fantastic_four

I'd want to wait until DC figures out how to consistently make films if I were Hamm.

I cringe every time she comes on screen...everything that comes out of her mouth is nagging or cornball cheese with an extra helping of cheese on top.

Yes, there's no positive track record with Sony to have reason to believe this movie won't suck. But I felt the same way with Deadpool, so who the heck knows.

I saw last Monday's episode today...best one yet. That plot twist with Reed Strucker being a mutant who was "cured" of the X-gene as a child and his kids ended up having the same powers as their great-grandparents was a REALLY good one.

The best superhero movie ever made is Dark Knight, so I agree, I think of all the DC films together because if I don't I'm leaving the best ones out. It's difficult for me to even imagine a superhero film ever being better than Nolan's second. I accept it as a theoretical possibility, but I'm not expecting it to happen during my lifetime. I hope I'm wrong and it does!

They do, but they didn't have a film equivalent to an editor-in-chief and let directors do what they wanted for the most part. So, for example, Nolan created a universe that he explicitly said wouldn't make sense to put into one where superheroes existed, i.e. the larger DC universe. Starting with Man of Steel they've been making an effort to maintain continuity of events within the film universe. Marvel wasn't maintaining continuity either with their own films either until they finally formed their production company in 2006 or 2007 and had their first releases with the 2008 Iron Man and Incredible Hulk films. The first Hulk film is in a universe all to itself with no connection to the post-2008 Marvel movies; the second Hulk movie had no continuity with events from the first.

When they do that they're evaluating the DC Extended Universe movies, which is the DC equivalent to the Marvel Extended Universe movies that began with Iron Man in 2008. All of the other films such as those you just listed are in their own universes and unrelated to each other.

I'm still ultra-impressed by the extreme quality of the Colossus CGI on that budget.

What year would you say that changed? I wouldn't put it before about 2005, and even after that the majority of stories just aren't that great. More started to be over the last decade or so, but still most are filler that wouldn't hold up to the standard of a Hollywood screenplay.

Another way of looking at it is that the standard we're holding the films up to is a standard that 99.99% of comic books ever written would never stack up against. We as collectors seem to endlessly give comic writers and artists a pass on mediocre writing and/or art, but not film directors, screenwriters, and actors. Why do we do hold filmmakers up to a standard our primary comics medium has never lived up to?

If you need help getting your Crusty Old Fart card, I recommend printing out some of your posts from these forums. You're an absolute shoo-in.

Not by Snyder, but it can by Nolan. He'll either rewrite what's bad about it himself or give it to his brother or David S. Goyer to rewrite into something good. Same applies to Scorcese or any other really good director. They're the gatekeeper that prevents the bad stuff from getting in.

Didn't they just use it at the start during the Surtur fight and again at the very end? The song is about Viking invasions, but so much of it refers to the Norse gods and Thor's hammer that it seemed entirely appropriate to use it. So much so that I'm surprised it took until the third movie for someone to think of that.

If they have good reasons for their opinion, then yes. If they don't, then no. If you shut them out either way then that's either willful ignorance to save time or arrogance that you're always right, I don't know which. Either way it makes discussion useless.

Ridley Scott is an OK director. The best directors are also capable of being a screenwriter, but Ridley Scott isn't a writer at all and has never written a single screenplay. Spielberg is similar in that he's also not a writer, but he's better than Scott at fixing problem on the fly. There would be no point in discussing the relative quality of War of the Worlds because you don't trust anyone's opinion on films except your own and people you know. All I can say is that I enjoyed that film and so did most critics, but as you've repeatedly stated that means nothing to you.

Directing trumps everything. A great screenplay with a bad director means a bad movie, but a bad screenplay with a great director can get edited on the fly. Or the director can have the screenplay scrapped and rewritten...Spielberg has done that several times. The Oscars present best film last because it's the big prestige category, but next to last is best director because they fully realize the director is the biggest individual contributor to the success of a film.

So untrue. Stick Robert Downey, Jr. into a Zack Snyder film and it's not going to change the fact that it's a Zack Snyder film. It'll be a little bit better, but it'll still have a bunch of problems. Mark Ruffalo does well as Hulk because Hulk is dead-simple to play. He screwed up on Bill Maher's show back in 2012 and openly admitted that he hates superhero movies. I'm somewhat surprised Feige didn't fire him, but he already had a contract at that point, so I'm not sure it was an option. Probably doesn't matter anyway since it doesn't take much to play a CGI character.

Their biggest problem is trusting directors to create quality superhero movies, but most great directors have no idea how to create a great superhero film. Marvel used to pick good directors and hope for the best, too, back when Avi Arad was in charge because he had no idea himself how to create good films with comic book characters. Some of the Avi Arad movies were good, some weren't, but it all came down to the director's vision. Arad used Kevin Feige as his sidekick comic book expert, but he didn't always take Feige's advice and just picked good directors, not good directors willing to change their usual approach to fit comic characters, hence they had unpredictable trainwrecks like Elektra, Daredevil, Hulk, etc. Ang Lee's Hulk is a perfect example--Ang Lee is a FANTASTIC director, he just wasn't sure how to create a great comic book film despite the fact that he really, really wanted to, and Avi Arad didn't know how to, either. But Feige does because he knows Marvel's characters really, really well, so he only picks directors he knows are capable of adapting what they do to the superhero genre. DC's success comes when they pick a director with a vision that ends up mapping well to superheroes. Patty Jenkins did great with that, and so did Christopher Nolan, so we got great DC films from those two. But none of the Warner Brothers execs have proven they're any better than Avi Arad was at pre-2008 Marvel movies. They need Geoff Johns to pick great directors willing to adjust what they do for the genre like Feige does, but since Geoff Johns keeps getting actively involved in production or writing (he co-wrote Aquaman), I'm not sure he'll ever be that guy. Which isn't surprising because creative types very frequently don't enjoy pure management jobs like Feige has, they'd rather be drawing, or creating characters and dialogue, or something closer to the end product than just picking the right guys to do well at the creative stuff. And I'm not sure that he and Jon Berg together can ever be that guy. Until they have their Feige equivalent guy or group of guys at the top, some of these movies will be great, and others will suck.

She's always had those long lines at 5.8" and change, but rarely does a film actually show them off. She also says she got fit for the first time for the role, and that she liked the feeling so much she wants to continue with it.

Saw it Saturday...flippin' fantastic. It was a winning new formula for Marvel--put all the humor in to draw the non-hardcores in, and put the fighting in to keep the hardcores happy. Best of both worlds. The surprising part was that even though I'm a hardcore, I actually started to get a little bored when the quipping stopped for ten minutes or so towards the end so that they could do the extended fighting sequences. The film seemed to actually turn me OFF to the core of superhero films. But that's not a quibble, just an observation. Just a fabulous film. The best part was Thor using his lightning to full effect for the first time. I enthusiastically agree with the idea of lightning being the primary focus for his power over him using the hammer.

The difference is we want really, really good movies. More of "The Dark Knight" or its semi-equivalents.

They've put the consensus up now.

Seems like he's become the new Michael Bay, the guy with the dynamic style critics love to dump on. I still like watching Michael Bay movies, too.

I think Affleck had something to do with it. I'm guessing an unrequited man-crush is the origin.