DC Movies - To Infinity and Beyond
- Thread starter dahj
- Start date
Oh, I have HBO Max, but content differs here. Same with Netflix, Prime. SOme stuff is the same, others isn't.
I'm booked in to see it Saturday.
Just coming home from the theater, I was very entertained. Honestly, I know people are free to like or dislike what they want, but I can't see how reviews this bad are even remotely justified. I found it proper good fun, and the ticket was money well spent.
I've found that RT's percentage scores are very deceptive, because the critic and audience scores are calculated differently so they can't be meaningfully compared. I think the critic scores are a strict up/down vote, which robs them of the nuance of the audience scores.
I remember with Batman v Superman, a movie notorious for the huge difference between the critic and audience scores, I found that when I actually read the specific reviews, the critics and audience members were pretty much in agreement that the film was entertaining in some ways but had massive structural and conceptual flaws. But critics' job is to be more concerned with the latter, while audience members are often more satisfied with just the former, and thus the critics weighed the flaws more heavily. And the difference in the rating systems exaggerated the discrepancy all the more. But really, both groups were pretty much in agreement the whole time.
Really, people get aggregate sites all wrong by treating the percentages and ratings as the ultimate takeaway. Really, it's the other way around -- the aggregate scores are just a rough overview, a drastic simplification, and you have to look more closely at the specific reviews to get the full picture. It's a classic case of "Lies, damn lies, and statistics." Statistics need context to be meaningful.
Stop trolling Snyder cultist areas
Because many people pick movies like this apart way too much. They are there for 'simple' entertainment. Meaning, big booms, over the top emotional triggers, laughter. It doesn't need to hold up to scrutiny because that's not its purpose.
I except to find many flaws in this movie, as I do in a lot o DC and MCU movies. I also expect to be highly entertained. And both can happen at the same time.
I've already watched the film (review to come in that thread on 10/24 due to scheduling), and it was a very, very new take on a character next to no one knows in the general population (effectively giving Black Adam a new face as far as said general population is concerned), yet the audiences at the screening I attended were thoroughly entertained, and actually shocked with a couple of choice scenes (more on that later). Reviews are mixed, not all one thing or another (and we know how certain people love to attempt to manipulate that sort of thing), so despite the screaming of those who despise the DCEU, Dwayne Johnson's comment was spot-on: the filmmakers listened to the DC fans.
And that strikes me as a profound waste of money. If you're going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars and years of effort into making something, it should be more than hollow, forgettable fluff, but should have something to say, something to make it worth all that effort. It seems utterly backward for the culture to believe that the works of entertainment that have the most money and time devoted to making them are the ones that we expect the least from in terms of the results.
And as a professional, I find few things more contemptible than the idea of a professional saying "It's okay, I don't have to bother to do a good job." No matter what task you're doing, you should always strive to do the best job you're capable of. There are certainly action movies that do have meaning and substance, intelligence and ideas, so to say "I can deliberately coast through this and do low-quality work because it's just an action movie" is despicably lazy, blaming the genre for one's own unwillingness to try harder.
I tend to agree, though sometimes some of the basics get messed up. There is a tendency, good, bad or indifferent, to treat comic book films different, either being "too dumb let's not try" or "this needs to be perfection." For me, when it comes to entertainment, there should be a solid story and characters for me to have an idea about, who they are and what they want, beyond just simple entertainment. A story is, after all, meant to evoke a response from the audience.
When I see the nitpicking style it tends to come from a place of not connecting with the film and then having to figure out why. So, already there is an emotional disconnect between what the story was intended to cause as a reaction and the audience member.
I think, as with many things in life, there is a balance to be struck. Just because it doesn't hold up to scrutiny doesn't justify a lackadaisical approach to storytelling.
"What drew you to this movie?"
"Well there were alot of "zeroes" at the end of the check hahaha"
One of the really nice surprises was a cameo by Al Pratt early on in the movie, especially with the guy they got to play the part.
My perspective on this is that I expect a high quality production in these kinds of movies. I don't want to see plot holes or inconsistencies, or dumbed down stories. I want actors to deliver quality performances. I want effects that dazzle me and don't jolt me out of the illusion of the story. I want the movies to remain somewhat true to the spirit of the character they are based on even though I am fine with changes being made from the source material. I don't want to be insulted by the story if I am paying a ticket price to go see it. These things are pretty obvious, I think. Meet this criteria and I am not going to worry too much about why Dr. Strange just doesn't cast a spell that prevents "most" of the world from knowing who Spider-Man is or something similar.