I noticed a "how did they miss that?" gaffe whilst watching "Joker 2" (most of which I rather liked despite and sometimes because of its faults). When reading the verdict near the end, the foreman of the jury says "the people of New York versus Arthur Fleck". Surely that should've been "the people of Gotham City"? Oopsie.
Bonfire Night here in the UK so it's time to watch "V for Vendetta". It has a decent enough 4K transfer - with top notch Atmos - and the movie itself is fair (with one excellent lead performance, one merely adequate and a raft of cameos from the best of British character actors) but the original Alan Moore penned comic series is (as usual) leaps and bounds better.
Checked out Godzilla Minus One. This feels like a direct response to the complaints people had with Shin Godzilla. They aren't complaints I shared, so I felt like this was a huge downgrade from Shin.
The one exception here are the special effects, Minus One has effects that are an astounding leap over the oftentimes pretty ropey effects in Shin. But even then, something about how grounded and haunted Shin was made those set pieces work even with the limitations of the effects. Minus One is more like a theme park ride, so the effects are better but the set pieces are weightless.
They also have only one set piece actually set in a populated area and its easily the best moment of the entire film. It also comes in around half way through this thing which is a good two hours, so it just made it a bit of a slog for me. Felt like the movie peaked and then I had another forty five minutes of cheesy melodrama to wade my way through before we had a limp final set piece in the middle of the ocean and a goofy cliffhanger ending.
I personally enjoyed Shin alright, but I thought the human stuff was a bit drier than it was meant to be. I felt the human part being a worthy story without Godzilla elevated the film in a way Godzilla hasn't seen since the first one, or perhaps that had never been done before.
@LN78 I think it was the state of New York, where Gotham is. Joker 2 had an awful ending, and upon retrospect and rewatching the first, the rest of the movie gets weaker and weaker too. It's astounding how the movie set out to not be good and fail as a sequel.
@Jaz007 Hmmmm. Not sure about that. That would mean that New York State has essentially two NYC's in that universe. You could be right though - in Donner's "Superman" Metropolis and New York City are obviously one and the same thing, so who knows?
@Jaz007@LN78 I’m no comic book scholar, but supposedly there’s an old Frank Miller quote that says “Metropolis is NYC during the day and Gotham is NYC at night”, which seems feasible as an explanation of the artistic inspiration of the two settings in isolation, but once you start having Superman and Batman crossovers then it completely falls apart when trying to have a real world grounding of the fiction. Likely the originators of the comics didn’t intend for readers to reach for real world parallels (but I will anyway…)
Over the years I’ve personally always considered Gotham as being analogous to Chicago and Metropolis to NYC, just because of the vibe of each of those cities . However that also isn’t really a perfect association because I think a lot of the crossover content relies on the two cities being close to each other. So another explanation out there says that the neighboring cities correspond to NYC and Newark, New Jersey. Yet another theory says that Gotham is Bronx/Brooklyn/Queens and Metropolis is Manhattan/Staten Island… or something like that. My knowledge of the NYC boroughs is lacking. Either way, the metaphor still falls apart when you get into the fictional content because the two settings seem to clearly be isolated and independent cities with their own government, leadership, and structuring. They don’t seem to be merely cultural carve-outs of the same city.
Then there’s the supposed proximity of Metroplis to Smallville which is clearly located in the state of Kansas. That would make Metropolis more akin to Chicago geographically speaking, but it doesn’t quite fit artistically, imo.
But one thing is clear — I’m definitely putting too much thought into it. 😂
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@FuriousMachine I’m glad that someone else likes to get lost in the fan theory weeds! 😄
It’s pretty clear that comics draw from historical and literal people, places, and events. I think overall DC is more metaphorical than Marvel who tends to be more openly unmistakably about its references. It’s fun to think about, regardless.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Let’s not forget Zack Snyder’s brilliant notion that the two cities are essentially just across the water from one another and yet have (apparently) strictly adhered to superhero jurisdictions and completely separate, independent and seemingly mutually exclusive news media. Genius.
@Th3solution I think you're digging into the issues of joining characters that were built to be separate. You have to forget a few things for the co-existence to work. we just have to accept that New York City was built twice in two different places and one doesn't have night time and the other doesn't have day time.
Watched Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse this week. Both were absolutely brilliant! Exceptional art style and animation. The plots were really engrossing, especially the latter movie as seeing all the different Spider-Men was just awesome. I seriously love Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen, more so than Peter Parker. They're just more interesting to me.
Anyway, great movies and I can't wait to see the next one.
What can anyone tell me about Transformers One as someone who thinks (some live action loved aside) Transformers hasn’t had a good series since Cybertron?
@PorkChopExpress Oh no! At only 69, that's too young I've loved him ever since I saw him in "Candyman" and every project he appeared in was better for it.
@LtSarge Glad you loved them, too They are truly great movies and the only reason they're not on my shelf is that I'm holding out hope for a box set when the third one is out.
@FuriousMachine Yeah, I'm really looking forward to watching the third movie.
Speaking of animated media, I saw that Prime has the Batman Animated Series as well as a new animated show from 2024 called "The Caped Crusader". Max also has some Batman animated movies as well as a Harley Quinn animated show. Are any of these worth watching? I've really become interested in animated superhero media now after the Spider-Verse movies and want to watch more.
@LtSarge The latest TMNT animated film i can highly recommend. It has a similar art style to the Spider-Verse films, but also feels different enough. I think there is also a TV show, but I've not seen that.
Not super hero related, but Arcane and Castlevanie on Netflx are top tier animanted shows IMO. The second season of Arcane drops today too.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
@JohnnyShoulder Thanks for the recommendations. I think I know which TMNT film you're referring to. I've also heard great things about Castlevania and Arcane. I'll add them to my watchlist whenever I decided to subscribe to those services again.
@LtSarge Almost forgot Blue Eyed Samurai, which is probably the best piece of entermaintment I've seen this year, animated or not. The TMNT film I'm referring to is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.
@PorkChopExpress It took a few episodes to get into Arcane, but was totally bowled over by it by the end. Yeah Castlevania is great, and I've not even played any of the games either.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
@LtSarge The Caped Crusader on Prime didn't do it for me; i didn't love the style, but I'm a bit picky when it comes to animation styles. I know a lot of people liked it, so you should give it a look and see if it's for you or not.
I can't speak for TMNT, as I haven't seen that one yet, but I concur with "Castlevania" being good. Though, in my mind, nothing can touch "Arcane" when it comes to animated series. To me, it is simply in a league of its own. I haven't seen "Blue Eyed Samurai" yet, though. From what I hear, it comes close.
@JohnnyShoulder Oh yes! I have become unhealthily obsessed with steelbooks
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