fantastic_four

The identity politics, but empathy is required to recognize what's so unique about them as compared to every other superhero film. The idea that an entire continent and people who have been oppressed for millennia having a power that exceeds all other nations is the most gripping fantasy with the strongest tie to realistic politics in the genre. Two billion of the most-oppressed people on the planet suddenly have a hero that can make them forget about the reality of their history. NO other superhero film has transcended the genre in that way, and it hadn't even occurred to me that it was even possible until I saw the film. I've always thought of Black Panther the way Lee and Kirby did, i.e. just a superhero that black kids can look up to. But the idea of Wakanda being the most powerful nation on Earth is SO much more impactful than any one superhero could ever be. But then to take that idea and explore the concept of staying hidden as opposed to using Wakanda's capability to empower Africans around the world...WOW. NEVER seen such realistic politics at the center of a comic book movie before this one. Finally saw the movie this weekend. Before the hype started I thought it would be really good, but when the hype hit I drew back and assumed it might be over-hyped. I was wrong; it deserves the hype.

Different body types? The most distinctive thing about the differences in their bodies is how extremely similar they are--same height, same body frame.

I get that, lol... I know how much you hate to sexually objectify men, so I figured I'd do it for you.

Disney is finally starting to release Marvel movies in 4K, but there's a catch--they've been filming them up to this point almost entirely in 2K digital, so there's no way to take them to 4K like you can with films shot on traditional film stock like 16mm or 32mm. So I don't think we'll ever see most of the current Disney movies in real 4K unless the studio has multiple copies they haven't revealed to date. All of the current Disney Marvel movies are 2K upscaled to 4K, which means they're really just standard HD released in a 4K disc format. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 was the first big 4K release, but it's upscaled. Supposedly Black Panther was shot in 3.4K, just shy of 4K quality but slightly lower. So I assume in a few years they will all be shot in higher resolution.

It's because he's not attractive enough. Bale, Clooney, Affleck, Kilmer, Adam West...these were all male models playing Batman, but Gyllenhaal is much closer to average. The major exception was Michael Keaton, and certainly everyone was surprised when he got the role, but he ended up crushing it with his performance. From an acting perspective Keaton may be the very best Batman, but he didn't really have the look. Turns out it probably doesn't matter all that much since all you can see in the costume is the chin, but you do see him out of costume so it does matter.

I didn't really stockpile this issue, but anytime I saw an 8.0 or better copy for market value or less I bought it and ended up with five or six copies from 8.5 to 9.6. It ALWAYS seemed undervalued to me, aside from the spike prices of 9.6 and 9.8 copies at a few points over the past decade or two. I'm sure we'll see more short-term surge and an inevitable dip in 9 to 18 months, but I also expect the long-term value to still be strong, so I still see no reason to sell for now.

My daughter saw the BP trailer on TV a month ago and said "Who is that, Catman". My 2-year old son and daughter both spend a lot of time running around the house yelling "I'm Catboy!"

The Rotten Tomatoes average rating (not the Tomatometer) is computed the same way and has those movies as 8.6 Dark Knight, 8.3 Black Panther, 8.3 Spider-Man 2. The difference between them might be a scoring discrepancy, or maybe it's just the critics each site chose to include. I can't speak for Black Panther because I haven't seen it, but certainly Metacritic has it wrong for Dark Knight and Spider-Man 2 but Rotten Tomatoes has it right. But they're both right in that those are the best two superhero movies ever made.

The hype on this is getting to a level that I can't imagine the film will live up to. It's a superhero movie, not some long-lost rediscovered play from Shakespeare.

I agree, Ian McDiarmid is an acting highlight of Return of the Jedi and all three prequels.

I enjoyed TLJ, but I'm not sure it has any scenes that would make my top ten list for epic Star Wars moments. I'm not sure Force Awakens had one of those either. Most of those are in the prequels. I haven't tried to create a ranked list, but on there would be Darth Maul vs. Qui-Jonn and Obi-Wan, Yoda vs. Dooku, Luke vs. Vader where he reveals that he's Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan vs. Anakin, Jango vs. Obi-Wan, Grievous vs. Obi-Wan, Vader vs. the Rebels in Rogue One and a few others I'm sure I'm overlooking at the moment. That's why I never got all the prequel hate during the 90s and 2000s...despite the bad Lucas character dialogue moments, almost ALL of the most epic Star Wars moments were in those films! The highlight of Force Awakens was probably either Han and Ben or Kylo vs. Rey, but those seem tame as compared to those prequel highlights. Snoke getting punked doesn't make the top 20. Any ranked list like that would probably have to include the cartoons, too, but I haven't seen them all yet to even factor them in. Slowly making my way through Clone Wars and haven't even started Rebels yet.

THIS is what makes them realize that? All that tells me is they're the same overly-judgmental flakes I've thought they were since 1999, adults parsing children's films with the minds of adults instead of children.

It absolutely, positively is not more divisive than those two films. I've been listening to fans trash George Lucas non-stop for almost two decades now for those movies. You TLJ haters need to up your game and start talking about how Rian Johnson raped your childhood so you can catch up to the hyperbole of all the Lucas prequel haters out there. I don't even get it with AOTC. He gave us the bad-assest Yoda we've ever seen, Jango Fett, and a ton of great battle scenes. That redeems him for all the cheese in that film.

I agree...we need to be shown why Darth Vader is feared throughout the galaxy. Walking down that hallway in Rogue One wiping the floor with Rebel troops was a good start, but there's SO much more they could do with that.

I didn't even realize the trailer was out until today, but it looks fine from what little you can tell from a trailer. About as good as the Rogue One trailer was at the time of its release.

Do you? I thought it just showed a big V at the end. If I were in the scenario you just described I might be asking myself "was that Venom, or is this a film version of the "V" television series?" I might think it was Venom after seeing the symbiote-blob in the container, but because of the lack of the full word I might have been not fully sure what it actually was.

That's what it looked like. That's the same way it got to Earth in Spider-Man 3 as well. That seems like the most obvious replacement for Spider-Man going to that alien planet from the old Secret Wars comic where the symbiote first appeared.

First Class is first rate, best of the X-Men films. I haven't decided where it ranks against the premiere spin-offs Deadpool and Logan yet.

That article says the toys' designs are based upon the comics, not the movie

No glimpse at ALL of Brock with the symbiote?

One way is that the symbiote's appearance on Brock never HAD to resemble Spider-Man's suit, it just did because he had originally bonded with him. They could have it look vaguely similar to the classic suit appearance but tie it to something else entirely than Spider-Man himself. Example--symbiote binds to Brock on Halloween. Brock sees a kid in a Spider-Man costume out trick-or-treating and assumes a form similar to the kid simply because it's the first thing it was exposed to. Another example--symbiote binds to Brock at a Halloween party. He came dressed as Spider-Man, but the costume gets wrecked during the binding, so the symbiote replaces it with a horror-inspired version of the suit he was wearing. Yet another example--symbiote binds with Brock. Brock hates someone who is a big Spider-Man fan and immediately decides he wants to get revenge or retribution against the guy, so he has the symbiote transform into a horrific vision of Spider-Man to taunt his victim. Or you could come up with examples where the suit ends up looking vaguely similar to Spider-Man but wasn't directly inspired by him or someone dressed as him at all.

i thought he'd want to be the first Me too! I went to his web site on Tuesday when the embargo lifted expecting him to trash the film, but he hasn't reviewed it yet. http://www.nationalreview.com/author/armond-white

Depends upon why you feel that way. Rarely can you get an actual feel for a film prior to release, so how can you be sure you're not jumping to conclusions based upon extremely biased and incomplete information?

pathetic losers Typically that type of irrational thinking is immune to rational thought, but if it wasn't, I wonder what that type of person would think about the reality that the concept of the character was created by two white guys in the 1960s specifically to give African-Americans a superhero to look up to? Nothing positive, I'm sure.

Hilarious to see the number of people crying racism that a movie about an African superhero has mostly black people in it.