There's nothing here we haven't seen many, many times before—and frankly done better.
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Review: <em>The Flash</em> is solid superhero fun, weighed down by too-familiar tropes
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I'm going to pass on this on the theater. I can't decide if I'm tired of super hero movies in general, or just DC's continuing way they do them. I suspect its 60/40 or 40/60. I saw the new Antman......meh. I saw the last GotG.....It was good but it wasn't a movie I was going to watch over and over. I just didn't come away with a feeling that DAMN that was really something I want to see again.
The super hero movie just doesn't hit me like it did when Iron Man came out.
The super hero movie just doesn't hit me like it did when Iron Man came out.
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It's hard to be interested in characters or a movie that the studio isn't even interested in continuing on with.
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"I can't decide if I'm tired of super hero movies in general, or just DC's continuing way they do them"
I figured out years ago that I was tired of super hero movies. On some level they are the same and are no longer even fun - at least for me ( for quite a while )
I figured out years ago that I was tired of super hero movies. On some level they are the same and are no longer even fun - at least for me ( for quite a while )
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If it weren’t set in the MCU, would the standalone GotG movies even be considered superhero films?
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Superhero movies are becoming like westerns. There are occasional breaths of fresh air (Into the Spiderverse), but most of it's been done already, and usually better. I lined up to see Nolan's Batman films and some of the early Marvel flicks, but I just don't care anymore, and no amount of Marvel spam on Disney+ can change my mind.
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I think... there's a sort of new paradigm for superhero movies: they're a lot more like comic books, these days.
In that, "read once" is the go-to mode for most comics. Especially the "arc" ones, the odd stories where the arc is written by someone who's maybe exploring things outside the normal wheelhouse. I mean, Batman? The Batman origin has been done a lot of times -- but there's obscure Batcomics that we'll probably never get to.
And that's okay. I mean, I've seen The Matrix upwards of fifteen times. I've seen the remainder at most twice. Not every movie has to be re-watched or even re-watchable to be good. There's something to be said for pulpy villain of the week takes on the various superheroes.
(Myself, I'd love there to be more Constantine, but I don't think enough people feel that way. He's far outside the usual DC wheelhouse, so I'm not expecting a "superhero" movie starring him.
although... John Constantine is actually the role Keanu Reeves said he'd like to reprise the most, so maybe? He's got enough pull to get it done.)
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I am completely burned out on most superhero films. However, the latest Spiderverse movie is one of the best I've ever seen (and the first one was also fantastic). The 2024 sequel is one of the few movies I'm actively looking forward to.
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It was fine... just fine. A reasonable popcorn flick. Ezra Miller was frankly too annoying for me, just the wrong side of nerd trope cringe. I had a beer and enjoyed it well enough.
The WHOLE DAMN MOVIE was about the terrible and tragic consequences of messing with time and then he STILL goes messing with time and causes George Clooney. Maybe I missed the comic book canon where the Flash is an idiot.
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There's just something lost so often when they try to do bigger and better and outdo what came before.
Scenes like Iron Man's first flight and first seeing the Brachiosaurus in Jurassic Park...they've been "outdone" time and time again but those are so well done I can still watch and feel the same wonder I did the first time.
Scenes like Iron Man's first flight and first seeing the Brachiosaurus in Jurassic Park...they've been "outdone" time and time again but those are so well done I can still watch and feel the same wonder I did the first time.
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I like superheroes and all that, but for me, the problem is when the stakes are raised to the level of "the entire universe is at stake" or, well, in this movie's case, "all the universes are at stake" -- the stakes get so stupid high that I always end up thinking of Dragon Ball Z! I was bored out of my skull watching the latest Avengers - movies with Thanos exactly for this reason.
Superheroes are at their best, when they're more capable than regular humans, but not to obscene amounts. It's their flaws and weaknesses that make them interesting. The Boys isn't a movie, I know, but I absolutely fricking loved it because for all the heroes' might and power, they were quite frankly even worse off than your average, regular Jane or Joe!
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Haven't seen the film, so I'm going to nitpick a part of the article:
It wasn't just "several scenes," it was a huge portion of principle photography, nearly half.
Principal photography began November 26, 1984, on a 14-week schedule set to conclude on February 28, 1985, Stolz was replaced on January 10, 1985. 34 days of filming was lost and had to be redone.
en.wikipedia.org
This article has the list of scenes Stoltz shot:
backtothefuture.fandom.com
Also, this movie isn't the first piece of media to do "alternate universe has Stoltz starring in BTTF." Fringe did the same joke in an episode over a decade ago:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScYGqRsHQ7s
www.fringetelevision.com
It wasn't just "several scenes," it was a huge portion of principle photography, nearly half.
Principal photography began November 26, 1984, on a 14-week schedule set to conclude on February 28, 1985, Stolz was replaced on January 10, 1985. 34 days of filming was lost and had to be redone.
Back to the Future - Wikipedia
This article has the list of scenes Stoltz shot:
Eric Stoltz
Eric Cameron Stoltz (born September 30, 1961, Whittier, California) is an American actor who was originally cast for the role of Marty McFly when production of Back to the Future began on November 26, 1984. According to the available call sheets, Stoltz filmed for seven weeks between November...
backtothefuture.fandom.com
Also, this movie isn't the first piece of media to do "alternate universe has Stoltz starring in BTTF." Fringe did the same joke in an episode over a decade ago:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScYGqRsHQ7s
Fringe Flashback: Eric Stoltz In Back To The Future
In the Fringe episode "Peter" , we see a flashback with two observers coming out of a movie theater showing Back To The Future . However, ...
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I'm quite partial to the Michael Keaton Batmans, myself. I'll grant you that it may be largely nostalgia and all that.
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The story of this movie is meh, but what really brought it down for me was the special effects (CGI), they are really terrible and very distracting.
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The new Ant-Man was pretty horrendous. The whole but of what makes the early Ant-Man movies fun is watching people deal with tiny things growing to hugely over sized proportions (the pez dispenser and Thomas the tank engine) or large things shrunk down to silly tiny things.
Ant Man 3 immediately went away from that and just turned into a poor man's Thor Ragnarok for some reason.
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If you have enough money to see Spiderman and The Flash once each. I'm told seeing Spiderman twice is the winning play.
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Similar. I think I'm just exhausted with all the different versions of Batman right now. And I say that as someone who got into comics/superheroes because I watched both Batman 1966 and the Justice League cartoon over the course of one summer.
And I understand the main draw of this movie is Keaton's Batman, but WB had the Batgirl movie ready to go with Keaton and none of Miller's current issues.
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We're dancing upon the transitional moment in history where Iron Man came out closer to the release date of Jurassic Park than to the present day.
Time to update this 12-year old comic.
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The Flash is a Soulless Corporate Checklist for DC Executives trying to compete with the MCU. Including having 2008 CG (seriously, that was glaringly awful). It wasn't BAD, but it was boring. Meanwhile, Marvel is doing fun stuff like Across the Spider-Verse (but they also just did Ant Man Quantummania, so maybe DC has a slight chance - or maybe that was just there to give them false hope!).
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snowman<ca>
Ars Praefectus
This is kind of where I am with full season arcs of TV shows, while some have executed it fantastically. Most of the time it seems to end up with portions over staying it's welcome, causing plots to be drug out way longer than should, cause pace to drag in individual episodes, and when fail hurt replayability of the good episodes. Complicated with it is much harder to have an arc worth 10-22 episodes, than 2-3 then maybe revisit later when have good idea.
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Praefectus
There were 450 movies released in 2022, around half the number released in 2019. It's not the "saturation" of superhero movies (which number fewer than 20, maybe even fewer than 10), it's the quality.
I just finished a (fourth?) rewatch of the MCU. The films I've enjoyed in the past I still enjoy. The films I hate I dropped 15 minutes in or skipped over entirely. The TV series are newer and have only been viewed once, but What If?, Loki, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier are just as good the second time. Hopefully, I'll feel the same for the remaining TV series, and maybe have a better opinion of the ones I didn't care for (Moon Knight and She-Hulk).
There is a notable drop in quality starting with the Phase 4 movies, though I did enjoy Eternals (fight me) and Shang-Chi. Quantumania... Whatever magic made the first two Ant-Man films work ran out along with the rest of the MCU. And I know this, because I had negative opinions of some Phase 1-3 films when they debuted, yet I just watched Homecoming for the first time a few weeks ago and loved it.
The industry is dominated by dramas, romantic comedies, sci-fi, and thrillers, and no one complains of saturation. Superhero films are just getting an increasing amount of mass-produced garbage. And from what I've read, The Flash does little to change that. Fortunately, there are films like Into the Spider-Verse to look forward to.
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Saw this in IMAX yesterday…Father’s Day gift. Now, I have to disown my oldest son. SIGH
SPOILER:
.
.…
.
Flying babies. Lead actor so annoying, you want to stab him and his mother. Black and white George Reeves? (Part of the Ready Player One eats too many mushrooms vibe of the movie)
I had hope. Sadly dashed. Fucking flying babies…
SPOILER:
.
.…
.
Flying babies. Lead actor so annoying, you want to stab him and his mother. Black and white George Reeves? (Part of the Ready Player One eats too many mushrooms vibe of the movie)
I had hope. Sadly dashed. Fucking flying babies…
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I wouldn't just give Marvel a win with Across the Spider-Verse. That was a Sony production, in association with Marvel, rather than the Marvel/Disney MCU machine.
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I can't remember the last superhero movie I enjoyed, so this article isn't super relevant to me.
However, I'm throwing my $0.02 in to say that third screen shot (2 Flash 1 Supergirl) looks like a fan-made desktop wallpaper.
However, I'm throwing my $0.02 in to say that third screen shot (2 Flash 1 Supergirl) looks like a fan-made desktop wallpaper.
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Haven't seen the film, so I'm going to nitpick a part of the article:
It wasn't just "several scenes," it was a huge portion of principle photography, nearly half.
Principal photography began November 26, 1984, on a 14-week schedule set to conclude on February 28, 1985, Stolz was replaced on January 10, 1985. 34 days of filming was lost and had to be redone.
Back to the Future - Wikipedia
This article has the list of scenes Stoltz shot:
Eric Stoltz
Eric Cameron Stoltz (born September 30, 1961, Whittier, California) is an American actor who was originally cast for the role of Marty McFly when production of Back to the Future began on November 26, 1984. According to the available call sheets, Stoltz filmed for seven weeks between November...
Also, this movie isn't the first piece of media to do "alternate universe has Stoltz starring in BTTF." Fringe did the same joke in an episode over a decade ago:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScYGqRsHQ7s
Fringe Flashback: Eric Stoltz In Back To The Future
In the Fringe episode "Peter" , we see a flashback with two observers coming out of a movie theater showing Back To The Future . However, ...
It must have been horrible for him to see all his posters fade away.
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Huh. I've moved residences five times since The Matrix came out, and I really dislike moving. I chose not to calculate any of the others. I just remember hearing a review of it on the radio on my way home from work one night and thinking "that's what we are doing this weekend."
My wife asked our kid if he would go see the new Little Mermaid with her, and his response was an immediate "No." She's taking a cousin's kid instead.
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Batman's whole thing is being a rich guy who plays vigilante at night by dressing up as a bat and beating the tar out of goons, mooks and clowns.
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I agree with you on the stakes.
It also really does not help that the whole superhero concept does not seem to scale well as the stakes scale up. I think the problem is that stories are more interesting when they are relatable. In trying to up the stakes too much, you lose the characters, and the flaws in the superhero paradigm get too exposed.
For example, spiderman (Sam Remi) like all superheroes is a ridiculous concept, but it works because we can relate to it A kid that is going through a big change in his life, yes we have all done that. Someone like Osborn losing their mind, easy to get. And it makes sense that those two fools would end up having a fist fight on the streets to resolve their relatively low states beef.
But if you try to scale that up too much, it becomes so much harder. Give them too strong powers, and people stop being able to picture themselves with those powers. Add too many characters and out brains cannot form an emotional connection with them. Add too many victims and they all become meaningless numbers. Make the threat more sophisticated, and you need the characters to have a more sophisticated approach than what amounts to having a fist fight on the front lawn like my drunken neighbors.
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Praefectus
Some say it's the other way around: Batman's whole thing is being a vigilante who plays rich guy during the day by dressing up as a playboy and dating an endless stream actresses, models, and socialites.
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The 22-26 episodes a season format is dying and probably never coming back as a mainstream production format because of what an absolute bear the production schedule is for everyone involved, plus being such a time sink that it's basically impossible to take on any other projects until the show ends. But I think it'd help a lot to have like 15-18 episodes instead of the current norm of 8-13 and then actually have an episode or two of world-building "filler" like they used to have in the old days. Star Trek Discovery season 4 actually more or less did this with the casino episode, which was still ultimately tied to the overall season plot, but which was mostly a fun standalone breather episode.
And/or, take the old A/B/sometimes-even-C plot structure from shows like 90s era Stark Trek and Stargate and have one of the plots be a side story (like the "character-specific episodes" these shows used to do) and have the other be the main plot arc story. Mix it up even and have the side story be the A plot on occasion in the middle of the season, while, sure, it's all going to be main plot at the start and end of a season (again, no different than something like DS9 or even SG-1).
There's also something to be said for having a lot of standalone stories that still have meaningful continuity between them. TNG doesn't do this because that just wasn't what TV shows were doing when TNG started. Voyager was frustrating because they were actively running away from this. DS9 went hybrid with serialization but lots of episodic-but-in-continuity stuff in between, and Farscape was similar but tilted a bit more toward seralized. The king of "it's not really serialized but there's a ton of continuity as you go along that you can't skip" is SG-1 (if you try to skip an episode it's guaranteed you'll wind up not fully understanding what's going on in an episode a couple of seasons later), Strange New Worlds is doing it to really good effect too.
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Some say that people like to fantasize that they are are rich and famous and that's why Batman was created rich and famous.
Some people also like to fantasize that they are strong and powerful and can single handedly take down 'the bad guys' and that's why Batman is a vigilante.
What makes him special though is that he's a borderline psycho. Or maybe he's actually gone over the edge?
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The last Superhero movie I watched in theaters was Avengers: End Game. At the risk of sounding like I troll, I actually slapped my forehead in disappointment when they introduced time travel. This I knew would now give any future Marvel movie a cop out to get any character out of any tough situation anytime. The multiverse was introduced too quick. I always felt the "cosmic beings" stories should be developed in parallel. The "unlimited power" thats offered by the idea of multiverse just makes you question what is really at stake? If the flick of of finger from a superhero can change the past, what does it really matter anymore? Every superhero movie now consists of the same emotional "jump on the grenade" character who dies, piano music plays and 2 minutes later they are brought back to life because of some mcguffin multiverse/time traveling plot device. Or the case where to get out a pickle some superhero (like Dr. Strange against Dormammu in a time loop) would use some mystical power to get out of one scenario only never to use that power ever again when it could be useful.
DCEU had an opportunity to keep the story lines more grounded and I might have given them a chance until I learned they are doing the same thing as Marvel. I decided to give Flash a hard pass at that point. Shoehorning in Batman because of... nostlgia bait was the other reason. I was hoping DC would try to do their own thing instead of trying to play catch-up and follow Marvel down their death-spiral.
DCEU had an opportunity to keep the story lines more grounded and I might have given them a chance until I learned they are doing the same thing as Marvel. I decided to give Flash a hard pass at that point. Shoehorning in Batman because of... nostlgia bait was the other reason. I was hoping DC would try to do their own thing instead of trying to play catch-up and follow Marvel down their death-spiral.
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