Wonder Woman Movie

Guardians of Ga'Hoole is probably his most...coherent, I think, film in terms of the narrative? It doesn't feel as weird or disjointed in the same way Sucker Punch or his DCEU films do.

I thought it was fairly entertaining but not a super great movie or anything.

Snyder's a very visual director, and the DCEU has been visually ambitious if nothing else. He's a lot more uneven when it comes to character and pacing.

I wouldn't say Nolan is particularly similar. His visual eye is a lot more meticulous, and his style is high-impact and kinetic but actually fairly reserved in terms of special effects (he prefers camera trickery and practical effects to CGI and colour grading, and while everyone remembers Inception for its epic folding cities, those were actually used quite sparingly in the movie proper). He's great at pacing scenes, has a reputation for planning his productions very tightly and not wasting shots, and even if I think his characters can come across as a little mechanical, it's consistent throughout all of his work. Whereas Snyder's characterization is hit and miss— some character beats work, some don't, but the larger issue is they don't feel connected.

Shooting a lot of wasted scenes is a larger problem for the DCEU, at the moment. It shows that a lack of planning, and it's that sense of cohesiveness and consistent payoffs which have served the MCU well. Even when a lot of the individual movies are serviceable but not overly memorable, the characters pull the audience through. It's the arc-building that allows the big tentpole movies to smooth over any bumps along the way. The audience is invested and that investment is constantly reinforced by all the little 'remember this?' and 'hey, did you notice...?' callbacks that are placed fairly subtly throughout the movies, without necessarily drawing attention to themselves.

The 'not drawing attention to themselves' part is something the DCEU is still learning. Part of the reward here, as in the comic books, is in discovery, in the fan picking these things out for themselves, rather than having the movie point to them too much. It's a fine line.

edited 27th Jul '17 9:35:29 PM by Unsung

The home release of Watchmen barely matters at all to the film's success. If it didn't earn at the box office, it was a disaster to the studios (particularly since they don't rake nearly as much profit from dvd sales as they do from the box office).

Bv S was, by all accounts, a success. But again, it's a movie starring the two most popular superheroes on earth. The fact it didn't even reach a billion is a testament to the studio's sheer disappointment.

Nolan films are all about ideas; the characters are there to represent themes and philosophical points and broad archetypes.

I think that's a perfectly valid approach to writing characterss, the main issue for me is that they tend to monologue about the themes of the movie in a way that feels a bit unnatural and melodramatic. Memento is the only movie of his I've seen that avoids that, the characters feel a bit more personable which is part of why it's his best film.

I don't think it's a lack of planning so much as a lack of faith in their directors. If what I heard about SS is true, they had a movie that was at least better and more coherent than what got released but they butchered it to try and please audiences and in the end got something worse.

edited 27th Jul '17 9:11:32 PM by Draghinazzo

Memento is absolutely his best film, in part because it doesn't overexplain itself. While the Talking Head Syndrome of Nolan's later films seems like it helps a lot with box office, making his many big ideas palatable to wide-release audiences, it does hurt his movies as art (Interstellar again). He understands emotion on a primal level that works best when it's shown without words, when the movie ends on a question, with the nail just about to be hit.^note Or the top still spinning, for example.

edited 28th Jul '17 5:23:03 AM by Unsung

Eh. I don't.

And the idea that you shoot hours of footage that might not make it into the movie is still different from staging hours worth of scenes that might not make it into the movie at all. You shoot different angles, you shoot multiple shots, you stage fights and explosions and greenscreen in various ways, you get multiple reaction takes and run through scenes multiple times, and yeah, you need more of that for a big-budget special effects extravaganza like this one, but you don't necessarily go out and shoot a bunch of your movie with the intention of not using it.

Trusting your directors is, I think, part of the planning process in a franchise endeavour. You're going to have to roll with whatever movie they make, so everyone needs to be on board from the word go, not second-guessing each other every step of the way. If Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman feeling of a single piece the way it does came about because she was allowed to make the movie she wanted to make, then I'd say the WB executives could stand to take a step back more often. Their recent track record isn't great, and that's not even a reference to the DCEU.

edited 28th Jul '17 5:22:16 AM by Unsung

Peter Mc Kinstry reveals what Ares was meant to look like in the film

http://io9.gizmodo.com/wonder-womans-big-bad-almost-looked-a-lot-more-intimida-1797298844

No real reason they couldn't have still gone with that design and kept using Thewlis for the voice, either. Sir Patrick was always a disguise.

Hell, even if they'd kept the mustache it wouldn't have been quite as bad if Ares wasn't shown as still having it in the flashback to ancient times.

Honestly Ares looked kind of cool when he was still an untransformed Brit. If they left him like that similar to Ardyn at the end of Final Fantasy XV, it might've been underwhelming for some people but it would at least be preferable to the ridiculousness of the Greek Warrior with Goofy Mustache design they ultimately went with.

Oh my God, that concept art. It's so awesome.

I'm torn either way. Something I liked about about the movie version was how he forged that armor from the materials around him, from literally the weapons of war. It fits in with how the character has adapted to the circumstances. The concept art is cool, but I don't see it as a leap above what we got.

I am kind of surprised about the Oscar push. It's a good movie, but the most common complaint is the third act and that would have a big impact on any picture/director/script nominations. I guess Production Design and Original Score has a chance.

I dunno, I kinda like the Ares we actually got. Ares is evil. What's that, you think Evil Is Cool? No, screw that. Evil is dorky, and a has dorky mustache.

One of my main issues with Wonder Woman was that Ares was treated as evil, and I think that detracted from both the movie as a movie and was part of one of the movie's two major fails from a representation and appropriation angle.

Because Wonder Woman the movie is about the worst treatment of Greek mythology that I've ever seen. Most of the Olympians were fridged before the movie even started, and then Zeus, Ares, and Diana are pressed into a Christian mold. Ares as the god of anger, aggression, strength, courage, and war would fit perfectly into the First World War.

FWIW, my headcanon is that Diana is not associated with Zeus (as in the text of the movie) or Athena (as in most comics) but with Hestia.

It should be pointed out that the Lasso is less commonly known as the Lariat of Hestia and one of Diana's powers is Sisterhood with Fire granted by Hestia.

Yeah, the Christian-izing of Greek myth annoyed me.

Re: Nolan and Snyder:

The visual similarity for me is that both of them love to use dark filters/grim coloring, which is a personal pet peeve of mine. Your movie can be grim without the lazy step of murdering all color/clear images.

The story similarity is that both of them tend to focus on very cynical points of view; they both have a tendency toward writing male heroes who are Ubermensch types; and they both also suck at including female characters in their work who aren't two-dimensional cut outs.

It should be pointed out that the closest thing to ubermensch we've gotten in the DCU are Zod in Mo S and Batman in Bv S. Hell, I'd make an argument for Diana fitting that description before character development sinks in.

The DCEU isn't cynical just being much more willing to acknowledge the difficulties and sacrifices that come with heroics as well as the opinions of the civilians affected by the heroes' actions

Isn't the lasso specifically named as a gift from Hestia in Steve's interrogation scene?

The line 'the Gods gave us many gifts, which you will come to know in time' leaves the door open to further backstory around the involvement of the other gods.

edited 28th Jul '17 4:37:46 AM by Hackett13

Snyder's colours are dark, but quite vivid and saturated. And one way or another, the washed-out colour palettes Nolan chooses do tend to suit the kinds of mood he's going for.

The points about flat female characters and not many of them, and ubermensch power fantasy heroes are spot on, I'd say.

Personal preference; having a scene or two with muted colors is fine, but a whole film? It looks like mud. Inception somewhat avoids this, but the story was still fine.

Ever notice how many Nolan films have a dead wife? It's creepy.

edited 28th Jul '17 4:59:38 AM by wisewillow

Memento, Inception, Interstellar; Martha Wayne, Rachel Dawes, and Talia; and I don't remember The Prestige too well, but both leads ended up dead and both men being in love with the same woman was a plot point, yes? It's some sort of pattern.

Nolan is talented in many respects, but writing female characters is not one of his strong suits. He's a bit like Edgar Wright in that regard. I don't find their female character to be awful or insultingly bad (it's not like watching a Michael Bay movie for example). But they tend to be, just there, most of the time. Not horrible, but not really memorable either.

The best ones that he's done are probably Anne Hathaway's Catwoman, and Marion Cotillard's character from Inception.

In regards to the "sad moment" debate between BVS and WW, WW wins that one hands down imo. I felt nothing during the bombing scene in BVS (well I did, but it was just annoying about how much wasted potential Holly Hunter's character was, and Mercy Graves to). WW handled it much better.