It’s going to be playing here in Morris this weekend. And while I’m usually quick to get in line for escapist fantasy, I think I’m just going to sit this one out. I’m going to catch up on my grading, instead, which sounds like more fun.
The problem with this movie that I can see coming is that it’s a Zack Snyder film, and takes everything far too seriously. 300 was fun in the sense that the joke was on him — it went so far over the top that it became campily bad, and you could watch it for the meta-mockery of raging ahistorical libertarian machismo (and of course Snyder is an acolyte of Ayn Rand.) Battling ubermenschen is right in Snyder’s wheelhouse, and he’ll stuff it full of pseudo-seriousness and completely overlook any human story.
And that humanity is what I’m looking for. Let’s all remember these are all comic book stories — they can deal with big themes, but there should always be a bit of light-heartedness beneath it all. These are stories about people with impossible powers dancing about in brightly colored leotards, after all. A sense of humor is required, but Snyder doesn’t seem to have one.
Of the superhero movies I’ve enjoyed, there’s an inverse correlation between the scope of the story and the pleasure of experiencing them. Those Avengers movies with a giant cast and city-demolishing cosmic enemy? Thud. Boring. The fun movies? Deadpool, Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy? The magnitude of the drama has to be compensated for with sufficient silliness. Man of Steel was possibly the worst of a bad bunch because there wasn’t a scrap of joy in the whole thing — they might as well have painted a scowling face on a wrecking ball and filmed a day of it smashing stuff. It would have been just as entertaining.
So, yeah, I’ll choose to grade papers over watching self-absorbed Comic Book Guy pander to the oblivious hero-worshipping demographic — you know, the kinds of people who think critics ought to be raped for disliking the object of their idolatry. I’m pretty sure those papers will contain an occasional bit that will make me crack a smile — inadvertently or intentionally — so that sounds like a lot more fun than watching angry cartoons punch each other.
I am not a Superman fan, never have been, so this will be a skip for me. It will still end up on the Netflix queue at some point, because Mister will want to see it.
I liked the Avengers flicks for the most part, but I’m not a fan of Captain America, so that cut into things a bit.
I’m curious to know what (if you’ve seen it) you think of the Daredevil series? It’s smaller in scope, but trying to be more serious than silly
It would appear MovieBob agrees with you!
MovieBob Reviews: BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (Spoilers!)
I’m still going to go see it Friday, despite all the negative reviews. I really only care about scenes of Superman doing super-things, and those are usually pretty fun to watch regardless of how good the story is. Obviously, a nice story would help but…what can you do.
Also giving this one a pass. The movie was rated only 42% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes yesterday; today the rating is down to 33% and seems to continue to decline as each new batch of reviews is posted.
“…painted a scowling face on a wrecking ball and filmed a day of it smashing stuff.”
Sounds like a Hulk movie to me.
@Caine: I am a huge Superman fan, so this will be a skip for me. So that leaves…?
Superman is optimistic, and fun, and a little dorky. If Zack Snyder wants to make disaster movies, he can leave Superman out of it.
“Man of Steel was possibly the worst of a bad bunch because there wasn’t a scrap of joy in the whole thing…” QFT
I liked the Netflix Daredevil! The first season was better, but otherwise it was good.
I also really liked Jessica Jones.
I hate this trend of superhero movies being afraid to just be superhero movies, and not like “dark sci-fi action thrillers.”
DC in particular seems to think that anything sillier than Watchmen is a kiddie flick no one will watch.
I actually loved the first Avenger film. It was a great example of defense at any cost, defenders protecting Manhattan at any cost, smashing the living piss out of Manhattan in the process.
It recalls to my memories, the memory of reading with interest a transcript of a meeting of the joint chiefs of staff. The chairman at the time, discussing defending against “the red horde” (no shit, that was an actually used term at the time), promising to defend our nation – even if he has to destroy it to do so.
Whatthefuck kind of defense destroys that which is being defended? That makes the defender as bad as the attacker!
The general in question was instructed to retire or be reassigned to a junior position.
So, the Avengers defended Manhattan – by blocking the streets, destroying dozens of buildings, destroying communications and mass transit, but they won.
They won the victory of Pyrhus, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.” (or, he’d return home alone – without his army or enemy).
For those unfamiliar with that military history note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory
C’mon, Batman vs Jesus will be great!
The great thing about movies is that now you can wait a couple months and they’ll be free.
The only reason to pay for a movie is if you want to reward the director/hollywood for producing it, you want to see it on a big screen, or you simply can’t bear to wait.
I thought the first Avengers movie was good and was often very funny, and most of the Marvel movies since the first Iron Man have tried to ensure fun was a core element, though I do find the CGI battle scenes and relentless urban destruction to be repetitive and boring. I find Snyder’s movies to be utterly dull, dumb and often nonsensical (Superman can kill a bad guy by twisting his neck with his bare hands, even though half an hour of smashing the same guy’s head into concrete, steel and tarmac hasn’t left so much as a stiff muscle).
I’d rather waste a full weekend bingeing on Daredevil and Jessica Jones for the umpteenth time than pay to watch Batman v Superman in the cinema. That said, I’m told that it at least does consider the actual human consequences of those city-destroying superhero battles, which even the Marvel films have so far just ignored.
Someone should make a movie about the super-powered clean-up-crews who restore cities after superhero battles.
It could be a good gig for aging superheroes whose x-ray vision has deteriorated to uv, still useful for sanitizing.
I enjoy the Marvel movies because they still have a sense of fun and excitement about it. DC movies don’t seem to get that. Superman is overpowered for there to be any real conflict and Emo of Steel was a huge disappointment. I may see DoJ next weekend so my ticket won’t count for the opening weekend tally just so I can say if it really is that bad or if the critics are wrong.
@mudpuddles, the collateral damage done by superhero battles is the whole plot of the Civil War movie so they haven’t been ignoring it. It was also addressed in the Agents of Shield series several times.
@wzrd1 At least the Avengers tried to contain the fighting to just a few blocks and protect civilians. Manhattan is more than just the downtown area you know.
@Vivec:
See, I don’t get this. They seem to understand superheroes just fine with the latest batch of superhero shows (Arrow, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow). Gotham is fairly dark, but I guess that just goes with the idea of the creation of Batman.
Yeah, I gotta say that saying The Avengers destroyed New York to try and save it is wrong. Half of their fight was literally protecting people, getting them out of harms way, and trying to defend the places they were huddled in fear. It gave the solid impression that the destruction was *despite* the heroes best attempts, not because of it.
It is in no way comparable to how Man of Steel dealt with it. The *only* civilians that mattered in Man of Steel was Kal-El’s boner maker and the named extras we saw earlier in the movie. Everyone else was expendable,
Like, just as an example;
In Man of Steel, the nigh-invincible supergodman dodges a gas tanker and lets it explode against a building behind him, despite the fact he could easily have caught/taken the explosion on himself to little or no harm to minimize risk and damage to civilians. He just ducks, giant explosion on an inhabited building, and he goes on to keep fighting like a sociopathic monster.
Avengers, and even Age of Ultron (which i liked a lot less than the first but is still relevant) has heroes *putting themselves in the line of fire* to protect people, to save people, to keep them from harms way and get hurt themselves in the attempt of keeping others safe and alive. Entire scenes were dedicated to Captain America, one of the squishier heroes, ignoring safety for the sake of the innocent. If Cap had the same choice Kal-El had with that tanker, he would have taken it right to the face and been killed in the slight hope he might deflect the truck from hurting someone else.
That’s what a fucking super hero is. It’s not about powers, costume, bright colours or silly names. It’s willingly putting yourself in danger because you might be able to take it, while others definately will not.
Fuck Snyder, fuck the Man of Steel and its sequel(s). At no point is Superman even putting himself in harms way for someone else that doesn’t make his boner happy.
Further and ALSO (shit i get so man about nerd things sometimes but its either this or mad about the judge letting Jian Ghomeshi go free because “despite case law stating that we can’t let post-crime behaviour affect the trial well these women just didn’t act like victims yknow” and I cannot just can not fucking deal with this shit i need my escapist hero fantasies where a person will walk up to that judge and jian and just make justice be properly fucking done wheres frank castle frank WE NEED YOU), there is one aspect of BvS that could have worked.
Namely; Bruce Wayne thinking Superman is a threat and monster because of his uncaring battles against other montsters. BUT, from what I’ve heard through the grapevine of reviews and such, that is a non-starter because he’s basically WRONG SO WRONG HOW DUMB OF YOU TO DOUBT JESUS GOD SUPERMAN EVER and led around by the nose by the villain of the movie to feel that way.
just… just fuck that. There was a good possibility of conflict there. An examination of what it means to wield supreme power in a world of mortals. Of responsibility to use those powers to minimize conflict, not blow it up in an earsplitting, migraine enducing coma of a fight sequence.
y’know, I wouldn’t be so mad at Man of Steel if they’d shown Superman trying. I don’t even care if he succeeds. The only thing, the single and unique characteristic, is that he just try. That’s it. Give it your best shot, Kal-El. Even if you fail, even if you are overwhelmed by the events, unable to save everyone, watching civilians die horribly because of your lack of experience or just power in the face of these odds, you need to fucking *try*. Trying and failing isn’t a bad thing. Because it means that you give a shit, that you aknowledge the need, that you have a moral fucking compass that works. Because if you try and fail, that is still an interesting story. If you try and fail, it gives more weight to that finale with Zod in the train station. It doesn’t make it look like you only care about humans if you have to see them die, and it gives more weight to the choice of killing Zod outright.
Because you tried to save people and failed. And it means that you now have a choice of continuing to try and fail against this power that is greater than you, or you make the choice of killing one to save millions.
Otherwise it comes off as “ehn I can’t be bothered anymore lets just kill zod and end the movie”
@16
I was more referring to like, the Nolanverse batman movies. Edgy realistic “modernized” superhero stories are not a thing I like.
For the record, I’m really not a fan of anything Marvel has made recently either.
Regardless, yeah. I was brought up with a lot of like faded old comics where it was goofy and hyper idealistic, with adverts for hostess fruit pies on the back cover. The closest there’s been to the kind of Superhero movies I’d like to see would be like, Batman Forever or Batman and Robin. Or, y’know, the Adam West one.
Chigau@#15: Someone should make a movie about the super-powered clean-up-crews who restore cities after superhero battles.
Or the doctors. Medcins Sans Superpowers.
No. A story, even a comic book superhero one doesn’t have to have a bit of light heartedness – It only needs to be good , and perhaps internally consistent.
Do you also have the same requirement for sci-fi and fantasy? – every bit as impossible as people with impossible powers ?Ghosts/monsters/demons are as impossible as superheroes – why not state horror movies must have a bit of light-heartedness ? Cthulhu , for e.g.?
Comic books are a medium – they can tell any type of story.
I’d be open to the idea of Superhero movies that aren’t lighthearted, but I’ve never seen a “dark” superhero movie I’ve wanted to watch twice.
chigau,
Something very close to that may happen; there’s talk about a TV version of Damage Control.
Tashiliciously Shriked @17:
Especially since they were fighting to protect the entire world from an alien invasion that was starting in New York. They were trying to keep the devastation limited to New York.
I hate they’ve mashed two universes together. Metropolis and Gotham are altenate versions of our NYC. To mash them together to have B-man fight S-man is confounding.
The only, minimal, consolation is that Bats is angry at Supes for all the damage Supes and friends did in MoS.
With the soon-to-appear, “Damage Control”, series, it seems the producers are trying to cope with the ramifications of their superhero’s exploits.
slithey tove @27:
You realize that Superman and Batman have been living in the same world, which has Metropolis, Gotham, and New York City all as separate cities on the Eastern Seaboard since the Silver Age of comic books, right? North America is a physical larger continent in the DCU to allow the fictional cities most superheroes live in to exist side-by-side with real American cities like Boston, New York, and DC.
@9 Vivec –
This is learned behavior on their part. The movies that they’ve made that have made them tons of money recently are Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel. The boondogles that they’ve lost money on (or at least didn’t make enough to justify their budgets) were Superman Returns and Green Lantern.
You’d think they’d realize that since Marvel does really well with movies that straddle the line between light-hearted and dark they could lean into the light-hearted a bit more. But they seem to think that stuff only works for Marvel and that DC characters have to be treated differently.
(The TV wing of DC Entertainment has figured this out much better recently, but look at how much time it took them. 10 years of Smallville plus 2 years of Arrow plus a handful of Flash episodes before they realized they could just trust their audience to have fun with it instead of trying to lean into how dark and serious it is.)
Personally, I’m not a fan of superhero’s having a shared setting either, although its moreso for the whole “Why let a badass normal in a fancy suit struggle to fight crime when there’s real supers who could curb stomp your average batman villain in ten minutes” deal.
I also remain wholly unconvinced by this modern “Well batmans actually better than everyone else because he’s /really really really smart/” line to try and make him a viable alternative to the other supers.
I much prefer batman existing in a standalone “otherwise normal” world, rather than having to turn him from a good detective and martial artist to “supergenius chuck norris who could beat every other superhero in a fight because planning“
Ugh, I think the nolanverse films are legitimately the biggest example of dissonance between me and critics I can think of. I can’t stand those movies at all.
My ideal batman throws batarangs in spandex while fighting 1940’s mobsters and silly villains – the animated batman would be a fair bit closer.to what I’d like.
If anyone has not seen the video of “300” recut to Madonna’s “Vogue” it is 1000% worth checking out, more so for the fact that it probably horrifies Snyder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_NrUD1iqME
Ah no microraptor – Bats & Supes have shared the same world since All Star Comics 3 in 1940, appearing together in All Star Comics 7 a year later. And Bats & robin were regulars on the Adventures of Superman radio show starting early in 1945.
One of my problems with DC of late is that they’ve switched Batman and Superman’s personalities/role/underlying metaphor. It started with Frank Miller’s Dark Knight, but it keeps up and is in the movies now.
It all comes down to this weird idea that Batman is “relatable” and therefore interesting, while Superman is “ideal” and therefore boring. I don’t even want to get into why those equivalencies are false, but I think that’s backwards.
There’s this weird attitude that if somebody does enough pushups, they could be Batman. But that’s completely false. Nobody can be Batman. Not because it’s fiction, but because Batman is this manifest of will and focus that is truly beyond everybody. Batman doesn’t adjust his worldview or adapt, he forces the world to change to him. The very fact that you care about Batman means you lack the focus to be Batman. Don’t get me wrong, I love Batman when he’s depicted well, but he isn’t a “goal” or something we should want to exist.
Meanwhile Superman, he’s not this unreachable lofty goal. He’s just a farmboy who wants to do the right thing. He doesn’t always get it right and sometimes his idea of what is right comes into conflict not just with what is wrong, but other’s idea of what is right. In short, he struggles to do the right thing, and not because of a sense of vengeance or anything, but because he feels there is a moral obligation to do what you can to make the world a better place. The only difference between him and any other “good” person is that he was born with super powers. Which really isn’t that different from normal anyway. People are born with all kinds of differences and we can all bring that to the table. Some of us need more help than others, but what really matters is the actions we take. Superman isn’t unreachable, he’s a very achievable goal. Do what you can to make the world better.
But what’s happened is writers, like Frank Miller, are so incapable of seeing a being with that level of power and imagining that they wouldn’t turn out to be oppressive, power hungry maniacs. They can’t imagine being able to punch a tank in half and not using the power to enforce your will on others. So Superman becomes this fascist force of destruction, while Batman, whose founding principal is to wage war on crime (it’s his original oath. Not to solve anything, just to fight) somehow becomes the champion of the underdog.
It’s a weird reflection of modern America. Somehow, the billionaire who doesn’t believe people deserve second chances is the hero, and the farmer/reporter who works for a living exposing corrupt businessmen is the villain.
@Vivec
But there are plenty of dark comic books that involve superheroes that can be read twice (even when I actively dislike them as a book – like Millers Dark Knight returns)
I’m not a comic book expert, but I could never stand (tv/movie) Superman so I’m skipping this movie just as I skipped those before it.
In Batman vs Superman, I’m a Batman fan all the way, but not enough to watch the actual Batman vs Superman movie.
@35
I think you misunderstood me. I hate “dark” superhero fiction, movie or otherwise. My response to reading watchmen or DKR was “ugh, I’ll trade that back for something else please.”
busterggi:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/batman-superman-movie/
“This is peculiar, because Batman and Superman have by far the longest-running bromance in the history of DC Comics.”
Batman and Superman have appeared together a lot.
@Vivec
Ok I meant that the craft behind Dark Knight returns can be appreciated (or wtatchmen)- even if you hate dark superhero stories (or as in my case hate the Miller version of Batman).
I can also think of Kingdom come (And Irreedemabe and Empire ) by Waid .
I assume you dont like Vertigo then (or perhaps current Image) and if so , you missed quite a bit (Lucifer by Carey!)
I assure you that if I forewent experiencing media I don’t enjoy – no matter how well made – I haven’t missed out on anything.
The problem with DC being too serious and dark is not limited to the movies. The comics have been like that for years. Sybil Pandemic does a good job of summarizing the problem. It was a problem with Marvel too, as seen in the atrocious Civil War, but they finally seem to have figured out that serious is not mature and lighthearted is not childish.
And the notion that Batman can beat Superman is total bullshit, no matter how much he plans. Everyone keeps saying “Batman wins because he has Kryptonite and is really rich and smart! and knows how to plan!” But that description applies to Lex Luthor just as easily. If being rich and smart and having access to Kryptonite and knowing how to plan guaranteed victory against Superman, Luthor would have done it by now. It also hinges on the idea that Superman is just a dumb jock who will blindly charge at Superman like a rhino. Again, if Superman was THAT dumb, Luthor would have defeated him by now. It’s not just Batman who knows Superman’s weaknesses: SUPERMAN KNOWS THEM TOO, and he knows how to compensate for them! He’s not going to charge blindly at a foe with Kryptonite. The reason Superman will win was summed up in Guards, Guards: In order for Batman to win, he would have to be lucky dozens of times. Superman only has to be lucky once.
If you want to see how a fight between a strong guy and a weak-but-skilled guy should go (i.e. the opposite of what the Batman fanboys claim), here’s Luffy fighting Usopp.
Petrander @ 3, thanks for the link.
I saw some of the 1948 Superman serial movies last night. I looked up the date, because in the first one, there was an incredibly-modern situation. Jor-El was trying to convince the high council of Krypton that their planet was in danger, and getting nowhere. Despite the rumbling volcano and the roof shedding plaster, they just scoffed and denied. It was global warming in black and white.
That’s part of the Superman mythos, him being human, or trying to be human, despite his powers. Two hours of invulnerability and building-smashing is not what I want to see. Put it this way, my usual question is why Superman has all those bulging muscles – if he is superstrong, he could be built like a pencil and still kick ass. Oh, I am sure the good people at DC have some excuse.
I hope that the contrived fight in this movie is Batman trying to depose the alien god, but I’m also sure they’ll mess that up, too. Seeing a Batplane in the trailer makes me think they are mixing up the things to take seriously and the things to laugh about. But that’s DC all over.
Walked out after an hour of nothing happening. If a film maker needs that much time to spool up, and I’m a really, really patient guy with very, very low standards for movie entertainment, then screw her/him. What a thundering dud! I walked home in the rain while my better half switched theaters to watch BGW2 and offered me the car! BTW, that theater was packed…not so batman vs superman…tons of seats in 3D.
Bet they lose big money. I wouldn’t watch it on Netflix.
So… I just got back home from seeing the film. I saw it in (real) Imax 2D. I’m getting started on drafting a review for it for my blog, but I wanted to say this:
In short, I am immensely frustrated by how this movie had so much good executed so poorly.
Most of the acting was honestly phenomenal. By everyone. I liked Gadot, Cavill, Affleck, Adams, Lane, Fishburne, Irons, Hunter… just about everyone (the only exception here is Eisenberg, and I didn’t hate him… I’m just not sure about his Lex Luthor). I love that they actually put some emphasis on Bruce’s mom this time around, since she was always basically ignored in the comics and in previous Batman films. I felt the story was actually good. I was even relatively impressed with the script.
Wonder Woman, in her very brief time in the movie, was so amazing that I am seriously ecstatic about her solo film. I’m convinced it’s going to be incredible. Gal Gadot was so good as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman that… well… her film just can’t get here soon enough. Her brief time on the screen was practically worth the price of admission by itself.
I hate Ben Affleck, so I was surprised to find that I thought he did an amazing job, almost as if he was born to play Bruce Wayne/Batman.
But the problem here is, at the end of the day, Zack Snyder. He is not the director for the DC Cinematic Universe, and I hope WB and DC realize that sooner rather than later.
It’s been announced that, maybe in August, there’s going to be an extended edition released with at least 30 minutes of extra footage, if not more. It certainly felt like at least 30 minutes of film was missing, and not in a good way. At least two scenes felt as if they were end credits scenes just randomly thrown into the middle of the film. There was no transition between scenes, and thus very little cohesion, and there’s multiple scenes lacking context that I’m willing to bet have that context in the removed footage.
Anyways… that’s my shorthand review… the long-hand review will be on my blog once I’ve got it written.
Oh… and a warning for those of you who thought Man of Steel was dark and bleak:
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice makes Man of Steel look like a G-rated animated rom-com made by Disney for children. I’m okay with that, personally, because while I absolutely enjoy the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the lighter, more fantastical vibe of those movies, I also like darker aesthetics and absolutely loved Nolan’s Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. But if you aren’t okay with that, well… this is your warning.
And of course I fucked up the formatting… let’s fix it…
———————————————————
Wonder Woman, in her very brief time in the movie, was so amazing that I am seriously ecstatic about her solo film. I’m convinced it’s going to be incredible. Gal Gadot was so good as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman that… well… her film just can’t get here soon enough. Her brief time on the screen was practically worth the price of admission by itself.
———————————————————
That’s better…
Also, the Preview button isn’t working…
I can already foresee that DC’s Justice League movie will be a disaster. The grim, brooding, Nolanized tone of the recent DC movies has already proven to be a jarring mismatch with Superman – imagine how poorly it will fit with the inherent silliness of a crossover-based team of superheroes. Either they’ll have to stick with Nolanization, or they’ll have to suddenly adopt a more lighthearted tone that doesn’t fit with the previous films. Either way, they’ve backed themselves into a corner.
Man of Boredom vs. The Angst Knight
…no thanks.
deepak shetty wrote:
Any movie franchise that expects to last beyond a single movie should be able to play more than just a single note over and over again. There just needs to be a little variety beyond growling, dark, brooding superhero versus growling, dark, brooding villain in a gray, hyperrealistic world. I’m not saying they have to go the Marvel way of using heroes wisecracking to lighten the mood, but they need to introduce some variety. The Dark Knight at least had a little through the Joker, but every other movie has forgettable characters doing and saying forgettable things.
I’m from Detroit, where it was filmed. I may go see a matinee next week and watch it for the scenery. Oh look! I know that deli!
Hey, that’s not a museum; it’s the downtown library!
I used to take my girl scout troop to that camp!
(I tried to post this yesterday but I wouldn’t go through. I put some effort into it, so here we go again.)
Superheroes have been “serious business” since the origin of the genre. Batman was a four colour version of the pulp magazine heroes of the ’30s like the Avenger and the Spider. The Avenger could easily have been a comic book character given his ability to reshape his face so he could look like anyone.(DC did in fact have a short lived Avenger series in the mid ’70s, drawn by the great Jack Kirby.)
I think a lot of people get their idea about superheroes supposedly being light hearted escapism from the effects of the mid ’50s panic about the negative effects of comics on kids, and the subsequent introduction of the Comics Code Authority, which heavily limited what could be shown. The strictures put in place led to things like the increasingly silly Superman stories of the ’50s and ’60s, where Lois Lane has to deal with Superman turned into a baby, or Batman and Superman try to one up each other to impress a princess. Ironically the ’60s Batman show, which shows a lot of influence of that era, came along when the writers started to move the character in a more serious direction again.
Having said that I think it can go too far the other way. I sort of drifted away from superhero comics after the “Mutant Massacre” storyline in X Men in the mid ’80s. The body count and the fact the X Men never seemed to win a lasting victory tired me. And things only got worse for superheroes in the “Extreme ’90s!”, the era of characters like Spawn, and artists like Rob “50 pouches for every costume, and 50 teeth in every mouth!” Liefeld.
If anybody cares, my spoiler-free review is up… (also, I hope this is okay, PZ. Feel free to delete if not…)
@ck, the Irate Lump
Most movie franchises, in fact, do play the same note.
There is a difference between playing the same note and playing the same motif, slightly modified.
Because of this thread,
(and because Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman)
when I went to the cinema this afternoon, I saw this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_(2015_film)
I’m glad I did.
Yeah, I want to go see that one myself.
Superheroes have been “serious business” since the origin of the genre
But even when they were serious, they still had some levity to them. There were jokes and comic relief characters. One of those heroes from the origin of the genre starts out trying to kill himself, then ends up defeating the bad guy by forcing him to perform basic arithmetic and sticking a dunce cap on his head when he gets the problem wrong. Stories need both ups and downs, because as Heraclitus observed, the two extremes help to define one another. If we’ve seen the characters at their highs, their lows are more profound, and vice versa. For a good example of this, check out my favorite manga, One Piece. The main characters have all had to endure tragedy and hardship in their backstories, but that makes the joy and camaraderie they have now more moving and poignant. By the same token, Luffy’s meltdown after the Battle of Marineford is extremely painful to watch because we’ve seen Luffy at his best and have a real sense of what he’s lost, and when he is able to overcome his grief and resolve to reunite his crew, it’s truly moving in a way Christopher Nolan’s bland angst-fest cannot hope to match. I was bored stiff when Krypton was destroyed, but I couldn’t hold back my tears when the Going Merry went down.
@tbtabby…
When you say “Christopher Nolan’s bland angst-fest”, are you talking about Man of Steal and Batman v Superman? ‘Cause those are Zack Snyder, not Christopher Nolan. Nolan did The Dark Knight Trilogy. He produced Man of Steal, but decided to not be involved with the rest after Snyder basically ignored his attempts at producing.