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DC Universe

   
Quote:
Originally Posted by Josh View Post
Really enjoying it so far.
We are too. We rewatched seasons 1 and 2 in the run-up to 3. Next to Avatar, they are probably my favs.

Not much to add to the praises of Young Justice. I loved the two previous seasons and the third is starting great.

Now for the much more controversial Titans... Well. The promotional campaign was a walking cringefest of a catastrophe through and through. The question of its fidelity to the original material remains, at best, debatable. And it clearly goes for the "Grim and Gritty" route which, by and large, isn't my preferred one as far as comics and comics adaptations go. So, what did I think of it when, against all odds, word of mouth convinced me to give it a try? I enjoyed it a lot.

For better and worse, the series bears the mark of Geoff Johns. Which, among other things, means that, yes, our heroes are ultraviolent and unapologetic sociopaths who routinely brawl, beat, bruise, maim, mutilate, kill, even COMMIT MASS MURDER, FOR GOD'S SAKE, and that there's enough blood splashes along the road to fill a bathtub and enjoy it Countess Bathory-style. All in all, I honestly found it a bit sickening at times.

That strong (some could say: extreme) bias aside, though... one has to recognize that the story works. The interactions between the characters work. And something else I'd be inclined to credit Geoff Johns for? It gives the feeling it all happens in a coherent, breathing, convincing pre-existing continuity: clearly the best rendition of the idea that, to date, was ever achieved in a DC live adaptation on either big or small screen. (Despite an unfortunate shyness to show Bruce Wayne's face onscreen that quickly turns into a laughable gimmick.) The actors are good. The filmmaking is good. And in the end, I'm waiting for the next season.

Adaptation isn't transposition. Sure, if the final product you make is bad, then the fact that it betrays the original material just adds insult to injury. But who cares if Stanley Kubrick's movies betray their sources of inspiration? On their own terms, they're masterpieces. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is Kubrick-level of quality that we have here. But it certainly makes the extra mile, compared to a lot of other productions of the genre, to help me overcome my preventions against some of its core choices, and hook me. Kudos.

It seems to be a theme with a lot of newer DC stuff in general that they're going for a darker, grittier tone. In principle I tend to prefer that but the Marvel films have some actual comedy in them and just tend to be more entertaining; the DC ones I think suffer from the grimness a bit, plus they are just generally less good.

Supergirl is at least one notable exception to that; it's not amazingly good, but they seem to appreciate what they've got to work with and the episodes are light-hearted with some almost tongue-in-cheek references. On the whole I found it quite watchable if not brilliant (and probably the best DC thing I've seen since The Dark Knight).

I might give Titans a whirl (I noticed it is available on non-US Netflix) but I'm not holding my breath. Plus, I have plenty of things higher up the list to watch first.

I concur on Supergirl, the only "Arrowverse" TV show, I think, that actually improves year after year (at least for the first three seasons, we'll see where the fourth lands). —I'll set aside the odd case of Legends of Tomorrow, that didn't so much "improved" as... recognized itself for a lost cause and gunned for a self-conscious "so bad it's good" comedy approach.—

A few years back I would've agree with your general assertion that
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheFred View Post
It seems to be a theme with a lot of newer DC stuff in general that they're going for a darker, grittier tone.
Clearly they were eager to replicate the success of Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy. Things are more diverse again now, I'd say.

But the problem for me is not so much about being "dark" or not. The main problem of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman (I couldn't bring myself to suffer the vision of Justice League) isn't that they're grim. But that grimness is out of character for Superman. And then they had to make Batman even ten times darker and edgier for contrast's sake. And even there, maybe, maybe a good filmmaker could've make something of it... but all that happens in movies that were generally horrifically badly written (there are more plot-holes in Man of Steel than there is actual plot!) and horrifically badly directed.

On the other hand, I think that a "grim and gritty" Suicide Squad movie —as was originally intended— could have work... but as this point DC/Warner was all "aaw, our movies underperfom, it must be because they're grimmer than Marvel's, quick, let's add neon colors and goofy humor, that will solve all!!"... and the result of this hasty, late-minute makeover, was, predictably, a mess.

As a long time comic reader who's always been a lot more DC, then Marvel. Personally, I like the animated stuff (except teen titans go, that show can die in a fire), but all the current live action tv-shows just annoy me for various reasons.

I enjoyed Constantine and was sad it was canceled. But personally I'd say the best thing they could do is scrap all those shows and start over, while kidnapping Geoff Johns and locking him someplace where he'd be unable to escape and make decisions on dc media for the next 5 years or so.

The Dark Knight ones were deliberately dark, and that worked - as a stand-alone thing. The thing with that was, as far as I was concerned, Gotham was basically the world and Superman didn't exist. It was just a gritty vigilante crime thriller, and it was done well.

I didn't watch Man of Steel because Superman isn't interesting to me any more (I maintain that Superman was very much of his time - those really old Superman films were more about him being super and the "wow!" of that, but you can't sustain that for long. Superman's basically all-powerful, and also not really that interesting in terms of personality - I don't think the franchise really works if I am always rooting for Lex Luthor).

I didn't watch Batman vs Superman (though it was on Netflix so I almost did whilst ironing once) because, well, it looks awful. Plus it's an awful premise (see the above re Superman), and it looks awful.

Justice League nearly made the cut as a plane film (I was flying transatlantic, had time to watch 5-6 films there and back, plus I was a bit of a captive audience) but didn't because of the above. I did watch Wonder Woman and it was OK, but largely disappointing (a lot of people told me it was great, but I think maybe that was only relative to basically every other recent DC film).

I just watched Suicide Squad recently. It wasn't that great, either. OK, but I think they missed an opportunity to do something different (i.e. with villains). I think I would have preferred it as a comedy - I think there were one or two laughs, but they were few and far between. Marvel films just do that better. Plus, DC seem to have this thing where every bad guy is like a planet-destroying deity or alien like it was a reject from one of the Transformers films (so, good starting point, huh?) and it's just too much for me (especially when you try and marry that up with Batman, a street fighter whose superpower is "being rich"). It almost feels like they're trying to jump into the "cosmic defenders" type of arena just to one-up Marvel (who've got there now with the likes of Infinity War but have been building up to that for years).

So I was tempted by Legends of Tomorrow (it looked naff but had an interesting enough premise that it could have been good, or at least a bit different) and Titans but don't have much expectation of either of them actually being any good.

Supergirl was kind of corny and not that great (I only saw some of the first series) but it gets huge bonus points for self-awareness. Being a rip-off of Superman is basically an in-universe joke, there is even some in-character discussion of the alias itself, and I quite liked especially at the start how they had her being hapless and struggling to use her awesome power (plus they dialled the power down a bit; basically every alien foe is super-strong, and she merely seems to be very strong herself rather than the "can fly backwards in time" levels of ominpotency).

Does Lego Movie count as DC? That was far and away the best film I've ever seen to feature DC characters, with far more understanding of DC characters (especially Green Lantern!) than any actual DC film and even the best Batman (who's the only DC character to have had a good film in recent years). Is Lego Movie on DC Universe?

The Bruce Timm cartoons were really the iconic versions of all the characters as far as I'm concerned. Everything I've seen since has failed to live up to them.
The first couple seasons of Arrow & Flash were good, and the first season of SuperGirl was OK, but the following year (season 5 of Arrow, 3 of Flash, & 2 of SuperGirl) were all so amazingly awful and a chore to sit through that I not only had no interest in watching them any more, I never wanted to watch the good seasons again. Heck, I couldn't even finish season 2 of Supergirl because it was so incredibly terrible.

Nolan's Batman just didn't do it for me. Maybe because Bale is incapable of actually conveying emotion? (You'd think that would be important for an actor to do, but all he seems to be able to do is play people utterly devoid of any kind of empathy.)

The Snyder movies... rather like Sony, DCs reaction seemed like "Wow, Wonderwoman didn't totally suck" as if they'd just won an Oscar.

I have DVDs of the shows I want to watch.
This idea of everyone having their own subscription service is going to just ruin them all. NetFlix used to be great, but now that everyone is yanking away their own shows to form their own subscription services, NF is becoming less and less useful.

Netflix still has quite a lot of stuff, and only costs slightly more than DC Universe, which for me makes it a no-brainer if you were planning to sign up to exactly one (and you're not cycling free Prime trials...). Have they pulled Supergirl from it now that DC Universe is happening? Ironically a lot of shows are available only outside their home territory for exactly this reason (Titans is available on Netflix everywhere except the US - but US Netflix still had more/better stuff overall), and in fact I think it's always been that way with some stuff (stuff where the channel have their own catch-up service and don't release it to Netflix right off).

Supergirl is still on NF in the US through season 3, just finished the season a bit over a week ago. Don't know if season 4 will be up after it finishes as has been the pattern with all the CW shows for the last few years.

I liked the first season and some parts of the second season of Arrow, Liked the first season of Flash better, Liked the first season of Supergirl and the premier of season 2, and I liked Constantine for what it was. And there was a brief moment were I though around season 2 they might be able to get it together and make Legends of Tomorrow work. And then we decided Damien Dark was just not going to go the hell away and STAY the hell away, but we also weren't going to do the bloody obvious thing and just let Sarah Lance off him and wibbly wobbly timey whimey Laurels Alive and a Metahuman over on Arrow. And any hope of Legends recovering went out the window for me.




So, I'm hearing that apparently they split Young Justice season 3 in two parts, and we got part 1 now and will be getting part 2 down the line. Anyone willing/able to confirm if that's accurate or not?





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