Superhero Cinematic Civil War - - - - - Part 45

[Spider-Fan]

Guys, this is not the Black Panther forum. Tag spoilers!

 

[DA_Champion]

Guys, this is not the Black Panther forum. Tag spoilers!

OK, thanks.

Can you remind me the general rule for tagging? Is it 7 days after release? 14 days?

You may have reminded me before, and if so I am sorry to have forgotten. I am 34 and aging rapidly :-(

 

[Spider-Fan]

OK, thanks.

Can you remind me the general rule for tagging? Is it 7 days after release? 14 days?

You may have reminded me before, and if so I am sorry to have forgotten. I am 34 and aging rapidly :-(

Generally, I would say give it 2 weekends. Should be enough time for most of us to see it.

 

[Drizzle]

You guys think its possible IW doesnt top Avengers 1? Could we be looking at a Spider-man 2 situation where the film is wildly praised by critics, fans and audiences but it doesn't match it's predesssor's BO simply because the predecessor was a lightning in a bottle moment and overperformed?

I think what’s in Infinity War’s favor is that this is the first time all (or most) of Marvel’s heroes will be brought together in one film. The Guardians of the Galaxy and Wakanda being in it will only help it at the box office.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

We see Wakandan armies in the trailer for IW, and we also see an important role implied for T'Challa. I think that Marvel knew that BP would be a good movie, and so they knew that they could capitalize on that by giving its elements a prominent role in IW.

To be fair I think IW is taking lot of it’s story from the Infinity comics story, in which Wakanda played a pretty important role. And BP for that matter.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Generally, I would say give it 2 weekends. Should be enough time for most of us to see it.

I always assumed it was best to wait four months.

 

[Spider-Fan]

I always assumed it was best to wait four months.

When release dates were more scattered, I think we were heavier on that. But, most films release within the same 2-3 week period anymore. That's why I say once it has been released in all the big markets, 2 weekends is probably okay.

 

[Web-Head]

But people actually LIKE Marvel films

Exactly t:

I think the biggest thing with JL was none of the general audience really cares for those versions of Batman and Superman and they didn't know what to expect with the others, or cared enough.

 

[BaelaTargaryen]

LMAO

 

[MadVillainy]

The high box office for BP just means that more people are MCU fans now.

Not necessarily.
As I and others have said, BP is getting a ton of viewers do don't care about the MCU but love seeing a diverse movie like BP on the screen.

 

[DA_Champion]

Not necessarily.
As I and others have said, BP is getting a ton of viewers do don't care about the MCU but love seeing a diverse movie like BP on the screen.

They are now invested in the character, some of them will want to know what he's up to in IW.

 

[Iceman]

They are now invested in the character, some of them will want to know what he's up to in IW.

And not just him, Wakanda, a good number of his supporting characters and the Wakandan army. I question how much they really enjoyed the film if they aren't at least a bit interested in seeing all of that again just 2 months later.

 

[Iceman]

Not necessarily.
As I and others have said, BP is getting a ton of viewers do don't care about the MCU but love seeing a diverse movie like BP on the screen.

It's ok loving that and not the MCU of course but these are not the people who have helped BP get made in the first place. That would be the likes of us who have paved the way by helping the MCU get to the level of success where they can try something like this with a big budget and not have to play it too tentatively like some of the Phase 1 films had to in those uncertain early days.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

LMAO

Lolllllllll

Hamill shutting clickbait down real fast. The mouse really must’ve spooked him during all the TLJ drama

 

[Sithborg]

They are now invested in the character, some of them will want to know what he's up to in IW.

Because that worked out so well for Justice League...

 

[Sithborg]

It's ok loving that and not the MCU of course but these are not the people who have helped BP get made in the first place. That would be the likes of us who have paved the way by helping the MCU get to the level of success where they can try something like this with a big budget and not have to play it too tentatively like some of the Phase 1 films had to in those uncertain early days.

You may want to seriously re-evaluate what you said in that post.

 

[BaelaTargaryen]

This Washington Post article is comedy gold

The Zack Snyder era of superhero movies is over. You should be sorry to see it go.

The weekend belonged to “Black Panther,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest offering, and rightly so: Ryan Coogler’s solid introduction to the kingdom of Wakanda wowed critics (97 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (A-plus CinemaScore) alike, racking up an estimated $235 million in its first four days of release. As some wags noted, this was more money than “Justice League” earned in its entire domestic run.

And while “Justice League” was certainly bad — a product that reeked of overbearing corporate meddling; a movie that reportedly cost upward of $300 million to make and yet somehow looked cheap and shoddy — I’m still sad that it (reportedly) marks the end of Zack Snyder’s efforts with the DC Extended Universe. He brought a unity of vision, both ideological and aesthetic, to Warner Bros.’ effort at countering Disney’s MCU.

There was some s******ing when DC announced that Snyder, hot off the heels of “Watchmen” (2009), would direct “Man of Steel.” Indeed, the auteur was forced to assure audiences that there would be no slow-motion action sequences, his signature artistic affectation. But this was always a mistake. The reason Snyder’s previous comic-book adaptations, “300” and “Watchmen,” had worked was that the speed-ramping effect he so loved — in which he slowed down the action and sped it back up as the camera drifted along, a spectator to carnage — perfectly mimicked the experience of reading a comic book. You see a frame and then another frame, but not what happens between them. Speeding up, then slowing down, suggests how the eye flits across the page, going from one act of violence to another.

The effect reappears in “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” a film more comfortable with the mythopoeic ideal of alien gods and men who dress like bats doing battle for the soul of society. Snyder dispenses with Batman’s origin story briefly, capping off a slo-mo killing of Martha and Thomas Wayne with a shot of Bruce, a child, enveloped by bats, rising out of a hole in which he has fallen, drifting out of a cave and into the sky as if accepting his destiny to simultaneously live both below and above the people.

This aesthetic carried into other movies overseen by Snyder during his tenure atop the DCEU. The early action sequences in “Wonder Woman” felt very much like outtakes from “300,” filled as they were with statuesque individuals leaping into the air in slow motion, firing arrows and hurling spears at invading savages. Wonder Woman’s (Gal Gadot) charge through the German offices echoed Batman’s (Ben Affleck) rescue of Ma Kent (Diane Lane) in “Batman v. Superman.” And it’s not surprising that the single best moment in “Justice League” toys with the use of slow motion to demonstrate exactly how powerful Superman (Henry Cavill) is.

This aesthetic vision may have triggered s******s — aggressively unique artistry often does — but it’s far superior to the MCU’s house anti-style, that cautiously competent CGI mishmash that defines the adventures of the Avengers and their friends.

More than a house style, however, Snyder oversaw a house ethos. And it’s here that the recent spate of DC films — as wildly uneven as they were, as messy as they could be purely in terms of storytelling — has always been more consistent, and more interesting, than their counterparts at Marvel. Consider Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), the key to the MCU’s success. He is wildly erratic as a character, swinging from libertarian privatizer of peacekeeping to statist global governance proponent to mad genius tinkering with godhood to father figure aiding a kid in need, depending on what the movie he happens to be in needs him to do to keep the action moving. He’s a plot device, not a person.

There’s no idea behind the Marvel films writ large, no overarching thought. One of the reasons “Black Panther” is so interesting is that there’s a philosophical struggle at its core, a messy tussle between security and safety on the one hand and the duties we have to the weaker amongst us on the other. And some of the other Marvel films have tinkered with notions larger than “heroes good, villains bad.” “Winter Soldier” was about the iniquities of drone warfare and the dangers to civil liberties posed by a too-powerful government while “Civil War” is about the hazards of occupational licensing. Too often, however, some all-powerful thingamajig is controlled by a hulking, forgettable, oddly colored bad guy who wants to either take over or destroy the world.

But there’s a unity of vision to the Snyder-led DC movies that is simply lacking over at Marvel. The idea, beginning with “Man of Steel,” was a simple one: What would happen if gods appeared on Earth? Snyder’s reboot of Superman asked us to consider what responsibilities a man with godlike power would be willing to accept. “Batman v. Superman” asked how the world’s most powerful men — batty billionaires and tech giants alike — would react to instantly finding themselves lower on the food chain. How would they protect humanity from the new monsters in their midst? “Suicide Squad,” meanwhile, asked how the government might respond to such an invasion, while “Wonder Woman” was all about the need for gods (or, at least, a demigod) to understand that free will sometimes leads to death and destruction.

These questions were often lost or muddied in the course of corporate tampering. While Marvel honcho Kevin Feige has hired a series of directors who will conform to the house style and has built up a universe slowly but surely, Snyder always seemed to be pushing for more and was saddled with a corporate giant that demanded an Avenger-style cinematic universe created in half the time. As Armond White put it in his review of “Black Panther,” “Coogler’s attempt at genre revision is part of Marvel indoctrination, so it’s less interesting than Snyder’s battle with Warner Bros. over artistic expression in the D.C. Comics Universe. Snyder turns moral conflicts into sensual kinetics.”*

Perhaps “Justice League,” which asks how the world would respond to losing its newfound god, is a logical endpoint to the question first raised in “Man of Steel.” It’s too bad that we’ll likely never get to see what Snyder truly wanted to do with the movie; he was reportedly fired last year and was definitely replaced in the director’s chair by Joss Whedon for reshoots. Fans thirsting online for the #SnyderCut will likely go unsated. We’ll just have to wait and see what Snyder has in store for us next.

*As an aside, I would pay a great deal of money for a “Hitchcock/Truffaut”-style book in which White interviewed Snyder. The iconoclastic critic has long been one of Snyder’s most devoted defenders, and I think it would be a fascinating glimpse into critic and filmmaker alike.

 

[Limonade]

Because that worked out so well for Justice League...

It's not a straight orange to orange comparison... more like a fresh orange and rotten orange comparison.

One grew from a better foundation than the other.

 

[Sithborg]

It's not a straight orange to orange comparison... more like a fresh orange and rotten orange comparison.

One grew on a better foundation than the other.

I mean, I think it is clear that the support won't necessarily translate, because IW is much, much whiter.

 

[Limonade]

I mean, I think it is clear that the support won't necessarily translate, because IW is much, much whiter.

You don't only have white... you have Greens, Purple, Animal, A freakin' walking Plant! Aliens... like, the fact that you see IW as a whiter film... uh, I dunno.

So I don't understand a movie that features all other types of movies... won't translate because of the color of skins throughout the film.

If anything it adds more popularity to Black Panther fanbase than anything else.

I'd agree with you if this movie was critically terrible and flopped like a fish. But that is not the case.

 

[chamber-music]

This Washington Post article is comedy gold

Snyder's vision was clearly divisive and would of probably lead to diminishing box office returns in the long run. No movie studio is going to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to a director/producer to make films half the audience is going to walk out hating.

Synder couldn't balance his themes alongside the expectations of blockbuster spectacle as well as Nolan did with his Dark Knight trilogy.

Diversity of vision is a strength and not a weakness.

I don't want to see all of Marvel and DC's universe films looking and feeling the same. It would get boring fast if they did.

Armond White isn't a critic anyone should be taking seriously. White is well known for being a deliberate contrarian and pot stirrer.

 

[PacificBoy]

It won't translate neatly but the situation isn't quite comparable to JL because IW was already pegged as a must-see event movie before BP's resounding success. Plus you have the fanbases from Ragnarok, Homecoming, GotG series and now BP, who aren't necessarily MCU fans in the first place, converging to see all these heroes meet up for the first time.

 

[Iceman]

You may want to seriously re-evaluate what you said in that post.

If you didn't like something in my post please let me know more specifically so I can try and address it. I'm not purposely trying to say anything offensive or provocative if it's coming across like that.

I've heard enough times how being "obsessed" with "juvenile" material like superhero-related media is a waste of time and not a worthy pastime for a fully grown adult with responsibilities. It is this juvenile material that has provided a now celebrated opportunity for a mainstream cultural event and moved things forward where more 'acceptable' methods have struggled. I'm glad that we are being joined on BP by many people who would never go to see one of these films usually, but I'd also ask that this is remembered for future reference by those who have trashed this hobby and told their kids and the younger generation in general to stay away.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

What the **** did I just read? It looks like someone at Washington post read every deluded Zaddy cult talking points and made an essay collecting them all.

Black Panther did not end the era of Zack Snyder. Zack Snyder ended the era of Zack Snyder.

It was dead in March 2016.

 

[Spider-Fan]

What the **** did I just read? It looks like someone at Washington post read every deluded Zaddy cult talking points and made an essay collecting them all.

Black Panther did not end the era of Zack Snyder. Zack Snyder ended the era of Zack Snyder.

It was dead in March 2016.

I think Justice League was the end. You can say it was his firing, but JL still has some Snyder in it. They could only course correct so much.