Movies

[West]

Dawn of Justice

Yes, it's a hot mess.

I really didn't want to say that. I wanted to like as much or more than I liked Man of Steel. Heck, I would have been okay with liking it a little less. But it's a disappointment.

The action sequences want to be epic, but they're awkward.

There are some pretty big plot holes and awfully contrived situations.

There's focus on bizarre things and lack of focus on things that could have given the film more definition -- I get the feeling the wrong things ended up on the cutting room floor when they edited it down to fit time constraints. Affleck and Gal Gadot do decent jobs. Aquaman, Cyborg, and Flash have very, very, very minor cameos. Eisenberg's Luthor was as bad as the trailers suggested -- it's over the top in the Jack Nicholson Joker bad way.

It's a shame they didn't spend half as much time developing the synergy of 'The Trinity' as they did trying to establish angst and conflict.

About the best thing that can be said is there are some nice nods to source material, including Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. I really hope this film doesn't kill DC's efforts at the theater, but they'll have to do much, much better. Some people rate movies on a sliding scale, but I've got my own personal rating method for any given movie:

If I was walking through a room, and it was on, would I stop to watch?

Nope.

[Benji]

I get the distinct impression that the director really really wanted to have both Lex Luthor and the Joker involved somehow, but he couldn't swing it for some reason so he just mashed them together and made quirky lex luthor instead. I seriously have some difficulty believing that people in that universe can come away from any meeting with Luthor without flashing "holy shit this guy is an insane supervillain" alarms sounding off in their heads - the jolly rancher scene was horrifying because of this.

Yes I am going to give this unstable rich kid with boundary issues and an obsession with making anti-superman weaponry access to alien tech and the corpse of Zod. This is a good idea. My constituents were very wise to elect me.

Batman has far too many guns. He is also far to comfortable with murder and mayhem in this incarnation than I'm comfortable with Batman being. There's a chase scene where he punts a car full of thugs across the road with the batmobile and then he shoots that car with a bat-cable a moment later so he can drag it behind the batmobile where it careens and tumbles behind him so he can use it as some kind of kenetic hammer against other vehicles. The entire time I was thinking "jesus this batman is a maniac, if they weren't dead in that car then they sure are dead now." It sincerely felt like he was Jason Todd and not Batman.

I liked Alfred. Wonder Woman was great in the... like collective 10 minutes of screen time she had. The only scene that made me sit up and be wowed was when she showed up at the final fight and that musical sting went off, that was fantastic.

I get the feeling that they're gonna aim for Darkseid being the big bad in the overarching plot. The Batman: Fury Road sequence with the parademons made me roll my eyes otherwise.

[Benji]

I caught a matinee showing, so I ended up paying $15 for a Large cherry coke, a box of junior mints and a movie that... wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen. I've paid to see worse films, this one was just exactly what I expected it to be, which is a little disappointing but sadly not every film can be Jupiter Ascending. I also got a half off a self serve frozen yogurt because I had a ticket stub, they had a couple dairy free options which was nice. Net viewing cost was $13 and two and a half hours of my time, so it could have been worse.

Also OMG WE KNOW HOW BRUCE WAYNE'S PARENTS DIED JESUS STOP RECAPPING EVERY TIME I DON'T CARE HOW MUCH YOU THINK THAT SCENE WITH THE GUN'S RETORT BREAKING THE STRING OF PEARLS IS TOTES AWESOME BECAUSE YOU WENT TO ART SCHOOL IT IS CONTRIVED!

[West]

I'll have to pin my DC hopes on this.

...which also explains why Claire Underwood is so badass. She's actually​ Antiope. O.o

[Chrisie]

BvS needs to make $1bn soon to simply break even as BvS overspent by tons on costly reshoots and rewrites... or (shackled by massive losses thanks to recent garbage like Pan, etc) WB are in real trouble.

So far BvS is scoring less than The Room (The Room!) on Rotten Toms and has (as at 26 March) made about $82m on the opening two days. So far, for comparison, Deadpool has earned about $735m. Star Wars FTA has over $1bn.

Strong openings didn't rescue Sony or The Amazing Spiderman once bad word of mouth got a hold.

Looks like West isn't the only one who'll be pinning hopes on prayers to Merciful Minerva and the power of the Amazons.

[Benji]

So apparently Dawn of Justice: Ultimate Edition is being released in the middle of July with an additional 30 minutes of stuff cut from the current film. It is also rated R, compared to the current film's PG-13. I can only assume that a lot of the reason the movie I saw was so spotty was because the extra 30 minutes was SUPER VITAL to the plot but they couldn't keep it in because of the rating.

Joy.

http://heroichollywood.com/batman-v-...-release-date/

[Chrisie]

Here's an example of the precision of DC's internal planning process.

Cast your minds back 30 years to #7 of Crisis on Infinite Earths and the death of Supergirl...here's how DC decided it...

[West]

In a month when Captain America: Civil War took us to the edge and beyond of what was possible and wonderful about the superhero(es) movie genre, X-Men: Apocalypse brings us crashing back down to the reality of everything that is not Marvel Studios.

It's not just exposed for not being great, it's fucking awful. Like you want to walk out bad, but you've committed, so all that's left is dwelling on what's bad about it. It's that sprained ankle or jammed finger you twist and prod at just to see how bad it can hurt.

The root of the problem is Bryan Singer, who's basically using this franchise to get Hollywood to foot his fetish bill. There's more Smug-Preening-In-Faux-Leather in this than a Joe Ezterhase movie. The 'action' is fairly minimal, and mostly consists of dirt swirling through the air. The CGI is bad, and at times I'm pretty sure I could see the edge-line between set and green screen.

Apocalypse wakes up, rallies some badasses, then kidnaps Charles to jump in his body. Jean Grey has to go Phoenix to save the day. The end. Oh, and Wolverine cameo looking fucking stupid in wannabe Weapon-X 'gear'. Of the X-Men franchise Obligatory Trifecta (we got Phoenix and Wolverine) the only thing missing was MacAvoy frothing and flinging spittle.

I liked First Class. I... was okay with... Days of Future. This regresses us all the way back to X-Men United. With less action. And worse CGI.

Do yourselves a favor and skip it.

[Cerberus]

Yeah. I haven't seen it yet, but the previews I've seen aren't inspiring me to go see it. Might wait till dvd then. I didn't mind Futures Past, but it wasn't great. The Wolverine though (the Japan one) has an almost pointless storyline. That really annoyed me