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I'm really looking forward to Suicide Squad, probably as Snyder and Nolan have had little to do with it.

Also helps its obviously based in part on the new 52 version, which I've really enjoyed.. the suggestion seems to be that Joker is the new 52 version as well.. which if accurate has me very stoked, really big fan of him in Death of the Family and Endgame.

Margot Robbie looks kinda hot but I'm just not that into comic book movies anymore.

Whether it was one too many bad Ryan Reynolds movies, one too many bad Snyder films, or just one too many marvel-will-they-ever-end movies, I can't say. I'm just burned out, I have no love left for the spandex special bus kids.

It helps to stop thinking of Superhero films as a genre and more as a method to tell a genre story.

EG, Cap 2 is a political action-thiller in the vein of a Harrison Ford film, Ant-Man is a heist movie ala Oceans 11.

Just because a story features characters who were once drawn with speech bubbles doesn't mean that it's all the same stories.

 chromedog wrote:
Margot Robbie looks kinda hot but I'm just not that into comic book movies anymore.

Whether it was one too many bad Ryan Reynolds movies, one too many bad Snyder films, or just one too many marvel-will-they-ever-end movies, I can't say. I'm just burned out, I have no love left for the spandex special bus kids.

I'm with you, mostly. I grew up reading these comics and I never could have imagined they would have made so many of these movies, and now that they have, I never would have imagined I would have gotten sort of tired of them. Between those last boring looking Spider-Mans I didn't go see, to the awful looking Fantastic Four I didn't see, to the BvS I did see and it was kinda meh... I've just sort of had enough. I love X-men but this new upcoming one leaves me feeling as disinterested as BvS. It's just too damn many.

That being said, there are some exceptions. I loved Deadpool, and I'm really, really looking forward to Suicide Squad.

Didn't look too bad, but I don't think I like Will Smith as Deadshot. He's too... Recognizable to me as just being Will Smith I guess. I mean it's one thing when he's playing a random dude in a movie. Seems different when he's playing a guy I know and have seen done by others. Will have to see more of the movie.

 AduroT wrote:
Didn't look too bad, but I don't think I like Will Smith as Deadshot. He's too... Recognizable to me as just being Will Smith I guess. I mean it's one thing when he's playing a random dude in a movie. Seems different when he's playing a guy I know and have seen done by others. Will have to see more of the movie.

To be fair - to a lot of us, me included, he is playing some random dude - I only recognised Harley, the Joker and Batman from the trailers and only know the other characters names as they are name tagged in the trailer and/or explained in various youtube vids.

Will Smith is usually good - so that's a plus......

 Ouze wrote:

 chromedog wrote:
Margot Robbie looks kinda hot but I'm just not that into comic book movies anymore.

Whether it was one too many bad Ryan Reynolds movies, one too many bad Snyder films, or just one too many marvel-will-they-ever-end movies, I can't say. I'm just burned out, I have no love left for the spandex special bus kids.

I'm with you, mostly. I grew up reading these comics and I never could have imagined they would have made so many of these movies, and now that they have, I never would have imagined I would have gotten sort of tired of them. Between those last boring looking Spider-Mans I didn't go see, to the awful looking Fantastic Four I didn't see, to the BvS I did see and it was kinda meh... I've just sort of had enough. I love X-men but this new upcoming one leaves me feeling as disinterested as BvS. It's just too damn many.

That being said, there are some exceptions. I loved Deadpool, and I'm really, really looking forward to Suicide Squad.

Exactly. I hit terminal burnout some time ago.

From David Ayer's Twitter...should put the reshoots rumormongering to rest, although I know it won't....

#SuicideSquad “reshoots for humor” is silly. When a studio loves your movie and asks what else you want, go for it! #ThanksWB #moreaction

Unlike most of you lot, I DIDN'T grow up reading the adventures of the spandex special bus kids. I've read a grand total of 1 issue each of superman, spiderman and cap (the latter actually helped me recognise one character from winter soldier - as falcon WAS in that cap comic. A team up).

My favourite batman stories are Judgement on Gotham, Vendetta on Gotham and Die Laughing which I read despite batman being in them.

I have zero knowledge of Avengers outside of the movies - same goes for X-men. I have no idea who deadpool is nor do I care to (and I really don't like Ryan Reynolds' acting - ditto for Snyder's direction. Watchmen was written as unfilmable - Snyder made a film version that was unwatchable).

I grew up reading 2000AD. Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Nemesis the warlock. All these good things. I'd much rather see another Urban Dredd film than any of the superhero stuff that's coming.

And your point about suicide squad is....escaping me....?

I have not watched a superhero movie at the cinema since Heath as the Joker, and this makes me want to do so again. Def the highlights look to be Leto and Robbie

 chromedog wrote:
I'd much rather see another Urban Dredd film than any of the superhero stuff that's coming.

Well, I'd also love to see a Dredd sequel, FWIW. That was a super solid movie. I don't have very much familiarity with the source comic, I don't think it got much penetration here when I was a teenager. The only non-American comics I really remember being easily accessible when I was that age were Tank Girl and Death's Head. My memory could be failing me.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Oh come on! A mulligan? The critics, collectively, just gave it a pass? No... that's not how it works.

That is very much how it works. Critics themselves will describe this. Thing is, when you interview the creators, and develop professional and even personal relationships with him, as most critics will do, it can effect how readily you'll turn on one of their films if it isn't very good. You're more inclined to show a little goodwill to the maker.

M Night Shyamalan gives a good example. Signs was a complete nonsense of a movie, slow burning tension totally released with a ridiculous conclusion. It scored 74% among critics, because critics were all hyped up about the guy after The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable - suddenly that stupid ending was okay because the movie was really about faith. Then there was The Village, which had the same slow build of suspense, and then another really stupid ending, now the rottentomatoes critics score is 43% so support is going but there were still plenty of defenders of that film though - it didn't matter that it made no sense, because it was a parable, or about American's innocence or some other nonsense. It wasn't until Lady in the Water, which was admittedly an even worse film, that critics finally gave up on this guy, and reviews plumetted to 24%.

Marvel's previous track record meant that even though AoU was a mediocre, paint by numbers affair, it got pretty strong reviews. But if Civil War is equally bland (unlikely) then you'll start to see a real impact.


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 gorgon wrote:
Contrast this with BvS, which only had the somewhat controversial Man of Steel preceding it and a director that some critics clearly don't like. From a strategic standpoint (with the situation being that they're trying to estabish their own brand), it would have been better for WB to have made a simpler, more family-friendly romp with an unoffending director rather than a dark, TDKR-inspired film from Snyder. They could have saved that stuff for later after they had some capital built up.

Yeah, and the other part I forgot to add in my response to you in the other thread is that critics are far from immune to all the talk that gets thrown around during production. Indeed they're more vulnerable because that gossip is a part of their everyday jobs.

When production is smooth and untroubled then critics are likely to see that in the final picture. But if there was a lot of backroom battles over money, control, or plot elements, then critics will be primed to see those faults up on the big screen.

Both BvS and AoU are very flawed movies, BvS because its pulling in about four different directions, AoU because it had no direction to pull in at all. But the critical response to the two films were wildly different, and not just for the reason I just gave, but also for all the reasons gorgon mentioned in the other post, and also because AoU was following on from some good movies, while BvS was following on from MoS.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Compel wrote:
It helps to stop thinking of Superhero films as a genre and more as a method to tell a genre story.

This is a good point. I thought I was bored with superhero films after the two Avengers films and Winter Soldier left me kind of meh, it turns out I'm just bored with Joss Whedon movies. I know The Winter Soldier isn't a Whedon movie, but there were enough Whedon influenced moments in there to take me out of what was otherwise a pretty enjoyable thriller. I thought at the time it was the superhero things that bothered me, but it turns out it was more the Whedon elements.

BvS, for all its faults, at least felt very different. I've since watched Ant Man, and that film was really fun, it was a heist movie with superhero trappings, like you said.

That's the appeal of Suicide Squad to me. I love movies like The Dirty Dozen, a bunch of misfits pressed in to government service. This looks like that on crack, in the very best way.

 TheMeanDM wrote:
And your point about suicide squad is....escaping me....?

I'll explain again.

To me, It looks like just another comic book movie about a fringe group of characters nobody but a handful of comic enthusiasts know about.
EVERYONE knows who superman, batman and most of the "big names" in the spandex short bus are. WTF are these societal rejects meant to be?
They mean about as much to me as Citizen snork or the traitor general probably mean to you (or probably less).

The trailer neither inspired me to want to see it, nor to investigate more closely what it was about. It may as well be another car chase, heist or overblown fantasy "epic" to me.




Keep the arguments polite, that's rule 1. motyak

 gorgon wrote:
As I said in the BvS thread, I don't think there's a conspiracy at work. I think there's a mix of factors that add up, and that the BvS filmmakers provided enough material for the negativity to stick. (A version of Dakka's own "Play better next time"?)

What I also think is that framing has a lot to do with how we view reality, and that critics are no more immune to this than anyone else. Especially when we're talking about a sequel and the concept of a cinematic universe. AoU had a lot of weight and momentum behind it from a largely successful Phase 2, as well as familiarity with the cast, characters, and (importantly) what to expect from a Marvel film.

I don't think AoU is a good film, and I think it unravels as soon as you start looking closely and pulling on threads. But Marvel has established a very familiar, strong brand for itself, and I think critics viewed the film through that frame and focused on the film's strengths rather than picking at its weaknesses.

Contrast this with BvS, which only had the somewhat controversial Man of Steel preceding it and a director that some critics clearly don't like. From a strategic standpoint (with the situation being that they're trying to estabish their own brand), it would have been better for WB to have made a simpler, more family-friendly romp with an unoffending director rather than a dark, TDKR-inspired film from Snyder. They could have saved that stuff for later after they had some capital built up.

I was expecting a "No of course not! That would just be silly!" response, not this.

Look... BvS wasn't a good movie. It wasn't terrible by any means, and was certainly worth seeing at the cinema (I didn't feel cheated out of my money, that's for sure), but the film feels like a movie that's had it's spine cut out. It jumps from scene to scene, the pacing is all off, and the director has nothing but contempt for the characters he is portraying (he's basically said as much, and the way he misused Jimmy Olsen is a great testament to that). It also didn't help that the second trailer ruined the end of the film.

But there really are people out there saying that Disney is paying critics off to trash it. Not only is that ludicrous, because were it true and Disney got caught their name would be mud, as would every critic who took a dime, but BvS doing poorly doesn't help Marvel. A rising tide raises all ships, so BvS doing well would have only helped Marvel.

As far as AoS goes, it has flaws of its own. The director saw that he had to replace all the dialogue with quips, making it a serious movie that none of the characters take seriously. It also had pacing problems - we go from Ultron being born and stealing the sceptre to suddenly he has super-robot body and is recruiting the twins... umm... where's the 15-20 mins of film that established that? Worse, unlike BvS, we know that there was nothing filmed in between those two parts - no 3 hour version here like we will get with BvS - and that's terrible from a story perspective. Thor's journey towards the middle is badly explained, but on the bright side what we got was a thousand times better than the original scene which was even more confusing and less useful (if you can say that). I distinctly remember my feeling during the big opening fight scene of AoU. I flashed back to Yahtzee's review of one of the Smash Brothers games (IIRC), where he said something along the lines of you try to convince yourself that you're having as much fun as you thought you'd have, but you're not. Same applied to AoU throughout most of the start and the end.


But at least Ultron's plan made sense:

Ultron want world peace.
Humans create war.
Kill all humans.
No humans = world peace

... which is classic Ultron.

What was the Joker, sorry, the Riddler... sorry Zuckerberg's plan? Kidnap Superman's mother and... umm... profit? Make his own LOTR Cave Troll and umm... destroy the world? What the hell was he trying to do?

 chromedog wrote:

 TheMeanDM wrote:
And your point about suicide squad is....escaping me....?

I'll explain again.

To me, It looks like just another comic book movie about a fringe group of characters nobody but a handful of comic enthusiasts know about.
EVERYONE knows who superman, batman and most of the "big names" in the spandex short bus are. WTF are these societal rejects meant to be?
They mean about as much to me as Citizen snork or the traitor general probably mean to you (or probably less).

The trailer neither inspired me to want to see it, nor to investigate more closely what it was about. It may as well be another car chase, heist or overblown fantasy "epic" to me.

Keep the arguments polite, that's rule 1. motyak

Thing is the excellent trailers are showing a dark but fun film which is appealing to lots of my non comic book fans - the two recent trailers have been stylish, clever, funny, plenty of action and quips and that's going to help get your general audience.

It does not really matter if you have never heard of the characters - I hadn't but we get enough of an idea from:

he's Deadshot - he shoots people
he's a crocodile - he eats people
He burns people
she's just crazy
your possessed by a witch

They are deniable - if they fail we thow them under a bus

Job done!

Translation - it's the dirty dozen/Tarantino film with supers

People will get that - it should work It will either appeal to you as that - or it won't................

Contrast this with BvS, which only had the somewhat controversial Man of Steel preceding it and a director that some critics clearly don't like. From a strategic standpoint (with the situation being that they're trying to establish their own brand), it would have been better for WB to have made a simpler, more family-friendly romp with an unoffending director rather than a dark, TDKR-inspired film from Snyder. They could have saved that stuff for later after they had some capital built up.

Except they didn't do either - they made a mistake IMO by focussing only on "lets have sups and batman fight" and then trying to crowbar in a reason for them to do so - throw in a nonsensical plot with a miscast main villain and its a mess.

They had a brilliant main cast for the "heroes" - just needed a decent plot / Villain to make a whole.

For me they were certainly not "more intelligent" or somehow "more ambitious" than a Fox or Marvel film any more than Man of Steel was (Or I would argue the Nolan series).

I always get sad when people complain about there being too many Superhero films. I mean, there has been an endless tide of Romantic Comedies for just about the entire history of Cinema, why do we not hear the despairing cries about how many of those there are? :p

 Charles Rampant wrote:
I always get sad when people complain about there being too many Superhero films. I mean, there has been an endless tide of Romantic Comedies for just about the entire history of Cinema, why do we not hear the despairing cries about how many of those there are? :p

It's a bit of a nonsense complaint, isn't it? I mean so many of them aren't even the same genre, they just have comic book origins.

I'm rather excited for this, and Leto as Joker does seem to work, and I'll even forgive the directors(?) for making him have the tattoos and whatnot, since the actor seems to fit the role so well. Not sure if he'll beat Ledger in my books, but I'll only know when I watch the movie I guess.

Also, the only two people I didn't know of are Diablo and the one possessed by a witch (Sorceress?) without reading a single comic book. Although I'm afraid I only heard of Will Smith, and Ben Affleck if we're including batman I suppose. None of the others ring a bell.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Charles Rampant wrote:
I always get sad when people complain about there being too many Superhero films. I mean, there has been an endless tide of Romantic Comedies for just about the entire history of Cinema, why do we not hear the despairing cries about how many of those there are? :p

It's a bit of a nonsense complaint, isn't it? I mean so many of them aren't even the same genre, they just have comic book origins.

Not to mention I grew up with either TERRIBLE super hero films like Superman 2. Or just had Batman from 89 that was the only good movie. So I'm enjoying the fact that there are so many right now I can actually rank them in a top 5 with a pile of movies left over

 Charles Rampant wrote:
I always get sad when people complain about there being too many Superhero films. I mean, there has been an endless tide of Romantic Comedies for just about the entire history of Cinema, why do we not hear the despairing cries about how many of those there are? :p

If you still have your Mancard (or in my case ManMastadon ) you constantly bewail the evil that is "chick flicks." Now that the Wife has her own movie club the danger has lessened, but she will still attempt to ensnare me into seeing one on occasion. I think its just practice for her...

Someone I have managed to avoid any "chick flicks" for a while, but I mainly managed that by hooking my wife on superhero films. Currently we are binge watching Justice League Unlimited and the 2011 Avengers cartoon. Happy days. Being an adult is fun!

The different genres thing is also tied into one of the reasons that we are getting this explosion of Comic Books, I think: Hollywood has only relatively recently noticed that there is actually this huge corpus of works by various comics publishers, a corpus that is not only written in a visual medium, but also features an wide range of stories and characters to work with. It is basically a goldmine for them to work with, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot more non-superhero comics reaching the screen as other companies search through comics to find material to work with.

 Charles Rampant wrote:
Someone I have managed to avoid any "chick flicks" for a while, but I mainly managed that by hooking my wife on superhero films. Currently we are binge watching Justice League Unlimited and the 2011 Avengers cartoon. Happy days. Being an adult is fun!

The different genres thing is also tied into one of the reasons that we are getting this explosion of Comic Books, I think: Hollywood has only relatively recently noticed that there is actually this huge corpus of works by various comics publishers, a corpus that is not only written in a visual medium, but also features an wide range of stories and characters to work with. It is basically a goldmine for them to work with, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot more non-superhero comics reaching the screen as other companies search through comics to find material to work with.

Unless you're Alan Moore, in which case you want comic to movie adaptations to die. lol.

Yeah, but isn't Alan Moore just a miserable human being in general? I've never seen anyone mention Alan Moore in conjunction with the emotion of happiness; always anger. The dude would make a good 40k character at this point.

'Miserable human being' is probably an apt description.

chromedog.jpg wrote:
I'll explain again.

They mean about as much to me as Citizen snork or the traitor general probably mean to you (or probably less).

The trailer neither inspired me to want to see it, nor to investigate more closely what it was about. It may as well be another car chase, heist or overblown fantasy "epic" to me.

Keep the arguments polite, that's rule 1. motyak

That viewpoint wasn't clear to me from the original post...thanks for clarifying.

However my question would then be:

If you aren't at all interested, in any way/shape/form.....why waste time providing a lengthy post saying that you aren't interested? Why even post at all about something that doesn't interest you?

I am trying to wrap my head around that.

I will say this:

I am certainly no enthusiast....last comic I bought was from...gosh....probably 1999?

But...I know The Joker
I know Harley Quinn
I know Killer Croc

Those are all pretty well known and "big name" villains from Batman.

The others, I have not heard of (Enchantress kind of sounds familiar).

My point is....you don't need to be an elitist enthusiast to be interested in this movie.

I like the premise of it...kind of a "Dirty Dozen" (showing my age, I know) feel/story to it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Charles Rampant wrote:
I always get sad when people complain about there being too many Superhero films. I mean, there has been an endless tide of Romantic Comedies for just about the entire history of Cinema, why do we not hear the despairing cries about how many of those there are? :p

It's a bit of a nonsense complaint, isn't it? I mean so many of them aren't even the same genre, they just have comic book origins.

But they really are pretty much all the same, though. Almost every superhero movie follows almost the same cookie-cutter formula. There are very few that actually go outside of the same tired genre. Ant-Man had some elements of a heist film, Jessica Jones - while not a movie - had some elements of noir detective stuff. By and large, though, your average superhero movie is just a mad libs of

"X is a downtrodden person, an underdog with no real hopes but with a heart of gold. Due to a incredible incident\discovery of alien birth\exposure to unobtanium, they gain superpowers far beyond mortal understanding. X realizes that they have to use those powers to save a girl, or maybe protect a city, or both. They manage to triumph over great odds due to their superpowers and learn about responsibility."

where x can be Deadpool or Spider-Man or Superman or the Fantastic Four or whatever. There are very few superhero movies that break out of this action template.

 KingCracker wrote:
Not to mention I grew up with either TERRIBLE super hero films like Superman 2.

Oh come on, Superman II was that bad...

Now Superman III, that's a piece of gak movie if there ever was one. I've only seen it once but I will admit that I really enjoyed watching it despite how terrible it is. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I was, how should I say... not of sound mind while viewing it.

 Ouze wrote:
But they really are pretty much all the same, though. Almost every superhero movie follows almost the same cookie-cutter formula. There are very few that actually go outside of the same tired genre. Ant-Man had some elements of a heist film, Jessica Jones - while not a movie - had some elements of noir detective stuff. By and large, though, your average superhero movie is just a mad libs of

"X is a downtrodden person, an underdog with no real hopes but with a heart of gold. Due to a incredible incident\discovery of alien birth\exposure to unobtanium, they gain superpowers far beyond mortal understanding. X realizes that they have to use those powers to save a girl, or maybe protect a city, or both. They manage to triumph over great odds due to their superpowers and learn about responsibility."

where x can be Deadpool or Spider-Man or Superman or the Fantastic Four or whatever. There are very few superhero movies that break out of this action template.

Oh yeah, they are definitely all the same movie, but the formula sells. The superhero genre isn't the only genre with this problem though as I think the same can be said for most genres (zombie horror, rom-coms, spy thrillers, etc.).

Despite the fact that they're all the same, I've enjoyed watching all of them because I'm still a child inside.

Absolutely, other genres have the same problem. I think every Nicholas Sparks Rom-Com is functionally the same movie for example.

Zombies movies were a great example to for you to use specifically, both for how rigid that formula can be, how popular the genre once was, and how the popularity of that genre has been subsiding as it gets over-saturated.

I do still see most of them. I don't think I've seen every single one in the theater - I saw Green Lantern and Fantastic Four coming from a mile away, and the last set of Spidermans looked totally unappealing. However, I think I've seen every MCU in the theater. Still, I'm generally finding them less and less interesting. I only saw BvS in the theater because I was really hot to eat a pound of popcorn and nothing good had been out in weeks, and I'm not sure I'll see X-Men Apocalypse in theaters at all. Same for Civil War.

I hope Suicide Squad really is more Dirty Dozen with guys that happen to be superheroes, than a superhero movie with a Dirty Dozen theme. Very little to no origin explanation, just an actual story that happens to have superhumans.

 Ouze wrote:
I saw Green Lantern and Fantastic Four coming from a mile away

I had the unfortunate experience of seeing Green Lantern in the theater. In my defense, the only reason I went was to take my nephew.

and the last set of Spidermans

Spider-Man

I think I've seen every MCU in the theater. Still, I'm generally finding them less and less interesting. I only saw BvS in the theater because I was really hot to eat a pound of popcorn and nothing good had been out in weeks, and I'm not sure I'll see X-Men Apocalypse in theaters at all. Same for Civil War.

I've seen all of the MCU movies in the theater and will continue to do so, especially now that my daughers are getting old enough to appreciate superheros (the old one has requested to see Civil War for her birthday next month). I'm also really interested in Doctor Strange just because it looks trippy.

I saw BvS because it's a movie with Batman and it gave me something to do with my mom, who is moving soon. I didn't expect much from it and I wasn't disappointed in that regard, but it was a mess of a movie in just about every regard. Still, I enjoyed it in the end.

I hope Suicide Squad really is more Dirty Dozen with guys that happen to be superheroes, than a superhero movie with a Dirty Dozen theme. Very little to no origin explanation, just an actual story that happens to have superhumans.

It definitely seems like that might be case because they don't really have the time to give detailed origins to all of the characters (thank God!). I'm actually really optimistic about this movie.