Justice League official "Zack Snyder" cut on HBO Max

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Ar-Pharazon, May 20, 2020.

  1. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I'm sorry, but eighty years of how a story relates to its target audience matters.

    I do if the character is closely tied with certain ideas and themes, and if they're closely tied to target audiences who have unique psychological needs.

    I think a good example is Peter Pan. There are plenty of variations of Peter Pan, but in the end it is always supposed to be a story that children can watch about the dichotomy between who we are as children and who we are as adults, about that tension between the two. You can do versions of Peter Pan about how being a child forever is good; you can do a fairly radical reinterpretation like Hook, which is about Peter having lost his childhood self and needing to find it again before he can return to his adult life and fatherhood. You can even do something a little harder to pull off tastefully, as the 2003 film version did -- that film was very much about the tension between childhood and adulthood that one experiences just immediately prior to going through puberty (it even ends with Peter and Wendy sharing their first real kiss).

    So there is a lot of room for variation and reinterpretation. But if the version of Peter Pan that comes out is ultimately about how much better being an adult is than a child and is something a child can't watch safely... Well, I'm sorry, but that's not really Peter Pan in any meaningful sense at that point. That's a new character for adults that has the same name as Peter Pan.

    Which is fine, if this work is acknowledged as having become something new! Watchmen was originally going to be about the Charlton Comics characters, but Alan Moore realized that his deconstructionist reinterpretation had caused his depiction of them to so radically diverge from the originals that it would be more appropriate to present them as original characters -- pastiches of the Charlton Comics characters rather than direct adaptations.

    (Frankly, Snyder's Superman strikes me being about as different from Superman as, say, Moore's Rorschach is from the Question. I'd have significantly less of a problem with his vision of Batman and Superman if they were depicted as separate, pastiche characters.)

    I would also say that how much divergence a property can reasonably have and still be itself is going to vary. Different properties are going to have different relationships with their themes and ideas. Star Trek was always for adults first and kids second, and from the start it chafed at the limits imposed upon it by the standards of 1960s American broadcast television. Attempts to turn it into a hit with kids have frankly never worked out. So I don't think that darker versions of Star Trek like DIS or PIC violate the fundamental ethos of the show, even when they feature graphic violence.

    I think longevity matters if that longevity has meant establishing a target audience of children and has been implicitly promising that it's a story that belongs to children first. It's not "eighty years" per se -- it's "eighty years they've been on children's lunchboxes."

    I don't think that would fundamentally violate the Sherlock Holmes ethos as I understand it. Sherlock Holmes, after all, began as pulp adventure novels marketed towards adults, about, as you say, a drug-addicted narcissist genius who solves crimes, with a less-astute audience-insert sidekick in the form of Watson. If it happens in 19th Century England or 21st Century America or in a 21st Century MMORP with Watson as a radio D.J. -- well, hey, whatever. The fundamental ethos hasn't changed. He's still an apollonian figure whose conflict is against Dionysian violations of the social order (whatever that social order might be).

    A real change in ethos would be if, say, Sherlock refused to solve crimes anymore and instead used his genius to always help violent criminals escape in the name of hating the police, or who's trying to foment an anarchist rebellion against the Crown. Those are just two examples off the top of my head, but in both examples he's no longer a figure whose job is to restore order against chaos.

    I just don't care about Smallville. It strikes me as neither particularly damaging to nor particularly supportive of the Superman ethos. Frankly the most interesting thing about Smallville anymore is the horror of what kind of person Allison Mack became in real life.

    I mean, Zack Snyder and Warner Bros. have free speech rights and I'm not arguing for censorship. But I am arguing that his work disrespects others' works, and disrespects the child audiences Superman and Batman were created for. I am frustrated with adults (creators and fans alike) who appropriate children's stories for themselves away from children, because frankly I find it selfish on adults' part when we center our tastes over children's in those contexts. There's not wrong with, say, doing a Superman pastiche like Brightburn, or a comic book one-shot like Red Son. But if the biggest Superman movie is for adults and expounds toxic ideas about masculinity and women's roles in the world, or if the newest issue of Action Comics is something a kid can't read, then, yeah, I find that creatively and morally objectionable.

    I also argue that many of the themes he expounds in his Superman and Batman films -- moreso in Batman v Superman than Man of Steel, which I was pleasantly surprised by -- are deeply harmful.

    There is a big difference between having strong opinions about what are and are not bad creative choices in specific contexts and "pearl-clutching."
     
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  2. M'rk son of Mogh

    M'rk son of Mogh Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I put Superman on the same level as Mickey Mouse, Kermit the Frog and Charlie Brown. Every person on earth has access to appreciate them if they choose, and sure, TPTB can hand over the character to a Zach Snyder and say "have at it, make it rated R and ground it in what you see as the real world", but... why?
     
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  3. thribs

    thribs Vice Admiral Admiral

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    But he hasn’t made Superman R rated. The film might have been (which I would dispute) but not the character. I don’t understand this argument
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2021
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  4. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    All those kids who are missing out on the R rated Superman movie will grow up and see it some day.
     
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  5. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Why not? If Snyder wants to explore Superman as someone who struggles with feelings of alienation, uncertainty and conflict about his relationship with the world then I see no harm.

    Superman is a story that can be told in a variety of different ways. People don't have to like it but that doesn't mean his work needs to be justified at every turn.

    Superman doesn't need to be kept in a safe little box.
     
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  6. captainkirk

    captainkirk Commodore Commodore

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    Am I the only one who thought the R rating felt like it was added in post? The F-bombs were mostly either said off-screen, and so could have been recorded more recently, or in the new footage. The blood was almost all CG as far as I could tell so I imagine that wasn't originally intended to be there.
     
  7. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Hasn't Kermit appeared in some R-rated stuff?
     
  8. Jax

    Jax Admiral Admiral

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    Some of the so called fanbase should be kept in a little box for sure. People who want to see the same version of a character over and over :shrug:talk about boring.

    I want to see Superman who isn't a bloody boy scout 2D American metaphor for greatness. Snyder's Superman was different, was far more human and was interesting unlike Routh's 2006 version for example that saw a 2006 film wanting to copy a movie from decades ago and guess what - not enough people turned up to watch it.

    Him and Miss Piggy haven't leaked a Sex tape have they? :ack:
     
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  9. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Here's my thing honestly. I want as many iterations of Superman as possible. Superman started out far more violent, until editors imposed rules. Which interpretation is more valid? Wouldn't the one the creator started off originally be more the accurate one? Or is it a matter of different creators are going to interpret this character over the years and that is a reflection of what the creators want to explore?

    Because, for my money, offering up different versions of Superman is not inherently a bad thing. People can not like it but one version is not more invalid than the other simply because it goes against the grain of commonly held assumptions.
     
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  10. TREK_GOD_1

    TREK_GOD_1 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    You must remember that a certain board member repeats the completely false narrative that an R-rated film means Superman is an R-rated character that's being "taken away" from children, when the original interpretation of the character in the comics was no grinning, winking Daddy Figure, but a vigilante, one who was enjoyed by children and adults alike.

    There is no harm--unless one operates from the constant lie that Superman was always the Weisinger/Plastino/Swan/George Reeves Park Ranger who only existed to grab villains by the collar and safely deliver them to prison. As that was not the way the character behaved.


    Well said. As a comic creation, he was not born in a child-proof bottle, so he should not be one as some sort of imaginary, fixed order.

    ..and in the comics--where he was born, hie was not a Boy Scout in his early years. I've posted evidence of the kind of character he was from the beginning (and over time, will post more), but the Superman of the original comics was not a winking, Daddy Figure.
    [​IMG]

    In the top row, Superman is playing judge, jury and executioner; he's not agonizing over the fact that the gangsters--trapped in their vehicle--were plummeting to their deaths. As one can plainly see, Superman's "A well-deserved fate!" is the hero making as harsh a judgement as real world people of the same era who said the same when criminals were gunned down, or executed by the state. The second row has Superman--once again--playing judge, jury and executioner in his cavalier attitude about a villain dying from the poisonous gas. "One less vulture" is the way he writes off a man who just died in front of him. Then, the next panel sees Superman flat-out threaten to shoot a villain who intended to do the same. There's no "evildoer! you're going to jail," but he's making a very human-type of threat.

    So much for the unjustified crying about Snyder "taking away" Superman from children.
     
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  11. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    They can't take Superman away. That's the beauty of multiple iterations. That's why I have Dean Cain Superman as my avatar-that's what I grew up with enjoying. Snyder didn't take anything away from that.
     
  12. Kai "the spy"

    Kai "the spy" Admiral Admiral

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    I have to correct you on a couple of points regarding Alan Moore. It wasn't as much that he himself chose to use pastiche characters of the Charlton characters for Watchmen as DC denying him the use of these characters for that story.

    Moore also had no qualms about turning characters from children's fiction into dark grown-up versions for deconstructionist pieces, as evidenced by his Marvelman (Miracleman in the US). The original Marvelman was pretty much a British version of Shazam/Captain Marvel. He was introduced in the 1950s when Fawcett Comics ceased publication of new Captain Marvel comics, so the British publisher, seeing how popular the series still was with children in Great Britain, launched the very similar Marvelman, and those original comics were tonally very similar to the Otto Binder Captain Marvel stories.

    Moore's version was very much aimed at adult readers, with a very dark tone, and the previous sidekick of Marvelman turned into a psychopathic, mass murdering villain, among other things. In fact, I first read these stories when Marvel finally reprinted them in 2014, and so soon after MoS I certainly noticed a few similarities, mostly in tone. Moore even went further than Snyder, having Marvelman leave his wife and pretty much remove himself from everyday humanity.

    And let's also not forget how Moore used heroines of children's literature in Lost Girls.
     
  13. thribs

    thribs Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I’ve been notified that the Joker scene in the black and white version is different to the colour version. I don’t have HBO Max again until Wednesday so I don’t know if it’s true.
     
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  14. The Borgified Corpse

    The Borgified Corpse Admiral Admiral

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    It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. While the Warner execs seem quick to dismiss any possible continuation of the Snyder-verse, it's not like they have any other solid plans for what to do with their wished-for shared universe. The next Batman & Superman projects are completely disconnected from the previous movies. Wonder Woman is in a bit of limbo after the tepid response to WW84. I've got my doubts about Aquaman 2 given how long it's taken the sequel to get going. And even after getting both Michael Keaton & Ben Affleck to sign on as dueling Batmans, Flashpoint has lost HOW MANY directors already? A continuation of the Snyder-verse seems about as plausible as anything else at this point. (I suspect that one of the bigger hurdles to that would be that Snyder would probably insist on bringing back Ray Fisher, which would probably be a total non-starter for everyone in current Warner Bros. management.)

    :wtf: Huh? I never got a hint of anything sexual about that scene, violent or otherwise. The fact that you came up with that probably says more about your outlook than that of the filmmakers.

    And you don't ask permission to give someone urgent life saving medical intervention!:wtf:

    Yeah. That always bothered me too. It's kinda weird when there's a movie set in the present day featuring an iconic character that's been around for decades and they have to operate in a world that's supposed to essentially be our world even though our world was fundamentally shaped by their presence in the pop culture. It's like in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, when a bunch of homeless people in the sewers get attacked, I kept expecting them to shout, "It's like something out of one of those Alien movies!" Because, in the present day, if something like that really happened to a real person, it would be weird for them to NOT mention the movie. Kinda the same thing with modern versions of Godzilla.

    Ugh. I have the extended 3-hour cut of Superman on blu-ray.:ack: There's a lot of pointless landscape shots just to fill time. I expect that Snyder's 4-hour Justice League will at least feature better looking filler.

    But...... I thought that we were all Spartacus. I mean, I'm Spartacus. What about you?

    Flashback Clark isn't resentful of having to help people. He may be resentful of having to hide his powers from everyone and he certainly resents not being able to give assholes a good thrashing when needed because a single tap from him would probably be fatal. But he doesn't seem to have any problem at all with helping people. His level of alienation feels appropriate to the character because, since he has so much physical power, he has to cut himself off from some of his natural human reactions lest he lose control.

    It's an interesting idea that his powers are both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because he can do so many things that others can't but a curse because someone that has that much power needs to be exponentially more aware of how he uses that power.

    As for the "Krypton had its chance" line, the Kryptonians were wiped out by an ecological disaster. That's not Social Darwinism. That's just straight up Darwinism.

    The "Maybe" scene comes so close to working for me. Kevin Costner's performance is 97% of the way there for me. There is a sense of ambivalence from him as he says the line but it's just not quite strong enough. There needs to be just a split second more of him choking on the word that I don't even think that he really believes but thinks that he needs to at least raise the question.

    Well, had he released the movie "as intended" back in 2017, Warner Bros. would have certainly insisted on a PG-13 rating, so any of the R elements certainly wouldn't have been part of the theatrical release. And the extended cut of BvS barely feels any more deserving of an R-rating than the theatrical version. Seems like Snyder mostly made this one R-rated because he could.

    I don't have HBO Max, so I'm waiting for the Blu-ray release but I like what I'm hearing so far. There are, inevitably, the Snyder-haters who were going to hate this no matter what. But I've yet to hear a pro-Snyder person feel disappointed by their high expectations. And a lot of the Snyder-skeptics have been at least mildly positive, not only saying that it's better than the theatrical cut but also better than Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman. That doesn't always necessarily translate to "good" in their eyes but it's promising to hear.
     
  15. thribs

    thribs Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I don’t know if it’s better than Man of Steel. Maybe on par with BvS.
     
  16. The Borgified Corpse

    The Borgified Corpse Admiral Admiral

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    It hacked into Zack Snyder's laptop and read the script! :D

    Snyder's movies are over the top and can sometimes have a bit of a knowing wink at the audience but I don't think that they count as satire. Just because he's highlighting his OTT imagery doesn't mean that he actually has any comment to make on it.

    You know, even with the blaming of the U.S., it still kinda makes sense in a dark, twisted way. Because it's not about making everyone so well-meaning that they don't want war. It's about making everyone so scared of the consequences that they decide not to fight even when they really want to (which, IRL, is what nuclear deterrence actually does).
     
  17. M.A.C.O.

    M.A.C.O. Commodore Commodore

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    I finally sat down to watch this film. It was awesome. Go big or go home and Snyder certainly went big. It's incredible how much Whedon, Johns and Berg cut from hours of material Snyder had shot. Only to reshoot their own scenes, Frankenstein the cuts together for their Avengers 1 copycat. I see now why they all got the boot after JL failed in theaters.

    I haven't watched theatrical JL since I saw it in theaters, even though I own it on blu-ray and iTunes. I don't imagine I will ever watch that version again.

    Also, never forget.

     
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  18. crookeddy

    crookeddy Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Is it true that they had to use a body double for that Flash scene because Gal didn't want her breast touched?
     
  19. thribs

    thribs Vice Admiral Admiral

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    They did use a body double but I don’t know if that was the reason.
     
  20. M.A.C.O.

    M.A.C.O. Commodore Commodore

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    Both Johansson and Gadot refused to do the faceplant into boobs scenes, from their respective movies. Likely because it undermined them as actresses and characters they were playing. Coincidentally, both Gadot and Johansson were pregnant at the time these scenes were shot.

    Stunt actresses were used instead in both scenes.
     
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