Suicide Squad / Birds of Prey Films (Ayer/Yan/Gunn, 2016-2021)

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#126 Post by feihong » Thu Aug 04, 2016 3:23 am

Well, here's something that maybe covers part of it: https://youtu.be/NrjneJvS6dk?list=PL86F ... ACCE&t=219" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

User avatar
captveg
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:28 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#127 Post by captveg » Thu Aug 04, 2016 3:32 am

feihong wrote:Well, here's something that maybe covers part of it: https://youtu.be/NrjneJvS6dk?list=PL86F ... ACCE&t=219" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Oh, so.... overcomplicated? I would never use the term "punishing" in that context. I guess I'm used to comic book villain plans that are ridiculous on paper. Joker's plan in The Dark Knight is equally ridiculous: kill public figures so Batman reveals identity, try to capture Dent who is falsely claiming to be Batman to draw out real Batman and get captured, tell Batman where hostages are at (but switch locations), escape from prison (which was prepared for ahead of the chase), change his mind about revealing who Batman is, etc.

User avatar
dda1996a
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#128 Post by dda1996a » Thu Aug 04, 2016 4:00 am

captveg wrote:
feihong wrote:Well, here's something that maybe covers part of it: https://youtu.be/NrjneJvS6dk?list=PL86F ... ACCE&t=219" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Oh, so.... overcomplicated? I would never use the term "punishing" in that context. I guess I'm used to comic book villain plans that are ridiculous on paper. Joker's plan in The Dark Knight is equally ridiculous: kill public figures so Batman reveals identity, try to capture Dent who is falsely claiming to be Batman to draw out real Batman and get captured, tell Batman where hostages are at (but switch locations), escape from prison (which was prepared for ahead of the chase), change his mind about revealing who Batman is, etc.
Well that's why I like DK less and less with every rewatch (and Nolan still suffers from these same problems in all his following films) with only Begins being the truly great one. But Nolan with all his plot holes, not well written screenplays and trying to hard to go bigger, is still million times the director Snyder can only aspire to be.
Nolan still manages to get you invested in the film and can create truly great scenes (interstellar works just because of this ability). There is a difference between reading between scenes and just having enough holes in your film it doesn't make sense (MoS if guilty of this). Hate to sound pretentious but as someone who consistently seeks more challenging films (Tarkovsky, Angelopoulos i.e) Snyder is just awful.
Just look at Watchmen. He completely misunderstand the films he makes. The only logical thing he made in said film was change the ending. But the bad soundtrack (as a big Simon and Garfunkel fan, Sound of Silence never sounded so wrong) making the film endorse violence and not go against it. He just doesn't understand what truly makes the source material really work, only adapting it's surface detail. That's why something like 300 can work, because it's nonsensical and stupid and enjoys it's own stupidity.

User avatar
tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#129 Post by tenia » Thu Aug 04, 2016 4:08 am

I do think TDK's Joker is at least consistent in the way his underlying grand theme (chaos) is always visible under his actions / motives.
But yeah, he remains a super-villain with grandiose but circonvoluted plans.
dda1996a wrote:Well that's why I like DK less and less with every rewatch (and Nolan still suffers from these same problems in all his following films) with only Begins being the truly great one. But Nolan with all his plot holes, not well written screenplays and trying to hard to go bigger, is still million times the director Snyder can only aspire to be.
BB always was the best of the the three because it's the simplest one. The other 2 try too much and while Ledger's Joker helps TDK to stay afloat, when you start scratching the surface and have a look at the script, it's not much better than TDKR's one, which suffers from multiple obvious flaws and a tepid pace.
dda1996a wrote:Just look at Watchmen. He completely misunderstand the films he makes. The only logical thing he made in said film was change the ending. But the bad soundtrack (as a big Simon and Garfunkel fan, Sound of Silence never sounded so wrong) making the film endorse violence and not go against it. He just doesn't understand what truly makes the source material really work, only adapting it's surface detail. That's why something like 300 can work, because it's nonsensical and stupid and enjoys it's own stupidity.
I discussed that on another forum (either AVS or HTF) and I actually believe that Watchmen movie works very well as a movie. There might be small elements or details that don't seem to show the same thing than the graphic novel but they remains details and aren't impacting the overall retaining of the core thematics of the novel.

Sure, people can debate endlessly over "Nothing never ends" not being adapted properly, but does that really changes so much ? Can a wrongly placed song change a whole movie ? A slow-mo ? Etc etc.

As for the movie endorsing violence, I strongly disagree. To me, and most of the people in my entourage who saw the movie (with many not liking it for various reasons), it clearly doesn't, and both The Comedian's behaviour and Dr Manhattan's lack of empathy are clearly depicted as despicable things.

User avatar
dda1996a
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#130 Post by dda1996a » Thu Aug 04, 2016 4:59 am

tenia wrote:I do think TDK's Joker is at least consistent in the way his underlying grand theme (chaos) is always visible under his actions / motives.
But yeah, he remains a super-villain with grandiose but circonvoluted plans.
dda1996a wrote:Well that's why I like DK less and less with every rewatch (and Nolan still suffers from these same problems in all his following films) with only Begins being the truly great one. But Nolan with all his plot holes, not well written screenplays and trying to hard to go bigger, is still million times the director Snyder can only aspire to be.
BB always was the best of the the three because it's the simplest one. The other 2 try too much and while Ledger's Joker helps TDK to stay afloat, when you start scratching the surface and have a look at the script, it's not much better than TDKR's one, which suffers from multiple obvious flaws and a tepid pace.
dda1996a wrote:Just look at Watchmen. He completely misunderstand the films he makes. The only logical thing he made in said film was change the ending. But the bad soundtrack (as a big Simon and Garfunkel fan, Sound of Silence never sounded so wrong) making the film endorse violence and not go against it. He just doesn't understand what truly makes the source material really work, only adapting it's surface detail. That's why something like 300 can work, because it's nonsensical and stupid and enjoys it's own stupidity.
I discussed that on another forum (either AVS or HTF) and I actually believe that Watchmen movie works very well as a movie. There might be small elements or details that don't seem to show the same thing than the graphic novel but they remains details and aren't impacting the overall retaining of the core thematics of the novel.

Sure, people can debate endlessly over "Nothing never ends" not being adapted properly, but does that really changes so much ? Can a wrongly placed song change a whole movie ? A slow-mo ? Etc etc.

As for the movie endorsing violence, I strongly disagree. To me, and most of the people in my entourage who saw the movie (with many not liking it for various reasons), it clearly doesn't, and both The Comedian's behaviour and Dr Manhattan's lack of empathy are clearly depicted as despicable things.
Well obviously one song won't but it's more than one. And still that isn't my only issue. Endless slo MO, and the violence perpetrated by Night Owl and Silk Spectre in the prison scenes and street fights are violent just for the he'll of it, at least the way they were shot. It's just all those thing combined that make it a disappointing film to me.
Nerdwriter's latest video essay (I'll link when at home) shows very well my issues with Snyder

User avatar
tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#131 Post by tenia » Thu Aug 04, 2016 5:49 am

dda1996a wrote:Endless slo MO, and the violence perpetrated by Night Owl and Silk Spectre in the prison scenes and street fights are violent just for the he'll of it, at least the way they were shot.
While I can understand the slow mo part (though I never found it offensive or annoying in Watchmenà, if the prison scenes and street fights weren't how they are in the movie, people who have said the movie is toning down the overall dark and gritty tone of the book as if trying to dilute it, and it wouldn't have another endless discussion about how they had to compromise for the big screen, etc etc. It's hard to find the right balance, true, but as for Watchmen, I think there is nothing Snyder could have done without having someone saying he should have done something else.

There were people complaining it was too litteral and people complaining it was taking too many liberties. People saying it was too violent but people wishing it was less violent. And so on...

User avatar
dda1996a
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#132 Post by dda1996a » Thu Aug 04, 2016 6:16 am

tenia wrote:
dda1996a wrote:Endless slo MO, and the violence perpetrated by Night Owl and Silk Spectre in the prison scenes and street fights are violent just for the he'll of it, at least the way they were shot.
While I can understand the slow mo part (though I never found it offensive or annoying in Watchmenà, if the prison scenes and street fights weren't how they are in the movie, people who have said the movie is toning down the overall dark and gritty tone of the book as if trying to dilute it, and it wouldn't have another endless discussion about how they had to compromise for the big screen, etc etc. It's hard to find the right balance, true, but as for Watchmen, I think there is nothing Snyder could have done without having someone saying he should have done something else.

There were people complaining it was too litteral and people complaining it was taking too many liberties. People saying it was too violent but people wishing it was less violent. And so on...
As someone who really doesn't give a damn about adaptations as long as they are good I was going to be fine with whatever as long as it was good. I just found the violence to be off putting in a way the film was enjoying those scenes)(like rorschach cutting both hands off the guy). True the GN is dark and violent, but it never feels pointless. Maybe this is a case of simply not being adaptable, but even then I'm not sure Snyder is the right guy, and nothing he made before or after makes me think otherwise. When your best film is a decent remake of a far better film I think you are going to change cinema.
Anyway this has taken our discussion away from this film. I could not care less as I barely enjoy superhero films anymore (this coming from someone who has a lot of comic books) as they just feel like endless episodes in a long series. The fact that DC hires the wrong directors for their films just makes me care even less than I usually do about their films. Giving Snyder total control over your biggest films is a mistake, and hiring people like Ayer isn't going to make me more interested in your film. I'm just happy my friends and I went to the cinema a day before this came out so I convinced them to watch the latest (and thank God this was the decent year) Woody Allen.

User avatar
captveg
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:28 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#133 Post by captveg » Thu Aug 04, 2016 8:08 am

I put Man of Steel as Snyder's best film, personally.

And I know what you meant, but seeing a complaint about comic book films being part of an endless series is somewhat hilarious considering the endless nature of the source material.

User avatar
dda1996a
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#134 Post by dda1996a » Thu Aug 04, 2016 8:27 am

captveg wrote:I put Man of Steel as Snyder's best film, personally.

And I know what you meant, but seeing a complaint about comic book films being part of an endless series is somewhat hilarious considering the endless nature of the source material.
I was expecting that...
A) Two different mediums
B) The best comics are usually short running storylines with an end to them.
For example civil the comics was a little too silly, but at least left a big mark the end for future storylimes

User avatar
tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#135 Post by tenia » Thu Aug 04, 2016 10:02 am

captveg wrote:And I know what you meant, but seeing a complaint about comic book films being part of an endless series is somewhat hilarious considering the endless nature of the source material.
To me, it's not so much having an endless series, just like what you would get with, let's say, Star Trek or James Bond (ie a string of sequels more or less related). The issue is about everything is spread amongst numerous different seemingly independant franchises. If you want to understand Thor 2, you need to watch Captain America, and if you want to understand Iron Man 3, you need to watch Avengers.

You can't simply follow a single individual franchise and possibly add the cross-overs on top : you need to watch all of them, even simply to understand Iron Man 3 compared to Iron Man 2.

It's exactly what I got tired from back in 2010 when I stopped buying Marvel comic books. In France, there aren't published chapter by chapter but regrouped under various monthly publications. For instance, you can buy Spider Man each month and you'd get 1 chapter from ASM and another one from SM + another one from a third incarnation. If you buy X-Men, you also get a chapter from New X-Men.

But everytime I happen to like a new franchise after reading it in what I was already buying, it was moved to a new monthly publication. At first, I was buying about 3 or 4 publications each month, but in the end, 4 years later, I had to buy 10 of them to follow every thing I was interesting in, simply because the material was split that way.

And when the time was coming for THE BIG CROSS-OVER, I would also have to buy additional publications. It just grew and grew to the point I said "freak it, I'll stop there". That's actually why Decimation was made in 200 : to simply write off part of the paper roster because it got so big it ended up being out-of-control.

That's what I don't like with Marvel "everything-is-linked-and-spread-over-5-franchises". It's just too much for me.

That's probably why I found Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man more likeable movies : because they weren't incorporated yet in this cob-web.

User avatar
jindianajonz
Jindiana Jonz Abrams
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:11 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#136 Post by jindianajonz » Thu Aug 04, 2016 11:23 am

tenia wrote:That's actually why Decimation was made in 200 : to simply write off part of the paper roster because it got so big it ended up being out-of-control.
I thought the official reason was to "get back to their roots" and try to match the world of the movies more closely. Morrison had changed mutant from an aberration to a culture, which resulted in an X-men team that was no longer hated for feared, but generally accepted. The EIC at the time, Joe Quesada, felt that this limited the number of stories that could be told (despite the fact that Morrison and short period following him was probably the most interesting the franchise had been since Claremont left) and mandated that the clock be turned back a little. Unfortunately, the ultimate result of the experiment was that the audience was made to watch their favorite characters suffer and get killed off for a couple of years while writers tried to figure out what new interesting stories they could generate from a 50 year old status quo.

The same thing happened with Spider-man in the infamous "One More Day" story.

User avatar
Rayon Vert
Green is the Rayest Color
Joined: Wed Jan 08, 2014 10:52 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#137 Post by Rayon Vert » Thu Aug 04, 2016 11:41 am


User avatar
captveg
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:28 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#138 Post by captveg » Thu Aug 04, 2016 11:57 am

These people are fools. Have confidence in your own views.

Tenia - I guess I don't think of it as a chore to keep up. 2-3 films a year for 5-8 hours of story seems like very little investment to stay on top of, IMO, especially in an era when people watch 12-13 episodes of a TV show in one weekend on Netflix. I just think of the MCU and DCEU as another TV show to stay current with, except with a huge budget and fewer episodes. It's kinda like watching a new Series of 3 Sherlock episodes every year.

User avatar
tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#139 Post by tenia » Thu Aug 04, 2016 12:54 pm

jindianajonz wrote:
tenia wrote:That's actually why Decimation was made in 200 : to simply write off part of the paper roster because it got so big it ended up being out-of-control.
I thought the official reason was to "get back to their roots" and try to match the world of the movies more closely.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070415151 ... ays21.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(it's originally longer - see the full transcript in the link - but here are some key elements)

Q : can you take us back to the origin of this story and tell us how "No More Mutants" came to be part of House of M ?
A : after forty years of publishing there are just some things that get out of hand and if your not careful, they've either broken or will break a character or a franchise. So, lets get to it. There are just way too many friggin' mutants in the Marvel Universe! There was a point where every new Marvel book I cracked open had a new mutant or mutant team lurking just around the corner. Ultimately it was going to get out of hand. So, House of M was constructed to get that genie back in the bottle and in a way that can't be a take back. Most of the mutant population is gone and I truly intend to keep it that way.
captveg wrote:Tenia - I guess I don't think of it as a chore to keep up. 2-3 films a year for 5-8 hours of story seems like very little investment to stay on top of, IMO
I understand your point and can't disagree with it on a technical point of view. Practically and personally speaking though, it does feel like a chore to me. Maybe I'm just not fully able to transpose what can be handled on other media.
However, it's not so much the time than the feeling it gives me. It often feels artificial to me, as if they were doing it just to give some narrative reasons for people to go and see movies with main characters they otherwise would skip (why otherwise go through the chore which is Thor 2 ? :lol: ). It's like when Paramount split the extras of Star Trek Into Darknes over multiple retailers to force people interested in those to buy the different releases. They didn't have to do that, but they did it nonetheless (and it worked to some extent, though it probably backfired on the longer term).

User avatar
captveg
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:28 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#140 Post by captveg » Thu Aug 04, 2016 1:02 pm

Well, I have no problem skipping movies that I don't like in a series when I revisit them. X-Men Origins: Wolverine comes to mind. I don't mind seeing it once even if it is bad, and I can just write it off as a TV show with a bad episode, personally. But I also see where you're coming from.

User avatar
dda1996a
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#141 Post by dda1996a » Thu Aug 04, 2016 1:09 pm

captveg wrote:Well, I have no problem skipping movies that I don't like in a series when I revisit them. X-Men Origins: Wolverine comes to mind. I don't mind seeing it once even if it is bad, and I can just write it off as a TV show with a bad episode, personally. But I also see where you're coming from.
What's X-Men Origins: Wolverine? Kidding aside I think that's different. Deadpool and X-men for example don't overlap, while iron man 3 is sort of a sequel to the avengers

User avatar
tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#142 Post by tenia » Thu Aug 04, 2016 1:26 pm

captveg wrote:Well, I have no problem skipping movies that I don't like in a series when I revisit them. X-Men Origins: Wolverine comes to mind.
I don't want to sound like I'm nitpicking again, but X Men Origins is very aside from any everything-is-linked aspect. It's not part of the MCU (like at all) and it doesn't even serve the main X Men franchise. Hell, the only thing it does is being a subject for jokes in Deadpool ! I'm not sure, but I don't think even The Wolverine draws anything from Origins so even its direct sequel doesn't use anything from it and can be watched without watching this one.

I'm more bothered by Thor 2 being used for Guardians of the Galaxy, or how Age of Ultron shows visions whose only purposes is to tease for Ragnarok. It just feels very artificial to me.

User avatar
captveg
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:28 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#143 Post by captveg » Thu Aug 04, 2016 2:33 pm

The X-Men movies are much less consistent with continuity, but I still have them in order of release together on the shelf (absent Origins). That's all I'm really saying.

User avatar
feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#144 Post by feihong » Thu Aug 04, 2016 4:04 pm

You guys have gotten far into other territory, but I've been thinking more about the Snyder "punishing for thinking" idea, and how to explain how I feel about it. It's not so much that the plot is overly complicated. It's that the plot is so complicated, unbelievable at so many instances, and so heavy with detail that it makes the tone of the movie flatter as a result. Everything gets baked down to a level of pure narrative: dream sequences are there because the narrative needs course-correcting, or the characters need their motivations fleshed out in more detail, and so the dreams/visions are doggedly literal in their presentation. Character psychology is baked down to a series of monologues, where characters bray their viewpoint at us and explain their thinking in fairly brazenly didactic terms. The visual aspect of BvS is there only to dazzle: it doesn't reveal information, paint in emotional backdrop, or develop characters. Every visual is about pure flashiness, and most of that flash is dedicated to recreating the look of particular videogames. Wonder Woman's fight with Deadpool was extraordinarily redolent of videogames––weight, strength, reflex, physical surroundings, all went out the window with the goal of making the fight flashier (this doesn't look to be the case in the trailer for the upcoming Wonder Woman movie––and I see it as a hopeful sign of improvements to come). So with a laborious narrative drive, a visual scheme with an almost completely different agenda, and Snyder just sort of ignoring subtleties of tone, BvS does kind of punish you for thinking about it. It doesn't make sense, it's based on readings of the characters that are very off–kilter, and it's done without any sense of grace or surety about it.

Watchmen suffers from a lot of the same problems; in the case of that film, Snyder slavishly recreates individual panels from the comic while he simply ignores the tone and feeling of the original work. I suspect the disappointment of many fans of the Watchmen comic is rooted in the idea that the comic is a story with a very complex, highly wrought tonal palette, and that the movie is flatly attitudinizing instead.

The Dark Night is interesting as a contrast; that narrative is exceptionally convoluted, but as you watch it seems to boil down to simple principals; in that way, it works very much like the comics do on their best days. Batman wants peace and order, and the Joker wants to mess that up for him. That film tasks Batman with believing in the convictions of people other than himself, which is pretty clever, because then key sequences revolve around Batman doing more than just beating up thugs. So the action scene in the streets, where Batman is trying to prevent the Joker from assassinating a witness, is given lots of extra texture by the idea that Batman's courage, ingenuity, strength and tenacity have to be in service of keeping someone else alive, and hoping that person will, at the end of the day, do the right thing. Never is Batman really in more peril than in this movie; he has to deflect every one of the Joker's weapons, adapting to the Joker's every malicious turn, and at the end of the day, the pain he endures and the wits he matches are all in the service of his faith that what he's doing will come out all right; that the district attorney will do his job, and that the justice system will prevail. It's a fascinating, inventive use of Batman's vigilante approach to crime fighting, where the stakes are more than just Batman kicking the crap out of thugs, or doing a simple rescue. None of the Snyder films manage that kind of intersection of theme and character motivation with the chance to show off cool action. Instead, the different components of that compelling stew––theme, character, action––get treated discretely, in separate blobs of didactic stuff.

As for the Marvel movies, I think they have become increasingly bland as they have worn on. They are still generally good–humored, and pretty much tonally consistent. Their shared universe works decently well, as it does for Marvel comics. The best movies are the ones that feature the most interesting and likable characters. Iron Man the first had a genuinely appealing cast, as did the first Thor and The Avengers. In Stage 2, or whatever, the Guardians of the Galaxy have been the most appealing set of people on screen. The Iron Man casts have been very imbalanced; they have no antagonist to match Downey's charisma following Jeff Bridges. After the first Avengers, Loki has been just a background character (he has often been sidelined that way in the comics, as well, his potency chained adjacent to whatever conflict Thor is facing this month or that month). By comparison, though, the DC movies are flailing and inconsistent. They are dead-set on jump–starting their team movies, without taking the time to develop likable characters for the audience to relate to. It sounds like Suicide Squad really suffers from that. The trailers have been appealing, precisely because they focus on what seem like interesting characters. It sounds like the film has a more plot-based agenda, and that the moments we've seen in trailers account for bits around the edges of the action. Those early Marvel movies really helped to ingratiate us to the different Avengers and their casts. There is a lot of consistency of style, and the same actors continue through the films for the most part, making the Marvel series much easier to follow and sink into (but maybe the seed of their later blandness has been in the way they have homogenized their style in the pursuit of such consistency).

It seems like a strange irony that Marvel movies have adapted a shared universe with so much basic consistency, while DC films struggle to make their various characters interact and gel together. Ironic in the sense that the comic book companies have historically played their hands that way as well. Marvel Comics' shared world was a result of an early, nearly initial concept, applied with general consistency for years. DC Comics' shared universe was arranged retroactively, shoehorning concepts together which were never designed to fit each other in the first place. Superman was never really meant to share a world with other superheroes––he is in a sense all of them in one, and every attempt to integrate him with other superheroes has been to diminish and reign in his character. Marvel, by contrast, grew their characters outwards from smaller beginnings, always with the idea that they would one day meet. It seems like in the movies those approaches have remained surprisingly consistent with their comic book origins. Marvel built from small to larger, creating a fluency that audiences could process quite easily. DC, by contrast, has jammed its characters uncomfortably together, without the benefit of gradual, consistent character development, and the result is a lot of tonal fluctuation and fussy, convoluted narrative. I mean, neither film division comes out especially good from all this. I think a lot of what makes movies absorbing narratives is lost in both Marvel and DC movies. The focus on heroes has tended to ignore what's interesting in the real world, and the emphasis on sensation leaves the movies with a lot less going on than meets the eye. As a serious comic book fan, I was thrilled with the first Iron Man and the Nolan Batman movies, but it's I'm a little surprised at how the worm has turned in this case; in a way, I'd prefer that we got back to loving cop movies or political chase thrillers or whatever. I feel like those films had a little more humanity to them, and a little more appeal.

User avatar
tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#145 Post by tenia » Thu Aug 04, 2016 4:45 pm

feihong wrote:Never is Batman really in more peril than in this movie; he has to deflect every one of the Joker's weapons, adapting to the Joker's every malicious turn, and at the end of the day, the pain he endures and the wits he matches are all in the service of his faith that what he's doing will come out all right; that the district attorney will do his job, and that the justice system will prevail. It's a fascinating, inventive use of Batman's vigilante approach to crime fighting, where the stakes are more than just Batman kicking the crap out of thugs, or doing a simple rescue.
I was thinking about TDK and the Joker and realised what you wrote here is indeed what makes the movie hold together in opposition to other recente super-heroes movies : at some point, while the main super hero gets depossessed from his own movie by the nemesis, it allows him to prove what he can do to save the day. But this doesn't happen without his movie being taken away from him. In TDK, the Joker actually gets in control of the events.

That's exactly where Suicide Squad fails : in the end, it's nobody's movie.

User avatar
captveg
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:28 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#146 Post by captveg » Thu Aug 04, 2016 5:23 pm

I must see different Snyder films then everyone else I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't mean to dismiss your argument, because it's very clearly stated with examples. I just need to reflect on this a bit more so I can perhaps explain why his comic films have worked for me.
feihong wrote: Superman was never really meant to share a world with other superheroes––he is in a sense all of them in one, and every attempt to integrate him with other superheroes has been to diminish and reign in his character.
I've found that those that primarily enjoy the Justice League Superman stories (myself) and those that enjoy his solo adventures have very different ideas about what Superman means to them as a character. To me, it's his interplay with the other heroes that I find more rewarding, especially in contrast to stories at the Daily Planet with Lois and Jimmy. The latter just seem too insignificant - a secret disguise being kept and stopping bank robbers are too beneath him and more of a distraction than a threat, but put him up as Earth's protector against the likes of Darkseid or Brainiac, and have him work with Flash or Batman to balance his physical strength with their specific skills, and I'm in.

I mean, my favorite moment in BvS kinda sums this up.

User avatar
Luke M
Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:21 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#147 Post by Luke M » Thu Aug 04, 2016 9:49 pm

Saw Suicide Squad tonight. The critics for the most part are right. It's has its moments and Margot Robbie does well but overall it's pretty bad.

User avatar
feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#148 Post by feihong » Thu Aug 04, 2016 9:50 pm

"I mean, my favorite moment in BvS kinda sums this up."

I think that image does represent what people who like Superman want of Superman; there's a godlike grandeur and bombast to that image, which is something that was present even in Superman's first appearances. In the minds of children of the time, he was created as a figure to, say, defeat the nazis. But he existed in a relative vacuum. And I think with no plans for a shared universe of characters, his creators gave him everything they could think of. He has no natural weaknesses, so the ones they have manufactured for him ride very thin; a single, rare mineral from space, and, later...magic. More than that, Superman has no character weakness. He's not neurotic. He's clever and intelligent, and even inventive. He outwits villains that try and master his mind. I've never understood why people wanted to read a story about the guy, simply because there was really no chit in his armor. And his "secret identity" seemed so paper–thin––and again, this was a template for secret identities to come. Later secret identities were made so that they were more essential. Batman needs to hide who he is. Spiderman has a secret identity that is in many ways more vivid and developed than his life as a superhero. And that human identity is more important to Spider-man than his secret identity, whereas Superman could walk away from his fake human life at any time.

But I think Superman doesn't naturally integrate into the rest of the DC Universe. His powers and skills overlap just about everybody's. The Flash is fast, but hey, so is Superman. Wonder Woman is super–strong and pretty indestructible, but so is Superman. The Green Lantern can fly around in space zapping people with green lasers (in theory he can do so much more, but lasers and fists are usually the order of the day), but Superman can fly around in space zapping people with red lasers. Superman has often been depicted doing impossible amounts of stuff all at once. He is really a Justice League unto himself. After Superman, the creators of superhero comics began building their characters with more weakness and fallibility. Later on, they would have powers that complemented one another, and personalities that gelled, or not, in interesting ways.

But I do think DC has not really ever been able to make the shared universe work too comfortably. So many of their heroes have to been considerably altered, or have their capabilities hand–waved away in order to make them viable as cooperative characters. Villains across the spectrum of DC are horribly mismatched in terms of aggression and capability when paired off against figures they don't usually fight (basically, most of the Batman villains have to be retrofitted somehow to handle fighting...oh...any other member of the Justice League––how do you go from squaring off against a tough guy in a bat suit to fighting an amazon princess...or the fastest man alive?). There is also––and I think this is one of the central elements of the issue––a level upon which every early DC hero has a personality that is essentially self–sufficient. Superman has only the vaguest of "wants" or "needs." Ditto Wonder Woman. The Flash, Green Lantern...they're people with tremendous self–confidence, on the whole, and they radiate a kind of self–sufficiency that is missing in the Marvel characters. The DC characters hardly need to team up to do anything––they are poweful and self–sufficient. What Marvel brings to their shared universe, that works as a strong buffer, I think, is a lot of neurotic personality. Marvel heroes are generally weaker than their DC counterparts (not so much in recent years, but definitely in the past––they used to periodically go through and lower the power levels of characters in the Marvel Universe, even), and they demonstrate a range of highly–wrought and fairly neurotic personalities which make their team–ups generally much more fraught and tense. Marvel characters go comatose in fights remembering old traumas. They freeze in fear. They fail, often. They do stupid stuff, vain stuff, that gets in the way of their superhero-ing, because their personalities demand it of them. They have fragile egos––some of them even have a very imbalanced sense of self. What this does, I think, is give the character a lot of malleability and maneuverability. Heroes and villains switch sides continuously in the Marvel Universe. In the DCU this is less common and far more uncomfortably awkward, and it sounds like the new Suicide Squad film suffers a bit from this same problem. In theory, the villains of Suicide Squad are wretched; the so–called "worst of the worst." Making them the heroes of a movie seems wholly unlikely. Whereas Magneto turning from the X-men's most hated foe to the head teacher at their school is a more likely transition. Magneto's own personality unlocks that path for him; and it also helped that his character journey unfolded gradually, over multiple titles and many years. Now, for fans of DC's stable of quite appealing characters (frankly, they look brilliant and often seem intriguing), I can see that the values of the Marvel movie approach are something one can discard, and focus on the moments in the new movies that crystallize that ideal of who each great character is in the essential. You absolutely can find images like that one you posted, that explain and answer the question, "who is Superman?" Whereas asking that question of Spiderman is much more complicated. For instance, do you show a picture of Spiderman, or of Peter Parker? Which is more important? And the new DC movies do mean to provide the kind of crystallizing images of the characters that feel essential.

For myself, I feel like the movies have most often been better served by consistence and duration––in that mode, I'm a Rivette fan––so I think I tend to feel more comfortable with the Marvel mode, which has developed characters pretty carefully over long stretches of time. And I love the Marvel characters, having grown up with them. But both companies' approaches are really beginning to grate upon me. I think the quality of mainstream narrative movies has depreciated a lot in the last 15 years or so, and it seems to me that the comic book movies are leading the charge. Snyder especially is one of those filmmakers who is at the forefront of going in that direction; he makes movies that are all about the moment, all about the now; movies that are racing through intensely convoluted and didactic plots to get to the next dazzling moment. I don't think he's interested in the more delicate underpinnings of drama––character motivation, tonal quality, mood––I don't think he really notices those things. He certainly isn't going to let any of those take over and drive the narrative. And it feels to me that there is very little human interest in these films of his––too much splash and bombast, not enough that seems real to me. And yet, the Marvel movies are getting to that point, too, through a different route. Their consistent, tame packaging is beginning to bore us to death. But I think the high points of the cycle of comic book movies now are the ones where character is illuminated and found to be appealing. The original Iron Man is great for that. Batman Begins does that pretty effectively as well. Guardians still has a lot of appeal in that regard. I honestly found myself wishing that the Guardians of the Galaxy hadn't had to stop a world–ending cataclysm at the end of their picture. I really wanted something smaller, more petty and personal for them to face. When the Nova ships started forming a blockade to stop a world–destroying starship near the end of the film, my brain went completely to sleep. Really, wouldn't it have been a bit more charming for them to face something more local, silly, and fun? Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example, ends by underlining very clearly that Indy never had to even be there––nothing would have been different if he hadn't shown up. And yet, his adventure is quite riveting.

User avatar
matrixschmatrix
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 11:26 pm

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#149 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Aug 04, 2016 10:41 pm

Feihong- I've enjoyed your posts, and I think you put your finger on why I dislike Snyder so much more than I managed to (outside of political considerations) but I don't think I agree with the idea that Superman works best in isolation; it's rich territory, certainly, but if you've ever seen the DCAU Justice League series, I think it shows fairly well that he's a character who can be well integrated into a larger superhero context- he becomes, rather than the lonely god protecting his planet, a big brother, a man who is immensely powerful but who is also part of a team that must be lead and thought about and interacted with. Superman has some canonical weaknesses (outside of the dullish Kryptonite)- he's vulnerable to magic and lightning, he's smart but not brilliant, and he's apparently remarkably easy to brainwash. As such, he can be a good partner for Batman- who is all brain and obsession, achieving by sheer willpower what Superman was born into- or Wonder Woman, a natural counterpart, but one who sees herself as much more apart from humanity than Superman (who is fundamentally Clark Kent in tights) ever does. He works well with the larger team, too, but they generally give him a chance to do things other than hit, without having to change back into a suit.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

#150 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Aug 05, 2016 12:15 pm

The reaction to this is making all my (already deluded!) hopes for a live action version of my favourite prisoner-turned-reluctant good guy shows Cyber City OEDO 808 seem further away!

(This is a really nerdy note but the UK dubbed version of this anime is really the way to watch it, as in addition to the great music score and opening title sequence added onto it, the actor playing Gogl in that episode is voiced by Sean Barrett! Barrett was the go to narrator in the mid 90s for natural history shows and was one of the two alternating narrators for the BBC's big People's Century series! So swearing it up as an anime tough guy must have been a fun break from the norm!)

Post Reply