DC Comics Multimedia General - A crisis of infinite fuck ups

[Polyboros2]

Saw it, I was expecting worse but I have a lot of issues with it.

Firstly, I was in a theater FULL of black people and they were quiet the entire time. While better for my viewing experience I think it's damning to the entertainment quality of the film. However, they were very vocal in Captain America 4, so maybe that's not a proper metric.

Overall, I think the movie is a giant mess with bits here and there that I liked. It felt like watching half of a CW Capeshit show, but like Season 3 or 4 where they had their shit together on the main characters, but the character bloat was starting to become noticeable.

Spoiler: More spoilery opinions.

• I fucking HATE Jor-El and Lara sending Clark to be a tyrant. Completely unnecessary to the plot, the whole movie I kept expecting them to correct that. That Kryptonian language is very complex or something, but not they just left that as his origin.
• Jimmy Olsen actually being a ladies man while not looking particularly handsome is like a funny gag, but when it's a critical plot point and essentially all of his characterization in the movie it's just distracting.
• I liked Lois, she was probably the least cunty Lois ever put to film. I think she had good chemistry with Clark.
• Mr Terrific was good(reminded me of Hawkman and Dr Fate being the only interesting parts of Black Adam), Guy Gardner was ok, Hawkgirl was a gag essentially.
• I didn't like Clark killing Ultraman. They had a perfectly easy set up for that where Lex is controlling him like a robot, just have him be a body that he's remote controlling that isn't alive. Could be a good set up for Cyborg Superman too if they wanted(barring him being thrown in a black hole)
• Both Clark and Lex have moments of good characterization muddle up with bizarre awful takes. Lex is worse, I agree his tech level is just absurd for an introduction. Clark is better overall, but there is still times where he just acts weirdly.
• The Makeupistani conflict started out good, Clark having conflict with acting where he has the power to stop harm, and that conflicting with the real world grayness of situations at the start is great. And then it loses all nuance and it becomes a paramilitary force crushing a bunch of homeless people that just live standing in a gravel pit. Hawkgirl just murdering President Borat felt like the punchline to a joke that wasn't told.
• I liked Supergirl in The Flash. Maybe it was just a drowning rat grabbing on to a piece of trash that floats, but I thought she gave a great performance and had character. This Kara feels like it's trying to capture what vapid people like about Slut Harley Quinn.

 

[el bandito loco]

Is Batman 89 still the best example of an origin movie that doesn't focus on the origin?

Yes. it's either that or if you really like the Matt Reeves Batman movie, maybe it. People would also throw Spider-Man Homecoming in that conversation but I think that Peter Parker is too much of a departure for that to be it.

For my money, it's still '89.

 

[Overly Serious]

I haven't seen this movie but with the heavy-handed analogies of Gunn being in "Twitter Jail" and the typing monkeys, and what I hear about Not-Israel or Not-Russia, am I reading too much into it to think that the whole mess about Kal-El's father telling him to go and outbreed the humans is some convoluted and ham-fisted attempt to lampoon people concerned about immigrants out-breeding the natives? Sounds like a Gunn thing to do. Maybe filtered through several layers of rewrites and edits so that it just ends up a mess but that was the intent?

Why is it that in the past 2 Supermen movies they had to spiritually rape one of his sets of parents?

Because Hollywood's favourite message to push is "Found Family". Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy was all about that and the sequel even more so. The elites hate natural families because the nuclear family is the biggest block to authoritarianism and demoralisation. It has always been.

You see Found Family pushed everywhere:


It's very big in the trans movement, where they endlessly push "your family doesn't accept you for who you really are. Come to us - we do".

Gunn obviously wants to tarnish Superman's parents in his movie. Especially such noble ones as Clark's who die to protect their child and give him a better life. I haven't watched that much of Gunn's work but I bet it crops up quite a bit.

 

[el bandito loco]

I haven't seen this movie but with the heavy-handed analogies of Gunn being in "Twitter Jail" and the typing monkeys, and what I hear about Not-Israel or Not-Russia, am I reading too much into it to think that the whole mess about Kal-El's father telling him to go and outbreed the humans is some convoluted and ham-fisted attempt to lampoon people concerned about immigrants out-breeding the natives? Sounds like a Gunn thing to do. Maybe filtered through several layers of rewrites and edits so that it just ends up a mess but that was the intent?

I don't really think so, I think that's giving them too much credit. I think it's legitimately just there to turn people against him and the breeding thing is just because Gunn thinks that it's funny. It's most likely a coincidence.

 

[Overly Serious]

I don't really think so, I think that's giving them too much credit. I think it's legitimately just there to turn people against him and the breeding thing is just because Gunn thinks that it's funny. It's most likely a coincidence.

Hmmmmm. -.-

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action...
(GotG1, GotG2, Superman... Found Family > Real Family.)

EDIT: I just learned that James Gunn made a movie titled Loli Love. :/

 

[el bandito loco]

Hmmmmm. -.-

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action...
(GotG1, GotG2, Superman... Found Family > Real Family.)

EDIT: I just learned that James Gunn made a movie titled Loli Love. :/

I dont think the found family aspect is relevant because it's been basically in all media targeted towards children for all of time, and in Superman he's been adopted and it's been there since 1938. I don't think Gunn is pushing anything political in using that (even if lots of people probably use it for that purpose) and there are other more political things in the movie, I think it's just what he's into.

think of basically any children's media and it's there. The Land Before Time, that's what it's about, The Goonies, it's about it, Bambi, it's in there a bit. and so on and so forth. And in the context of Superman, it's not even really like that the way it is with Batman where he ends up finding family (beyond Alfred) in a bunch of people similar to him he takes in, Superman's found family is a nuclear household. Dad, Mom, him. They just adopted him.

 

[Overly Serious]

I dont think the found family aspect is relevant because it's been basically in all media targeted towards children for all of time, and in Superman he's been adopted and it's been there since 1938. I don't think Gunn is pushing anything political in using that (even if lots of people probably use it for that purpose) and there are other more political things in the movie, I think it's just what he's into.

think of basically any children's media and it's there. The Land Before Time, that's what it's about, The Goonies, it's about it, Bambi, it's in there a bit. and so on and so forth. And in the context of Superman, it's not even really like that the way it is with Batman where he ends up finding family (beyond Alfred) in a bunch of people similar to him he takes in, Superman's found family is a nuclear household. Dad, Mom, him. They just adopted him.

Yes, yes... This has been going on a long time hasn't it? -.-

 

[el bandito loco]

Yes, yes... This has been going on a long time hasn't it? -.-

Oh c'mon I know you don't really believe, ever since Dickens wrote Oliver Twist 200 years ago the idea of finding family with people who like you in stories for children for you is part of some conspiracy to make everyone a faggot, do you?

I'm not disagreeing that it can and has been used in a manipulative way, but it's absolutely insane to pretend that it's not a milquetoast basic positive lesson that's just in everything because it's inherently relatable and understandable to everyone.

the problem is moreso sappy hug box bullshit where the flaws of someone aren't tolerated but encouraged. but either way imagining such a basic message as 'becoming friends with people with things in common as you' is an existential threat to normalcy is nuts.

In this case of this particular movie, it's not even rejecting things to go find someone else. He was adopted as a baby and they raised him. his lesson in the movie as far as parents go is as Pa Kent tells him in it, Parents arent there to tell you what to do for your entire life but to care about and support you to do the right thing. which he does, they raised him not to be a bad person so he has superpowers and uses them to help anyone he can.

The Els being tarnished is there to prove the point that despite being from space Superman is as human as anyone else. as he states directly and over obviously in the final act. that he's a product of his upbringing not his DNA. If there's anything to it, its the idea being raised by all American parents and being assimilated into normal American culture is the way an immigrant actually becomes a good person instead of holding on to wherever they're from's culture as their whole identity.

 

[Overly Serious]

Oh c'mon you don't really believe, ever since Dickens wrote Oliver Twist 200 years ago the idea of finding family with people who like you in stories for children for you is part of some conspiracy to make everyone a faggot, do you?

Oliver Twist was separated from his real family and sent into poverty and Dicken's novel is a vehicle for him to show to polite society the awful conditions children are born into. The Found Family in which Oliver ends up are a criminal gang exploited by Fagin and the happy ending is when he is returned to his real family. You've made an odd choice for something to show Found Family as a positive.

But to the general point, actually yes - I do think Found Family is pushed as an anti-family tool. See that department store window above. See how routinely it's pushed by the trans lobby to say your found family is more important than your real family because the latter don't accept your true identity. It's all over the place. And it's very different from the case of baby Kal-El being adopted by the Kents when his own parents are lost, or Alfred raising young master Bruce. The issue is the pairing of it with a rejection of the real family in favour of a superior found family. And that trope has become very popular in modern media. And Gunn has used it a few times.

The Els being tarnished is there to prove the point that despite being from space Superman is as human as anyone else. as he states directly and over obviously in the final act. that he's a product of his upbringing not his dna.

Which is a very pushed message these days. That people are the product of what you imprint on them, their upbringing, not their DNA.

I'm not saying that's a bad message. If Stitch created as a weapon finds love and becomes a good guy, great. But it's a rather odd message for Superman. I haven't seen the movie but I do not like the sound of his true parents being made unpleasant in order to push that message. And sending someone to another country (world) with the purpose of out-breeding the natives, is a pretty unpleasant feeling trait to give them.

I do in fact suspect that this was introduced as a kind of Fuck You to people concerned about immigration. Garbled by editing and revisions, perhaps.

EDIT: I stand by what I say that the family unit is the biggest obstacle to oppression and demoralisation in human history. Has always been. And therefore it's been targeted over and over by the elites in ways both propagandistic and real (like targeting African American women with welfare pitches and bumping up the divorce rate). I have lost track of the anti-family messaging I have seen over the past few decades in the media. And messaging of Found Family > Real Family has been something I've noticed more and more of. A necessary half of that equation is to undermine the values of the Real Family by making it flawed.

 

[el bandito loco]

Gunn has used it a few times.

But he doesn't in this movie which was my point of why it wasn't relevant and I was telling you because you hadn't seen it.

and Oliver Twist in the end, he ends up with a found family in Mr Brown or whatever the fuck his name was in the end. the point was that there's found family stories that have existed forever because its basic and relevant to everyone in some way.

I wasn't disagreeing it can and is used that way (as I said) but it's nuts to conflate every time that is used it's being used in that way.

Even in Guardians, the only thing anyone rejects is Thanos and Ego, who are evil. It's not being used in a "my family disagrees with me so I found other people who accept my lifestyle" it's the parents are just flat out evil, and the children choose to be heroes instead. There's a huge difference in that, and i choose to go do something potentially life changing because I feel that way today and my dad doesn't want me to.

 

[Overly Serious]

and Oliver Twist in the end, he ends up with a found family in Mr Brown or whatever the fuck his name was in the end. the point was that there's found family stories that have existed forever because its basic and relevant to everyone in some way.

Brownlow. And Brownlow helps him find his true ancestry and I think one of the characters he lives with is his aunt? In any case, it's not an example of the trope I'm talking about in which Found Family > Real Family. All Oliver's woes stem from him being taken from his family and the happy resolution comes about from rediscovering his family connection.

I wasn't disagreeing it can and is used that way (as I said) but it's nuts to conflate every time that is used it's being used in that way.

Well I might see the movie in time. I'm going off comments here I admit it. But it remains a very, very weird thing to my mind, to make Kal-El's parents be promoters of ethnic replacement. So weird that I look to why Gunn would do such. And as he's pushed said message in the past, for me it's a plausible reason.

Even in Guardians, the only thing anyone rejects is Thanos and Ego,

Ego is his actual father. That supports my point about the film's message. Found Family > Real Family.

 

[Fatsuit Shinji]

EDIT: I just learned that James Gunn made a movie titled Loli Love. :/

Just check the wiki page for it and the "loli" is in reference only to actual lollipop candy. Plot reasons the lollipops are given to homeless people.

 

[el bandito loco]

Ego is his actual father. That supports my point about the film's message. Found Family > Real Family.

yeah but in context that's just retarded. he's evil. By this logic Star Wars is problematic to you because Luke doesn't join Vader in Empire. you're making a case that anything that features any biological related characters as bad is part of some sort of asinine attack on the family. I'm saying I dont think you can argue this as a tool promoting this message when in context it's against actual evil. It's not the same thing as family rejecting a lifestyle and finding someone who accepts it.

There are plenty of things that do the latter, that you could point out as promotion of those ideas. the way youre presenting this, is that any story about this type of thing is a specific type of programming or whatever that it just isn't. nobody thinks Luke's rejection of Darth Vader is supporting the idea of leaving your parents house in tenesse to go join a hippie community in Oregon to suck dicks and shoot heroin.

sure, the message boils down to found family, but it's a huge distinction and difference when your biological family is actually objectively evil than an ideological disagreement. if your dad was a murderer or something and you rejected him as a father and went and found some other people that's not the same thing as if he was some normal guy and told you your college major was useless and so you left to go live with other people.

My long winded point is that you can't really equate the usage of it in the context of guardians or something with trans activism. Trans people probably do, but that's because theyre idiots and missing the point, and as with everything else they do, they cannot see media without projecting themselves onto it but that doesn't mean the movie was doing that. I dont even like those movies at all, but it's crazy to think theyre endorsing rejection of a regular home.

if nothing else I think we both agree that trans people have basically ruined everything because they project themselves onto everything to such a degree it sours one of the oldest story archetypes in history because as with everything else, they have to make it about them so it unfortunately makes the rest of us think that too.

 

[the printer is outo fink]

By this logic Star Wars is problematic to you because Luke doesn't join Vader in Empire. you're making a case that anything that features any biological related characters as bad is part of some sort of asinine attack on the family.

Star Wars ends with Vader joining Luke when he sacrifices himself to save his son. Vader finding his love of his biological family is what saves him and kills the Emperor. He wouldn't have turned on Palpatine for anyone other than his own child.

 

[Overly Serious]

yeah but in context that's just retarded. he's evil.

This is strange logic. There's no actual reality behind the story. He's whatever he's written to be. If I write a story where men keep raping someone and the message of my movie is 'men are rapists,' a criticism of that isn't deflected by saying "yes, but the men were raping". The criticism is an out-of-universe thing about what someone chose to write and the moral they chose to present.

Is anybody unable to say that "Sinners" is pretty racist against White people by casting them all as vampires because in the movie, they're all vampires? You see my point.

By this logic Star Wars is problematic to you because Luke doesn't join Vader in Empire.

That's actually not my logic nor the trope I have described. @the printer is outo fink already pointed out very succinctly how so. But I'd go even further still and point out that Luke goes directly against what his found family tell him and redeems his father through their familial bond. From Oliver Twist to Star Wars you've actually gone into an even odder choice of counter-example because he also finds his sister via destiny and the familial bond between siblings is also critical to the plot. In fact, I can think of few examples of popular media LESS likely to emphasise that family matters than the nonology about the Skywalker family. Who multiple times don't even know they're members of it yet its importance returns. Rey may originally have been related in one version of the script!

you're making a case that anything that features any biological related characters as bad is part of some sort of asinine attack on the family.

I am not making that case. I am observing that it has been a very common trope in recent years to see a message of rejecting your real family in favour of a found one. And as I pointed out with that department store window picture above, it's not just in movies. It's very explicit. And was a omnipresent theme in Progressive messaging like the trans movement and LGBTQI2SWTFBBQ material. Even damn schools material on trans that was distributed in schools here was saturated with the messaging of ditch your real family in favour of those who accept you.

I'm not making a case that "anything that features a biologically related character as bad is part of this." I'm saying I have observed a strong pattern and it's one that isn't arising organically from culture or even just storytelling. When advertisers are filling shop-windows with the text "Found Family" over and over, something is going on.

My long winded point is that you can't really equate the usage of it in the context of guardians or something with trans activism.

I can indeed link them. Have done so several times now. I link them in the sense I see both growing from a common cause - societal pushing of the denigration and division of the family.

Lets talk about salt. Is salt bad? No - it's tasty, it's even a positive thing. Until it's in everything and everywhere and all you can taste in your mouth is salt. When I look at the number of films pushing rejection or replacement of the family compared to the importance of family coming out today, I can see lots of the former and the latter, I don't know... Tyler Perry's Madea movies? They always have a strong pro-family message.

Who would win? James Gunn's Hawkgirl or Tyler Perry's Madea. (I'm betting on the latter).

 

[That Chris Guy]

Lex was pretty atrocious. Holt is good with what he’s got, but it doesn’t feel like Lex. Lex leaves way too much evidence against himself for me to think he is as cunning as other Lex adaptations. He also has access to way too much for a first outing. My suspension of disbelief ended once the world was being ripped in two, no way Luthor would be dumb enough basically end the world, Lex usually keeps his bullshit on the down low or in a way it cannot be linked back to him. It would have made for a better story if the plot created a situation in which Lex completely avoided jail.

1A! 1A! 1A! 1A! 1A!

...was kind of stupid, really. I think Hoult is a fine actor, but he didn't come across as very clever. He did the classic Dr. Evil of just telling Kal his entire secret plan while he was imprisoned, and monologuing his personality during the fight. Those choices don't seem very Lex-like.

I'm not an avid comic book reader, but Luthor struck me as a pragmatic, Machiavellian thinker, which is not the kind of Lex we got in the movie. Figuring out his plan should be a little harder than him blurting it out to everyone, and upon his arrest I wouldn't think he'd have a little cry about it - he'd just be thinking about his emancipation and how to get there. He wouldn't care if everyone called him a traitor; he's smarter than all of them by his own logic, and they don't understand the full extent of his plans.

 

[Captain Syrup]

Firstly, I was in a theater FULL of black people and they were quiet the entire time.

Yeah, just going off vibes and talking to guys at work, it seems like Black people actually liked the Zack Snyder movies.

This self-effacing, "this movie is good, but also shit" reboot was made for divorced Gen X dads.

 

[Overly Serious]

The defining Lex Luthor moment for me is when he builds a computer to figure out who Superman is and when it spits out "Clark Kent" he scraps the computer because it's obviously flawed. He is smart enough to work out something nobody else could but unable to conceive of someone with Superman's power living a humble life.

And that's what makes a classic villain - someone who is undone by their own critical flaw, something that separates them by that one thing from being the hero. To him Superman is a peer, a rival, the one real challenge to his self-identity as the greatest person ever. Such a person who can make Lex secretly doubt himself cannot be an ordinary man. In any aspect.

Of course the other defining moment for Lex Luthor is when he stole forty cakes. That's as many as four tens.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Yeah, just going off vibes and talking to guys at work, it seems like Black people actually liked the Zack Snyder movies.

This self-effacing, "this movie is good, but also shit" reboot was made for divorced Gen X dads.

A huge chunk of Synder fans were black and Indian but you will never hear anyone admitting this

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

Channels like Midnight Edge need a thread? Holy shit he is sucking off James Gunn like no tomorrow. He’s ignoring the obvious Gaza shit in Superman and James Gunn brother saying Superman is an anti-MAGA movie. Midnight Edge unironically using the same argument Disney adults and journalists use to defend MCU and Disney Star Wars movies and show underperforming. Midnight Edge, Kino casino and Yellow flash Superman not woke narrative based around Lex Luthor isn’t Trump. Nigga he’s still an obvious Elon Musk stand in. Including owning not twitter.