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I am so happy for the Suicide Squad reboot. They have James Gunn directing with Idris Elba playing Deadshot. The first one was one of the worse movies I have seen in the theater and they missed the point of the suicide squad. Here is hoping they fix the characterization of Waller in the new film.

I hope that James Gunn continues to make fun and wonderful movies.

I hope it kicks off with The Real Joker catching up with Jared Leto's in a 'Trevor, Trevor Slattery' style and horribly murderising him in the face.

In fact, just make that the movie. Four and half hour epic.

Marvel vs DC makes no sense to me either. At the moment I seem to be a DC guy on the comics front and Marvel when it comes to films, but those roles have been the exact opposite in the past, so...

Marvel for films.

DC for amination

2000ad, The Galaxy's Greatest Comic, for actual comics.

Yep. I grew up a mostly DC comics guy (with the exception of Spider-man and some X-Men). But it has been a rough couple of years for DC films for me.

I loved the Dark Knight and if they cut off the last 30 minutes (any after the final capture of the Joker), it might be my favorite superhero film. But the Marvel films have been fun. They can be light, deep, and anything in between. Guardians of the Galaxy have been very fun and thoughtful movies. They have been about traumatized individuals building a family unit and finding solace with each other. While making silly jokes, having rad laser fights, and saving the galaxy.

I hope that Gunn brings some of that energy to Suicide Squad.

I think one of the big issues with the last Squad movie is that for all their marketing played up 'bad guys doing good', they're really not that bad... There's very little in that movie that you couldn't see plenty of hero (or at least antihero characters) also doing.

I think this is most obvious in the choice to make all the grunt baddies look like monstrous eye-blobs. Essentially the same CGI army we've seen the Avengers, League, Guardians ect smash through half a dozen times. If, on the other hand, they'd been mind-controlled humans who would go back to their normal lives the moment Enchantress is stopped, and that's clearly spelled out, you have the perfect showcase for the fact that the Squad is composed of genuine villains.

That scene where Deadshot is up on the car mowing them down with a variety of cool guns? As it stands, that's a cool action sequence. But swap the eye-blobs for mind-controlled civvies and it becomes the mission statement of the squad writ small: to win, they'll do things that even the most edgy of heroes won't do, they'll happily murder scores of regular men and women if it means saving the day and their own skins. That simultaneously shows the Squad for what they are, explains why the various heroes aren't immediately rushing in to stop the mass destruction and makes the audience do a double-take in the same way the Church scene in Kingsman does: it's a brilliant action sequence, but also one that makes you feel horrible for enjoying it on a base level.

I'm hoping Gunn brings some of that to his take on them, rather than just copying the tone of GotG (which, ironically, the first movie tried and failed to do).

@Paradigm -- I'm not sure about that. If you make the SS more legitimately villainous, audiences have no one to identify with and root for. That path is really tricky to pull off without having people just not like your movie. To me, that wasn't the problem with it so much as the story and lack of a clear vision.

From 10,000 feet, SS was a nice concept, but neither Ayer nor the studio knew what they wanted it to be. This is was a film that got recut by a trailer company(!) with reshoots by Ayer after people responded to the GotG-ish trailer (which didn't really reflect the film they had at that time). To be fair to Ayer, it was also a rush job (I think he wrote it in a matter of weeks) and came on the heels of BvS, which had the studio panicking.

Anyway...everything sure seems a lot saner now. But it's funny how GotG and SS continue to be so entwined. They aren't even really the same thing other than sharing a team concept.

Gunn is really digging deep into DC lore with some of his character choices for SS...Ratcatcher, Polka-Dot Man, King Shark, and Peacekeeper? Wow. See, I always thought that that SS should have been more grounded and street-level, but Gunn is definitely not going overly grounded with this one. Sounds like he really has a vision, which is a very good thing.

Of the list, King Shark is fairly sane since he's basically interchangeable with Killer Croc for the most part and has some good source material to work with. The number of times I call him Killer Shark is.... yeah. I just like that he's a Green Lantern villain cause why not?

Another vote for having no interest in the "rivalry"; I grew up reading both. I leaned towards Marvel just because I loved the X-Men, but also read no shortage of DC stuff. Nowadays I barely even know what the imprint even is.

For me, I basically see the divide between Marvel and DC as being based upon what they're good at. I go to Marvel for the MCU and sooome games. I go to DC for animated shows and movies. I've never been able to really get into the comics much tbh, so that's an area of equal indifference to me.

Speaking for myself, I liked Suicide Squad. I hope Gunn's reboot does well--but I enjoyed the first outing.

 Ouze wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
That's certainly one way to interpret it. The other way would be that by rehiring him, they're saying that comments made a decade ago don't automatically reflect the character of a person now.

What has changed between then and now? This isn't any more true today than it was 6 months ago or whatever ago.


He should never have been fired in the first place, but what BCB is asking isn't exactly unreasonable either. Why was his twitter history so damaging to the brand 6 months ago, but not now?

I expect it was a knee-jerk reaction to avoid bad press. Then they realized they not only didn't have a plan for what to do to replace him, but had no idea what kind of director they could count on to direct GotG3 OTHER than him... and that rehiring him was really their only choice.

Either that or risk another JJ/RJ series disconnect...

 Vulcan wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
That's certainly one way to interpret it. The other way would be that by rehiring him, they're saying that comments made a decade ago don't automatically reflect the character of a person now.

What has changed between then and now? This isn't any more true today than it was 6 months ago or whatever ago.


He should never have been fired in the first place, but what BCB is asking isn't exactly unreasonable either. Why was his twitter history so damaging to the brand 6 months ago, but not now?

I expect it was a knee-jerk reaction to avoid bad press. Then they realized they not only didn't have a plan for what to do to replace him, but had no idea what kind of director they could count on to direct GotG3 OTHER than him... and that rehiring him was really their only choice.

Either that or risk another JJ/RJ series disconnect...

Ehhh...they got more bad press than they would have if they'd left him on.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
That's certainly one way to interpret it. The other way would be that by rehiring him, they're saying that comments made a decade ago don't automatically reflect the character of a person now.

What has changed between then and now? This isn't any more true today than it was 6 months ago or whatever ago.


He should never have been fired in the first place, but what BCB is asking isn't exactly unreasonable either. Why was his twitter history so damaging to the brand 6 months ago, but not now?

I expect it was a knee-jerk reaction to avoid bad press. Then they realized they not only didn't have a plan for what to do to replace him, but had no idea what kind of director they could count on to direct GotG3 OTHER than him... and that rehiring him was really their only choice.

Either that or risk another JJ/RJ series disconnect...

Ehhh...they got more bad press than they would have if they'd left him on.

Probably true, but lately Disney - and Hollywood in general - has become rather oversensitive whenever a Causehead of any sort criticizes them, deserved or not.

Definitely zero interest in a Marvel vs DC rivalry. Have actively spoken against such a stance at the comic shop I work at when people have asked which side I’m on.

I never really understood the rivalry myself. Both companies produced some REALLY good stuff... and both also produced some total drek. I'd be hard pressed to say one is definitely and qualitatively better than the other.

Now if we're going to talk about my personal preference, I read a lot more Marvel than DC, but that's strictly personal and subjective...

I can only hope that the SS reboot does the thing where they kill an entire stadium full of people to prevent a techno-virus from escaping.

That's exactly the sort of story that James Gunn should be using SS to tell, building from his Troma years, and it's exactly the sort of story that shows why SS exists.

Tribes be tribing. People just like to form tribes and that "us vs. them" mentality that comes from the tribes.

Even if it just is something redicilous like Marvel vs DC or football or something like that.

I've never understood the DC v Marvel superhero rivalry thing.
Because of the silly naming conventions they use, it took me years to work out that xforce, xmen and xmutants were all different stories. Or that Shazam and Captain Marvel were two different characters from different labels (NOT helped by the only exposure to the former being the 70s live action TV show, where he was constantly referred to as "Captain Marvel', when the show was listed in the guide as "Shazam".)

I'm more a Dredd and Rogue Trooper and the rest of the 2000AD stable fan, though. Keep your spandex special bus crowd. Gimme some of that old time "I am the law".

The Captain Marvel vs Shazam thing is actually a part of a three way rivalry originally and I think is a fun story. Captain Marvel was originally from a third party company whose name
I don’t recall. He was basically knock off Superman. DC did try sueing them, I don’t recall how that turned out but I think they lost. Eventually third party company went out of business and DC picked up the rights to Captain Marvel. They didn’t do a whole lot with him at one point, and accidentally let the Trademark rights lapse. Marvel snatched those up quick like, and did their own Captain Marvel character. So DC and Marvel both own Copyrights to different Captain Marvel characters, but Marvel owns the Trademark on Captain Marvel. So DC can call their character Captain Marvel inside any book or show he’s in, but they can’t title the comic or movie Captain Marvel. Woo IP law!

Incidentally I think DC is moving away from calling him Captain Marvel. In the recent new Shazam #1 they say his name is Shazam, but he can’t really tell anyone his name without transforming. They tease at him wanting to call himself Captain Marvel as a possible alternate name to get around that but he gets interrupted and they don’t actually say it. I don’t know if they resolve that in later issues because I did not care for the book and didn’t read past the first issue.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I can only hope that the SS reboot does the thing where they kill an entire stadium full of people to prevent a techno-virus from escaping.

That's exactly the sort of story that James Gunn should be using SS to tell, building from his Troma years, and it's exactly the sort of story that shows why SS exists.

I highly doubt something like that will happen. I imagine SS will continue to be a slightly darker version of Avengers.
We must remember this is a comic book tentpole movie. Deadpool revels in the irony of still being a comic book tentpole movie.
Something dark like Glass...no that won't do.

 AduroT wrote:
The Captain Marvel vs Shazam thing is actually a part of a three way rivalry originally and I think is a fun story. Captain Marvel was originally from a third party company whose name
I don’t recall. He was basically knock off Superman. DC did try sueing them, I don’t recall how that turned out but I think they lost. Eventually third party company went out of business and DC picked up the rights to Captain Marvel. They didn’t do a whole lot with him at one point, and accidentally let the Trademark rights lapse. Marvel snatched those up quick like, and did their own Captain Marvel character. So DC and Marvel both own Copyrights to different Captain Marvel characters, but Marvel owns the Trademark on Captain Marvel. So DC can call their character Captain Marvel inside any book or show he’s in, but they can’t title the comic or movie Captain Marvel. Woo IP law!

Incidentally I think DC is moving away from calling him Captain Marvel. In the recent new Shazam #1 they say his name is Shazam, but he can’t really tell anyone his name without transforming. They tease at him wanting to call himself Captain Marvel as a possible alternate name to get around that but he gets interrupted and they don’t actually say it. I don’t know if they resolve that in later issues because I did not care for the book and didn’t read past the first issue.

Fawcett comics originally owned Captain Marvel. The Superman lawsuit was settled out of court as the Golden Age ended and superheroes were kind of seen as a passing fad. Fawcett agreed to stop publishing the character entirely, which is where the trademark lapsed and Marvel was able to make their own character to claim the name. DC started licensing him as their line expanded in the Silver Age, but by then Marvel owned the name. They didn't actually own the character proper until the 90's.

My favorite part of all the IP nonsense is that it all somehow resulted in Marvel getting the rights to the Spawn character Angela. The somehow of that is a pretty awesome story of its own.

 Frazzled wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I can only hope that the SS reboot does the thing where they kill an entire stadium full of people to prevent a techno-virus from escaping.

That's exactly the sort of story that James Gunn should be using SS to tell, building from his Troma years, and it's exactly the sort of story that shows why SS exists.

I highly doubt something like that will happen. I imagine SS will continue to be a slightly darker version of Avengers.
We must remember this is a comic book tentpole movie. Deadpool revels in the irony of still being a comic book tentpole movie.
Something dark like Glass...no that won't do.

SS is about "the greater good", where unfortunate sacrifices need to be made in the field. SS definitely isn't the Avengers (that's the DCEU JLA) - SS is supposed to be the Punisher-like version of MCU GotG. Plus, DC Warner likes "dark and gritty" - that's why they desaturated Snyder's Donner-bright MoS into a murky Nolan-grey thing. It would be a huge missed opportunity to set SS apart from the rest, rather than having the characters and plots true to the comics.

All that is from the comics. Its relationship with moviemaking is at best tangential.

Warner Brothers is not going to go dark again. People were fired and they understand what the deal is, as evidenced by WW and AM.

Its going to be fantastical AM / GotG style, not the Watchmen. No stadiums of people being murderized, etc. etc. Aint no money in that.

 LunarSol wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
The Captain Marvel vs Shazam thing is actually a part of a three way rivalry originally and I think is a fun story. Captain Marvel was originally from a third party company whose name
I don’t recall. He was basically knock off Superman. DC did try sueing them, I don’t recall how that turned out but I think they lost. Eventually third party company went out of business and DC picked up the rights to Captain Marvel. They didn’t do a whole lot with him at one point, and accidentally let the Trademark rights lapse. Marvel snatched those up quick like, and did their own Captain Marvel character. So DC and Marvel both own Copyrights to different Captain Marvel characters, but Marvel owns the Trademark on Captain Marvel. So DC can call their character Captain Marvel inside any book or show he’s in, but they can’t title the comic or movie Captain Marvel. Woo IP law!

Incidentally I think DC is moving away from calling him Captain Marvel. In the recent new Shazam #1 they say his name is Shazam, but he can’t really tell anyone his name without transforming. They tease at him wanting to call himself Captain Marvel as a possible alternate name to get around that but he gets interrupted and they don’t actually say it. I don’t know if they resolve that in later issues because I did not care for the book and didn’t read past the first issue.

Fawcett comics originally owned Captain Marvel. The Superman lawsuit was settled out of court as the Golden Age ended and superheroes were kind of seen as a passing fad. Fawcett agreed to stop publishing the character entirely, which is where the trademark lapsed and Marvel was able to make their own character to claim the name. DC started licensing him as their line expanded in the Silver Age, but by then Marvel owned the name. They didn't actually own the character proper until the 90's.

My favorite part of all the IP nonsense is that it all somehow resulted in Marvel getting the rights to the Spawn character Angela. The somehow of that is a pretty awesome story of its own.

Angela is a different thing. Todd Mcfarlen (who made spawn) was all about creator control and ownership. So anyone who wrote a spawn story and invented a character owned that character. The guy who invented Angela was Neil Gaimen. Marvel approached Neil about using the character and Todd had a meltdown and told Neil that he was not allowed since Todd fething hates the big publishers. Neil said feth you Todd shes mine, and seamingly to spite Todd he actually sold the rights to the character to Marvel. So now Spawn cant even use her without Marvels permission.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also my favorite one is the great howard the duck switcheroo. Its amazing.

I think you can do well having them do bad things for good reasons. Heist and assassination stories can be more funny than dark but still keep the "bad guys forced to do good things" ideal.

I think its actually Secret Six, but I'd pay good money to see the trolling issue adapted where the team meticulously plans their attack on a penthouse suite Oceans style until Deadshot notices the target walked out on the balcony and snipes him.

 Frazzled wrote:
All that is from the comics. Its relationship with moviemaking is at best tangential.

Warner Brothers is not going to go dark again. People were fired and they understand what the deal is, as evidenced by WW and AM.

Its going to be fantastical AM / GotG style, not the Watchmen. No stadiums of people being murderized, etc. etc. Aint no money in that.

To be fair, the upcoming Joker film is probably going to be very dark. Although SS figures to be closer to 'four-quadrant' filmmaking than Joker.

Under the new boss, it seems like each franchise has some room to be its own thing...and even be different things within each franchise's own mini-universe, as evidenced by the Trench horror film that's in the works (spinning off Aquaman). Apparently, this is how WB is going back to a director-driven model -- by giving each creator his own corner of the DC universe to build and oversee according to their own vision. Wan has the Aqua-verse. Matt Reeves will have the Bat-verse. Jenkins has the Wonder-verse.

SS figures to be Gunn's corner. And I think he may go darker with it to distinguish it from GotG (and bust out a little since the Marvel stuff is more studio-driven). But I think there'll still be some balance to it, to your point. The first SS made a lot of money, so they'll be aiming for that again. And right now general audiences don't seem inclined to respond to something really grim.

 Col Hammer wrote:
Tribes be tribing. People just like to form tribes and that "us vs. them" mentality that comes from the tribes.

Even if it just is something redicilous like Marvel vs DC or football or something like that.

Put that way, I'd much rather have them fighting over trivial stuff like DC vs Marvel, or football vs baseball, instead of Democrat vs Republican slowly wrecking 'E Pluribus Unum'.

I think one of the big issues with the last Squad movie is that for all their marketing played up 'bad guys doing good', they're really not that bad... There's very little in that movie that you couldn't see plenty of hero (or at least antihero characters) also doing.

Indeed.

Always an issue with shared universe settings, but where the hell were any of the other heroes when the craziness started ?



They needed to have the villains do much more morally grey stuff to have the concept work.

And also do away entirely with the idea pushed that they were also some form of defense against Superman et al if they went rogue and did things the Govt. did not like.

With the possible exception of the Enchantress -- and that didn't work out too well did it eh ? --- don't really think that crazy girl with a bat, throws boomerangs & drinks beer or shoots guns really well would do a lot against Superman but MMV.

Enchantress was just bobbins. What was with the unconvincing body-popping in the background? Oh god I cannot stand that film.

Yes, Harley's derriere is quite a pleasing sight unto mine eyes. But that's not a two hour movie, and never should be.