Film is by definition a visual medium. Paint me a picture and tell me a story.
Warner bros announce superhero films through 2020
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Film is by definition a visual medium. Paint me a picture and tell me a story.
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But that's the problem with Hollywood today -- too many directors think the story half doesn't matter.
No, the problem with Hollywood, especially genre Hollywood, is that too many directors are controlled by studios who want easily consumable stuff. When you have people like Denis Villeneuve, David Ayer, Ridley Scott, Scorsese, Spielberg, hell, I'll even toss a bat to Nolan and Fincher ... when you have those guys working today, and doing good stuff--in some cases, genre stuff--there's no excuse for lackadaisical vision.
^I don't see those as mutually exclusive. None of the directors on your list is among those I'm thinking of, except maybe Ridley Scott in recent years. I was thinking of your Bays, your Snyders, people who came from commercials and music videos and think that all you need is pretty pictures and the script doesn't matter.
They're like the original Image founders of the comic world. They felt the art was the important part. Thankfully, Image books bring fantastic stories now! Maybe in 20 years, WB movies will do the same?
The problem with Hollywood is that you pay more for a soda and popcorn at the theater than you do for the movie - and based on the relative satisfaction and long-term value of the products, that seems entirely reasonable.
I think you can make a great movie that's just style over substance. But these action movies don't even have style, they just show off their tech. Action that doesn't logically track or create suspense, lots of distracting noise going on in the background instead of interesting motion in the foreground.
I feel just the opposite. I consider BvS the most extreme example I've ever seen of the Hollywood tendency to put spectacle over story. At least in the theatrical version, it has no coherent narrative at all, just a bunch of random moments that make no sequential sense. Even within a single monologue by a single character, it often feels like it's jumping between fragments of several unrelated monologues, because there's no logical progression to the subject matter, any more than there is to the overall flow of the plot.
Although I should clarify that saying "Hollywood has a problem" is not at all the same thing as saying "Every Hollywood movie has the same problem." There are certainly plenty of films that don't have the problem, films that turn out quite well. But when movies do bomb, I find it's frequently for the reason I said -- because great care was put into every aspect of the production except giving it a solid foundation in the script stage. I see these films that are amazingly well-executed tellings of really shoddily conceived stories, and I can't help but think how much better they could've been if their makers had treated the writing with as much care and respect as they treated the casting or cinematography or production design.
It's more that for the longest time, DC mainly was about flawless archetypal characters while Marvel built itself on being about flawed characters who just happened to have Superpowers.
I always think that slightly misses the mark.
Marvel recreated superheroes as people who want things - in other words, as human beings. The different tone of the early Marvel was derived not so much from the superhero comics of the 40s as from the comics the writers had been doing in the 50s: two parts Sci-Fi and one part Romance.
Superman and Batman were motivated by values.
What's Superman's motivation? To do good. What drives Batman? Pursuit of justice...here again, in modern times Batman has shaded most successfully into being human, and hence more popular, because they've emphasized the negative personal experience and feelings of anger, etc that are part of his story.
Spider-Man and Reed Richards and Bruce Banner and Ben Grimm have values, but are motivated by personal desires and emotions. Parker is motivated by concern for and protection of his family, and for romantic and personal relationships. Grimm and Banner struggle with issues of alienation and loneliness, etc. I don't think human needs and desires are "flaws" per se, problematic as they are.
Marvel recreated superheroes as people who want things - in other words, as human beings. The different tone of the early Marvel was derived not so much from the superhero comics of the 40s as from the comics the writers had been doing in the 50s: two parts Sci-Fi and one part Romance.
Superman and Batman were motivated by values.
What's Superman's motivation? To do good. What drives Batman? Pursuit of justice...here again, in modern times Batman has shaded most successfully into being human, and hence more popular, because they've emphasized the negative personal experience and feelings of anger, etc that are part of his story.
Spider-Man and Reed Richards and Bruce Banner and Ben Grimm have values, but are motivated by personal desires and emotions. Parker is motivated by concern for and protection of his family, and for romantic and personal relationships. Grimm and Banner struggle with issues of alienation and loneliness, etc. I don't think human needs and desires are "flaws" per se, problematic as they are.
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Peter, Reed, Bruce Banner and Ben all had characters flaws and internal conflict with themselves too. DC tended to stay away from that for a long time, and didn't care much about the non-super side to their characters either. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent were never really important to the stories, while Spider-Man made Peter Parker the more important of the two identities.
DC still has trouble getting away from this. I mean, the WW movie was good but Diana herself never came off as a flawed individual. She was naive but that was it. Compare her character to the bloodthirsty and warmongering person Thor was in his first movie.
Well my experience with the movie is totally different, I still find it immensely interesting and rewatchable, and the spectacle bits are the least of the reasons for it (though I enjoy those bits as well).
I just can't see the argument for BvS as emblematic of Hollywood. If anything, modern Hollywood is pushing for simple, straightforward stories, where everything is literal, properly explained and hermetically logical and that's considered "good." But BvS doesn't fail at doing that, it doesn't even attempt to do that, instead it draws on the narrative tradition of classical theater, it eschews simple straightforwardness for the exploration of themes and ideas, it ignores almost everything in the rulebook for appealing to mass audiences(people even complained there wasn't enough action in it when it came out), hence why I see it as very un-Hollywodish. (I'd take Justice League as a very good example of what I consider Hollywooding it up.)
Also, people love to dismiss Snyder as a simpleton music video director who can only do pretty pictures(as if anyone can do that), but his background is in art history and it absolutely shows in his work. His imagery and attention to detail speak volumes to me, moreso than any excessive use of words could, and I reject the notion that there's something wrong with that and the "proper" way to do thing is to literally explain stuff with more words.
Problem is, when you get so wrapped up in your own self-importance and lack a proper narrative...it still doesn't mean it's a good picture.
Doesn't amount to much without an actual story.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it takes both. Movies are both visual and narrative. I'm not saying BvS needed more words; I'm saying the words it uses make no sense. They don't go together. Characters speak in word salad. There's often no logical connection between one sentence and the next. It fails on the most basic level of cohesiveness.
I'm not saying this to be mean-spirited. I'm not exaggerating for effect. I don't want to dislike movies, certainly not ones about some of my favorite characters. But I was truly stunned by how exceptionally incoherent this particular movie was compared to virtually every other movie I've ever seen in my life -- even compared to the other Zack Snyder movies I've seen, which had their problems but were not even remotely this bad. Heck, Man of Steel could've been a great movie if not for the disastrous third act. But BvS, at least the theatrical cut, was just a mess all the way through. I don't see any "narrative tradition of classical theater" in it, because I don't think it even has a narrative to speak of.
And even when Snyder tried to be profound, like with Luthor's spiel about "God can't be all good and all powerful at the same time"....it still fell apart because as soon as Luthor found out the effects of Kryptonite he KNEW Superman wasn't invulnerable and thus his whole stance fell apart.
You want a good human schemer character who wanted to destroy superhumans, look at Zemo.
You want a good human schemer character who wanted to destroy superhumans, look at Zemo.
I'll grant that the shaky cam of Man of Steel was intentional, and therefore not incompetent photography, but, holy cow, was that one of the most dumbfounding blockbuster decisions of the past decade. "Hey, let's take Superman, the prototypical superhero icon of stability, wisdom, and calm, and tell the cinematographer to act as though she were a drunk who forgot all her tripods at home! It'll be so edgy, and clever, and gorgeous!"
The shaky camera works in the Bourne sequels - well, Supremacy and Ultimatum, at least - because it reflects its protagonist's fractured mind (and totally fails in Quantum of Solace for precisely the inverse reason), and it works in Battle: Los Angeles because it simulates being on the ground with the normal, terrified grunts. But when Clark and Jonathan are having their heart-to-heart about the bus kids, and then Jonathan shows him the ship, why the f*** is the frame trembling like there's an earthquake happening? When Clark does his first big flight, with zero humans in sight, who the hell's viewpoint are we meant to be in while the camera jerks around, trying vainly to keep him in the center of the frame? At least in BvS, as hugely conceptually flawed as it was, Snyder and Co. had the sense to throw MoS' shaky cam in the dumpster where it belonged.
Hey, man, if you don't understand the basic thematic and symbolic purpose of the "Lois investigates experimental bullets, an invention that hasn't changed all that much in the past century, for a situation that didn't require special bullets" subplot, I can't help ya.
(I mean, I can't help you because I have no idea myself. Anyone?)
Dude, BvS is all about asking what if superhumans existed in the real world. And in the real world, if an alien spaceship crashed in shallow waters within sight of land, world governments and militaries would totally leave it completely unguarded, except for a rickety wooden sign or two. That's just common sense Political Science 101!
... Wait, what?
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I'm more surprised Superman let them keep the ship, actually. He was willing to destroy a Drone (and millions of dollars of Taxpayer money) rather than just give it back to the Army, but he lets them keep the ship?