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fantastic_four

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Everything posted by fantastic_four

  1. fantastic_four
    I'm more looking forward to the Nightcrawler and Mr. Sinister from that wave, they both look great. The sculpt looks MUCH better on Nightcrawler as compared to the Toy Biz version, but he has no bendy tail like the original so I'm not convinced I'll like this one better. I'm skeptical but hopeful.
  2. fantastic_four
    One thing to note is that it's controversial to even cover the classic heroic myths like the Iliad, Odyssey, Beowulf, or the Arthurian legend in literature classes. It's widely done, but LOTS of teachers and curriculum managers don't think it's important to cover classic heroic myths because they think kids get enough hero worship in all of the media they willingly participate in. The reason it's not at all controversial to cover those is for at least two huge reasons--one, it teaches a kid that heroic myths are both legitimate and important, and two, it teaches us that the genre isn't new or fleeting, it's a genre that has persisted throughout the history of human civilization.
  3. fantastic_four
    You're saying that as if it's the critics doing it. It's the writers doing it. They're free to write stories with significant and innovative social and individual themes if they want, they just don't because that's not what fans of the hero genre want. We're in it for the fantasy; without that, it's an entirely different genre and one that fans would think is boring or preachy. And it's the fantasy that removes it so significantly from the context of normal life that the themes conveyed barely apply to us in our lives aside from the key component of ALL heroic fiction--to inspire us to stand up against injustice and help others.
  4. fantastic_four
    Shape of Water and Birdman are BOTH art. The theme was the point, not entertainment. You may not either liked or even identified the theme, but it existed. Theme isn't the point of ANY Marvel movie. It's entertainment. There's no room at the table; it's a different table. Fiction teachers in 30 years won't be assigning Endgame to their students as required viewing. And I'd be pissed if Feige tried to sit down at that table because that's not what the hero genre is about. He could let one of the directors do it from time to time I suppose, that'd be fine, but the headliners will always stay true to the hero genre because that's what people want today just as they've wanted it for millennia before us.
  5. fantastic_four
    So conflict. Yes, that's a universal theme, but it's also the bare minimum for a semi-compelling film for adults. You're going to find conflict in the vast majority of compelling films, so Oscar voters are looking for far more innovative themes than that. Think about every book or movie you were assigned to read or watch in school and try to think about why you were made to read or watch them. That's the type of fiction you're going to see the Academy nominate. If you never liked any of that stuff they made you read in school enough to figure out why they made you read it, you'll also never understand how the Academy members vote for films, either.
  6. fantastic_four
    I agree a film shouldn't just receive an award or a nomination because it made a load of money at the box office. That reward is the bank account growing. But if you read the statement from this anonymous source, they stated there would never be a place for an 'Avengers movie' at the Oscars table. How can any reasonable person predict future films even not qualifying? You can't, unless you are biased. You'd have to not be paying attention to NOT be biased. The hero genre is implicitly about entertainment and always has been for thousands of years from the Iliad and Odyssey to Beowulf to King Arthur to Westerns through to superhero films. His bias is that when two zebras mate they're probably going to give birth to another animal with stripes. I generally agree with him, superhero films aren't art, they're entertainment, and if that changes I'll be shocked because that's what the fans of the genre want, myself included.
  7. fantastic_four
    It was at 16% on RT when I woke up around 2 AM, but now it's up to 21%. ON THE RISE! At least it's beating Fantastic Four which finished at 9%.
  8. fantastic_four
    That's BS! It's consistent with the entire history of the Oscars; they RARELY nominate entertainment-based films unless they're significantly innovative. The best example of that during my life was the nomination Star Wars got for the extreme innovation to editing and cinematography that movie introduced that changed blockbuster movies forever. If the purpose of a film doesn't have a strong thrust of trying to improve the human condition in some way by conveying a moral theme it virtually never gets nominated.
  9. fantastic_four
    I have no idea who actually made the call about whether or not to release the film after Disney acquired Fox, but I prefer to assume that Feige wanted it out there right after Captain Marvel and Endgame to remind everyone why he's the king.
  10. fantastic_four
    Oh, no, Famke succumbed to the knife. Her eyes look bizarre now.
  11. fantastic_four
    I just noticed that Simon Kinberg didn't just write this film, but he also wrote the previous Fox telling of the Dark Phoenix tale in "The Last Stand." He also wrote the 2015 Fantastic Four film. Wonder if he's ever been asked about what he wanted to do differently with Dark Phoenix the second time around?
  12. fantastic_four
    Wow. . The train didn't just jump the tracks, the cargo exploded immediately upon impact. The reviews are so bad I had to scroll back to the top of the Rotten Tomatoes page to make sure I hadn't accidentally clicked on a DC movie. This may be the only Marvel movie besides 2015 Fantastic Four that I skip entirely.
  13. fantastic_four
    Wait, why would he have re-casted Wolverine at all? Logan was born in the 19th century and actually appeared in First Class in the 1960s as Hugh Jackman.
  14. fantastic_four
    I bet the Fox execs' major sticking point was that Vaughn's version would have involved casting someone other than Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. They saw one treatment with Jackman and one without and went with the one that would have Jackman in it. I can't judge Days of Future Past in an unbiased way. My initial bias was heavily in favor of it based upon my reading of it as an 11-year old. Later as a teenager I read Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" and realized that time travel stories are too complex to tell in any satisfying way without creating paradoxes that should result in alternate realities but never do, so by the time the movie came out I was biased in the opposite direction against the entire idea of such a story. And as was just the case with Endgame, you can't think about it too hard or the paradoxes start to multiply.
  15. fantastic_four
    That sounds MUCH better than what we got, and given that his film was better than the ones that have followed I'm inclined to believe that his approach was the superior one.
  16. fantastic_four
    They're going to get someone much younger than Tom Hardy since he's 41.
  17. fantastic_four
    Those two were unavoidable to release to the public because they were staff changes. But yea, as with all of those other examples you cited the dirt doesn't come out with Marvel until after release, not before it like we're hearing with Dark Phoenix. Why? Is Feige just a magic man who does no wrong, or is it the quality of Disney's lawyers? Disney has been historically notorious for how litigious they can be, so if I had to guess I'd guess it's Disney's lawyers making everyone involved with production sign non-disclosure agreements that are steeply punishing if they're broken.
  18. fantastic_four
    In the age of social media this is the norm, not the exception, there's just more meat to chew on with Dark Phoenix. I was open about it until they decided to open the review embargo overnight, now I'm fully expecting a train wreck and will be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't happen. I've often wondered why this doesn't happen with MCU films. I'm wondering if it's because Marvel keeps such a tight lid on almost everything having to do with production. Most of the things we're hearing people complain about with Dark Phoenix are things I NEVER hear about any Marvel film ever. Test screenings? I assume Marvel does those, but I don't remember ever hearing about how they went. Going overbudget? Marvel doesn't even release that stuff, do they? For whatever reason MCU films just don't have as much production info out there prior to release as Fox films do.
  19. fantastic_four
    Somewhere in the universe there was a species that was down to the last male and female and then one of them disappeared. NICE JOB, THANOS. It shouldn't have been half but a per-species sliding scale that went up or down based upon a complex formula that weighed variables including current population and available resources. The guy had a millennium or so to work on that formula, WTH man?!?!
  20. fantastic_four
    I had that too, completely forgot about it until now. But I'll never forget the little flame effect that you could move in and out of his mouth with a lever.
  21. fantastic_four
    It's being co-written by Martin and Jane Goldman, doesn't that make it automatically more interesting? By the way, Jane Goldman is quite a cutie.
  22. fantastic_four
    I think I lost interest in the Night King when all it took to beat him was a shanking. Didn't need an army...I would have sent Adebisi or Schillinger from "Oz" to take him out.
  23. fantastic_four
    I'm unclear on what you're implying since the embargo lift date and time in that tweet is the same one I referenced. I got mine FROM that tweet--then triple-checked it from two other sources--I just translated it to Eastern Standard Time.
  24. fantastic_four
    Absolutely, positively not. If that happened, virtually every DC comic ever made would all be back to cover price by now.
  25. fantastic_four
    Just saw that the review embargo lifts Wednesday June 5th at 1 AM EST. That is the weirdest review embargo lift date I've ever seen...apparently, they want the reviews to come quietly in the night when you're sleeping and not paying attention. Oh lord.