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Old 07-22-2016, 07:45 PM   #91
TuralyonW3
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check out hickman's avengers 1-3 and new avengers 1-3... if you dig them you'll love the run... if you're hopelessly lost then yeah it'll be tough

 
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Old 07-22-2016, 07:45 PM   #92
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it's hard to say. background info definitely enhances. how is your knowledge of marvel characters in general?

I was fairly knowledgeable about 25 years ago.

 
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Old 07-22-2016, 07:47 PM   #93
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check out hickman's avengers 1-3 and new avengers 1-3... if you dig them you'll love the run... if you're hopelessly lost then yeah it'll be tough
and if you decide you dig it let me know and i'll give you perfect reading order and torrents if you want

 
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Old 07-23-2016, 08:57 AM   #94
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Ok thanks. I've got so much stuff piled up for reading at the moment.

Jar Of Fools last night

and been reading Melody


and Mickey Z's "RAV" - totally digging this


Have you ever read any Spain Rodriguez stuff?

 
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Old 07-23-2016, 09:30 AM   #95
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i feel like the word 'reading' somewhat overstates the action required to go through a comic book

may i suggest 'flipping through'

 
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Old 07-23-2016, 09:31 AM   #96
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pretty amazing though, if you're into text-heavy psychological introspection.
disco king to thread

 
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Old 07-23-2016, 01:11 PM   #97
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i feel like the word 'reading' somewhat overstates the action required to go through a comic book

may i suggest 'flipping through'
lol what an arcane thought

 
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Old 07-23-2016, 01:37 PM   #98
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still takes more mental involvement then watching a movie

 
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Old 07-23-2016, 04:39 PM   #99
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i don't see how

 
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Old 07-23-2016, 04:40 PM   #100
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you mean because you need to concentrate on tugging on that page and flipping it

 
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Old 07-23-2016, 04:46 PM   #101
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tbh i used to love r̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ flippin' through comic books when i was a kid, mostly because i draw\paint and was always fascinated by that style.

keeping up with a zillion-edition plot arc was too much hassle though, so i mostly kept to one off books and such. does anybody have nice recommendations for some of those?

 
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Old 07-23-2016, 04:49 PM   #102
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A lot of comics I've read have quite a lot of exposition as well some challenging ideas

 
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Old 07-23-2016, 07:31 PM   #103
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i don't see how
Just don't

 
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Old 07-27-2016, 07:58 PM   #104
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Almost finished with Stray Bullets. I don't want it to end.

 
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Old 08-06-2016, 10:14 PM   #105
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omg STRAY BULLETS

 
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Old 08-07-2016, 03:23 AM   #106
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i feel like the word 'reading' somewhat overstates the action required to go through a comic book

may i suggest 'flipping through'
I dunno, this just reminds me of when people say stuff like "books are better than movies because they make you imagine the things which takes more work than just having them shown to you." Like yeah literary appreciation comes from imagining what Dumbledore must look from from the text description.

Different mediums have different conventions that affect how they convey the content. Just like there are things that prose can do that movies can't, and things that movies can do that theatre can't, there are things unique to comics.

I think we use the word "reading" because comics do share this weird relationship with literature by virtue of them both having text on pages. Almost seems like they are kinda a subset of literature, rather than something completely apart. But a comic isn't just prose with pictures.

Comics and film both have sequences of images, but with film, you're sort of dragged through all those images 24 frames a second, whereas with with comics, past and present are all there on the page before you, coexisting. This kind of allows artists to create meaning and composition not just within the diagetic space of a single panel, but with the juxtaposition of different images representing different times and spaces. Of course, one of the most famous examples of this is Moore and Gibbon's Watchmen. Used a nine-panel grid, and one of the issues was actually symmetrical.

Another thing that I think comics and cartooning do well is playing with the idea of subjective interpretations of reality. The entire world presented in a comic is in the style of the artist who drew it. It's a little different from movies, in which the director and cinematographer, in presenting what they want us to accept as reality, can construct their world by deciding what's in and what's out of the frame, and giving focus where they want to, because at the end of the day, the filmmakers have to work within reality and film things and people that exist in some form. They just manipulate how they are presented. With comics, every single detail in the presented reality is a quirk of the artist, and one artist's world is going to look different from another's.

There are some cool resources on comics. Comics criticism is still in its infancy, and we don't even have a solid foundation of terminology to discuss the form's conventions in the way that people who talk about poetry or theatre or music or film do. But there have been some good books here and there on it. Also, I've been loving this relatively-new YouTube channel on comics. It's like "Now You See It," but for comics.





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tbh i used to love r̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ flippin' through comic books when i was a kid, mostly because i draw\paint and was always fascinated by that style.

keeping up with a zillion-edition plot arc was too much hassle though, so i mostly kept to one off books and such. does anybody have nice recommendations for some of those?
There are a lot of self-contained comics that are outside the serialized nature of ongoing mainstream comics.

Within mainstream comics, there's a lot of OGNs and miniseries. Like, for Batman, I'd recommend arcs from the series Legends of the Dark Knight. Pretty much they had rotating creative teams do self-contained 4-issue arcs, and a lot of these are collected in neat trades. I'd say check out Batman: Shaman and Batman: Venom by Denny O'Neil, as well as Batman: Gothic by Grant Morrison. For other cape stuff, maybe Kyle Baker's Plastic Man run, Batwoman: Elegy by Rucka and Williams, Superman: Red Son, and Superman for All Seasons. I think the trade collecting the entire recent Omega Men series should be out that month, give that a try. I don't think it requires any background knowledge (it has the Kyle Rayner Green Lantern, who is now actually the White Lantern, but you don't have to know a thing about his history or anything other than what the book tells you about him to get the story).

I've liked most of what I've read from Ed Brubaker. He does a lot of pulpy hardboiled crime stuff. I was reading The Fade Out but never finished it, and will probably just buy the trades so that I can read them all in one go because it's a mystery and you kind of have to read mysteries all at once so that you don't forget clues.

I feel like you'd like Adrian Tomine's stuff. Check out Summer Blonde.

 
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Old 08-07-2016, 03:26 AM   #107
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Oh, and everyone should read Batman: Mad Love and pretend that Suicide Squad movie doesn't exist. Also, people should read John Ostrander's Suicide Squad run and pretend that that Suicide Squad movie doesn't exist, but that's, like, 70 issues or something so I wouldn't expect people who just want short stories to read it. But Mad Love is a self-contained graphic novel. It's done in the style of the '90s cartoon by the creators of it and set in that universe. And while it's pretty light and tongue-in-cheek, it's not a kid's book, either.

 
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Old 08-07-2016, 04:27 AM   #108
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I dunno, this just reminds me of when people say stuff like "books are better than movies because they make you imagine the things which takes more work than just having them shown to you." Like yeah literary appreciation comes from imagining what Dumbledore must look from from the text description.

Different mediums have different conventions that affect how they convey the content. Just like there are things that prose can do that movies can't, and things that movies can do that theatre can't, there are things unique to comics.

I think we use the word "reading" because comics do share this weird relationship with literature by virtue of them both having text on pages. Almost seems like they are kinda a subset of literature, rather than something completely apart. But a comic isn't just prose with pictures.

Comics and film both have sequences of images, but with film, you're sort of dragged through all those images 24 frames a second, whereas with with comics, past and present are all there on the page before you, coexisting. This kind of allows artists to create meaning and composition not just within the diagetic space of a single panel, but with the juxtaposition of different images representing different times and spaces. Of course, one of the most famous examples of this is Moore and Gibbon's Watchmen. Used a nine-panel grid, and one of the issues was actually symmetrical.

Another thing that I think comics and cartooning do well is playing with the idea of subjective interpretations of reality. The entire world presented in a comic is in the style of the artist who drew it. It's a little different from movies, in which the director and cinematographer, in presenting what they want us to accept as reality, can construct their world by deciding what's in and what's out of the frame, and giving focus where they want to, because at the end of the day, the filmmakers have to work within reality and film things and people that exist in some form. They just manipulate how they are presented. With comics, every single detail in the presented reality is a quirk of the artist, and one artist's world is going to look different from another's.

There are some cool resources on comics. Comics criticism is still in its infancy, and we don't even have a solid foundation of terminology to discuss the form's conventions in the way that people who talk about poetry or theatre or music or film do. But there have been some good books here and there on it. Also, I've been loving this relatively-new YouTube channel on comics. It's like "Now You See It," but for comics.
as i mentioned, i didn't mean much in the way of criticism - i like comics - but this analysis was enjoyable to read. there are certainly some devices that only comic books are able to utilize, and good storytelling that comes through in comics is inspiring.

interestingly though, a good, compelling comic is so impressive because, after all, it's based on cinematic rules, but it strips the creator of most techniques and movements that are possible in cinema - but not in a medium that relies on fixed frames. it forces one to be able to extract and refine only what is most important to really deliver a good story.

the first video embed you posted provided an interesting take on some of that.

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I feel like you'd like Adrian Tomine's stuff. Check out Summer Blonde.
i just ran a quick google image search on that and it looks awesome. i'll look into it.
just curious - how'd you know i was going to like it?

 
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Old 08-07-2016, 09:38 PM   #109
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Oh, and everyone should read Batman: Mad Love and pretend that Suicide Squad movie doesn't exist. Also, people should read John Ostrander's Suicide Squad run and pretend that that Suicide Squad movie doesn't exist, but that's, like, 70 issues or something so I wouldn't expect people who just want short stories to read it. But Mad Love is a self-contained graphic novel. It's done in the style of the '90s cartoon by the creators of it and set in that universe. And while it's pretty light and tongue-in-cheek, it's not a kid's book, either.
I have the 66 issue Ostrander run in floppies (with all the crossovers... Manhunter, Firestorm, Checkmate, Captain Atom.) Red it a few years go (in conjunction with Ostrander's Firstorm and Manhunter runs) and it was amazing. One of my fav comics experiences.

 
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Old 08-08-2016, 05:11 AM   #110
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Oh, and everyone should...pretend that Suicide Squad movie doesn't exist.
While pleasantly surprised to see it critically panned, it's kind of upsetting to read about how it's just "shattered August box office records with a towering number one debut grossing an estimated $135.1M in its first frame" and "generated the third best opening weekend for all of 2016 behind fellow comic smashes Captain America: Civil War ($179.1M) and Batman v Superman ($166M)."

With films like Synecdoche, New York pulling in only $4.4M, capitalism ensures that we're doomed to see these cinematic tumors metastasize.

 
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Old 08-08-2016, 05:12 AM   #111
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Suicide Squad kind of looks like if an Ed Hardy shirt wrote a movie.

 
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Old 08-08-2016, 10:39 AM   #112
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While pleasantly surprised to see it critically panned, it's kind of upsetting to read about how it's just "shattered August box office records with a towering number one debut grossing an estimated $135.1M in its first frame" and "generated the third best opening weekend for all of 2016 behind fellow comic smashes Captain America: Civil War ($179.1M) and Batman v Superman ($166M)."

With films like Synecdoche, New York pulling in only $4.4M, capitalism ensures that we're doomed to see these cinematic tumors metastasize.
definitely, but i don't know why you act surprised.
this issue has become malignant at least a decade ago, with all the spiderman re-re-re-boot prequel of a re-makes trampling any chance for something new, interesting or innovative. fortunately there are still gems to be found occasionally, but at least statistically it's becoming less and less probable to get even one great movie per year.

 
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Old 08-08-2016, 10:50 AM   #113
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My surprise was at the poor reviews, as I had assumed it'd get the usual treatment where it's inexplicably regarded as brilliant.

 
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Old 08-08-2016, 11:52 AM   #114
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as soon as I saw the version of the Joker in SS I knew that movie was about to be shit even for a comic book movie

But I'm not the only one ofc

 
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Old 08-08-2016, 12:08 PM   #115
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Disco:

I really like the quick spin off alternate reality graphic novels with major DC characters in them. The last one you recommended me was All Star Superman where within the first "chapter" Lex has effectively doomed Superman

What I really liked about it is that it didn't go down the "hero is faced with challenges but defeats enemy in the end" route that too many hero stories go down.

This is what's great about for example, Watchmen, too

and kind of the ending of The Dark Knight for a pleb example

 
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Old 08-08-2016, 09:25 PM   #116
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to call suicide squad a movie is giving it too much credit

 
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Old 08-09-2016, 12:10 AM   #117
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interestingly though, a good, compelling comic is so impressive because, after all, it's based on cinematic rules, but it strips the creator of most techniques and movements that are possible in cinema - but not in a medium that relies on fixed frames. it forces one to be able to extract and refine only what is most important to really deliver a good story.
There are a lot of great comics that are cinematic, but I don't think that being cinematic is a prerequisite to being a good comic.

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i just ran a quick google image search on that and it looks awesome. i'll look into it.
just curious - how'd you know i was going to like it?
I dunno, it might have something to do with some of the things I've seen you post about, like your ex or your current situation with being back in your home country. Tomine's style kind of explores personal insecurities and melancholia. Also, he's Asian-American and you went to China so I guess there's kinda a connection there, I dunno.

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I have the 66 issue Ostrander run in floppies (with all the crossovers... Manhunter, Firestorm, Checkmate, Captain Atom.) Red it a few years go (in conjunction with Ostrander's Firstorm and Manhunter runs) and it was amazing. One of my fav comics experiences.
I haven't read the entire run yet, but the issues I've read have been good. I work my way through old series slowly because I read a few issues and then get distracted by something else and then come back to the series.

One of the few good things to come out of the film is the fact that DC is finally collecting the series in trades. That's a lot more convenient than tracking down floppies in dollar bins and torrenting (especially because I don't have any sort of tablet and reading off a laptop is hell). I'll probably read it all now.

Man, I also loved that '80s Captain Atom series. I remember Nightshade being a supporting character in both series, and there being something of an inter-departmental rivalry between Waller and Eilling. I also remember that Millennium crossover.

I've never read Firestorm or Manhunter (I have a trade of the Archie Goodwin stuff but am yet to get to it).

DC was killing it in the late-'80s, so much good stuff there.

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While pleasantly surprised to see it critically panned, it's kind of upsetting to read about how it's just "shattered August box office records with a towering number one debut grossing an estimated $135.1M in its first frame" and "generated the third best opening weekend for all of 2016 behind fellow comic smashes Captain America: Civil War ($179.1M) and Batman v Superman ($166M)."

With films like Synecdoche, New York pulling in only $4.4M, capitalism ensures that we're doomed to see these cinematic tumors metastasize.
I think it had a huge opening weekend because of pre-sale tickets. When people start to realize it sucks, I think we'll see a steep decline at the box office, just like with Batman vs. Superman, which was still profitable, but failed to meet WB's expectations.

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definitely, but i don't know why you act surprised.
this issue has become malignant at least a decade ago, with all the spiderman re-re-re-boot prequel of a re-makes trampling any chance for something new, interesting or innovative. fortunately there are still gems to be found occasionally, but at least statistically it's becoming less and less probable to get even one great movie per year.
So much of the stuff I'm hearing about WB's DC adaptations sounds dreadful. Apparently, they hired, like, six screenwriters to pen competing treatments for the Wonder Woman film, and then picked the "best parts" of each into some Frankenscript. The original director dropped out due to "creative differences," so you know they just hired some yes-person who will have the project shat out by WB's deadline. The guy doing Aquaman dropped out after the Batman vs. Superman reviews.

Hasty reshoots were ordered for Suicide Squad to add more jokes and levity after people complained the super-bad Superbat film was "too dark," and the film got a new edit that, according to reviews, made the plot incomprehensible (not that I think it was ever going to be a good movie to begin with, but it probably would had at least had basic scene continuity). I'm probably not the only one who noticed that it wasn't until the BvS reviews that the Squad marketing took on a neon glow with uptempo '70s rock songs. Even the latest Justice League trailer features Batman and The Flash cracking unfunny jokes as |Icky Thump" plays in the background, so you know it will be a lot of fun.

I think part of the problem is that, due to the success of Marvel Studios, studios are planning out these movies, like, fucking decades in advance, and making movies not because somebody somewhere has a story that needs to be told, but just because it's part of some 15-year franchise-building plan. And deadlines are strict due to various marketing obligations, so these things are gonna get pumped out hell or toilet water.

Also, people like what's familiar, so you just get rehashes of Spider-Man, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Independence Day, and everything is an adaptation, reboot, or sequel.

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My surprise was at the poor reviews, as I had assumed it'd get the usual treatment where it's inexplicably regarded as brilliant.
I think BvS and Suicide Squad (I haven't seen the latter, I'm just going by common themes I'm hearing about in reviews) are getting shit on because, not only are they dumb movies, they are incompetently made dumb movies.

Like, Avengers isn't a good movie, but at least the story structure makes sense. At least you understand why characters do what they do, even if it isn't for very profound or complex reasons. At least you can say, "well, that was a movie, I suppose." I didn't enjoy it much, but I didn't feel like ending my life, either.

With something like Batman v. Superman, it feels like it was edited by having a blindfolded person pick tableaux out of a hat. Shit is introduced that has nothing to do with the movie at hand, because it will tie in to something three movies down the line. Character motivations are inconsistent. The plot hinges upon the actions of the villain, which make no sense, and one can't even parse out which of the events that transpire are intentional on his part, and which are pure coincidence. The alleged main character is not a character at all, just some passive object that is there to look sad as other characters discuss him, because, as it turns out, Zack Snyder's interests always lay with making terrible Batman movies rather than terrible Superman movies. This film has all the problems of the Marvel Studios movies, and then additional ones that make it impossible for even somebody who can enjoy okay films to enjoy these ones. They fail on pretty much every level a film can possibly fail on.

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as soon as I saw the version of the Joker in SS I knew that movie was about to be shit even for a comic book movie

But I'm not the only one ofc
Oh god, Leto's Hot Topic Joker.

I'm just disappointed that Batman didn't match.



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Disco:

I really like the quick spin off alternate reality graphic novels with major DC characters in them. The last one you recommended me was All Star Superman where within the first "chapter" Lex has effectively doomed Superman

What I really liked about it is that it didn't go down the "hero is faced with challenges but defeats enemy in the end" route that too many hero stories go down.

This is what's great about for example, Watchmen, too

and kind of the ending of The Dark Knight for a pleb example
Yeah, those succinct stories sheltered from the wider continuity can be pretty good.

Have you read Batman: Black & White? It's an anthology of 8-page black-and-white Batman stories by various creative teams. First volume is the best, but they are all good.

 
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Old 08-09-2016, 03:14 AM   #118
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The late 80s were a fucking majestic time for superhero comics


 
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Old 08-09-2016, 10:27 PM   #119
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I think it had a huge opening weekend because of pre-sale tickets. When people start to realize it sucks, I think we'll see a steep decline at the box office, just like with Batman vs. Superman, which was still profitable, but failed to meet WB's expectations.
Yeah, the thing I was reading did say that the figures for Saturday had fallen off by about 40% and that Sunday was likely to go another 20% in that direction.

Regardless of profit forecasting and performance relative to studio expectations, the fact that a blatantly terrible movie can generate thirty times as much in a few days as a genuine contribution to culture can make in a lifetime more or less guarantees that resources aren't going to be allocated away from the Suicide Squads of the future. As long as social media campaigns and billboard advertising are enough to bring in numbers like in the above, it'll always be easier to simply tune the marketing of a by-the-numbers cinematic turd when genius minds come in much shorter supply than the writing teams that serve our levity on explosion-strewn platters.


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I think BvS and Suicide Squad (I haven't seen the latter, I'm just going by common themes I'm hearing about in reviews) are getting shit on because, not only are they dumb movies, they are incompetently made dumb movies.

Like, Avengers isn't a good movie, but at least the story structure makes sense.
To me, it's apples and pears.

If we're discussing the standards for what constitutes an acceptable contribution to the world of film in terms of whether the story makes basic sense, we're already beyond fucked. In any case, this ignores the vast quantity of superior examples with no obvious narrative structure at all.

 
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Old 08-09-2016, 11:32 PM   #120
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Can anybody who actually subjected themselves to this film (Catherine Wheel?) verify my prediction?

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I like how you can already tell who's gonna live and who's gonna die through a formula [that] factors in the familiarity of the character, the popularity of the actor, and whether the character's a minority or not.

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Yeah, the thing I was reading did say that the figures for Saturday had fallen off by about 40% and that Sunday was likely to go another 20% in that direction.

Regardless of profit forecasting and performance relative to studio expectations, the fact that a blatantly terrible movie can generate thirty times as much in a few days as a genuine contribution to culture can make in a lifetime more or less guarantees that resources aren't going to be allocated away from the Suicide Squads of the future. As long as social media campaigns and billboard advertising are enough to bring in numbers like in the above, it'll always be easier to simply tune the marketing of a by-the-numbers cinematic turd when genius minds come in much shorter supply than the writing teams that serve our levity on explosion-strewn platters.
On the one hand, yeah, it's pretty amazing how quality and profitability can be inversely-related. On the other hand... these days, I don't find myself feeling much frustration about mass-appeal media. There was a time when I lamented that Katy Perry and Lady Gaga make billions while what I thought of as "real music" (in middle school, at least) slid under the radar. Looking back, it seems more like a position I staked out in order to elevate myself above the "rabble" in an attempt to increase my self-perceived sophistication, than anything else.

I tend not to draw much of a distinction between high and low culture, and though mass-appeal and art are often separated, I don't think they are mutually-exclusive, and think that there will always be instances where artistic merit and corporate profit coincide. I'm no film connoisseur (there's probably not a single medium or subject of which I am or will ever be), but I think even films about licensed characters can be good, if the people working on them have the care and competence and vision to explore some interesting themes through engaging devices. I think it was Ebert who's maxim was, "it's not what the movie is about, but it's how it's about it."

But, as Sturgeon's Law dictates, 90% of everything is shit, so yeah, we're gonna see way more stinkers from Hollywood than good things.

Quote:
Originally Posted by buzzard View Post
To me, it's apples and pears.

If we're discussing the standards for what constitutes an acceptable contribution to the world of film in terms of whether the story makes basic sense, we're already beyond fucked. In any case, this ignores the vast quantity of superior examples with no obvious narrative structure at all.
Yeah, I was more explaining why the movies got different reactions from audiences. For me, I don't see much difference between a film like Green Lantern and a film like Iron Man, even though one was loathed and the other won accolades. I was like, "hey, these were both kinda boring and thin." If Green Lantern only had non-shit CGI, people probably would had loved it as much as any Marvel Studios film. But people prefer a sturdy-but-tacky armchair to an equally-tacky one that is shoddily put together.

There are a lot of art movies that eschew conventional narrative, but I think people can tend to tell the difference between a work creating meaning through alternative means to narrative, and one trying for narrative, but failing at it.

Then again, there will always be grey areas. Some people find David Finch movies on par with Batman v. Superman, and feel that all the claims that they are not meant to be logical are just excuses for poor narrative by viewers willfully blind to the emperor's genitals. I'd disagree with them, but I'm sure people of either opinion could come up with reasons to support theirs.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TuralyonW3 View Post
The late 80s were a fucking majestic time for superhero comics

Yeah. I was reading some Grell Green Arrow, and ordered another O'Neil Question trade.

JLI was good, too. I really hope that DC collects other '80s Giffen stuff, like L.E.G.I.O.N. and Omega Men.

Have you read the semi-recent Superior Foes of Spider-Man? I loved it, and it seemed reminiscent of the tone of JLI to me.

 
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