DC Comics on Film

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Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
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DC Comics on Film

#426 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:12 pm

I...kinda liked the movie. I had an enjoyable time with it. I’m surprised, since I didn’t like the other DC Snyders and this was of a piece with them. But something about the endless, self-indulgent grandiosity coupled with the pervasive sense of things fitting together properly after an experience where they didn’t left me feeling positive.

It’s the same basic movie as the theatrical cut, but with the connective tissue added back, the characters better accounted for, and a better visual sense (the theatrical version looked horrendous, especially during the climax.

There are some odd affecting moments here where the movie strains mightily to escape its own vfx blockbuster cage. Superman’s death throes echoing across the world is a poetic idea. Sea nymphs(?) singing a lament as Arthur Curry rejects Bruce before disappearing under water, one nymph holding his discarded shirt to her lips in melancholic ecstasy, was haunting and inexplicable. I’m not sure what it’s doing in the movie, but it was more memorable than the action scenes.

But then a number of creative choices here are bizarre—like everything involving Martian Manhunter. Or the stuff with Deathstroke. Or Bruce’s dream of the future. The Marvel movies never left the viewer adrift for not having read comics, but Snyder frequently does. These scenes are meant to be important, but, like similar scenes in Batman vs. Superman, I was lost.

What struck me most about the film and helped clarify Snyder as a director of superhero films is that Snyder is not a triumphal director at heart. However hard he tried, the moments of triumph, victory, and coming together were not especially convincing emotionally.

Zack Snyder is primarily an elegist. That’s why the best moments of the movie are all in the first episode, which mourn the loss of Superman. Snyder is most at home in sadness, brokenness, and melancholy, a sense of having lost something great and then hardened over. Knowing this clarifies his very particular (and unpopular) characterizations: Superman, twice orphaned, connected to humanity by the slimmest threads and shadowed by the spectre of apocalypse. Batman, death haunted and alone, taken to branding victims and exacting hate crusades. Aquaman, in self-imposed exile, straddling two worlds he’s emotionally disconnected from. Wonder Woman, another self exile. Cyborg, seething, resentful, full of loss, and isolating in his apartment. Only The Flash, tho’ from another broken family, has hope and direction.

But it’s not only the characters, it’s the whole tone of Snyder’s DC films. Snyder has frequently called his superheroes gods, but these are movies born of a feeling that the age of gods is over. These are not stories of hope and rebirth, of a nostalgia that celebrates what’s old and important. Snyder tells stories with a sense of things having already ended, in which what’s being shown has in a sense already been lost. They’re tales from a defeated tribe that offer not a promise of future rebirth but a memorial instead. They tell of gods that know somehow they’ve already died, that our childlike wonder and belief in them has vanished, and they are sad, broken, and angry as a result, wreaking havoc on worlds that seem to reflect their own inner turmoil and disconnection.

Melancholy is the dominant mood of a Snyder film, Justice League most of all. Even the big moments of triumph, the posed hero shots, are suffused with it. There isn’t a shot of the sun unclouded by a haze. Superman returns in a funereal suit. The big group pose is atop ruins backgrounded by an overcast sky. A dirge for the dead, the dead comic book hero.

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feihong
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#427 Post by feihong » Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:42 pm

I don't disagree with the points you make, but I would probably couch them slightly differently; I would say that elegy is simply all Snyder knows how to do. His stylistic quirks are largely slow-motion with sad pop song covers over it. I mean, they do that on the nightly news frequently, as well, and the effect is largely the same. There's a good Maggie Mae Fish video that analyzes the theme that is articulated in Snyder movie after Snyder movie, which you identify in your post: the idea that "we're already dead."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY7EnEu ... 8&t=1524s

Maggie tracks that theme through many of his movies. A character actually articulates it in Dawn fo the Dead, and she's especially good at showing how Snyder writing from that premise is so destructive to any message of "empowerment" in Sucker Punch, taking agency away from the oppressed characters, making one of them sacrifice for the others in an obligatory way. I think if you were to follow Snyder down the rabbit hole, he seems to view most situations of human interaction as foregone conclusions, and that leads to some really weird stuff. Pa Kent's death in Man of Steel is a great example of how awkward this theory is in practice. Snyder seems to assume so readily that characters are immediately doomed, that he takes it as writ that they are so, and in some cases just doesn't see the need to even push the scenario to make the characters' sacrifice unavoidable. It creates a space where the characters are all simply waiting to die.

But I feel the problem with that morbid tone of elegy––and I think you touch on it as well––is that it gets applied to every human situation Snyder tries to depict. So the whole film is steeped in gloom. Even in triumph, the League is awash in Snyder's miserable desaturation. Unlike, say, Paradjanov, or Bunuel, or other more sophisticated auteurs, Snyder simply doesn't have another mode to pivot to. And when he strays from actually elegaic scenes into other kinds of drama, he reveals that he doesn't have the creative resources to reach for another tone or mood.

A contrast I've been thinking of is Seijun Suzuki, who also begins many films under the premise that the deeds of humankind are doomed to failure. Somehow, Suzuki almost always finds ways of making this entertaining (Our Blood Will Not Forgive and a couple of the TV movies are the only exceptions I would note here). I think part of this is that Suzuki is interested in seeing his characters struggle against their fate––he is really interested in seeing how human energy is spent, and his films are arranged for us to see the mad, spinning energies within us express themselves. But Suzuki's characters are generally not heroes, in the strictest sense––and Snyder's frequently are. It makes the doom-laden feel of watching his paralyzed characters seem off-kilter, tonally dissonant. For these characters are meant to continue triumphing, beyond Snyder's vision of them. And so, in the Avengers movies, we feel the Avengers will screw up, but will ultimately keep moving forward and trying to fix things. Their own outlooks are essentially positive. In Snyder's superhero movies, the characters wear the thinnest film of positive anything. Many of them seem like Pa Kent, already looking for a good way to die. I think in a way the outlook Suzuki often adopts is more in line with what Snyder actually feels. But I don't think Snyder's tenuous grasp of mis en scene allows for any of the subtlety of Suzuki's absurdism, and his own approach negates the possibility of embracing a more positive-oriented approach to his heroic characters. That may be for me why I feel the triumphalism of the movie really drags on, and why the elegy does as well. Snyder invests neither situation with the variability of real-life situations. There is nothing to do when watching these slow-motion images; no ideas to ponder, no ambiguity to puzzle over. Snyder's viewpoint is simplistic, and arbitrary. So, I don't know. I liked about an hour of this kind-of, sort-of okay. But mostly I felt it offered very little.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#428 Post by Mr Sausage » Sat Mar 20, 2021 12:05 am

You could probably write a dissertation on Zack Snyder’s dead fathers. How many are there in JLSC? Five? And we get one more who embraces death for confusing reasons, like it’s somehow better for his son, despite in this case having an arc where he tries to make up for being an absent father.

Mothers are usually still around, sometimes in box form.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#429 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Mar 24, 2021 11:38 pm

Well, I never thought I'd say this but I too watched the Snyder cut, following back-to-back viewings of BvS and the Whedon JL last night (thanks Amy Adams completism project, aka cinephile self-flagellation). Perhaps it's because both of those were so horrendous, or because I had less than 24 hours to compare the Justice League cuts, but Snyder's version is infinitely better for many reasons that Sausage already mentioned. As I've made clear on this board, I love recontextualizing a work through non-objective, or non-insular, frameworks, so I would doubtlessly subscribe to feihong's impressions had I seen this alone in a vacuum without accounting for the knowledge of its history, as well as subjecting myself to the alternate edit. However, I have no interest in doing such things and history is often critical to comprehending what an artist is doing. It's not as simple as the Whedon cut being bright and the Snyder cut being noticeably grimmer, but the requiems coating every frame of this passably-generic superhero flick communicate Snyder's baseline mood, a melancholic state posturing toward hopelessness unironically populating a narrative about humanity's last hope.

Snyder's heroes are like many people in the human services fields who struggle with their own mental health while providing services to help others, and I can't help but sense that his gloomy aesthetics don't so much resemble his rigid beliefs but rather his ethos: Snyder accepts that life is a challenging, brutal place from his vantage point, but is interested in characters resembling extensions of his self (active psychology and dreamy wish fulfillment) who push to survive not in spite of their emotional and philosophical handicaps, but wearing them as weights on the same armor that bares their strengths. There is no overcoming hardships in psychological trauma and core beliefs with finality for Snyder, but working through them and reframing their value as parts of yourself.

I also found it impossible to ignore reading the film as woven with the thread of his daughter's memory, which of course makes sense considering he put this together once he was able to work but obviously still grieving. An early scene of Amy Adams attempting to move on with her life, transmitting small gifts like giving coffee to the cop and trying to smile to support herself with these small but meaningful connections, is so apt to the sisyphean process following acute grief into static 'being': experiencing melancholia and yet also able to see peripherally enough to also grasp the fringes of gratitude. That this scene plays to Distant Sky, arguably the saddest song from Nick Cave's album dedicated to his unpredictable loss of his son, moved me as I understood what Snyder was communicating using the tools available to him under- and slightly to the left of- the confines of a big-budget blockbuster flick.

That goes for Aquaman's bar-departure into the ocean, and the Icelandic singing and smelling meditation, and so much more. Perhaps most affecting is The Flash's heroic saving of the girl from the car wreck, where he halts to gaze at her beauty as she is about to die for what feels like eternity. This seems like such a personal moment of pause, Snyder desperately living vicariously through his characters for as long as he can, to convey how he wishes to not only save, but observe and absorb his daughter's energy, to be with her for just one more second- an invaluable second that would last like a lifetime. I noticed a similar pensive tenderness in Cyborg's provision of a tangible miracle in the form of a slots-jackpot for a struggling mother at an ATM in the rain, who reminds him of his own mother that he cannot bring back. The images are shot deliberately to impart the spacious distance between himself and this woman, translating Snyder's wishful ability to be philanthropic in the same frame as his recognition of the futility to actualize what he really wants, and his inherent isolation from those he does help.

Is it a good movie? Well, I can't really be impartial at this point to say, but I will credit that outside of my personal interest in self-reflexive analyses, things just make sense now. Obviously from a narrative level, we actually get to know and somewhat care about these characters- especially Cyborg (I'm in awe of how every emotional beat was sucked away in the Whedon version). But even on a purely structuralist level, the film is edited with respect to the consumer. Take the opening bank robbery in the Whedon cut, which was so sloppy and thrust upon us in a rushed, nonsensical manner, but now emerges after gradual acceleration and with a sense of grace that is inviting instead of alienating. The shots of Wonder Woman engaging with the terrorist feel slowed down just a fraction of a second longer, and from what appear to be alternate angles for the long shot and their shot-reverse-shot conversation edited differently- which might be trivial to some but that exchange was uncomfortably jarring last night, defying basic rules of cinema's digestibility shaped in the editing room, now able to be consumed with a much smoother momentum.

The same goes for how other scenes are concocted that play almost the same- Barry Allen/The Flash and his dad in prison is awkward in the Whedon cut, with Barry much more hastily reactive to his dad's advice not to visit anymore (to the point of intending to produce an embarrassing comic effect..) but in the Snyder cut he keeps his hand on the glass and takes in what his father is telling him with his eyes closed before responding the same way. This makes the scene play entirely different, and Crudup's own retort to Barry's quip keeps with the mournful vibe without skipping a beat. It's a sad scene and Snyder lets is remain that way, while Whedon made it silly in a misjudgment that allowed Barry's tendency to compensate for depression with humor to transform the tone of the scene into his solipsistic projection; a nervous retreat from dramatic material into safe hibernation of avoidance, instead of showing the defense mechanism objectively for what it is, with simultaneous sincerity to the grave material. The following scene with Wayne and Barry had plenty of humor (without the whole extended "brunch" bit- thank god, the punchline of needing friends was good enough) but the faint austere score permeating the background, and restraint (yes) of the slo-mo ninja star action, tightened the encounter and was simply-put, all around better filmmaking. It really is amazing how cutting a few seconds or paring back some of the superficial extravagance (yes again, Snyder does eliminate a lot of Whedon's own pompous additions with- dare I say- humility) can make such a huge difference.

The aspect ratio didn't bother me either, but funneled my appreciation toward the somber mise en scene in a paradoxical claustrophobic epic. I think the choice worked well at earning the prioritization of compassion to the characters on screen, without (more) distractions filling out the margins. I don't know, I'm not a Snyder fan outside of Dawn of the Dead and Sucker Punch, but this absurd bombastic tone poem was cool to see in context. I can't really recommend it any other way, though I'm admittedly not a fan of modern action or superhero movies (and perhaps this is why I enjoyed the setup of the first three hours drastically more than the last hour). Although the Marvel movies are unquestionably more interesting and involving than this DC franchise (not that I like either, but come on), the Snyder cut commits its focus to the emotions of individual human beings and eliminates a lot of big action setpieces, while still retaining a loud force of stylization, and it may be the best superhero film since the Nolan Batmans. There's one thing I can say for it: the action scenes never felt aggravatingly disengaging like most Marvel movies- not that I cared for them much, but they were so clearly secondary that I felt connected to where Snyder's heart was, at the very least.

Cde.
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#430 Post by Cde. » Thu Mar 25, 2021 3:29 am

I'll say that I loved the action scenes, particularly anything involving The Flash, but I too appreciated that Snyder saw them as just one part of the spectacle and not the justification for the whole endeavour. As a hater of Snyder and superhero films generally I was stunned by this very sincere and beautiful film.

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cantinflas
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#431 Post by cantinflas » Thu Mar 25, 2021 5:31 am


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domino harvey
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#432 Post by domino harvey » Thu Mar 25, 2021 9:20 am

Haha now TWBB has to watch it again to truly be a completist

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therewillbeblus
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#433 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Mar 25, 2021 9:29 am

If it ain't listed separately on LB, I'm letting myself off the hook (please nobody add this to LB)

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Re: DC Comics on Film

#434 Post by hanshotfirst1138 » Tue Aug 10, 2021 5:49 pm

Peter Jackson couldn’t make a film as excessive as the Snyder Cut in 1970s Italy.

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cantinflas
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#435 Post by cantinflas » Mon Mar 07, 2022 2:54 am


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Never Cursed
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#436 Post by Never Cursed » Tue Apr 19, 2022 7:24 pm


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therewillbeblus
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#437 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu May 05, 2022 3:34 pm

I just revisited Superman and Superman II for the first time since I was a kid. I didn’t like them back then and have always found Superman the least compelling of all superheroes, but I figured, with my track record of revisits reversing initial impressions, I should give them another go. Well, both left me cold again, though there are several strengths each possess:

1. While the second installment is superior in nearly every way, the evil mastermind plan in the first film has stuck with me all these years as the best example of villainy’s potential for ludicrousness. It’s particularly impressive how Lex Luther’s idea (to buy up cheap real estate in bumfuck CA and blow up coastal property to increase his’ net worth, when it becomes coastal property) is committed to and followed through on by the script and actors, translated into character. Everyone is aware of how madcap this idea is and yet it’s also sincerely entertained as kinda brilliant theoretically, which is enlightening as the act of cognitive framing is as far as Luther’s skills can take him. Everything else involving these characters and their Three Stooges dynamics is awful, but it’s fun to see their arc engaged with by the filmmakers as both pathetic with condescension and idealistically genius, reinforcing their delusional imaginative entertainment with the same hokey artifice of cinematic narrative.

2. The second film brings higher stakes and investment into characterization, actually has a decent setpiece or two, and cycles back to events with a sense of catharsis. Unfortunately the bar was set very low in the first film, so none of these elements are effective in a vacuum, only comparatively. Still, Stamp’s trio of aliens trying to interact on earth has its casually comic moments, and the climactic action scene is genuinely impressive and involving, using its budget economically, as if bet all on one scene, and it works.

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captveg
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#438 Post by captveg » Fri Jun 24, 2022 12:31 am

I wouldn't want to be the one trying to decide if $150m in reshoots for The Flash (making the budget $350m+) is a gamble worth taking.

At this point I'm leaning towards "yes" because of Keaton's Batman returning being too important to not get theatrical revenue. In the long run that should pay itself off with not just this movie, but Batgirl and other possible supporting roles / cameos in other films, even if you almost double the entry fee.

Miller is just too much of a liability at this point after that Rolling Stones article. Gotta roll the dice on the expense.

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#439 Post by The Narrator Returns » Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:27 pm

Warner has taken the unprecedented step of pulling the plug on Batgirl mid-post-production, with no possibility of release on any platform.

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Big Ben
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#440 Post by Big Ben » Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:34 pm

It absolutely kicks ass that someone could waste ninety million dollars on something and then be like "Yeah we shouldn't release it." I mean good lord.

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tenia
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#441 Post by tenia » Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:41 pm

And that's from the studio that thought these theatrical versions of Suicide Squad and Justice League were good enough to be shown. Imagine what they have on their hands to say "oh no" to this one.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#442 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Aug 02, 2022 6:38 pm

Unrelated, but I just started watching the Harley Quinn animated series on HBO (after finding out it exists just the other day, getting perfect reviews in its third season) and it's excellent- easily the best DC thing I've seen since Nolan's trilogy and a nice crude complement to the Batman animated series

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knives
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#443 Post by knives » Tue Aug 02, 2022 9:44 pm

tenia wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:41 pm
And that's from the studio that thought these theatrical versions of Suicide Squad and Justice League were good enough to be shown. Imagine what they have on their hands to say "oh no" to this one.
To be fair it’s technically not the same studio as all the personal has changed up top.

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Brian C
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#444 Post by Brian C » Tue Aug 02, 2022 11:21 pm

The point still stands, though - no studio would do this if they thought they had a movie on their hands that people would actually enjoy.

Or maybe that's not true - maybe WB is just getting out in front of some horrible scandal that is about to break. That would actually make the most sense, like if someone involved was funding Armie Hammer's cannibal dungeon or something. Because even if the movie itself was the worst piece of crap ever filmed, they could still bury it on streaming platforms without anyone caring or even probably realizing it was out there, and then whatever happens happens ... maybe they get lucky and it finds an audience after all but if it doesn't, they're no worse off.

What they're doing here is making it disappear, and that's an extraordinary measure that only really makes sense if there's an extraordinary reason for it.

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domino harvey
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#445 Post by domino harvey » Tue Aug 02, 2022 11:26 pm

I don’t know, a lot of Warner Bros leadership’s recent moves have been pretty out there (including telling Eastwood to fuck off), this just sounds like stupid management to me. But everyone who enjoys anything from any sector of WB should be concerned, because if they’re ready to sit on a $90 million movie, they’ll follow through on some of their other threats too (like no more original programming) or worse

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Re: DC Comics on Film

#446 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Tue Aug 02, 2022 11:50 pm

Came across something about it being a tax write-off

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Matt
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#447 Post by Matt » Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:31 am

They could release it and still write it off as a loss for tax purposes. I think if there’s a new management in place, they’ll want to take the loss up front and blame it on bad decisions made by the former team. If they stick with the original release plan and it’s another brand-tarnishing, publicly mocked flop, it reflects badly on the new team.

This may also be the first step in either scrapping the cursed Ezra Miller Flash film or doing extensive rewrites and reshoots to make it releasable.

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feihong
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#448 Post by feihong » Wed Aug 03, 2022 2:11 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 6:38 pm
Unrelated, but I just started watching the Harley Quinn animated series on HBO (after finding out it exists just the other day, getting perfect reviews in its third season) and it's excellent- easily the best DC thing I've seen since Nolan's trilogy and a nice crude complement to the Batman animated series
I got the first two seasons of this on blu-ray and I've watched it all the way through a few times now, after watching it in its initial run––so I've seen the first two seasons, maybe...4 times now? I'm far from a fan of DC cinematic material, far from a fan of Batman, and I have no special love for the Batman Animated Series (nor any special dislike), but I thought this was real clever and fun and just a generally exciting show, which does a lot with the huge cast of Batman-related characters who have been hanging around, in some cases for decades (or even half a century, for some of them). It also meets a particular story need the comics just can't seem to consistently commit to (i.e.,
SpoilerShow
Harley & Ivy dating
). DC getting so chicken on this in the comics is so profoundly disappointing. Thankfully, the show is unambiguous about it––except in the parts of the story where the ambiguity provides a rich backdrop for character development.

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brundlefly
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#449 Post by brundlefly » Wed Aug 03, 2022 2:49 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 6:38 pm
Unrelated, but I just started watching the Harley Quinn animated series on HBO (after finding out it exists just the other day, getting perfect reviews in its third season) and it's excellent- easily the best DC thing I've seen since Nolan's trilogy and a nice crude complement to the Batman animated series
Yes, welcome to the club!
brundlefly wrote:
Wed Nov 18, 2020 8:50 pm
The Harley Quinn animated series is on HBOMax and it is a gift, a goofball clownf*ck corrective (with heart) to the ponderous self-serious slog that is too many superhero properties. It may be the most quotable show since 30 Rock -- the joy of watching supervillains sit around and say things like, "I am the shadow that haunts your darkness!"and "I think it was more of a lack of affordable housing that destroyed Gotham." There's more than a hint of Ben Edlund's Tick in there (Kite Man!), Christopher Meloni's Jim Gordon is the best Jim Gordon, and there's enough Ugogirl narrative throughline to make the thing as bingeable as razzy tazzy.
There's a "Cheers for supervillains" spin-off in the works currently called Noonan's set to feature Kite Man and Bane as regulars.

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knives
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Re: DC Comics on Film

#450 Post by knives » Wed Aug 03, 2022 7:35 am

Brian C wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 11:21 pm
The point still stands, though - no studio would do this if they thought they had a movie on their hands that people would actually enjoy.

Or maybe that's not true - maybe WB is just getting out in front of some horrible scandal that is about to break. That would actually make the most sense, like if someone involved was funding Armie Hammer's cannibal dungeon or something. Because even if the movie itself was the worst piece of crap ever filmed, they could still bury it on streaming platforms without anyone caring or even probably realizing it was out there, and then whatever happens happens ... maybe they get lucky and it finds an audience after all but if it doesn't, they're no worse off.

What they're doing here is making it disappear, and that's an extraordinary measure that only really makes sense if there's an extraordinary reason for it.
It doesn’t happen often for obvious reasons, but when studios change hands the craziest of things can occur including not releasing already finished films regardless of quality.

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