...shrekfan246 said:
Y'know, the world is full of weird things, but, even among other kinds of strangeness, Japanese strangeness exists in a class all its own.
It's About Characters, Stupid
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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Y'know, the world is full of weird things, but, even among other kinds of strangeness, Japanese strangeness exists in a class all its own.
The right author is Kurt Busiek, specifically with Superman: Secret Identity. I'm sick and tired of all the main-continuity nonsense in both DC and Marvel (I don't know how stuff that sounds so interesting when I read summaries ends up being so much less fun when I try to actually read it), but that was an amazing book/non-canon story using the familiar Superman story elements to represent the stages of a man's life, rather than the traditional adolescent wish fulfillment.LobsterFeng said:
Speaking of Kurt Busiek, another interesting way to approach superhero stories in a character-based way rather than using the point of view of the heroes or villains is to do what he does a lot in Astro City. The world it's set in has a lot of references/homages to the DC and Marvel ones and the characters and events in them, but a lot of his stories are told from the point of view of normal, everyday people living there who have to deal with the consequences of a world full of superheroes/supervillains running around all the time. You get a very interesting and personal perspective of things with a rather different focus if it's done well, but I really can't see that happening in a big budget DC/Marvel movie (although maybe if the Astro City one finally goes somewhere...). Maaaaybe one of the animated DC ones, which tend to be pretty good quality from the few I've seen, but it doesn't feel like their style.
What the hell did i just watch ? I didn't blink the whole while .shrekfan246 said:
OT: Yup People are going overkill . They make things flashy so that it sells well , then they realise their kinda shot themselves in the foot for sequels. Then they wonder why people say sequels tend to suck.
have Batman show up at the very end of each one to punch them all in the stomach 'cause he's an empty-headed violent fascist.
Ah, pure comedy gold!
Having just beaten Arkham Asylum, what does Killer Croc symbolise? I wasn't even aware there was a 'Killer Croc' villain until I played the game.
Ah, pure comedy gold!
Having just beaten Arkham Asylum, what does Killer Croc symbolise? I wasn't even aware there was a 'Killer Croc' villain until I played the game.
in most mediums it's not so much what the person does it's more what we know about the character before they do it. take like the punisher movie for example and just start the movie from the point where he starts hunting down the "bad" people
or most other "vigilantly" superheros take away their back stories and what you have is no real different then the villains they fight. like the x-Men for example when Magneto said 'you know we are not all that different' he meant that when taken at face value without knowing the history of these specific people, and not have them be "likable" to some degree you would be wondering why they are the heroes, and the other is the villain. this is the same reason why when introducing a new hero they are typically either shown in a "normal" day before they were made the way they are now, or we are given that information in retrospective. then if we ever do learn information about the villain it is usually for the purpose of dehumanizing/montrafying them. step one to creating an enemy whether it be in comics/movies/politics/war is to remove any kind of human connection the general public/person has for them.
he is a supervillain running around causing collateral damage in an attempt to kill/maim/harm a few people
I agree with most of the idea behind the DC antagonists, but some later Marvel stories experimented with ideas like that to varying degree. However, most Marvel villains are shallow and unrelated to the protagonist still, but the same could be said of DC: how does Gorilla Grodd relate to the Flash?
...I would definitely be on the hype train for a movie about a league of injustice though, I hate most DC heroes.
...I would definitely be on the hype train for a movie about a league of injustice though, I hate most DC heroes.
I disagree a skilled writher does not have to higher the stakes and can even lower them and still make a good follow-up story I personally really like the avengers and with the right people the next one can be about them trying to keep their favorite shoarma tent open and I would still be good.
Do agree with your legion of doom plan god that would be awesome.
Do agree with your legion of doom plan god that would be awesome.
But wait didn't you dislike Dragon Age 2 partially because it didn't have a world threatening fantasy story, but instead a mor etight focus on a single city and its various dangers and struggles?
Great article.
This is why I loved Buffy season 6. Having gone up the Big Bad scale from Super-vampire to Vampre-Love-Interest-Gone-Evil to Giant snake-demon to Frankenstein uber-demon to Hell-God, they realised they needed to go in a different direction and made the sixth series go all psychological on our ass, and while it wasn't perfect it was really the only way they could have made it work. Of course in season 7 they went back the other way again and fought against the very concept of evil itself, but you can't have everything.
And with that in mind... imagine what Marvel and DC could accomplish with a coalition experiment where Marvel designs a new superhero and DC creates the arch-nemesis of said character.
Might be a bit of a stretch to say it would automatically work, but sounds like a good idea on paper.
Might be a bit of a stretch to say it would automatically work, but sounds like a good idea on paper.
Oh...oh my god. Joker is the Assassins and Batman is the Templar. WE'VE BEEN ROOTING FOR THE WRONG SIDE ALL ALONG.Falseprophet said:
I don't think the Avenger movie works very well as a comparison, because (I thought) the whole concept of the Avenger movie was it was the big pew-pew movie, all the Smaller scale movies were the previous movies, all leading up to the big Finale. So in a since I think The Avenger movie was more a of a closing of the series rather than really opening up a new franchise. Plus the alien invasion didn't feel like it was trying to be too big, it wasn't, say, an ancient evil asleep for thousands of years threatening the entire universe but just happens to need to be stopped by a guy on Earth with a green ring...
"...it's eventually revealed that the zombie attack in America was started as an attempt to assassinate one solitary individual who was planning to reveal information about a previous zombie attack - get your head around that logic...."
...I'm afraid I can't do that, Ben, because my brain is not made of taffy.
I mean, seriously, Capcom has completely tossed any sort of logic or sense of scale out the window at this point. As much as I'm typically a foe of reboots, Resident Evil needs one, stat.
More on-point: Depowering your protagonists isn't the only route towards making them more interesting, of course. You could place other limiters on them, force them to scale themselves back voluntarily- making them fight in a place where high innocent casualties are likely if they go full-out, or keep someone they care about in constant danger. I think it's a lot more interesting if a hero whose typical Plan A is "smash through wall, punch bad guy" has to come up with a much more subtle attack plan on the fly AND ensure that he doesn't accidentally go overboard with his own strength and endanger what he's trying to protect.
Of course, that requires good writing, which is not the most easily-found thing in the entertainment industry.
...I'm afraid I can't do that, Ben, because my brain is not made of taffy.
I mean, seriously, Capcom has completely tossed any sort of logic or sense of scale out the window at this point. As much as I'm typically a foe of reboots, Resident Evil needs one, stat.
More on-point: Depowering your protagonists isn't the only route towards making them more interesting, of course. You could place other limiters on them, force them to scale themselves back voluntarily- making them fight in a place where high innocent casualties are likely if they go full-out, or keep someone they care about in constant danger. I think it's a lot more interesting if a hero whose typical Plan A is "smash through wall, punch bad guy" has to come up with a much more subtle attack plan on the fly AND ensure that he doesn't accidentally go overboard with his own strength and endanger what he's trying to protect.
Of course, that requires good writing, which is not the most easily-found thing in the entertainment industry.
DC doesn't have better villains. They're pretty even in my view. Yes yes, DC has Batman's rogue gallery, Sinestro, etc. but Marvel has provided us with Magneto, Dr. Doom, Loki, Thanos and several others with their own complex view on the world and interesting motivations.
The Avengers did portray Loki as the "MWAHAHAHA I SHALL TAKE OVER THE WORLD" kind of guy/god, but remember his interactions with Thor in that movie, as well as every scene he had in the Thor movie and you can clearly see that he's a conflicted and interesting character.
The reason he and the rest of the characters didn't get a lot of character development in Avengers is because all of that happened during each of the heroes' individual movies. The Avengers was basically one long, drawn out climax to the collective story of each character, and that's pretty much the reason why I prefer most of the individual movies over the Avengers itself.
The Avengers did portray Loki as the "MWAHAHAHA I SHALL TAKE OVER THE WORLD" kind of guy/god, but remember his interactions with Thor in that movie, as well as every scene he had in the Thor movie and you can clearly see that he's a conflicted and interesting character.
The reason he and the rest of the characters didn't get a lot of character development in Avengers is because all of that happened during each of the heroes' individual movies. The Avengers was basically one long, drawn out climax to the collective story of each character, and that's pretty much the reason why I prefer most of the individual movies over the Avengers itself.
Great article, I like that it wasn't the inevitable "bash RE6" article that every Escapist contributor has had to put out recently. There's a little bit of that, but not nearly as bad.
Yahtzee, you have a great point that DC definitely does better by their villains than Marvel does. The only think I would point out is that X-Men has some pretty interesting villains, not the least of which being Magneto, the Malcom-X to Xavier's Martin Luther King. The X-Men story has some pretty complex characters all around, some enemies become friends and some friends become enemies. But for my money, Lex Luthor is a more compelling villain than any of them.
I think an entire movie focused on DC villains would be great, but the problem I would find with that is that villains tend not to stand on their own very well. Or they at least don't without some super hero to menace. Sure, you could make a plot where they all inevitably betray one another, but it wouldn't be as interesting without their heroic counter parts.
That's just my opinion, of course. It may be interesting to some people.
Yahtzee, you have a great point that DC definitely does better by their villains than Marvel does. The only think I would point out is that X-Men has some pretty interesting villains, not the least of which being Magneto, the Malcom-X to Xavier's Martin Luther King. The X-Men story has some pretty complex characters all around, some enemies become friends and some friends become enemies. But for my money, Lex Luthor is a more compelling villain than any of them.
I think an entire movie focused on DC villains would be great, but the problem I would find with that is that villains tend not to stand on their own very well. Or they at least don't without some super hero to menace. Sure, you could make a plot where they all inevitably betray one another, but it wouldn't be as interesting without their heroic counter parts.
That's just my opinion, of course. It may be interesting to some people.
I think every story would benefit from Batman showing up at the end and punching someone in the stomach. Try it:
A kid came to my door and asked me if I wanted to buy some candy bars to help his school. I said sure and handed him some money. Then Batman walked up and punched him in the stomach.
A kid came to my door and asked me if I wanted to buy some candy bars to help his school. I said sure and handed him some money. Then Batman walked up and punched him in the stomach.