DC Movies - To Infinity and Beyond
- Thread starter dahj
- Start date
I'm down with dumb-but-fun -- infinitely preferable to longjohns movies that pretend to be profound existential meditations.
I thought the same, but I was surprised and pleased how well the visuals held up on Blu-ray. Part of it is that it's one of those discs with shifting AR, such that most of the action and effects scenes pop out to IMAX ratio and fill the TV screen.
If it helps, I had next-to-no experience of or interest in the character going in, but I haven't felt such unalloyed delight at a movie since 2013.
Eh.
No matter what, it definitely looks like it's not going to have your usual superhero movie style.
When you say "pretend" do you mean because they didn't execute it well? Or do you mean movies that might take the subject matter more seriously and actually are existential meditations... like Logan.
Because, for me, there's space for both the dumb and fun and the existential meditations, as long as they are executed well.
I tend to think that if you want existential meditations, then you want Ingmar Bergman, not funnybook movies. But sure, "pretend" does imply cases where the intellectual emperor is unclad.
I don't know. Meditations can come in all forms. I brought up Logan... there's a lot of it that is a sort of existential meditation. For both Logan and the Professor.
Well, to be fair, I haven't seen Logan. Certainly its reputation is that it's smarter than the average superhero fare. And I am in no way suggesting superhero movies can't be moving, inspiring, even intelligent and thoughtful. But I also think the whole genre is fundamentally a bit silly, and that audiences and filmmakers take it, and themselves, too seriously at their peril. The best superhero movies are smart, and silly, and emotional, and exciting, all at once.
Suicide Squad wasn't either, so that's logical.
You should see Logan.
I think the genre is much more flexible than you give it credit for.
Look at Watchman, the book, not the movie. It’s great. It takes the genre seriously and delivers something special.
Or Moore’s run on Miracleman.
It’s not the genre. It’s the execution.
Watchmen is a parody of the genre, how does it take it seriously?
It isn't.
Personally, I would call it a deconstruction, but not a parody.
Ok, a non-comedic parody == deconstruction. It's still miles from being a regular superhero story. If you do Watchmen with Batman and Superman you get BvS.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parody
par·o·dy
/ˈperədē/
noun
1. an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.
I like the idea of having a connected universe for the main properties where and when it makes sense but to also have side projects that don't have to fit into that. I haven't read comics in a while but it seemed to me that was the case there as well. You could have a gritty mini-series like "Havok and Wolverine" or a wacky take like Nextwave that didn't really fit the tone and/or the main continuity. DC had its Elseworlds stories and so on.
We do get that on the television side but I don't think it would be bad on the movie side and I think we may start to see diminishing returns if they don't shake up the formula from time to time. Now that we've done Avengers are moviegoers as compleled by that big superconnected crossover universe? I'm not pretending I know the answer so maybe they are but i do think there's a place for some experimentation.
We do get that on the television side but I don't think it would be bad on the movie side and I think we may start to see diminishing returns if they don't shake up the formula from time to time. Now that we've done Avengers are moviegoers as compleled by that big superconnected crossover universe? I'm not pretending I know the answer so maybe they are but i do think there's a place for some experimentation.
Solid thinking. You are right on target, and yes, comics--all the way back to the "Imaginary Story" years at DC, (and as you pointed out) to the Elseworlds imprint era, there was a natural place/separation for main universe continuity, and one for alternate realities.
Audiences--long reared on sci-fi dealing with those subjects over and over again--would understand the two universe approach, and never suffer a moment's confusion about why (in DC's case) MoS - WW/AM 2 are part of the same universe, while other films stand on their own.
You give audiences WAYYYYYYYY too much credit. There were 100s of people rushing to imdb to add a "goof" that it should have been Joe Chill who killed Bruce Wayne's parents in Batman Begins.