I don't mean to keep picking on Momoa like I have it out for the guy or anything, but he gave
an interview before the release of
Lost Kingdom where he talked about a couple of interesting subjects. I know that directors sometimes offer actors roles that they didn't audition for, but Momoa's account of how he auditioned for Batman and didn't think much of it until he was inexplicably offered the role of Aquaman makes me even more sure that Snyder cast Momoa more for PR reasons than artistic ones. Bear in mind that this was all long before Momoa became a star in his own right and developed his onscreen chill-dudebro persona. Back then, he was best known for playing fierce, intimidating characters, and most famously Khal Drogo on GoT. It's true that Aquaman has been portrayed in the comics as a brawny badass type as well, like Roundy pointed out, but that's hardly conditional on the actor cast in the role, is it? Very few lead actors in capeshit movies are already known for being especially big or tough beforehand. No, I'm pretty sure that Snyder was worried that people would mock Aquaman for being lame long before they ever saw him on screen, and so he prioritized casting someone he thought would nip those jokes in the bud. To me, that's a very silly and overly defensive attitude to take, but hey, I'm not the in-demand blockbuster auteur who continues to receive huge budgets and full creative freedom to deliver dud after dud, Snyder is. What do I know?
Momoa also talks about Lobo, and I think at this point we can pretty much say it's confirmed he'll be playing him at some point in the new universe. This is not how actors respond when asked about mere rumors. Anyway, as was mentioned in this thread earlier, Momoa would actually be perfect as Lobo. He looks the part without needing to be turned into a CGI monster, and he wouldn't need to leave his laid-back comfort zone of acting. My main concern is that with Momoa in the role, they'll very likely try to turn Lobo into the hero of the movie who has to save the day, blah blah blah, and that's just not his character. I could see Lobo as the protagonist of an irreverent, low-stakes MAX series where he travels around the galaxy and gets into hijinks, but for a big mainstream blockbuster, Lobo should absolutely be a supporting character, not a hero. Put him in a Superman or Green Lantern movie where he's a wild card who complicates the plot - maybe the villain hires him to take out the hero, and they get into a few fights, but at the end of the movie Lobo respects the hero enough to show up and help him defeat the villain. Something like that, as opposed to a movie like
Lobo: Dawn of Capeshit.
Also, the teaser for
Joker: Folie à Deux dropped a few days ago. I'm already exhausted by the discourse around it, just like I was for the first
Joker. It's not even the movie itself that I dislike so much as it is its most enthusiastic fans; the people who praise it endlessly for simply going through the motions of being a serious movie and focusing on psychology and character rather than action and explosions. I'm not saying that anyone who liked the movie is dumb or easily impressed, but I think I can say with some confidence that anyone who truly thinks that
Joker was brilliant and revolutionary probably never watches movies that aren't blockbusters. Like one infamous Letterboxd review said:
Anyway, here's the new teaser:
I actually think this looks way more intriguing than the first one. I think they did a much better job at translating the costume and makeup for Harley into a gritty, grounded setting than they did for Joker himself. The idea that this is going to be a musical is easily the most interesting thing going on here, but I have to say that I won't be fully convinced that this will really be a proper the-characters-sing musical until I see footage of the characters actually singing. Maybe I'm being a bit too cynical, but producers and directors lie about upcoming movies a lot as a general rule, and they never face any consequences for it. I think it's very possible that this movie might just have a lot of songs that play in the background, or music itself will simply be a big theme in the movie, and then the people who claimed that this would be a musical will shrug and say "Yeah, that's what we meant by a musical." I'm not saying that's what I think will happen, just that it's a possibility that I think a lot of people aren't even taking into account. Also, because this franchise is this franchise and has the fans it has, I just can't get over the people creaming themselves at the closing shot of Arthur smiling through the lipstick on the glass. It's neat, sure, but it's nowhere near as ingenious as people are making it out to be. (Check the comments and I guarantee you'll see at least a few people raving about it.) It's not even original. This is obviously where they got the idea:
I have no problem believing that virtually all of
Joker's most devoted fans have never seen
Taxi Driver or
The King of Comedy (and if they had, I strongly suspect that they'd be far less enthusiastic about
Joker), but is
The Dark Knight, of all movies, really outside of their reference pools? This poster was everywhere when the movie came out. Maybe
Joker's biggest fans aren't old enough to remember TDK's release. It would actually explain a lot if the bulk of the movie's fanbase were teenagers.
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