for
Civil War to head the "control" side, in that regard, as there was already reason to regard him as someone who wasn't genuinely responsible and didn't want power so much under
control as under
his control.
...But to put
BvS's version of Luthor behind the "superheroes as a menace" side was as much as sweeping the issue off the table with a shower of confetti and a kazoo fanfare.
Because that someone was barely holding Doomsday in place and was exhausted from doing most of the fighting?
That seems like a stretch. If anything, that sounds like a good reason to say, "Here, why don't
I hold Doomsday in place while you stab him"?
A relationship that consists of a running gag of Groot saying three words and Rocket reacting with snark.
Actually, it mostly consists of Groot saying three words and then Rocket
interpreting them- and from what we're led to believe, correctly.
The brilliant thing about the Groot/Rocket relationship, to my mind, is that Rocket tends to be the meanest, snarkiest, and most wantonly violent of the
GotG chracters- and then he's partnered with someone who he largely feels compelled to be
nice to.
Just from the top of my head, we have the scene with Clark when his father tells him where he came from, the discussion after Clark saves the kids on the bus and the scene with Lois and Clark afyer the ordeal in Nairobi. These scenes do exist in the movies.
Man of Steel did have its moments; I didn't turn on the movie as much as some. The Lois scenes in
BvS felt to me like they were rushing to reach the next plot point- touching on her the bare minimum necessary to indicate that yes, this character was still in Superman's life and therefore an adequate reason for him to be manipulated into saving her.
Notably they didn't really bother establishing how the two suddenly moved as far as living together. I can almost forgive that because, yeah, everyone
knows Clark and Lois end up together- but in a movie so barren of meaningful connections, the leanness of one possible outlet for same stands out.
Like they did with El Diablo.
El Diablo gets very little development. He's a pacifist, he gets taunted, then he's not. He had a family, he got angry, now he doesn't. He despises the other Squaddies, then he works along side them; suddenly, they're family. His control over his power is so precise that he can make fiery letters float in the air, unless he loses his temper- and then he lashes out to the point that he kills his whole family- except when he loses his temper with people he barely knows, and then he uses it against their enemies instead.
If
SS actually wanted to make part of the movie about El Diablo learning to control his temper, or finding a new family, or seeking forgiveness for his acts, there's enough room for that there- it just wanted the audience to
think that those elements and themes were there without spending time and energy on them.
He got a flashback. About thirty seconds of his past with voiced-over narrative. That's more than some of the "main" characters get, but that's comparing degrees of famine. We're told he feels terrible.
...But that's just it. We're
told.
You mean this preview?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INLzqh7rZ-U&t=3s
That's better than some. I will admit I hadn't seen that one. But it's also- what, the third preview trailer? The fourth? How carefully did you have to be following the film to catch it?
Aka, every action trailer ever made. Maybe watch the film first before passing judgement?
I fully intend to watch it, assuming it gets even middling reviews. And good films sometimes get bad trailers, and vice-versa. And trailers can simply fail to accurately represent the films they're advertising accurately.
But I can't discard the impressions of prior movies in a franchise when seeing new entries offered up, nor should I. And there
have been action movie trailers that managed to convey character and intrigue as well as "jangle shiny keys" moments. Sometimes if something isn't offered it's because it isn't there.
What the hell does this even mean? Why is it that people automatically assume that representation and telling a good story are mutually exclusive despite plenty of evidence to the contrary?
That's not what I said, thank you.
I'm coming off of a series of movies that have struggled with basic issues of characterization, motivation, and plot, even given fairly expansive running times to work with.
Wonder Woman is a part of that series, and it has a
lot to do. It needs to provide an origin story for a character who hasn't had a significant screen presence since a television show in the 1970s. It needs to rise above the mixed reception for its predecessors and renew interest going into
Justice League. It needs to show that it can bring in audiences- not just in the United States, but world-wide. In parallel, it needs to show that a superhero action film with a female lead can succeed (not just for itself but for any similar enterprise that may follow), and be carried off by a female director. It needs to make its audience invest in it central character enough that we care about a raft of other characters accompanying her, knowing in advance that a) the lead comes through to show up in
BvS and b) most or all of them are likely dead and only their influence with the heroine carries on.
It would be very easy to sprinkle the movie with characters and situations which exist for no purpose other than to get in Diana's way just because she's a woman; to use the time setting as an excuse, and revel in cheap applause when such one-note characters inevitably get their comeuppance.
It would also be very easy to have Wonder Woman demonstrate at every opportunity that she will overcome all obstacles on her own, that she needs no help from anyone, that anyone who might seek to protect her is only getting in her way.
The former is lazy screenwriting, and- given the precedent set by earlier works- could literally detract from time that might be better used elsewhere. The latter risks removing any real sense of conflict or stake from the movie- Diana will win, everyone who stands with her will be nothing more than a distraction and probably get slaughtered to generate more melodrama as convenient.
We don't come to care about characters merely based on what they overcome (especially when victory is both easy and fore-ordained.) We come to care based upon their
struggle- even when they lose. Often,
especially when they lose. There is a real danger that Wonder Woman will come to the screen arrayed only against opposition that she can defeat with relative ease in a manner the audience is expected to feel good about in the shallowest ways. It is entirely likely that there is pressure on the film to deliver exactly that.
None of the above means that representation and telling a good story are mutually exclusive. It means that
WW in particular has a number of hurdles to jump and a number of easy pitfalls that could get in the way of it
being that movie, and current existing precedent is running against it.
And again: that I believe it is likely to struggle with achieving all it seeks to in no way means I'm not
hoping that it succeeds.
oJ (fuck me, but that title is just unwieldly; it's like something I'd expect from a parody), whether you liked it or not, probably won't see that kind of re-appraisal. I'm not saying it won't happen, but I just don't think anyone will care enough about it in 5 years to even bother.
