What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Tron wrote: Finally someone else who is fed up with the pointless euro gamification of superhero moves into having to be "dark, gritty and serious" (but almost without exception embarrassingly failing anyway) and can enjoy what superhero movies should be more often. (also stop with the mature violence, and make more of them more reasonable to watch with your 6 year old who just wants to see Iron Man fly around and do shit, having to worry about actual guns and violent explicit deaths can be saved as a "treat" for when they they are older).

In fact, here is my easy filter for directors of superhero movies

-> will this be fun and suitable for a 6 year old? No? Back to the drawing board

(I get it, the money draw is coming from sad middle aged men living out their basement nerd fantasies, so it will never happen, but still.)

I don't think your last comment there is correct. Those "sad middle aged men" that you think are going to see superhero movies are far, far too few to have any impact at the box office. That's not at all who Marvel is going after (I can't speak to DC because I have no fucking idea what they're doing). What Marvel has done, to their credit, is expand their appeal WAY beyond the tiny core of people who still read comic books. After all, the highest selling comic book in a given month sells, what, maybe 100,000 copies nationwide?? That's nothing. No, what Marvel has done is appeal to TEENAGERS because that's where the real money is. My 21-year-old daughter has never read a superhero comic in her life, and she freaking LOVES the Marvel movies. To hear her talk about geeky topics like infinity stones is a riot.

I'm also not sure that asking for a superhero movie with no violence, suitable for a 6-year-old makes a lot of sense. Physical violence is such a core aspect of the superhero genre. That's like asking for a Western movie with no gun violence. It's baked into the genre.

Great points, Joebot.

A superhero movie without any violence wouldn't even be a superhero movie anymore. A hero can't fight crime without fighting and still earn back at least production costs at the box office. Besides, little kids can't buy their own movie tickets, so there has to be at least some all-ages appeal. A good kid-friendly approach to the genre would be animated superhero movies. The Incredibles was amazing, and I personally think that Batman: Mask of the Phantasm was the best Batman movie ever. There is still violence, but the animation takes it a step back from reality and makes it less intense for young children.

I agree that Marvel superhero movies are wildly successful, in part, because they are reaching far beyond the vanishingly small modern comic book fanbase. DC is finally figuring the same thing out after three bad movies before this year. Wonder Woman proved that DC can successfully emulate the Marvel approach, and Justice League showed that even a half-assed compromise between the Marvel style and their beloved Zack Snyder grim/gritty shit can do well.

Not that grim/gritty is necessarily bad. It tends to be bad, but in the right hands, it can be great. Logan was a fantastic movie. I wouldn't take a young child to see it, but the tragic and extremely violent elements were in service to a strong story and featured a few excellent actors at the top of their game. Logan also broke all the rules for superhero movies, but did it well. No costumes, no flashy powers, no origin story for two of the main heroes, and frankly not much in the way of heroics so much as desperate self-preservation. The opening scene frankly seemed like a hard trolling of Wolverine fans, both funny and very disrespectful to the hero.

Agreed. That perspective strikes me as one similar to the old "Comics are for KIDS!" routine that we used to get whenever Batman wasn't (Biff!) punching out the (Pow!) villain-of-the-week, but was instead involved in a story with adult themes. Because he's an adult and if you want a functioning character (i.e. human first, superhero second), that's what needs to happen. This is DC's primary failing with almost every character other than the Batman. If you're expecting every Marvel film to be the equivalent of a Pixar film, you're going into them with a wildly inaccurate perception both of the intended audience and the material that they're based upon. Marvel first identified their target audience as college-aged back in the 60s. That's a half-century ago. DC persisted with the villain-of-the-week for the next decade (barring the Batman) and still doesn't really understand it, which is why Marvel has been eating their lunch ever since.

I also agree with Shellhead's suggestion of the animated stuff. The Incredibles is one of the best films of the last 20 years, mostly because it makes fun of a lot of superhero tropes, but still weaves in enough bombast to keep the kids entertained while telling an intelligent story. Incidentally, most of the best comic material out there these days has precisely zero to do with superheroes. I've been reading, writing, and/or producing comics for most of my life and I currently read one "superhero" book: Kurt Busiek's Astro City, which is only marginally that, since the setting is basically a way for him to tell other stories with superhero trappings. That's what Marvel's secret has been for a long time, even though their comics and their films are a lot more oriented toward the superhero-y than Astro City is.

Tron wrote: In fact, here is my easy filter for directors of superhero movies

-> will this be fun and suitable for a 6 year old? No? Back to the drawing board

(I get it, the money draw is coming from sad middle aged men living out their basement nerd fantasies, so it will never happen, but still.)

HAH, well, I have to DISagree with you there, my good man. (mouthy inhale) You see, while TRUE, I am well renumerated as a sysadmin, I would not say I am SAD, NO, indeed, I feel my rich fantasy life brings me immense joy (adjusts hat) and SNEH, let's just say I have...

Ok, that's enough of that. We can have both! I want cool gritty superhero stuff. I want goofy lighthearted superhero stuff. I think the problem we have is that the gritty stuff is fucking bad. It's either made light enough to score PG-13, and thus, doesn't actually seem gritty, or it's DEADPOOL and wall-to-wall CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY jokes.

LOGAN was good gritty. THOR is good goofy. Stop spending money on bad movies just because they are in between the good ones.

Loving Vincent - A film about the death of Vincent Van Gogh that's animated using 65,000 oil paintings. It was definitely unique and interesting. Would recommend.

Loving Vincent - A film about the death of Vincent Van Gogh that's animated using 65,000 oil paintings. It was definitely unique and interesting. Would recommend.

Yeah, I really need to catch that. Looks great.

I saw Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri yesterday. So very good, and easily one of the best Coen brothers movies that the Coen brothers didn’t make. People being beautiful and horrible and cynical and hopeful and conflicted. Several wonderful and surprising moments and scenes and lines throughout. And there's an amazing meta takeaway that parallels the whole premise. Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, and Sam Rockwell, all terrific. Barney, get thee hence and go see this.

There’s so much to see these days! It’s on my list for sure to see , as are
Gods own Country
Disaster Artist
Shape of Water
The Post
Star Wars

Man... I’ll make a big effort right before Xmas to see stuff. I’ll make you a deal, you see Florida Project and I’ll see Three Billboards? I’m dying to talk to you about Florida

Last night I finally got to see Logan. It's on HBO this month. I loved it, and it is definitely one of the best comic book movies I have ever seen. I won't say it was the best because I am probably being influenced by having just seen it. I would call it a comic book movie as opposed to a super hero movie; its tone is definitely not dudes in spandex.

it ages well in your head as you think about it later too. What comes with being someone with extraordinary powers, the various burdens... it's so good

I’ll make the deal that when Florida Project is somewhere I can see it, I will. But don’t miss Three Billboards if it’s showing near you.

Need to see three billboards. The trailers had this thing framed in a really unappealing way but the film sounds totally different.

Finally saw GOTG 2...I have to say I think the "meh" response it kind of got was misguided. But I mean, shit, I sort of "meh"ed it off when it was in theaters. But I loved it, and I was surprised at how emotional it got- there was quite a big payoff for all of the characters and their relationships and even though it was still a big, dumb CGI-fest it didn't short-change the characters. I really liked the pairing off and how everybody found something they needed. Unusually effective and unexpected for this kind of picture.

HOWEVER...



It was also really funny overall, I thought it was funnier than the first one, mainly because the heavy lifting of introducing the gang was already done and everyone was already established. Drax stole the show in this regard, really funny work by Bautista.

Young Kurt Russell creeped me out.

Like almost all comic movies, it still had to have the big stupid CGI-heavy end of the world finale...but it kind of didn't need it at all. I was more satisfied by the character resolutions.

Soundtrack wasn't quite as good though- some good cuts, sure, but it just didn't have the impact overall.

The Watchers...ha! Now that was unexpected. But then again, so was Howard the Duck.

Versus Thor: Ragnarok...not sure. Probably would give that one the edge over it, but I think these are two of the best Marvel pictures as it stands. Funny how my ranking there has changed so much from when Winter Solider was 1 and Avengers was 2...now it's Ragnarok, GOTG2, Doctor Strange and then the rest of them...

Michael Barnes wrote:

Warning: Spoiler!

Yondu dying was bullshit. He pulled a Ste
Like almost all comic movies, it still had to have the big stupid CGI-heavy end of the world finale...but it kind of didn't need it at all. I was more satisfied by the character resolutions.

We just watched GotG2 last night and this is how I felt the entire time. That much CGI does nothing for me. I never feel any weight/danger/anything to all of the action and it just washes over me as noise. The character beats were great and I'd much rather watch that.

I really enjoyed GotG 2. It has been interesting because I personally found Thor extremely unfunny and drag-ey but everyone loved that, but then I laughed a lot at GotG 2 and general consensus on that was it was pretty eh.

Put me in the thumbs-up category for GotG2 as well. I didn't really understand all the "meh" I was seeing here, but didn't feel like fighting it out.

Storywise, I think it's a lot tighter than the first one. The whole Kree business isn't all that relatable for casual folks, but everybody understands daddy issues.

It had a lot more chance to let the characters shine (again by not needing to introduce a whole cast). I probably like the first one more, but not by a huge margin. On any given day it could be either one.

I still need to see Ragnarok, if only because "is it in space?" seems to be the most reliable marker for how much I'm going to like an MCU movie.