Gatsby77

See...here's where I think Affleck doesn't need Batman nearly as much you would think. And it depends on how you define "big hit financially." Argo grossed more than 5x its budget worldwide. Gone Girl grossed more than 6x its budget worldwide. And each of these were critical darlings -- and rightfully so. Batman v. Superman grossed less than 3.5x its budget worldwide.

Two thoughts: 1) I'm inclined to believe the rumors that JLA is mediocre. Proof point? Last I checked, The Flash is on indefinite hiatus, with two directors having dropped out. A 2018 release date? Puh-leeze. IMDB notes only four castmembers so far and that a new screenwriter is doing a "page one re-write." How does this relate to Justice League? It demonstrates the lack of a real plan for the universe. At least Channing Tatum had the balls to walk away from Gambit until there's a suitable -script. 2) Speaking of...I'm still confused how Affleck could be dissatisfied with the -script when he was the first screenwriter on it. Keep in mind that Affleck (technically) won his first Oscar for screenwriting back in the 90s. Sure...rumors are he passed it to Geoff Johns, and then Chris Terrio was brought in to scrub it. But "not satisfied with the -script" doesn't jive with me when you yourself -- an Oscar-winning screenwriter who is no stranger to superhero movies -- had first crack at said -script.

It would have been his first big-picture experience. Live By Night: - Budget: $65MM - WW Box Office: $19MM - Revenue Ratio: .29X (yikes) Argo: - Budget: $44.5MM - WW Box Office: $232.3MM - Revenue Ratio: 5.2X The Town: - Budget: $37MM - WW Box Office: $154MM - Revenue Ratio: 4.2X Gone Baby Gone: - Budget: $19MM - WW Box Office: $34.6MM - Revenue Ratio: 1.82X (his first directing effort) Maybe seeing the massive work involved in BvS while he shadowed Zack Snyder was eye-opening. Not to say he couldn't have learned further in the role. Three of those films have impeccable critical acclaim. That combined with the fact that Affleck has starred or co-starred in multiple blockbusters makes the idea of him directing one of his own a no-brainer. Writing, directing, and starring all in the same one is another matter. Not surprising he doesn't want to do it all particularly given that he's also committed to direct and star in an adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Witness for the Prosecution" next year. Directing is the work that takes the most time commitment for a film, so freeing himself up makes sense. He may also be gun shy about directing a superhero film. He didn't see Daredevil and BvS being critical disasters, and he probably didn't see that happening for his recent Live by Night film, either, so he probably prefers to keep directing dramas for now since that's where he's had success so far. If these DC movies keep bombing I predict he'll drop out of Batman entirely before this film gets made. If the Justice League movie ends up being the disaster half of Hollywood is predicting it's hard to see him continuing the role. He's a well-known superhero fan, but I'm sure he'd much rather be a part of a universe that's being critically accepted like Marvel has done. No way he wants to keep being the post-Nolan Batman whipping boy for critics. I absolutely agree with this. In recent years Hollywood has had no problem elevating far less accomplished directors than Affleck to blockbusters immediately. And he has _far_ more experience actually in blockbusters than most of those directors (going back to Armageddon). Granted, some of these elevations have had disastrous results -- but by no means all: Gareth Edwards: Monsters --> Godzilla Jon Watts: Cop Car --> Spider-Man: Homecoming Marc Webb: 500 Days of Summer --> The Amazing Spider-Man Neil Blompkamp: District 9 --> Elysium Patty Jenkins: Monster --> Wonder Woman Scott Derrickson: Sinister --> Dr. Strange Rian Johnson: Looper ($30 million budget) --> Episode 8 The first five on that list each had one low-budget dramatic film to their name when they were given the keys to the kingdom. And none had anywhere close to the directing record of Affleck. and of course: Josh Trank: Chronicle --> Fantastic Four

Maybe a diffferent scale, but Affleck wrote, directed & starred in The Town. More importantly, how about Stallone? People forget that he's written at least 17 of the major films in which he starred. He wrote, directed and starred in Rocky II, III, IV, Rocky Balboa, Rambo (2008), and The Expendables. And he was older than Affleck for the latter three.

Then why is Rolling Stone reporting that he's concerned with the screenplay? If he's writing it he would just edit the concerns out. Or are he and Johns disagreeing on the screenplay elements? Or is Rolling Stone just wrong? http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/ben-affleck-drops-out-as-the-batman-director-w464061 The article is about Affleck's concern with directing the movie he is also serving in other roles. I had to read that twice before I caught the tiny blurb about Affleck being concerned with the -script. Seems like you may have gotten fixated on one word rather than what the story was targeting. Not to say it isn't a concern. But if Affleck was trying to do all the other jobs, those would probably take him off point from finishing the -script. Maybe this should go into the Water Cooler 'multi-tasking' thread, and how that impacts a final quality product. Two points: Given that they've been prepping this for nearly a year now, it's a bad sign when the director drops out (see also: X3). I also wouldn't be surprised if he was actually dropped as director due to the poor performance of Live by Night. To date, after 6 weeks, it's cleared less than $20 million worldwide against its $65 million production budget. And it's projected to lose Warner Brothers ~$75 million. Oscar winner or no, when that's the most recent thing on your resume, it's hard for the studio to entrust you with executing the vision of a $200 million picture of a far bigger scale than anything you've worked on before. They'd be better off going with someone like Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World, Terminator: Genisys). Or (of course) the rumored Matt Reeves.

I think this will be good, but not necessarily a blockbuster. It will play _really_ well to its target audience (Wolverine fans) but will likely be far too niche / overlooked by the masses.

So...here's a blog post I wrote about Pokemon Go last summer (a compilation of facts & statistics about it). Relevance to these boards? I invoked the Rule of 25! http://www.petermorscheck.xyz/25-facts-about-pokemon-go/

I'd love to collect 1-24 in 9.6. Right now I have just # 1 (a meager 9.4) and 8-9 (both 9.6).

Except they've already done so. The reports (credible or not) from the last 48 hours were: a) Justice League is basically done already -- and a mess; and b) there's no -script for Batman, which has put not only its 2018 release date and Affleck's entire involvement in question. I have faith in Johns, but not that he was involved early involve _and_ had enough sway to save Justice League. The bigger issue is that (according to Affleck himself) Batman doesn't have a -script. Now, Affleck's also in a considerably weaker position than he was a week ago, given Live By Night's middling reception in its super-limited release and its Golden Globes shut-out, so I think he needs Batman & will ultimately do it. But they should have had a -script locked for Batman months ago. Points to a lack of any real plan for the DCEU -- this news, and the indefinite hiatus for Flash -- reinforces the narrative that DC's just making it up as they go along. Finally, I'd still bet my eye teeth we're getting Hal Jordan in Justice League. Remember -- it's "Unite the Seven." We have yet to see Superman or GL, but they'll be there. If I were DC, I'd do whatever it took to hire Drew Goddard away from Disney and give him full creative control.

Ult. Spider-Man # 1 White is still a good book, as variants go.

Also, Showcase 4 is arguably the start of the Silver Age. It started a new direction and new version of older heroes that continued with Showcase 22 and Brave and Bold 28, which directly led to Marvel's FF, etc. While I agree with many of the arguments above, I'd put Flash 106 above Flash 110 and even 117. 'Cuz Grodd rules.

My ranking exactly.

I loved it. First, they didn't screw up the plot in the ways I feared with the reshoots. Second, I get how the film could be polarizing to audiences. But the primary goal of this film was to show they could do a great Star Wars movie without direct connection to the Skywalker family or the characters showcased in the first 7 films -- to test how an expanded universe Star Wars film might work. And on that score, they succeeded wildly. Yeah - there were some pacing issues in the beginning, but by the third act, all was forgiven. Not sure yet if I liked it more than TFA, but it took a lot more risks than that film, and to me, those risks paid off in spades.

Good book that's not his second appearance. Second appearance would be ASM # 102, eight months earlier.

Umm...because they're both absolute movies that still made money at the box office, and therefore, sequels. And you're right. Transformers 1 isn't a good comparison to Suicide Squad -- per Rotten Tomatoes, twice as many critics liked the former vs. the latter. But to me, critical and box office aside, the movies are precise comps in that they both had enormous potential and yet turned out to be in execution. Opportunities missed.

(ahem!) 5 Transformers movies (and counting).

I like Will Smith a lot and he was indeed a high-point of Suicide Squad. We've also seen that the Independence Day sequel was . But...I find this quote by Smith ironic: “...but the choice of trying to go forward versus clinging and clawing backwards. I do want to aggressively go forward and do new things and create and hopefully be able to stumble upon a new heyday.” Because he's just signed on to do two more "Bad Boys" sequels. Granted, I'll think they'll be fun, and I really enjoyed the first two movies, but hard to reconcile his quote with those new forthcoming films.

Just marketing hype. Means nothing. Remember they announced FF2 before its release as well.

This. A million times this. :sick: :sick: If you're keeping it to vol. 1, I actually liked ASM 361-365. But Maximum Carnage was one of the worst things that came out of the entire decade of the '90s. It was worse than Secret Wars 2.

While the second and third movies were , I still have a soft spot for Highlander: Endgame. It was a solid coda to the movies and the TV series, teaming up Christopher Lambert's character and Adrian Brody's character for the final battle of good vs. evil with a fairly ingenious plot. And the bad guy - whom I've only ever seen elsewhere in Passenger 57, was decent as well. Recommended - don't let the fact that it's Highlander IV dissuade you.

If we're still waiting for the Soul gem, wouldn't that go with Warlock?

I'd knock out books that are primarily valuable because they are specialty books or variants. That would include books like: Goobledygook 1-2 (since most Turtles fans I know would much rather have a TMNT # 1) Turtlemania Gold Albedo 0 variants Also - in a print run quirk, I think The Crow # 1 is more significant than Caliber Presents 1 (since it's more common & generally less expensive), even if the latter is the first appearance. But I'd keep The Tick Special Edition 1 on there. Well...not sure if it warrants true inclusion *yet* but probably will by next year, once the revived show has hit. (I'm a huge Tick fan, but don't consider this necessarily a Top 50 Copper book.) Likewise, I'd favor Crisis 7-8 over Crisis # 1, just as I'd favor Secret Wars 8 over Secret Wars 1. And ditto on favoring the two Bobba Fett keys over Star Wars # 107. #107 was a minor key for awhile because it was early Portacio, but print run-wise it's no harder to find than Star Wars 101-106.

FYI it isn't anything to do with time-hopping or traveling, it's just access to memories. Just as when you are trying to figure out a problem you might suddenly remember a moment from your past that can help you. But yes, not everyone learns it fully enough (or tries to) to get to that level of perception. "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards" - The Queen of Hearts Except that her "memory" was working forwards, too, so it wasn't memory and therefore had everything to do with time-hopping. Disagree.

Saw it last night. Surprised by how much I loved it. As one review said, it basically accomplished what Interstellar *tried* to do, but ultimately somewhat botched in its execution. Will see it again to share and discuss with other friends.