Justice League official "Zack Snyder" cut on HBO Max

How do the Winter Soldier or Civil War rely on depowering the hero for a handicap?

 

Posting a link to some uniformed mouth is not evidence. Particularly one who could not understand a scene with a clear intent to introduce the progression of its main issue.

Absolute bullshit. You are looking for an "Islamaphobic" boogeyman where none exists. The title sequence showing Muslims praying--and other mass gatherings around the world and eventually chaos (all after the prologue of Anna's hospital scenes where the reports of bites are mentioned / escape from her reanimated husband / zombies overrunning her town laid out how widespread the outbreak would be and ended up being across the face of the world. The only individual who could not understand that highly effective title sequence is one with some misguided agenda who foolishly thinks merely showing Muslims (neverminded everyone else the sequence shows) is an affront to them, when it is not.

 

In those cases, I was thinking of taking the hero out of his element. Cap was not working his normal day job. I know that we want to see the hero doing something special--assuming that all the other adventures and comic book stories take place between films. But it would be nice to see the hero have adventures in his or her status quo. And I stress that the Captain America movies are some of favorite movies--not just the MCU.

 

Eh, I wouldn't really say Cap's 'natural element' is just his 'day job' of doing Avengers stuff or working for shield. It's doing the right thing in all possible circumstances. That's what defines him.

Really, I would argue the Winter Soldier is the story of Cap actually finding his natural element because he never really belonged at SHIELD to begin with - it was the 'day job' opening scene that wasn't really right for him as a character, which is why he's so unhappy with Fury even before he finds out something bigger is going on.

You could potentially argue Civil war a bit more in the sense that it is very unnatural for Cap to be on the opposite side against so many of his friends, though I'm honestly still not sure how this whole 'natural element' approach is really truly comparable to depowering characters, anyway.

 

In the 80s, Cap got backpay from the army, from when he was suspended, which they rounded down to a million dollars. I feel like he could have got a lot more than that if he had lawyered up.

Black widow is probably a billionaire, who draws funds from Putin and SHIELD simultaneously.

 

Zac has access to excess Watchmen cut footage, that DC owns.

It wouldn't be hard to smere 2 hours of asto fore unseen Watchmen into Justice League considering the 2009 Dr Manhatten cgi can be done with an IPhone and Rorsache gas a full face mask.

 

A wealth of well-reasoned points.

 

Here's the thing about that--I don't want Superman in the real world. I want Superman to be Superman. Movies come out very rarely, and there hasn't been a really good Superman movie since 1980. Routh wasn't a traditional Superman either. So when we get this reboot, the idea that we get this cynical, brooding, dark version was just a huge mistake in my opinion.

Adam West and Christian Bale were two very different versions of Batman, but they were both Batman. They both embodied the general principles of the character, but Batman works fine in both light and dark tones.

Superman does not. Superman is a person of pure good, where Batman is damaged. Superman had similar if not worse losses, but they happened when he was so young, and he was raised by such a great couple.

Maybe an alternate world story arc like Snyders could work in a cartoon or a series, but movie are so rare that we should be seeing the traditional version.

And EVEN if you want to try what Snyder did, to completely butcher Jonathan Kent like that was horrible.

In the Reeve movie, Jonathan's death was something that showed Superman that he had limits. All that power. All the things he could do. He was no match for a heart attack. The last thing Jonathan talked about was that Clark was here for a reason, and it wasn't to score touchdowns.

But Snyder's Jonathan was upset that Clark didn't let a busload of kids drown. It's one thing to lecture Clark on being careful, but the extreme was awful. And look how THAT Jonathan died. Because he wanted to save a dog and Clark couldn't help him? Really? If Clark saved the dog, he could have done it a way where he held back and just looked like a fast teenager running. Jonathan died for no reason because Clark didn't act when he could have. That was just awful.

Superman's debut in the Reeve movie was brilliant. Out of nowhere, he saves Lois' life and then spends the night helping people. When he realized that people might have questions, he did an interview and introduced himself to the world.

In Snyder's movie, he was hiding and was called out by others of his race.

The movie didn't expose his general goodness. He inspired no one.

And again, if you want to see a great Superman movie, watch Captain America: First Avenger. Proof positive that Superman can work today.

 

Superman in a darker tone works fine for me. A lot better than Adam West as Batman, actually. That's not what some (maybe even many) people wanted and that's fine, but that doesn't make it fundamentally wrong.

Also this

Is just deliberately obtuse. He hid his identity, but he went out of his way to help people multiple times before Zod showed up specifically because the movie WAS exposing his general goodness, and he chose to make the leap of faith to trust humanity and reveal himself, even voluntarily surrendering to an obvious madman because he wanted to save lives.

He also explicitly inspires Lois and the military and civilian commanders he deals with ("This man is not our enemy", plus basically everything that happened on the plane at the end).

 

I still got choosebumps from that scene, same with Jonathan from Smallville. They are such a big inspiration for Clark.

 

As per the Arrowverse's Crisis on Infinite Earths is it not an alternate version, though? I get wanting it the way you want it but they've acknowledged multiple different Supermen across multiple universes.

 

I was thinking that a silver age Superman/boy would have replaced dead Jonathan with a robot, before Martha knew that she was a widow.

The truly disturbing thing about that, was when Clark had to program the robot how to gave sex with his mother. I mean he has x-ray vision and super hearing, so not only does Clark know all of Jonathan's moves, he knows if Martha has been faking it for the last 20 years.

PS...

When did Clark figure out he could turn back time? Because he can totally get an end around on a heart attack. Short of surgery, Jonathan is going to die 3 times a month until Clark comes to terms with how frail his father's health is.

 

Like this? 1 minute in:

 

I continue to insist that the Jonathan stuff was the absolute worst part of MOS. It's just... awful.

 

1) Reducing a woman to the phrase "uninformed mouth" is misogynistic.

2) You are not presenting a counter-argument to what she argues.

You are either misunderstanding, misremembering, or deliberately lying about the shots in the sequence.

Let us refer to the Dawn of the Dead opening titles here:



The very first shot is of Muslims at prayer. The very second shot is of a dead body in what appears to be some kind of medical facility. The third short is of what appears to be a zombie; the fourth shot is a close-up of the zombie's mouth, as though to suggest imminent attack.

In film language, there is something called the Kuleshov effect. It is a universal practice by which images that are closely juxtaposed are understood by audience members to relate to one-another and to have meaning based upon their relationships to one-another.

As a result of the Kuleshov effect, juxtaposing the image of Muslims at prayer immediately with the images of a proto-zombie in a medical building (without ANY intervening images) is clearly intended to link the idea of Islam with the idea of a threatening zombie.

Your claim would have value if those other images from around the world were inserted between the shot of the Muslims at prayer and the shot of the proto-zombie. But because those two images are very clearly juxtaposed, the Kuleshov effect takes hold and the filmatic language links the two.

 

Given when it was released, in the post 9/11 climate, Iraq, "war on terror" etc. it wouldn't surprise me if it was deliberate subliminal messaging by the filmmakers.

 

Actually, yeah that was weird. The only shot of people in a crowd was the Muslim gathering.

 

Never seen Dawn of the Dead, but took a look at that clip, and yeah, the muslims praying is the only shot before there's a b/w shot of a corpse, and then the close-up of a zombie. So, yeah, even if it wasn't the intended message, I can certainly see why people would interpret this as suggesting the muslims to be the cause of the zombie virus.

 

Translation: No one mentioned gender in relation to opinion (or anything else) at all, but you shoehorned inapplicable accusations in there to protect someone who was in fact, uninformed. Not working.

Translation: you made a hollow claim failing to realize that the burden of proof is on you, but all you're doing is playing would-be defender (when you cannot represent the feelings or perceptions of those represented in that scene) by creating an offense you wanted to see. Again, not working.

Ignoring the fact the film's prologue established the zombie outbreak occurring in an American city with no references to other lands, followed by a credits scene showing mass crowds indicating just how large the outbreak would be, then followed by riot and combat footage from around the world means you have an astoundingly poor misunderstanding of film language--how scenes are continuing to tell the story set in the prologue (and its greater meaning with the Cash song). There is not one moment or suggestion that Muslims were behind or connected to the zombie outbreak...ooh, there's that inconvenient prologue again.

 

Superman is just not a character that belongs in a darker universe. It's not what made the character so popular and I think Snyder's version was so wrong that it killed the DC franchise before it even began. I think that if you can't understand the importance of Superman, you can't run the DC universe.

I think Snyder failed miserably there.

His subsequent movies followed suit. It's a Superman movie--so yeah, I do think darkness is fundamentally wrong.

Does it have to be quite as light as Reeve? No. For me, I think the tone of the 1996 cartoon was absolutely perfect.

That's not Superman. I never said Superman was not good, but when it comes to his debut, the circumstances showed he was forced out of hiding. Superman should have CHOSEN to reveal himself, not have Zod do it. Let's also not forget that the movie had maximum destruction and if we are talking real world, that battle would have caused trillions of dollars of damage and thousands of lives if not more.

I consider Jonathan's death on Smallville to be a huge mistake and a shark jumping moment, PRECISELY because he was such a great character on that show. He was so well written and so well done by John Schneider. His last action in life was so perfectly in character too. Jonathan Kent is Superman without the power. Jor-El's and Lara's genetics gave Clark the physical power, but the Kents made Clark into Superman. They raised the hero. It's such an amazing story and Snyder botched it so badly. What's worse is that Costner is an incredible choice for Jonathan. He has that warmth that Schneider had and could absolutely pull off the person that raised Superman. But the script had other ideas.

This is 100 percent true. Of course there are multiple Earths with multiple Supermen. Most of them are the traditional version, but many are not (Red Son, the version where Superman is evil, etc.)

But that said, from the audience standpoint, and if they are starting a new movie shared universe, not going with the traditional version was suicide.

Those videos are great. I will say this--when John Byrne made changes to Superman, I know he kept the essence of the character. He made some changes I didn't like (cold Krypton, no Supergirl, no Superboy), but one change I loved was that the Kents were alive in Clark's adulthood. They were younger, which also made sense. Clark having the Kents in his life added to the character. I loved it. So I hated when Smallville killed Jonathan and that became a thing again.