I liked Aquaman a lot more than Shazam, but that might just be down to personal preference. I prefer high stakes underwater sci fi to little kids figuring out superpowers shenanigans.
Both super hammy, but I prefer my ham with giant helmet lasers and fishmen and sexy Momoa and his even sexier red haired queen. And Dolph and Dafoe and Nicole Kidman and Temuera Morrison!
(IMO, Aquaman would have worked much better with a minor rework to occur before JL).
How, exactly? If you're locked into JL as the end state, you have to end it with Aquaman not being the king of Atlantis. It's hard to see that as a minor change.
An absent king who acts as a figurehead while regents run the kingdom mostly, which wouldn’t be unreasonable given his dual nature requiring interaction with the human world.
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Aquaman is very bizarrely structured for a movie. It's like a twelve issue run of an actual comic book: there's an overarching plot, but each individual bit has it's own "thing". This is the issue where they go to Italy, this is the issue versus the Trench, etc.
And I love that. It's one of the only movies that actually feels like a comic book.
Eh, I would say there's plenty of superhero movies that feel like a comic book. It's just they feel like the parts that are usually lambasted in reviews of said comics. Infinity War felt like a super on point recreation of a Secret Wars style mandatory cash grab event comic. BvS seemed to channel that Frank Miller Dark Age its-not-stupid-its-mature-and-edgy comic feel. You can feel Alan Moore seething in every single frame of any number of movies adapted from his work.
Aquaman is very bizarrely structured for a movie. It's like a twelve issue run of an actual comic book: there's an overarching plot, but each individual bit has it's own "thing". This is the issue where they go to Italy, this is the issue versus the Trench, etc.
And I love that. It's one of the only movies that actually feels like a comic book.
It definitely has the feeling, to me, that the production team thought "damn it, this might be the only time anyone in Hollywood gets to make an Aquaman movie, so by gum we're going to do all of Aquaman. Get our Dinosaur people on the phone, we're pulling an all-nighter."
Yeah, I get the feeling that there was an awareness that the DCEU was wobbling, so maybe don't plan to be able to use this guy in a dozen movies.
I'd say Shazam is funnier, but Aquaman is more fun.
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I can actually watch Shazaam the whole way through more than once, though. Aquaman wasn't the incredibly dull slog of the Snyder crap, but the writing is still really really terrible and basically a long-ass list of cliches. Most of the good stuff comes from Mamoa, but everybody else is pulling their dialogue from The Big Book of Generic Lines for My Character Type. The eyecandy stuff is a huuuge improvement for the franchise, but ultimately it's still a bunch of empty CG I have no investment in because I only just found out about all these kingdoms in this movie. Shit, the movie even has the terrible "this thing you're remembering me teach you is the UNBEATABLE TECHNIQUE you will, big surprise, need to win in the final climactic showdown" setup, which was cringey as hell.
They should've just skipped most of the prince's conniving shit and given more lines to Mamoa. Let the guy chew up the scenery, he was far and away the most entertaining part of the film, followed distantly by the colorful effects sequences.
The worst I can say about Shazaam is that it has a bunch of kid actors, but most of the time they still do a pretty good job anyway. The adoption story has some actual dramatic weight to it and it even ties in decently to Batson accepting what he can do and deciding to use it for good. The main enemy is also a pretty bad dude instead of just being some asshole prince with parental issues; him tossing a brother out the window and feeding his father to demons was way more impactful than any amount of posturing and backstabbing from Prince Water Guy.
+2
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Batffleck was fine as was Jeremy Irons as Alfred. I never felt like Affleck's work was part of the problem.
We lost JK Simmons as Gordon, too.
cj iwakura on
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
edited August 2020
Alright, I finished Harley Quinn. Fucking loved it. Man did they nail the characters. And man were there some DEEP lore cuts. Whoever wrote this show absolutely knew the characters inside and out. I especially loved the angry fanboy callout in Season 2. Not all of the jokes or plots landed with me but I absolutely loved it for what it was. The raunchy lovechild of golden age MTV and the Timm/Dini's DCAU. I was getting some serious Daria vibes off Ivy.
With Harley finished, I moved onto Young Justice Season 3, Outsider. Boy did they sail right from soft PG to R (like The Matrix) between seasons. Good god, I was not expecting all the
child violation/murder. And they keep brutally murdering Halo because she just comes back to life. I just finished the Lobo episode and he just straight up impales her on a barbed spike. They show us in highly graphic detail, ripping it out of her bloody chesthole.
Like, damn. I've fucking loving this season but I was not expecting it go go from "Hello Megan"
to the crunching sound of necks snapping.
Edit:
Wow, next episode, they went hard R body horror. Holy shit, did not see that coming
It was inevitable but DC Universe is looking to be fully merged into HBO Max. And Harras allowed the stupidity of Nu52 to carry through and then chickened out with the Doomsday Clock attempt to revert things as best as could be. And yet Bendis still writes Superman into the ground.
edit: Well that's a hilarious and inappropriate thumbnail.
Zach Snyder, everyone!
+15
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Yeah, the gratuitous ass shots that WEREN’T there in Wonder Woman made me roll my eyes all the harder in Justice League. Like seriously? Come on, Gal Godot is the best thing about the DC cinematic universe, followed by Jason Momoa. Give her some damn respect. This isn’t the Fast and the Furious.
Yeah, the gratuitous ass shots that WEREN’T there in Wonder Woman made me roll my eyes all the harder in Justice League. Like seriously? Come on, Gal Godot is the best thing about the DC cinematic universe, followed by Jason Momoa. Give her some damn respect. This isn’t the Fast and the Furious.
Not to mention how Snyder made the effort to re-dress the Amazons. (Left is Wonder Woman, right is Justice League.)
They probably figure getting free money from licensing rights for the toys while also having to stop dealing with distribution on their end. Very dumb move but, this is why you don't make deals with the devil.
+5
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Yeah, the gratuitous ass shots that WEREN’T there in Wonder Woman made me roll my eyes all the harder in Justice League. Like seriously? Come on, Gal Godot is the best thing about the DC cinematic universe, followed by Jason Momoa. Give her some damn respect. This isn’t the Fast and the Furious.
Not to mention how Snyder made the effort to re-dress the Amazons. (Left is Wonder Woman, right is Justice League.)
Point of order. The Snyder costumes were designed and shot before WW's. It would be more accurate to say that Snyder made some shitty, sexist costumes and Patty Jenkins fixed them for her movie.
ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
Man AT&T just AT&Ts everything up, don't they?
...y'know the worst part? The best-case scenario for them I can see is that they jettison DC comic publishing entirely and Disney buys them up, and that would still be terrible because media conglomeration. (This would only be comic publishing; even AT&T aren't stupid enough to fire sale fucking Superman et al as an IP, right?
When comic book stuff is dominating entertainment media of video games, TV, and movies, with both DC and Marvel putting out more critically and financially successful material on those platforms then ever before, why are actual paper comics such a dead end business?
...y'know the worst part? The best-case scenario for them I can see is that they jettison DC comic publishing entirely and Disney buys them up, and that would still be terrible because media conglomeration. (This would only be comic publishing; even AT&T aren't stupid enough to fire sale fucking Superman et al as an IP, right?
...right?)
I think Disney owning literally all of comic history is problematic, but who knows anymore
+7
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
When comic book stuff is dominating entertainment media of video games, TV, and movies, with both DC and Marvel putting out more critically and financially successful material on those platforms then ever before, why are actual paper comics such a dead end business?
Tradition
Because most of the industry is run by people who either have a financial interest (Diamond Distribution) or a personal interest (Boys Club editorial) in maintaining a failing status quo, or are simply not financial savvy enough (executives who started as creators and/or editors) to introduce positive change that looks good on a balance sheet.
Also the 90's speculation boom and subsequent crash led to a lot of bad decisions that increased stagnation within The Big Two and instead of changing course both companies have mostly fought to maintain their monopoly on the industry. As such, creator wages have fallen while comic prices have soared and new markets (webcomics, manga, digital comics) have fractured the talent pool.
The birth of the MCU and the acquisition by Disney have allowed these stagnant forces to continue to chart the course... but maybe not for much longer
When comic book stuff is dominating entertainment media of video games, TV, and movies, with both DC and Marvel putting out more critically and financially successful material on those platforms then ever before, why are actual paper comics such a dead end business?
They're too expensive. They're inconvenient for a variety of reasons. Going to buy some means having to set foot in a comic shop and encounter comic shop guys. They're not good at being new reader friendly, and when they do make an effort to attract new readers they usually manage to shed fans in the process. How many different comics are there now to consider if someone new goes into a store looking for the X-Men? How many different titles do you have to buy to keep up with the latest X-Men event? And that's a title that went through a major reboot of sorts to simplify things pretty recently. If you jump on to a new title and get invested quickly there's no way of knowing if they'll even get to complete their first storyline or get canceled after a few issues.
I like comics, but I haven't bought a paper comic for myself in decades. I'd much rather just buy collected stories in graphic novel/trade paperback form, and I'd rather get them some at my local bookstore. Or sign up for Marvel Unlimited for a while and catch up on things for a bit, and then let it go again.
Add to all of that, most of the writing is now for those trade paperbacks, not individual issues. So everyone except the die-hard collectors ignores the expensive single "floppies" and just waits until those come out.
Commander Zoom on
+4
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
...y'know the worst part? The best-case scenario for them I can see is that they jettison DC comic publishing entirely and Disney buys them up, and that would still be terrible because media conglomeration. (This would only be comic publishing; even AT&T aren't stupid enough to fire sale fucking Superman et al as an IP, right?
...right?)
I think Disney owning literally all of comic history is problematic, but who knows anymore
Think of it as media accelerationism! When Disney owns all media, then Disney is the enemy of all humanity. That's when the real fight starts!*
(Don't do this, people who wait for the real fight to start rarely realize what they have already lost)
The tremendous success of comic book IP tv and movies and the continued failure of comic books can, I think, be easily attributed to the fact that way more people like comic books than like comic book stores. There's no good way to keep up with (or acquire) all the new series, event series, limited series, etc. except going, physically, to a store and browsing the racks. I'm a white dude and still don't really enjoy going to comic shops. Tons of people who aren't white dudes have serious issues going into those places. Trades you can get on amazon without having to interact with comic book store employees and/or patrons.
The tremendous success of comic book IP tv and movies and the continued failure of comic books can, I think, be easily attributed to the fact that way more people like comic books than like comic book stores. There's no good way to keep up with (or acquire) all the new series, event series, limited series, etc. except going, physically, to a store and browsing the racks. I'm a white dude and still don't really enjoy going to comic shops. Tons of people who aren't white dudes have serious issues going into those places. Trades you can get on amazon without having to interact with comic book store employees and/or patrons.
I thought that was only me! I look like the stereotypical white male nerd and I feel odd going into comic shops. They just seem kinda unwelcoming. Last one I went into had some kind if bitcoin kiosk (what does it even do?) in the back, if that means anything.
I used to be one of those guys. I like to think I've gotten better, and as I have, I've also gotten less and less comfortable with that crowd.
(It's also been years since I actually read comics. )
Posts
Both super hammy, but I prefer my ham with giant helmet lasers and fishmen and sexy Momoa and his even sexier red haired queen. And Dolph and Dafoe and Nicole Kidman and Temuera Morrison!
An absent king who acts as a figurehead while regents run the kingdom mostly, which wouldn’t be unreasonable given his dual nature requiring interaction with the human world.
Eh, I would say there's plenty of superhero movies that feel like a comic book. It's just they feel like the parts that are usually lambasted in reviews of said comics. Infinity War felt like a super on point recreation of a Secret Wars style mandatory cash grab event comic. BvS seemed to channel that Frank Miller Dark Age its-not-stupid-its-mature-and-edgy comic feel. You can feel Alan Moore seething in every single frame of any number of movies adapted from his work.
Definitely true to the source material!
Yeah, I get the feeling that there was an awareness that the DCEU was wobbling, so maybe don't plan to be able to use this guy in a dozen movies.
I'd say Shazam is funnier, but Aquaman is more fun.
They should've just skipped most of the prince's conniving shit and given more lines to Mamoa. Let the guy chew up the scenery, he was far and away the most entertaining part of the film, followed distantly by the colorful effects sequences.
The worst I can say about Shazaam is that it has a bunch of kid actors, but most of the time they still do a pretty good job anyway. The adoption story has some actual dramatic weight to it and it even ties in decently to Batson accepting what he can do and deciding to use it for good. The main enemy is also a pretty bad dude instead of just being some asshole prince with parental issues; him tossing a brother out the window and feeding his father to demons was way more impactful than any amount of posturing and backstabbing from Prince Water Guy.
We lost JK Simmons as Gordon, too.
With Harley finished, I moved onto Young Justice Season 3, Outsider. Boy did they sail right from soft PG to R (like The Matrix) between seasons. Good god, I was not expecting all the
Like, damn. I've fucking loving this season but I was not expecting it go go from "Hello Megan"
Edit:
Read the first four words, and my heart almost stopped.
Honestly kinda hoped it was JK Rowling...
"Nice to see you playing well with others again."
Any word if he'll get more screen time in the new cut?
Almost seems unfair that he's a great JJ and Gordon... almost.
It was inevitable but DC Universe is looking to be fully merged into HBO Max. And Harras allowed the stupidity of Nu52 to carry through and then chickened out with the Doomsday Clock attempt to revert things as best as could be. And yet Bendis still writes Superman into the ground.
There is so much character and story in that one still photo. Man I love me some JK.
edit: Well that's a hilarious and inappropriate thumbnail.
Zach Snyder, everyone!
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Not to mention how Snyder made the effort to re-dress the Amazons. (Left is Wonder Woman, right is Justice League.)
Ouch
The fuck? Of all the things to axe first, why would your easy money be the first?
Point of order. The Snyder costumes were designed and shot before WW's. It would be more accurate to say that Snyder made some shitty, sexist costumes and Patty Jenkins fixed them for her movie.
https://kylegarret.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/aa7b3-ww-earth-one-2.png
...y'know the worst part? The best-case scenario for them I can see is that they jettison DC comic publishing entirely and Disney buys them up, and that would still be terrible because media conglomeration. (This would only be comic publishing; even AT&T aren't stupid enough to fire sale fucking Superman et al as an IP, right?
...right?)
I think Disney owning literally all of comic history is problematic, but who knows anymore
Tradition
Also the 90's speculation boom and subsequent crash led to a lot of bad decisions that increased stagnation within The Big Two and instead of changing course both companies have mostly fought to maintain their monopoly on the industry. As such, creator wages have fallen while comic prices have soared and new markets (webcomics, manga, digital comics) have fractured the talent pool.
The birth of the MCU and the acquisition by Disney have allowed these stagnant forces to continue to chart the course... but maybe not for much longer
They're too expensive. They're inconvenient for a variety of reasons. Going to buy some means having to set foot in a comic shop and encounter comic shop guys. They're not good at being new reader friendly, and when they do make an effort to attract new readers they usually manage to shed fans in the process. How many different comics are there now to consider if someone new goes into a store looking for the X-Men? How many different titles do you have to buy to keep up with the latest X-Men event? And that's a title that went through a major reboot of sorts to simplify things pretty recently. If you jump on to a new title and get invested quickly there's no way of knowing if they'll even get to complete their first storyline or get canceled after a few issues.
I like comics, but I haven't bought a paper comic for myself in decades. I'd much rather just buy collected stories in graphic novel/trade paperback form, and I'd rather get them some at my local bookstore. Or sign up for Marvel Unlimited for a while and catch up on things for a bit, and then let it go again.
Think of it as media accelerationism! When Disney owns all media, then Disney is the enemy of all humanity. That's when the real fight starts!*
(Don't do this, people who wait for the real fight to start rarely realize what they have already lost)
I thought that was only me! I look like the stereotypical white male nerd and I feel odd going into comic shops. They just seem kinda unwelcoming. Last one I went into had some kind if bitcoin kiosk (what does it even do?) in the back, if that means anything.
(It's also been years since I actually read comics.