Saddam Hussein

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #420 on: April 30, 2016, 04:24:53 AM »
That's interesting.  I didn't know that, and apparently neither did Zack "100% comic book" Snyder.  It was still a bad idea for a film adaptation, anyway.  Yes, Superman is technically fast and powerful enough to go pretty much anywhere on the planet he's needed and deal with any situation promptly, but at the very least, some geographical distance between Metropolis and Gotham would help us suspend our disbelief and suppose that Batman actually serves a purpose, that he goes to places and does things that Superman doesn't.  There's no need for a Batman who operates in Superman's backyard.

As for The Flash, his movie is being written and directed by Seth Grahame-Smith

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/flash-movie-loses-director-888994

Good.  Hopefully he'll be replaced by someone who actually has some experience.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2016, 12:28:10 PM by Saddam Hussein »

Rama Set

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #421 on: April 30, 2016, 12:06:22 PM »
As for The Flash, his movie is being written and directed by Seth Grahame-Smith

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/flash-movie-loses-director-888994

Good.  Hopefully he'll be replaced by someone who actually has some experience.

If everyone thought this way, Citizen Kane never would have been made, or a bunch of other great movies.

Saddam Hussein

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #422 on: April 30, 2016, 01:32:13 PM »
lolwut?  I'm not saying that only experienced directors should ever direct films.  Obviously, everyone has to start somewhere.  But a big-budget, crowd-pleasing capeshit movie isn't a job for a first-timer.  For all we know, he might not even be competent with a camera.

Rama Set

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #423 on: May 01, 2016, 12:02:55 AM »
lolwut?  I'm not saying that only experienced directors should ever direct films.  Obviously, everyone has to start somewhere.  But a big-budget, crowd-pleasing capeshit movie isn't a job for a first-timer.  For all we know, he might not even be competent with a camera.

Maybe, maybe not.  It is still the same as saying Orson Welles had no business directing Citizen Kane, which was a massive budget movie for the time.  Maybe this guy could have surprised.  Guess we will never know.

Saddam Hussein

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #424 on: May 01, 2016, 08:01:38 PM »
Citizen Kane would only have been considered big-budget in its day because Hollywood wasn't used to spending truly enormous amounts of money on movies back then.  When adjusted for inflation, it cost about $13.1 million to make.  Most capeshit movies today have a budget of over ten times that.  And this is going to be part of a franchise that WB hopes will bring in billions for them.  Besides, I think it's pretty obvious when you look at this guy's resume that he is no Welles.

Rama Set

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #425 on: May 02, 2016, 12:45:23 AM »
Citizen Kane would only have been considered big-budget in its day because Hollywood wasn't used to spending truly enormous amounts of money on movies back then.  When adjusted for inflation, it cost about $13.1 million to make.  Most capeshit movies today have a budget of over ten times that.  And this is going to be part of a franchise that WB hopes will bring in billions for them.  Besides, I think it's pretty obvious when you look at this guy's resume that he is no Welles.

Look at Orson Welle's resume before Citizen Kane.  He had directed two short films and had a few narration credits to his name.

Saddam Hussein

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #426 on: May 03, 2016, 01:03:22 AM »
That's not true.  Welles had been working steadily in both radio and theater (both acting and directing) for a few years prior to Citizen Kane, and had already garnered considerable fame and critical acclaim from them.  I won't deny that he was very lucky to get the contract that he did, but looking back on his life, Welles was arguably something of a prodigy, and far more deserving of a chance to write and direct his own movie than the largely-unknown Grahame-Smith, who, once again, would have been in the very different position of helming a tentpole capeshit film with the hopes and expectations of a studio and millions of fans riding on him.  It feels to me like he was meant to be the latest fortunate son plucked from obscurity and groomed to be a big player in Hollywood - which wouldn't bother me nearly as much as it does if not for the fact that Hollywood constantly tells us (both directly and indirectly) that they're terrified of taking risks and want to play it safe as much as possible.  That's why they don't want to involve more women and non-white people in movies, that's why they're constantly rebooting and recycling old properties instead of creating new franchises, that's why they encourage screenwriters to stick to worn-out tropes and "save the cat"-style plotting, and so on.  But all the while, they're constantly spending tons of money and taking huge risks trying to hype up an unknown white male actor as the next major star or an unknown white male director as the next major Hollywood big shot.

I'm getting a bit off-topic.  I don't mean to bash Grahame-Smith too much.  Maybe he does have some talent, and maybe he's got it in him to make a fine capeshit romp, but the fact is that right now, he has no directing experience, and while directing a tentpole blockbuster might not need an especially distinctive style or a seasoned veteran behind the camera, it still needs competence.  He hasn't demonstrated that yet.  Even the poster child of those lucky directors who have risen far beyond their qualifications, Colin Trevorrow, had directed a movie before he was handed the reins to enormous franchises.

Rama Set

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #427 on: May 03, 2016, 01:23:48 AM »
I don't know, I look at Grahame-Smith's resume and I see substantial experience in writing and producing, so he obviously would bring knowledge about story and what it takes to get it on the screen.  "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" most assuredly had heavy special and visual effects and action sequences, and he was very involved in the making of that.  I bet, with the right team around him, he would have done a fine job.

Now WB are probably going to do something desperate like try to convince Terrance Malick to direct the Flash.

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Offline beardo

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Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #428 on: May 03, 2016, 04:49:56 AM »
I don't care who directs The Flash, because I'm not familiar with directors. What they do need to do is cast another actor.
The Mastery.

Rama Set

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #429 on: May 03, 2016, 12:35:49 PM »
I don't care who directs The Flash, because I'm not familiar with directors. What they do need to do is cast another actor.

Like the Flash from their successful Tv franchise?  Yea...

Saddam Hussein

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #430 on: May 04, 2016, 04:32:00 AM »
Ezra Miller is a fine actor and beardo is just homophobic.  But I do wonder how the movie is going to distinguish itself when the show has already covered so much of the "classic" source material.  It'll have better effects, sure, but what else?  It's the kind of dilemma that almost makes me agree with WB/DC's oddly inconsistent policy of not letting their TV shows cover properties that upcoming movies are about to focus on.  It really is too bad that movies make all the money and so are prioritized above all else.  If Batman wasn't such box office gold, they'd probably be able to make a kickass Netflix show for him, with all the screen time they need to focus on those things that the movies can't.

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Offline beardo

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Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #431 on: May 04, 2016, 08:15:17 AM »
He looks wrong for the part.
The Mastery.

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Offline Snupes

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Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #432 on: May 04, 2016, 02:06:53 PM »
He looks like he smells bad
There are cigarettes in joints. You don't smoke it by itself.

Saddam Hussein

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #433 on: May 08, 2016, 02:11:54 AM »


They misspelled "terrific" in the title.

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Offline Roundy

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Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #434 on: May 19, 2016, 02:42:08 AM »
It sounds like good new to me.  Geoff Johns is probably the best mainstream writer DC has right now and he's done good work retooling classic characters (Flash and Green Lantern in particular) without resorting to an unnecessarily dark and gritty tone, which thank heavens DC/Warner Bros really seems to want to veer away from right now.

Anyway, unless Legends of Tomorrow really blows me away with the finale, or at least tosses out a really good cliffhanger, I think the first season of the show will be the last I watch.  It doggedly refuses to make sense and a few of the actors just irritate me.  Kind of a letdown.

They should spin Leonard and Mick off onto their own show.  And send Sara back to Arrow where she can be Black Canary and probably die again.  Not that I want to see it happen but it has to sooner or later; Papa Lance isn't allowed to be happy.
Dr. Frank is a physicist. He says it's impossible. So it's impossible.
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George

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #435 on: May 19, 2016, 04:18:11 AM »
(This is a little confusing, as I deleted the original post before Roundy replied.  Sorry!)

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/batman-v-superman-fallout-warner-895174

This is good news.  I have no idea if Geoff Johns will prove to be some kind of DC equivalent of Kevin Feige, but transitioning away from whatever loose framework they have with Snyder at the helm is definitely a step in the right direction.  And look at that box office total, too - just $870 million worldwide.  That's plenty of money, to be sure, but what was arguably the most anticipated capeshit film in history should have easily earned well over a billion.  Let's hope they take another hint from all this and dump Goyer too.  In other news:


George

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #436 on: May 20, 2016, 04:59:29 PM »
I'm glad LoT was mentioned, as I had some major issues with it too.  The biggest problem was easily the writing.  I accepted some time ago that literally every TV show or movie that focuses on time travel, no matter how good it is, will have plot holes and details that just don't make sense if you think about them long enough, but this show took it to the next level.  How many times did they abruptly rewrite the rules of how time travel worked, do things that were said to be impossible just a few episodes ago, or bring up major new elements that logically should have been mentioned a long time ago?  And that's not even taking into account the many ways it conflicts with how time travel is portrayed in The Flash.  Do the Time Masters take into account speedsters who can hop through time?  And do the Time Wraiths ever try to interfere with what they're up to?

On a more general level, it's hard to make a satisfying seasonal arc over as simple an end goal as "Kill this guy."  There's no way the characters can really "progress" towards that goal and yet not achieve it over the course of an episode.  All they can do is try, inevitably fail, spend the rest of the episode cleaning up their own mess, and they're back to square one.  Heroes who do nothing but constantly fuck up make for very unsatisfying viewing.  And they don't even fail for good reasons - say, that they've misjudged and underestimated Vandal Savage, who turns out to be the world's greatest badass and manages to outsmart and overpower them at every turn.  That could help build up our villain and sell him as a major threat to the audience.  But no, instead their failures always seem to come down to carelessness, basic ineptitude, and the deus ex machina of "Time wants to happen/this event can't be changed, blah blah blah."

Speaking of Vandal Savage, he was terrible.  It's not necessarily the actor's fault, although his goofy accent was a bit distracting at times, but he was nerfed to a huge degree here.  Merging him with the (far more obscure) villain Hath-Set was a big mistake.  Not only did it did it make Savage that much less awesome by reducing his lifespan so drastically, it turned him into a weird parasite who's dependent on the Hawks to survive and pathetically mopes and pines after Hawkgirl.  And in person, he really wasn't all that powerful or impressive.  That last point is an odd one, because in his introduction in the Flash-Arrow crossover, they were definitely playing up the angle that he had some vaguely-defined magical abilities beyond his immortality, but LoT apparently just forgot about that and reduced him to being a decent martial artist who likes knives.

On the notion of other characters.  I never liked Rip Hunter; he always came across as selfish, hypocritical, and shockingly incompetent at his job to me, and I highly doubt that was intentional.  The Hawks didn't amount to anything positive (blah blah love triangle bullshit) between them, and I have absolutely no idea what message the writers were trying to send with them.  They seemed to realize that the idea of telling someone that they're destined to fall in love with some creepy person they don't know and that they'll never find happiness with anyone else is all kinds of fucked up - but at the exact same time, they were committed to reinforcing the truth of it!  What the actual fuck?

I did like the other characters, though, and there were some great moments mixed in with all the nonsense.  The prison break with Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell practically smirking at the camera because of the obvious parallel to their roles on Prison Break, hanging out in the Old West with Jonah Hex, the goofy kaiju homage with Ray turning himself gigantic so he could fight that huge robot, and a few others.  I don't regret watching the show, for all my issues with it.  I will probably watch the second season, if only because now the CW plans to do a ridiculous four-way crossover with all its capeshit shows.

Arrow's latest season can probably be summed up with this gif:



Back on the subject of BvS, lol.
« Last Edit: June 03, 2016, 12:08:25 AM by George »

George

Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #437 on: June 03, 2016, 12:07:45 AM »


I doubt this will make the movie much better, but I'll still probably watch it for masochistic reasons.

http://deadline.com/2016/06/the-flash-rick-famuyiwa-dope-dc-comics-warner-bros-1201766332/

I approve of this choice.
« Last Edit: June 13, 2016, 09:13:10 PM by George »

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Offline Snupes

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Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #438 on: June 03, 2016, 04:44:05 AM »
Why do you approve?
There are cigarettes in joints. You don't smoke it by itself.

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Offline beardo

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Re: First Look at Ben Affleck's Batman
« Reply #439 on: June 03, 2016, 05:50:19 AM »
Because he's black.
The Mastery.