Tough Crowd

I’m a little different. As a raving comic book geek (Yes, I also got the “…would be to court death” reference at the end of Avengers I) but also a fan of wider-ranging tastes, I’m not about to give a movie a pass just because it’s catering to my tastes. I’m a sysadmin, but I’ll freely admit that Harrison Ford’s Firewall was not a good movie.
There are already signs that the superhero genre is getting played out; Age of Ultron was a muddled mess of visual chaotica with too many subplots flying around, and Mardisvelney has used up all the A-list heroes and is digging into the B- and C-list characters that have no mythic resonance and that nobody knows.
The best observation I’ve heard came from a film review I’ve lost the link to: superhero movies are this generation’s 80’s action movies. The Arnie movies, the Rambos, the Die Hards, the JCVDs. Over-the-top, corny, splashy, fun but ultimately disposable.

The Netflix Marvel series are well worth a watch. I’m not much of a superhero nerd, but they are startlingly moreish. They might even rise to the level of good drama in their own right.

And it’s well into David’s Friday morning, and I need to get to bed.
31%

Saw. Regretted. It’s a fucking omnishambles.

There are very few films I go out of my way to watch twice. I can think of maybe a dozen.
I would enjoy seeing the list.

Sad Affleck.
Perfect.

And further . . .

…making something that entertains millions of people for a couple of hours[…] isn’t that awful.
Oh, don’t misunderstand me; look at how many of those 80’s action movies are cultural touchstones now. It just saddens me that given the stories that superhero movies could be making – they are, ultimately, the 20th-century expression of the Campbell Hero Myth – they’re choosing to default to slam-bang grimdarkery.
Look at Ant-Man: in amongst the coloured power suits, there’s a pretty good movie about blended families and what it’s like to be a father ejected from his own daughter’s life and the struggle to deal with that conflict. Using a superhero movie to do that is the ideal way to anchor that in a man’s POV instead of the usual female one.

It just saddens me that given the stories that superhero movies could be making – they are, ultimately, the 20th-century expression of the Campbell Hero Myth – they’re choosing to default to slam-bang grimdarkery.
Yes, I think this is where Synder fails, quite badly, and to a lesser extent the Christopher Nolan films too, which, a few scenes aside, I didn’t much like. A lot of 90s comics were terrible for this reason too. Again, there’s a nihilism that jars and is quite at odds with notions of heroism and that aforementioned, rather important, sense of elation. Villains can be nihilistic, heroes not so much.
There’s a scene in the first Avengers film in which Tony Stark is hurled through the window of his penthouse and is falling to his apparent doom, pursued by an autonomous, somewhat tardy, suit of armour, which wraps itself around him as he falls. On one level it’s silly, but it’s a visually wonderful idea and seen for the first time in a cinema it’s quite thrilling, in fact elating. It works dramatically – which is to say, emotionally – because Tony Stark is a likeable character and we want him to survive.
Ditto the ‘barrel of monkeys’ scene in Iron Man 3, in which an explosion on Air Force One results in 13 passengers – more than our hero can carry – falling without parachutes from 30,000 feet. Naturally, an ingenious solution presents itself, albeit one that necessitates a bit of teamwork in difficult circumstances. That the solution is somewhat improbable in no way diminishes the spectacle and tension – and the elation when it (just barely) succeeds. Again, we, the audience, want the hero to prevail and so there’s an emotional pay-off. That’s what makes it exciting, suspenseful and fun.
This is the kind of basic stuff that Synder doesn’t do well, or even seem to understand.
[ Edited. ]

Um.
I really enjoyed it…

What are we missing?
http://io9.gizmodo.com/batman-v-superman-spoiler-faq-of-justice-1767720335

[ Reads spoiler FAQ ]
Wow.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/batman-v-superman-spoiler-faq-of-justice-1767720335
Hmmmm . . . . Skimmed through bits and pieces . . . for a train wreck viewing variety of attendance, I do note that I have a matinee showing available nearby . . .
—Went to see Gods Of Egypt for just the same reason . . . Now as far as demonstrating utterly energetic cluelessness, that one managed to make the Marvel comics grasp of Norse mythology almost plausible . . .

. . . for a train wreck viewing variety of attendance, I do note that I have a matinee showing available nearby . . .
Oh, dear.
—Yes I bloody well did make the point of catching a matinee . . .
Sooo, as noted above, Prometheus gets 73% on Tomatoes because of cinematography by Ridley Scott.
In bvs, not only does the script make even less sense than even Prometheus, the cinematography sucks.
Therefore, what’s the point of making bvs, aside from blowing $250,000,000? Actually, that’s easy to answer: The only point of bvs is to be a standard production staff employment project, so that anyone named in the credits got to have a paycheck, where if any profit turns up, that’s a bonus.
Literally everything the FAQ says “wasn’t explained in the film!” was damn well explained in the film if you were paying any attention.
Ahhhh . . . Scuzzi? I was paying very close attention, just like the writer of the FAQ, and quite actually the FAQ is utterly accurate, now that I’ve read through it all.
. . . damn well explained?!?!?!!
‘k, to pick just one bit of total cinematic gibberish, where was there any explanation of that bit with what was supposed to be The Flash?—Particularly noting that one can only do such an I.D. by A) being a viewer of the movie, who B) has read a number of the comics . . . .