I am starting to get tired of Batman in the current DCAU, though that's mostly because the current DCAU is kinda shit.
Dear DC,
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Have you seen some of the golden age character designs? Many of them are considerably less gaudy than their Silver Age counterparts. Like Flash. Who wears what essentially is jeans and a long sleeved red shirt with the logo, as opposed to a bodystocking. The golden age Sandman, trench coat and gas mask, he essentially is a toned down Rorschach. There are some more fantastical design, sure. Dr. Fate; dark blue suit, bigass Dr. Strange cape, gold helmet. Specter, albino in a dark green hood. Even so, many of these guys WEAR PANTS. That's a step toward a more normalized design than many superheroes. Green Lantern wears pants, and while it is gaudy his cape has a massive popped collar (a thing in the 2000's.)Samtemdo8 said:Wow all of that just sounds lame. I ma sorry dude but the Golden Age and Silver Age are just dated.Kyrian007 said:
I don't want to see the DC heroes looking like this in live action:
I am sorry dude but what you are asking for is more appropriate for Animation than Live Action. Because it would look so gaudy live action.
Actually their design and the overall look could easily look a lot like what Snyder landed on in Watchmen. And when he is going more or less on script and storyboarding from comics... he did fine. His problem was stupid visual and camera gimmicks, not character design.
Besides, the point wasn't about design. It was about the freedom to tell stories about different, not overused and ruined characters. Freedom to do things like modernize the character designs. Although in many instances that would be a mistake (like X-Men biker leather level mistake) because you don't chose to adapt an iconic character and then change the design that's part of what MAKES them iconic.
And that's the plus of JSA as opposed to JLA, these characters are farther removed from their pop culture "iconic" status. Updates or even slight changes to backstories aren't going to "freak out the fanboys" like it does to more "iconic" characters like Supes and Bats.
Allow me to contend that Legends of Tomorrow did Golden/Silver Age heroes like the JSA fairly well, even on a TV budget. Its not always looks, its presentation, characterization... Granted it wasn't like a constant thing, but the few episodes they've been in actually were good. CW/DC though has been more on-point with using a lot of the sillier heroes/villains of the pre-Dark Knight age fairly well. Even King Shark and Gorilla Grodd were good despite being ridiculous concepts.Samtemdo8 said:
Yes I have seen the original Golden Age designs, and they look boring and old. And I LOVED Snyder's camara cinematography in Watchmen, especially that one face close up scene of Rorschach in the rain:Kyrian007 said:Have you seen some of the golden age character designs? Many of them are considerably less gaudy than their Silver Age counterparts. Like Flash. Who wears what essentially is jeans and a long sleeved red shirt with the logo, as opposed to a bodystocking. The golden age Sandman, trench coat and gas mask, he essentially is a toned down Rorschach. There are some more fantastical design, sure. Dr. Fate; dark blue suit, bigass Dr. Strange cape, gold helmet. Specter, albino in a dark green hood. Even so, many of these guys WEAR PANTS. That's a step toward a more normalized design than many superheroes. Green Lantern wears pants, and while it is gaudy his cape has a massive popped collar (a thing in the 2000's.)Samtemdo8 said:Wow all of that just sounds lame. I ma sorry dude but the Golden Age and Silver Age are just dated.Kyrian007 said:
I don't want to see the DC heroes looking like this in live action:
I am sorry dude but what you are asking for is more appropriate for Animation than Live Action. Because it would look so gaudy live action.
Actually their design and the overall look could easily look a lot like what Snyder landed on in Watchmen. And when he is going more or less on script and storyboarding from comics... he did fine. His problem was stupid visual and camera gimmicks, not character design.
Besides, the point wasn't about design. It was about the freedom to tell stories about different, not overused and ruined characters. Freedom to do things like modernize the character designs. Although in many instances that would be a mistake (like X-Men biker leather level mistake) because you don't chose to adapt an iconic character and then change the design that's part of what MAKES them iconic.
And that's the plus of JSA as opposed to JLA, these characters are farther removed from their pop culture "iconic" status. Updates or even slight changes to backstories aren't going to "freak out the fanboys" like it does to more "iconic" characters like Supes and Bats.
But I get what you are trying to say, and I hate it when the fanboys freak out about changes in the "iconic" character's stories to. Its annoying and coming from me I have seen worse things done to these charcaters than Snyder's moves.
That's pretty much why I like the Arrowverse more than the DCEU: it's allowed to have fun and embrace the sillier aspects of comic books. Villains are goofy and cheesy. Characters ham it up all the time. Those shows are aware of how ridiculous comics sometimes get ... and don't care.Imperioratorex Caprae said:
"Yes, go Barry! Run at that 2 ton sharkman!"
I hate the sillier aspect of comic books because then I cannot take these heroes seriously anymore.Chimpzy said:
And people think "treating things seriously" is a bad and not valid thing to have anymore. I longer care about the charcaters if they just act like goofballs aimed for 10 year olds anymore. I want Superheroes to mature and stay mature.
I want DC to take notes from Vertigo comics than thier Silver Age past.
My personal wish is for a The Question movie. I mean, Rorschach exists because demand for the character exceeded DC's willingness to experiment at the time. (Same with Darkman.) I mean, the character is basically Batman if he was Clark Kent after a lab accident, followed by an Iron Fist origin story. Actually, by that same token, a movie about The Creeper would also be pretty cool. Come on DC, it's one way to think outside the Batman box while still staying firmly pressed against it.
Come to think of it, if they scrap the last Jonah Hex movie, his origin story plays like a fairly standard western...
Come to think of it, if they scrap the last Jonah Hex movie, his origin story plays like a fairly standard western...
DC only needs 2 things to make an awesome Jonah Hex movie. Writer Joe R. Lansdale and director Don Coscarelli. Or maybe directed by the guys doing AMC's Hap and Leonard. Basically directors who have adapted Lansdale stories before. Lansdale has written Jonah Hex for DC comics (and a couple of the most awesome episodes of Batman the Animated Series,) and his stuff adapts pretty well to screenplay form. If anyone is going to do Jonah Hex right on the big screen... its Lansdale. And he's worked with DC before, with at times award winning success.ccggenius12 said:
Also, please stop catering exclusively for angsty teenagers. And stop trying to make me suck Damian Wayne's dick!
I think superhero films need to run the balance between "so dedicated to realism that the premise becomes absurd" and "so apathetic to realism that the film becomes absurd."Samtemdo8 said:
I mean, I saw Lego Batman a few days ago - we got it late in Australia - and I was actually unimpressed. It started out as a pretty funny riff on Batman, but by the end it was so astonishingly saccharine that I was abruptly reminded that I was watching a kid's movie. I mean, it ends with Batman in a sparkly white outfit singing about friendship. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ddO2oMX61E] I'd just stopped caring. Running jokes off of Batman and Joker's homoerotic vendetta is funny, but it ended with him literally making up with the Joker and deciding that they're buddies. That's weird. It didn't feel like the Joker at that point.
But even the realism of the otherwise-admirable Nolan films also fell apart eventually. I mean, in the first two films, the plot was grounded enough that I could actually believe that a ninja with a bunch of military gadgets was doing the things Batman was doing. But by Rises, Bane's plot was so cartoonishly large-scale, over such a long period of time, with such ridiculously high stakes that I could not longer credibly believe what I was seeing. There were nukes and a six-month re-enactment of the French Revolution and all of the city's police were trapped in a hole. Bane's soldiers were shooting at the ground instead of at the marching citizens because otherwise they'd massacre them. The final confrontation was in broad daylight. It didn't work. The realism was straining to accomodate the absurdity of the narrative, and failing.
And when you get down to it, I don't think the Snyder films are "realistic" at all. Not in the same way the Nolan films were. They're no more probable or logical than Marvel films are - in fact, the first Iron Man film is way more realistic than half of what Batman does in BvS - they're just more serious. They're playing the superheroics for drama and pathos, and people misread that as "realistic" when it's actually just as fantastical as everything Marvel's doing; it's just on the other end of the tragegy/comedy spectrum. It actually kinda worked in BvS - the title fight ended with some actual pathos, and the film was trying to be about the competing philosophies of the two main characters and the villain - but the film was hampered by shitty editing and pacing and a big stupid punch-up fight with a giant monster.
Like, the film starts with "Is a person with godlike power obliged to prevent evil, and are they culpable for allowing evil to persist? How do we hold God to account for his mistakes? Is there anyone morally capable of wielding that power, or is human nature so intrinsically flawed that they will inevitably break their most sacred principles?" And then it ends with "Wow, we sure killed the hell out of that giant monster!" Kinda...dropped the ball there, Snyder. Sorry.
I am not asking for Realism on the level of Nolan Batman like turning Bane from Chemical induced Super Warrior to whatever he's supposed to be in Dark Knight Rises.bastardofmelbourne said:
I want Giant Monsters and Superpowers too, but I want the characters to treat their Superheroing Seriously.
Like for me how I want Superman to be done is this. Basically I want Superman to be turned into Spiderman in THIS sense.Natemans said:
I want the theme of "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" heavily themed into Superman. Superman has ultimate power practically but he needs to bear the Burden of Heroic Responsibility more heavily than how they do it to Spiderman.
The problem isn't so much that DC films are serious, just that they're being serious badly.Samtemdo8 said:
Both MoS and BvS try to question the idea of how much good an actual Superhero can do, and what their responsibilities are but both botch that by either plain stupid writing (seriously, Luthors speeches about "the goodness of Gods" reads like stuff I'd have written in my edgy teenage atheist years) or by ignoring it all together in favour of a punch up (Batman and Supermans entire beef being resolved by a shared name and by Doomsday turning up).
On top of that, in their quest to be super serious they neglect to make actually compelling characters. Marvel seems to have at least understood that you have to make the characters likeable for audiences to root for them.
To be honest, the biggest problem with DC movies for me (note, haven't seen Suicide Squad so maybe it's different there) is that someone seems to misunderstand what the characters are about, emphasising instead sheer power (in my opinion). Instead of Batman the detective we have Batman-the-mass-murderer-who-guns-people-down-with-his-batmobile-and-throws-them-into-lifts-with-grenades-unles-their-mum-was-called-Martha-because-fucking-what?!
And instead of a Superman who saves people we have a Superman who just hits people really hard. I've said it before, but there's two scenes in BvS I feel show that they just don't get Superman.
The first is when Lois is being held hostage by that gunmen in Africa(?). Superman arrives and the guy has a gun to her head, what does Superman do? Instead of, I dunno, using his Superspeed to pluck the gun from his hand and restrain the guy, Supes instead smashes the guy through like three walls (this really puts a damper on the whole "I didn't kill people" thing). The second is (I think) when he meets Batman for their showdown. Superman is supposedly there to ask Batman for help, what's the first thing he does? Lands on the ground hard enough to crack the floor beneath him (1:35 in video cause I don't know how to do the whole "show only this part of the video thing").
Hell, even when he's still trying to talk to Batman he basically shoves him half way down the street.
Yeah, this is basically the best sum-up of the problems with the DCEU at the moment. The idea isn't a bad one, the concept isn't bad. It's just very, very poorly executed.TrulyBritish said:
I think what he was aiming at was a Batman who was so far gone off the deep end that he'd rationalised "thou shalt not kill" as "thou shalt not murder," and figured that if he kicks a mook into a hallway with a grenade that the mook had primed, the mook is really killing himself.TrulyBritish said:
Which is...well, it'd be doable, but not in the way Snyder did it. I mean, at one point Batman just drives the Batmobile directly through another car full of mooks. It just disintegrates into an explosion. Those guys didn't survive. That's murder.
One other thing Snyder does well is montages that effectively convey plot beats while not using much or any dialogue. Like the opening to Sucker Punch [https://youtu.be/14GZruL1hrE?t=46], or the opening to Dawn of the Dead [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G2YAtFeVOM], or the opening to Watchmen [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h24D87SqaLQ]. Each of those basically tells you an entire plot in a few minutes without using many words at all, just emphasis on key images.
What I think BvS needed to do was start with the Metropolis flashback, and then cut to the titles and have one of those montages that shows us what Superman and Batman have been up to in the two years since then. Gradually show Superman saving people and earning the world's trust and adoration, and parallel it with Batman gradually becoming more and more brutal, more and more bitter, stapling guns to the Batmobile, branding and maiming criminals, and obsessing all the while over how the world is putting its faith and trust in a Superman who he thinks is literally too good to be true. Then end it with the scene in Africa with Lois Lane, having basically shown us both how Superman ascended to becoming the hero of the world and how Batman descended into becoming an antagonist. Because he is an antagonist; for most of the film, he's a well-intentioned villain.
That made me scoff as well. There's no way that random warlord pulled through that with his skeleton intact. He's either dead, or he's a bag of flesh full of broken bones.TrulyBritish said:
Superman could've done something similarly intimidating, like super-speed up to the guy and just put his hand over the muzzle of the gun. Instead he just tackles him through like, three brick walls. That guy's not getting up.
Shit, something about BvS just gets me typing out huge mammoth posts analysing its shortcomings and strengths.
...I should go watch BvS again.
Yeah, having a montage like the one at the beginning of Watchmen would have been pretty cool.bastardofmelbourne said:
Actually, I wonder if maybe an issue with Snyders work is he likes to leave things unsaid? I remember having a discussion with my brother about Luthor in the film. I said he often came across as an inconsistent babbling idiot (see his speech at the part) while my brother thought this was meant to show that Lex was too busy thinking about his schemes, and not on the party, hence seeming distracted.
I think my favourite thing about the scene in Africa is that the warlords men were clearly shot by bullets, bullets it later turned out were being solely developed by Lex Corp according to the goddamn CIA, and yet Superman still gets the blame for it.bastardofmelbourne said:
Or, you know, that they decided to just kill off Jimmy Olsen just cause.
Oh, in the extended edition it shows KGBeast (Luthor's head henchperson, he's never called that in the film) burning all the corpses with a flamethrower to make it look like they were killed with heat vision.TrulyBritish said:
The super-distinctive Lexcorp bullet thing makes no sense, though. It was like they needed a clue for Lois Lane to follow to tie it to Lexcorp, but in the end Lex just kidnaps her right as she's figuring it out, so it was kind of pointless anyway. And it makes Lex look dumb, because he uses distinctive Lexcorp bullets to frame Superman.
It would've made more sense if Lex had used some plot device bullet that's designed to disintegrate or explode when it hits a target - so that it's slightly more plausible to accuse Superman of killing the people in Africa, since there'd be no bullets in the bodies - and she picks up an un-disintegrated round that got lodged in her notebook and later ties it to Lexcorp, who designed this weird leaves-no-evidence bullet.
One other idea I had was that the bullets were made out of Kryptonian metals and designed to hurt or kill Superman, and Luthor used them because he knew that then the US military wouldn't investigate too closely because they didn't want to publicly admit that they hired Lexcorp to design anti-Superman bullets. But again, none of this is in the film, and it suffers for it.