DC, MARVEL, Dark Horse Comics / Graphic Novels, TV Shows, Movies etc

Got back from seeing Thor Ragnarok today on one of the last local showings. IT WAS F**ING AWESOME! Ton of fun, and everything I was hoping it'd be from when the first trailer dropped. Good action, lots of amusing to laugh-out-loud jokes, and one of the first times I can honestly say a Marvel movie villain left an impression. The escalation of general destruction near the end bodes well for a certain incoming villain too.

Spoiler:

Hype for Infinity War commence! And perhaps also a bit of motivation to catch up on the MCU I've missed up to this point too!

I'm gonna talk about Justice League. There are spoilers and that but honestly you could tell me the entire plot of this film by looking at the poster.

I went and saw Justice League myself yesterday, between my two shifts at work. It wasn't a bad film! I enjoyed the hell out of it and I really appreciated it just being a superhero film and not overly militarising things or trying to be anything else.
It suffered from the obvious problem - Superman is so powerful that everyone else could leave most things to him - but it used every conceivable plot device to make it work, and it just about pulled it off.

I liked all the characters and I felt like they each had a little story arc. They were all heroes anyway, but became someone better by teaming up with and befriending the others. It was just nice.
I also didn't know until I went in that Danny Elfman was on music. He did a banging job, as always, and it was amazing to hear some of those classic themes return.

ZeroJones wrote:

My boy - sorry, 'boi' - The Flash, was a bit too cheesy for my liking. Cyborg will be better in the next film he's in and Aquaman was a dudebro.

The Flash was cheesy butI enjoyed it. It is so rare to see someone just enjoy being a superhero, they're always so brooding and moody. Havign a guy who runs fast and helps people was wonderful and the moment when he agreed to join the team was lovely. For Cyborg I agree, this was kind of his origin so a little dull. Aquaman was a dudebro, but it worked well and the lasso scene was perfect pay-off for the character. Everyone looked and acted like they'd stepped right from a comicbook page in a way you rarely get with Marvel films. Say what you will about Snyder as a storyteller, but he is a damn good visualist.
He does do a little bit of the Bayonetta camerawork with Wonder Woman, giving us a few too many shots of Gal Gadot's bum, but this is one of the few cases where I think the "the men are objectified too" argument actually works. The Batman workout in BvS, all the topless shots and flexing, the bromance . . . I know lots of ladies (and men) who are interested in this film for Khal Drogo's "performance".
It all works here because this is a superhero film. An unashamed, unabashed, straight-up movie about gods among men being really amazing. Of course it has the hottest people with the most chiselled abs. How else would the Justice League look?

Quote :

I don't know what position Steppenwolf, the film's villain, occupies in the DC canon... but he felt like a non-entity who was disconnected from the film.

He's basically a henchman of Darkseid. (Thanos, the big villain in the current Marvel stuff, is just a deliberate rip-off of Darkseid and the New Gods). I think he and his Parademons were handled better than the Chitauri in the first Avengers, who didn't have any build-up and posed literally zero threat. These guys were creepy looking, it was clear they were going to do real damage, and the device of the little family under siege in their house was a great touch. Also, the "scent of fear" thing and the way it lead to Step's downfall was glorious.

masofdas wrote:

Superman is everything I hate about the hero in this film.

Unfortunately, I'm inclined to agree here. I generally really like Supes. He was good in Man of Steel, and the little phone video at the start of JL was really cute and a perfect realisation of the character. When he actually returns though, the cheese is turned up so high I honestly felt like they were trying to parody Superman. Considering how absolutely perfect Wonder Woman and Batman were here (though maybe we need to get rid of Affleck anyway? Watching that develop closely . . .), its a shame they didn't embrace Supes a little better. Or, just let him stay dead/ confused and dangerous/ lost and disinterested for more of the film.

You know what would have been nice? If he'd woken up as Clark Kent and not been able to remember he was Superman, and seeing the rest of the League save day inspired him. Then we'd have the whole team ready for the sequel, but the ending here wouldn't have had that tinge of Deus Ex Machina.


Overall, I think I came out of this film much more positive than my fellow forumites. Perhaps I just had such low expectations after BvS that I couldn't be disappointed. Overall, it was a fun and gorgeous film and did a good job of showing how DC films are going to be different from the Marvel ones. I think there's definitely room for both going forwards.

P.S: I never want to see a big sci-fi action/ superhero film about a damn cube ever again.

Spoiler:

Some good thoughts but the only good thing about DC is that upcoming Batman Ninja Anime.

Have you ever seen western heroes turned into anime/ manga? They seem to be universally awful!

I haven't but seems to be a lot of hype around Batman Ninja and the trailer did look cool as.

My problem with The Flash's cheese content is two-fold.

Fold One: I don't like cheese, particularly now that my wife is vegan. I can tolerate it on pizzas because there's so much more to grab the attention of my taste buds - that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Fold Two: I feel it's going to be difficult to spin The Flash off into his own film and have people take him seriously. I know that Barry Allen tends to be a bit more relaxed anyway - that's one of the reasons I like him and, seriously, S4 of The Flash is knocking it out of the park on a regular basis in that regard these days - but he will struggle to be taken seriously being serious on-screen in the future. Is my fear, anyway - I understand that the first The Flash film will be based on the Flashpoint storyline (heaven knows how all the backstory necessary for that to work will get off the ground in a film under three hours long), so maybe the seriousness will be taken up by... someone else.

Also, a thought I had about how JL relates to BvS that made me happy about both films...

Spoiler:

ZeroJones wrote:

I feel it's going to be difficult to spin The Flash off into his own film and have people take him seriously.

See, you say that but I thought one of the best serious heroism moments of the film was Batman and Flash's "just save one" conversation. There's probably a really good film to be made from Barry having to deal with something serious and learning that he can be more than a speedy goofball.

Saw Black Panther and it might be one of the best films in the MCU and should all go see.

I saw Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier the other day. Good stuff, one of the better MCU movies. I particularly like that the Bucky situation is left unresolved and they didn't just handwave seventy+ years of brainwashing in an instant.

The action sequences were also amazing. Loved all the instinctive-tier hand-to-hand combat they had going on.

Now onwards to Avengers 2 and Captain America 3!

Oh, Athers, you've got some ace films to come. I was really impressed by Captain America 2 as well; very much its own film. I was wondering how they would make Cap work in the modern era; I needn't have worried.

Earlier today I saw Black Panther. Now that is a confident, swaggering film by a studio who can do no wrong (well, except for

Zero's opinion, don't @ him:

Truly great stuff, particularly the mid-credits scene, with its barely disguised middle fingers to certain figures on the world stage. Also, made itself feel like a James Bond film early on only to morph into something quite, quite different. I'm going to echo mas and say all o'y'all should make a beeline to the cinema to see it.

Aye I really enjoyed Black Panther as well, only real negitives I can think of are that some of the jokes in the final act werent needed at all.

Cracking movie, that Black Panther. Everybody was just so damn cool and likeable in that movie and the action scenes were a treat. Visually, it looked great as well - I don't know what Marvel have been on since Thor Ragnarok, but it's done wonders for the colour palette in their movies.

One small peeve...

Genuine spoilers for the movie, btw:

Finally got around to seeing Black Panther (it only came out today in japan).

Oh my.

That was a phenomenal film. There wasn't a single moment when it didn't have me absolutely captivated. I don't know what it was even, but I was so involved emotionally in a way I'm often not with superhero films these days. I think between this and Thor: Ragnarok, the curse of the Marvel Villain has been well and truly broken. Klawe was watchable, but Killmonger was something else. I genuinely felt for him and his cause, while at the same time knowing that T'Challa had to put him down. It meant that ending was genuinely heartbreaking.

Man, I had tears in my eyes from the moment they flew into Wakanda until the credits rolled. What a film! It just frustrates me that we had to have 20 films about white boys called Chris before we could start getting superhero films about other cultures and parts of the world given the Marvel budget.

The spoiler chat from above:

Also:

Glad you could experience it! I take it there were subtitles for the native audience?

I might have to see it again, myself...

Yeah, cinemas seem to offer the choice of subtitles or dub with this kind of film, which is pretty cool.

Aye, the more I see people react to seeing Black Panther for the first time the more it get's me playing it back in my head and I've now decided it's my favourite film in the MCU. (My previous one being GoTG)

Was Klawe implied to be (or even explicitly implied) racist? I thought he was just a thieving, murdering scumbag but I didn't catch anything that suggested racism - I thought he was more drawn to the Wakandans because of the mountain of Vibranium there. I might have missed something, mind.

Drunkalilly wrote:

What a film! It just frustrates me that we had to have 20 films about white boys called Chris before we could start getting superhero films about other cultures and parts of the world given the Marvel budget.

It's great to see but what bugged me from the press and stuff was headlines like first black superhero (I guess they mean the whole film but its not how it reads) and I'm like did we all forget about Blade and it was R rated did we also forget that when Deadpool and Logan came out.

Also, we had the Spawn movie

JayMoyles wrote:

Was Klawe implied to be (or even explicitly implied) racist? I thought he was just a thieving, murdering scumbag but I didn't catch anything that suggested racism - I thought he was more drawn to the Wakandans because of the mountain of Vibranium there. I might have missed something, mind.

He repeatedly called the Wakandans "savages", stuff like that.

masofdas wrote:

It's great to see but what bugged me from the press and stuff was headlines like first black superhero (I guess they mean the whole film but its not how it reads) and I'm like did we all forget about Blade and it was R rated did we also forget that when Deadpool and Logan came out.

Also, we had the Spawn movie

While those other films exist, this is the first of the current ongoing mega-budget superhero film trend, and it wasn't just a film with a black lead but a film by a black director, with a mostly black cast and a plot that touched properly on issues of race which genre films often avoid, or tiptoe around and use awkward metaphors like "mutants" to discuss.

Drunkalilly wrote:

JayMoyles wrote:

Was Klawe implied to be (or even explicitly implied) racist? I thought he was just a thieving, murdering scumbag but I didn't catch anything that suggested racism - I thought he was more drawn to the Wakandans because of the mountain of Vibranium there. I might have missed something, mind.

He repeatedly called the Wakandans "savages", stuff like that.

Definitely missed something! Oof.