I'm a fan of epic 3 hour movies. Back in the day when cinemas still used film it was usually broken into two parts and you could stretch your legs and go to the bathroom. It was kind of like watching a stage play.
ROTK and Endgame needed a bathroom break in the middle! And when orchestras play LOTR live in concert they do add an intermission
I recently watched Aquaman and Shazam for the first time. I liked Shazam a lot more as I felt far more invested in the characters and felt the lead performances were stronger. Would definitely be in favour of the drum-playing octopus from Aquaman returning though.
I loved Wonder Woman, really liked Aquaman, Shazam and The Suicide Squad, was meh on Suicide Squad and Justice League (though I did finally feel like I was watching Superman, weird upper lip and all), hated MoS, REALLY hated BvS, and haven't yet seen WW84 and the JL Snyder cut.
Wonder Woman and Aquaman were not very established here in the Netherlands when growing up, so I'll have to take your word on them. I agree with you on Batman and Superman. WW1 was still a very enjoyable film for me, but not as great as some feel it is. Aquaman.... I enjoyed it too. But it felt to me like trying to grab in on the succes of GotG and Thor Ragnarok, with more humor added, loads of odd looking cgi creatures and more colorful.
Hubby and I thought Green Lantern: First Flight would've made a terrific live-action film. Good. I liked Green Lantern, but thought it needed a good editor. I hated MoS when we saw it in the theater and when I catch parts of it on TV, I still don't like it. I understand now that Snyder planned MoS, BvS, and JL as a trilogy, with Clark becoming the beacon of hope I love in JL, but I just didn't connect with Supes in MoS. YMMV The best part of BvS for me was Affleck & Irons. They really captured the characters IMO. Sadly, as much as I usually like Jesse Eisenberg, I didn't dig his version of Lex. Hubby told me the extended cut is better, but I haven't seen it yet. ZSJL made so much more sense! I wanted to beat up Whedon even more than I already did. Wonder Woman was perfect. I will happily watch it a million times. I will have to re-watch WW84 to see if I like it better the 2nd time (that happens for me sometimes). I really liked Aquaman! I didn't expect much going in, but it was fun and gorgeous (not just Jason and Amber ). I saw it again and still like it. Shazam! was marvelous! Zack Levi was perfect. My dad had complained the superhero movies had gotten too dark, so we showed him Shazam! and he loved it! Again, I saw it more than once and still liked it.
IMO, the best part of BvS, and of Snyder's DC movies in general, was Amy Adams's marvelous Lois Lane. In fact, she was my all-time favorite live-action Lois, before Bitsie Tulloch claimed the crown this year on S&L.
I loved Amy Adams in MoS. Not so much in BvS. The only part of BvS I really unreservedly liked was Gal Gadot. I know I'm really in the minority on this one, but I adored WW84 from the first moment I saw it (watched it twice right off the bat). I'd say it's slightly more fun than the first one, which I also love, and maybe even a tad higher than MoS for me (which is around the same level for me as WW). It feels like a fantastic continuation of the original film's style while also playing in a totally different era (of all the retro 80s films that came out in recent years, WW84 was by far the best at actually feeling like an 80s movie yet also still being fun from a modern viewpoint). Plus, Pedro Pascal absolutely killed it, imo. Best villain in the dceu movies.
As someone who was a teenager in the 80s, they definitely got the feel right. The mall looked terrifyingly familiar. Pedro was terrific, but I wouldn't say he was a villain so much as someone who got in waaaaaay over his head. I wish they hadn't called him Max Lord. It had me expecting something different.
I hate it when DC movies/tv uses characters in name only like that because it means that we aren't going to see a more comics accurate version of the character any time soon. A Justice League reboot of the nineties version of the League GotG style might actually have been a success.
The last thing anyone wanted to see was a joke-splattered JL movie, which is what a GOTG-styled movie would have been. Essentially, that's a MCU format championed not only by GOTG, but other films in that franchise, like Whedon's, and we saw what a disaster it was when Whedon tried to apply to the theatrical version of JL.
There's nothing wrong with jokes (even lots of them) in a superhero movie. And if there were, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and especially Shazam would have been disasters, too. Obviously the style of humor (and presentation in general) used in a Justice League movie should be very different from the style of the GotG because they are very different groups of characters but I do not believe anyone said otherwise.
I was referring to the line up of Blue Beetle, Guy Gardner, Mister Miracle, etc by DeMatteis and Giffen. The era where Max Lord appeared--but I guess that was the 80s, wasn't it?
Remember when Gavin O’Connor was meant to make the sequel to Suicide Squad? Well, it seems that a change in regime at WB also meant a change in what was wanted from the film: https://theplaylist.net/gavin-oconnor-suicide-sq-20210912/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter Personally, as I loved TSS, I think his loss was our gain.
So not only is The Batman to have a cop-based spin-off show but Colin Farrell’s Penguin may get his own prequel for HBO https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/the-batman-spinoff-series-penguin-hbo-max-1235063438/
Andy Muschietti has shared quite an intriguing image to his Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CUA2qB8lo2_/?utm_medium=copy_link
Wonder Woman had very light moments here and there, and was not filled with jokes like certain superhero films. Largely, it was a darker film ending on a somber note, which is why it worked so well as a WW's origin story set during a war. Superhero films need their own voices, and that comes from not copy+pasting that same approach used in a number of superhero movies.
Yeah if only the DCEU had been like that and MOS, and BvS and the Snyder cut of JL hadn't all been in the same vein as The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight rises eh eh?