Talk about the art of storytelling here.
Storytelling: the neverending story
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Superman IV had the most interesting premise, but was ill conceived from the outset.
Imagine Superman tells the world that he is going to eliminate all nuclear weapons from the planet… can you imagine any scenario where everyone in the world would agree to that? Well, that’s what happens in the very first act of the movie, and Lex Luthor — for no really well-defined reason other than he hates Superman – gets involved in the story as the enemy.
However, it’s not far from a more Red Son or Kingdom Come approach. If they had taken it seriously — Superman politely tells the world that there will no longer be war – not just the threat of WW3, but really no more war at all and he will start by eliminating all the weapons of mass destruction in the world. People would lose their collective shit!
So the leaders of the world – through their intelligence agencies – go straight to Lex Luthor and say “get us out of this mess and you can have anything!” That’s a good start to a Superman movie.
And I would play Superman straight. Not an angry, grim guy, but this really nice, polite and sympathetic hero who’s always smiling even though he’s freaking out the whole world because he knows “deep down” they’ll understand this is the right thing to do. Meanwhile, Lois Lane is out there screaming that Superman has gone crazy while Clark is like “I don’t know, Lois, if you had the power to save the whole world from nuclear destruction what would you do?” “That’s not the point, Clark!”
Meanwhile, Lex comes up with the anti-Superman (not necessarily the Eurovision WWF wrestler Nuclear Man, but maybe Bizarro) and it manages to put Superman out of action. Only now, instead of facing forced global disarmament, they now face Luthor with a small army of superweapons only he can control. Out of the frying pan and into the core of a nuclear reactor. So the nations of the world are on the verge of unleashing those nuclear weapons Superman wanted to destroy on Lex and his army. Then, Superman recovers and comes back to save the day.
I think that would’ve made a more interesting direction for a Superman movie, but probably not something to come out of the 80’s. The 70’s or in 2008, though, it would’ve worked.
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I haven’t watched either of the two Dune movies so far or read any of the books, but I hope the new movie makes it all feel less complicated than that.
I am sure the movie will mainly consist of a meeting between representants of the Spacing Guild, the Emperor, the Bene Gesserit and the Tleilaxu hashing out contracts.
Also, Jesus, Dave!
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Also, Jesus, Dave!
I tried watching the 90s movie version but it seemed to be quite a loose adaptation and bore little resemblance to what I’d heard about the property.
Hopefully the new movie is a more faithful adaptation.
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Well if you didn’t like that one, I don’t know what to tell you. I mean, that movie had Richard E. Grant and Alan Cumming!
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I am sure the movie will mainly consist of a meeting between representants of the Spacing Guild, the Emperor, the Bene Gesserit and the Tleilaxu hashing out contracts.
Nope, that’s for the Dune Messiah movie, I’m afraid… =P
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First, I wouldn’t spend so much time on the desert planet. There are a whole bunch of worlds – hell, spend more time on the space ships. And this whole order of women only with psychic powers? Why not make most of them men with telekinesis, too – and special swords they use, too.
Also, why does Paul have to be royalty? He should be like a farmer’s kid. That way people will relate to him. Just a regular working class guy.
The emperor is not very threatening in the book either. I mean, he makes a lot of threats, but he’s pushed around all over the book. Instead, give him like some moon sized space cannon that can wipe out planets. Also, make Baron Harkonnen like his second in command. And make him tougher. Like Paul and the Baron never meet until the very end of the book. That’s crazy. You gotta have the protagonists come in contact with the antagonist more than once. What was Herbert thinking?
Also, maybe a cool twist… hmmm? I know, maybe the Baron is actually Paul’s real dad! Now we’re cooking!
Another thing it could use is a vaguely racist sidekick for comic relief.
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Wow that’s a pretty good idea, someone should do a movie…
Also: I hate you… =P
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First, I wouldn’t spend so much time on the desert planet.
Good. I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
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This grouping is similar to all the groupings of a cast of characters in a story. Comics have a team of the leader, the babe, the energy, the strong guy, the antihero, the acrobat, etc.
The original Star Wars trilogy had the wizard, farmboy, pirate, princess, and the comic relief sidekicks.
The seven samurai…
Fantasy novels of a group on a quest…
And on and on…
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It’s tough to say that Black Bolt represents “rulers” and Namor doesn’t. Both are “non-human” points of view – one is a separate race entirely and the other is half-human and half-alien.
However, in a way, they all represent outsiders – even Tony Stark who is essentially a technocrat.
Stark – human + technology. The expansion of the human ability to augment the body and mind and control the external world. And the consequences of doing that in a chaotic natural environment.
Xavier – human + evolution. The natural and artificial changes to the human genome and, on the negative side, the competition for survival that drives evolution.
Black Bolt – human + the stars. The conceptual changes in the human race as it prepares for existence beyond the earth and possibly comes into contact with extraterrestrials.
Strange – human + the supernatural. Magick, religion, the ability to get in touch with the creative and irrational nature of human existence. Strange looks inside while Stark looks outward.
Richards – human + science. As opposed to technology, science changes the mind and its abilities to conceive of and change one’s perspective and internal relation to the universe. As opposed to Strange, Reed represents the rational expansion of the consciousness rather than the irrational.
Namor – human + the sea. The sea conceptually and historically has been a representative of the unknowable and destructively anti-human aspects of nature. It is an “alien” world in our own world.
Also, with Xavier, Namor and Black Bolt, there is the added element of being a selected group – an outsider minority – which a lot of the Jewish creators of these characters can relate to.
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The seven samurai…
As I recall, aside from temperament, there wasn’t much to distinguish the seven men. Oh, one was an archer, but that’s about it.
As for the Illuminati theory, Tony Stark and Reed Richards are interchangeable as genius scientists. Where is the representative of the military, or the intelligence community, or legal or political or environmental communities? Who is there to represent women, or people of color, or LGBTQ, or youth, or the elderly. This group is basically a bunch of upper class elites.
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Stark is not really a scientist like Richards. He’s an engineer and that is quite distinct from a researcher or physicist. Tony could build something from Reed’s science, but he’d need Reed to do the work to create that science.
It is notable who is not included. No Black Panther. No Captain America. No Captain Marvel.
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By the way, for anyone who’s a fan of Dune… If you could, how would you fix the Dune saga? I’ve been thinking about it, and there’s a couple of ways I’ve thought of, but I haven’t settled on one just yet… I’m curious to know what others think about this… I’m guessing the first step in everyone’s plan would be to get rid of the Brian Herbert books… =P
Just read the first novel, Dune, and pretend the other six hundred books don’t exist.
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As I recall, aside from temperament, there wasn’t much to distinguish the seven men. Oh, one was an archer, but that’s about it.
I also wonder how intentional the archetyping is in ensemble pieces anyway. Like with Batman – you can say that his classic (and really underutilized in the comics) villains represent aspects of himself. Two Face is the dark mirror to the two sides of Batman/Bruce Wayne. Mr. Freeze is a man who can’t move past a traumatic event and grief. The Riddler is a brilliant mind that creates evil mysteries rather than untangles them. Catwoman is a night prowler that commits crimes rather than fights and foils them. The Penguin uses his riches to become a king of crime with his own array of gadgets. The Joker is constantly being portrayed as Batman’s conceptual nemesis. In the later Bane also was something an Anti-Batman training himself from childhood to be a superhuman threat mentally and physically and Poison Ivy came to represent the threat of romance in his life, and possibly since he is so connected to the city, the threat of nature as well.
However, I wonder if the writers are actually aware of that when they created the characters or use them today. Or were they just basically thinking of characters to fit with the theme?
Has anyone else noticed the irony of his becoming a “bat.” When the bat flies through his window, he takes it as a sign from his dead father than he should become a bat to strike fear in the hearts of the “superstitious” criminals. However, he just said he thinks that his father’s ghost sent a bat through his window — he’s the superstitious one. Your average criminal is just gonna pick up a poker from the fireplace and bash its brains in.
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It’s been said that Middle Earth is supposed to represent Europe. But then you think about what is over the western ocean from Middle Earth: a land of perfect people who are eternally wise and beautiful and the creators of everything that’s good in the world. Compare that with what’s over the western ocean from Europe and it’s clear that Tolkein’s world had absolutely no similarity to our own
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It’s been said that Middle Earth is supposed to represent Europe. But then you think about what is over the western ocean from Middle Earth: a land of perfect people who are eternally wise and beautiful and the creators of everything that’s good in the world. Compare that with what’s over the western ocean from Europe and it’s clear that Tolkein’s world had absolutely no similarity to our own
What have you got against Canadians?
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Tolkein certainly did not intend Middle Earth to represent early Medieval Europe… he quite openly intended it to represent a mythic Anglo Saxon England. He didn’t think the English had a mythic collection of tales separate from the Celts and later Norman influences so he made it up.
In the annotations, he reveals the conceit that the Lord of The Rings is an academic translation of the original texts so these are meant to be taken as based on the “true” stories of an imaginary early Middle Ages England.I’d say the Western Lands probably represented Spain. Isn’t that where all the English pensioners retire? 😉
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I’d say the Western Lands probably represented Spain. Isn’t that where all the English pensioners retire? 😉
Best theory I’ve ever heard
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Wow… Talent for War… Your analysis of Batman’s rogue gallery was spot on and well said. You indeed have a keen mind.
Thanks – but I also wonder if it is intentional when the characters were developed or if it was really something that came up long after. In a sense, the Batman villains were just versions of Dick Tracy characters – and that I think was intentional, Batman was essentially a mash up of many other things that were popular at the time from pulp heroes, detective fiction, costumed superheroes and comic strips. Batman is one of those cases where the creative teams and publishers intentionally set out to capitalize on anything that was popular at the time and it actually worked.
I think the archetypes of the villains started to really get defined with THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. Especially, the order vs chaos nature of The Joker (in KILLING JOKE, mostly). Batman responds to the chaotic violence of the world by fighting it, and Joker simply joins in. That’s the dark mirror he provides, but it is a more recent portrayal.
As far as the Batman comics though, I really can’t think of a good story for most of the classic villains except Joker – who has been used a lot. When was the last time we got a truly memorable Penguin, Riddler, Mr Freeze or Poison Ivy story in an actual Batman comic in, say, the past 10 years that wasn’t some version of an Elseworlds story? They are far more likely to be better written in movies, television, cartoons and videogames than in the actual comics.
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The War of Jokes and Riddles in King’s run. The Penguin had a role in The Joker War which might also explain why the others were scarce(they were hiding in the Penguin’s bunker to get away from Joker’s chaos). Mr. Freeze in the story where Bruce Wayne is on jury duty. Harley is always thinking about Ivy.
They do show up, but generally not without the Joker. In the Mr. Freeze story, was Freeze much of an antagonist? Was Batman facing off against him or was it really more about Bruce Wayne fighting an internal struggle where the antagonist is the Batman?
I think the writers of Batman comics really prefer introducing new antagonists rather than trying to find ways that use the classic villains as strongly as they used to. A lot of this is likely because Batman has beaten all of them so often, but that’s true of Joker as well and he shows up all the time. Maybe that is because it’s mandated from above, though. So the rest of the villains get cast as either flunkies for the Joker or different other crews. Or, like Harley Quinn and Catwoman, they become “good guys” and lead their own titles and stop being real antagonists for the Bat.
Personally, here’s what I’d like to see implemented in Batman stories.
First, Batman is not the primary target of the villain. Whenever Joker shows up, it eventually circles around to some design on his part against “The Bat.” In the classic detective story, the murderer or criminal is not motivated by anything to do with the detective until they are on the case.
Second, the antagonist’s objectives and motivations are the direct driving force of the story. Whatever the villain wants is what the Batman has to uncover and stop. And the victims of the plot shouldn’t all have some direct connection to Batman, Bruce Wayne or his extended family (again, strange for a character that was always intended to be a secretive loner) until he encounters them in the story.
Third, it should also involve some direct connection to an internal struggle in the Bruce Wayne vs Batman story. The villain works best when they are a dark mirror to Batman himself.
Finally, Batman almost always works best when the Bat is essentially like a werewolf. Bruce Wayne can sympathize with the victims and even the villains, but Batman simply wants to find and punish the perpetrator and will torture Bruce until that happens. It’s not nearly as dramatic if Bruce Wayne wants to be the Batman or totally integrates what is obviously dangerously abnormal behavior (dressing up in a costume, solving crimes, risking his life and the lives of children he’s responsible for, inventing weird and dangerous gadgets and getting into fights). He simply cannot control becoming the Bat, but the dramatic difference is that he can influence what the Bat can and cannot do — like murder people — while his villains cannot control that side of their own obsessions and defects.
It’s not so much that “happy Batman” won’t appeal to people, but that the internal conflicts are a lot stronger when there is a battle between what Bruce wants and what the Bat demands.
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Science fiction had, traditionally, been considered to be a pulp genre and wasn’t taken seriously as literature until the 1960s when Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land came out. Science fiction wasn’t explicitly aimed at children, though the primary audience would have been as either kids or mentally deficient adults.
While I have no doubt that a lot of kids were reading Dune in the 60s and 70s and 80s, those books had a lot more complexity than seen in Harry Potter or Hunger Games. And even a YA series like Harry Potter has different layers. Reading the Harry Potter series at 9-12 is going to be a far different experience than reading it at 30+. (If you’re ten, then Snape is just going to be a mean teacher, reading it in your thirties, then he becomes a tragic, pathetic character, bitter and twisted by unrequited love, regret, and childhood trauma.) Which is how the best stuff ostensibly aimed at “young adults,” like Star Trek or Star Wars or Doctor Who, works — kids can get one thing out of it, and adults can get another thing.
And another thing to consider is the cultural revolution of the late 1960s. Nearly all media produced before then was aimed at general audiences. Movies were still subject to the Hays Code, television programs were held to stringent standards (separate beds for married couples!), music had to be safe to be played on the radio, and novels did not have explicit sex, graphic violence, or f-bombs. So, really, almost all art and entertainment that came out before the hippies came along and flushed the standards of decent, conservative society, would have been mostly safe for children to view or read, even if it wasn’t aimed at them.
It’s interesting that Doctor Who is considered to be a childrens’ program to this day. Of course it was aimed at kids when it debuted in 1963. All science fiction at that time would, if not been considered to be strictly for children, aimed in that direction.
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It really is. Not because the story is bad – the novelette is pretty great. But the point of the novel is that it all happens inside the character’s head; Schnitzler is quite similar to Joyce in the ways he examined how you could depict how consciousness and perception work in writing. That’s a difficult thing to adapt into a movie. But Kubrick also didn’t even try to adapt that aspect of it; in the movie we’re just outside watching Tom Cruise walk around. Which is just fucking boring. I don’t know what Kubrick was looking for in his adaptation of the Traumnovelle, but he didn’t find it.
The screenwriter Fred Raphael wrote a book about it EYES WIDE OPEN that reveals a lot of how it came about. Since he’s Kubrick’s age and has already been a big success in film and literature, his portrayal of Kubrick is more realistic and pretty funny. His essential problem was that Kubrick didn’t think the relationships in modern day New York were significantly different than those in Vienna almost a 100 years before. So, the movie felt a little weird – like when they do a Shakespeare play and set it in a modern setting but keep all the dialogue exactly the same. Only everyone knows Shakespeare, but Raphael had to guess that Schnitlzer was the author. Kubrick didn’t want to tell him.
Also, Raphael quickly debunks the idea that the orgies were based on real things Kubrick had experienced with the elite of film and politics. He asked Raphael to come up with some background for it, so the writer spent about an hour putting together a fictional FBI dossier on this group of Kennedy fans among the wealthy and famous who started a kind of sex club based on the Kennedy’s supposed sexual exploits. When Kubrick read it, he thought it was real and Raphael had to tell him he just made it all up. Kubrick didn’t seem to understand that writers can make things up. They don’t need some actual real events to base anything on.
It’s interesting but personally those weren’t issues I had with the film. I’m with Christian that it’s just boring watching Tom Cruise walking around a lot.
Whether realistic or not the orgy scene is the only bit that grabs the interest (let’s be honest 99.99% of the audience will not have attended a high society orgy to know either way), not for the obvious reasons of plentiful nudity but the tension around him getting found out is creepy as hell. The way it’s shot and the music is prime Kubrick. It’s a brilliant scene.
After all that though the payoff from that tension is he just leaves and goes back to his normal life. Hence the feeling of ‘is that it?’.
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What exactly is so complex about it?
Well, for starters, it’s nothing like what you described above when comparing Paul to Katniss. Again:
Paul is NOT the hero, yes he’s the protagonist, but he’s not really a hero or even a very good person for that matter. He’s not the lowly commoner who rises against the establishment and gets duped into thinking the rebelion is better… I mean, for all intents and purposes HE is the establishment and his rebelion is just a coup, it’s not a righteous fight for the people, he’s a punk-ass princeling throwing a tantrum over his lost inheritance and doing waaaaaaaaaay more harm in the process. And indeed, it’s something that someone might not get at first, so that’s a bit more complex than many other stories, I’d say.
Now, I don’t know what’s your threshold for complexity, but I think most people would agree that Dune is complex, for various reasons… I honestly don’t even agree it’s a YA-like novel, or anyhting of the sort, even when only taking into account the first book… which there’s no reason to do so.
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I saw some tribute to Ray Harryhausen of the stop motion movies of Sinbad and so on. The huge lobster monsters and sword fights with skeletons…
He was ahead of his time but was there to influence the future moviemakers.
Makes me wonder what he would do today. Bring back Sinbad? Maybe, but then we would have to go back to the previous discussion of the “mythical” remote islands and parts of the world used for adventure…
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Remakes/Revivals
Twilight Zone – The Original Series
I was originally on MW with the Twilight Zone theme in my avatar. That is how I got to be known as no one else used the show. Anyway…
I have seen a few episodes of the revivals of the series (i.e., the one in the 80’s, the Forrest Whitaker one, and the Jordan Peele one). They meant well but I feel that TOS on the whole had reached its limit given the amount of episodes, various stories and settings. I mean you already had the original episodes of scary objects, talking dolls, strange dreams, aliens, strange societies, post apocalyptic situations, and so on. This is evident in the fact that almost all the remakes and revivals of the show can’t really add anything new. I have to say that it was all covered in TOS in its glorious black and white.
This is to say that a proper revival/remake of an old show shouldn’t be a rehash of the old material and if it can’t add anything new, then why bother? Reimagining however is another thing like what was done with Battlestar Galactica and in comics, the Ultimate Universe for a while.
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The original Twilight Zone had an interesting approach in that it would be the world as the viewers knew it, but there was one thing different each time. Rod Serling didn’t know much about science fiction so he went to people like Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson, popular American SF short story writers, to provide the stories and scripts.
Today, shows like BLACK MIRROR are partially the same approach updated to our times, but one thing Twilight Zone always was about – like all television shows from that period – was defining the American character. That was much more what Amazing Stories did in the 80’s, and honestly, I’d rather some new show took that position today rather than bringing back the twilight zone.
Though honestly, the media environment is so changed that television anthologies are a bit anachronistic. Even shows like BLACK MIRROR and NO. 9 or what’s that CGI one – Sex, Death and Robots maybe – seem behind the curve compared to all the short films on the Internet you can watch anytime.
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Well, Darkseid’s supposed to be the ultimate expression of evil… Thanos is not really that, specially in the movies… so you can do something different with Darkseid.
Also, fuck Stardork.
And lastly, I wouldn’t mind a Sinbad remake, but it’d probably suck ass… or it’d be too similar to PotC… but since the later is pretty much done for, maybe it’s a good time to try with Sinbad.
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😂 Funny
Yeah, I guess Sinbad would be similar to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
That’s the problem. Too many parallels, similarities.
Thanos parallels Darkseid – Can DC really present Darkseid as totally different from Thanos to the audience? Think about it.
Starlord to Flash Gordon – already covered
and on and on…
On a side note, I don’t know if Dune will really take off as a movie. Will the audience really be into that spice stuff and those huge sand worms?
I don’t know the budget offhand, but you got to figure it has to bring in over 400M to have been worth it to the studio.
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Families…
Think of the most famous and popular stories in history and most of them will involve family relationships. Father-Son, Wife-Husband, Brother-Brother, Sisters, Daughters, etc.
Watch any Korean drama and 90% of them involve some parent-child tension. Especially mothers and sons. Either the son is doing something dramatically risky for his mom or vice versa or the son and mother are dramatically in conflict. Same for fathers and daughters but… not as much. Something about the tension of the mother-son relationship is captivating for Korean audiences, but Korean shows and movies are popular across the world so maybe they hit on something universal.
It’s hard to think of many films or novels where family isn’t a source of conflict in either marital strife or blood relations. Even when the story isn’t about family, often some family event is at the core of the hero’s character.
So, when writing a story, think of the role family plays in it.
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Malekith in Thor 2 is one of the worst because he’s just a pantomime villain.
It was unfortunate and it did make me wonder if the original story had a lot more to it because… why cast Eccleston for that?!
At heart, the “Dark Elves” could have been great. In fact, for me, the entire Asgaardian world is a let down primarily because it doesn’t really take that Jack Kirby imagination that mixed science fiction with mythology. If you look into the motivation of the Dark Elves, it’s actually kind of Nietzschean (or actually Schopenhaurian). The Dark Elves were in a way the consciousness of the nothingness before existence. In fact, “Dark” is somewhat wrong since really it implies they take a side, but darkness is no more “nothing” than “light” would be.
The basic idea is that existence is monstrous. On balance, there is much more suffering in the world than joy. In fact, suffering is so prevalent, that joy is not even a positive object. Instead, happiness is basically defined in the absence of any misery. From the point of view of nothingness, existence is a horrible travesty, so, with the same sort of cosmic simplification that Thanos has toward overpopulation, Malekith would have toward suffering in the universe. Suffering exists and is an intrinsic part of existence, so to cure suffering, simply end existence.
However, that requires an entirely different sort of characterization for the Dark Elves. They would be operating with a sense of universal altruism. They would not be intentionally sadistic, vicious or cruel. Instead, if they killed someone, it was because in the big picture, that’s the best thing they could do for them. Malekith should’ve been played more like a monstrous Ghandi or Moses figure driven by extreme empathy for people who been inflicted by the disease of existence. The selfless and holy prophet of the ultimate death cult.
On top of that, if they really went with the idea that cosmic characters like Thor and Loki and their antagonists truly are motivated by mythic concepts, it would have made for a much better story on the whole. Loki is an incarnation of chaos at heart, so he could have been more another faction in this struggle. Helping Thor for his own reasons, not to save existence, but to make it even more chaotic. Loki is a much weaker character in the sequels because he stops being a character driven by his own desire to influence the universe as a god.
Superheroes or pulp heroes are often not really the “heroes” of the movies. In a sense, they are the antagonists to the villain who is really the one with the strongest objective that the hero must foil. It’s an interesting story formula basically designed to leave the superheroes in the same position at the end of the story that they were at the beginning – primarily because these are serial stories.
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As I said before, if DC does a kneejerk and slaps together a JLA vs Darkseid and his ugly monster army, what is the difference?
None. The point I was making is they shouldn’t do that but something better.
What your sentence suggests is that if DC does something half-assed and the same as Marvel it won’t be very good. Which to be fair is hard to disagree with. It’s probably more interesting though to speculate on how you could do it well.
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The point I was making is they shouldn’t do that but something better.
It’s probably more interesting though to speculate on how you could do it well.
This is true. That would be the challenge to present their Darkseid movie. I also said that the proverbial ship has sailed. WB had their chance. There is an online pic speculating on some ideas Snyder had and what the “Snyderverse” could have been had the WB powers that be went with it.
Too late now imho…
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I’m doubtful they would let Snyder breathe life back into the DCEU, but it does seem like they will retain the elements of it. Personally, I think they should continue with more separate and self-contained arcs rather than go for the same sort of Avengers Infinity.Endgame ideal.
Some arcs they could use are Morrison’s New World Order JLA arc where a team of extraterrestrial superheroes come to Earth and start solving things like global warming, pollution, disease which leads people to ask why the JLA weren’t doing this.
If they did bring up Darkseid, I do think the idea of the corruption of the hero would be the way to go. Thanos was dedicated to his mission but he didn’t expect anyone else to understand. With Darkseid, he demands the rest of the universe agrees with him. He represents the temptation of power to force compliance and you know there is a kernal of that in all the heroes to make the world do the right thing.
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But we’re still talking about *that*… so…
From the perspective of the average movie attendee who does not read comics… How different is Darkseid from Thanos? To them, both are interplanetary ruthless conquerers who have set their sights on Earth.
As I said before, if DC does a kneejerk and slaps together a JLA vs Darkseid and his ugly monster army, what is the difference?
The moviegoer will just say “We saw this before with Marvel Endgame and Marvel did it better.”
DC would have to make a strong differentiation of such a movie to avoid such a comparison. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed as the WB powers that be, never gave Snyder and his proposals that much of a chance. I found that pic of what might have been interesting.
Well from a layman’s perspective I very much doubt there’s a difference between Marvel & DC in general… they’re all the same “superhero shit” anyways…
As for the differences… well, Snyder WAS doing something very different to the MCU, maybe not in content necessarily, but certainly in tone, so whatever he ended up doing with Darkseid, would’ve probably been very different inherently… but yes, WB fucked up and here we are… I mean, they could still back pedal a bit, but with the constant mergers, which is something people don’t take into account as much, it’s hard to say what will happen and when.
For all we know, IF the Discovery merger goes through, whoever ends up in charge could decide to turn around and follow the Snyderverse (which they have been doing anyways, if to a lesser extent and not as tightly as the MCU model), or the could go for a tabula rasa decision and start all over again… but that’s only IF the merger goes through… if it doesn’t then who the fuck knows either… point is, between this new merger and the AT&T one, yeah it’s no wonder they haven’t been able to put out a consolidated vision…
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It’s “memorable”, which is arguably better than just “good”.
I know what you mean. The kind of thing people will talk about for years, like a world war or a global pandemic.
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Why is just about every epic show/movie done in a British accent?
Define “epic”. If you’re referring to fantasy films like Lord of the Rings and shows like Game of Thrones, I think there is a rule of thumb that says that fantasy “period pieces” need a British accent to give it a Shakespearean gravity. Nobody wants Gandalf to sound like he’s from Texas, or for Daenerys to be a Brooklyn babe.
Many contemporary epics (the MCU or DCEU films, for instance) have a more American sound; even some of the British actors (Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland) sound American in their roles. But even there, the “Shakespearean” Asgardians maintain a British accent for the same reason noted in the paragraph above. Who wants Thor to sound like a Malibu beach boy?
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Who wants Thor to sound like a Malibu beach boy?
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That’s more of a “you know it when you see it” situation. Like the old saying “if the human mind was so simple that we could understand it, then we would be too simple to understand it.” If sophistication could be clearly defined, then it wouldn’t be sophisticated.
It’s much easier to identify unsophisticated narratives where motives are clear and events easily summed up in simplified conclusions like sporting events where the winners and losers are obvious.
Vonnegut’s shape of stories lecture gives some idea of the difference between simple stories and sophisticated: https://youtu.be/GOGru_4z1Vc
In a simple story Jane hates John because of a wrong he’s done to her. In a complex story, Jane hates John because of a wrong she’s done to him. You can’t necessarily say why a narrative is sophisticated because sophisticated stories don’t tell you what’s the good news and what’s the bad news.
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Well… then…
What determines sophistication?
In terms of English accents, we English determine sophistication. We invented the language, so we get to say who uses it with sophistication. And we say it’s us not you. Sorry, Al
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I thought the Normans invented English. Or was it the Saxons?
The English could not have invented English, though. It would be an oxymoron. If a person is English, that means they came in after it was already invented. So, someone who is not English would have had to invent the English.
Just like the English invented America. It wasn’t a bunch of Americans in England who crossed the sea and then founded America.
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The Godfather novels and movies made Fredo a little “slow” in the head because if he was competent, it would have added another brother to be the next leader. But as you know, after Sonny got shot up, Michael was pretty much next in line.
Of course, that was the intent of the author as well. Fredo actually was pretty intelligent, but he was incompetent and impulsive. In the books, he is much more clever but he has no backbone. Also, I don’t think the movies show how Michael was not respected and definitely not feared by the other families or even by the Capos in the Corleone family. All the time spent in Sicily was to show the audience that Michael had changed by the time he got back to America, while everyone else just thought of him as the “College boy.” Meanwhile, Fredo actually had more connections in the mob underworld so it would not be unrealistic for him to expect to be promoted. It was just Don Vito’s support that got Michael into the top spot and then it was the assassinations of the other mob bosses that made him the Godfather. Before that, everyone thought he was going to be a pushover and that the Corleone family was finished.
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In the 70’s, I would say that the “spookiest” characters was Dr. Strange and his adventures and Ghost Rider.
When the Comics Code Authority lifted restrictions on vampires, werewolves, ghouls, etc., Marvel quickly took advantage by creating series including TOMB OF DRACULA, WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, GHOST RIDER and similar horror-themed titles. Of those, I think Dracula was by far the scariest character of that era. While the other characters tried to use their “powers” for good, Drac was pure evil, one of the first “bad guys” to star in a Marvel comic.
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in comics though, a lot of that was due to the code. It pushed this abnormal innocuous tone on comics because naturally they were grimmer and grittier like the pulps that inspired them. That’s actually the normal development for stories aimed at adolescents. Even romance novels for teen girls were steamier than what you read in the YA sections today. The essential story formula of the time was poor young girl almost gets raped by a roguish young man, then struggles to become a success and finally ends up with the man who had tried. to rape her after conquering him with her love. Bizarre, but very popular.
Before the code, there was EC comics which had war stories, crime, science fiction and, most popular, horror, and plenty of other publishers did more than superheroes. Jack Kirby was known as a monster comics artist with titles in the same vein as the monster movie matinees. You still saw a lot of that in his superhero work.
however, the code pretty much killed everything except superheroes and those had to be very toned down. So when the code finally started to wane, all that much darker, and richer, content came back, but superhero comics were the only real game in town. The pendulum really swung back in the 90’s and most of the grim dark stuff today in Marvel and DC really still comes out of that period. However, the other genres are back as well so if you have a horror story to tell, you can just tell it without capes and superpowers.
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In the mob, there is no reason to expect succession to fall according to birthright. Gangsters choose their leaders when their Don dies, but in this case, Vito retired and he chose Michael against the wishes of his capos. It’s not just that Fredo was older than Michael, but he’d been in the business longer, and he could not have really been that incompetent.
And Sonny was being groomed for leadership of the family, but then he had a really bad day at a toll booth
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Even romance novels for teen girls were steamier than what you read in the YA sections today. The essential story formula of the time was poor young girl almost gets raped by a roguish young man, then struggles to become a success and finally ends up with the man who had tried. to rape her after conquering him with her love. Bizarre, but very popular.
But that’s the plot of every romance novel aimed at adult women too, even today. And going all the way back to Wuthering Heights. These are written by women for women, which gives us a very confusing picture of what women want.
I mean, going by our choices of fiction, boys want to save the world and excel at sports, while girls want to get almost raped and finally end up with their almost-rapist
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I mean, going by our choices of fiction, boys want to save the world and excel at sports, while girls want to get almost raped and finally end up with their almost-rapist
Why do you think James Bond movies get such a big audience?
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