RIP Zack Snyder

not really

we can dream though

it's sad he killed Superman

it's sad he never got to make that authoritative adaptation of the Fountainhead where Howard Roark beats Toohey to death with his bare hands

rip big man, heaven needed a visionary director

i think ILX really needs to look at itself in the mirror. is this the first person the board has collectively gotten together and killed?

will never forget his last words...

"avenge me" - to no one in particular

*sigh*

is this the first person the board has collectively gotten together and killed?

*looks off meaningfully into the middle distance*

Joe Lieberman RIP
RIP David Brooks

Enraged Zack Snyder Lashes Out at People Who Don’t Think Superheroes Kill

“Someone says to me, ‘Batman killed a guy.’ I’m like, ‘f**k, really? Wake the fuck up,'” Snyder says in the video. “I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

Snyder goes on to explain: “Once you’ve lost your virginity to this f**king movie and then you come and say to me something about like ‘my superhero wouldn’t do that.’ I’m like, ‘Are you serious?’ I’m like down the fucking road on that. It’s a cool point of view to be like ‘my heroes are still innocent. My heroes didn’t f**king lie to America. My heroes didn’t embezzle money from their corporations. My heroes didn’t commit any atrocities.’ That’s cool. But you’re living in a f**king dream world.”

...You've charmed me.

Can we just close the book on this collective delusion that superhero culture has moral or artistic merits?

Granted, I haven't seen any since Batman Returns (1992) convinced me it was a genre for children, but I really do think that the whole genre is poisoning a generation, who would otherwise understand that the survival of human civilization will only be possible through collective action of ordinary people.

Zack Snyder, should you read this, have Superman close coal mines or sink (empty) oil tankers. You might win a fan.

Resisting...urge...to c+p...trenchant post...

Dr. Wertham would agree

I'm not quite there with Wertham. I do think future generations, living amidst the conseqences of our lives, will regard all of it as empty escapism.

Is there a single superhero that really responds to our collective guilt for destroying a planet?

This is that hot new 'engagement with one concept necessarily entails a lack of engagement with another concept because the human mind isn't capable of juggling two or more concepts simultaneously' thing rearing its head again, isn't it. Such a hot take, and so very fresh.

Is there a single superhero that really responds to our collective guilt for destroying a planet?

Can we just close the book on this collective delusion that superhero culture has moral or artistic merits?

Granted, I haven't seen any since Batman Returns (1992) convinced me it was a genre for children

Is there a single superhero that really responds to our collective guilt for destroying a planet?

I do think future generations, living amidst the conseqences of our lives, will regard all of it as empty escapism.

you could say this about literally every form of entertainment

Is there a single superhero that really responds to our collective guilt for destroying a planet?

― with Chew Guard™ technology (Sanpaku), 26. marts 2019 03:59 (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Isn't Aquaman mad that we're polluting the ocean?

xpost Well, then, perhaps it's time for every form of entertainment to tighten it up. I don't recall Ethan Hunt ever trying to put an end to carbon emissions in the Mission Impossible series of films, for example. Why not?

WHY NOT?

superman 4 ended the cold war and inspired the nations of the world to destroy their nuclear arsenals, i dunno what more you could expect tbh

Wake the fuck up. If you don't think Darkwing Duck doesn't kill people, you're living in a dream world.

— Lindsay Ellis (@thelindsayellis) March 26, 2019

Yes but people are an invasive exotic in Duckberg so killing them is both legal and encouraged.

(Sanpaku, if you're still reading, much love 2 u + yrs, didn't mean to have a go but I'm hard-pressed to think of an opinion expressed on this board I have felt so compelled to clown that I could almost write a book-length retort, and I accept that this is perhaps redolent of a number of unresolved issues on my own part, I accept this, I do.)

Is there a single superhero that really responds to our collective guilt for destroying a planet?

https://mondrian.mashable.com/uploads%252Fcard%252Fimage%252F250653%252F20a552d3-1a76-4f67-83da-bc1fb8f24fca.jpg%252F950x534__filters%253Aquality%252890%2529.jpg?signature=rR9uIyiXR1_9PEzHGldFpIiSGLY=&source=https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com

Captain Planet embezzled so much money

I've always thought his extensive oil holdings posed a serious conflict of interests.

army of child soldiers also problematic imo

Dr. Wertham would agree

― pippin drives a lambo through the gates of isengard (Sparkle Motion)

dr. wertham did good work and had some reasonable points, and has had his reputation smeared by enraged comic book fans backlashing against a moral panic that basically none of them were even alive for

Um.

Please, and only if it's not too much trouble, unpack the everloving christ out of that one when you get a chance. Thanks much.

(Color me shocked that reviving a Zack Snyder thread would elicit some of the more piping-hot takes I've seen in some time.)

"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call... the Challops Zone."

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.huffpost.com%2Fgen%2F1182665%2Fthumbs%2Fo-ROD-SERLING-facebook.jpg&f=1

Ooh, ooh, let me try! Ummmmm...okay: 'the work of Frank Miller only really got good around the time when he kicked off his drug-induced progeria'. Hope that got me in the Zone!

I'm assuming the formula here is something like: (wrong + conservative) * baffling²

you guys know wertham did work unrelated to comics and did try to make some sense of peace with comics later in life, right

dr. wertham did good work and had some reasonable points, and has had his reputation smeared by enraged comic book fans backlashing against a moral panic that basically none of them were even alive for

^Both parts of this sentence are complete and utter bollocks. Just for example, this study from 2010 found that Wertham “manipulated, overstated, compromised and fabricated evidence”:

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/books/flaws-found-in-fredric-werthams-comic-book-studies.html

oh for sure his original foray into comics commentary is nearly 100% indefensible

I would've assumed that he had a career beyond his crusade against comics but I'll concede that I never felt particularly compelled to explore the subtler shades of his life. Maybe Joe McCarthy regularly organized community book drives for disadvantaged children after those congressional hearings, who can say.

I'm biting my tongue because I really only read more info on him in order to half-heartedly bait the thread by going to bat for rushomancy's take out of boredom

but today I learned

Wertham had an early reputation as a progressive psychiatrist who treated poor black patients at his Lafargue Clinic when mental health services for blacks were uncommon due to racialist psychiatry. Wertham also authored a definitive textbook on the brain, and his institutional stressor findings were cited when courts overturned multiple segregation statutes, most notably in Brown v. Board of Education.

it's kind of wild that 90% of the things I've ever heard are "that guy fucked up the funnybooks!" and he was out there treating under-served communities and helped break down racist institutions

I mean, he did fuck up funnybooks though

All the more tragic that that's the hill he chose to die upon.

he got what he wanted I guess in that nobody actually buys or reads comic books

Coming from the "Sucker Punch" auteur, his bropinions are no surprise. Wish he'd just optioned "Irredeemable" instead of taking on the Big Blue Boy Scout.

Re: comics and bettering the world, J. Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars had a nice plot along those lines. Was noted in 2016 as optioned for a movie, but haven't heard anything new there for a while.

can we get a definitive take from Zack on whether Batman fucks

We know Nite Owl fucks.

If Zack Synder is to be believed, then comics... aren't just for kids anymore... o_0

bam! pow!

I wonder how The Fountainhead is coming along.

i'm not necessarily defending wertham's role in instigating the anti-comics witch hunt. sure, he had some crazy-ass ideas like that the batman/robin relationship had elements of man-boy lust or that wonder woman comics had bondage undertones. i just feel like overall, he did some good work, and dismissing him as "like mccarthy, but for comics" is an overly reductive sketch.

i wonder how wertham would have felt about the comics code he instigated in promoting censorship of anti-racist stories, like the ec comics one about the black astronaut. probably conflicted. maybe he felt it was a fair price to pay for six year olds not seeing graphic depictions of baseball games played with human entrails.

i'd say in the long run the comics code was bad for comics, but not because it hurt superhero comics. if anything they might have benefited from the hysteria - when wertham began his crusade comic superheroes were dying out, being replaced by funny animal, horror, and romance comics, comics that were also genre exercises but often with more storytelling possibilities than you could get with superman or captain america. the code in practice, unlike the hays code, served to reinforce comic books as a medium for children, and when "mainstream comics" got around to telling adult stories decades later, they did it with garish and childlike power fantasies marketed towards young boys. now we have a medium fit for a generation of man-children like snyder.

Wonder Woman comics did have bondage undertones!

I've yet to see any evidence that Wertham did any 'good work' within or about comics - as I noted upthread, Seduction of the Innocent is actually 'bad work' in terms of methodology, transparency, accuracy and fairness, in that it routinely distorts facts in order to bolster a highly dubious thesis (and gain Wertham publicity in the process - the good doctor was a notorious gloryhound).

I don't think funny animal comics have any more or less storytelling possibilities than superhero comics; and what 'adult stories' in mainstream comic, 'decades later', are you talking about?

It's good practice, as a general thing, to not talk about a thing like you know what you're talking about if you don't actually know about the thing you're talking about. As a general thing.

Wonder Woman comics did have bondage undertones!

― Ward Fowler

i confess to a slight bit of sarcasm in that statement

again, any "good work" wertham did would not have been related to comics - if these issues should have been considered at some point, they would benefit from being considered in a different environment than the hothouse atmosphere wertham fostered.

funny animal comics might or might not have had more storytelling possibilities than superhero comics, but i don't feel like they had fewer storytelling possibilities at least. i feel like walt kelly did a pretty good job with pogo. at the very least comics in that era had a sort of genre diversity they haven't, outside of art comics, had since.

my statement about "garish and childlike power fantasies" was badly phrased - i meant it to apply to the original conception of the characters, not necessarily to the "adult" stories themselves

there's an inherent dissonance in telling "adult" stories with superheroes, one that i'm honestly not necessarily averse to; it's just that the limitation of "comics = superheroes" is arbitrary, dumb, and apparently immutable at this point.

full disclosure, i'm super ill right now so please take anything i say in the context that i might possibly be delirious right now.

It's good practice, as a general thing, to not talk about a thing like you know what you're talking about if you don't actually know about the thing you're talking about. As a general thing.

― The First Time Ever I Fly @ U Face (Old Lunch)

i don't know what you're talking about

Although I'll admit to having some eye-rolling affection for Sanpaku and rusho picking up the mantle of the newspaper journalist who walks into a comic book store for the first time since junior high and writes that perennial column about the shock of learning that comics aren't just for kids while betraying just how little they've learned about the medium from their fifteen-minute foray into the unknown.

My sympathies for yr illness, rush. I mainly honed in on...

now we have a medium fit for a generation of man-children like snyder.

...which just...no. Just no. Like, sure, this is an accurate depiction of a sliver of comics output and fanbase but as a general remark it's so wildly off-the-mark that it doesn't even merit a rebuttal. It's indicative of a complete lack of engagement with yr subject of inquiry.

One time I saw a dude reading an issue of Preacher and then he screamed at his waitress, therefore comics is a garbage medium. (wipes hands in a gesture indicating the case is now closed)

got what he wanted I guess in that nobody actually buys or reads comic books

Wertham’s Ghost was running Marvel in December 1994?

yet to see any evidence that Wertham did any 'good work' within or about comics

He thought zines were great and that kids were better off making their own material & fostering a creative community than reading dumb shit by grownups

statement about "garish and childlike power fantasies" was badly phrased - i meant it to apply to the original conception of the characters, not necessarily to the "adult" stories themselves

no need to walk this back, Dixon’s Punisher and Prime and Youngblood and WildCATs and the entire ouevre of G. Johns are rightly classified here

an issue of Preacher

speaking of garish and childlike power fantasies

That's precisely what I was speaking of!

If you're going to take comics to task, y'all, follow the sic playbook. We may wildly disagree on a given topic but damn if the dude hasn't done his homework.

I like some of rushomancy's conclusions but I think most of his premises are flawed or wrong

xpost (I mean, within reason. I'm a megafan but the Wards and the sics on this board regularly reveal my relative ignorance.)

i was browsing some comments re the zack snyder comments and there was some young DC fanboy talking about how Marvel is confectionary pop made for mass appeal as opposed to BvS which was a psychologically and philosophically dense work. my first reaction was (obv) amusement at the idea that zack snyder's juvenile teenage angst "dark" aesthetic is more sophisticated than yr average Marvel flick but then i was struck by the realization that the two companies have totally swapped. there was a time in my childhood when Marvel had cornered the market on the anti-hero "dark" storylines and DC was more the symbolic wholesome American icons comix and now that seems to have totally swapped? like is your average DC fan from the 90s more likely to be a Marvel fan in the 10s and vice-versa? are there tons of dumb teenage boys who love DC now bc it captures their emotionally turbulent experiences and disdains Marvel for appealing to a broader audience?

as opposed to BvS which was a psychologically and philosophically dense work

bvs has a cult audience and afaict they all believe this

i have yet to put myself through it so i can't comment

xpost

do these contrasts carry over to the actual comics or are they mostly limited to the films?

there's an inherent dissonance in telling "adult" stories with superheroes

superheroes obviously inhabit fantasy worlds, but adults have fantasies and I don't see the necessity of dissonance there, unless your definition of "adult stories" requires they accurately reflect the realities of adulthood.

Or at least underwear worn under your pants

I haven't read much DC stuff for a number of years but they both put out enough material of varying tones that I don't think you could make any fast + easy contrast like that. I mean, Marvel is putting out comics that appeal to young girls and also grim gritfests. I can confirm of Marvel at least that they've certainly matured a lot in recent years, particularly in comparison with where they were in the '90s.

old lunch i don't even know what to say, possibly i'm just communicating badly? because what you're saying i'm saying isn't what i feel like i'm saying. i try not to do rebuttals, at _best_ the argument gets bogged down in minutae. i think there have been really interesting "mature" stories about superheroes. i think stan lee did interesting things with superheroes, i think jack kirby did interesting things with superheroes, i think alan moore, to an extent, did interesting things with superheroes, and i feel like at this point the narrative possibilities have been exhausted and all that's left is to tell the same stories again. which is all right! but at some point, you know, maybe stories like "love and rockets" are _more_ accessible and universal than whatever the hell the hulk is doing this week (presumably struggling with his anger management issues and/or punching the Leader)?

are there tons of dumb teenage boys who love DC now

absolutely not

there's an inherent dissonance in telling "adult" stories with superheroes

superheroes obviously inhabit fantasy worlds, but adults have fantasies and I don't see the necessity of dissonance there, unless your definition of "adult stories" requires they accurately reflect the realities of adulthood.

― A is for (Aimless)

when marvel switched from telling stories about monsters to creating spider-man they renamed the comic from "amazing adult fantasy" to "amazing fantasy"

i don't think this necessarily has any larger meaning, it's just an interesting data point

Or at least underwear worn under your pants

I dunno. Half the adult bike riders I see are dressed in brightly colored spandex underwear like superheroes.

Dan DiDio has been running DC (....into the ground!!!) for 17 years now, and his active policy is to publish comics exclusively for 40+ year old men who go to comic shops on Wednesdays, but to treat them like they are ten.

think stan lee did interesting things with superheroes

that’s it, I’m joining OL on the Rushomancy Revenge Squad

within the context of the time, yes! making a bunch of interchangeable dudes with alliterative names each of whom had a different very obvious achilles heel was a significant advance for the art form.

i mean you can only run things on the fletcher hanks model for so long before you drink yourself to death

I think the point that superhero comics came into prominence after the comics code era began, and that the code codified the medium (or at least its mass market version) as one where plots and characters were only able to work within a certain moral framework, doesn't necessarily mean that superheroes are inherently a subject for kids alone. It's a fantasy subgenre that's got broad appeal.

The idea that child- or family-friendly media avoids certain things on the basis of morality, or tackles issues in a more straightforward way to avoid moral ambiguity, has basis in the whole conversation about developing young minds. But it's not limited to comics, or to superheroes. There's plenty of Hallmark channel-style junk out there that adults consume, not to mention broadcast television that airs before kids are presumably in bed, which is still targeted at a mainly-adult audience.

Snyder's take seems incredibly dumb because he's using the most mass-market long-standing characters for his superhero fantasy wankfest and he's treading over territory that's been explored for decades in comics and other media. There have been plenty of Superman or Batman alternate takes, some using those actual characters, many not, that have a character that kills, etc.

He just sounds incredibly dumb by stating that *of course* a costume fantasy character does these things, because he's contributed to a series of movies that's pure fiction and insists his take is somehow adult and realistic without realizing that his take is neither adult nor realistic.

I would've assumed that he had a career beyond his crusade against comics but I'll concede that I never felt particularly compelled to explore the subtler shades of his life. Maybe Joe McCarthy regularly organized community book drives for disadvantaged children after those congressional hearings, who can say.

― The First Time Ever I Fly @ U Face (Old Lunch)

It's good practice, as a general thing, to not talk about a thing like you know what you're talking about if you don't actually know about the thing you're talking about. As a general thing.

― The First Time Ever I Fly @ U Face (Old Lunch)

not trying to play gotcha here, but these two posts so close together inspired me to read the wiki on Wertham and his life was pretty interesting! Including the fact that his work was cited in Brown v. Board of Education. I'm not going to pretend I knew that before today, but comparing him to McCarthy seems pretty unjust.

He thought zines were great and that kids were better off making their own material & fostering a creative community than reading dumb shit by grownups

This in reference to his last book, The World of Fanzines? I've not read it, but I think this is a fairly convincing demolition job by Dwight Decker:

He seemed to only reluctantly acknowledge comic books and science fiction as the source of fanzines and fandom, and gave a couple of the most skewed capsule histories of the genres I've ever seen, concentrating on their anti-war and non-violent aspects. In discussing the comics fanzines' emphasis on superheroes, he offered the remark that "the creative imagination of fanzine writers and artists, especially the younger ones, tends in the direction of heroes, maybe in that lies a message for our unheroic age." This is more than a little remarkable coming from the man who in Seduction classified superheroes as a bizarre variant of "crime comics" and thought Superman in particular was a fascist avatar. Mostly, he glosses over the comic-book connection of comics fandom, treating it puzzledly or condescendingly when he can't avoid it, and seems to proceed on the premise that fandom just spontaneously organized itself as a communications vehicle for teenagers, with comic books only an incidental, even accidental aspect of it all. As usual, Dr. Wertham concentrates on violence and is delighted to report that there isn't any in the world of fanzines.
The World of Fanzines is a masterpiece of scholarship gone off the track.

http://art-bin.com/art/awertham.html

yes, I meant to note that his zinethusiasm came decades after his anti-comics crusade, and wasn't offered as a corrective alternative at the time

each of whom had a different very obvious achilles heel

this is one-quarter of an idea, not several interesting things. it was a very good quarter of an idea! but by not actually writing the comics, Lee was never able to "do" anything with it at all, in terms of significant narrative impact or character development.

xxpost I both recognize the good practice of knowing of what I speak when I speak authoritatively AND I talk out of my ass a whole whole lot. I contain multitudes.

(We're getting into the weeds here but I was never so convinced of Lee's paltry contribution to his own comics as I was when I finally got around to reading the run of FF/Thor released as Kirby was leaving the company, followed of course by his mindblowing Fourth World work.)

XD

imho the best position in this "debate" is the (iirc) Eddie Campbell one: superhero comics are not inherently bad, but their becoming synonymous with "comics" was bad, because that happening obscured the brilliance of newspaper comics (plus other non-newspaper genres, though I'm personally less invested in those), which make for a much better, more varied historical and artistic foundation for the medium.

Admittedly this is a dumb thread to make that argument in

I can totally get with that. As much as I love superhero comics, I'd equally love to see them lose their primacy in the medium.

at least we know that Wertham and Zack Snyder would agree in substance, but possibly not wording, that Superman is a fascist avatar

To bring it back to the topic at hand a bit, Snyder's perspective is stupid even within the strict context of current WB/DC adaptations. The Supergirl TV show for example has such an optimistic approach (and often presents it as a contrast to fictionalized representations of current events) and is pretty damn progressive (first front-and-center transgender actor in any mainstream superhero adaptation afaik) that it's hard to believe it exists under the same umbrella as Snyder's Hate-verse.

(xpost mh)

ha ha yes

it's so painful that Snyder is a committed Randian, but he connects this to comics by thinking "BATMAN SHOULD KILL!!!!!! MAKE THINGS 'SPLODE" instead of sending postal orders to Bellingham and thoughtfully assessing Ditko's thrice-annual narrative essays on personal responsibility within society

If Zack Synder is to be believed, then comics... aren't just for kids anymore.

I do want film to give serious consideration to the problems identified in Larry Niven's Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex

we can't revisit that essay any more perfectly than when Penthouse Comix reprinted it with new Curt Swan illustrations

dozens of xposts (damn u work for getting in the way of my discussing comical books)

old lunch i don't even know what to say, possibly i'm just communicating badly? because what you're saying i'm saying isn't what i feel like i'm saying. i try not to do rebuttals, at _best_ the argument gets bogged down in minutae. i think there have been really interesting "mature" stories about superheroes. i think stan lee did interesting things with superheroes, i think jack kirby did interesting things with superheroes, i think alan moore, to an extent, did interesting things with superheroes, and i feel like at this point the narrative possibilities have been exhausted and all that's left is to tell the same stories again. which is all right! but at some point, you know, maybe stories like "love and rockets" are _more_ accessible and universal than whatever the hell the hulk is doing this week (presumably struggling with his anger management issues and/or punching the Leader)?

― the scientology of mountains (rushomancy), Tuesday, March 26, 2019 12:47 PM (fifty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The number of people who have done interesting (which I guess I take to mean transformational or transcendent on some level) takes on superheroes are honestly pretty minimal, but the genre is like any other storytelling vehicle at the end of the day inasmuch as it's what a creator opts to make of it. It's a (potentially allegorical) framework for telling all sorts of stories, even if a disproportionate number of those stories are mostly 'biff bang pow'. But even if a lot of it is just kinda like chugging through episodes of a fair-to-middling TV show, I think you'd be surprised by the number of creators who aspire to make something a little more interesting than the eleventy-millionth iteration of a slugfest between Button Guy and Waffle Iron Fellow.

Incidentally, although I haven't gotten around to reading it yet the Hulk comic currently being released is probably among the most critically-acclaimed mainstream books on the shelves these days (by an ex-ILXor who, by all accounts, is really swinging for the fences) so that probably wasn't the best example to use. ;)

(And I ADORE L&R, as I have mentioned many many times, just ftr.)

Oh but more to the point you concluded with, while L&R is certainly more realistic and relatable on that level (more than I'd like, perhaps, as the cast ages at the same rate as me...), I think (at least on paper) that the abstract template of a Hulk comic dealing with anger issues is incredibly fertile and universal. Clearly this isn't a mode of delivery that's going to appeal or speak to everyone, but it has its place and serves a function when it's done well. I particularly appreciate mainstream comics that wrestle with real world issues through the proxy of fantastical characters, and I like to think that increasing numbers of kids and/or people who otherwise don't do a whole lot of reading are getting nascent exposure to new ideas via a spoonful of superhero sugar. Which may seem like nonsense if you aren't engaged with the medium, but certain books/creators really are pushing in progressive directions.

i guess it doesn't surprise me to learn that the hulk comic book is very good right now, because he's a high profile character and of course high profile characters earn the most money, which means he gets the best writers, even if he can't for the life of him carry his own film. i just think it's a sort of fucked up state of affairs where the best comics writers and artists get shepherded in through this deeply dysfunctional corporate duopoly and the only way their work gets read is if they shoehorn their presumably brilliant and innovative stories to be about some antique schmoe named bob banner or whatever.

because he's a high profile character and of course high profile characters earn the most money, which means he gets the best writers

you really aren't familiar with comics, are you? :)

either that or i'm not familiar with capitalism, one or the other

the best comics writers and artists get shepherded in through this deeply dysfunctional corporate duopoly

there is only one instance in history of the best comics writers being shepherded through part of the corporate duopoly.

While it's undoubtedly easier to have a career in comics if you're writing mainstream superhero books (which, again, is not a state of affairs I particularly favor) and there are surely some people who do so primarily for that reason, a lot of writers (even very good writers) do so because they love writing mainstream superhero books.

the idea there's high culture/low culture is endemic to the idea that comics retooling the same characters is any more derivative or disposable than other media doing the same thing

not that oscar-winning films are necessarily high culture -- and you can definitely make the argument they're not -- one of the most highly acclaimed years of last year was a remake of a remake of a remake

can we like recapitulate post-structuralism next or sthing

sic, if you're about to go off on another of your 'Jeph Loeb is the most amazing scribe of our lifetime' tangents I would beg your forbearance.

fair xp

flagged OL's post

Sorry, guys, hate to be such a radical outlier but Ultimatum just wasn't as next-level as you continually insist.

i'm not talking about "high culture" and "low culture", i'm talking about mass culture and niche culture. and no, comic books aren't unique in this, they have a lot of the same problems as hollywood does, which i guess makes it unsurprising that the medium has adapted so well to film. except if anything the culture industry around comic books is even more superficial, vapid, and idiotic than that around hollywood, which i wouldn't have necessarily believed to be possible if i hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

Well if you're going to judge a medium on the basis of it fan culture or promotional apparatus, that's a whole 'nother can of worms that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot mixed metaphor.

so has anyone seen the film adaptation of "my friend dahmer" and is it any good?

(NB, almost all of my interactions with comics fans are limited to ILX, and my exposure to mainstream comics reportage is limited almost entirely to idly poking around the site linked in the revive, so I'm just about as disconnected from that stuff as it gets.)

a lot of writers (even very good writers) do so because they love writing mainstream superhero books

the only people who write mainstream comic books as a career are people that love doing so, and as very good as they may be at corporate entertainment product, they are never the best writers in the medium (and almost never produce work of any worth outside that genre)

his run on Swamp Thing aside (a horror/SF book in a superhero shared universe), Alan Moore's entire DC career =
3 Superman stories (plus a UK-only prose short)
1 and a half Batman annuals (plus a UK-only prose short)
3 Green Lantern back-ups
2 Omega Men back-ups
a 2-part Green Arrow backup
1 Phantom Stranger short
and two issues of Vigilante
... all in two years.

Dylan Horrocks and Beto Hernandez each lasted a year on Batman spinoffs, iirc, and Horrocks was so traumatised by the experience that he couldn't even draw for years afterward

does the former Vertigo imprint count as a mainstream comic book venture for purposes of argument, here?

sic, what's your take on:

Warren Ellis
Kieron Gillen
Brian K. Vaughan
Matt Fraction
Kelly Sue DeConnick
G. Willow Wilson
Christopher Priest
Dwayne McDuffie

does the former Vertigo imprint count as a mainstream comic book venture for purposes of argument, here?

it doesn't count as servicing corporate-created-or-stolen superhero properties, for the most part

sic, what's your take on:

a couple of them are wildly overrated, a couple of them are very good collaborative assemblers of commercial entertainment, a couple of them I've read nothing by (or not enough by to justify my existing suspicions re: their quality)

I would like to read Quantum & Woody if I found a complete run in a Little Free Library

I guess I tend to judge writers on the basis of how they fare within their chosen milieu (and its attendant constraints and challenges) without concerning myself overly much with how they stack up against those who are doing a whole other thing. Is Jason Aaron the new Jim Woodring? Hell no, nor do I think he aspires to be. Woodring's status as a top-level phenomenon doesn't diminish the work of someone who's at the top of an entirely different game. Woodring's mainstream stuff never exactly bowled me over. They're both honing a set of skills that best serve their respective intentions.

I expect that resolves the issue once and for all, after decades of circular arguments re: the quality of mainstream vs. alt comics. Who knew it would be that easy!

Granted, I haven't seen any since Batman Returns (1992) convinced me it was a genre for children

you kinda lost me here tbh

I mean..., yeah, that was kinda the elephant lurking in Sanpaku's post.

I haven't turned on a radio since that jackass Vanilla Ice made my eardrums bleed, but I think it's fair to assume that everything released since has been hot trash.

Admittedly, I do instantly forget this fact every time I'm reminded of it. Because of that thing where it's a fact that makes no sense.

Imagine a universe where Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole is so popular that instead of opining dumb shit on Batman, Zack Snyder spends his days screaming "WAKE THE FUCK UP! OWLS KILL!" or that it's a world you even knew he directed that movie in the first place.

— Chris Hastings (@drhastings) March 26, 2019

owls may or may not kill but owlman sure as fuck does

you think the owls are what they seem? put your fucking big boy pants on

I haven't turned on a radio since that jackass Vanilla Ice made my eardrums bleed, but I think it's fair to assume that everything released since has been hot trash.

i can think of like... three superhero movies better than batman returns and one of them is superman 2. if sanpaku wasn't feeling it i think he made the right choice

someone bump my goddam thread for it and tell me if it's nazi or not tho

i will say, i think alan moore gets posited as some sort of insuperable genius of comics, as a High Artist if you will, and i don't think he's the best writer of superhero comics by a long chalk. like snyder's watchmen is some sort of defilement of a great artistic work, but no, to me it's a flawed film of a flawed comic book by a flawed writer and dc going back to the well on those characters is less a slap in the face of a singular genius than the sad admission that they don't believe they can come up with anything better. it'd be like if doctor who's story model was largely run off the totally forgettable backup strips moore did in "doctor who" magazine back in the day.

i'm a big fan, and maybe partly it's my upbringing, but i am a big fan of high mediocrity in comics. to me, my favorite mass market comics writer, and i basically quit reading comics in 2004, is probably john ostrander, who maybe isn't a Great Writer but told some pretty good stories. mostly those weren't superhero stories, admittedly.

well i was also surprised that anyone would watch BATMAN RETURNS of all films and go "oh, i see, so this is a genre for children!" i mean, there's a reason mcdonald's cancelled their happy meal promo for that film!

lol yeah

owls may or may not kill but owlman sure as fuck does

duh, he's a supervillain

i don't think he's the best writer of superhero comics

being the best writer of comics to be currently working in the superhero-industrial-complex for a couple of years is not the same thing as ^ this

BvS is not totally uninteresting.

Batman Returns is also the least exemplar-y of superhero movies, Sanpaku found a wild number of ways to be wrong in that one opinion

superheroes ARE for children though

BvS is not totally uninteresting.

think i saw this quote on the steelbook cover

(i believe you)

Snyder makes films that have a lot of dramatic tension and subtext you need to really examine over multiple viewings

https://i.imgur.com/wdM5uCL_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

superheroes ARE for children though

― steven, soda jerk (sic), Tuesday, March 26, 2019 6:02 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

NUH UH

i can think of like... three superhero movies better than batman returns and one of them is superman 2. if sanpaku wasn't feeling it i think he made the right choice

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, March 26, 2019 5:45 PM (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We can go back and forth about whether your own position on superhero movies is wrong or whether it's super-wrong, but Sanpaku's position wasn't that he personally saw no value in continuing to see superhero movies after Batman Returns but rather that having seen a movie from thirty years ago is a sufficient basis for an declarative statement re: three subsequent decades of the genre. To bring it back to the realm of film, that's not unlike hailing Jack as a masterpiece sight unseen because Coppola seemed to be heading for the stars after watching Apocalypse Now and then absolutely nothing he directed subsequently. It's so much a considered position as it is something you throw out on a message board to spur conversation through a tedious workday. A challop, if you will.

'NOT so much'

having seen a movie from thirty years ago is a sufficient basis for an declarative statement re: three subsequent decades of the genre

i agree that this is a v unreliable principle and it is a happy accident that it didn't mislead anyone this time.

i don't think he's the best writer of superhero comics

being the best writer of comics to be currently working in the superhero-industrial-complex for a couple of years is not the same thing as ^ this

― steven, soda jerk (sic)

that was kind of what i was trying to get at, moore was working at a disadvantage due to the arbitrary limits of the medium. he had, basically, one superhero story to tell. he's told it multiple times, and has faced struggles telling other types of stories. these struggles aren't all down to the superhero-focused nature of the market, by any means, but it doesn't seem to help.

Moore is a breeding experiment between a sentient cloud of marijuana smoke and the oxford english dictionary

What if it turned out the OED was actually in French this whole time, what if that?

the arbitrary limits of the medium. he had, basically, one superhero story to tell. he's told it multiple times, and has faced struggles telling other types of stories.

Sanpaku-esque!

;)

alan moore is erik satie trying to make a living as a country musician

alan moore hasn’t written an actual good comic in about fifteen years (smax, I’m thinking, or thereabouts) and his non-comics fiction is dire

most non-grant morrison dc comics from 2005-2018 are not that far from whatever Zak Snyder thinks about superheroes, unfortunately

Think it's worth saying that the market dominance of superhero comics has traditionally been an American condition or 'problem', though I wonder if that's changed in countries like France or Italy in recent years (back when I knew French comics better, translated superhero comics were definitely seen as a niche, minority taste, and there were little or no indigenous superhero comics).

FNAC in Paris had a pretty huge superhero section last time I was there.

I'd always assumed Le Peregrine enjoyed a reputation in France which far outgrew that of his country of origin (a la José Carioca in Brazil). So heartbreaking to learn that his heroic visage isn't adorning French lunchboxes and children's bedlinens.

batroc the leaper was honoured with the distinction of chevalier of the legion d'honneur in 1989 tho tbf

i'm sorry, BATROC ZE LEAPAIR to give him his correct title

oui

I have to wonder how many people Batroc, given his penchant for comically-accented self-address, has left with the mistaken impression that he is in fact afflicted with leprosy.

As it turns out, #BatmanVSuperman could’ve been much worse. pic.twitter.com/EU52JFs2pR

— Amon Warmann (@awarmann) March 27, 2019

TBF that is in keeping with real life, where there's only one person named Martha.

that is so perfectly moronic that i genuinely wish he had gone through with that

He coulda set Supes' funeral to Tom Waits' "Martha" since it was clearly also written about Martha.

Now I feel like such an idiot for never realizing that both of their names end in '-man'. The clues of their obvious familial bond have been staring us in the face this whole time.

oh man they TOTALLY should've gone with this crazypants horrible idea

It gives me no pleasure to do this, but I have to defend Zack here. It was a joke

https://io9.gizmodo.com/no-zack-snyder-never-seriously-considered-making-batma-1833621453

latebloomer otm

defending Snyder would mean saying it was joking about a real idea, because as goofy as it is, that's still more interesting than 90% of the ideas they went with

always felt the perfect comics project for him was an adaptation of All Star Batman and Robin

ASB&R is really funny, though!

are there any intentional laughs in Snyder films that aren't just bro jokes

ASB&R is a fascinating document of the brief and final flickers of self-awareness as it's being consumed by psychosis.

All-Star Batman doesn't kill people because that's the easy way out and criminals deserve to suffer

so, apparently, do readers

just going back to simon's post a couple of days ago where he said that 'BvS is not totally uninteresting'... he's right!

bvs is really interesting, albeit in none of the ways that snyder likely intended - it feels weirdly personal in a way that marvel studio movies rarely do, as if he felt empowered to make a lot of really stupid choices and he absolutely squeezed every last drop out of the opportunity presented to him

like, snyder managed to take two characters whose longevity has been very much tied to their unusual ability to withstand multiple, often contradictory, reinventions in the hands of hundreds of creators across the better part of a century and managed to create a take on each which rang completely false and hollow, which is quite an achievement imo

Most people with similar impulses are content with suiting up and harassing passers-by in Time Square.

it's kind of inspiring that someone as apparently extremely stupid as zack snyder managed to accrue enough power and influence to be handed the reins to a multibillion dollar franchise and proceed to make numerous high-profile creative mistakes which each subsquent film tried to correct, making entirely new creative mistakes in the process

life goals tbh

to an extent all storytelling is the projection of values and an inner life on to characters that appear, but it's amazing how little of that background seems to surface in BvS

the projection of what the director thinks about the characters is really evident, though! all that angst and rage and confusion about past has the characters acting in ways that seem incongruous with what we're shown in their on-screen background stories

I would sooner rewatch BvS, especially with like-minded friends, than any of the MCU stuff I've seen tbh

it's the only superhero movie where one hero tries to cave in another's head with a giant porcelain sink, that's for sure

I'd rather watch Suburban Commando than BvS

also I haven't seen / won't see Justice League but I have no doubt the Snyder version would be preferable to the mutant Whedon one that got released

i'd love to see the opportunity to see snyder's original version for sure

did we talk much about aquaman round these parts? i saw it a couple of weeks ago and it's admirably open to embracing the batshitness of the source material in a way that's entirely antithetical to snyder's approach - in fact in a lot of ways the entire movie is about stripping jason momoa of snyderbaggage and remaking the character entirely

it's the only superhero movie where one hero tries to cave in another's head with a giant porcelain sink, that's for sure

― recreational colonoscopies 4 u (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, March 28, 2019 9:37 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Although it does have a televisual precedent in that episode of Super Friends where Aquaman put one of the Wonder Twins in the hospital.

(I swear to god that that was an xpost and had no idea you were discussing the Aquaman film at the same time that I was randomly impugning his good name.)

the CGI in aquaman looked so bad and omnipresent, it kind of put me off watching

the unrealness of the cg actually does a reasonable job of selling the deliberate oddness of the undersea world they've created, where dolph lundgren rides into lurid technicolour battle on the back of a giant seahorse, amber heard drives an underwater spaceship which has a windshield for some reason even though it's filled with (and travelling through) water, and julie andrews is a terrifying colossal sea beast

Imagine the faceful of plankton and minnows you'd suffer while piloting your high-speed suboceanic vehicle if you didn't have a windshield (watershield? tideshield?).

Aquaman's going to hit HBO or whatever soon, right?

you're right, i should have had more faith in the faultless worldbuilding of aquaman (2018) xp

It's like you've never sat for hours ceaselessly considering the minutia affecting Atlantis's vehicular traffic. Who are you.

It wasn't the underwater CGI that i disliked. It was the on land CGI that was jarring

ffs you mean we went on this tangent about the efficacy of underwater windshields for NOTHING

actually the other objection i have about amber heard's high-speed suboceanic vehicle is that it doesn't appear to facilitate travel at any greater speed that just swimming or hopping on the back of the nearest giant sea-creature

have I mentioned yet that I apparently spent my teen years living a few miles away from Jason Momoa

Suddenly very curious about what land-bound hijinks could possibly have merited dipping into the CGI budget for a film about an underwater kingdom.

not to the best of my recollection

did your paths ever cross at a taffy pull or a barn-raising

hmm apparently he took marine biology at the magnet high school so maybe I passed him in a hallway a few times?

damn they'd been grooming him for a while huh

so it seems!

hahaha oh man the same martha

i love this. "you're in witness protection. here's a new last name. new first name? huh? why?"

"we are arranging for you to be married to Jonathan Kent. He keeps attempting to walk into tornadoes"

'same martha' is only marginally less stupid than what snyder actually put on screen tbh

er, i mean more stupid

it's all stupid

I mean he assumed we all wanted to see Supes fuck Lois in a bathtub

I will never get over the pee jar

i think it's actually... less stupid than what happened in the movie, ngl

I also loved they ruined what in even mediocre hands could have been a cool reveal (Wonder Woman) in the trailer

oh god the pee jar

bvs is an embarrassment of riches, honestly

xp
grandma's peach tea is all-time. i had a convo with someone recently, where we were both convinced we had made the peach tea pee jar part up in our heads, until we realized we both had the same "delusion"

I think this is where the Steele dossier originated

man of steele

I will never get over the pee jar

― Buttigieg comes right from the source (Neanderthal), 28. marts 2019 16:42 (fifty-nine seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When BvS premiered I was volunteering at a local cinema, and since nobody wanted to watch that film we used it to teach me how to work the screening equipment. We jumped into the film at random, and hit on this scene where a judge is steering intensely at a jar filled with yellow liquid, and everything is so serious. Since I hadn't seen it, I asked what was with that jar. 'Oh, Lex Luthor peed in it'. I still don't really know how to make sense of that.

At least if Schumacher had directed the jar would have had a note that said "big piss-take"

it takes a special kind of stupid to write a scene where your villain, who is the smartest man alive, flawlessly executes his painstaking plan to... trick an enemy into drinking his urine

piddle me this, batman
xp

TBF that's probably among the ways I'd squander my status as the smartest man alive.

Lex was always into biological warfare it fits

unfortunate post / screen-name synergy there xp

Omg

For all my powers, i couldn't save her from drinking piss

Or getting blown up

Btw this comments sectionis a goldmine of stupid:

https://geektyrant.com/news/zack-snyder-says-fans-surprised-by-batman-killing-people-needs-tp-wake-the-fk-up

Suddenly compelled to browse through the BvS IMDB plot keywords. Just thought I'd share a few with u:

superhero crying
nude corpse
reference to martin luther king jr.
human branding
man wearing glasses
double amputee
self mutilation
tortured to death
following someone
impalement
bagpipes
cnn reporter
e mail
product placement
burned to death
severed arm
hope
tough girl
raised middle finger

poll

nude corpse used to post on ILX IIRC

Sure that's not from Lloyd Kaufman's sex tape?

lyrics from a ministry b-side iirc

(Apropos of very little, I just remembered that my gf babysat for Jourgensen one time and also that life sure is weird.)

While those keywords have admittedly been taken out of context it's probably worth explicitly pointing out that they still denote the intentional creative decisions of a man making a movie about Batman and Superman.

Snyder's Batman would probably tweet "BUILD THE WALL!"

Wait are superheroes allowed on Twitter or only their alter-egos?

snyder's superman would probably build it

Like even if the drawing and quartering of a tertiary character is only seen for a frame or two and never mentioned again, you have to wonder why someone remaking the Wizard of Oz felt to include in the first place and what it says about them.

If you think Dorothy wasn't slipping around in witch viscera after tossing that bucket of water, wake the fuck up.

geektyrant.com sounds like a parody site

TS: "bucket of water" vs "salad"

xxxp one of my favorite things about Ryan North's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is that every issue opened with the left column of the credits page being Squirrel Girl, her friends, Iron Man, Spider-Man and Howard the Duck all tweeting at each other.

e.g.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/2d662ff0e5da3596acf19ec1eb161fdb/tumblr_ooehnyr39j1qznjklo1_400.png

Lol DJP

Wait are superheroes allowed on Twitter or only their alter-egos?

― Buttigieg comes right from the source (Neanderthal), Thursday, March 28, 2019 11:45 AM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

picturing one of computer-screen diagrams showing how traffic is being routed all around the world in order to create an untraceable pattern, and it zooms out to show it's Batman staring at the screen in the batcave, and he's using this anonymization network so he can tweet about the pee jar

mood: peejar.gif

for some reason when I saw the movie I thought it was poison or something and did not catch that it was pee

of course it was pee

I have absolutely no recollection of this scene tbh

I was going to say the only bit I remember is Kevin Costner walking into a tornado but that was in Man of Steel

it is one of the more memorably numbskulled scenes in recent american cinema

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4_tYmMrjBUA/V3zjZypB_GI/AAAAAAAACoQ/vuseMkzlJKUpvpaMUezw9TJupBXPSchkgCKgB/s1600/lmao.gif

why have so many of you seen so many Zack Snyder movies though

the door to that car should be smacking dances with wolves on the butt if he is in a tornado

i hate myself and thus don’t believe i don’t deserve nice things xp

um my excuse is that i had to see squad, bvs and man of steel on account of my old job (and tbh i skipped squad)

some people slow down to gawk at car accidents, some people are like characters in the Ballard novel Crash and fulfill different needs with car crashes

(and tbh i skipped squad)

bcz you love Snyder and only want to see his films, got it

sic burn

In the interest of full disclosure, I have never actually watched a Zack Snyder movie but then I feel like his public persona is an adequate basis for clowning even if one is relatively ignorant of his filmography.

(Actually I just remembered that I do own a copy of his Dawn of the Dead remake, should I break the seal y/n)

that one allegedly has a good James Gunn script but there's no way that rewatching the original is not a better use of those 90 minutes

I freaking hate every Zack Snyder movie that I've seen except for the Dawn of the Dead remake - that's probably more to do with James Gunn script and cast than anything he did. I think it's a fun remake.

wait bvs has bagpipes?

so i have to know, is batman vs. superman worse than "intolerable cruelty"?

Intolerable Cruelty is pretty funny, they and Deakins just lit it like a mersh romcom so ppl downgrade it further

BvS is like having the flu and being told your toilet is overflowing after your 5-year old shit in it

In the interest of full disclosure, I have never actually watched a Zack Snyder movie but then I feel like his public persona is an adequate basis for clowning even if one is relatively ignorant of his filmography

what the shit

It's true, I am the Stephen Glass of Snyder-bashing.

ffs

you think you know someone, and then... this

If it's any consolation, discussion itt has ratcheted my interest in ever actually seeing his work from 0% to at least like 1.25%.

you must suffer as i have suffered

I wouldn't bother with it. It's bad but it's not interesting-bad or-funny-bad or overconfident-auteur-bad, just kind of grimy-and-dull-bad.

Worth scanning through on fastforward if you're really curious.

The most interesting thing about it was the experience of reflecting on my cognitive dissonance while watching the movie (i.e. "why is this thing full of characters from my childhood that i loved so chillingly boring?")

Worth scanning through on fastforward if you're really curious.

Thus cutting his Watchmen down to a sprightly 108 minutes!

I thought I hadn’t seen even a second of any Snyder film but turns out he has a writing credit on Wonder Woman, which I walked out of an hour in

As a general thing, I tend to avoid adaptations that don't maintain fidelity to at least the spirit of source material that I have some affection for. So while I may have taken my share of flak as president of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole fan club, I stand by my decision.

xpost

good move, the last half hour of Wonder Woman really tips it into Snyder-level-badness

(the movie up to that point is daft but fine)

boooooo xp

By way of illustration, the first MCU movie I saw was Captain America and then only begrudgingly. Years of hype about Iron Man hadn't been sufficient to disabuse me of the notion that people generally took a dump into a film can and called it a Marvel adaptation.

I worked at a video store when Ga'Hoole came out and for some reason we found that movie completely hilarious. I think the "photorealistic" owl effects are so genuinely impressive that it heightens the ridiculousness of the premise

xpost (In before some wiseacre inevitably says 'and what's changed?')

for some reason we found that movie completely hilarious

weird that you would find the perfectly normal concept of owls in battle armour hilarious

hootlita: battle owl

I like to imagine that Snyder failed to consider how the owls were meant to wield their maces and crossbows until some of the concerned CGI personnel worked up the nerve to ask him about it, and that in the finished product there's just like a sword very crudely hovering over the wing tips of an owl in the heat of battle, because a wing is kind of like an arm or it's at least where an arm would be on a sword-wielding creature irl so that's probably how an owl would use a weapon to fight another owl, right?

(Part of the problem here is that any actual Snyder movie is inevitably going to disappoint me by failing to be as ridiculous as I imagined it to be.)

you people are batty

I've seen at least part of most of the Snyder films and the Dawn of the Dead remake is the one that holds up as an actual traditional mass-market movie as far as having a coherent script and a plot that sticks to it.

I wouldn't say that he wants to be regarded as auteur-ish, but there is a strong sense that he's come from the over-the-top segment of the music video/promo video world and wants to do a lot more with visual effects, striking images, and obvious symbols than actual plot progression or structure. I'd say that his attention span is shorter than Michael Bay's, but Bay somehow took a turn into frantic over a decade ago and somehow became less coherent than Snyder, as far as making action scenes that are indecipherable.

At one point I'd have cynically postulated that he's part of the cross-section of people who wish they were mid-2000s Tony Scott, but I don't think that's really the case.

I legit enjoyed Sucker Punch

i had honestly forgotten sucker punch existed

not thrilled to be reminded tbrr

I only caught part of it on tv and was mostly thinking "are you fucking kidding me?" about the plot but it was pretty

movie is 100% hilarious

While mulling over what criteria I use to judge whether a comics adaptation is up to par (or whether I even intend to give it a shot in the first place), it suddenly occurred to me this morning that my favorite Superman movie is almost certainly Superman 3. Which should, I suppose, call into question every position I've taken in this thread or any other.

it has maybe the best single superman sequence of all of them - bad superman vs clark kent

in all other respects, of course, you're out of your goddamn gourd

my judgments about superhero movies based on comics are never going to be completely divorced from the source material because I only have a human mind, but I feel like judging movies on their own merits and whether they succeed in that medium is a more useful exercise

Zack Snyder's public statements are extremely weird in that context because he seems to think there's just this fictional character Batman that exists outside of context?

RIP big man, heaven needed a 53-year-old man yelling at other people to “grow up” if they don’t take children’s superhero Batman so seriously that they think he murders frequently

Yeah, I think that's at least part of why I can't bring myself to roll with the Snyderverse. It's like being beholden to the source material takes a backseat to working out some personal issues on the big screen.

sic, I might be just speaking for myself here, but I don't consider 'for children' quite the pejorative you seem to.

it has maybe the best single superman sequence of all of them - bad superman vs clark kent

in all other respects, of course, you're out of your goddamn gourd

― mr greta t. gremlin (bizarro gazzara), Friday, March 29, 2019 10:01 AM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Counterpoint: what other Superman film features anything as magnificent as a new wave-era Roger Miller song?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFZSERDQtrk

(I am occasionally concerned about my genuine love for particular cultural objects which are unquestionably abominable.)

consider 'for children' quite the pejorative you seem to.

I’m sorry I insulted your sweet baboo Zack by suggesting that he is a plastic-brained idiot far too immature to write for children, who deserve to have good stories written and drawn and filmed for them

it suddenly occurred to me this morning that my favorite Superman movie is almost certainly Superman 3

omg SAME

I read the novelisation about a dozen times before seeing Supes 3, was not prepared for how cheap & tatty it looked

The only good Superman movie is Elliot S. Maggin’s Last Son Of Krypton

I did not know that existed

I mean, assuming it helps at all to alleviate the pall of derangement I've cast upon myself, I would argue that the DCAU provided us with the optimal adapted version of Superman. I wish there was a Timmverse Superman film that I could name as my favorite, but alas.

I really enjoyed the Timmverse version of Darwyn Cooke's The New Frontier. I really felt like all the performances in that were terrific.

(and tbh i skipped squad)

bcz you love Snyder and only want to see his films, got it

lol i forgot it wasn't him. nah it was because of the other two movies is why

Not sure if this is a challops, but the big problem with the supes films for me is Gene Hackman's horrible "comic relief" Lex Luthor.

Superman 3 is *obviously* the best one. Richard Pryor! Bad Superman! The scheme from Office Space! The terrifying robot lady! The diamond!

Superman 4, on the other hand, is one of those "so bad that even as a kid you knew it was bad" bad movies

Look, when you stray into Golan and Globus territory, you just have to throw your qualitative compass out the window and let the winds of coke-fueled madness take you where they will.

i had no idea 'sucker punch' even existed

i'll probably watch it tbh

I did not know that existed

(It’s an original novel, not a movie. 100% imprinted my tiny headcanon version of Krypton / Smallville / teen Lex vs Superboy hatred etc etc, and taught me what a philtrum was)

what a philtrum was

That's almost the only thing I remember about also reading that novel as a youth! And I may still have never seen the film. What was the context, do you remember?

Probably something about Superman's philtrum looking real weird because they CGI-ed over his mustache?

very nearly: Superman goes undercover on another planet where everyone looks like humans except they don't have philtra, so he fills it in with some putty

man of steel, philtrum of putty

http://images.sequart.org/images/Superman-Maggin-Moore-001.jpg

this looks exactly as worn as my memory of my copy

(from the extremely prolix Colin Smith wondering if Alan Moore nicked some of his own prolixness off Maggin)

The extremely scientific infodump:

Average humanoid height in the Galaxy was somewhere between two and two-and-a-half meters. The nine Guardians were all an identical height of 124 centimeters. They also had filtrums.

Filtrums are rectangular clefts in the skin leading from the bridge between the two nostrils to the middle of the upper lip. Most of the humanoids in the area of the Central Cluster had them. The only known incidences of filtrums in humanoids outside that region of the Galaxy were on the planets Earth and Krypton. There were several theories on the reasons for this incidence of the apparently functionless birthmark, but one thing was known about them. Only humanoids with filtrums were capable of smiling.

The youngest of the Guardians was born within twenty years of the oldest, roughly eight billion years ago. Their blue skin was completely unwrinkled, they no longer had visible pores or prints in their skin, they each had a fringe of thick white fur around the sides and backs of their heads, they were virtually identical in appearance. What active communication they had with each other was instant, on a subliminal level. They no longer had any need for telepathy. Their functions were identical, their aspirations and jealousies were lost to the ages. Only one Guardian had actually left Oa in eight billion years, and he returned only briefly to be stripped of his immortality as punishment for some subtle breach of the group's ethical code.

LATE SPOILER:

"Not a bad escape plan for an amateur," Luthor told his companion as solar energy took over from inertia to fuel the Black Widow.

"Well, it was you who got all that computer information, like the pyramid's layout and the way to scramble the computer record of the escape," Superman complimented Luthor as he tore off the fake uniform and the wad of flattened building material he had scooped out of a wall and used to cover the cleft of his upper lip.

Hmm, excessively complimenting one another, hastily removed uniforms, scooped-out philtrums...sounds like a recipe for sexytimes if ever I heard one.

Superheros aside, I think anyone who has even seen any review of Sucker Punch, the film Zack Snyder had the most creative control on, would find him a bit skeevy.

In a moral and sane universe, that would have been the end of ZS's directorial career.

His Watchmen film was impressive as an effort in slavish emulation that also entirely fails to understand what it is copying.

it’d be cool if the movie had managed to be a meta commentary on the history and form of superhero movies

You're more likely to get that sort of treatment with the HBO adaptation/sequel.

well, now they'll have to make it a commentary on Snyder's work

fp'ing you all for not referring to him as elliot s! maggin

the book cover is right there

yeah i'm fp'ing dc comics as well

what about Hutchinson

hutchinson can fp themselves, i'm moving on with my life

tbf they stopped existing in 1985

Zack Snyder said "I don't think anything is going to happen right away, but Jim and I talked about it quite a bit. And talked a lot about maybe doing a book, or a comic book down the road to kind of finish this. We haven't locked anything yet."

"I would love to do a comic book, in the post-apocalyptic Knightmare world, the world has fallen, the ragtag team that's left alive trying to put it back."

"Inside of that story, we would also do that story of Joker killing Robin. The Joker is somehow involved in the stealing of the Mother Box and using it to create the treadmill; Cyborg is going to do the math, this is what we're going to have to do to jump back in time and warn Bruce correctly. A lot of the conflict would be Bruce reliving the death of Robin and what went into that."

"That would be a fun comic, Even just the death of Robin in that world would make a nice little one-off."

Recreating comic books in comic book form

a comic book with... violence? and shocking twists from a ragtag team? is there nothing his visionary mind can't rethink?

There were many avenues of interest but the bulk of my focus fell upon 'that would be a fun comic'.

I always thought that the element missing from Death in the Family was the visual of Jason Todd's brains spraying all over Joker's pant leg. The scene as depicted just never felt as...fun as it could've been.

I guess I should just be thankful that people like him and Geoff Johns are able to reroute their dark impulses into creative pursuits rather than, say, building furniture out of their neighbors' remains.

i mean sure for the next door neighbor but the damage to the culture...

"We're gonna kill the shit out of Robin" is either super brave or super dumb in this era when people get apoplectic over spoilers.

idk if you can spoil a comic book explicitly positioned as being based on a prior comic book, at least as far as broad strokes go

Remembering now that the trailer for Batman v Superman had that shot of Batman looking up at the defaced Robin suit image that implied he was long dead and the movie proper includes that same shot and literally nothing else about it or why it matters iirc

not explaining shit that’s implied backstory that’s not essential to the movie’s plot is fine, imo

tired of everything being explained, when it doesn’t come to the main plot. just.. let stuff have happened with implications

Yeah that’s true and I agree generally with that approach. Just in that case it seemed like a fan service type of thing to me when I saw it.

imo fan service relatively invisible to those who don’t get distracted by it is also good, until someone yammers at them about it

News that Snyder's completed "Army of the Dead" and a prequel has me interested. Didn't know this was in the works, with all the JL attention.

his previous dead movie was a better remake than a lot of others and when the message is simpler he gets the direction better?

his own ideas are less straightforward and there’s
just... no vision, and not in a fun “open to interpretation” way imo

basically he has a variation of the Michael Bay visual
sense, however still has an ability to focus on the screen. but he just throws ideas he found interesting at the screen haphazardly. or is just boringly adapting things without nuance (Watchmen)

His Dead movie is the only thing he's done that's not worthless.

He has now done a Dead movie that IS worthless. "Impressed" that a man who recently lost his daughter can film a scene where a woman tries to save her daughter and they both get crushed to death by a shipping container and it's played for laughs. And then 5 minutes later you're expected to be moved by a man who loses his wife because Snyder is a useless shitbag when it comes to making films.

I quit at the 30-minute mark. Still 2 hours to go.

Flicked through it, looks like the usual inarticulate bombast

The RLM guys make the movie look dumber than Kong vs. Godzilla.

decrying KvG and the Snyder army pic and boosting… Red Letter Media?

The plot of the movie involves a rich guy hiring a safe cracker to break into the rich guy's own safe.

It turns out that rich guy didn't actually want the stuff in the safe, but the head of an alpha zombie. The time it takes to unlock and unload the safe lets the alpha zombies attack them, destroying both the money and the head. Spoiled u lol.

Rich guy works with the US government and would have had easier access to zombie's heads at any earlier point.

Also the entire movie is shot with extremely short depth of field. Not such a good idea for a movie featuring hordes of zombies.

the one dude’s mission was to get an alpha zombie
head, iirc

everyone else’s mission was to run into weird things that made them question the futility of being in a heist film, including the corpses of a failed prior expedition that looked like their own. accompanied by a time loop joke that… may set us up for the sequel:

Army of the Army of the Dead

I'm guessing the time loop thing was included because Snyder thought the Ring Cycle involved a literal time cycle.

really looking forward to watching this if the RLM dudes hated it or complained about it being dumb

the negative effects of red letter media on film discourse are profound imo

I don't like or watch RLM stuff but I tend to think of Cinemasins as the nadir of online film criticism, RLM is just boring and vaguely offputting

true by ultimate beef is with cinemasins now and forever but rlm is responsible for plinkett

Huh, I guess I just don't find the RLM people that much more off-putting or whatever than most things on the internet, and they occasionally make good observations. No idea what their negative effects on anything are, let alone on film discourse, whatever or wherever that is.