Author Topic: New Dawn of Justice Trailer  (Read 23348 times)

Vee

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #20 on: December 04, 2015, 11:51:22 PM »
That all sounds plausible, but are we sure we're not giving too much credit to the MoS writers?

Also my juvenile self giggles every time i see 'Fapp' or 'Fap' as sound effects in old comics.

Arcana

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #21 on: December 05, 2015, 12:39:19 AM »
That all sounds plausible, but are we sure we're not giving too much credit to the MoS writers?

I think to think of it as "help" more than "credit."  In order for something to be plausible, or to be more precise in order for it not to be implausible, its only necessary that there exists a reasonable explanation that fits all the facts.  Its not necessary that the creators presumed it or believed it or were even aware of it, only that they did not explicitly disavow or contradict it in their content.

I like to think of myself as a "constructive nitpicker."  Its a personal preference of mine that on the one hand I like to think about things in a way you might call nit-picking.  But I like to take those nitpicks and see if there's a way to turn them on their head and make them strengthen rather than weaken the original content.  The Peter David novel Vendetta is something I consider a commercial example of this kind of thinking.  It starts by looking at the Trek TOS episode The Doomsday Machine and asks a pretty simple question: if the Doomsday Machine moves around so slowly, how could it come from another galaxy as Spock suggests in that episode?  And the answer is: it really shouldn't have: it would take too long and there's no way for it to fuel itself during the trip between the galaxies.  That seems to be a nit pick plot hole.  But what if that nitpick is flipped upside down: what would explain those facts?  What if it came from outside the galaxy not because it came from another galaxy but because it had been put there from originally inside our galaxy?  Let's keep going: maybe it was put there because its creators were essentially throwing it away.  Why?  Maybe because it was a prototype: clearly it wasn't a very good Doomsday Machine in actuality: although it did destroy many planets and wrecked havoc with two starships, really as a true Doomsday weapon it wasn't difficult to destroy.  A really big fusion bomb thrown down its maw did it: during a full-scale interstellar war that wouldn't be considered a big price to pay to take that thing down.

Okay, so we have a prototype weapon that moves around slowly and destroys whole planets, mostly ignores small warships, has an impenetrable hull, no crew, and a single powerful antiproton weapon.  What sort of foe would this be useful against?  How about the Borg?  The Borg (at least as originally envisioned) didn't care about individuals, didn't fly around in small warships, primarily targeted technology and planetary cultures, used high technology cutting beams to slice up interesting technology, and assimilated the beings of the cultures it tried to absorb.  The Doomsday Machine seems almost specifically designed to be an antiborg weapon in retrospect.  Its design is actually kind of silly if its enemies were anything like the Federation: its slow enough to allow its enemies to mount a defense, and its weaponry, outside of surprise, its not really good at destroying fleets of enemy warships.  But against the Borg, that usually come at you one at a time in large colony ships?  And assimilate whole planets? 

Once you take the nitpicks apart about how the Doomsday Machine worked, how it functioned, how it moved, how it attacked, what its weaknesses were, and instead of saying its nonsensical ask instead what circumstance would make those actually make sense, an interesting idea emerges.  That's what I consider constructive nitpicking.  We *know* the writers of the Doomsday Machine were not thinking about the Borg for obvious reasons.  But that doesn't mean there's no value to thinking it for them.

Kaos Arcanna

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #22 on: December 05, 2015, 02:25:19 AM »
I see what you mean, but I would still content that even though it appears Superman would have lost if not for the Batman gambit, its still a pretty close fight in relative terms.

As to Man of Steel, in that movie it was shown that Superman's powers come not only from exposure to yellow sunlight, but overall from Earth's (lower) gravity, its abundant sunshine, and its atmosphere.  In an environment that replicates that on Krypton such as within the Kryptonian ship that Zod has, Superman's powers quickly disappear entirely.  And when Zod tries to terraform Earth into Krypton at the climax of the movie, Superman was shown to be negatively affected by among other things the stuff the world engine was spewing into the atmosphere.

An interesting question is what that stuff was.  Perhaps in the Man of Steel universe, the stuff that the world engine puts into Earth's atmosphere to replicate the atmosphere of Krypton is, in fact, that universe's Kryptonite.  Maybe there's something beneficial about it for Kryptonians, but it interacts badly with them when Kryptonians live for extended periods of time on a planet like Earth.

Incidentally, the introduction of Doomsday opens the door to a theory of mine I've tossed around regarding an otherwise weird plot hole in Man of Steel.  If exposure to Earth gives Kryptonians superpowers, why would Zod want to terraform Earth into Krypton?  Wouldn't it be better if they kept Earth earth-like, and even if there was a period of suffering the net result would have obviously been great for Kryptonians.  It seems like Zod is pursuing a strange goal; the goal of depowering his own people.

It might actually make sense when seen from the perspective of Zod and Kryptonian culture as portrayed in MoS.  As Jor-El seems to imply when he describes Kryptonian history to Clark and Zod also seems to imply through his actions, Kryptonians were very conservative in their beliefs about everyone having a specific pre-ordained place in society that was dictated by genetic programming.  In their own way, they believed in a genetic purity of their species.  If so, what if the mechanism that grants Kryptonians their powers on Earth is not simple adaptation, but something that happens at the genetic level.  Their actual genes adapt to the new conditions and cause them to in effect mutate into something that can thrive in their new environment.  Superpowers would be a kind of genetic mutation.  If so, then that might be the reason Zod isn't swayed by superpowers.  In his opinion, Kryptonians should live the way they were meant to live, which is in a Kryptonian environment and a genetic adaptation to that environment only.  He might also feel that a world full of superpowered Kryptonians would be disruptive to order, but the notion that he would also have a racist reaction to anything that "changes" Kryptonians in any way actually makes sense in the story.

There's no basis for the hypothesis that superpowers come from a genetic adaptation anywhere in MoS, but Doomsday might provide that.  In the original canon, Doomsday was the product of strange, Lamarckian experiments with Kryptonians, suggesting that Kryptonian biology isn't like most: their genetic structure can adapt to harsh conditions in unconventional ways.  If Doomsday establishes a similar fact in BvS, that Kryptonian biology is adaptive at the genetic level and can produce a being like Doomsday through experimentation, then that would connect to the theory that Zod didn't see superpowers overall as a good thing, and would be motivated to terraform Earth into a planet that wouldn't grant Kryptonians superpowers (or at least as much superpowers - the Sun would still be stronger) because it was far more important to Zod to return Kryptonians to their predestined state.

I believe that Zod and the Kryptonians were so eager to Krypton-Form Earth because the enhancement of their senses was incredibly painful for them and hard to adjust too. Kal-El had spent virtually his entire life here and had learned to focus; they hadn't and it pretty much put them out of the fight each time it happened until Zod himself learned to focus past it.


I still want to know why Zod didn't just use the machine on Mars or Venus. He would have saved conflict with Kal-El and gotten the chance to rebuild his world without a fight

Vee

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #23 on: December 05, 2015, 02:55:59 AM »
I think to think of it as "help" more than "credit."...

You're probably right. I used to do such constructive nitpicking all the time when I was teaching. I still do it for media that I like. You seem to be much more generous than me in extending the practice. I've got a definite threshold for charitability when it comes to what could also be explained as bad writing, especially if there are other examples of such in the same piece.

Arcana

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #24 on: December 05, 2015, 03:33:20 AM »
I believe that Zod and the Kryptonians were so eager to Krypton-Form Earth because the enhancement of their senses was incredibly painful for them and hard to adjust too. Kal-El had spent virtually his entire life here and had learned to focus; they hadn't and it pretty much put them out of the fight each time it happened until Zod himself learned to focus past it.

Yeah, but all other things being equal, would you trade months or years of suffering in that way to get Superman's powers for the rest of your life?  So would I.  Without some reason why not, I would think the guy who's stated mission is to do whatever it took to protect Krypton's people would want to find a planet where they were virtually indestructible.

The only other possibility I can think of is that Zod was actually thinking that it would be dangerous (in a social, not physical way) for all of Kryptonian society to have superman's powers.  That could be seen as a potential source for social disruption, or even rebellion.


I still want to know why Zod didn't just use the machine on Mars or Venus. He would have saved conflict with Kal-El and gotten the chance to rebuild his world without a fight

Maybe because he wanted a fight.  He was, as he himself admitted, specifically born, bred, and educated to be a soldier, to fight Krypton's battles.  He sees things through that lens.  I like to think of Zod as a more complicated person than just a one-dimensional monster: he seemed almost regretful that he had to destroy Jor-El's holographic AI: as if he saw it as a necessary evil, not something he took pleasure with.  As a person, he wanted vengeance on Jor-El through Kal-El, and he wanted to conquer Earth.  But that was tempered by his singular belief that everything he did was supposed to be for the good of Krypton as he interpreted that.  I think it pained him to destroy anything of Krypton, even if he felt it was necessary or even if he wanted to do it on a personal level.  I think terraforming Earth was probably due to the fact that conquering and destroying Earth was able to satisfy multiple desires on his part.  It might have been quicker and easier to terraform Earth rather than Mars or Venus since Earth was already sufficiently similar to Krypton to be inhabitable, and he could do it while wiping out the only threat to new Krypton in the Solar System.  *And* by terraforming Earth into Krypton he would ultimately eliminate Kal-El as a threat.  Without his superpowers, he's just another guy on Earth facing a super-advanced alien invasion force.

There's a little bit of tragedy to the fact that Zod was exactly what Krypton designed him to be, and in the end neither Krypton's government nor even Zod himself could break free from that destiny.  They made him to protect Krypton, and it drove him to try to defend Krypton from its own staid government.  And that single-minded purpose meant he couldn't see a way to co-exist with humanity on Earth, even if it meant they would basically be gods on Earth. As Jor-El's AI put it, they were both ghosts, stuck in an irreplaceable past.

Arcana

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #25 on: December 05, 2015, 03:42:06 AM »
You're probably right. I used to do such constructive nitpicking all the time when I was teaching. I still do it for media that I like. You seem to be much more generous than me in extending the practice. I've got a definite threshold for charitability when it comes to what could also be explained as bad writing, especially if there are other examples of such in the same piece.

I consider whether something is bad writing or just straight up a mistake, and whether something is nevertheless plausible, to be separate considerations.  If you've ever seen someone really bad at bowling throw a ball right into the gutter, have it bounce out, hop into the next person's lane, and then hit a strike, its like that.

Also, I'm reminded of a joke I heard a long time ago.  A long time Chicago Bears fan goes to his friend's house to watch the the Bears play the Packers.  The Bears are having a horrible game and the Packers score touchdown after touchdown.  The friend's father, also a long time Bears fan, jumps up and cheers after every touchdown.  The guy whispers to his friend what's going on.  His friend whispers back that his dad's eyesight is going bad and he's almost deaf and he can't actually tell the Bears are losing.  The guy asks his friend why he doesn't tell his father what's actually happening.  And he shrugs and says "why should I; he's watching a better game than I am."

Vee

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #26 on: December 05, 2015, 04:13:37 AM »
I'm always glad other people are enjoying things more than i am. My anhedonia spread wide to people without my compulsion to consume media would leave me with nothing to grouse about :D

Vee

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #27 on: March 23, 2016, 10:27:36 PM »
Early reviews are pretty damning, saying it's completely disjointed, attempts to make an entire movie out of easter eggs for the upcoming movies, and has a plot that doesn't even make sense if you know the source material and definitely won't if you don't. Sadly all of those things sound markedly better than what I was expecting from the various trailers.

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #28 on: March 23, 2016, 10:37:29 PM »
With Hack Snyder at the helm, it was always going to be appalling - two movies into their "cinematic universe", and DC already needs a full reboot.
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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #29 on: March 24, 2016, 02:38:39 AM »
Oh yeah, the early reviews are seriously panning it.  It's not going to slow down opening weekend but if the rumor that the film cost $400 million to make, WB is in some serious trouble.  The reviews just moved my viewing from Thursday night to a discount Tuesday night a week or three in the future.  And I even went to see Fant4stic in the theaters after it got a 9% on RT.

I think tomorrow we will see WB stock take a dip while Disney's stock goes up.  Unless BvS is so bad it could harm the entire superhero genre (together with Fant4stic and ASM 2).  WB better pray that Suicide Squad does bank.
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Arcana

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #30 on: March 24, 2016, 03:05:43 AM »
With Hack Snyder at the helm, it was always going to be appalling - two movies into their "cinematic universe", and DC already needs a full reboot.

Having not yet (obviously) seen the movie, I'm still reserving judgment.  I have heard that some fans love it, and some fans don't, and the critics are tending to fall on the side of not liking it much, but there are lots of movies that fall into that category that I enjoyed personally.

Still, I think it is a fair judgment that Zack Snyder is a great cinematographer but only an average story-teller.  He's definitely not a "hack" but he's not a deep story teller like say Nolan was/is, or a fun story teller like Whedon tends to be.  "Superficial" tends to come to my mind.  Having said that, there's no way DC is rebooting the DCverse.  They have all their eggs in one basket, and they frankly don't care what critics think.  The movie appears to be tracking into a billion dollar movie, and if it follows even conservative projections it will almost certainly make enough money to justify continuing the path to Justice League.  Warner will sooner sell all the blood of all their employees to fund a sock puppet shadow wall theater version of Justice League than let Disney continue to have singular access to all that Avengers money being made.

Arcana

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #31 on: March 24, 2016, 03:26:09 AM »
Oh yeah, the early reviews are seriously panning it.  It's not going to slow down opening weekend but if the rumor that the film cost $400 million to make, WB is in some serious trouble.  The reviews just moved my viewing from Thursday night to a discount Tuesday night a week or three in the future.  And I even went to see Fant4stic in the theaters after it got a 9% on RT.

I think tomorrow we will see WB stock take a dip while Disney's stock goes up.  Unless BvS is so bad it could harm the entire superhero genre (together with Fant4stic and ASM 2).  WB better pray that Suicide Squad does bank.

I think these kinds of movies are practically immune to reviews.  The early reviews for Avengers Age of Ultron were not kind, and even I think it was a weaker movie than the first Avengers, but it still made 1.4 billion in total box office (8% less than the 1.5 billion of the first Avengers, but still plenty successful overall) and all the "Marvel has finally lost it" commentary did exactly zilch to Marvel's momentum.

I also think Warner is probably more vulnerable to a disaster at the box office than Disney.  Disney's stock is affected a hundred times more by ESPN subscriber news than all the Marvel movie money printing magic combined.  Nobody seems to care that Marvel is making a gazillion dollars at the box office, because in the grand scheme of things its only a small part of the Disney entertainment empire.  Disney stock isn't moving whether BvS makes a trillion dollars or eight dollars.  Warner, I'm less sure about.  I think Warner needs BvS to be at least commercially successful to build momentum to their singleton movies (WW, Aquaman) and the lead up to JL, and DC's numbers are more significant to Warner's financials than Marvel's are to Disney.

In any case, Rotten Tomatoes has a 34% critic score for BvS but an 82% audience score.  That's a wild divergence I don't see often if ever, although it is still obviously very early.  I wonder if it will keep or erase that divergence past the weekend.

Vee

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #32 on: March 24, 2016, 04:37:13 AM »
I think these kinds of movies are practically immune to reviews.

Case in point, the Transformers franchise has grossed nearly 4 billion.

Arcana

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #33 on: March 24, 2016, 05:58:10 AM »
Case in point, the Transformers franchise has grossed nearly 4 billion.

Interesting to note also that after the first one, the domestic gross of the last three has dropped with each release while the international gross has increased with each release.  How a blockbuster like Transformers looks to an American critic is not necessarily relevant to why a foreign or especially a non-English speaking audience might go to see those movies.  What they are, are flashy, effects laden, and simple.  And it is not that foreign audiences want simpler movies than American audiences: I think the exact opposite is true.  But simple is important when trying to watch a movie that has to translate across cultural and language barriers.  The Avengers, Skyfall, Jurassic World - these are all good entertaining movies for American audiences but they also translate easily to foreign audiences.

I think the JJ Trek movies are instructive.  The first one is considered the better of the two by American audiences (or the second one is considered the worse of the two, depending on your inclinations) and it shows in box office: the second made less money in the US.  But the second one *doubled* the overseas draw.  If I had to guess, I would say that is because in the US the first was seen as a more comfortable nostalgic Trek movie while the second one was too dark and simultaneously missed its retreading of Khan for new audiences not as familiar with the story *and* the hard core fans who were familiar enough to appreciate it but didn't like it.  Foreign audiences by comparison didn't have as much of this baggage.  They didn't have the nostalgic baggage and thus appreciated the first one less.  But conversely, they didn't have the baggage to disapprove of the retreading in the second movie and appreciated it more as a straight sequel to the first one.

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #34 on: March 24, 2016, 08:39:23 AM »
He's definitely not a "hack"

He's worse than a hack - desecrating the entire concept of Superman wasn't enough for him  - he's spread it around this time.
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Arcana

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #35 on: March 24, 2016, 09:26:03 AM »
He's worse than a hack - desecrating the entire concept of Superman wasn't enough for him  - he's spread it around this time.

Zack Snyder is a director, and the director is the guy that manages all the shoot the movie with cameras and stuff.  The man who desecrated the entire concept of Superman was David Goyer, who came up with the basic story with Christopher Nolan and wrote the script to Man of Steel.  Zack Snyder was hired to direct long after the story was basically a done deal (he was not their first choice and the same script was pitched to several different directors before they got Snyder on board).

Dawn of Justice is based on a story idea formulated between Snyder and Goyer, but Goyer wrote the initial script and then Chris Terrio did rewrites (probably including expanding Ben Affleck's role in the movie substantially based on reports during pre-production).  And there was probably a lot of studio input as well, owing to the need to connect the dots to Justice League.

Calling Snyder a hack might seem more fair if you actually faulted him for things he actually did, and not things he pretty assuredly did not do.  While Snyder probably had *some* input into the stories of both movies, that input was probably superficial in Man of Steel which laid the groundwork for both movies.  It was probably more substantial in Dawn of Justice, but Goyer, who was mostly responsible for the story and completely responsible for the script of Man of Steel, and also the first draft script writer for Dawn of Justice, should get far more credit, and blame, for the story elements of both movies than Snyder.

Snyder can be blamed for his use of CGI, some of his visual tropes, and probably drawing out the fight at the end too long.  Those are all his calls: when the script says something like "Superman and Zod fight" he can choose to shoot that in a lot of ways.  But your understanding of how film works is missing a lot of important pieces if you think at some point the script says "and then Superman ends the fight with Zod somehow" and Snyder said "lets have Superman snap Zod's neck like a twig: that'll be cool."

If you enjoy calling Zack Snyder a hack, don't let me stop you.  But maybe if you tried to figure out what he actually did and did not do in the productions of all of his films, your opinion might change.  It will at least be informed.

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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #36 on: March 24, 2016, 09:31:40 AM »
Personally, I find the "desecration" more palatable overall than Nolan's efforts to drain all the fun and style out of Batman.  And I'm glad they seem to be ditching the bland Tom Clancy's Dark Knight aesthetic for this movie.  It will likely be a mess of a film, but I like everything I've seen of Batman and I'm just hoping to get some fun superheroic action out of it.  And on the plus side, I wouldn't care too much if Superman killed that Lex Luthor.
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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #37 on: March 24, 2016, 10:07:10 AM »
Originally I wanted to invite a friend... but after reading a few reviews I'll rather watch it on my own first.
And on the plus side, I wouldn't care too much if Superman killed that Lex Luthor.
^This... so much. He looks, sounds and well, feels like some kind of Bizarro-Lex.
Very poor casting choice.
« Last Edit: March 24, 2016, 10:33:54 AM by Nos482 »
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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #38 on: March 24, 2016, 10:09:47 AM »
I have no interest in this movie other than Batman's awesome hulkbuster suit new armor.

TBH I am really interested in the new armor. I think it looks great.
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Re: New Dawn of Justice Trailer
« Reply #39 on: March 24, 2016, 02:01:18 PM »
DC's heroes just do not work when done grim 'n' gritty.  There's just something about their core makeup that does not lend itself to that type of portrayal.  I'm very scared of what they might do to Captain Marvel when/if that movie/character falls under the Goyer/Nolan/Snyder work slate.