OTOH, Ray's interpretation that Johns wanted the character to be a "jovial, cathedral-cleaning individual" seem to be based on his own inferences, rather than direct statements. It's possible that this is what Johns actually meant, but I can't think of any scene in the movie where playing the character as a servant would actually fit, even with bad intentions. So where would that even come up?
Seems more that it's based on Fisher having only ever seen the Disney animated movie.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
He didn't immediately remember the plot, but the main character rang a bell
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
+12
Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
:tell_me_more:
Also hey, y'know what's really grown on me? The effects for Flash using his zoomy powers. Thought his running looked silly, and it still kinda does, but it works IMO.
Not super familiar with the source material, so not sure if it's how his powers work, but in the movie at least it felt like he was stepping outside of time to move at normal speed, just... faster than he should? It was super cool and looked crazy dangerous! Especially liked how gently he boops the car crash victim to guide her down, rather than actually grabbing her. Really sold the idea that it's really difficult to safely interact with anything while he's moving.
Oh brilliant
+3
amateurhourOne day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered Userregular
Also hey, y'know what's really grown on me? The effects for Flash using his zoomy powers. Thought his running looked silly, and it still kinda does, but it works IMO.
Not super familiar with the source material, so not sure if it's how his powers work, but in the movie at least it felt like he was stepping outside of time to move at normal speed, just... faster than he should? It was super cool and looked crazy dangerous! Especially liked how gently he boops the car crash victim to guide her down, rather than actually grabbing her. Really sold the idea that it's really difficult to safely interact with anything while he's moving.
Yeah I feel like that is 100% in response to Pietro from X-Men but I'm definitely okay with it. It makes what you're seeing more believable than a guy getting squiggly marker lines on his face all of a sudden.
are YOU on the beer list?
+1
Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
I really liked the ZSJL flash - I thought the power effects were cool, I thought the character added some much-needed levity and enthusiasm but not in the annoying tired joss whedon sarcastic quip way. I liked that the character had something to do, and I thought the intro sequence with the dog walking gig and the car crash was actually kind of a beautiful scene
The bit with his dad was under baked but I guess I’d seen enough of the tv show to know what was up
I have been told by a fan of The Flash that the personality of the flash character in ZSJL wasn’t right for the Barry Allen flash but would have been great for some other version of flash and I briefed him, but that didn’t make any difference to how I experienced it.
But that aside, a character who is in a previous scene said to hate his appearance appearing in a way that displays it, forces others to see them anyway, is a character choice. Instead of looking at what the character is doing in the text and using that to inform your reading of the character, youre hung up on what they would have done in your version.
Here's the character in the text :
Silas Stone: Victor. Victor, you're not... stuck in here. You still have a life ahead of you. Your mother would've wanted you to live that life.
Victor Stone: If you were there, Mom would still be alive.
One of the first scenes is Silas begging Victor to not be a shut in, and then Victor basically telling him to fuck off. Later on when he's standing outside an atm, a couple sees him and is disgusted by he puts his hood on. So he's clearly self conscious about his appearance, in text. But apparently not self consuls enough to have been wearing his hood all along.
Simple question : why did Victor shut down all the power in the city block when Diana arrived? At the very least, that's kind of a dick move.
Was it to prevent people from seeing him? Because cutting out the power doesn't cause everyone inside to shut down like some sort of video game. In fact, it usually does the opposite: people look outside to see how far the black out goes. If he wanted to avoid attention, he could have just met her on a roof top.
Or maybe he intentionally wanted the world to see him, according to you? In that case, why not meet in broad daylight, where there would be lots of people?
The only thing that might make sense is the first explaination : cyborg only did that to be a dick. "fuck the world, let's see how much you like getting your power shut off, lol."
Again, this is a sign of inconsistent one dimensional writing. Snyder has a bunch of ideas he thinks are cool, like how cool it would be to show cyborg shutting the power off. But he doesn't ask himself if it makes sense for the character to do that.
Saying 'well he didn't directly SAY it like DIRECTLY SAY he wanted him to clean cathedrals, there are no literal cathedrals in the movie' is kind of ignoring the whole idea of like, symbolic communication.
If Stan Lee tells Ian McKellan that magneto is stopped to be similar to Malcolm X, that doesn't mean that he wants McKellan to play the role in black face because Malcolm is famous symbol for the black community. Even if that's how the actor interpreted the suggestion, that's clearly not what Stan Lee would have meant.
It's funny how you try insisting "look at the text instead of creating your own version," and then you completely ignore what Johns described as what he meant in order to substitute your own version.
Johns version of what he meant makes perfect sense within both his understanding of quasimodo and the text that Snyder provided. All of the qualities he describes that Snyder puts in the script.
Ray's version of what he thinks Johns must have meant doesn't really fit in anywhere. Even if we assume that Johns is OPENLY racist as fuck and not afraid to let people know that, I don't see any scene in the script where it makes sense for him to suggest that cyborg play the role as a servant. Even Alfred barely has any servant moments, and that's his literal job.
I was actually thinking about the 90s Flash the other day, and how his time in soaps probably helped John Wesley Shipp prepare for the role: by giving him practice in earnestly delivering dialogue that is melodramatic, overwrought and often completely bizarre. (So, you know, comic books.)
Not super familiar with the source material, so not sure if it's how his powers work, but in the movie at least it felt like he was stepping outside of time to move at normal speed, just... faster than he should? It was super cool and looked crazy dangerous! Especially liked how gently he boops the car crash victim to guide her down, rather than actually grabbing her. Really sold the idea that it's really difficult to safely interact with anything while he's moving.
One of my favorite version of super speed was from "The lost room."
Time is breifly frozen, but that also greatly limits your ability to interact with objects, which means you need to be incredibly clever about how you use it.
But that aside, a character who is in a previous scene said to hate his appearance appearing in a way that displays it, forces others to see them anyway, is a character choice. Instead of looking at what the character is doing in the text and using that to inform your reading of the character, youre hung up on what they would have done in your version.
Here's the character in the text :
Silas Stone: Victor. Victor, you're not... stuck in here. You still have a life ahead of you. Your mother would've wanted you to live that life.
Victor Stone: If you were there, Mom would still be alive.
One of the first scenes is Silas begging Victor to not be a shut in, and then Victor basically telling him to fuck off. Later on when he's standing outside an atm, a couple sees him and is disgusted by he puts his hood on. So he's clearly self conscious about his appearance, in text. But apparently not self consuls enough to have been wearing his hood all along.
A character doing one thing at one point and then another thing at a different point is not an inconsistancy. Like, the basic mechanism of not wearing hoodie> something happens that makes you self conscious > puts on hoodie is fairly comprehensible.
Simple question : why did Victor sit down all the power in the city block when Diana arrived? At the very least, that's kind of a dick move.
Was it to prevent people from seeing him? Because cutting out the power doesn't cause everyone inside to shut down like some sort of video game. In fact, it usually does the opposite: people look outside to see how far the black out goes. If he wanted to avoid attention, he could have just met her on a roof top.
Or maybe he intentionally wanted the world to see him, according to you? In that case, why not meet in broad daylight, where there would be lots of people?
The only thing that might make sense is the first explaination : cyborg only did that to be a dick. "fuck the world, let's see how much you like getting your power shut off, lol."
See that at least would be a valid reading, since it's based on the character's actions. Maybe he did do it to be a dick, to show that he could, maybe you see that and realize you don't personally like cyborg. But going 'it doesn't make sense for the character to do that...well they're the character, and they're doing that.
If Stan Lee tells Ian McKellan that magneto is stopped to be similar to Malcolm X, that doesn't mean that he wants McKellan to play the role in black face because Malcolm is famous symbol for the black community. Even if that's how the actor interpreted the suggestion, that's clearly not what Stan Lee would have meant.
It's funny how you try insisting "look at the text instead of creating your own version," and then you completely ignore what Johns described as what he meant in order to substitute your own version.
Johns version of what he meant makes perfect sense within both his understanding of quasimodo and the text that Snyder provided. All of the qualities he describes that Snyder puts in the script.
Ray's version of what he thinks Johns must have meant doesn't really fit in anywhere. Even if we assume that Johns is OPENLY racist as fuck and not afraid to let people know that, I don't see any scene in the script where it makes sense for him to suggest that cyborg play the role as a servant. Even Alfred barely has any servant moments, and that's his literal job.
A script isnt the same thing as a performance. Which is exactly why they're disagreeing how to construct the performance.
Your choice of language here suggests that you think that Fisher is somehow 'mistaking' Johns request and making some kind of absurd leap. But it is rather they are both describing the same concept (play it softer, 'nicer', more happy and accepting of your inhuman position), only one side is noting a problematic perspective to that concept the other isn't. Which becomes more apparent later in the article with the 'we cant have an angry black man at the centre of this movie' stuff that was reportedly influencing Johns from the studio.
Jeedan on
+1
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Not super familiar with the source material, so not sure if it's how his powers work, but in the movie at least it felt like he was stepping outside of time to move at normal speed, just... faster than he should? It was super cool and looked crazy dangerous! Especially liked how gently he boops the car crash victim to guide her down, rather than actually grabbing her. Really sold the idea that it's really difficult to safely interact with anything while he's moving.
One of my favorite version of super speed was from "The lost room."
Time is breifly frozen, but that also greatly limits your ability to interact with objects, which means you need to be incredibly clever about how you use it.
An interesting interpretation, but I've yet to see a portrayal of what would actually happen: the force of everything you touch is magnified by orders of magnitude. Flash gets away with it because of Speed Force, which lets him bend/break the rules of physics while moving fast.
But in a realistic portrayal, you could turn a pebble into an utterly lethal object. A fist-sized stone thrown at fastball speed becomes a high-velocity cannonball. A slap that would me moderately painful at normal speed could snap a neck, twist the head entirely around, and/or utterly destroy all the bones and flesh it touches. Surfaces that normally seem hard could crumble under your touch, and something like water could become as unforgiving as concrete. You couldn't use a keyboard or phone without either extreme care or causing each to disintegrate violently. Even just navigating a building at night might be tricky because all the lighting would be an epileptic nightmare of flickering. Even for basic stuff like like moving at a run would probably cause wooden structures to shred as you move across them, and you might even put out enough point force at a sprint that you would damage concrete just by running on it. Nevermind the constant shockwaves you would generate, which would be loud as hell and could be outright dangerous depending on proximity.
Super-speed without Speed Force compensation would be some nasty shit to deal with. It would be fucking hard to use it without massive damage.
Your choice of language here suggests that you think that Fisher is somehow 'mistaking' Johns request and making some kind of absurd leap.
No, the giant leap is when Ray says he assumes that's what Johns meant (he doesn't actually say that this is what Johns said) even though it doesn't make any sense in the context of the script and also Johns clearly explained that he meant something else entirely which does make sense in the context of the script.
But it is rather they are both describing the same concept (play it softer, 'nicer', more happy and accepting of your inhuman position), only one side is noting a problematic perspective to that concept the other isn't.
Except you're still relying on Ray's inferences of what Johns meant, which is the opposite of what Johns actually said.
Johns' representative responds: "Geoff gave a note using a fictional character as an example of a sympathetic man who is unhappy and has an inclination to hide from the world, but one whom the audience roots for because he has a courageous heart."
Which becomes more apparent later in the article with the 'we cant have an angry black man at the centre of this movie' stuff that was reportedly influencing Johns from the studio.
Fisher says he later learned from a witness who participated in the investigation that Johns and other top executives, including then-DC Films co-chairman Jon Berg and Warners studio chief Toby Emmerich, had discussions in which they said they could not have "an angry Black man" at the center of the film.
That could just as easily be interpreted as questioning, "Are we falling into a stereotype by depicting the character this way?"
And let's face it, this isn't "Black Panther" where the angry black man is a sympathetic antagonist who has been screwed over by the world. It's a superhero movie where one of the heroes says "fuck the world" for no clear reason that's ever addressed or resolved in the story, only to act as if he never felt that way when his dad gets kidnapped. And yes, you'll probably respond with "Black people have a right to be angry for any reason they want!", and that's true. But if that's the case, then you should probably address the reason for their anger in the story. A black person who's angry for no clear reason is a stereotype.
A character doing one thing at one point and then another thing at a different point is not an inconsistancy. Like, the basic mechanism of not wearing hoodie> something happens that makes you self conscious > puts on hoodie is fairly comprehensible.
See that at least would be a valid reading, since it's based on the character's actions. Maybe he did do it to be a dick, to show that he could, maybe you see that and realize you don't personally like cyborg. But going 'it doesn't make sense for the character to do that...well they're the character, and they're doing that.
I checked out FCH on Atomika's recommendation, which lead me to this bit of writing advice from the creators of South Park:
Basically, all your story beats should be connected with either "therefore" (logical progression) or "but" (complication). If you have to connect your story beats with "and then...", it's bad writing. This isn't just the South Park way of writing things: Most writing classes will say something similar. But most writing classes aren't able to sum up the theory in only 2 minutes. Another technique I've heard is to start from your ending scene, and work backwards. This is how you keep your story tight and cohesive and avoid filler.
Your defense of Snyder is simply "and then another thing happened," which is lazy writing. "He's self-conscious AND THEN he's not AND THEN he is AND THEN he's not again. Cyborg is a good person with a good heart who goes through all this trouble to help out a struggling mom, AND THEN he's a total dick to hundreds of people he's never met before for no reason, which would include lots of households with single moms." Like if you want to play Cyborg as a total dick, that's fine, but you need to do that consistently. But a few scenes earlier, the writers tried to establish him as a kind person. So how did we get from point A to point B? Synder includes them because he thought they would look cool, but it's inconsistent.
That's the problem with Snyder's writing in general. Events simply happen arbitrarily, one after another, with no natural sense of progression simply because they look cool. For instance, the entire museum scene with Wonder Woman doesn't really have any real connection with the main story. It's just a giant "and then." You could cut out that entire scene, and the story would make just as much sense.
We see a flashback of Cyborg's past, where his mom is talking to the dean about his hacking. Getting called into the dean's office for hacking the grade system is kind of a big deal, so we expect to see some sort of progression or complication, right? Wrong! AND THEN we immediately cut to a football scene. BUT his father isn't there. THEREFORE Victor and his mom are talking about it. AND THEN a car accident happens.
And this is yet another example what I mean by one-dimensional writing.
Movies have limited run time. Scripts with multi-dimensions make the most of this by revealing hidden layers and depths to what we thought we were watching before. You can re-watch a movie like "Hot Fuzz," and now those opening scenes reveal completely different meaning. It's the exact same movie, but the way the movie is written forces you to adjust your perspective and see things in new ways. "The Sixth Sense" is a mediocre suspense thriller if you remove the final reveal. But after you see the reveal, you want to re-watch the entire movie, in order to catch the things you didn't notice before.
One-dimensional writing doesn't reveals additional layers and depth. The only way to grow is by adding more screen time. Changes seem to happen arbitrarily and without reason, rather than organically building from previously overlooked clues that were planted earlier on. Snyder needs a scene that depicts Wonder Woman as cool and edgy, but he also needs scenes that further the plot. Instead of coming up with one scene that does both, he treats both these things as separate tasks, resulting in a much larger screen time.
A character doing one thing at one point and then another thing at a different point is not an inconsistancy. Like, the basic mechanism of not wearing hoodie> something happens that makes you self conscious > puts on hoodie is fairly comprehensible.
See that at least would be a valid reading, since it's based on the character's actions. Maybe he did do it to be a dick, to show that he could, maybe you see that and realize you don't personally like cyborg. But going 'it doesn't make sense for the character to do that...well they're the character, and they're doing that.
I checked out FCH on Atomika's recommendation, which lead me to this bit of writing advice from the creators of South Park:
Basically, all your story beats should be connected with either "therefore" (logical progression) or "but" (complication). If you have to connect your story beats with "and then...", it's bad writing. This isn't just the South Park way of writing things: Most writing classes will say something similar. But most writing classes aren't able to sum up the theory in only 2 minutes. Another technique I've heard is to start from your ending scene, and work backwards. This is how you keep your story tight and cohesive and avoid filler.
Your defense of Snyder is simply "and then another thing happened," which is lazy writing. "He's self-conscious AND THEN he's not AND THEN he is AND THEN he's not again. Cyborg is a good person with a good heart who goes through all this trouble to help out a struggling mom, AND THEN he's a total dick to hundreds of people he's never met before for no reason, which would include lots of households with single moms." Like if you want to play Cyborg as a total dick, that's fine, but you need to do that consistently. But a few scenes earlier, the writers tried to establish him as a kind person. So how did we get from point A to point B? Synder includes them because he thought they would look cool, but it's inconsistent.
That's the problem with Snyder's writing in general. Events simply happen arbitrarily, one after another, with no natural sense of progression simply because they look cool. For instance, the entire museum scene with Wonder Woman doesn't really have any real connection with the main story. It's just a giant "and then." You could cut out that entire scene, and the story would make just as much sense.
We see a flashback of Cyborg's past, where his mom is talking to the principle about his hacking. Getting called into the Principal's office for hacking the grade system is kind of a big deal, so we expect to see some sort of progression or complication, right? Wrong! AND THEN we immediately cut to a football scene. BUT his father isn't there. THEREFORE Victor and his mom are talking about it. AND THEN a car accident happens.
And this is yet another example what I mean by one-dimensional writing.
Movies have limited run time. Scripts with multi-dimensions make the most of this by revealing hidden layers and depths to what we thought we were watching before. You can re-watch a movie like "Hot Fuzz," and now those opening scenes reveal completely different meaning. It's the exact same movie, but the way the movie is written forces you to adjust your perspective and see things in new ways. "The Sixth Sense" is a mediocre suspense thriller if you remove the final reveal. But after you see the reveal, you want to re-watch the entire movie, in order to catch the things you didn't notice before.
One-dimensional writing doesn't reveals additional layers and depth. The only way for the story to grow is by adding more screen time. Changes seem to happen arbitrarily and without reason, rather than organically building from previously overlooked clues that were planted earlier on. Snyder needs a scene that depicts Wonder Woman as cool and edgy, but he also needs scenes that further the plot. Instead of coming up with one scene that does both, he treats both these things as separate tasks, resulting in a much larger screen time.
Look, you dont need to work so hard here. Irond Will succinctly summed it up two pages ago
Trying to keep up here but is the argument that it was fine for Whedon to cut Cyborg from JL because Cyborg was a dumb character and also we hate Zack Snyder?
The argument here appears to be that, cyborgs character is bad, inconsistent, shallow etc and therefore the stuff surrounding fishers statement stems not from any racial issue, but from zack snyder being a bad wrong director who made a bad wrong character who deserved to be cut.
I can try and support that no, cyborgs arc is pretty good and even if being uncharitable as at least as functional as any in a super hero flick but ultimately its pointless because that’s subjective anyway and you can just say ‘no its bad, trust me’, and then try and re explain ‘depth’ to me with more youtubes and I keep telling you I do not care and you keep explaining it again.
When its ultimately, its a sideshow and not really the point.
Your choice of language here suggests that you think that Fisher is somehow 'mistaking' Johns request and making some kind of absurd leap.
No, the giant leap is when Ray says he assumes that's what Johns meant (he doesn't actually say that this is what Johns said) even though it doesn't make any sense in the context of the script and also Johns clearly explained that he meant something else entirely which does make sense in the context of the script.
But it is rather they are both describing the same concept (play it softer, 'nicer', more happy and accepting of your inhuman position), only one side is noting a problematic perspective to that concept the other isn't.
Except you're still relying on Ray's inferences of what Johns meant, which is the opposite of what Johns actually said.
Johns' representative responds: "Geoff gave a note using a fictional character as an example of a sympathetic man who is unhappy and has an inclination to hide from the world, but one whom the audience roots for because he has a courageous heart."
They are not saying 'opposite' things. They are describing the same event from two different perspectives. This is how disagreements commonly work, particularly regarding such things as artistic representation and symbolism, which inherently creates multiple angles for interpretation.
This is indeed how many disagreements on fraught topics happens: one party says something intended as 'innocent' from their perspective, the other party goes 'hey man, maybe you don't mean it like that but that could be taken as kinda...'
What happens next is important. If the impulse is then immediately to shut the latter person's perspective down as crazy or invalid, there is an issue.
That could just as easily be interpreted as questioning, "Are we falling into a stereotype by depicting the character this way?"
This is what makes the situation interesting and a little more nuanced than obvious hateful bigotry. WB are essentially doing the well-meaning liberal bigotry thing - "we just want to show that black people can be nice". (A position reinforced with the appointees hilarious 'just so you know I was with Obama!' reference)
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I mean, there is an angry black man stereotype. And the movie is shitty enough that the portrayal of such would likely not be received well, because you have to further justify the artistic choice to reinforce such a common, negative stereotype. This is similar to the idea that you can't have Cyborg saying, "Booyah!" because it reinforces negative stereotypes and reduces black characters to catchphrases rather than people.
The exact argument we are hearing from Fisher, through the article, is that the portrayal of Cyborg the character in the film was nuanced and deep enough to warrant, on its surface, potentially reinforcing a negative stereotype. (This is, coincidentally, the same argument people used to justify the potential recasting of Iron Fist as an Asian-American, and argument that I personally disagree with, in the sense that showing any Asian with martial arts skills is fundamentally problematic from a representation standpoint.) If you look at the actual Snyder Cut, it seems pretty apparent that the quality of the movie, and Cyborg's arc in particular, may not warrant that level of support.
I agree that these discussions are complex and nuanced and need to be had, particularly with an eye towards deference to the people who are most impacted by those portrayals. But Fisher does not have a monopoly on whether the choices that are ultimately made are the correct ones. In many ways, that's left up to the audience and society at large in terms of how they perceive and consume the work.
Regarding Ray's complaint about black people and catch phrases, the real reason most characters don't have catch phrases is because coming up with a good catch phrase is actually incredibly difficult. You need something that is cool, unique, and suitable for a wide range of situations. It will make your character a lot more likeable. This usually happens organically, and is very difficult to manufacture. Batman's catch phrase of "I'm Batman" happened as an improvisation from Michael Keaton, and it caught on ever since. Keaton wasn't trying to give him a catch phrase, but as soon as he created one, the writers stuck with it.
Marvel movies do use catch phrases when they can ("Avengers Assemble!", "Hulk smash!", "It's clobbering time!", "Flame on!", etc.) DC movies are less likely to use them because a) there are fewer movies, and b) their catch phrases simply aren't as good and usually come across as incredibly dated. Cartoon Cyborg is the most popular and well known version of the character, and the catch phrase is a big part of it, and that's what audiences expect. I'm reminded of the FOX exec who didn't understand the appeal of Deadpool's character and didn't think that Deadpool was funny, so he forced the director to sew his mouth shut in "X-Men: Origin." And you know... art is subjective, so it's a perfectly valid opinion. The difference is, Ray wasn't an executive. Or even an actor with any real name recognition.
Are there racial connotations to using catch phrases? To an extent, sure, but those can be deconstructed.
1) Black actors have to work harder than white actors, and a good catch phrase is an effective way to beat the odds. It's the same way that the black women in "Hidden Figures" need to be a lot more intelligent than their whiter counterparts for the same position.
2) Certain catch phrases can be lazy or generic, i.e., "Oh, hell nah!" This usually applies to black characters who only have their catch phrases, but no real personality outside of that. That doesn't really apply here.
Later on in the movie, we see the following dialogue:
Aquaman: Round two?
Cyborg: Hell yeah.
So Ray can accept his character would say things like "Hell yeah" as a generic rallying cry (Which, BTW, a comic book catch phrase for Kite Man) but he hates the idea that the character would say things like "Booyah"? This seems like a really arbitrary distinction.
On the cartoon, Khary Payton wasn't forced to say "Booyah" by racist produces who wanted him to sound more stereotypically black. Quite the contrary: There were racist producers, but they worried that "booyah" was a euphemism for cocaine. Meaning the racist people didn't want him to use the phrase. The phrase itself isn't generic, it was popularized by a black sports caster Stuart Scott who used the phrase to set himself apart from the white sports casters who had their own (not as good) catch phrases. SNL even wrote an entire skit about this premise, where the joke is that a white sportscaster is trying to be like Scott and failing miserably.
Cyborg, meanwhile, is a star football player. Exactly the type of person who would watch sports casters, and exactly the type of person who Scott would be narrating. So in this specific case, it's basically an homage to a specific black man who broke barriers. It can even be an in-universe homage, since people quote pop culture in regular life all the time.
BTW, why isn't Ray Fisher offended at the idea that he's playing a football star? Are there no stereotypes about black people being good at sports?
Schrodinger on
+3
Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
Not super familiar with the source material, so not sure if it's how his powers work, but in the movie at least it felt like he was stepping outside of time to move at normal speed, just... faster than he should? It was super cool and looked crazy dangerous! Especially liked how gently he boops the car crash victim to guide her down, rather than actually grabbing her. Really sold the idea that it's really difficult to safely interact with anything while he's moving.
One of my favorite version of super speed was from "The lost room."
Time is breifly frozen, but that also greatly limits your ability to interact with objects, which means you need to be incredibly clever about how you use it.
I just appreciate that you brought up The Lost Room. It's one of my favorite mini-series ever, and I don't see it brought up very often.
I can try and support that no, cyborgs arc is pretty good and even if being uncharitable as at least as functional as any in a super hero flick but ultimately its pointless because that’s subjective anyway and you can just say ‘no its bad, trust me’, and then try and re explain ‘depth’ to me with more youtubes and I keep telling you I do not care and you keep explaining it again.
You keep falling back on "But art is subjective!" it to dismiss the opinion of others, while simultaneously presenting your own opinions (or the opinions of Fisher) as absolute and beyond question.
They are not saying 'opposite' things. They are describing the same event from two different perspectives. This is how disagreements commonly work, particularly regarding such things as artistic representation and symbolism, which inherently creates multiple angles for interpretation.
I'm not really sure how you can interpret "more happy" and "jovial" to mean the same thing as "unhappy."
jo·vi·al: cheerful and friendly.
un·hap·py: not happy.
Those look nothing alike to me. But I guess that's because art is subjective.
This is what makes the situation interesting and a little more nuanced than obvious hateful bigotry. WB are essentially doing the well-meaning liberal bigotry thing - "we just want to show that black people can be nice". (A position reinforced with the appointees hilarious 'just so you know I was with Obama!' reference)
Again, you're going from "but art is subjective" to "things are stereotypes because I say so, and not when I say they aren't."
Does Cyborg's background as a football player ever add anything to his character or the story at all? On the cartoon, it helps define the characters loveable personality. Which Ray apparently didn't want. So why include it at all? There's a hundred different ways to demonstrate his absentee father without the use of football.
Snyder uses it to show off his athletic prowess. Which, in a superhero movie, is the least remarkable thing about him. This entire movie is about a bunch of individuals coming together as a team, and Cyborg and Diana are the only characters with real team work experience, so that would be the perfect opportunity for his experience to come up. But it doesn't.
They could have taken out the scene with the Dean, and replaced it with one where he's coordinating football plays. This would have shown off his genius, rather than relying on tell, provided a further contrast with his isolation after the accident, and naturally flowed into the next scene. They could have started him off as a selfish jock who cared only about his own ego (To play into the idea that he doesn't need anyone else), or gone the opposite route by showing his consideration and empathy for other team mates. Then later in the movie, you see him slowly building up a brand new team, and coming up with the plays. For instance, using superior team work to defeat Superman, rather than relying on Lois Ex Machina.
If Cyborg starts off with the attitude of "I don't need anyone," then there should have been a scene where he tries to tackle the problem by himself and failing. Have him show up as his dad is being taken, and realizing that he can't fight the Parademons on his own. Instead, his dad is quickly kidnapped and he immediately goes to the team for help, as if he never refused them in the first place. So why include that scene where he meets Diana at all? You can remove it from the movie and not lose anything.
If you want to do "refusing the call" and have a story where he's pissed at his dad for turning him into a monster, then commit to that by having him shun his own powers out of spite. Which means he only has himself to blame for not knowing how to use his powers effectively, and the only way to redeem himself is by embracing his fathers teachings to learn how to use his powers effectively. This would also reinforce the idea that his character was "broken" before meeting the team, since learning to use his powers would be part of the healing process.
Alternatively, have him isolate to his own fortress of solitude, only to watch helplessly on security cameras while his father is taken away. There's lots of different ways to do this.
Part of the problem is that Snyder wants to give his character an arc, but he doesn't want to give the character major flaws to overcome.
Schrodinger on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I’m you want realistic flash powers? He runs once and the friction with the air ignites it into a waves of superheated plasma with the force of a atomic bomb
I’m you want realistic flash powers? He runs once and the friction with the air ignites it into a waves of superheated plasma with the force of a atomic bomb
Realistically, the air resistance would stop him long before he got to that point.
I’m you want realistic flash powers? He runs once and the friction with the air ignites it into a waves of superheated plasma with the force of a atomic bomb
I’m you want realistic flash powers? He runs once and the friction with the air ignites it into a waves of superheated plasma with the force of a atomic bomb
huh, I don't remember seeing that in "Flash Facts"...
Not super familiar with the source material, so not sure if it's how his powers work, but in the movie at least it felt like he was stepping outside of time to move at normal speed, just... faster than he should? It was super cool and looked crazy dangerous! Especially liked how gently he boops the car crash victim to guide her down, rather than actually grabbing her. Really sold the idea that it's really difficult to safely interact with anything while he's moving.
One of my favorite version of super speed was from "The lost room."
Time is breifly frozen, but that also greatly limits your ability to interact with objects, which means you need to be incredibly clever about how you use it.
I just appreciate that you brought up The Lost Room. It's one of my favorite mini-series ever, and I don't see it brought up very often.
I loved that show too and haven't thought about it in forever. When I watched that clip it all came flooding back and it was a hell of a cool moment.
Quicksilver's "stop time" speed scene was really cool at first but I'm kind of over that as a depiction of super speed now and don't think it should apply to the Flash. The Flash doesn't stop time, he literally moves and thinks super duper fast and the Speed Force lets him do that without all those pesky physics issues. It just seems lazy to me.
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Bloods EndBlade of TyshallePunch dimensionRegistered Userregular
Also, superman totally does say a catch phrase in the movie.
"I'm a big fan of truth and also justice" as in truth justice and the american way.
That's his a catch phrase from the radio series since everything had to be narrated out loud or else the audience wouldn't know what was happening. It's an example of tell, don't show, because the "show" wasn't possible for the medium.
It's like how comic books used onomatopoeia to replicate the sound of fights, because they didn't have actual sound. It's generally only transferred over to other mediums as a joke, most notably with the Adam West series.
It's also from an era where the idea of flight was a relatively new thing and one of the major wonders of modern technology. Now and days, it's not nearly as impressive. To the extent where DCEU can't even remember whether or not WW actually has that power or not, because it's so unimportant to them.
Anyway, I'm watching another tribute to Stuart Scott, where black sportscasters are talking about how much he inspired them and paved the way for non-white sportscasters. Because before Scott came along with his booyahs, sportscasting was considered a primarily white field, even though so many of the actual athletes.... were not.
But yeah, why the heck would Cyborg want to be associated with something like that?
True, but the problems he was facing weren't all because of race and he didn't act like it was micro-aggressions he wanted careers ended over his. His superiors were insensitive and being dicks, he never produced smoking guns appropriate for the heat he was bringing, and with problematic actions like throwing he investigator under he bus who was on his side. It is when discussion is about characters being written in a DC movie and my opinion about Superman is far from being a minority, that's been happening since Man of Steel.
He laid out the allegations clearly. Other people backed him up on it. In the article posted he specifically says he does not want careers ended.
Fisher's allegations have been vague as hell for months, only now has he truly opened up and her is no smoking gun. He wasn' doing what Carpener's been doing lately. The second she spoke up Whedon was righlty toast, that turned everyone agains Whedon nor Fisher because Fisher didn' bring he receipts until long afterward. They backed ha he had problems worth addressing, hey weren't agreeing opening with what he said. Hiding behind NDA's isn't being forthright.
"I don't believe some of these people are fit for positions of leadership," says Fisher, who explains he's not looking for anyone to be fired. "I don't want them excommunicated from Hollywood, but I don't think they should be in charge of the hiring and firing of other people." Fisher knows he's not going to win that battle, but he feels a point has been made. "If I can't get accountability," he says, "at least I can make people aware of who they're dealing with."
Except when Whedon's kicked off his show and his career right now is terminated and Fisher's still not happy with the results. He refuses to work for WB again as long as Hamada is here. Accountability in his terms is nobody he's angry with keeping their jobs.
You're accusing him of 'overreacting' over things that are only 'micro aggressions'.
I don't know how to put this more plainly. The "just" microaggressions are the problem. When a POC complains about microaggressions people say 'you're just over reacting'. thats what makes micro aggressions problematic and hostile. That they're subtle and passive-aggressive and plausibly deniable. They make a hositile and toxic environment where when the POC complains people can go 'woah woah lighten up! No need to be angry about it!"
Of course they're a problem, but that wasn't Fisher was doing. He wasn't saying microagressions. He was acting as though all he WB were doing far more than that to him behind the scenes. Except his complains about miscroagressions weren't all simple yes and no examples. I;s fine for him to be angry, calling everyone racist (and not in the microagressive sense) and abusers isn't.
Don't twist my words, please.
Fischer is talking directly about his experiences on the set, without exaggeration and you are saying: That he's just overreacting, being difficult, being a diva, doing it for selfish reasons, stop being so angry about it, all the other stuff people say whenever a POC dares to complain about something.
Except he wasn't, he was being vague and refused to go into specifics. For months.
I have very little sympathy for defending the hollywood machine against the opinions of a young black actor tbh.
This isnt just about sympathy, it's about the facts. He's not Tom Cruise, he isn't even Don Cheadle.
Why not? Why isn't being a dick to your actors to the point where they hate you and dont want to work with you (and recall, it isnt just fischer who had the issues here) enough to burn a career over?
Fisher's claims weren't about being a dick it was about being racist and abusive. Is taken months before we go this far with confirmations of what went on behind the scenes and he was acting like it was far more than what was exposed. Microagesions weren't being how he made his claims, which weren't transparent in he least. They are so vague his claims could have been viewed as Whedon saying he N-word, and physically assaulting him on set.
Burning a career isn't he only option to pursue change which is badly needed. No because Hollywood, and WB, badly need to change heir racist systems bu if every black actor did that here would' be any left in films, specially when is been shown Fisher wasn' correct in how bad i was. It was horrible, and should' have occurred, but how he was acting it was not about micro aggressions.
Also I want to keep in mind the 'one bad apple' thing, where people disavow the individual but defend the structure that enables them. Disavow Whedon himself (which is easy now the tide has turned against him) but in the same breath go "but c'mon is what they did really that bad though that you gotta make a big deal about it?'
I already said it was a toxic work environment and WB having issues with racism isn't news, his isn't just about Whedon but how Fisher went about this wasn't exactly by the book in how he wen about his claims. You know why the latest article was a revelation for Fisher? He's never been that open befor and guess wha? I wasn' as bad as he made it out to be. We've had to play guessing games because he didn't reveal specifics. Have you been following Fisher's exploit since he Snyder Cut was being promoted?
When the people Fisher was angry at changed on a dime, rather when explaining all in full and this included Hamada - someone who wasn' hired by WB until after League wrapped. And the investigator who was on his side, she didn't find what he wanted so she had to go. No considerations that he might be mistaken or that he misinterpreted what Johns said. Just burn everything down.
Ok. But, thats not what happened. You said:
Snyder and Fisher are connected through the Snyder Cut, who they both view as being their magnum opus and a chance for better things, they need each other to thrive. This is why we never hear what Fisher has to say about Snyder's problematic movies and how Snyder waiting until after is released to denounce Nazis isn't a problem or other nasty shit Snyder's said about anyone who dislikes his movies. Fisher's on the Shut Up and Fuck You train.
Which sounds a lot like questioning Fischers character and his honesty because of his opinions on Snyder or his movies.
I gave him the benefit of a doubt for months. I got burnt too many times for my troubles and as explained besides his issues with WB he went above and beyond defending Snyder, which is a seperate issue to wha he's saying about Whedon. Once more conflating anything bad with disking Snyder's films as though they're a moral measurement of anything. His opinion on Snyder's movie matter since represention was a concern in Whedon;s production. Is hypocritical for it only to matter with Whedon being a professional dick, and being totally ok when Snyder does it in his own films with nary a hint of complaint. Do you think Snyder's films don't have issues with POC or female representation? Its been embarrassing wha he's done to Lois in these films, the only worthwhile performance Adams' got was Man of Steel and that had its own problems.
Going against half the WB top brass as a new actor isn't exactly great for his career.
Not if Fisher thinks he's going to win.
What things? What are you talking about? What relevance does it have to Fischer?
The thread's gone over what he's done recently, in the past, and in the very post you're responding to. Instead, Snyder's existence on the Earth depose being he director of he film Fisher's on is being erased as if he had nothing to do with Justice League. Whedon isn't the only controversial director of the movie so why the pretense that Snyder is outside he scope of Hollywood, the film itself or Fisher?
Wayne T Carr is a writer, director and teacher. Fisher retweeted his.
Snyder is a director is a worse track record with POC and women in films than Whedon is on screen, thankfully he's not as bad as Whedon is on set - which is a low bar to clear. Nothing about Iris being reduced to a small cameo, J'onn being reduced to a cameo where half of it is being Martha because reasons and Silas Stone being killed off leaving Cyborg as the sole main black presentation in the Snyder Cut? There's nothing problematic about those roles in the movie? Snyder did it and Fisher's happy so move on.
Bear in mind that none of this necessarily justifies the actions of the studio executives. It's quite possible that we've already put way more thought here into what does or doesn't constitute appropriate representation than they ever did.
I do find this argument kind of interesting. We're debating whether a black person should have the right to decide whether something is an offensive caricature towards them, which would normally be a very bad idea to do, but the argument is being made that in this case, Fisher is actually appropriating and failing to understand another culture, that of sports fans.
Unless we can get the perspective of a black sports fan in here, I'm not sure how much of a basis we have to meaningfully discuss this.
Barry leaves the prison after visiting his dad who was framed for murder, and is immediately confronted by the world's great detective. Who presumably was keeping tabs Barry and knew where he was, because I refuse to believe that Bruce was waiting there all day. Batman bonded with Superman in the previous movie when he realized that both of them have moms. And yet... the World's Greatest Detective doesn't offer his services to clear an innocent father?
Wow, what a dick.
I get that they have more urgent matters to worry about, but a simple "I promise to help out when this is over" would have gone a long way.
I do find this argument kind of interesting. We're debating whether a black person should have the right to decide whether something is an offensive caricature towards them, which would normally be a very bad idea to do, but the argument is being made that in this case, Fisher is actually appropriating and failing to understand another culture, that of sports fans.
Unless we can get the perspective of a black sports fan in here, I'm not sure how much of a basis we have to meaningfully discuss this.
I think the problem is that Fisher had a vague understanding that the word "booyah" was associated with the black community, and immediately concluded that it therefore must be derogatory, without actually bothering to investigate why it was associated with the black community. Specifically, because of the contributions of one particular black man who broke a lot of barriers for other black people to follow. One who was dignified and professional, while staying true to his roots.
I never watched Sportscenter, but I actually remember watching the SNL sketch when I was a kid. Didn't realize that it was based on a real person, but it adds an entirely new layer.
Fisher basically equates the Stuart Scott to Jimmy Walker from "Good Times," who is a completely different character from a completely different era. I never watched the show, but a quick search says that Walker was seen as a buffoon by his own co-stars, and the lead apparently walked off the show in disgust. He's also a huge conservatives to the point where there were rumors that he was dating Ann Coulter. Another reason the lead left is because show was also staffed entirely by white writers.
Pretty much the only thing Walker and Scott have in common is that they're both black, which apparently makes them interchangeable in the eyes of Fisher.
I mean, there is an angry black man stereotype. And the movie is shitty enough that the portrayal of such would likely not be received well, because you have to further justify the artistic choice to reinforce such a common, negative stereotype. This is similar to the idea that you can't have Cyborg saying, "Booyah!" because it reinforces negative stereotypes and reduces black characters to catchphrases rather than people.
The exact argument we are hearing from Fisher, through the article, is that the portrayal of Cyborg the character in the film was nuanced and deep enough to warrant, on its surface, potentially reinforcing a negative stereotype. (This is, coincidentally, the same argument people used to justify the potential recasting of Iron Fist as an Asian-American, and argument that I personally disagree with, in the sense that showing any Asian with martial arts skills is fundamentally problematic from a representation standpoint.) If you look at the actual Snyder Cut, it seems pretty apparent that the quality of the movie, and Cyborg's arc in particular, may not warrant that level of support.
No, the exact argument was something more along the lines of 'its different for the white writer who writes it vs the black actor who has to say it".
Again, appeals to the 'depth' of snyders screenwriting* is not required in order to understand this.
Cyborg is the one character who can’t disguise himself. He lives in his skin. His otherness is a constant fact of his life. And that to me—and Ray and I discussed this—speaks about being a Black man in America.”
I agree that these discussions are complex and nuanced and need to be had, particularly with an eye towards deference to the people who are most impacted by those portrayals. But Fisher does not have a monopoly on whether the choices that are ultimately made are the correct ones. In many ways, that's left up to the audience and society at large in terms of how they perceive and consume the work.
'These discussions are complex and need to be had' is empty rhetoric unless an essential point is made - these discussions need to be had while including POC perspectives.
Otherwise, you end up with takes like this dogshit:
I do find this argument kind of interesting. We're debating whether a black person should have the right to decide whether something is an offensive caricature towards them, which would normally be a very bad idea to do, but the argument is being made that in this case, Fisher is actually appropriating and failing to understand another culture, that of sports fans.
Unless we can get the perspective of a black sports fan in here, I'm not sure how much of a basis we have to meaningfully discuss this.
I think the problem is that Fisher had a vague understanding that the word "booyah" was associated with the black community, and immediately concluded that it therefore must be derogatory, without actually bothering to investigate why it was associated with the black community. Specifically, because of the contributions of one particular black man who broke a lot of barriers for other black people to follow. One who was dignified and professional, while staying true to his roots.
I never watched Sportscenter, but I actually remember watching the SNL sketch when I was a kid. Didn't realize that it was based on a real person, but it adds an entirely new layer.
Fisher basically equates the Stuart Scott to Jimmy Walker from "Good Times," who is a completely different character from a completely different era. I never watched the show, but a quick search says that Walker was seen as a buffoon by his own co-stars, and the lead apparently walked off the show in disgust. He's also a huge conservatives to the point where there were rumors that he was dating Ann Coulter. Another reason the lead left is because show was also staffed entirely by white writers.
Pretty much the only thing Walker and Scott have in common is that they're both black, which apparently makes them interchangeable in the eyes of Fisher.
Are we really doing, 'fisher is approriating sports fan culture' he has a 'vague' understanding of the dynamics here' and insinuations that maybe he's the real racist.
Yeah I'm out. This is a fucked take dude. It is shameful.
Jeedan on
+1
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I think you need to take a step back and consider which forum you're posting in, and whether it's the appropriate place to insinuate that people are being disingenuous while cherry-picking what to respond to within their posts and calling them "dogshit" and "fucked takes".
I've only posted 4 times regarding the Fisher article. Every single time I've noted that POC perspectives were not considered appropriately and better representation, particularly at leadership positions, needs to be present. And yet somehow you are happy to levy accusations of vagaries and empty rhetoric.
Consider whether you are letting your emotions dictate your responses rather than taking people in good faith and responding accordingly. You also seem to be operating under the mistaken assumption that everyone who is participating here and debates with you operates as one giant hive mind when it's clear that several of us agree on some things but disagree on others.
There was an episode of "Fresh Off The Boat" where Randall Park has the chance to guest star on a morning show, which is an amazing opportunity for an Asian man in the 1990s, and he does a great job being himself and making people laugh. But then his wife warns him that he needs to be careful, or else he's going to be seen as a clown and be another "Long Duk Dong." Park is absolutely terrified at the prospect, and isn't sure if people are laughing at him or with him. So on his next appearance, he acts super serious and confrontational. Afterwards, his wife complains that now this everyone will think that Asians have no sense of humor.
Finally, they realize that it's unfair to expect one Asian man to be the representative for the entire Asian race. So he goes back to just being his charming self again.
The main difference is that Ray is an actor, so his job is to play a role, not to be himself. He's never gotten past the "I must be super serious so that I won't be seen as Long Duk DongJimmy Walker" phase, as if those are the only possibilities, and is offended by any suggestion to the contrary. And Cyborg isn't supposed to be a representative for his entire race, because there are so many other black superheroes before and after who are a lot more prominent. In addition to the other entries I mentioned, "Hancock" and "Suicide Squad" both featured Will Smith, and both those movies were far more successful than "Justice League" and featured their black lead a lot more prominently.
To Fisher, who had few screen credits, playing the half-man, half-machine Cyborg — the first Black superhero in the DC film universe — was both a huge career break and a major responsibility.
If you're talking in terms of cameos, Martian Manhunter was there first in "Man of Steel." If you talking in terms of prominent feature film roles, Deadshot beats him by a year, and managed to have a much clearer storyline. Ray put all that pressure on himself for something that wasn't even true. And even if he had been the first, that wouldn't mean much in the long run if his character was utterly forgettable. Black Panther became a worldwide phenomenon. Cyborg? Not so much.
By sheer coincidence, the single most influential catch phrase to come out of of the MCU is also said by a black superhero. Was that racist? Should Marvel not have done that? Does this mean that Chadwick Boseman is Jimmy Walker now?
Schrodinger on
+3
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
It’s really unfortunate how everyone in this thread has now given exponentially more thought about Cyborg than either of the JL directors did
Posts
Seems more that it's based on Fisher having only ever seen the Disney animated movie.
Also hey, y'know what's really grown on me? The effects for Flash using his zoomy powers. Thought his running looked silly, and it still kinda does, but it works IMO.
Not super familiar with the source material, so not sure if it's how his powers work, but in the movie at least it felt like he was stepping outside of time to move at normal speed, just... faster than he should? It was super cool and looked crazy dangerous! Especially liked how gently he boops the car crash victim to guide her down, rather than actually grabbing her. Really sold the idea that it's really difficult to safely interact with anything while he's moving.
Yeah I feel like that is 100% in response to Pietro from X-Men but I'm definitely okay with it. It makes what you're seeing more believable than a guy getting squiggly marker lines on his face all of a sudden.
The bit with his dad was under baked but I guess I’d seen enough of the tv show to know what was up
I have been told by a fan of The Flash that the personality of the flash character in ZSJL wasn’t right for the Barry Allen flash but would have been great for some other version of flash and I briefed him, but that didn’t make any difference to how I experienced it.
Here's the character in the text :
Silas Stone: Victor. Victor, you're not... stuck in here. You still have a life ahead of you. Your mother would've wanted you to live that life.
Victor Stone: If you were there, Mom would still be alive.
One of the first scenes is Silas begging Victor to not be a shut in, and then Victor basically telling him to fuck off. Later on when he's standing outside an atm, a couple sees him and is disgusted by he puts his hood on. So he's clearly self conscious about his appearance, in text. But apparently not self consuls enough to have been wearing his hood all along.
Simple question : why did Victor shut down all the power in the city block when Diana arrived? At the very least, that's kind of a dick move.
Was it to prevent people from seeing him? Because cutting out the power doesn't cause everyone inside to shut down like some sort of video game. In fact, it usually does the opposite: people look outside to see how far the black out goes. If he wanted to avoid attention, he could have just met her on a roof top.
Or maybe he intentionally wanted the world to see him, according to you? In that case, why not meet in broad daylight, where there would be lots of people?
The only thing that might make sense is the first explaination : cyborg only did that to be a dick. "fuck the world, let's see how much you like getting your power shut off, lol."
Again, this is a sign of inconsistent one dimensional writing. Snyder has a bunch of ideas he thinks are cool, like how cool it would be to show cyborg shutting the power off. But he doesn't ask himself if it makes sense for the character to do that.
If Stan Lee tells Ian McKellan that magneto is stopped to be similar to Malcolm X, that doesn't mean that he wants McKellan to play the role in black face because Malcolm is famous symbol for the black community. Even if that's how the actor interpreted the suggestion, that's clearly not what Stan Lee would have meant.
It's funny how you try insisting "look at the text instead of creating your own version," and then you completely ignore what Johns described as what he meant in order to substitute your own version.
Johns version of what he meant makes perfect sense within both his understanding of quasimodo and the text that Snyder provided. All of the qualities he describes that Snyder puts in the script.
Ray's version of what he thinks Johns must have meant doesn't really fit in anywhere. Even if we assume that Johns is OPENLY racist as fuck and not afraid to let people know that, I don't see any scene in the script where it makes sense for him to suggest that cyborg play the role as a servant. Even Alfred barely has any servant moments, and that's his literal job.
One of my favorite version of super speed was from "The lost room."
Time is breifly frozen, but that also greatly limits your ability to interact with objects, which means you need to be incredibly clever about how you use it.
A character doing one thing at one point and then another thing at a different point is not an inconsistancy. Like, the basic mechanism of not wearing hoodie> something happens that makes you self conscious > puts on hoodie is fairly comprehensible.
See that at least would be a valid reading, since it's based on the character's actions. Maybe he did do it to be a dick, to show that he could, maybe you see that and realize you don't personally like cyborg. But going 'it doesn't make sense for the character to do that...well they're the character, and they're doing that.
A script isnt the same thing as a performance. Which is exactly why they're disagreeing how to construct the performance.
Your choice of language here suggests that you think that Fisher is somehow 'mistaking' Johns request and making some kind of absurd leap. But it is rather they are both describing the same concept (play it softer, 'nicer', more happy and accepting of your inhuman position), only one side is noting a problematic perspective to that concept the other isn't. Which becomes more apparent later in the article with the 'we cant have an angry black man at the centre of this movie' stuff that was reportedly influencing Johns from the studio.
An interesting interpretation, but I've yet to see a portrayal of what would actually happen: the force of everything you touch is magnified by orders of magnitude. Flash gets away with it because of Speed Force, which lets him bend/break the rules of physics while moving fast.
But in a realistic portrayal, you could turn a pebble into an utterly lethal object. A fist-sized stone thrown at fastball speed becomes a high-velocity cannonball. A slap that would me moderately painful at normal speed could snap a neck, twist the head entirely around, and/or utterly destroy all the bones and flesh it touches. Surfaces that normally seem hard could crumble under your touch, and something like water could become as unforgiving as concrete. You couldn't use a keyboard or phone without either extreme care or causing each to disintegrate violently. Even just navigating a building at night might be tricky because all the lighting would be an epileptic nightmare of flickering. Even for basic stuff like like moving at a run would probably cause wooden structures to shred as you move across them, and you might even put out enough point force at a sprint that you would damage concrete just by running on it. Nevermind the constant shockwaves you would generate, which would be loud as hell and could be outright dangerous depending on proximity.
Super-speed without Speed Force compensation would be some nasty shit to deal with. It would be fucking hard to use it without massive damage.
No, the giant leap is when Ray says he assumes that's what Johns meant (he doesn't actually say that this is what Johns said) even though it doesn't make any sense in the context of the script and also Johns clearly explained that he meant something else entirely which does make sense in the context of the script.
Except you're still relying on Ray's inferences of what Johns meant, which is the opposite of what Johns actually said.
Johns' representative responds: "Geoff gave a note using a fictional character as an example of a sympathetic man who is unhappy and has an inclination to hide from the world, but one whom the audience roots for because he has a courageous heart."
Fisher says he later learned from a witness who participated in the investigation that Johns and other top executives, including then-DC Films co-chairman Jon Berg and Warners studio chief Toby Emmerich, had discussions in which they said they could not have "an angry Black man" at the center of the film.
That could just as easily be interpreted as questioning, "Are we falling into a stereotype by depicting the character this way?"
And let's face it, this isn't "Black Panther" where the angry black man is a sympathetic antagonist who has been screwed over by the world. It's a superhero movie where one of the heroes says "fuck the world" for no clear reason that's ever addressed or resolved in the story, only to act as if he never felt that way when his dad gets kidnapped. And yes, you'll probably respond with "Black people have a right to be angry for any reason they want!", and that's true. But if that's the case, then you should probably address the reason for their anger in the story. A black person who's angry for no clear reason is a stereotype.
I checked out FCH on Atomika's recommendation, which lead me to this bit of writing advice from the creators of South Park:
Basically, all your story beats should be connected with either "therefore" (logical progression) or "but" (complication). If you have to connect your story beats with "and then...", it's bad writing. This isn't just the South Park way of writing things: Most writing classes will say something similar. But most writing classes aren't able to sum up the theory in only 2 minutes. Another technique I've heard is to start from your ending scene, and work backwards. This is how you keep your story tight and cohesive and avoid filler.
Your defense of Snyder is simply "and then another thing happened," which is lazy writing. "He's self-conscious AND THEN he's not AND THEN he is AND THEN he's not again. Cyborg is a good person with a good heart who goes through all this trouble to help out a struggling mom, AND THEN he's a total dick to hundreds of people he's never met before for no reason, which would include lots of households with single moms." Like if you want to play Cyborg as a total dick, that's fine, but you need to do that consistently. But a few scenes earlier, the writers tried to establish him as a kind person. So how did we get from point A to point B? Synder includes them because he thought they would look cool, but it's inconsistent.
That's the problem with Snyder's writing in general. Events simply happen arbitrarily, one after another, with no natural sense of progression simply because they look cool. For instance, the entire museum scene with Wonder Woman doesn't really have any real connection with the main story. It's just a giant "and then." You could cut out that entire scene, and the story would make just as much sense.
We see a flashback of Cyborg's past, where his mom is talking to the dean about his hacking. Getting called into the dean's office for hacking the grade system is kind of a big deal, so we expect to see some sort of progression or complication, right? Wrong! AND THEN we immediately cut to a football scene. BUT his father isn't there. THEREFORE Victor and his mom are talking about it. AND THEN a car accident happens.
And this is yet another example what I mean by one-dimensional writing.
Movies have limited run time. Scripts with multi-dimensions make the most of this by revealing hidden layers and depths to what we thought we were watching before. You can re-watch a movie like "Hot Fuzz," and now those opening scenes reveal completely different meaning. It's the exact same movie, but the way the movie is written forces you to adjust your perspective and see things in new ways. "The Sixth Sense" is a mediocre suspense thriller if you remove the final reveal. But after you see the reveal, you want to re-watch the entire movie, in order to catch the things you didn't notice before.
One-dimensional writing doesn't reveals additional layers and depth. The only way to grow is by adding more screen time. Changes seem to happen arbitrarily and without reason, rather than organically building from previously overlooked clues that were planted earlier on. Snyder needs a scene that depicts Wonder Woman as cool and edgy, but he also needs scenes that further the plot. Instead of coming up with one scene that does both, he treats both these things as separate tasks, resulting in a much larger screen time.
Look, you dont need to work so hard here. Irond Will succinctly summed it up two pages ago
The argument here appears to be that, cyborgs character is bad, inconsistent, shallow etc and therefore the stuff surrounding fishers statement stems not from any racial issue, but from zack snyder being a bad wrong director who made a bad wrong character who deserved to be cut.
I can try and support that no, cyborgs arc is pretty good and even if being uncharitable as at least as functional as any in a super hero flick but ultimately its pointless because that’s subjective anyway and you can just say ‘no its bad, trust me’, and then try and re explain ‘depth’ to me with more youtubes and I keep telling you I do not care and you keep explaining it again.
When its ultimately, its a sideshow and not really the point.
They are not saying 'opposite' things. They are describing the same event from two different perspectives. This is how disagreements commonly work, particularly regarding such things as artistic representation and symbolism, which inherently creates multiple angles for interpretation.
This is indeed how many disagreements on fraught topics happens: one party says something intended as 'innocent' from their perspective, the other party goes 'hey man, maybe you don't mean it like that but that could be taken as kinda...'
What happens next is important. If the impulse is then immediately to shut the latter person's perspective down as crazy or invalid, there is an issue.
This is what makes the situation interesting and a little more nuanced than obvious hateful bigotry. WB are essentially doing the well-meaning liberal bigotry thing - "we just want to show that black people can be nice". (A position reinforced with the appointees hilarious 'just so you know I was with Obama!' reference)
The exact argument we are hearing from Fisher, through the article, is that the portrayal of Cyborg the character in the film was nuanced and deep enough to warrant, on its surface, potentially reinforcing a negative stereotype. (This is, coincidentally, the same argument people used to justify the potential recasting of Iron Fist as an Asian-American, and argument that I personally disagree with, in the sense that showing any Asian with martial arts skills is fundamentally problematic from a representation standpoint.) If you look at the actual Snyder Cut, it seems pretty apparent that the quality of the movie, and Cyborg's arc in particular, may not warrant that level of support.
I agree that these discussions are complex and nuanced and need to be had, particularly with an eye towards deference to the people who are most impacted by those portrayals. But Fisher does not have a monopoly on whether the choices that are ultimately made are the correct ones. In many ways, that's left up to the audience and society at large in terms of how they perceive and consume the work.
Marvel movies do use catch phrases when they can ("Avengers Assemble!", "Hulk smash!", "It's clobbering time!", "Flame on!", etc.) DC movies are less likely to use them because a) there are fewer movies, and b) their catch phrases simply aren't as good and usually come across as incredibly dated. Cartoon Cyborg is the most popular and well known version of the character, and the catch phrase is a big part of it, and that's what audiences expect. I'm reminded of the FOX exec who didn't understand the appeal of Deadpool's character and didn't think that Deadpool was funny, so he forced the director to sew his mouth shut in "X-Men: Origin." And you know... art is subjective, so it's a perfectly valid opinion. The difference is, Ray wasn't an executive. Or even an actor with any real name recognition.
Are there racial connotations to using catch phrases? To an extent, sure, but those can be deconstructed.
1) Black actors have to work harder than white actors, and a good catch phrase is an effective way to beat the odds. It's the same way that the black women in "Hidden Figures" need to be a lot more intelligent than their whiter counterparts for the same position.
2) Certain catch phrases can be lazy or generic, i.e., "Oh, hell nah!" This usually applies to black characters who only have their catch phrases, but no real personality outside of that. That doesn't really apply here.
Later on in the movie, we see the following dialogue:
Aquaman: Round two?
Cyborg: Hell yeah.
So Ray can accept his character would say things like "Hell yeah" as a generic rallying cry (Which, BTW, a comic book catch phrase for Kite Man) but he hates the idea that the character would say things like "Booyah"? This seems like a really arbitrary distinction.
On the cartoon, Khary Payton wasn't forced to say "Booyah" by racist produces who wanted him to sound more stereotypically black. Quite the contrary: There were racist producers, but they worried that "booyah" was a euphemism for cocaine. Meaning the racist people didn't want him to use the phrase. The phrase itself isn't generic, it was popularized by a black sports caster Stuart Scott who used the phrase to set himself apart from the white sports casters who had their own (not as good) catch phrases. SNL even wrote an entire skit about this premise, where the joke is that a white sportscaster is trying to be like Scott and failing miserably.
Cyborg, meanwhile, is a star football player. Exactly the type of person who would watch sports casters, and exactly the type of person who Scott would be narrating. So in this specific case, it's basically an homage to a specific black man who broke barriers. It can even be an in-universe homage, since people quote pop culture in regular life all the time.
BTW, why isn't Ray Fisher offended at the idea that he's playing a football star? Are there no stereotypes about black people being good at sports?
I just appreciate that you brought up The Lost Room. It's one of my favorite mini-series ever, and I don't see it brought up very often.
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oh yes. Doom patrol is insanely good. Might be my favourite DC property since the DCAU
You keep falling back on "But art is subjective!" it to dismiss the opinion of others, while simultaneously presenting your own opinions (or the opinions of Fisher) as absolute and beyond question.
I'm not really sure how you can interpret "more happy" and "jovial" to mean the same thing as "unhappy."
jo·vi·al: cheerful and friendly.
un·hap·py: not happy.
Those look nothing alike to me. But I guess that's because art is subjective.
Again, you're going from "but art is subjective" to "things are stereotypes because I say so, and not when I say they aren't."
I will be deeply saddened if they can't get a third season out of this.
Snyder uses it to show off his athletic prowess. Which, in a superhero movie, is the least remarkable thing about him. This entire movie is about a bunch of individuals coming together as a team, and Cyborg and Diana are the only characters with real team work experience, so that would be the perfect opportunity for his experience to come up. But it doesn't.
They could have taken out the scene with the Dean, and replaced it with one where he's coordinating football plays. This would have shown off his genius, rather than relying on tell, provided a further contrast with his isolation after the accident, and naturally flowed into the next scene. They could have started him off as a selfish jock who cared only about his own ego (To play into the idea that he doesn't need anyone else), or gone the opposite route by showing his consideration and empathy for other team mates. Then later in the movie, you see him slowly building up a brand new team, and coming up with the plays. For instance, using superior team work to defeat Superman, rather than relying on Lois Ex Machina.
If Cyborg starts off with the attitude of "I don't need anyone," then there should have been a scene where he tries to tackle the problem by himself and failing. Have him show up as his dad is being taken, and realizing that he can't fight the Parademons on his own. Instead, his dad is quickly kidnapped and he immediately goes to the team for help, as if he never refused them in the first place. So why include that scene where he meets Diana at all? You can remove it from the movie and not lose anything.
If you want to do "refusing the call" and have a story where he's pissed at his dad for turning him into a monster, then commit to that by having him shun his own powers out of spite. Which means he only has himself to blame for not knowing how to use his powers effectively, and the only way to redeem himself is by embracing his fathers teachings to learn how to use his powers effectively. This would also reinforce the idea that his character was "broken" before meeting the team, since learning to use his powers would be part of the healing process.
Alternatively, have him isolate to his own fortress of solitude, only to watch helplessly on security cameras while his father is taken away. There's lots of different ways to do this.
Part of the problem is that Snyder wants to give his character an arc, but he doesn't want to give the character major flaws to overcome.
"...what the fuck?"
Realistically, the air resistance would stop him long before he got to that point.
I mean... I'd watch that movie, hell yeah.
huh, I don't remember seeing that in "Flash Facts"...
I loved that show too and haven't thought about it in forever. When I watched that clip it all came flooding back and it was a hell of a cool moment.
Quicksilver's "stop time" speed scene was really cool at first but I'm kind of over that as a depiction of super speed now and don't think it should apply to the Flash. The Flash doesn't stop time, he literally moves and thinks super duper fast and the Speed Force lets him do that without all those pesky physics issues. It just seems lazy to me.
"I'm a big fan of truth and also justice" as in truth justice and the american way.
That's his a catch phrase from the radio series since everything had to be narrated out loud or else the audience wouldn't know what was happening. It's an example of tell, don't show, because the "show" wasn't possible for the medium.
It's like how comic books used onomatopoeia to replicate the sound of fights, because they didn't have actual sound. It's generally only transferred over to other mediums as a joke, most notably with the Adam West series.
It's also from an era where the idea of flight was a relatively new thing and one of the major wonders of modern technology. Now and days, it's not nearly as impressive. To the extent where DCEU can't even remember whether or not WW actually has that power or not, because it's so unimportant to them.
Anyway, I'm watching another tribute to Stuart Scott, where black sportscasters are talking about how much he inspired them and paved the way for non-white sportscasters. Because before Scott came along with his booyahs, sportscasting was considered a primarily white field, even though so many of the actual athletes.... were not.
But yeah, why the heck would Cyborg want to be associated with something like that?
Fisher's allegations have been vague as hell for months, only now has he truly opened up and her is no smoking gun. He wasn' doing what Carpener's been doing lately. The second she spoke up Whedon was righlty toast, that turned everyone agains Whedon nor Fisher because Fisher didn' bring he receipts until long afterward. They backed ha he had problems worth addressing, hey weren't agreeing opening with what he said. Hiding behind NDA's isn't being forthright.
Except when Whedon's kicked off his show and his career right now is terminated and Fisher's still not happy with the results. He refuses to work for WB again as long as Hamada is here. Accountability in his terms is nobody he's angry with keeping their jobs.
Of course they're a problem, but that wasn't Fisher was doing. He wasn't saying microagressions. He was acting as though all he WB were doing far more than that to him behind the scenes. Except his complains about miscroagressions weren't all simple yes and no examples. I;s fine for him to be angry, calling everyone racist (and not in the microagressive sense) and abusers isn't.
Don't twist my words, please.
Except he wasn't, he was being vague and refused to go into specifics. For months.
This isnt just about sympathy, it's about the facts. He's not Tom Cruise, he isn't even Don Cheadle.
Fisher's claims weren't about being a dick it was about being racist and abusive. Is taken months before we go this far with confirmations of what went on behind the scenes and he was acting like it was far more than what was exposed. Microagesions weren't being how he made his claims, which weren't transparent in he least. They are so vague his claims could have been viewed as Whedon saying he N-word, and physically assaulting him on set.
Burning a career isn't he only option to pursue change which is badly needed. No because Hollywood, and WB, badly need to change heir racist systems bu if every black actor did that here would' be any left in films, specially when is been shown Fisher wasn' correct in how bad i was. It was horrible, and should' have occurred, but how he was acting it was not about micro aggressions.
I already said it was a toxic work environment and WB having issues with racism isn't news, his isn't just about Whedon but how Fisher went about this wasn't exactly by the book in how he wen about his claims. You know why the latest article was a revelation for Fisher? He's never been that open befor and guess wha? I wasn' as bad as he made it out to be. We've had to play guessing games because he didn't reveal specifics. Have you been following Fisher's exploit since he Snyder Cut was being promoted?
When the people Fisher was angry at changed on a dime, rather when explaining all in full and this included Hamada - someone who wasn' hired by WB until after League wrapped. And the investigator who was on his side, she didn't find what he wanted so she had to go. No considerations that he might be mistaken or that he misinterpreted what Johns said. Just burn everything down.
I gave him the benefit of a doubt for months. I got burnt too many times for my troubles and as explained besides his issues with WB he went above and beyond defending Snyder, which is a seperate issue to wha he's saying about Whedon. Once more conflating anything bad with disking Snyder's films as though they're a moral measurement of anything. His opinion on Snyder's movie matter since represention was a concern in Whedon;s production. Is hypocritical for it only to matter with Whedon being a professional dick, and being totally ok when Snyder does it in his own films with nary a hint of complaint. Do you think Snyder's films don't have issues with POC or female representation? Its been embarrassing wha he's done to Lois in these films, the only worthwhile performance Adams' got was Man of Steel and that had its own problems.
Not if Fisher thinks he's going to win.
The thread's gone over what he's done recently, in the past, and in the very post you're responding to. Instead, Snyder's existence on the Earth depose being he director of he film Fisher's on is being erased as if he had nothing to do with Justice League. Whedon isn't the only controversial director of the movie so why the pretense that Snyder is outside he scope of Hollywood, the film itself or Fisher?
Fisher's known to ride or die with Snyder.
Wayne T Carr is a writer, director and teacher. Fisher retweeted his.
Snyder is a director is a worse track record with POC and women in films than Whedon is on screen, thankfully he's not as bad as Whedon is on set - which is a low bar to clear. Nothing about Iris being reduced to a small cameo, J'onn being reduced to a cameo where half of it is being Martha because reasons and Silas Stone being killed off leaving Cyborg as the sole main black presentation in the Snyder Cut? There's nothing problematic about those roles in the movie? Snyder did it and Fisher's happy so move on.
I'm more than willing to admit Whedon has serious problems with POC and women representation in his cut.
Edit: My "t" isn' working right so my posting won' be as pristine until I get that fixed.
I do find this argument kind of interesting. We're debating whether a black person should have the right to decide whether something is an offensive caricature towards them, which would normally be a very bad idea to do, but the argument is being made that in this case, Fisher is actually appropriating and failing to understand another culture, that of sports fans.
Unless we can get the perspective of a black sports fan in here, I'm not sure how much of a basis we have to meaningfully discuss this.
Wow, what a dick.
I get that they have more urgent matters to worry about, but a simple "I promise to help out when this is over" would have gone a long way.
I think the problem is that Fisher had a vague understanding that the word "booyah" was associated with the black community, and immediately concluded that it therefore must be derogatory, without actually bothering to investigate why it was associated with the black community. Specifically, because of the contributions of one particular black man who broke a lot of barriers for other black people to follow. One who was dignified and professional, while staying true to his roots.
I never watched Sportscenter, but I actually remember watching the SNL sketch when I was a kid. Didn't realize that it was based on a real person, but it adds an entirely new layer.
Fisher basically equates the Stuart Scott to Jimmy Walker from "Good Times," who is a completely different character from a completely different era. I never watched the show, but a quick search says that Walker was seen as a buffoon by his own co-stars, and the lead apparently walked off the show in disgust. He's also a huge conservatives to the point where there were rumors that he was dating Ann Coulter. Another reason the lead left is because show was also staffed entirely by white writers.
Pretty much the only thing Walker and Scott have in common is that they're both black, which apparently makes them interchangeable in the eyes of Fisher.
S2.5/3 went into production in Feb I believe? So might be a bit but it is back on track
No, the exact argument was something more along the lines of 'its different for the white writer who writes it vs the black actor who has to say it".
Again, appeals to the 'depth' of snyders screenwriting* is not required in order to understand this.
* Note, screenplay was actually by Chris Terrio, who has his own opinions on what happened to Cybogs arc, so If you hate it least direct your ire right https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/04/chris-terrio-justice-league-batman-v-superman?utm_brand=vf&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter&mbid=social_twitter&utm_medium=social
'These discussions are complex and need to be had' is empty rhetoric unless an essential point is made - these discussions need to be had while including POC perspectives.
Otherwise, you end up with takes like this dogshit:
Are we really doing, 'fisher is approriating sports fan culture' he has a 'vague' understanding of the dynamics here' and insinuations that maybe he's the real racist.
Yeah I'm out. This is a fucked take dude. It is shameful.
I've only posted 4 times regarding the Fisher article. Every single time I've noted that POC perspectives were not considered appropriately and better representation, particularly at leadership positions, needs to be present. And yet somehow you are happy to levy accusations of vagaries and empty rhetoric.
Consider whether you are letting your emotions dictate your responses rather than taking people in good faith and responding accordingly. You also seem to be operating under the mistaken assumption that everyone who is participating here and debates with you operates as one giant hive mind when it's clear that several of us agree on some things but disagree on others.
I can assure you this is not the case.
Finally, they realize that it's unfair to expect one Asian man to be the representative for the entire Asian race. So he goes back to just being his charming self again.
https://www.vulture.com/2015/11/fresh-off-the-boat-recap-season-2-episode-6.html
The main difference is that Ray is an actor, so his job is to play a role, not to be himself. He's never gotten past the "I must be super serious so that I won't be seen as Long Duk Dong Jimmy Walker" phase, as if those are the only possibilities, and is offended by any suggestion to the contrary. And Cyborg isn't supposed to be a representative for his entire race, because there are so many other black superheroes before and after who are a lot more prominent. In addition to the other entries I mentioned, "Hancock" and "Suicide Squad" both featured Will Smith, and both those movies were far more successful than "Justice League" and featured their black lead a lot more prominently.
If you're talking in terms of cameos, Martian Manhunter was there first in "Man of Steel." If you talking in terms of prominent feature film roles, Deadshot beats him by a year, and managed to have a much clearer storyline. Ray put all that pressure on himself for something that wasn't even true. And even if he had been the first, that wouldn't mean much in the long run if his character was utterly forgettable. Black Panther became a worldwide phenomenon. Cyborg? Not so much.
By sheer coincidence, the single most influential catch phrase to come out of of the MCU is also said by a black superhero. Was that racist? Should Marvel not have done that? Does this mean that Chadwick Boseman is Jimmy Walker now?