Topic: The Movie Thread

@Th3solution I just accepted the phase sbjcting since Marvels lost any realism they tried to have with Iron Man when they first started. The mom thing felt like a bit of a jump in logic, but then I just accepted for what it was lol. I didn’t expect to see Ant-Man and Infinity War explained, but that’s because the house arrest excuse was stupid as all get out. It made for a good personal life dynamic, but it’s utterly ludicrous to thing they didn’t get him for the battle of the worlds with Thanos because of it. Since he wasn’t in Infinity War I already accepted that part of it, and consider an Infinity Problem more than a Ant-Man problem.

Batman: Hush is getting an animated movie!!

Also, Disney are of course reactionary hypocrites in the James Gunn matter, but I don't see them reversing the decision.

Western society has never had to deal with the long-term ramifications of something like social media before. People create permanent records of their stupidity on something like Twitter now and it's haunting them long into the future.

Well, anyway, Disney is pretty famously averse to ANYTHING linking them to racism or pedophilia (pretty much the reason they'll NEVER pull Song of the South out of the memory hole by re-releasing it), so once this became a big thing, Gunn's firing was only a matter of time, even if they knew about the possibility that it would come out into the open. Just as ABC knew very well about Roseanne's tendency to post insane rubbish on her twitter account when they rebooted her show.

It has been pretty interesting watching conservatives wise up and start weaponizing the left's techniques against them to claim scalps.

@JohnnyShoulder @Ralizah I think the interesting thing is that there already was a trial be media back in 2013-2014 when these tweets originally surfaced and they were addressed by Gunn and Disney. What we have here is double jeopardy on social media.The implications are pretty scary - essentially anything ever said or done in your past can be weaponised. Gunn's jokes are horrid and very very offensive however you can see similar on plenty of 'edgy' shows from comedians or networks. I wonder what the impact will be to the creators of that content?

Absolutely right about the interesting use of this and it being weaponized. I hate the false outrage at everything - while there are successes in calling out obvious injustices, boiling down everything to a simple right or wrong is just turning everything into a witch hunt which means real injustices get lost in the mix.

@Kidfried It was weaponised. Perennial arse Mike Cernovich was the chief instigator this time around.

There's very little surprise in Disney's reaction. The far right mob-minded have found their perfect weapon against anyone like Gunn who is routinely critical of them - snowflake-like reactions to any highlighted behaviour that they can't deal with; so you may never be seen to be or have been anything other than perfect; never having succumbed to any particular 'ism'; be utterly and totally 'liberal' or progressive in all things at all times.
Any differing opinion, any dare to question the liberal hive-mind, and sadly - even a few bad taste, vulgar jokes are now the bullets that will sink you. Because not enough people and companies - how ever well intentioned are able to stand back and just say: 'so what?'.

Al Franken's resignation was largely the same sort of thing. His tasteless joke became a weapon to use against lefties and their "one drop rule" in terms of public morality (any sort of display of perceived sexism, racism, etc., regardless of context or severity, and you're 'unpersoned' by the mob).

Of course, it's not like influence in the culture wars doesn't go both ways. Lefties going after right-wing figures on youtube and getting their videos demonetized by targeting their advertisers is the EXACT same tactic Gators employed in 2014 to hurt Kotaku and cause it to lose millions of dollars in ad revenue.

And, of course, siccing mobs on people via social media is something both the alt right and the snowflake left are fond of doing. Doxxing, too.

Extreme political views and communities are especially bad on reddit. Tons of digital ink has been spilled on extreme right wing communities on that site, but, strangely, they never seem terribly interested in the equally crazy leftist subreddits on there. I guess this is to be expected with communities like r/late_stage_capitalism and whatnot, but r/politics, one of the bigger subs on the site, has been totally radicalized. I browse it every day and routinely see people calling for revolution, violence against politicians, against conservative neighbors, against supreme court judges (recently saw one highly upvoted post suggesting Justice Kennedy should be executed as a traitor for letting Trump pick his successor), etc.

Needless to say, I find this societal insanity to be both fascinating and utterly infuriating. Although I'm tired of being called, variously, a "nazi," a "soyboy," etc. so I've stopped offering my opinions online for the most part.

ON TOPIC: I saw The Equalizer 2 yesterday, and I really don't understand the lukewarm reviews. It's a fantastic movie! A definite improvement on the first one, too. This one is much more of a moody spy thriller. It still has some awesome action sequences, of course, but the film takes more time to set them up, and it's less interested in lingering on the aftermath. Denzel's healthy masculinity brings a lot of charm to the character, as it did in the first film.

@Ralizah On topic indeed!

I quite enjoyed the first film, and must admit that the reviews for the second have put me off (paying cinema prices at least). They're not unexpected, and seem to indicate the sequel I expected of such a tenuous movie reboot anyway. I can forgive Denzel a lot though, so I'll get around to it.

Have you seen the Death Wish remake? Surprisingly not awful. Willis does sometimes seem like he's in a different room to the rest of the cast; just seems like a bizarre disconnect with his performance and other people in some scenes, could be an editing thing I suppose.
But yeah, if you enjoyed The Equalizer, give Death Wish a shot.

@KALofKRYPTON I actually saw Death Wish opening weekend. It's about what I expected: a fun, if somewhat toothless remake of a classic exploitation film without the troubling racist subtext. Although the way the public reacts to his vigilante killings makes it feel a bit more like mid-series Dexter than the original Death Wish.

Ultimate Shymalan plot twist: The Sixth Sense was actually true all along and nobody on set could actually see Willis.

@Ralizah Ha!

If anyone doesn't know that one by now...!

@KALofKRYPTON There's always that one guy who gets upset when you spoil a 19 year old pop culture phenomenon with unmarked spoilers.

Robert De Niro is in talks to join Joaquin Phoenix's The Joker movie.

@WanderingBullet I still just don't understand why it's even happening...

I'd assume that since they're riffing on The Killing Joke, De Niro will be a cookie cutter mob boss pressuring Phoenix's Joseph Kerr/Jack Napier to don the Red Hood.

@KALofKRYPTON I think I withhold my judgement until I see the trailer. Besides, while Leto's performance wasn't bad, I don't think he did a great job either.

@WanderingBullet I like Phoenix, I think he's probably a good pick for the project actually. I just don't see all that much merit in it. WB could be putting their resources to work fixing their mishandling of Snyder's films, rather than falling back on their default position of pushing what they think will be instantly profitable. I assume that Leto is probably under contract for another film, and given how badly Suicide Squad was received (largely because of the studio meddling, and creating a Will Smith vehicle) and the slightly absurd state of the Batman solo film - you can bet that they aren't really in a rush to use Leto again. But The Joker sells.
It just feels cynical.

I quite like Leto's Joker. Took me a while, but the combination of genuine, fear inducing passive-aggression and the look really do work. I'd like to see the entire gamut of Joker material they filmed for Suicide Squad - I'd wager that it alone is easily better than the entire film- and potentially, the best representation of The Joker on film. (*Nicholson is great, Ledger is great - but both characterisations are bigger steps away from what I think of The Joker. The level of violence aside, Leto feels like, with a little more of perhaps what we didn't see - TAS Joker. The best Joker).

@KALofKRYPTON Maybe I'm being bias because I'm a Will Smith fan but I honestly wouldn't mind a Deadshot solo film. Both he and Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn were the only plus points for me in that movie.

I wasn't on board with the idea of Ledger being cast as The Joker initially but he proved me wrong. For me, he's Joker is one on the best and iconic on screen villains of all time. Like you, I think Phoenix is probably a good pick for the project as well mainly because I can actually see him as the Joker.

I also loved Under The Red Hood's animated movie version of The Joker.

@WanderingBullet I've no problem with Will Smith - I just think it wasn't the best move to anchor the film around him so heavily. Deadshot is a deathly boring character at the best of times (I mean, you've got Captain Boomerang!). Casting someone a with a little less star power and focusing more on the team really would have helped. As would not trying to be too Marvel-like in the edit (and trailers).

As I say Ledger is great, but his Joker is a total contrivance for that film. I'm not sure I can articulate it well enough to make sense to be honest. He's great, it's a good film for the most part too - but the story and script always feel so entirely contrived by way of narrative convenience, that I don't think Ledger's Joker could exist effectively outside of it. it is the way of Nolan's film making that his characters and story beats only ever exist to very specifically serve the narrative; an insular feeling I suppose.

SO what do you all think of the Star Wars Episode IX cast announcements, i'm pretty sure @RogerRoger will be happy

EDIT: Also it looks like the Disney/Fox deal is done so i wonder how that will impact things and i wonder how long until we get news on the X-Men and Fantastic 4 coming to the MCU?

Saw Deadpool 2 the other day and I really enjoyed it. I liked it more then the first one. I especially liked the end bits during the credits. Can't wait for the third one.

@Tasuki Nice. I've already pre-ordered the Blu-ray from Amazon. Still waiting for Infinity War to be available for pre-order.

@Kidfried I wasn't really a big fan of the Watchmen movie. There was also that one scene which was pretty disturbing.

@WanderingBullet @KidfriedI loved Watchmen. Excellent adaptation I thought.

I watched Coco (brilliant) and The Greatest Showman (waste of 2 hours) at the weekend.

Hoping to catch Teen Titans Go To The Movies with my daughter at some point this week too.