Iambaytor

Yes and no, a good story doesn't need to have the characters spell it out in dialogue (Example: "Batman's been a real mess since the death of his partner") but where BvS failed is that it picked up Batman's story in the middle. Presumably he hasn't always been like this but the only sign we really see of that is the way Alfred reacts to his behavior. Ultimately it feels like there's a Batman movie missing from the continuity, we don't have an example of what he was like before so the most natural thing to assume is that he's always been the grimdark asshole he is in the movie.

I mean, it's bad writing across the board but the intent I've picked up is that BvS Batman was in the midst of a rampage following the death of Jason Todd/the destruction of Metropolis. He was on edge in a big way and seeing the results of those actions as well as the level-headed influence of Diana caused him to lighten up in the aftermath. But I'm cool with Justice League Batman just being THE Batman now and leaving BvS Batman in the dumpster with Ed Norton Hulk and Terence Howard Rhodey.

That was the best part of the movie!

I can't say for sure if you specifically said anything but you can find plenty of pedophile jokes in the old Grassy Knoll vs. Hondos thread. Similarly there are a few dirty joke threads floating around with far worse than any of Gunn's tweets. As for acceptance out in the world of pedophile jokes? Watch the movie The Aristocrats sometime, or the stand-up of any of the comedians I mentioned, or look at those Michael Ian Black tweets. It's easy to look at them now and say "that's too far" but none of us did back then and that makes us as culpable as Gunn and anyone else. I'm not saying Gunn's some straight-edge hero but the only thing we have evidence of is that he had a shitty sense of humor 7 years ago. When a victim pops up I'll believe them but so far it's just a conservative firebrand rapist trying to depower someone who spoke out against him.

And I'm absolutely not trying to advocate for moral relativism here. If he'd posted those jokes last year I'd be calling him out too. He should've deleted them, he should've apologized for them (assuming he remembered them, I certainly don't have total recall of every shitty thing I said over the years), but when people show that they've changed and their crime was relatively victimless (I know, people have triggers and off-color jokes have victims in the abstract, but let they who are without sin cast the first stone there) I think a stern "you were a shit, don't do it again" is acceptable.

Probably the same way the Flash and Aquaman did in the Justice League movie.

The tweets were done before that, he's kept his nose clean since then and apologized about his past shitiness a handful of times. And the "he was in his 40s" argument is so disingenuous. Again, applying the metric of Hondos in the past a lot of people said shit in their 30s that I would never consider appropriate to say to or about another human being, especially in public. You mean one? 1 tweet? The one that's not even a pedophile joke and only seems like one because it's on the wall that Mike Czernovich made to make it seem like James Gunn is a pedophile? Literally every tweet that has a section outlining something upsetting in a red box isn't about pedophilia. 5 of those tweets are pedophile jokes and they're all pretty tame by 2009-2011 Standards. People are now trying to do the same thing to Sarah Silverman and Michael Ian Black pulling up tweets from the same era with the same subject matter (their tweets are far more crass than Gunn's) and God help them if they get around to Anthony Jeselnick, Jimmy Carr, or Lisa Lampinelli (who, unlike Gunn, are still making these type of jokes as they literally built a career around it.) His use of a transphobic slur is definitely problematic but hardly uncommon for the era (I could summon up relevant threads from this very site if folks wanna doubt it.) He also seems to have done a lot of his shit talking "in character", you remember that problematic trend of saying just awful bigoted shit but doing a voice to signify that this isn't your words but the words of some person you'd made up for demonstrative purposes? It's a shit comedic bit and I'm glad it's gone away for the most part but it was socially acceptable at the time. There's nothing about these tweets that leads me to believe he's a pedophile, just that he was a jerk who told crass, unfunny jokes. Which he admitted to before he signed on for the first movie, don't even try to believe Disney didn't know about every single one of those tweets when they hired him. Besides, this whole edgy joke schtick was clearly him trying to ape his mentor Lloyd Kaufman, the man still tells jokes like that and is celebrated by it in much the way a lot of comedians problematically try to be the next Don Rickles. I'm going to guess the reason he left the tweets up is because he thought it smarter to own up to who he had been than to try and hide it like a coward, but apparently that's a bad move. By all accounts he quit doing that shit and grew as a person, his public output and the things he's written bear out that he's not that person any longer. Is Disney within their rights to fire him? Of course, but they knew about all this and didn't care until it affected their bottom line. You guys should be concerned because some alt-right troll just affected the decision of a multi-billion dollar corporation because a person who spoke out against the alt-right wasn't always as enlightened as he is now. This is a very dangerous precedent. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go edit every single post I ever made in this place because I know who I used to be and I'm not going to allow to anyone to weaponize my past ignorance against me

Nah, that grim and gritty DC universe is fully visible in the trailer, that seems to be the thrust of the joke.

Quoted from the last link:

I'm fine with a reboot, the show hasn't aged very well and though a lot of what worked about it at the time still shines through it's still very much a WB show from the 90s. On the surface the casting of an African American actress is fine, it's an empowering role in all that but that's kind of losing the elemental point of the series in that Buffy is representative of the bubble-headed blondie that dies first in most horror movies, she's meant to subvert that. I'm still very interested in a reboot. Once a character takes on legendary status they deserve to be remixed and re-interpreted like Batman or Zorro James Bond, this still might suck but I'm interested to see what they do.

It's hands down better than the original, it would've been even better if it had nothing to do with the original. I finally got around to watching and reviewing the various cuts and I don't feel like repeating myself so for posterity: Theatrical Cut Director's Cut Final Cut Blade Runner 2049

*shrug* I'm pretty sure there's worse than this on this very site if we were to go back far enough. I get it but his Twitter account has been there the whole time, Disney could've, probably should've looked into it. Edgelord humor was in for a while and pretty much everyone who indulged said some stuff they'd have a hard time explaining in the cold sober light of 2018. I mean would you be able to track down every shitpost you have on this site, I admit I'm a special case since I was 16 when I started here but it's quite an undertaking.

I'd love Slither 2.

What If Copyright Trolls Weren't Squatting on The Conan the Barbarian License Despite the Fact That He Should Be in the Public Domain?

Maybe the first issue could be a meta What If. "What if Marvel's What If Wasn't a Disposable Garbage Book?"

Ridley Scott can't hurt you here.

Wouldn't Fallout 4 be the biggest VR game to date?

Alright, this totally makes up for him not getting that Aliens sequel.

I'm down for this.

The Thor trilogy is fine. The first one's delightful, the second one is goofy fun, and the third one is one of the best MCU films but it's only okay as a trilogy. I didn't find that bit regressive because Tony is still battling with his PTSD as well as his vision from Age of Ultron, it affects his decision making and makes him rash. If you watch all the movies with Tony in a town you can see the way the story degrades his character bit by bit until he's the twitchy mess he is in Infinity War. He's hiding behind his sarcasm but the man is a wreck.

I get that but it's not the story this Tony needed. Movie Stark should never actually be metahuman because that undercuts who he is in this universe, he's a normal human with a great intellect and that's his superpower. As for alluding to the Wolverine trilogy re:Captain America. What I meant is that tonally and stylistically they feel like three very different movies, they have a connective tissue but it's superfluous to the movies at large.

So long as I live the praise heaped on Batman Begins makes less and less sense. I get that on a cinematic scale Batman was a joke at that point (neither the Schumacher or Burton films are good movies, they're weird cult films that somehow got massive budgets and big-name actors and they're a lot of fun but they're basically parodies of themselves) but Batman Begins is so wrong-headed in so many ways. They have to justify everything about a dude who dresses up as a bat to the point where there's a scene where Christian Bale and Morgan Freeman have a serious discussion about the little horns on his mask. But don't worry we have two underdeveloped villains (especially Scarecrow) who never really have a moment to shine, an action finale that crawls to a conclusion, and a half-hearted romantic subplot that treads water. It's half overwritten origin story and half under-written super hero movie and it just wants you to take it sooooooo seriously, you guys. The supplemental hour of Dark Knight involves the epilogue with Two-Face, hospital explosions, the two board sequence, the long diversion to Hong Kong, and so much speechifying. This movie wasn't even bad like the first one but Nolan had to take it far too seriously anyway. See I'd accept the dull but coasts line for the first Iron Man. It's making a hero out of a character few people liked who doesn't have much in the way of noteworthy villains. But 2 and 3 are very much about Tony's personal struggles, Steve is pretty unflappable in his moral center and conflict comes when the ideologies of other characters conflict with what he knows to be right. And that's fine its the Superman ethos, he's an incorruptible force for good and the conflict comes from the fact that he'll never be able to save everyone. The villains of Iron Man 2 are there to show Tony he's not invincible and that he can't stagnate and take his talents and friends for granted. Iron Man 3 (I couldn't care less how it adapts the extremis storyline) is answering the question posed by Cap in the Avengers "What are you outside of that suit?" Suddenly a man in a suit of armor has to live in a world of gods, aliens, super soldiers, and giant radioactive monsters AND deal with a serious case of PTSD stemming from his near-death experience in The Avengers. And to top it off he has to face a group of people among whom the weakest can destroy his armor singlehandedly AND his armor is broken. The weird parallels between Iron Man 3 (shadow terrorist organization, hero broken, big late-movie plot twist) and The Dark Knight Rises show the strength of Iron Man's willingness to buy into its silly concept and have fun with it vs. Nolan's need to makr everything so serious and make it seem real. Also unlike Captain America, Iron Man 3 has an end to Tony's arc. tot leaves the story open for more but it's a complete story with a beginning middle and end that fit together neatly.

I'll second Axel's Iron Man Trilogy is Best trilogy. For one it's the only one where its main character actually goes on a journey (one that has continued through every movie he's been in past the end of the trilogy), for two The Dark Knight has not aged well (it's still a near flawless 90 minute movie but that other hour is pretentious mess) and both Batman Begins and Dark Knight Rises are fucking garbage. Captain America feels almost as loose a trilogy as the Wolverine movies did and the first one is too montage-heavy and feels like a pre-2000s super heroes movie (the worst Marvel movie, whichever you estimate that to be is still better than any comic book superhero movie made before X-men that isn't Blade) and while it's got a lot going for it it suffers from having the least enticing villain in the entire Marvel franchise (infinity guantlet thrown) and the biggest wet fart of an ending (should've covered Caps WWII escapades in the first hour then jumped to the future). It's better than what it's emulating but it's pretty dull and coasts a lot on the charisma and strength of its main character. Cap 2 and 3 are great, fucking spectacular, love them but of these three the most cohesive and best trilogy is still Iron Man. Yeah, Iron Man 2's third act is kind of a dud and it suffers for not giving Tony a proper nemesis but the entire thesis statement of the movie is that Tony's his own worst enemy so that doesn't bother me. I'll hear no bad words about Justin Hammer, he's great and I hope someday they make a Thunderbolts movie and bring him back as their Agent Coulson figure.

He had to have popped up there somewhere and I think he was on the Midnight Sons for a bit too.

In my journey through all of the Spider-Man comics (sans one-shots, yes I am still doing that) I was surprised to find that his introduction was really strong and I see why Marvel keeps wanting to bring him back but just like Cloak and Dagger, nobody seems to have any ideas on how to make him not boring as shit. He works fine in ensemble books, his time in Legion of Monsters, Marvel Zombies 4, and Punisher: Frankencastle were fine but he just can't lead a story for shit.