Showing posts with label DC Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DC Movies. Show all posts

06 July 2018

Dead Again

Allow me to reflect a moment upon my own personal level of geek.


When The Death Of Superman comic came out back in the early '90s, i was a staff artist for the computer game developer/publisher, Interplay Productions. Even in that sort of culture, i tended to be the hermit weirdo - showing up barefoot or wearing zoris, making art in my cave. For a while there the business card read Art Troll as my official title. (Eventually i settled on Existential Cinematographer since i was making movies of things that didn't exist using non-real cameras in virtual space.) My office walls were generally covered with comic and art posters, often with things like Dinosaurs Attack! bubble gum cards and other odd trading cards lining the spaces between. Typical attire for me was comfy pants, t-shirt, and a loose open shirt over that. Sometimes there was a posterboard area on my wall for spontaneous art releases. It was a weirdo lair in other ways, too. I was older than much of the industry, and married, with children by my former wife, in a land of fresh-out-of-school kids and bachelors with too much stake in their futures to be bothered with women in any serious way. (I was the first one in the company that didn't have a share in it. The 10 who were there before me left as millionaires. So when i say they were busy working on their futures, i mean that in a very real way.)

Anyway...
One day the shoeless-casual dude (it was California, dude is appropriate usage) showed up at the office in a dark suit and tie - shiny shoes - all clean and presentable, with the black armband bearing the S shield, much to the confusion of most of the others. Gamer Geeks ≠ Comic Geeks.
And that's how i was dressed for the rest of that week, in mourning for the fallen Kal-El.

When i sometimes speak out about the wretched affairs that are the mainline DC movies, it's often assumed that i'm some Marvel fanboy who doesn't like DC. Quite the opposite is often true - I grew up favoring the DC characters, even when i preferred what Marvel was doing in their magazines at times. Though, admittedly, in the classic "Are you a Superman fan or a Batman fan -Who do you want to be?" argument, i always sided with Green Lantern. (Even back then, it was obvious to me that an artist should using the ring. Architect John Stewart even hinted at that for us.), and it's that love for the characters that has made me so bitter about their absence from the films. If i talk about the tone of the movies, or pure stupidity of some aspects and scenes, then i'm told i must hate Zach Snyder. Not true - i overall enjoyed his adaptation of Dave Gibbons' work, and i've watched Sucker Punch more times than all of his DC films combined. I just wish he'd make the Marvelman/Miracleman movie he so obviously wants to make instead an Elseworlds version of DC. (Okay - That pooch has already been screwed, and the puppies sold for breeding stock) Out there in the 'DC Extended Universe', i'm loving the hell out of a lot of the DC TV Shows and the DC Animated Movies.


Last week, the latest of those animated movies was released - The Death Of Superman, obviously based on the comic storyline referenced above. While the studio heads are busy trying to figure out how to handle the DCFU*, the folks who've been turning out great stories for a couple decades and more have been quietly building their own film universe with a series of intersecting Batman and Justice League movies for the last four years. This one makes... um, quite a few of them since 2014.
Hmm...  Let's see.

The Batman movies -
Son Of Batman
Batman Vs. Robin
Batman: Bad Blood
and the Justice League had -
Justice League: War
Justice Leabue: Throne Of Atlantis
and then they directly intersected with -
Justice League Vs. Teen Titans
followed by -
Justice League: Dark
Teen Titans: The Judas Contract

Did i miss any?

I'm not sure about Suicide Squad: Hell To Pay. Frankly, it got turned off when Amanda Waller showed up early on and it was the new skinny generic Waller instead of The Wall. You know - the version where some weak artist decided it was too hard to draw Amanda Waller because she didn't look like the what they were used to drawing, or some pervy artist decided it was more fun drawing pretty girls rather than one of the few people in comics that looked like a human being. At that point, we wondered if the right people were still in charge and decided to come back when our expectations weren't as high. It'll probably be a while. There's just too much in the world to be watched in a single human lifetime, so there's always something else.
And i don't remember if the previous animated Suicide Squad movie, Batman: Assault On Arkham, tucked into this film universe or  deviated significantly to meet the source material of the game. I do remember it was superior to, and more enjoyable than, the live action SS movie.

Along the way, they've turned out a couple of enjoyable Elseworlds films, too - Justice League: Gods & Monsters and Gotham By Gaslight. And this is just in the last 4 years - post Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. (Batman: Ninja comes from a different studio, does it not? What about Scooby Doo & Batman: The Brave & The Bold? It's getting a lot harder to track all this stuff!)

I'm not completely certain that The Death Of Superman takes place in that intersecting universe, though it does feel like it at this point. Let me throw out an "Arrrrrrgghhh!!!" that we have to wait about a year for Reign Of The Supermen to follow up on The Death Of Superman. That said, i'm very glad that they decided to do the story as two separate movies. Far better than trying to crunch it all into one film. It was a good idea with Return Of The Dark Knight, and it's a good plan here.

Even with the abbreviated version of the tale used for the previous Superman: Doomsday, it was still a bit too compressed to build the proper emotional momentum and impact. Once one gets past the highly questionable use of cheek lines in the animation, it did not terrible with the character and story, but still was one of the least memorable DC animated movies of that decade. It was certainly far better than the generic third-act creature upon which they slapped the name Doomsday for the DCFU.

Of course, that means we've got time to see him take on the Justice League...







...before the big showdown...



I still prefer "circus suit" Superman to "ski suit" Superman, and see the Nu52 and other endless reboots as a surrender ("We give up. We can't do as good as those who came before us, so we're just going to redo instead.") But these animated movies based on the newer iterations of the characters are quite enjoyable, and far superior to most of the live action films.

If you haven't yet, check 'em out.

frames from The Death Of Superman (2018)

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*(DCEU, or DC Extended Universe, is an unofficial term slapped on by one reporter which really makes no sense. That name would seem to include the comics, films, novels, tv shows, animated movies, etc.,. So for me, i think it's going to be the DC Film Universe when talking about the movies. DCFU just makes more sense. In pretty much every way.)

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28 October 2017

Dear Gods (All 6 Of 'Em), Let Him Say His Name!

I don't know if you heard yesterday's casting announcement for the "other" Captain Marvel - He Who Cannot Use That Name.* We've known for ages that Dwayne Johnson will be playing Black Adam - for so long that they had to give him his own movie while he waited. (Good call there - let things build)

Friday they finally cast the part of the adult version of Billy Batson in the upcoming Shazam! movie - Zachary Levi.


That's a bit of casting that seems like a natural fit. He's shown his ability to play a boy in a man's body as Chuck Bartowski in Chuck, and over the course of the series, and continuing as Fandral The Dashing in the last two Thor movies, he's built himself up to handle the action roles. This could be a mighty fine thing. I can see a potentially excellent onscreen chemistry between The Rock and he when the inevitable meeting with Black Adam comes.

Hopefully, they'll come up with something (Captain Thunder?) that will let him say his name and avoid the ridiculous Freddy Freeman situation. Seriously - did decades of people mocking Captain Marvel Jr's inability to say his name without changing not factor at all when it came time to name our hero? Or is callng him Shazam another case of the modern comic editors hating heroes and intentionally having a laugh at his expense?


On a completely unrelated note - another news item caught my eye at the same time. Southwest Airlines is talking Live In-Flight Bands. Blasting music at a captive audience unable to escape or avoid it.
Didn't we read that was one of the ways they tortured prisoners in Guantanamo Bay? I guess it's only a natural evolution. Isn't this the airline that beat a passenger they didn't want recently?

How i imagine the press announcement, with a little help from Alex Ross

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*(When DC comics bought the rights to the old Fawcett line, including Captain Marvel, they didn't register the accompanying trademarks. Marvel decided they could find a use for that name and filed registration papers. So, even though Captain Marvel existed first, they haven't been able to use his name in publication titles for decades. Transitioning to movies only complicates things, and the name cannot be used at all. So they've taken to calling the character Shazam, inlcuding a promotion from captain to wizard. So now he needs to wear a name tag since he cannot speak his name without transforming into Billy Batson. D'oh!)

01 September 2017

Random Thought on DCEUpid Design Theory

I'm trying to imagine the design meeting for this costume...

"Oh! I know! We can cover his costume in all kinds of little crap that will cause lots of drag when he moves at speed. That way his outfit will constantly be flying apart when he runs. 
That'll look so cool!"

Coming soon - Flasher Flash.

pity poor Ezra Miller in this 3rd rate Flash Costume from Justice League

23 July 2017

Savagely Stupid or Hail Mary Play for Salvation?

One interestingly odd bit of information that came out of San Diego this weekend is that The Flash movie is going to be based on Flashpoint, the story-line in which Flash inadvertently massively changes the timeline/reality.

My first thought was, "Well, that's stupid. You're going to have him change things before we even see his world before the change? Kinda kills the impact."
Seriously - choosing a story-line that's whole point was to shake up the status quo seems like a terribly poor choice for the movie that establishes the status quo. It would be very typical of a lot of Hollywood thinking, to go jump straight into Big Events without ever giving us the character build up that makes us give a damn about the event. This holds especially true for Warner Brothers and their hurry-and-catch-up attitude towards the DCEU.

But... (here comes the deluded optimist part of my fractured brain) ...what if?
What if this will be their attempt to fix things. What if this is a plan to abandon the dark Elseworlds universe they've been trapped in since Man Of Steel? What if the reset at the end of the movie brings us a recognizable version of Superman? Fan reaction to Tyler Hoechlin's version on Supergirl must have been a hell of a shock to the WB movie heads.

Sure, they'd still have to deal with the painful stupidity part of the stories (another day), but this could be one hell of a head start if they were going to take advantage of this opportunity for a course correction, eh?