Episode 133.5 - Minisode 133.5

[FisterRoboto 7499]

Suicide Squad has pissed me off since the word go. SS is one of my favorite DC titles, and this just looks like garbage. And the characterization of Harley as some kind of fucking Hot Topic Barbie full of the kind of lines that the kid in high school that was trying way too hard to be weird would spout is just too much for me. I've been a lukewarm defender of BvS (as in, I'm the dude saying, "Yeah, it's got a shitload of problems, but it's not as awful as everyone is saying."), but I can't think of a single positive thing to say about any of the SS trailers so far.

 

(Also, last trailer used "Bohemian Rhapsody." This one uses "Ballroom Blitz." Wonder if they'll use the rest of the Wayne's World soundtrack for the movie. It'd probably be the best thing about it.)

 

As for Doctor Strange, I'm kind of indifferent. I honestly don't know much about the character, and I just don't get everyone's fascination with Benedict Cumberbatch. That said, I will watch fucking anything with Tilda Swinton in it, and I love Chiwetel Ejiofor. I'll watch it before I watch SS, but I'm not really that amped up about it.

[RyanSz 3140]

I've liked the Suicide Squad trailers (though I haven't seen the most recent one) and they are pretty close to what the recent series have been, which have been fantastic. They aren't really designed to fight someone like Superman, but rather any of the off shoot villains being made by enemies domestic and foreign. One of the more recent stories involved them sneaking into either North Korea or Russia in order to stop them from further creating super robots. Other stories have included them basically wiping out the entire Super Dome because it had been overtaken by a techno-virus that mutated all of the people attending the football game. They aren't meant to be a deterrent for heroes like Superman or Wonder Woman, but rather they are the real line of defense against the stuff other organizations won't give the full measure to, so the line about Superman is basically a smoke screen to get the signoff for a black flag operation using Villains. As for Harley, she has had a similar style like in the film for a while now, usually mixing emo, roller derby girl, and various forms of her old harlequin style when she was introduced, so that is par for what it currently is in the comics.

 

In regard to Doctor Strange and the Phase 3 films, I get why they are doing an origin for him as to casual fans, he's pretty unknown outside of the crossover storylines where he's in the douchebag club, The Illuminati. It's also been a quite a while since he's had his own solo series, and is really only getting one now because of the movie. Most of the time in the last sixteen years he has just been a side character or a smaller member in the larger teams that populate the Marvel universe, so it makes a lot of sense for him to have an origin film. For the other Phase 3 films, the Captain America and Thor threequels seem like they will continue the quality of the previous films, same for Guardians 2. Black Panther should have enough of an intro in Cap 3 to ease into his standalone movie and the Inifinity Wars movies will hopefully succeed where Age of Ultron faltered. The only ones that I am iffy on are Spiderman but I've read it's not another origin film so that's a plus, Ant-Man and Wasp because I don't know how those characters are going to integrate in the overall MCU; and Inhumans because they might be only slightly more known than Strange or when Guardians was first announced, but they do have a connection to Agents of S.H.I.E.LD. so that should help. Captain Marvel I don't know enough about outside of what I've read in crossover stories or Avenger stories to have an opinion on the movie.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

I think that the DC movie universe so far and what Zack Snyder THINKS he knows about the characters can be traced back to this...

 

 

Holy shit, did Supes and Bats ever have it out for those two. Jimmy and Robin ending up in an early grave was apparently something that got revisited quite often...

 

[RyanSz 3140]

I think that the DC movie universe so far and what Zack Snyder THINKS he knows about the characters can be traced back to this...

 

 

Holy shit, did Supes and Bats ever have it out for those two. Jimmy and Robin ending up in an early grave was apparently something that got revisited quite often...

 

Well c'mon, those two were REALLY lame.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

Well c'mon, those two were REALLY lame.

I'd never seen those covers, as I found them when I was looking for something else. There was an issue of "Secret Origins" that had "The Origin of the Jimmy Olsen-Robin team!" on the cover, just for the first page to show their tombstones, with Batman and Superman being like "Well, I guess we shouldn't have let them go out on their own like that...". Of course, they weren't dead because it was the Silver Age, but implied sidekick murder is ALWAYS hilarious.

[RyanSz 3140]

There are countless sites dedicated to covers that are funny in hindsight, many focusing on Olsen and Superman. DC at least has the ability to acknowledge their campy-ness in that when they released the great poster book displaying their memorable covers from the past 75 years featured many of these wacky covers like this:

 

 

Or this:

 

 

Also while not a DC comic, this cover will stand the test of time as being universally terrible:

[SaltPeanuts 479]

Hi Paul, can I stop the music?

[Cockney Mackem 514]

Hope this pic works...

 

[Cockney Mackem 514]

[Cockney Mackem 514]

 

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

[taylor anne photo 11311]

I've been a lukewarm defender of BvS (as in, I'm the dude saying, "Yeah, it's got a shitload of problems, but it's not as awful as everyone is saying.")

I'm in that club too! Nice to know I'm not alone.

 

Captain Marvel I don't know enough about outside of what I've read in crossover stories or Avenger stories to have an opinion on the movie.

Read her solo stuff by Kelly Sue DeConnick! It's AMAZING! Makes me really really hope that's the direction they're going to go for the movie.

 

Also:

 

I love out of context comic panels!

 

I liked the first SS trailer but my interest is not very high. I'm not a huge Bendylip Cucumber fan so as soon as he got cast I decided I really didn't give a shit about Doctor Strange either. But I'll probably still end up seeing both of them anyway.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Just a few of my faves

 

 

 

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

[FisterRoboto 7499]

I'm in that club too! Nice to know I'm not alone.

 

[jarrycanada 2483]

Hi Paul, can I stop the music?

 

 

 

Yes, you can and it's just that easy.

[jarrycanada 2483]

after hearing this weeks show, about how Van Dammes love for Sylvester Stallone.

 

 

[Cockney Mackem 514]

 

 

I wouldn't want to fall out with anyone about it because you're all such special people. But I hated every interminable second of BvS

[FisterRoboto 7499]

I wouldn't want to fall out with anyone about it because you're all such special people. But I hated every interminable second of BvS

You're certainly entitled to your opinion I thought the last half was passable. There are major things they should have cut out. For example, do we REALLY need to see the Wayne's murder again? By this point, we should just accept it as cultural knowledge and just assume everyone knows Thomas and Martha Wayne's story (and we certainly don't need it to be hammered home, like, 30 times in one movie).

 

But most of the other problems with the movie come from the way they're trying to reverse engineer a Marvel universe. Instead of building each of the characters separately and then trying to join them together, they're trying to start with the team and work backwards. And that's how you get a movie trying to tell three different stories to justify everything instead of one solid story. If this had literally just been Batman versus Superman, it would have been much better. Instead, they needed to work in WW and set up the JLA. And that's what really slows the pacing of the movie down, and where most of its issues originate.

 

I'm definitely not saying it's a good movie, but people are acting like it's the worst movie ever made, when really, it's not even the worst comic book movie made in the last year (that honor goes to Fantastic Four).

 

 

Also, going back to Doctor Strange, I was initially excited about Tilda Swinton, but then I found out she's playing a totally whitewashed character. I didn't really know much about the character, but I learned that today when the picture came out of Scarlett Johannson in Ghost in the Shell. So I'm a bit put off on both accounts.

[RyanSz 3140]

For me the main problem with BvS was that we did not need the Lois Lane storyline AT ALL, it was basically a wikipedia summary of the other three storylines of Batman, Superman, and Lex Luthor. If that plot had been removed they could have easily trimmed 30 minutes off the run time. Also Eisenberg was horrible as Luthor, I've stated on the BvS thread that he was more in line to play the Marvel villain Arcade rather than Luthor. I liked the movie despite those issues and felt that the new performances by Affleck and Gadot were really good and got me excited for their individual movies, though I'm interested to see where Affleck takes Batman in his solo movie.

 

As for people complaining about Batman killing people, that is a bunch of selective memory on people's parts in regards to his history. Batman has killed a BUNCH of people over the years. When he was first created almost 80 years ago he was shooting people point blank in the head on a regular basis or snapping people's necks on window sills. Even in the movies he was killing people, either through apathy or inadvertently. In the Batman he led numerous Joker henchmen to their deaths by dropping them from the sky as he cut the Joker's floats loose, then his actions led to the Joker plummeting to his death, Batman Forever saw him indirectly kill Two-Face by throwing a handful of coins at him while he was on a high ledge, much to the dismay of Robin, Batman Begins had him by proxy kill Ra's al Ghul, Dark Knight he directly killed Two-Face, and in Rises he indirectly led to the death of Talia.

 

Also here are more inappropriate comic stills:

 

[taylor anne photo 11311]

As for people complaining about Batman killing people, that is a bunch of selective memory on people's parts in regards to his history. Batman has killed a BUNCH of people over the years. When he was first created almost 80 years ago he was shooting people point blank in the head on a regular basis or snapping people's necks on window sills. Even in the movies he was killing people, either through apathy or inadvertently. In the Batman he led numerous Joker henchmen to their deaths by dropping them from the sky as he cut the Joker's floats loose, then his actions led to the Joker plummeting to his death, Batman Forever saw him indirectly kill Two-Face by throwing a handful of coins at him while he was on a high ledge, much to the dismay of Robin, Batman Begins had him by proxy kill Ra's al Ghul, Dark Knight he directly killed Two-Face, and in Rises he indirectly led to the death of Talia.

What's funny is I've seen people say that Batman doesn't kill people in BvS in order to defend how good it is. Which makes me sit here like okay he definitely does but that doesn't have to mean it's automatically a shitty movie so can we all just calm our tits and open our eyes just at least a bit.

[RyanSz 3140]

What's funny is I've seen people say that Batman doesn't kill people in BvS in order to defend how good it is. Which makes me sit here like okay he definitely does but that doesn't have to mean it's automatically a shitty movie so can we all just calm our tits and open our eyes just at least a bit.

When I originally heard the argument that he did I thought they were getting up in arms about the dream sequence, but then I remembered the chase scene. Now a weak argument could be made that the villains GI Joe'd/A-Team'd their way to safety in the explosions but I didn't see any parachutes so I don't think that is the case.

[Cockney Mackem 514]

He kills people, he doesn't kill people. The story has to hold up. This didn't hold up at all. This was a at retread of things done better in other films (oh look THIS flashback again. Thomas Wayne has been shot more fucking times than 50 Cent.)

 

No good narrative. No good dialogue. No coherence. Dream sequence. Dream sequence. Dream sequence. Thudding clunking plot points. No one does anything that makes sense. Smashy fighty Smashy fighty. Soupy fog. Ponderous ending. Shite.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

When I originally heard the argument that he did I thought they were getting up in arms about the dream sequence, but then I remembered the chase scene. Now a weak argument could be made that the villains GI Joe'd/A-Team'd their way to safety in the explosions but I didn't see any parachutes so I don't think that is the case.

He also straight up shoots a few of those Russian thugs but an argument could be made that he doesn't go for the "kill" shot, however it's definitely a departure from Nolan's "No guns!" Batman.

 

And