Bats v Supes

[Dalty]

Does he bleed?

[Mal Shot First]

And Batman growls once again.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Pretty much what I expected. Pretty dreary.

[Dalty]

I liked it. Looks like they are taking a sensible approach to the ramifications of Supes existence.

[Space Tycoon]

Hits me right where I live. Pretty cool.

[Dalty]

Better than hitting you right in the baby-maker!

[Space Tycoon]

Now, I do have a few questions... is that the Batwing or plane firing on, and blowing up those soldiers? Is the no-kill policy still in effect?

Also, Riddler at 1:21?

[Corporal_Hicks]

I don't know, it comes off as trying too hard.

Also, the timing of the trailer release is horrible. It does not stack up well vs that Star Wars trailer.

[Dalty]

Yeah, it does. However then I just sit back and think:

They have actually successfully pulled off an Avengers movie, and a sequel is coming out, with a whole cinematic and TV intergrated world around it.

We are actually going to see Batman v Superman fight each other on screen.

And they really, really did start making the next 3 Star Wars movies.

It's like some kind of geeks fever dream!!! And yet we still moan and whinge. Cunts like us are never happy.

[Space Tycoon]

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

[Dalty]

He is in a dark place........ permanently!

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Darkness! No parents!

[Dalty]

Sometimes it's not black, it's just very dark grey.

[Space Tycoon]

What don't you Fucking UNDERSTAND?!!!

[Space Tycoon]

I say this as a full-on Nolanite, with no apologies.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Nolan can barely do Nolan. Do we really want Snyder doing Nolan?

[Dalty]

Oh, yeah, I forgot. According to the internet apparently Nolan is now shit and 3 of the best superhero movies ever made are also shit. I forgot that the Internet is always correct and I will immediately moderate my behaviour as instructed.

[Space Tycoon]

Now you're learning.

[Space Tycoon]

According to the Internet, Nolan now sucks. As does Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Ridley Scott, and George Lucas.

In the coming years, so will James Gunn, Joss Whedon, JJ Abrams, and those guys who directed Cap 2.

Spielberg seems to be immune from this phenomena somehow.

[Dalty]

The Internet will get him eventually.

[Space Tycoon]

It gets us all in the end.

[Space Tycoon]

So to speak.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Nolan's not bad. I never said he was. I think he has a great movie somewhere in him.

Nolan's Bat movies go back and forth from being incredibly engaging to pretty clunky, but I think they're decent movies on the whole. I'm not sure about calling them superhero movies. Sometimes it feels right to call them that, but much of the time it doesn't.

We've had this conversation before. I feel like Dalty gets defensive whenever Nolan's not uniformly praised.

My comment was meant more to knock Snyder than Nolan, if it wasn't clear. I don't think Snyder has it in him to do an outright and convincing Nolan pastiche. I don't think he can, and I don't think he will. There's too much "bro" left in Snyder. It's clear he has ambitions toward artistry and a desire to delve into philosophy, but these things continue to be tempered by his bro-ness. Oddly enough, this bro-ness, despite how much it annoys me, is probably the thing that keeps his movies watchable for me. I think a bro-less Snyder movie might be insufferable. The bro-ness is ridiculous enough, at least, to keep me there until the credits roll.

Nolan strikes me as someone trying to convince himself and his audience of his depth and talent. He has this depth and talent, but I'm pretty sure he's insecure about it. Once he moves past his insecurity, he may make something so incredibly good that it'll blow away even his biggest fans.

I'm more convinced that Nolan has a great movie in him than I am that Snyder has a great movie in him. So far, it seems to me Nolan's just better across the board. He gets better performances out of his actors, he's a better and more focused visual stylist, and, as far as I can tell when I listen to the two of them talk, he's plain smarter. (Being smarter doesn't necessarily make you a better filmmaker.) If Snyder has an edge on Nolan, it's that he seems genuinely excited to be making movies. (This can be a mixed bag in its own right--think Ed Wood--but it doesn't have to be. Scorsese continues to seem to me to be genuinely excited to be making movies. He can be hit-or-miss, himself, but when he hits, he really hits.)

Snyder's already come fairly close to full-on Nolanite, tonally, with Watchmen. It's still full of Snyderisms, of course. It also fully embraces the more fantastic elements of superhero comics. I don't think Nolan has done that, yet, with a comic property. He kind of did it with The Prestige, but there were no comic book superheroes there for him to be partially ashamed of making a movie about, and he was able to hide the fantasy behind science.

I think The Prestige is still Nolan's best effort. The Dark Knight seems the better effort on the surface, but a big part of that is Ledger's performance. Take Ledger out of the equation, and it demotes the whole to a fairly solid cop/heist drama that asks some big questions about democracy and surveillance, has some pretty heavy-handed moralizing, and has good actors having to speak some cringeworthy lines.

This is just my take on things. I'm not the one who decides what makes movies good or bad. I've never made a movie, so I'm only able to look at the movies of others and say, "I would do this this way, but I wouldn't do this this way." There's no guaranteeing I'd even be able to have the movie turn out to look the way I actually wanted it to look. I can applaud Snyder and Nolan in this regard. I get the feeling that they're both generally satisfied with how their movies turn out.

I haven't seen Interstellar. Maybe I'll feel it to be that great movie I continue to think Nolan has in him. I also haven't seen Dawn of Justice. Maybe it will surprise the hell out of me and won't be the slapdash clusterfuck I fear it will be. If it does end up a clusterfuck, I won't necessarily blame Snyder for it. The dude was made to scramble when Man of Steel didn't do as well as they were hoping it would. He was made to scramble two or three times, even. I'm pretty sure his original intention was just to make a Superman-centric Man of Steel sequel. I can't say I know exactly how things went down, but looking in from the outside, it seems he was first forced to include Batman, then he was forced to refocus and put Batman more front-and-center (notice it's not Superman v Batman; that's a clear vote of no confidence for the ability of this version of Superman to make bank on its own), then he was forced to wedge more DC characters in and make it a backdoor pilot for a Justice League movie. He's had to roll with a number of (sucker) punches from WB/the big brass.

[Space Tycoon]

I get a little defensive about my tastes in movies when I've had a few oat sodas, just in case The Entire Fucking Internet hasn't noticed yet. At first blush Snyder and Nolan don't exactly seem to be a natural match. I can only wonder how they get on professionally, if there aren't some pretty epic disputes along the way.

For now I'll say I think you owe it to yourself to see Interstellar. I had my own issues with it, but overall it is the most unique take on, well, interstellar travel I've seen in many, many years. Whether or not it will lead to more hard sf movies in the years to come, remains to be seen. I'd like to see him do more in that vein.