One Damn Thing After Another

1) It’s the curse of Ben Afflack.
2) THIS! IS! BULLSHIT! Zack “300 Abs” Snyder did the DC version of Sucker Punch but with dudes.
3) DC picked the wrong director… again.

@ManchuCandidate: Much to my surprise, Affleck is blameless here. Not that he’s good, mind you, but the character is so ill-conceived it’s not recognizably any Batman you know. There’s reinventing, and there’s just slapping a name and suit on whatever strikes your fancy.

So, yeah: This one’s on Zack. Again. His love of empty disaster porn and neglect of story and character exceeds even that of the Master, Michael Bay. I swear, at moments I thought I was watching a Transformers movie.

@nojo:
It’s making money, but DC is going to play 2nd critical fiddle to Marvel till comic book hero movies die their inevitable death.

I suspect it is not Batfleck, but he was shit as Daredevil.

@ManchuCandidate: True, and it reflects the DC/Marvel rivalry going back fifty years.

All those whiny Marvel superheroes make better movies, since they all have built-in Issues to work through, and thus stories to tell. DC has tried retrofitting this character and that with Emotions, sometimes very effectively, but it’s not fundamental to their conception.

Thus, the Captain America trailer was more interesting in three minutes than BvS was in the 2.5 hours that followed — because the Marvel characters are better drawn, so to speak.

But the Suicide Squad trailer was also great fun, in the third-string Netflix way: Nothing at stake, no marketing to protect, so let’s just go for broke.

@nojo:
I have almost nothing good to say about Zack. I hate his movies except for the Watchmen, but even then there were portions that made me roll my eyes. He produces eye porn with no money shot or drama like Bayhem. If he made a rom com he would still throw in slo mo and sepia filters.

I laughed all the way through 300. I laughed even more when RW bloggers lauded it as a US Amercia metaphor till someone pointed out that the very gay (and vicious) Spartan Army was not a “don’t ask don’t tell” kind of army.

@ManchuCandidate: Much as I’d love to blame Zack, the fish rots from the top, and he’s just a victim of poor executive casting.

The real failure lies at the feet of whoever at DC fills Kevin Feige’s role at Marvel, the Suit who’s running the show.

The MCU (Nerd Alert!) is extraordinarily well-conceived, and obviously not easy to replicate. But look as well at the unconventional choices of directors and stars over the years, people you would never entrust with a tentpole blockbuster, but who, like I think was said of Jon Favreau or Sam Raimi, find the little movies in big ones, providing interest and character between Blowing Shit Up. DC sticks in a thoughtless 9/11 allusion and calls it a day.

Really, DC is Microsoft to Marvel’s Apple: No imagination.

@nojo: Much to my surprise, Affleck is blameless here. Not that he’s good, mind you, but the character is so ill-conceived it’s not recognizably any Batman you know.

Bisco Jr and I agreed that he was a passable Batman done in by horrid scriptwriting and – most egregiously – departing from the Code.

Oh and, +1 for choosing an Ay-rab femme for Wonder Woman. Both audacious and bodacious.

My prob with these movies is that they’re just not fun anymore and haven’t been for years. The DC and Marvel superheroes–and even Star Trek–have all been given the dark ‘n gritty treatment. As a result, I leave the theatre feeling depressed, aggravated, and exhausted.

They say that movies are a reflection of the times, frequently veering into screwball comedies and musicals when the national mood is foul, but this trend of the last decade is something else entirely. When it stops being fun, give it up.

I liked the second season of Daredevil, but there were too many ninjas. Way too many ninjas. I never imagined such a thing, but, yes, ninjas out the ass.

Maybe Black Panther won’t suck.

@¡Andrew!: Yyuup. I’m looking for a terrorist and an ocelot. Not necessarily in that oder.

@ManchuCandidate: Sucker Punch was a stylized piece of shit. Watched that and Red Riding Hood the same day, and lived to tell about it.

Heston blew up the earth in Battle because he didn’t want to do a third movie. Somehow (hint, with time travel) they soldiered on without him.