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Canon-Strike VII: DC Cinematic Universe

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    #16
    I actually saw this one. It drew me to it in spite of the previous DC films because the trailers were pretty strong and did seem to give an impression that it was moving away from what I didn't like about Man of Steel. So I was hoping for good but slightly prepared for it to be a stinker. I liked it. It was a strong superhero movie that worked in quite a few ways. Chris Pine brought a lot to it, I felt, and he grounded the movie (although he looked haggard, like he wasn't well when they shot it) and the setting was interesting. The world of the Amazons was also portrayed really well and the character herself worked really well.

    Where the film hugely fell down for me was in the last section and the villain. All the drama and human stuff was left behind in favour of a big fight (I can't blame Wonder Woman or DC for that - most superhero films are guilty of this) but, to make it worse, the fight turned into a vague abstract CG thing and the big enemy, the mighty Ares, just didn't bring the presence the fight needed. The actor is great, by the way, and I've seen him do wonderful and creepy work in other things but he doesn't have a big supervillain thing going on at all. It's like they needed to give him some other form at the end and they didn't. So the end left me disappointed but, overall, I felt it was a good film.

    And yet I haven't ever had the urge to revisit it.

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      #17
      That's pretty much how I see it, I like it but Captain America pulls off the trick better because it embraces the cheesy nature whilst also legitimising the character. It makes some of the stuff you might otherwise baulk at easier to digest whereas the end of WW feels at odds with what comes before it. The sequel seems to be stepping out of the Snyder shadow more confidently (though I remain in need of convincing of Wigg as a villain as well).


      Just to veer us way back to the earlier films again as well, where the hell did the outrage over people dying as a result of Batman's actions come from with the DCU? Far as I'm aware these films never really went into territory on that that any other incarnation in film hasn't done either

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        #18
        Thanks for creating the thread SR. Its been a good read with the summaries and others' opinions to go through.

        For me its been as follows:

        Man of Steel - Not a bad effort at all. Add had been mentioned previously it caught the strength of the Kryptonians pretty well and the action wasn't too hard to follow. As far as origins stories go it wasn't a bad effort at all. Amy Adams as Lewis Lane was good casting and its a shame the character's strength and confidence seem to fall by the wayside in the sequel.

        Batman vs Superman - great on paper but the execution was not up to that. Too flabby a film where we wait nearly an hour (perhaps) for the main showdown. Wonder Woman's scenes and Batman's fight against the heavies are mostly good but most of the rest of the film is forgettable.

        Suicide Squad - They decided to introduce the characters in the form of music videos. What? There was some alright characterisation with Harley and El Diablo (I think that's his name) but all the other characters were just there. Jared Leto's Joker will forever be remembered as trying too hard to be insane (see the recent iteration for how to portray a descent into insanity convincingly).

        Wonder Woman - Great setting, the Amazonians and their homeland were interesting, Gal does a convincing job of proving she's right for the role, the light humour is there and the action is well shot on the whole. I didn't mind the third act but I can appreciate others' criticisms of it.

        Justice League and Aquaman haven't been covered yet so I'll update my post when these are included in the thread. I will say this; DC seems to be doing a better job with standalone comic book films than Marvel at the moment. That could change over time but Marvel/Disney is big on the interconnectivity and that's probably not going anywhere anytime soon.
        Last edited by Paddy; 07-10-2019, 20:07.

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          #19
          Movie 05 - Justice League
          It's a testament to the road laid before this that it felt like Warner's had rushed their team up film when in reality it occurred just one film sooner than Marvel used to deliver theirs. The big issue clearly being that the film followed an arc rather than origins meaning this film carried the responsibility of delivering it's own tale, introducing several new heroes and villains and following up the ending of BvS. The scent of blood in the water and lots of behind the scenes shuffling led to Snyder stepping out and Whedon stepping in on this as well leading to a final film that was very muddled in tone, not salvaged but lacking in consistency. One price being that Cyborg seems to have been a casualty along the way (arguably was always doomed to be one).




          Share your thoughts on what was arguably the end of DCU Phase One

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            #20
            I can sit and watch JL easily enough but I think by this point it was clear that the tone of the DCU was in need of change and it was overly entrenched in one style. As much as it's easy enough to watch it's very shallow next to MoS and BvS (which it feels like a trilogy closer to) and for a film that's still the biggest event film in the DCU there's not really anything that stands out about it. The one thing that's nice about it is that by the end of it Clark has completed his journey and is the Superman we know, a shame it was just in time for Cavill to step out of the role and Warners to stop using the character.

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              #21
              Originally posted by Superman Falls View Post
              That's pretty much how I see it, I like it but Captain America pulls off the trick better because it embraces the cheesy nature whilst also legitimising the character. It makes some of the stuff you might otherwise baulk at easier to digest whereas the end of WW feels at odds with what comes before it. The sequel seems to be stepping out of the Snyder shadow more confidently (though I remain in need of convincing of Wigg as a villain as well).
              Part of it, for me, was how the transition from comics/animation to live-action changes things in a way I didn't anticipate.

              Comics have, for a long time, shown characters in conflicts or around real-world events. Superheroes being involved in WW1 and WW2 is not a new ground for the medium; hell, some of those characters were tools of propaganda during the actual war (something lampooned to great effect in The First Avenger). A key of this, too, is tying the war into the mythology of the comics, so as to give the war a context within their fictional universe.

              Both The First Avenger and Wonder Woman do this. However, there's a key difference in their approach which I think is quite important.

              In The First Avenger, The Red Skull is running a secret society within the Axis powers, based around a division that investigates experimental technologies. This works well in terms of weaving it around historical events, as we know in real life, the Nazis had departments that performed these kinds of tasks, producing things like the V-bombs, research into jet engines, and even some that were collecting religious artifacts (something heavily fictionalised in Indiana Jones, but loosely based on something real).

              Critically, though, The First Avenger never directly implies that WW2, the real conflict which leaves a lasting scar on the people who are alive today, was caused by superhero drama. In that movie, the war is just the war; The Red Skull is taking advantage of it.

              The thing I didn't like about WW is the tacit implication that the villain, Aries, manipulating people, was the reason WW1 was taking place. I don't know why that irks me; I'm just not sure I'm happy with stories recontextualising real events like that. It'd be like if Marvel made a Captain Britain & Psylocke movie in 2022, and it was about them trying to stop the people committing the 7/7 bombings in London, because the the perpertrators were really androids under the control of Magneto. Or if Banshee was involved in the troubles in Northern Ireland, because Apocalypse was using them as a smokescreen so he could kill Thatcher.

              And this is daft! Because I have no problem with, for example, superhero drama being behind the murder of Caesar, so you could say "where is the cut-off?" and in truth, I don't know.

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                #22
                Did the WW comics use Ares as the cause of WWI? Just wondering in case it came from trying to adapt something that already existed.



                Going back to my earlier ponderings about Batman and killing, I had a look online and the Burton Era Batman killed arguably 9 people on screen over the 4 films, Nolan Era Batman arguably 4 people killed by him/his actions. It's somewhere in the mid-teens I think for the DCU incarnation taking assumption on the viewers part into consideration.

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                  #23
                  Movie 06 - Aquaman
                  If Wonder Woman was the DCU turn heeling towards success then Aquaman was an unexpected sprint in that new direction. Carrying influences from what came before but like WW telling a standalone story, this origin tale charts Arthur post-Justice League but pre-taking up the full mantle of King of Atlantis. This was the second tentpole big budget film for James Wan as well with it adding to what is currently a 100% track record of delivering $1bn+ with each. We somehow live in a world where Aquaman is now the biggest character in the DCU currently.



                  What made Aquaman a key moment in the DCU?

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                    #24
                    Though I have a lot of time for films made by Wan, I won't lie, I kind of don't understand the level of success that Aquaman enjoyed. It's a fine enough film but there's nothing about it that elevates it above the genres finest. It's biggest accomplishment for me comes from it successfully adapting the character in the first place.

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                      #25
                      Yeah, I didn't get it either. I'm not in sync with the people going to see these DC films anyway - and the audience is huge for these films so, whatever about quality criticisms, they are pulling in the numbers. But Aquaman always seemed like a particular hard sell to me. And yet massive numbers of people turned up so what do I know?

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                        #26
                        That's it, he wasn't an audience drawing factor in Justice League so it's not the character or Momoa that's the draw, yet it's hard to spot what element made Aquaman the level of success it was without it being those aspects as everything else is pretty standard.

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                          #27
                          Movie 07 - Shazam!
                          And here we are at the seventh and currently most recent entry, the most standalone of them all really, Shazam. The film marked the first of DC's attempts to adapt a character in a new tone where a DCU event film hasn't set some element up, whilst at the same time being made for a reduced budget to minimise risk and allow for a smaller taking to still work in the studios favour allowing them to grow franchises like Marvel was able to do with Captain America. The first result is this film which subtly sets up the characters connection with other DCU heroes whilst not relying on it, also introducing a more humourous approach around a hero who isn't as easy to adapt on paper given the BIG storyline.



                          Is Shazam a reflection of the DCU setting right where once it went wrong?

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                            #28
                            I still haven't seen this yet but it is the only one of the bunch that I still want to see. It looked like a lot of fun from the trailers.

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                              #29
                              It's probably my favourite though I need to rewatch it, it's pretty much exactly what the trailers make it look like but that's all it needed to be. It takes the set up and tells a small little origin story which could sit as it is or open up into sequels and spin-offs of varying scale.

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                                #30
                                Originally posted by Superman Falls View Post
                                That's it, he wasn't an audience drawing factor in Justice League so it's not the character or Momoa that's the draw, yet it's hard to spot what element made Aquaman the level of success it was without it being those aspects as everything else is pretty standard.
                                I actually came in to say that I think Momoa was a big part of the draw.

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