Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

[Kirsten]

I preferred the Watchmen film, tighter and better handled. the graphic novel dragged and got a bit silly.

[YorkNecromancer]

The 'Watchmen' film looked perfect, but it entirely missed the point of both Silk Spectres. Zack Snyder can't do female characters for sh!t, and he's not clever enough to do what George Miller did on 'Fury Road' and get an expert in to advise him.

Not to mention, the 'Watchmen' film felt super-dumbed down. Like, did we really need to have Doctor Manhattan overtly say SPOILER: 'The Comedian was your father?' Subtlety is not something in Snyder's vocabulary.

The lack of the ridonkulous intergalactic doomsquid was awesome, though. Much preferred the film's ending. Made WAAAAAY more sense than the comic's, and actually made Doctor Manhattan's opening scene into a Chekov's Gun, which I thought was super-clever.

[Kirsten]

I don't think it was dumbed down, it was just condensed from a massive sprawling novel in to a single film

[YorkNecromancer]

Silk Spectre's character arc is all about overcoming her teenaged rejection of her mother, and learning to embrace her as a real human being, something she had never been able to do before the realisation that her mother had been protecting her from the truth that her father was a murderously psychopathic rapist. This was obviously helped along by the realisation that she was just as capable of making the same mistakes her mother had in choosing men (Silk Spectre I with The Comedian; Silk Spectre II with the outwardly kind Doctor Manhattan who is - in his own way - more inhuman and cruel than The Comedian could ever be). It's all about how she finally realises she is flawed, her mother is flawed, and that they have a commonality she never realised or appreciated. In a very real way, she rejects her mother as a mother in order to learn to love her as a friend. The relationship with Night Owl II is part of that personal growth, but it's not central to it in the way that it is to him.

In the film? Not so much; her arc just gets reduced to 'I'm going to cheat on my god-husband because Reasons'.

Didn't think much of the film's handling of Silk Spectre at all.

Loved that ending though.

[Kirsten]

I didn't get that feeling from it personally

[YorkNecromancer]

There was a really good article on it when the film came out; I've been trying to find it but no luck. But it argued the point quite well.

[Erik Setzer]

The Watchmen did a MUCH better job of conveying the source material than V For Vendetta did. You can tell how bad V missed the mark by all the kids wearing Guy Fawkes masks while crying out for more government. (For those who didn't real the graphic novel, V was a pure anarchist. Zero government. The book also touched on chaos vs. anarchy.)

I actually enjoyed Man of Steel, because it's silly to try to make complete sense of a comic book movie. It worked well enough and was enjoyable.

I like the way this movie looks more now with this trailer. Showed it to a friend last night who, when I said he should watch it, sighed at first and showed notable lack of enthusiasm. Once it ended, his interest in the movie was thoroughly piqued. The trailer does a nice job of hinting at why Batman would go after Superman to begin with, and what could make him go on a bit of a rampage.

Deadpool... I want to see that trailer in decent quality. Saw a horrible quality camera video of the trailer, and that alone made me want to go buy tickets for it and curse my lack of time machine. You can tell with the trailer alone the movie's definitely going to need that R rating, but I don't think they're going to be going overboard with it. It's nice that they're also completely ignoring the existence of The-Movie-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

[Kirsten]

V did a fantastic job of the novel, it was wonderful.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Indeed, I recently got the graphic novel at Comicon and read through it. Granted, a lot of details changed because some things translate to film better than others. The uprising of the people is still there, V's push to bring down Fascism, the only real difference is that the novel ends on making it clear that Britain is left to the wolves and an anarchic state at the end, whereas the movie simply seems to cut the leadership out and still leave Britain with a working infrastructure that could host a people's government.

Then the order of things that V blows up is a bit different, as well as characters and what they do. The 1980s post-WWIII setting is updated to a modern post-9/11 setting, and it's known the rest of the world still exists, it's just a bit beaten up and economically destitute after the, "War on Terror," which is only skimmed over as it isn't important to the plot, and merely sets up Britain's fascistic decline. The original novel also skimmed over whether the rest of the world even still exists.

I dunno, the core themes of rising up against oppression, and the failure to contain human freedom/anarchy every time a government tries with a heavy hand are still there. I actually think the movie did the, "Dominoes Fall," sequence better, as you see the Fingermen losing control of the situation very rapidly, piece-by-piece.

[Mr Mystery]

I want to watch it again now!

Sadly, having a bunch of self-important trustafarians co-opting the symbol of your work in order to protest capitalism and globalisation by wearing cheaply made, Chinese repro masks really took the wind out of my enjoyment.

You're not 'V', you're nowhere near 'V', and let's face it - you like your anonymity because it gives you carte blanche to act like total dicks with minimal reprisals. But hey, don't forget, when you do get tracked down (because hey, who knew the government would pay people a lot of money to better at this sort of thing than you), it's time to squeal on all your buddies. That's right. Squeal. Squeal like a pig in a war