In Discussion About Comic Book Films...

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The trick is not minding
@Wyldesyde19 Listen, that's the end of your ballyhooing, you imp. Arthouse Mafia has a long history of dealing with the likes of you. I just called them and you can expect them soon. We've got a special policy for urchins like you. I'll be lenient with you, though and instead of watching Lav Diaz I'll make you watch Starcrash over and over again. We cannot make you watch the films of Lav Diaz due to the cost of his movies. Arthouse Mafia is an entirely old-arthouse-veteran-backed organization. Thank you for your understanding.

... did I mention how the populace has a bad taste in art due to their lack of exposition to a variety of quality art? There are differnt kinds of aesthetics but most people has no taste in aesthectics at all. A big group of them creams over superhero genre. Coincidence?
The Art House Mafia might be a tad too busy creaming themselves over Starcrash. Which is great for them. It’s the only time they can sans actual women in their lives.
Wait.....is that how they got you? They forced you to watch superhero films over and over again and conditioned you to hate them, right? If so you still can be saved. You still can be pure.
It’s not too late!!!!!
But if they do come over, I insist on Lav Diaz. Maybe Bella Tar.
It’s the principle, you see?

Sic Semper Lav Diaz!!!
Or Bella Tar.



Victim of The Night
I was watching a bit of Age of Ultron last night and had forgotten how close it came to being a completely crappy movie. Some Marvel movies are not going to age well.
I will never forgive that jackass who was in charge of Marvel studios for what he did to that movie.
It's been a bit of a pet-project of mine for years to learn how that movie went wrong and it all comes down to how much that jerk made Whedon cut out of the movie.
Like the whole thing with Hawkeye's family. That was supposed to be a big and much more powerful reveal because there were all these little bits leading up to, "Oh, Clint has some secret he's keeping, what is it?" and all that and it turns out that it's not sinister at all, it's that he has this family the he loves and a home and everything. And the jerk made them cut all the buildup for run-time.
And then the whole Bruce and Nat thing, the extended scenes of that actually really work (for me at least) and I thought that could be another nice little character thing there. But it got trimmed to the point that it just seemed shoe-horned or something and then when the Russo's take over and decide to drop it completely from the arc then it ends up sitting out there like some wart.
Of course, probably the most egregious, is cutting Thor's quest. So he's just like, gone for most of the movie and then he just suddenly appears, does this dramatic thing without a word, that now has no context whatsoever because of the cuts, and is like "Hey! I know this robot-guy didn't exist moments ago but everyone needs to trust him with the future of the World right now! And I will now blurt out several lines of expository dialogue that make almost no sense but you're gonna have to roll with it." It makes the movie and The Vision particularly make no sense. He's called The Vision because he's Thor's vision from his quest. But not only that but really the whole creation of The Vision, which is what the movie is actually ABOUT, is totally lost in the studio's decisions to focus more heavily on the action. Which is why the big floating-city climax feels more like Man Of Steel than Avengers.
I know nobody likes Joss Whedon right now, and I don't blame them, but if you piece together the movie he was making here before he kept being told, despite delivering the second-highest-grossing film in history to Marvel, that he had to keep cutting all the character and back-story stuff for action, you can really see how he shot the movie we should have gotten and then had to cut so much that it ends up being arguably the most nonsensical movie in the catalogue.
Still, it has its moments.



Victim of The Night
Also, I am really getting to know some of the characters on this forum now.



I believe that anyone basing their taste in films on being part of a superior team, whether from the popular consensus or the contrarian side of the spectrum, is probably playing the game wrong. Or the wrong game even. Purity is a useless shibboleth.



But Conan doesn't come from a comic book.
Neither does Star Wars. But they fit the format: mythic, serial, deceptively disposable. Conan was originally a pulp hero of adventure magazine stories, or basically comic books' older brother.



Neither does Star Wars. But they fit the format: mythic, serial, deceptively disposable. Conan was originally a pulp hero of adventure magazine stories, or basically comic books' older brother.
Are you channeling Mr. Glass on purpose?



Doubt it, but my mythic wallet is pretty bad ass now that I think about it.



The trick is not minding
I believe that anyone basing their taste in films on being part of a superior team, whether from the popular consensus or the contrarian side of the spectrum, is probably playing the game wrong. Or the wrong game even. Purity is a useless shibboleth.
I want clarify that my posts are completely facetious, and am just being having fun at Minios expense.
I really don’t begrudge people their tastes, and only poked fun at his in response.*
He plays a persona up to the hilt on these forumns, and sometimes it’s just funny to see how far he will go with it. But yeah, my posts are all in jest.



I want clarify that my posts are completely facetious, and am just being having fun at Minios expense.
I really don’t begrudge people their tastes, and only poked fun at his in response.*
He plays a persona up to the hilt on these forumns, and sometimes it’s just funny to see how far he will go with it. But yeah, my posts are all in jest.
I didn't mean to aim that post in your direction. No clarification necessary. And I think Minio's taste is certainly intriguing, but the tribalizing language of "normies" and "pure" is a bit of a mirror reflection of those who define films by sheer numbers. It feels more like sporting positioning than criticism. There are, no doubt, those who would prefer this thread be a video game. And Minio would prefer to make it a lite-brite image to complement the FX of Starcrash. Who knows? I do know that Star Wars already had introduced metaphysics (the force), and orgone was already a part of Duran Duran's excessive pleasure machine in Barbarella, so who knows? Let's just all try to come together.



Which is why the big floating-city climax feels more like Man Of Steel than Avengers.
You just had to go there didn't you.



The trick is not minding
I didn't mean to aim that post in your direction. No clarification necessary. And I think Minio's taste is certainly intriguing, but the tribalizing language of "normies" and "pure" is a bit of a mirror reflection of those who define films by sheer numbers. It feels more like sporting positioning than criticism. There are, no doubt, those who would prefer this thread be a video game. And Minio would prefer to make it a lite-brite image to complement the FX of Starcrash. Who knows? I do know that Star Wars already had introduced metaphysics (the force), and orgone was already a part of Duran Duran's excessive pleasure machine in Barbarella, so who knows? Let's just all try to come together.
Oh yeah, totally agree. I didn’t think it was aimed at me, necessarily, so it’s cool.



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
My opinions are the only honest, unadulterated, and pure ones in this thread. :) If you feel offended by something I wrote, let me know.

Hats off to heroes who give high ratings to Superhero movies. Thanks to you, I know that instead of another Yamada, I should watch t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶u̶r̶t̶h̶ the fifth part of Avengers. Sorry, but watching 1980s Malaysian movies with one rating on IMDb doesn't automatically make you a cinema expert, so take it easy with them "How to impress Minio with my hipster taste" Google queries.

And to think that someday some MoFo who just wants to impress me (like that kid Velvet once upon a time) will watch some pseudo-legit film by Guadagnino or some other hack and go all crazy hollering how elite he is.

Instead of crying that you hadn't seen a masterpiece in years, you should take the time to check my highest-rated films, and I assure you, your cinephile satisfaction would increase by about 800% in two weeks.

A fair warning to people who discovered cinema like 3 months ago and now ostentatiously pretend that Whiplash, Fight Club, La La Land, Roma, Shawshank Redemption, Call Me By Your Name, Forrest Gump, Joker etc. etc. are the best movies of all time and directors like Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese etc. etc. are the great masters of cinema:

They should avoid me at all costs and everything will be fine.

But let's not digress anymore and continue the fascinating conversation on why Comic Books Films are crap. Because we already reached a consensus on whether they are crap, haven't we? :cool:
__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.



My two (slightly cheaper Canadian dollar) cents:


I've enjoyed enough comic book films, including some of the MCU ones, but I think what bugs me about the MCU is that they're too obviously part of a greater corporate strategy. I appreciate that you can build a shared universe, but I insist that you need to pay off a decent number of the things you setup, otherwise you're not respecting the audience's time. (I've mentioned before that I have a similar problem with television, so will concede that others have different priorities.)


So many of the dramatic beats of these movies have been pushed off to future installments that watching many of the individual movies feels like watching an ad for the next one rather than an actual movie. And the flipside is that when things do "pay off", they've all been set up like twenty movies ago that unless you're invested in seeing **** from the comics onscreen or something, the impact is lost. I remember watching Infinity War and, despite having seen most of the movies beforehand, felt like I was hit with a pop quiz that was worth like 50% of the grade but had stayed up playing video games the previous night.


I have the same problem with the new Disney Star Wars movies, where all the narrative beats feel too obviously in service of a greater focus-grouped, corporate defined plan. (Even in The Last Jedi, the one people cite as bucking the trend, is too conscious in the way it pushes against "expectations" to the point that almost all of its artistic choices are terrible.) The calculation is too transparent.


I prefer these movies when they try to work as standalone works or concede their smallness. Janson praised the first Iron Man, and I think that movie holds up because it was made before they had their overall strategy figured out, so it remembered to be an actual movie.



Also, to those claiming that superhero movies are just like any other genre, I think superhero movies offer a much narrower template than say, westerns, and the Disney-Marvel complex in particular has a way of drowning out other kinds of movies.



The trick is not minding
My opinions are the only honest, unadulterated, and pure ones in this thread. If you feel offended by something I wrote, let me know.

Hats off to heroes who give high ratings to Superhero movies. Thanks to you, I know that instead of another Yamada, I should watch t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶u̶r̶t̶h̶ the fifth part of Avengers. Sorry, but watching 1980s Malaysian movies with one rating on IMDb doesn't automatically make you a cinema expert, so take it easy with them "How to impress Minio with my hipster taste" Google queries.

And to think that someday some MoFo who just wants to impress me (like that kid Velvet once upon a time) will watch some pseudo-legit film by Guadagnino or some other hack and go all crazy hollering how elite he is.

Instead of crying that you hadn't seen a masterpiece in years, you should take the time to check my highest-rated films, and I assure you, your cinephile satisfaction would increase by about 800% in two weeks.

A fair warning to people who discovered cinema like 3 months ago and now ostentatiously pretend that Whiplash, Fight Club, La La Land, Roma, Shawshank Redemption, Call Me By Your Name, Forrest Gump, Joker etc. etc. are the best movies of all time and directors like Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese etc. etc. are the great masters of cinema:

They should avoid me at all costs and everything will be fine.

But let's not digress anymore and continue the fascinating conversation on why Comic Books Films are crap. Because we already reached a consensus on whether they are crap, haven't we?
You forgot StarCrash. And The Host. And The Wailing. Movies you specifically listed in your top 300 hipster films of all time. Aka the “please take me seriously when I post, I’m a true cinephile!” list.
A fair warning to someone who just wants to impress someone (everyone?), but when you mention being ostentatious while being ostentatious, well....
Don’t worry Minio. There’s still hope for you yet! I’m sure you’ll see the light and one day realize that all your pretensions were for naught!
And on that day we shall welcome you with a warm blanket and a copy of Avengers 5 or 6 or what ever.

One of us!
One of us!
One of us!



My opinions are the only honest, unadulterated, and pure ones in this thread. If you feel offended by something I wrote, let me know.

Hats off to heroes who give high ratings to Superhero movies. Thanks to you, I know that instead of another Yamada, I should watch t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶u̶r̶t̶h̶ the fifth part of Avengers. Sorry, but watching 1980s Malaysian movies with one rating on IMDb doesn't automatically make you a cinema expert, so take it easy with them "How to impress Minio with my hipster taste" Google queries.

And to think that someday some MoFo who just wants to impress me (like that kid Velvet once upon a time) will watch some pseudo-legit film by Guadagnino or some other hack and go all crazy hollering how elite he is.

Instead of crying that you hadn't seen a masterpiece in years, you should take the time to check my highest-rated films, and I assure you, your cinephile satisfaction would increase by about 800% in two weeks.

A fair warning to people who discovered cinema like 3 months ago and now ostentatiously pretend that Whiplash, Fight Club, La La Land, Roma, Shawshank Redemption, Call Me By Your Name, Forrest Gump, Joker etc. etc. are the best movies of all time and directors like Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese etc. etc. are the great masters of cinema:

They should avoid me at all costs and everything will be fine.

But let's not digress anymore and continue the fascinating conversation on why Comic Books Films are crap. Because we already reached a consensus on whether they are crap, haven't we?
Comic films are crap MOSTLY because they don't stick to the source material.

Let's look back in time: we have something that reaches a small segment of the public consciousness: comic book superheroes. The consciousness of the public grows until characters are multimedia and practically household names. They become SO popular someone decides to make a movie out of it! (How could you go wrong if the subject matter is so popular?)

Then they change the source material that launched the stories into the public consciousness & extreme popularity (they begin to remove some of the very aspects that made the source material popular in the first place).

I can hear all the arguments to that now:
How can you tell stories from the 40's to the 70's without updating them?
Characters who've evolved over decades (who now have multiple alternate continuity counterparts) no longer have any "definitive" version!
Audiences are more mature now and need the source material made just as mature also!
How do you cope with 80-year-old characters who've never aged without changing them?
You can't fit a half century of comic details into a 2 hour movie!

All good points, but essentials of stories & characters can still be captured & told in movie form if that is the desire of filmmakers.

The evidence: most of the movies that have tried to honor the source material are better than the ones that haven't... and the further a movie moves away from the source material, the worse the movie tends to be (most of the time).



Comic films are crap MOSTLY because they don't stick to the source material.

Mostly crap, because they don't really care about the story, I think. You can depart from source material and tell a good story even if that story is an insult to the source material, right?



I think these films are crap because they seem to be made by algorithms and focus groups. Check-boxing "required items" and sending it back to committee for revision after revision is a massive investment to stave off abject failure by guaranteeing mediocrity. Even the "good" entries in the genre are kind of the equivalent of "Competently cooked Kraft Mac & Cheese."



We get the rare gem like Spiderman 2 or Ledger's Joker or Infinity War and the threads that miraculously bring it together and we start to expect more of these films than they're really designed to deliver. If I am spending half a billion dollars, I going to be more concerned with ROI than with taking risks. The budgets are too damned big.



The calculation is too transparent.
There it is. There's the thunder.



Victim of The Night
Neither does Star Wars. But they fit the format: mythic, serial, deceptively disposable. Conan was originally a pulp hero of adventure magazine stories, or basically comic books' older brother.
Hm. Again, having read every original Conan story Howard ever wrote, I don't know that I would think of them as comic books' older brother. Howard essentially invented the sword and sandal genre and even Tolkien, knowingly or not, owes a tremendous amount to him and to those stories. He is definitely the older brother of Dungeons & Dragons, I'll concede that much.
But I guess I get what you mean.



Victim of The Night
... orgone was already a part of Duran Duran's excessive pleasure machine in Barbarella, so who knows? Let's just all try to come together.