[George]

<George> I disapprove of your title change to the capeshit thread, Blanko
<George> You should have used the word "capeshit" in there
<George> I've grown so used to it that the word "superhero" looks foreign to me
<Blanko> I don't want to use profanity in subjects
<Crudblud> How can one man be so moral?

[beardo]

"shit" really isn't a profanity imo tbh js

[beardo]

That looks literally nothing like Steppenwolf.

[Crudblud]

Warren Ellis' 2014 run on Moon Knight is really good! I'm used to Ellis being kind of a snarky edgelord, and there is some of that in here, but he really gets the dark humour of the character and his unique mental condition. This time around Moon Knight is a private detective, and has more of a cold persona than I've seen before, which leads to some great moments of deadpan humour, but also emphasises his fearlessness. He is still an incredibly violent character, but not quite so over-the-top as he was when Charlie Huston was writing him back in 2006 — a run which was fine, but far too self-serious for my taste — and gets into a lot of fights that would give the Netflix Daredevil a run for its money both in terms of bloodshed and in terms of spectacle.

Speaking of Netflix, I really want to see Moon Knight on there. His multiple personalities mean that he himself could make up half the regular cast, and he has some seriously diabolical villains that would be really cool to see on screen if they were handled properly. I think the biggest barrier to a live action adaptation would be the effects budget, since (in this latest run) he has quite a few gadgets like a drone glider, a self-driving car, tons of Egyptian artefacts which he uses to fight different kinds of enemies etc. (even in older versions he has a technological arsenal to rival Batman) and gets into some pretty weird situations, not to mention his god Khonshu appears to him in many different, typically grotesque guises. If done well, it could be the best thing Marvel has put out so far.

Moony is often compared to Batman, and there are some similarities, but the former is literally the avatar of a bloodthirsty Egyptian god, has no qualms about killing people, and is funding his operation with blood money he made through various shady activities in the past, as opposed to the latter, who does or tries to do everything by the book and is motivated by his belief in justice. Moony also dresses in all white so that his enemies will see him coming, and takes pleasure in extreme violence, whereas Batman prefers stealth and strategy and to only use necessary, non-lethal force. In some ways Moon Knight is closer to the Punisher, though he does not use guns, and indeed they seem to be "friendly" rivals in quite a few publications.

The art by Declan Shalvey ranges deftly between low key portraiture and dense spectacle and has a great sense of atmosphere. Moony's average day being extremely unpredictable, the art can jump from a realism which anchors the madness to psychedelic dreamscapes, and all without losing that feeling of controlled chaos. There can occasionally be a disjunction between the subtleties in the artwork and the sledgehammer satire that Ellis likes to use, but in an odd way those conflicting extremes serve only to emphasise similar aspects in the protagonist's character. Along with Bendis' 2012 run this is easily the best Moon Knight I've read so far, it's just a real shame that it only lasted six-issues. The stuff afterwards (Brian Wood and Greg Smallwood) looks like Clipart — not by comparison, it literally looks like Clipart. It's written fine, but it looks like Clipart.

Clipart!

Edit: Okay, so actually the story of the later stuff is really cool and the art "grows" on you, I guess, I still prefer the Shalvey stuff though.

[Snupes]

Yaaaay, I've helped to make a Moon Knight fan! ! !

[Rama Set]

That looks literally nothing like Steppenwolf.

Some people are speculating it is Yuga Khan. I am not familiar but a quick Google search and it looks like that makes more sense.

[George]

It's definitely Steppenwolf.  They confirmed it in the press tours of the Justice League set from a couple of weeks ago, described in the articles that Snupes and I linked.

[Rama Set]

It's definitely Steppenwolf.  They confirmed it in the press tours of the Justice League set from a couple of weeks ago, described in the articles that Snupes and I linked.

That article just confirmed Steppenwolf was the main villain. Yuga Khan could have a role as well.

[George]

Batman prefers stealth and strategy

and to only use necessary, non-lethal force

Also:



In other news:

<George> beardo: In a few weeks Pooicide Squad is coming out
<George> It will be better than BvS, which was bad
<beardo> I sense you're trying to accomplish something with this, but I don't know what.
<George> Bait, obv
<George> They released a final trailer, which I will post
<George> Well, "trailer"
<beardo> Does it have shitty unfitting music like the rest of them?
<George> It's Bohemian Rhapsody again
<beardo> then I dpon't care
<George> How very shallow
<beardo> And tbh, I'm not interested in thise movie
<beardo> Batman can't save it
<George> I thought Batman can save anything
<beardo> unfortunately not this
<George> That's loser talk
<beardo> there's too much wrong
<beardo> I won't pay to watch it, I'll wait a couple of weeks and then download a korean rip with huge korean subtitles or something
<George> lol
<George> That's what I did with Crapocalypse
<George> Stupid Asian censors muffled Magneto's "fuck"

http://io9.gizmodo.com/these-suicide-squad-character-videos-are-like-getting-a-1783803084

Slipknot doesn't even get a line!  He is so getting his head blown up early in the movie.

[George]

We finally have trailers for the new upcoming movies!



I'm hopeful for this one.  No Snyder or Goyer involved, an interesting setting, and a main character who seems very different to Batman and Superman.  The one thing I'm not a fan of is the use of slow motion.



I'm tentatively hopeful for this one.  WB may have learned some lessons from BvS's poor reception, but they've still got Snyder in the director's chair.  And the scene with the Flash felt like it was trying way too hard to be funny.  Oh, well.  It's too far off to be worrying about it now.

[Rama Set]

Wonder Woman looks good, although that electric guitar theme has to go.  Justice League looks fine, although on top of what you said about the Flash scene, it seems like they are trying too hard to make Aquaman a bad ass.

[George]

I don't actually have too much of an issue with them playing Aquaman up as a badass, because there's a good reason for it beyond just trying to rip off Batman's shtick.  To most people, Aquaman means this:



He's the useless guy who talks to fish, in other words.  And most of those people don't even know that this lame interpretation of him began and ended with Superfriends.

[Snupes]

Yeah, but they're trying so hard that they've gone past "badass" and ended up at "tryhard". I laughed out loud at that stupid scene of him downing whatever alcohol and slamming it on the ground.

Also Cyborg looks like an AMD graphics card. What a horrid design.

[Snupes]

http://io9.gizmodo.com/jared-leto-has-a-fucking-ridiculous-idea-for-how-the-jo-1784407115

God, Leto sucks. Fuck.

As someone in the comments pointed out, he really should read this:

[George]

They all suck.  What is this shit here?

http://io9.gizmodo.com/in-all-seriousness-was-the-suicide-squad-set-an-actual-1784477978

I can at least understand why an actor portraying the Joker would put in extra effort to make sure they do the role justice, but what the hell is Jai Courtney talking about?  Captain Boomerang is not that deep or complex a character.  He's an obnoxious bigot, a selfish asshole, and a loutish bogan.  And judging from the trailers, Courtney looks like he's nailing the role, so good for him.  But why in God's name would he need to take drugs or burn himself with cigarettes for this?  It makes no sense at all.  If the cast and crew are making up these stories, then they're fucking pathetic.  And if they're not, then the whole operation needs to be investigated by whatever agency handles dangerous work environments and abuses in the workplace.

EDIT: Looks like Courtney was indeed making it up.  I wonder how much else they made up.

[George]

The review embargo ended today, and once again, it's not looking good:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/suicide_squad_2016

One interesting thing I've learned from the reviews is that the Joker plays a very small and inconsequential role in the movie (much like Wonder Woman in BvS), and doesn't share any screen time with any members of the squad beyond Harley.  If you needed any further evidence that Leto's "method acting" was just an excuse for him to be a dick to everyone, there it is.  Oh, and the main villain turns out to be a big ugly CGI nothing trying to destroy the world in a dull and generic way.

[Lord Dave]

The review embargo ended today, and once again, it's not looking good:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/suicide_squad_2016

One interesting thing I've learned from the reviews is that the Joker plays a very small and inconsequential role in the movie (much like Wonder Woman in BvS), and doesn't share any screen time with any members of the squad beyond Harley.  If you needed any further evidence that Leto's "method acting" was just an excuse for him to be a dick to everyone, there it is.  Oh, and the main villain turns out to be a big ugly CGI nothing trying to destroy the world in a dull and generic way.

So capeshit without capes.

[George]

A lot of capeshit ends up not involving capes.  In related news, THR reports that WB executives panicked after BvS's poor reception and heavily interfered with Soupicide Squid, while this article pins the blame on Snyder.  Did such executive meddling hurt the movie by diluting Ayer's vision, or was that vision just really bad to begin with?  And did Snyder's "Executive Producer" credit mean that he had much involvement with the movie?  I don't know!  But maybe I'll have some ideas when I get to see it on Friday.  I don't want to say too much more about it until then.

[George]

And now that I've seen it, I have to say that it's really bad.  It's pretty obvious even if you didn't read that THR article that the movie was very messily edited, scrambled around, and reworked by the studio.  Remember the marketing for this movie?  The garish colors, the gaudy pop-art sensibility, the psychedelic imagery, all hinting at a movie that could be really cool and unique?  Yeah, that's not reflective of the film at all.  They tried, to an extent, to make it seem like it was, but there's only so much you can do when the filming is all done.  Freezing the screen and throwing text up there describing the characters in a tongue-in-cheek manner is fine, as is making the beginning and end credits bright and colorful, but all this really ends up doing is dragging the introduction out.  By the time the movie is satisfied that the characters are all fully introduced to the audience, there's no time for there to be a story at all.  I'm serious, there's no story here.  It's all just an excuse to get the characters fighting Enchantress, her shitty CGI brother, and her shitty CGI army.

Oh yeah, about Enchantress.  She sucks.  She's easily one of the worst capeshit villains I've ever seen.  She has no personality, no real motivation beyond some weird thing about humans not worshiping her anymore, and her evil plan is - stop me if you've heard this one before - to open up a big portal in the sky that rains down death and destruction upon the world, and if the heroes don't destroy the portal in time, life as we know it is doomed!  Oh, and there's a MacGuffin that's key to her power, in case this plot didn't seem quite familiar enough to you already.  Can you believe this shit?  What really kills me about it is that Ayer himself openly mocked this cliché in the past as something his movie ostensibly wouldn't do, and then he goes and does it himself!  It's completely contrary to the point of an organization like the squad, too.  They're supposed to handle gritty, grounded, politically-charged missions that the government doesn't want to publicly endorse.  A generic save-the-world thing like this is what you'd expect more conventional capeshitters to take care of.

If there's anything redeeming about this movie, it's the cast, who really do give it their all.  Will Smith basically plays himself, but he's charismatic enough to get away with it.  Margot Robbie is fun as Harley, although she has an annoying tendency to switch between an exaggerated Brooklyn accent and a more generic American one.  Viola Davis is fantastic as Amanda Waller, and it's a testament to her talent that she can make the dull exposition she's saddled with work as well as it does.  Joel Kinnaman is adequate as Rick Flag, and the other actors, who don't get a lot of focus, do well with what they have.  As for the Joker, I honestly can't really say whether he's good or bad.  He's barely in the movie at all, and it seems like most of his scenes were cut.  He started out as pretty annoying, and then in later scenes, I felt like maybe he was starting to grow on me...and then the movie's over, so I can't decide.  A character like the Joker always comes across as grating in the first couple of minutes you're introduced to him.  You need time to look past the tics and see how menacing or twisted he really is, and the movie just didn't give Leto a chance to make a non-superficial impression.  Maybe he has potential, is all I can really say.

In short, don't see this, or at least don't spend money on seeing this.  It's not worth it.

[juner]

By the time the movie is satisfied that the characters are all fully introduced to the audience, there's no time for there to be a story at all. I'm serious, there's no story here.

This is simply not true. The character intros are maybe ~20 minutes of the 2 hour movie... It's hard to take the rest of you review seriously when you say things like this. The story isn't great, it's generic. That's fine for most of the audience I imagine, but telling people not to spend money seeing it is a bit nonsensical. I'd suggest maybe staying away from reading critic reviews before seeing a movie for once, it may be skewing your perspective. Or, you're a huge fan of SS and expected a lot more, which if that's the case, then fine.

I do agree with most of the rest of what you said. Villain is generic and the plot has been seen a million times before. But it's almost like that's what capeshit movies are. I'd suggest having a drink or two before watching the movie, it'll lower your expectations.