Foundation and Empire --> Foundation and Dongles
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@nimelennar: The minute I saw the OP, I figured you were talking about Snyder. I saw what he said a day or two ago, and I’m appalled. One, superheroes are “a fantasy world,” so “realism” is selective at best. And two, when you’re dealing with a long-running property with many different versions and interpretations, you’re never going to win everyone over to your view. He went far beyond defending his vision-- he was obnoxious and insufferable and clearly does not grasp that he’s alienating the very audience he’s depending on to support his work.
@gadgetgirl: Yup, I agree that studios are often ignorant of who might enjoy their product. The “common wisdom” says women don’t care for science fiction, yet I’ve known quite a few female fans who love it as much as I do.
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I attended an event once with a panel discussion with three directors. They said the common wisdom was that women don’t choose which films to go to at all – their male dates do. Basically the industry figured that what women liked was irrelevant.
I’m hoping the success of Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel might move the needle on that, but I know it’s going to take a lot more than a handful of films for it to truly happen.
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That’s crap. My ex and I traded off more-or-less equally picking the movies , if there wasn’t one we both wanted to see. We both preferred sci-fi, fantasy, and action films. And I never dragged him into a “chick flick.” (Horror movies, on the other hand, got watched by my choice more than once.)
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Exactly.
And that applies to more than just the nonsense physics that allows people to fly or shoot spiderweb or survive impact with the ground at terminal velocity.
Superhero stories are fables. They’re morality tales. Yes, the heroes are supposed to be flawed so that they can grow past those flaws, but they’re supposed to be examples to aspire to. If you aspire to be a hero who is only as good as it’s pragmatic to be, that won’t make you all that much better as a person. But if you aspire to be Steve Rogers, who will take whatever beating is necessary to stand up to a bully, or Peter Parker, who will choose a life responsibility, as difficult as that life can be, or Bruce Wayne, who knows that the Joker will eventually free himself from Arkham again and cause more havoc, but refuses to kill him anyway because murder is wrong…
You can look at these characters and decide to be more Captain-America-like, or Spider-Man-like, or Batman-like, and become a better person. If your superhero’s standards are, “I shouldn’t have rescued the people on that bus, because it could personally inconvenience me if people knew I was special…” That’s not a very high bar to aspire to. Certainly not what I would call “heroic” let alone “superheroic.”
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It is classic Randian libertarianism though.
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What else would you expect from a man whose next project is adapting The Fountainhead?
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I expect nothing from Snyder except the coasting arc and fall of a classically Peter-principled dumbshit.
What would be unexpected would be for him to go back to work as a DP, which he’s actually good at.
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My read on Smith is that he’s pretty much who he presents himself as, a geeky dude who lucked out with his film and is still not entirely sure how he managed to do that. I get the sense he still identifies more with his fan base than with his colleagues… it could all be an act, but the fact that he protested his own movie (the one that is probably his most solid and mainstream film, too) speaks volumes…
JJ Abrams is a straight up dick and the fact that his ST franchise fizzled out is probably due to his contempt for trekkies.
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From a Hollywood and comics guy:
I don’t entirely agree. I think we can be angry and recognise how pathetic people like this are.
That, and there’s also the point that assholes like Snyder thrive off outrage… and hate being reminded that they’re actually pitiful.
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I’d suggest the proper reaction would be a boycott of his next film, but I don’t think anyone who disagrees with his cynicism would want to watch his next film anyway.
Or better yet, push Shazam to a higher box office total than BvS, and have “the free market” prove him wrong.
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Dammit. I think you just talked me into seeing Shazam.
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Regarding the specific example of “Batman,” it’s certainly a reasonable position to take that a dude in a Halloween costume will not actually be scary to hardened criminals if he’s not actually harming them in horrific and terrifying ways. Frank Miller and Christopher Nolan both struggled with this.
But at the same time, it’s the way the character has traditionally been written, and Snyder (or Tim Burton or whoever) have no grounds to dismiss these traditions and the fans thereof. They’re the new guys. Nobody asked for their opinions.
There could be other ways of dealing with these contradictions that the movies haven’t even tried yet – instead of rationalizing it away, they could play it up that everybody is afraid of the “clown” because he’s a vicious axe murderer but they laugh at the Dark Knight because he’s just kind of silly – they could make Bruce Wayne own that silliness, and succeed somehow anyway.
A while ago I noticed something about the costumes in the old Batman TV show from the '60s, with Adam West and Burt Ward – the costumes looked ridiculous, of course, but they also looked practical – they were just like professional-wrestling outfits. They were designed for the actors to actually fight in. The silliest designs were also, paradoxically, the most realistic.
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A plot I think could be useful:
Batman hurts someone as they’re committing a crime. This disables and/or disfigures them life. Or else it causes them to die later on, but slowly and painfully.
Years later, their child wants revenge on the Dark Knight. The crime was being committed out of coercion or desperation, not malice, and Batman’s actions caused far more misery than the successful completion of the crime would have. Hospital bills, etc.
In other words, Batman did murder someone, just not quickly. And the criminal’s child confronts him with it, with receipts.
So basically the plot of Les Mis.
I think it’s been done in the comics anyhow, probably several times over. I do agree “Batman doesn’t kill people” is a bit… facile, given how often he injures them.
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You and I remember Budapest Les Mis very differently.
Yeah, I don’t care how well trained in martial arts you are; you punch that many people in the head, hard enough to knock them out, some of them aren’t going to survive it.
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They’re just sleeping…
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I found an article that might be relevant to your interests:
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They could resolve a lot of this by switching personalities between Batman and the Joker.
If the bat guy were the loud, crazy, disorienting one, then interacting with him could be intimidating and scary even if he’s not harming people physically.
But two loud crazy guys in the same movie would be confusing, so they’d have to make the Joker the quiet one. I’m thinking, like, casting Jack Black as Batman and Keanu Reeves as the Joker.
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This is me weighing Jack Black against Keanu Reeves, and discovering that there’s a very fine line between loving this idea and hating it.
I guess my question would be: does Keanu play it straight, or go full camp? And would we be able to tell the difference?
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